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Biography
As Thailand rose with the world order since WWII, its reputation in the international agricultural sciences owed much to one person. Charan Chantalakhana was the man for the times. As the Vietnam conflict stimulated massive US influence in Thailand, more benign stars aligned to build on Charan’s remote Siamese origins and guide him through a leading US university. This biography includes his pioneering Kasetsart University work in animal science research and his leadership in Thai universities, his role in the peak international research body the CGIAR and in the International Livestock Research Institute, and some of his many accolades. Perhaps of even greater human interest, Falvey’s work also traces Charan’s inspirational life from Siam’s obscure Deep South, through his early truancy years before shepherded by mentors until he himself became an outstanding mentor for Southeast Asia and the global advocate for smallholder farmers.
This book owes its origins to a collation of some of my publications for which a higher doctorate (Doctor of Agricultural Science) was awarded by the University of Melbourne in 2004. In that guise it was titled: Integrating Reductionist Research into International Agricultural Development: Re-conceiving Agricultural Research for Development; Technical Support for Development; Thai Agriculture; International Agriculture; Agricultural Education. It was thus an attempt to seek continuity across my research and development activities around various countries up until that time and to distill from it some conclusions that might inform future directions for international agricultural research and ...
Forword It was agriculture that enabled human beings to become producers rather than hunters and gatherers, and in doing so to settle into communities. From these earliest settlements have developed the elaborate and complex societies of today. During all these millennia, we have tended to take agriculture for granted. This is unfortunate, and unfair by all those - farm men and women in the fields, scientists in their laboratories, and policy makers in parliaments and elsewhere, for instance - who have contributed to the development of agriculture; an enterprise that is as significant as it is exciting. The history of modern agriculture which has made possible the greatest leap in well-being...
Small farmers tilling handkerchief sized farms feed more than half the world. They thus maintain national stability, forestall conflict and reduce emigration. Secure food supply is nothing short of national security. Such facts define the poor world, yet are misunderstood by nations that influence international development. Practitioners know that small farmers’ yields can exceed those of large farms. They also know that food security means guaranteeing enough food to survive as a national priority unrelated to free trade. Good governments of poor countries practice this to avoid food shortages and anarchy. Food always comes first – that is the message of this powerful book. History is r...
The Internet of Things offers massive societal and economic opportunities while at the same time significant challenges, not least the delivery and management of the technical infrastructure underpinning it, the deluge of data generated from it, ensuring privacy and security, and capturing value from it. This Open Access Pivot explores these challenges, presenting the state of the art and future directions for research but also frameworks for making sense of this complex area. This book provides a variety of perspectives on how technology innovations such as fog, edge and dew computing, 5G networks, and distributed intelligence are making us rethink conventional cloud computing to support th...
Educational gaming is becoming more popular at universities, in the military, and in private business. Multidisciplinary research which explores the cognitive and psychological aspects that underpin successful educational video games is therefore necessary to ensure proper curriculum design and positive learning outcomes. Developments in Current Game-Based Learning Design and Deployment highlights the latest research from professionals and researchers working in the fields of educational games development, e-learning, multimedia, educational psychology, and information technology. It promotes an in-depth understanding of the multiple factors and challenges inherent to the design and integration of game-based Learning environments.
The significantly expanded and updated new edition of a widely used text on reinforcement learning, one of the most active research areas in artificial intelligence. Reinforcement learning, one of the most active research areas in artificial intelligence, is a computational approach to learning whereby an agent tries to maximize the total amount of reward it receives while interacting with a complex, uncertain environment. In Reinforcement Learning, Richard Sutton and Andrew Barto provide a clear and simple account of the field's key ideas and algorithms. This second edition has been significantly expanded and updated, presenting new topics and updating coverage of other topics. Like the fir...