Diplomacy skills matter, and the widespread perception that anyone with common sense can be trusted with a diplomatic position, even without proper qualifications, is misguided and dangerous. Diplomacy is a serious business. The matters that diplomats deal with are too important to be left to amateurs. There are careers that do not require a new hire to possess any special skills on day one; diplomacy is not such a profession. Diplomats must have most basic skills so that they can hit the ground running. In fact, they are expected to have them before joining a diplomatic service, because most governments do not provide much substantive training to new officers. Although different career tracks–political, economic, consular, management and public diplomacy–require some specialized knowledge and abilities, most diplomatic skill sets are universal. This chapter covers the key aspects of diplomatic tradecraft, on which the rest of the book will elaborate and expound.

In this chapter our attention will primarily be restricted to the dispersed phase. Clearly the continuous phase is also important, but in this chapter we will discuss the state or evolution of the continuous phase only as needed in the context of characterizing the state of the dispersed phase. Consider the case of a turbulent multiphase flow with a random distribution of monosized spherical particles (or droplets or bubbles) within it. Imagine taking pictures of the particle distribution in an experiment (i.e., in one realization) without recording the details of the flow surrounding the particles.

Health and science diplomacy is the activity of deploying international cooperation in the service of science and public health, and using global health and science efforts to achieve foreign-policy goals. As a bridge between the scientific community and decision-makers in government, a science or health diplomat must understand the work of both and, ideally, how they think. Scientists see a pattern or anomaly in nature and try to gather data and evidence to explain it. They publish their findings in peer-reviewed scientific journals. But those findings also have to be packaged and communicated to nonscientists, because the data rarely speaks for itself. This is where science diplomats come in. They need to understand the evidence and incorporate it into persuasive arguments that can influence policymakers to elevate the potential threat as a priority and take action.

In Chapter 7, we open with a thorough discussion of “the theory of the firm,” followed by a conventional treatment of productivity and an introduction to costs. This chapter also has a lengthy discussion of expected applications (sunk costs, agency problems, insource/outsource), and a number of unusual but important applications (dedicated investments, franchising, tenure, and employee management).

In Chapter 4, we bring more sophistication to our demand curve analysis with a lengthy description of elasticity, a discussion of lagged-demand and network goods, and a dialogue on concerns about demand theory.

Photosynthesis takes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and stores the carbon in the biomass of plants and trees. This carbon is released when the biomass is converted to energy but the overall cycle of growing biomass through photosynthesis and converting it to useful energy can be considered to produce limited net emissions of greenhouse gases. The processes by which biomass is converted into energy are described, including the thermochemical processes of combustion and gasification of solid biomass, the biochemical processes of anaerobic digestion, and alcoholic fermentation and the extraction of oil from plants. Combustion of biomass to generate electricity is described and the gasification of biomass is discussed. Anaerobic digestion to produce biogas and the alcoholic fermentation of crops to produce biofuel are described. The production of biodiesel by the extraction and purification of vegetable oil from plants is also described. The chapter is supported by 5 examples, 16 questions with answers and full solutions in the accompanying online material. Further reading and online resources are identified.

We have completed our discussion of the drag force, where the term “drag” has been used to represent the force on a particle that is in the direction of ambient flow as seen in a frame of reference attached to the particle (i.e., drag is the force component along the direction of relative velocity). But there are many situations where the force on the particle is not only directed along the ambient flow, but also has a component that is perpendicular to the direction of ambient flow. In this case, the particle not only experiences a “drag” force, but also is subjected to a “lift” force.

The EU’s equal opportunities policy prohibits discrimination on grounds of race, religion, sexual orientation and age. The Directives prohibit direct and indirect discrimination as well as harassment. The Court of Justice has played an important role in shaping quality law. Drawing on the Charter of Fundamental Rights, it has indicated that non-discrimination is a general principle of EU Law, but the precise effect of this over and above the degree of protection offered by the equality Directives is not clear. Moreover, the Court is called upon to shape the scope of equality law and balance the prohibition against discrimination with other legitimate policies. Beyond conferring rights to workers, the EU has extended gender and race discrimination to other spheres, like the provision of services and education. Efforts to develop a policy of substantive equality have led to mixed results: positive discrimination is allowed only in limited circumstances, there are significant differences in the capacity of national equality bodies to offer support to victims of discrimination and mainstreaming equality in EU Law has been patchy.

This chapter considers EU data protection law, most notably Regulation 2016/679, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The GDPR governs the processing of data that identifies an individual or makes her identifiable. It sets out circumstances when the process is lawful. The most notable of these is that the individual consented to it; processing is necessary to perform a task in the public interest or in the exercise of official authority; or the data is required for the pursuit of a party’s legitimate interests unless the fundamental rights of the individual overrides these interests. Individuals have a number of rights in respect of their personal data. These include the right to information about it and to access it, and to rectify inaccurate or incomplete personal data. Arguably, most contentiously, the individual can have the data erased if she withdraws her consent or the data is no longer necessary for the purposes for which it was processed. This right must be balanced against other interests, most notably the freedom of others to expression and information.

A diplomatic mission is an organization like no other. Its members live and work away from home, and the line between their professional and personal lives is blurred to an extent most outsiders do not fully understand or appreciate. In the average workplace, a supervisor is not concerned with what employees do at home. That is not the case in a diplomatic mission. Its staff is a community, and excessive drinking, a nasty divorce, threats of violence or a suicide is not just one family’s problem. It affects the section in which that person works, and often the entire mission. The chief of mission has not only authority over almost everyone at post, but also responsibility for their security and well-being. So managing such a workplace is a unique and daunting task, made even more difficult by being in a foreign country.

The solar heating of buildings, the solar heating of water and solar thermal electricity generation are discussed. The importance of solar energy in determining the temperature of buildings is emphasized. The circuit representation of low-temperature heat transfer is used to estimate the heat loss and solar gain in buildings. The use of degree-days to predict the long-term performance of a building is illustrated and the behaviour of glass in capturing solar energy is described. The principles of solar water heating using a flat-plate or evacuated-tube solar collector is shown and the performance of a flat-plate solar collector is analysed. The use of selective absorber surfaces to improve the performance of a solar thermal system is discussed. High-temperature concentrated solar thermal systems are described with particular applications for electricity generation. Parabolic trough and Fresnel lens linear collectors are described as well as solar power tower schemes. The chapter is supported by 4 examples, 13 questions with answers and full solutions in the accompanying online material. Further reading and online resources are identified.