A history of modern mindfulness meditation and a critique of it as a practice that deeply misunderstands human consciousness.

Mindfulness meditation is often presented as a simple practice of turning inward and quieting the world to discover an authentic "inner voice," but the very idea that consciousness contains such a voice depends on a slew of contradictory beliefs about Buddhism, neuroscience, and more. In Out of Mind, R. John Williams challenges the core (and misguided) assumptions about human nature that shaped the development of modern meditation, revealing how they were informed by nineteenth-century theosophy, German idealism, Buddhist modernism, Heideggerian mindfulness, Cold War brainwashing, and even phenomena like sensory deprivation tanks. Against the notion that truth lies hidden in our brains, Williams argues that we are never sealed off from the world. Our consciousness extends beyond our own minds-into the intricate web of language, literature, art, and other people to which we are intimately connected.

Advancement in Medical and Wellness Tourism, Volume 2 delves into how innovation and human creativity are reshaping the way of travel for health care. This book explains how technology, creativity, and entrepreneurial spirit are transforming the way people seek wellness beyond borders. The edited book highlights new opportunities, challenges, and solutions shaping the medical tourism industry today.

This volume offers a comprehensive exploration of medical tourism, covering evolving consumer behavior, digital transformation, sustainability, and emerging technologies like AI and robotics. It brings together global perspectives on healthcare, entrepreneurship, and patient experience, shaping the industry across diverse cultural and economic contexts.

Parliamentary committees play a decisive role in lawmaking, yet their internal dynamics remain largely unexplored in political science - particularly when it comes to voting behavior. This book breaks new ground by systematically analyzing committee-level voting in the European Parliament (EP), drawing on an original dataset that covers the EP's 8th legislative term (2014 - 2019). It offers the first comprehensive empirical assessment of how consensus, cohesion and coherence emerge within committees and how these dynamics shape legislative outcomes.

Through rigorous analysis, the book reveals how internal committee decisions influence the EP's institutional role, legislative efficiency, and democratic legitimacy. It situates the EP-characterized by strong committees and exceptional transparency-within comparative parliamentary research and uses it as a lens to explore broader questions of legislative governance within the European Union and beyond.

By linking empirical findings to key theoretical debates, this book contributes to a deeper understanding of legislative behavior, institutional negotiation, and the evolving nature of parliamentary democracy. As such, it is an essential resource for scholars of EU politics, legislative studies, and institutional theory.

This book offers a comprehensive exploration of Medan's development, blending rigorous research with narrative flair to recreate the historical ambience of the city and its people. Divided into three sections, the book delves into the evolution of Medan and its strategic role in the plantation economy, examines the lives and contributions of its prominent Chinese community, and follows the rise and fall of European and Chinese enterprises.

The book draws upon multiple historical archives from the Netherlands, Indonesia, Singapore, China, Switzerland, and many more, combined with images and interviews. Together, these resources provide a compelling backdrop to the narratives of influential figures and also everyday people. By situating local developments within the broader context of global events-such as economic and political shifts in Asia-the book provides a thorough understanding of Medan's role as a truly cosmopolitan city in the Dutch Indies. The book is designed to invite readers into a unique past, using language and place names of the era to enhance authenticity.

This book is among the first to map out China's strategic narratives in the context of the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. Recognizing that the Chinese actors involved with and influencing Chinese foreign policy has continued to grow under the leadership of Xi Jinping, the authors shed light on the nuances and variations of distinctive sources of China's foreign policy with regard to the current war in Ukraine. They empirically analyse the nuances and variations of Chinese sources of foreign policy and illuminate China's possible course of action and role in response to current and future international security crises. In particular, the book seeks to answer the following questions: What strategic narratives have China's official sources of foreign policy disseminated concerning the war in Ukraine? What do Chinese MFA, media and think tank strategic narratives reveal about China's view of, identity in relation to and potential solutions for the conflict in Ukraine? To what extent are these narratives consistent and or competitive? The research argues that China's strategic narratives project different views, values and solutions to the current war, thereby reflecting the lack of a top-down masterplan on security issues and conflicts. In turn, China's contradictory strategic narratives provide evidence that China's foreign and security policy is a work in progress, raising the necessity to acknowledge some degree of uncertainty with respect to China's future intentions.

