Best Selling Books by Christopher Reid

A collection of some of the most beautiful poems in the English language.

A bright and charming new poetry collection, from 2009 Costa Book of the Year winner, Christopher Reid.

Now reissued in the poetry front-list look: Reid''s hugely popular narrative poem The Song of Lunch.

For and After is Christopher Reid''s fourth collection of poems to be published by Faber & Faber, and his first since Expanded Universes in 1996. It consists, more or less half and half, of poems bearing dedications to friends, colleagues and loved ones, and translations or versions of works in foreign languages, including a passage from The Odyssey and a miscellany of pieces by Horace, Leopardi, Baudelaire, Rilke and others. By turns intimate and affectionate, satirical and mischievous, For and After is a dazzling insight into one of the most imaginative minds in the business.

In this thesis, in situ biasing experiments on BiFeO3 thin film devices were enabled through the development of a specimen holder and sample electrode mask. The dynamics of ferroelectric domain propagation and nucleation were studied at varying electric fields, and at high spatial and temporal resolution using this in situ technique. A range of dynamic behavior is witnessed in the captured movies, including domain nucleation, propagation, switching, relaxation, and intermediate domain configurations. The dynamic interaction of domains and defects is studied. A network of misfit dislocations at the BFO film-substrate interface is found to alter domain morphologies and velocities. Threading dislocations are shown to stabilize intermediate domain configurations and radically slow domain relaxation, while also acting as pinning sites. A comparison of the observed domain kinetics is made to two popular models -- the Kolmogorov-Avrami-Ishibashi model and Nucleation Limited Switching model. The influence of the arrays of dislocations on the domain kinetics in these BFO thin film devices more accurately fits the NLS model. Investigations into the influence of charged domain walls and charged defect clusters are presented. These findings, by revealing how the presence of defects and localized compositional changes play a role in domain wall motion behavior during electric field control, can help improve the design of future devices built upon ferroelectrics and multiferroics.

Ever since the success of the Calgary Winter Olympics in 1988, the concept of "legacy" has grown in importance as a justification for hosting Winter Olympic Games in North America. While the term has increasingly been used to denote a positive outcome and to support hosting such Hallmark events, little has been done in terms of researching how "legacies" are best planned and implemented. This capstone analyses a number of legacy programs using the 1988 Calgary, 2002 Salt Lake City and upcoming 2010 Vancouver Games as case studies, combined with a series of in-depth interviews with specialists in the field. The study generates a list of important criteria for creating successful legacies to be considered during the initial planning process. These criteria are then used to formulate options in terms of how future Olympic legacies might be structured that stress the importance of engaging the community in a meaningful way.

Author''s abstract: It is important in the development of cloud robotics that the challenges presented by transferring computational loads to networked resources are properly addressed. The challenges include network latency, data integrity, security, and privacy. The objective of the present work is to investigate the issues of latency and data integrity in a representative cloud robotics environment. The present work involves setting up a cloud robotics network in an open-source Robot Operating System (ROS) framework and carrying out investigations on the levels of latency and reduction in data integrity as utilization of the network increases. In this study, a virtual datacenter has been set up to provide the foundation on which to build software systems to provide cloud services. Robot Operating System (ROS) framework has been used to facilitate communication among heterogeneous systems in the network. Three types of robots, including the Parrot AR.Drone2.0, the Kobuki Turtlebot 2, and the LEGO EV3 have been implemented in the system. The system has been tested for baseline connectivity and under low- and high-bandwidth conditions to determine the latency and data integrity of the network connections. Additionally, a heterogeneous system consisting of sensor feedback from the AR.Drone2.0 and motor control of the Turtlebot 2 has been built to examine the connection between the devices themselves. Through this study, it has been demonstrated that under low-bandwidth conditions, the network performs reasonably well in the areas of latency and data integrity. However, for high-bandwidth conditions involving image transmission, the network performance deteriorates considerably, both in terms of latency and data integrity. One possible reason is the wireless router used in the current setup. It is also recommended that, especially under high-bandwidth loads, it is necessary for networked systems to perform some portion of their computations on-board and high-bandwidth wireless connectivity to the cloud is facilitated. Ongoing research and future directions are also outlined.