Book & CDs. This popular instruction book, ideal for both individual and classroom use, is now accompanied by 2 audio CDs! The 25 lessons combine dialogues with easy-to-follow grammatical explanations. Sidebars feature vocabulary, cultural information, and helpful tips for travellers and businesspeople. Other features include an introduction to hiragana and katakana writing systems, and a Japanese-English/English-Japanese glossary. The aduio CDs complement the dialogue and vocabulary sections of each lesson, helping the reader to understand the language as spoken.

Contemporary societies are constructed, constricted, and constrained by various series of examinations. Governments of both Western and non-Western countries tend to conduct detailed, multi-layered and continuous systems of tests or examinations. International tests, such as PISA and TIMSS, have also been introduced to compare the relative performances of learners within diverse educational institutions across different countries. Examinations therefore provide a methodological pivot for comparing a range of societies. They enable us to contrast the West and the East; the North and the South; tribal and mass society; ancient and postmodern civilization; and so on. Comparing parallel societies from across Asia, the Middle East, Europe, and North America, this book proposes fundamental transitions in sociological research from system to process and from communication to composition through intensive studies on examinations. It uses ethnographies, interviews, questionnaires, documents, statistics, and big-data analyses to make comparisons on broad scales of time and space. In so doing, it suggests hypotheses encompassing different kinds of societies in human history, including those in the Axial Age and the Modern Ages.

In this first comprehensive compilation of review chapters on this hot topic, more than 30 experts from around the world provide in-depth chapters on their specific areas of expertise, covering such essential topics as: * Block Copolymer Systems, Nanofibers and Nanotubes * Helical Polymer-Based Supramolecular Films * Synthesis of Inorganic Nanotubes * Gold Nanoparticles and Carbon Nanotubes * Recent Advances in Metal Nanoparticle-Attached Electrodes * Oxidation Catalysis by Nanoscale Gold, Silver, and Copper * Concepts in Self-Assembly * Nanocomposites * Amphiphilic Poly(Oxyalkylene)-Amines * Mesoporous Alumina * Nanoceramics for Medical Applications * Ecological Toxicology of Engineered Carbon Nanoparticles * Molecular Imprinting * Near-Field Raman Imaging of Nanostructures and Devices * Fullerene-Rich Nanostructures * Interactions of Carbon Nanotubes with Biomolecules * Nanoparticle-Cored Dendrimers and Hyperbranched Polymers * Nanostructured Organogels via Molecular Self-Assembly * Structural DNA Nanotechnology With its coverage of all such important areas as self-assembly, polymeric materials, bionanomaterials, nanotubes, photonic and environmental aspects, this is an essential reference for materials scientists, engineers, chemists, physicists and biologists wishing to gain an in-depth knowledge of all the disciplines involved.

Comprehensive Natural Products III, Third Edition, Seven Volume Set updates and complements the previous two editions, including recent advances in cofactor chemistry, structural diversity of natural products and secondary metabolites, enzymes and enzyme mechanisms and new bioinformatics tools. Natural products research is a dynamic discipline at the intersection of chemistry and biology concerned with isolation, identification, structure elucidation, and chemical characteristics of naturally occurring compounds such as pheromones, carbohydrates, nucleic acids and enzymes. This book reviews the accumulated efforts of chemical and biological research to understand living organisms and their distinctive effects on health and medicine and to stimulate new ideas among the established natural products community. Provides readers with an in-depth review of current natural products research and a critical insight into the future direction of the field Bridges the gap in knowledge by covering developments in the field since the second edition published in 2010 Split into 7 sections on key topics to allow students, researchers and professionals to find relevant information quickly and easily Ensures that the knowledge within is easily understood by and applicable to a large audience

Given the recent expansion in materials chemistry, this book addresses several of the vigorous areas of research in this field, where inorganic materials are central to the research. Each chapter provides an introduction to the subject under discussion and then develops the field to provide a sensible overview, with certain topics being expanded. Written by an international group of researchers the nine chapters cover such important areas as inorganic superconductors, magnetic materials, biogenic inorganic materials, polymeric co-ordination compounds, liquid crystals and precursors for electronic materials.

The theme of death is an essential component of film narrative, particularly in how it affects the hero. Filmmakers from different cultures and backgrounds have developed distinct yet archetypal perspectives on death and the protagonist's response. Focusing on Western and Japanese period genre films, the author examines the work of John Ford (1894-1973), Akira Kurosawa (1910-1998) and Sergio Leone (1929-1989) and finds similarities regarding death's impact on the hero's sense of morality.