Gaining insight into the judgments related to geographical indications is essential to understanding how the complex puzzle of GI protection fits together within European Union law. This system empowers producers to manage their respective geographical indications, enabling them to respond to growing societal demands for sustainable products. The scope of protection is carefully calibrated to balance the intellectual property rights of agrifood GIs with the coexistence of pre-existing trademarks. Notably, the protection of GIs extends beyond mere conceptual evocation, also encompassing cases involving figurative signs and even product shapes. A review of European Court of Justice and General Court case law reveals a clear trend in favour of protecting geographical indications, reinforcing the importance of this intellectual property right.

This book investigates emerging work attitudes among employees in China's service sector, with a particular focus on the phenomena of "Tang Ping" (lying flat) and "Nei Juan" (involution). The research draws upon original empirical data collected in Shanghai in 2023, situating these attitudes within the context of intergenerational workforce dynamics and China's rapidly evolving urban service economy.

This book examines the factors that lay behind the emergence of the principle of conservation of energy and of a new fundamental concept, energy, from a science marked by rough notions concerning the various forces and powers of nature. These conjoined developments constituted arguably the most important innovation in physics during the nineteenth century: they unified and defined the field as never before while for the first time bringing mechanics-previously belonging to mathematics-within the purview of physics. As shown in abundant detail, no one but Friedrich Mohr and Robert Mayer - both marginal figures in the science of the day - exemplified both aspects of this development, i.e. the concept of energy and the principle of its conservation. What it shows, likewise in abundant detail, is how those concepts achieved clarification through the exchanges and interactions of scientists-from Britain, Germany, France, the Netherlands, and Denmark-who addressed cognate issues. Any notion of "discovery" as an essentially individualistic aspect of science is thus rendered moot. Based on an in-depth study of the work of twenty scientists, this book is of great interest primarily to professional historians of science and graduate students.

Nurturing AI-Powered HR Analytics and Virtual Reality in Employee Psychology and Workplace Happiness examines how emerging technologies are reshaping the foundations of modern human resource management. Drawing on advances in AI-powered HR analytics, the book demonstrates how data-driven insights can enhance organizational decision-making, predict employee behavior, and support interventions that foster engagement, motivation, and well-being. By illuminating the strategic value of intelligent analytics for understanding workforce dynamics and optimising HR practices, it provides a compelling case for building more responsive, ethical, and psychologically supportive workplaces.

Complementing this analytical perspective, this timely work explores the transformative potential of virtual reality in employee psychology and workplace happiness. It highlights how immersive VR environments can reduce stress, enrich training and onboarding, strengthen team cohesion, and nurture overall mental well-being by simulating real-world experiences within safe, controlled contexts. Offering a clear roadmap for responsible and human-centred implementation, this volume is essential reading for HR professionals, organizational leaders, and researchers seeking to harness technological innovation to cultivate more fulfilling and productive workplaces.

A Nobel Prize-winning physicist illuminates how physicists think about and do physics

What principles guide physicists' ways of thinking and the practice and culture of the discipline? In The Physicist's Way, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist P.J.E. Peebles argues that definite assumptions underpin the working physicist's approach, the elements of which are learned organically by incoming generations of students and shared across the field. Peebles outlines these basic principles, elucidating how physicists apply their approach to a broad range of topics, from quantum physics to the physics of the expanding universe.

After discussing physicists' demanding tests of the fundamental theories of quantum physics and relativistic cosmology and how physicists think about the puzzling lack of consistency between the two, Peebles considers the sociology of the field and where physics might be headed. Engaging throughout with ideas developed by scientists, philosophers, and historians, he elucidates the unique place physics holds in the natural sciences for the ability to discover theories that make definite predictions that agree with what can be observed.

The Physicist's Way offers an enlightening perspective on how physicists think about and approach the practice of physics.

