Laser surface texturing (LST) is a process that uses lasers to modify or prepare a material’s surface for improved performance. This book examines laser surface texturing techniques for various materials and applications. It also explores the microstructural, tribological, anti-corrosion, and mechanical behaviors of laser-textured component surfaces to understand the mechanisms for improving lifecycle and reducing frictional losses.This book:• Considers LST of metals, ceram...

In the heart of a towering city rises a dream born of struggle, resilience, and unstoppable ambition. Gilgamesh Tower: I Can, Why Can't? is the stirring journey of five young visionaries who turn adversity into invention and pain into purpose.Bound by friendship and driven by hope, they face betrayals, failures, love, and impossible odds, but what unites them is their refusal to give up.This isn't just a story. It's a mirror held up to every reader who's ever doubted themselves. It's a cal...

Embark on a mesmerizing journey into the captivating world of The Heir of Meridian, a fantasy novel that unveils a universe of unparalleled wonder. At its core lies Meridian, an ethereal realm nestled at the center of the universe, where deep blue skies and mythical creatures thrive under the reign of immortal rulers. Shrouded from other worlds for three millennia, Meridian's inhabitants entrusted mystically empowered Guardians to maintain peace in the face of human greed. As a new era daw...

From 2013 to 2015, over 11,000 people across West Africa lost their lives to the deadliest outbreak of the Ebola virus in history. Crucially, this epidemic marked the first time the virus was able to spread beyond rural areas to major cities, overturning conventional assumptions about its epidemiology.With backgrounds ranging from development to disease control, the contributors to this volume - some of them based in countries affected by the Ebola epidemic - consider the underlyin...

This anthology reflects the complex processes in the production of historical knowledge and memory about Sierra Leone and its diaspora since the 1960s. The processes, while emblematic of experiences in other parts of Africa, contain their own distinctive features. The fragments of these memories are etched in the psyche, bodies, and practices of Africans in Africa and other global landscapes; and, on the other hand, are embedded in the various discourses and historical narratives about the...

The haunting story of a virus that triggered the worst pandemic of modern times.**“Both a saga of tragedies and a detective story.” —**The GuardianThe flu pandemic of 1918–1920 was one of the greatest human disasters of all time. It infected a third of the people on Earth—from the poorest immigrants of New York City to the king of Spain, Franz Kafka, Mahatma Gandhi, and Woodrow Wilson. But despite a death toll far higher than that ...

Heart of Darkness is a novella written by Polish-born writer Joseph Conrad (born Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski). Before its 1902 publication, it appeared as a three-part series (1899) in Blackwood's Magazine. It is widely regarded as a significant work of English literature and part of the Western canon. This highly symbolic story is actually a story within a story, or frame narrative. It follows Marlow as he recounts, from dusk through to late night, his adventure into the Congo to a g...

Can non-governmental organisations contribute to more socially just, alternative forms of development? Or are they destined to work at the margins of dominant development models determined by others? Addressing this question, this book brings together leading international voices from academia, NGOs and the social movements. It provides a comprehensive update to the NGO literature and a range of critical new directions to thinking and acting around the challenge of development alternatives...

Essential reading for anyone interested in the African continent and the diversity of human history, this Very Short Introduction looks at Africa's past and reflects on the changing ways it has been imagined and represented. Key themes in current thinking about Africa's history are illustrated with a range of fascinating historical examples, drawn from over 5 millennia across this vast continent.

The word germ is defined as 'a microbe that causes disease'. The vast majority of microbes do not infect us at all: it is pathogens that make us ill. These include bacteria, viruses, protozoa, fungi, worms, and prions. Living with Germs not only looks at all of these in detail, but also at the defence mechanisms by which we come to terms with them, whether by eliminating them, stopping them from eliminating us, or simply learning to live with them. This is thefirst book to look at the subj...

First discovered in 1976, and long regarded as an easily manageable virus affecting isolated rural communities, Ebola rocketed to world prominence in 2014 as a deadly epidemic swept through Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia in West Africa. Thousands of people died as the extraordinarily contagious disease spread rapidly from villages to urban centres. Initial quarantine responses proved often too little and too late, and the medical infrastructure of the affected countries struggled to cop...

The Land Is Ours tells the story of South Africa’s first black lawyers, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In an age of aggressive colonial expansion, land dispossession and forced labour, these men believed in a constitutional system that respected individual rights and freedoms, and they used the law as an instrument against injustice.The book follows the lives, ideas and careers of Henry Sylvester Williams, Alfred Mangena, Richard Msimang, Pixley ka Isaka Seme...