The discipline of Biosystems Engineering emerged in the 1990s from the traditional strongholds of agricultural engineering and food engineering. Biosystems engineering integrates engineering science and design with applied biological, environmental, and agricultural sciences. Introduction to Biosystems Engineering is targeted at 1st and 2nd year university-level students with an interest in biosystems engineering but who are not yet familiar with the breadth and depth of the subject. It is designed as a coherent educational resource, also available for download as individual digital chapters. The book can be used as a localized, customizable text for introductory courses in Biosystems Engineering globally. It is written as a series of stand-alone chapters organized under six major topics: Food and Bioprocessing; Environment; Buildings and Infrastructure; Information and Communications Technology and Data; Machinery Systems; and Energy. Each chapter is organized around stated learning outcomes and describes key concepts, applications of the concepts, and worked examples.

Introduction to Business covers the scope and sequence of most introductory business courses. The book provides detailed explanations in the context of core themes such as customer satisfaction, ethics, entrepreneurship, global business, and managing change. Introduction to Business includes hundreds of current business examples from a range of industries and geographic locations, which feature a variety of individuals. The outcome is a balanced approach to the theory and application of business concepts, with attention to the knowledge and skills necessary for student success in this course and beyond.

Short Description:
This book describes how Earth's climate is changing, how it has been changing in the recent geological past and how it may change in the future. It covers the physical sciences that build the foundations of our current understanding of global climate change such as radiation, Earth's energy balance, the greenhouse effect and the carbon cycle. Both natural and human causes for climate change are discussed. Impacts of climate change on natural and human systems are summarized. Ethical and economical aspects of human-caused climate change and solutions are presented. Data dashboard

Word Count: 52328

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This book acknowledges our changing information landscape, covering key concepts in information literacy to support a research process with intention. We start by critically examining the online environment many of us already engage with every day, looking at algorithms, the attention economy, information disorder and cynicism, information hygiene, and fact-checking. We then move into an exploration of information source types, meaningful research topics, keyword choices, effective search strategies, library resources, Web search considerations, the ethical use of information, and citation.

This ebook provides a unique pedagogical approach to teaching the fundamentals of communication systems using interactive graphics and in-line questions. The material opens with describing the transformation of bits into digital baseband waveforms. Double-sideband suppressed carrier modulation and quadrature modulation then provide the foundation for the discussions of Binary Phase Shift Keying (BPSK), Quadrature Phase Shift Keying (QPSK), M-ary Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (M-QAM), M-ary Phase Shift Keying (MPSK), and the basic theory of Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM). Traditional analog modulation systems are also described. Systems trade-offs, including link budgets, are emphasized. Interactive graphics allow the students to engage with and visualize communication systems concepts. Interactivity and in-line review questions enables students to rapidly examine system tradeoffs and design alternatives. The topics covered build upon each other culminating with an introduction to the implementation of OFDM transmitters and receivers, the ubiquitous technology used in WiFi, 4G and 5G communication systems.

Becoming an Agent of Change

Short Description:
This textbook will show you how to comprehensively analyze, investigate, and address escalating problems of economic inequality, violence, substance abuse, homelessness, poverty, and racism. It will provide you with perspectives and tools to partner with community members and organizations to promote a fair and equitable allocation of resources and opportunities. Please email us at openaccesscptextbook@gmail.com with any feedback or to request downloadable versions of the chapter lecture slides and quizzes for instructor use.

Word Count: 110951

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Introduction to Comparative Government and Politics is the first open educational resource (OER) on the topic of comparative politics, and the second OER textbook in political science funded by ASCCC OERI, in what we hope will become a complete library for the discipline. This textbook aligns with the C-ID Course Descriptor for Introduction to Comparative Government and Politics in content and objectives. It is organized thematically, with each chapter accompanied by a case study or a comparative study, one of the main methodological tools used in comparative politics. By contextualizing the concepts, we hope to help students learn the comparative method, which to this day remains one of the most important methodological tools for all researchers.