This book examines the transformation of online targeting in a world of increasing privacy regulation, declining third-party identifiers, and growing reliance on first-party data. It provides practical guidance for marketers, technology teams, and decision makers who need to build sustainable digital advertising and data strategies.

The authors explain how organizations can develop privacy-compliant targeting capabilities based on first-party data, identity resolution, and modern marketing technology architectures. They evaluate emerging approaches from both advertiser and publisher perspectives and show how companies can maintain effective targeting, measurement, and personalization in a cookieless environment.

Without consistent and privacy-compliant customer recognition across touchpoints and devices, organizations risk fragmented customer views, inefficient advertising spend, and unreliable attribution. This book outlines concrete strategies to overcome these challenges and build a future-ready foundation for data-driven marketing.

This book attempts to answer the most fundamental questions of BRI by applying economic methods: What is, what to do, and how to do. Whether in China or the international community, whether in academia or in decision-making circles, there is no consensus on these issues, even though BRI has been around for eight years. As a result, there are many misunderstandings and suspicions about BRI, which have become a major obstacle to its smooth development. As an academic study, this book is not a simple interpretation of the official Chinese BRI representation, but an analysis of it is based on a unified theoretical framework. In addition to tracing the evolution of BRI and the cognition of the international community, the focus of this book is to analyze the attributes, positioning, and governance structure of BRI, as well as to discuss the internal and external risks it faces and its future development direction. The author starts from the development orientation of BRI (different from the current rule orientation of global governance) and makes a normative definition of it. Emphasizing development orientation does not mean that BRI does not need rules, but to jointly formulate rules according to the needs of development. Therefore, one of the directions to promote the high-quality development of BRI is institutionalization.

This project offers a fresh, in-depth analysis of the evolving relationship between the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) in the ASEAN region. Through comprehensive analysis of investment data from 2016-2023, the book sheds light on the contrasting yet interdependent roles these banks play in ASEAN, with a special focus on five key countries: Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, the Philippines, and Indonesia. By integrating data analysis with geopolitical insights, the book provides a nuanced understanding of the strategic, economic, and political dynamics at play in Southeast Asia.

Advances in Pacific Basin Business, Economics and Finance (APBBEF) is a peer-reviewed publication series issued annually by Emerald Publishing. The journal is dedicated to promoting interdisciplinary research in finance, economics, and management, with a focus on the Pacific Rim region. All submissions undergo a peer-review process, with editorial recommendations provided by members of the editorial board. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

1. Policy and management of financial markets and institutions;
2. Options, futures, and derivatives markets;
3. Corporate finance and investment decisions;
4. Insurance and risk management;
5. Accounting, auditing, and taxation;
6. Artificial intelligence and emerging technology in finance;
7. ESG and sustainability issues;
8. Income, employment, and education;
9. Monetary and foreign exchange policy;
10. Broader economic policies relevant to the Pacific Basin.

APBBEF is indexed in ABI/INFORM, EconLit, EBSCO, ProQuest, ResearchGate, and Google Scholar.

How British intellectuals of the twentieth century reckoned with the emergence of an Asian power

Most historians of nineteenth and twentieth century Europe point to the persistence of racialised and hierarchical views of non-Europeans as "uncivilised." Yet these accounts overlook the profound intellectual impact of what contemporaries called the "awakening of Asia." In Rival Civilisations, Chika Tonooka shows how the rise of Japan after 1905 compelled British intellectuals to rethink fundamental questions about world order and human difference. Juxtaposing Japanese and British sources, Tonooka offers an innovative history of British Eurocentrism-its ebbs and flows and emergent pluralist alternatives-through the lens of British debates on Japan.

