This volume gathers the latest fundamental research contributions, innovations, and applications in the field of design and analysis of complex robotic mechanical systems, machines, and mechanisms, as presented by leading international researchers at the 4th USCToMM Symposium on Mechanical Systems and Robotics (USCToMM MSR), held in Irvine, California, USA on May 21-23, 2026. It covers highly diverse topics, including soft, wearable and origami robotic systems; applications to walking, fly...

A great, rhapsodic, urgent book full of joy, grief, rage and love . . . A must-read' Helen Macdonald, author of H is for HawkNature has many gifts for us, but perhaps the greatest of them all is joy; the intense delight we can take in the natural world, in its beauty, in the wonder it can offer us, in the peace it can provide - feelings stemming ultimately from our own unbreakable links to nature, which mean that we cannot be fully human if we are separate...

Finance serves the rich and powerful. We need to democratize it.**Winner of the 2026 Outstanding Contribution to Political Sociology Book Award from the American Sociological Association**Why is democracy so broken and how might it be fixed? In The Master's Tools, award-winning author Michael A. McCarthy argues the answer can be found in the flows of credit and investment bound up with finance capital.Today, finance guides ...

Everyone likes to make money, but the act of selling can be uncomfortable and even stressful. By focusing on helping your customer rather than selling to them, you can overcome your resistance and turn a potential customer into a lifelong relationship. Even those who are timid, frightened and otherwise distressed by the prospect of selling will find these simple, time-tested methods of seasoned sales professionals easy to understand, implement, and even enjoy!

You ain't gonna like it: bad grammar's not so bad. - The TimesRemember all those grammar rules from school? No? Most of us don't. Mike McCarthy, renowned corpus linguist and co-author of the 900-page Cambridge Grammar of English answers the awkward questions that regularly bother us about English grammar. In this helpful A-Z field guide, McCarthy tells us what the conventional rules are as well as shows us what people are writing or saying now and...

ONE OF THE GUARDIAN'S BEST NATURE BOOKS OF 2020SHORTLISTED FOR THE RICHARD JEFFERIES SOCIETY & WHITE HORSE BOOKSHOP LITERARY PRIZE'Lovely: full of fascinating detail and anecdote, but the undertow of the virus moving in real time beneath its sunlit surface gives it a unique emotional heft.'-The Times'A literary window into the wonderful wild world during lockdown... ...

If we could see it as a whole, if they all arrived in a single flock, say, we would be truly amazed: sixteen million birds. Swallows, martins, swifts, warblers, wagtails, wheatears, cuckoos, chats, nightingales, nightjars, thrushes, pipits and flycatchers pouring into Britain from sub-Saharan Africa.It is one of the enduring wonders of the natural world. Each bird faces the most daunting of journeys -navigating epic distances, dependent on bodily fuel reserves. Yet none can refuse....

The moth snowstorm, a phenomenon Michael McCarthy remembers from his boyhood when moths “would pack a car’s headlight beams like snowflakes in a blizzard,” is a distant memory. Wildlife is being lost, not only in the wholesale extinctions of species but also in the dwindling of those species that still exist.The Moth Snowstorm is unlike any other book about climate change today; combining the personal with the polemical, it is a manifesto rooted in experience, a poignant m...

Few things are capable of invoking the kind of anxiety and terror as the thought of making a public speech. The fight-or-flight response triggered by the idea is a defense mechanism no longer useful to us in this modern age. In this book, you'll learn easy and powerful techniques to override this all-too-common fear, and begin to view the idea of public speaking with excitement and confidence. The techniques discussed within the book were developed by author Michael McCarthy and used in re...

ELT: The Basics offers a clear, non-jargonistic introduction to English language teaching for EFL/ESL teachers in training, early career teachers, those considering taking up ELT, and experienced teachers who may want to read about the way the profession has developed and continues to evolve.Key features of this book include:Real classroom data and data from ELT training programmesDiscussion of a wide range of learning contexts a...

The extraordinary story of Richard Whittington, from his arrival in London as a young boy to his death in 1423, against a backdrop of plague, politics and war; turbulence between Crown, City and Commons; and the unrelenting financial demands of Richard II, Henry IV and Henry V, to whom Whittington was mercer, lender and fixer.A man determined to follow his own path, Whittington was a significant figure in London's ceaseless development. As a banker, Collector of the Wool Custom, Ki...

English Vocabulary: The Basics offers a clear, non-jargonistic introduction to English vocabulary, the way linguists classify and explain it, and the place of vocabulary in our overall picture of the language, and in society. Introducing a range of terminology for discussing vocabulary, the reader is provided with a coherent, structured description of what we know about words and their meanings.Key features of this book include:• Analysis of historical roots of pre...