Agriculture is the product of a complex mixture of behavioural, biophysical and market drivers. Understanding how these factors interact to produce crops and livestock for food has been the focus of economic investigation for many years. The advent of optimisation algorithms and the exponential growth in computing technology has allowed significant growth in mathematical modelling of the dynamics of agricultural systems. The complexity of approaches has grown in parallel with the availabil...

Fantasy is a genre of speculative fiction set in a fictional universe, often inspired by real world myth and folklore. Its roots are in oral traditions, which then became fantasy literature and drama. From the twentieth century it has expanded further into various media, including film, television, graphic novels, manga and video games.Fantasy is distinguished from the genres of science fiction and horror by the absence of scientific or macabre themes respectively, though these gen...

Many say that some of their greatest friends, and their greatest joys and feelings, are about animals. Rather than find those same joys and feelings from amongst friends, family and the rest of humanity it can be far easier, some say wiser, to find that from other sources. Some animals may be entirely innocent and entirely devoted to us. But we forget that in the world of wild animals survival is the primary instinct and usually the great enemy is the human race.In this volume our ...

The aim of this book is to explore the challenges facing rural communities and economies and to demonstrate the potential of spatial microsimulation for policy and analysis in a rural context. This is done by providing a comprehensive overview of a particular spatial microsimulation model called SMILE (Simulation Model of the Irish Local Economy). The model has been developed over a ten year period for applied policy analyis in Ireland which is seen as an ideal study area given its large p...