Tonooka describes how British intellectuals and commentators grappled with such issues as whether civilisation was singular or plural; whether the civilising mission in Asia might be more successfully undertaken as the "yellow man's burden"; whether non-Christians could be moral; and whether a world converging along Western lines was likely and even desirable. Even at the Empire's peak, British thinkers began to grasp that Britain could no longer take its civilisational preeminence for granted. But Tonooka also considers what these debates on Japan missed, arguing that British civilisational discourse consistently overlooked what she demonstrates to be the paradoxical nature of global modernity. As a result, these British blind spots repeatedly foreclosed anticipations of critical world political challenges that lay ahead. Her original and rigorous analysis will enable readers to identify analogous blind spots over the rise of China and its consequences for the global order.

As a global conversation around political transformation and environmental struggles continues, Southern Visions of Nature examines how Chilean environmental organisations use visual digital media to shape public discourse, build collective identity, and collaborate during political upheaval, revealing the unique intersections of environment, politics, and communication in a Global South context.

Through a rich methodological combination, Aravena-Ortiz explores how environmental organisations in Chile use visual media in digital spaces to advocate, mobilise, and construct collective identities during politically charged moments. Providing a compelling case study of a country with deep environmental challenges, ranging from water scarcity to extractive economies, and a society marked by growing ecological awareness and civic mobilisation, the chapters unpack how environmental discourse became a prominent theme in public debate and visual media emerged as key tools in how EOs communicated their concerns and visions for the future. The author reveals how these communication strategies were used to shape public discourse, are shaped themselves by internal logics, and how they interact with formal and informal partnerships. Centring the voices, practices, and visual languages of Chilean organisations, chapters challenges the often Global North-centric narratives that dominate discussions of digital activism.

Providing a cohesive portrait of contemporary environmental communication in Chile, Southern Visions of Nature contributes to multiple academic fields, including environmental communication, media and visual culture studies, political communication, and Latin American studies. It is both a timely scholarly intervention and a testament to the creative resilience of environmental activism in an age of interconnected crises and within the struggle to imagine and communicate a new future from the Global South.

Sustainable development is at the forefront of urban, rural, social, agricultural and economic development policies in European countries, out of these areas, agriculture is researched the least as there is currently more focus on central and urban areas.

Salvati and Konaxis present an interdisciplinary and multidimensional examination of the complex evolution of rural systems in advanced economies, and more specifically in Europe and the Mediterranean region, providing an integrated framework approaching environmental problems and socioeconomic issues jointly. Distinctive chapters authored by leading scholars in Europe identify the intrinsic peculiarity of the environmental-economic nexus characteristic of advanced economies and the most important differences with other socioeconomic contexts. Both contributions from a traditional ecological/agronomic vision, and studies having a more strict socio-demographic and economic focus, clarify the role of policies addressing sustainable development goals in the 'kaleidoscopic' rural landscape, confirming the need of place-specific approaches to socio-ecological complexity and the partial effectiveness of generalized, top-down measures.

Against the archetypal vision of economic backwardness of agricultural and forest systems, Transitional Rural Landscapes shows a dynamic image of rural landscapes under the increasing impact of climate change, providing novel interpretations, conceptual definitions, and operational tools designed to reduce ecological fragility and economic vulnerability.

This book introduces mobile ethnography as an in-situ qualitative research method that enables participants to document lived experiences on smartphones as they unfold. By capturing in-situ data such as text, photos, videos, audio, ratings, timestamps, and GPS, the method provides rich contextual insight into experiences as they are lived, not just remembered. Visualized as journey maps, customer and employee experience data can be analyzed to identify patterns, pain points, and opportunities for improvement.

Grounded in service design, customer experience research, and ethnography, the book presents a systematic literature review of ethnographic research in leading information systems journals from 2000 to 2025. The review finds increasing methodological transparency, but also persistent gaps in research design, triangulation, and reflexivity. To address these gaps, the author proposes an exemplary research design to strengthen validity and reliability.

Using Design Science Research Methodology, this dissertation develops mobile ethnography as a design artifact comprising the method, participant-facing mobile apps, and web-based analysis software for researchers. Based on seven iterative design cycles, the book shows how participants can become active contributors to customer experience research while maintaining data integrity and motivation. It concludes with implications for AI-supported analysis. In other words: rigorous research, but with dirt under its fingernails.