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Since the dawn of the civilizations that olive has been playing a critical role on both the society and the economy. Indeed, one can argue that olive and olive oil were as critical as they shaped a form of culture, a seminal pillar that supported the Mediterranean civilizations and that has since then spread worldwide, influencing others. As waves and tides, the use of olive and olive oil has certainly met low points, to the extent that its use even became to be considered old fashioned more recently, when the traditional Mediterranean food and culture started to be jeopardized by very different modern ways of living. Nevertheless, despite defying challenging conditions, stubbornly as always, the Mediterranean diet not only continues to prevail, but keeps granting the admiration of diverse strands of the society and science, being notoriously evident the set of recent research that points to its health benefits, having olive oil as the cornerstone, a vegetable fat, considered to be highly healthy, as it enhances the control of important health indicators, such as the bad cholesterol, serving for nutritional and therapeutic uses, and preventing the occurrence of a number of diseases, including cardiovascular problems and some forms of cancer.

Taking into consideration this framework, the research presented in this book is focused on the examination of the main trends on olive and olive oil in the Iberian Peninsula, from production to retail and consumption, by analyzing several data sets covering recent decades. In terms of findings for more recent years, it was possible to conclude that despite the increasing recognition of the benefits of olive and olive oil by the society, and despite the increase in olive production, the consumption of olive oil has been decreasing internally, being replaced by increases in exports. This is most probably due to the economic conditions that have deteriorated due to the 2008’s financial crisis, which, together with an increase in olive oil prices, has prevented a considerable portion of the population to have financial conditions to access to the consumption of such an important component of the Mediterranean diet.

The conception of markets as interfaces connecting semi-autonomous systems of producers and customers has led to an extensive use of social network analysis. So far, the network focus has been on connections among people, paying less attention to the crucial role played by connections between cultural elements (e.g., concepts, representations, ideas) in the way markets are formed and sustained. Such connections constitute “semantic networks” and are the focus of the present article. We attend to them by developing a network view of the cultural dimension of markets and apply it in an empirical setting where culture plays a crucial role – luxury watchmaking – to illustrate the impact of market semantic networks on a major outcome: price.

This chapter considers food security in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia from a global perspective within a water-energy-food nexus framework.

A general water-energy-food nexus framework is used to analyze the interplay of water scarcity, relative energy abundance, and food production and consumption in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. We identify crucial considerations from the perspective of high food import dependency based on sourcing food to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia through food imports and foreign investments.

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has introduced major reforms to reduce the use of highly subsidized but very scarce water for domestic feed and food production. However, the country is now more vulnerable to increasing food demand in relation to high, volatile world market prices, particularly for cereals. Despite major reforms in agricultural production, the KSA government faces serious challenges.

Developing strategies to meet the KSA food security objectives is essential. The KSA government should push reform even further and revise its policy regarding forage crops to save scarce water resources. Furthermore, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia would benefit from a more extensive food security strategy in which food stocks and subsidies are complemented by in-kind and cash transfers.

This chapter provides a taxonomy of key rolling stock types and covers the key engineering principles. This chapter concentrates on the aspects of the rolling stock that make it sustainable in terms of passenger transportation; these aspects are primarily safety and crashworthiness. These are specific items that contribute to make the rolling stock and hence rail system more sustainable; passengers need to be confident that they are travelling in safe rolling stock and the vehicle consist, manufacturing technique or materials used should not compromise the crashworthiness aspects. For this reason, all aspects of this chapter reference vehicle safety and crashworthiness.

China's defense industry is analyzed by comparing the technical level of the military and civilian products manufactured by China's nuclear, space, aviation, shipbuilding, ordnance, and electronics industries with their advanced counterparts. Generally, China's defense industry is about 20 years behind the global leaders. Thus, it is inappropriate to declare China's emergence as the world’s second military power. However, if it continues on its current development trajectory, it will attain that status in the near future.

The railway track system is the platform by which loads from moving trains are transferred to the underlying soil or supporting infrastructure such as bridges. The most common type of railway track system is ballasted track, which has been in use for over a century. Ballasted track has proved versatile. It can be constructed using locally available materials and with modifications to the rails and sleepers, crossings transferring trains from one route to another can be created. The structure of a ballasted track system consists of two main parts. The upper portion, termed the superstructure, comprises the rails, fastenings and sleepers. It is formed of components whose shape, stiffness and strength are designed and closely controlled. Below the superstructure is the substructure, which comprises the ballast and sub-ballast. Although the materials used in the substructure may have been specified, their engineering properties and geometric placement are less well controlled. In this chapter, we will explore how a typical ballasted track system transfers load to the ground and the ways in which the track form deteriorates, requiring maintenance and eventually renewal.

Drawing on sociolinguistics, this chapter proposes an encoding–decoding perspective on evaluation, conceptualizing codes as interpretive schemas that are encoded by firms and decoded by audiences. A key element in this process is code complexity, denoting combinations of interdependent elements. We demonstrate that the evaluation of code complexity depends on the type of audience (professionals and laypersons) and the type of complexity (technological and aesthetic). We analyze the attribution of awards by professionals and the public in luxury watchmaking, featuring three mechanisms: the social embeddedness of audiences, their motivation for evaluation and supply-and-demand matching. The results attest to significant differences in the evaluation of technological and aesthetic code complexity by professionals and laypersons. There is a premium attributed to aesthetic code complexity by professionals and a premium attributed to technological complexity by laypersons. Finding the right type and level of code complexity to pursue in their offerings is a key strategic challenge for producers.