Introduction to Computer Graphics is a free, on-line textbook covering the fundamentals of computer graphics and computer graphics programming. This book is meant for use as a textbook in a one-semester course that would typically be taken by undergraduate computer science majors in their third or fourth year of college.

Welcome to the website for An Introduction to Computer Networks, a free and open general-purpose computer-networking textbook, complete with diagrams and exercises. It covers the LAN, internetworking and transport layers, focusing primarily on TCP/IP. Particular attention is paid to congestion; other special topics include queuing, real-time traffic, network management, security and the ns simulator.

The book is suitable as the primary text for an undergraduate or introductory graduate course in computer networking, as a supplemental text for a wide variety of network-related courses, and as a reference work.

Welcome to the website for An Introduction to Computer Networks, a free and open general-purpose computer-networking textbook, complete with diagrams and exercises. It covers the LAN, internetworking and transport layers, focusing primarily on TCP/IP. Particular attention is paid to congestion; other special topics include queuing, real-time traffic, network management, security, mininet and the ns simulator.

The book is suitable as the primary text for an undergraduate or introductory graduate course in computer networking, as a supplemental text for a wide variety of network-related courses, and as a reference work.

This textbook provides context and essential concepts across the entire range of legal issues with which managers and business executives must grapple. The text provides the vocabulary and legal acumen necessary for businesspeople to talk in an educated way to their customers, employees, suppliers, government officials—and to their own lawyers.

This textbook introduces readers to the idea of cooperation and mutualism. Cooperatives and mutuals are participatory organizations in which members participate in control and governance, receive economic benefits through patronage refunds or net income, and become owners through equity. These mutual-benefit organizations exist alongside non-profit organizations and investor-benefit organizations through the global economy.

Introduction to Criminal Investigation, Processes, Practices, and Thinking is a teaching text designed to assist the student in developing their own structured mental map of processes, practices, and thinking to conduct criminal investigations.

Delineating criminal investigation into operational descriptors of tactical-response and strategic response while using illustrations of task-skills and thinking-skills, the reader is guided into structured thinking practices. Using the graphic tools of a “Response Transition Matrix”, an “Investigative Funnel”, and the “STAIR Tool”, the reader is shown how to form their own mental map of investigative thinking that can later be articulated in support of forming their reasonable grounds to believe.

A Canadian Open Education Resource

Short Description:
NewParaAlthough this open education resource (OER) is written with the needs and abilities of first-year undergraduate criminology students in mind, it is designed to be flexible. As a whole, the OER is amply broad to serve as the main textbook for an introductory course, yet each chapter is deep enough to be useful as a supplement for subject-area courses; authors use plain and accessible language as much as possible, but introduce more advanced, technical concepts where appropriate; the text gives due attention to the historical “canon” of mainstream criminological thought, but it also challenges many of these ideas by exploring alternative, critical, and marginalized perspectives. After all, criminology is more than just the study of crime and criminal law; it is an examination of the ways human societies construct, contest, and defend ideas about right and wrong, the meaning of justice, the purpose and power of laws, and the practical methods of responding to broken rules and of mending relationships.NewParaSpecial thanks to Leah Ballantyne, LLB LLM, a Cree lawyer from the Mathias Colomb Cree Nation in Pukatawagan, Manitoba, who provided expert Indigenous consultation/editing for this textbook.

Word Count: 291406

ISBN: 978-1-989864-64-7

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Welcome to learning about how to effectively plan curriculum for young children. This textbook will address:

Developing curriculum through the planning cycle
Theories that inform what we know about how children learn and the best ways for teachers to support learning
The three components of developmentally appropriate practice
Importance and value of play and intentional teaching
Different models of curriculum
Process of lesson planning (documenting planned experiences for children)
Physical, temporal, and social environments that set the stage for children’s learning
Appropriate guidance techniques to support children’s behaviors as the self-regulation abilities mature.
Planning for preschool-aged children in specific domains including
Physical development
Language and literacy
Math
Science
Creative (the visual and performing arts)
Diversity (social science and history)
Health and safety
How curriculum planning for infants and toddlers is different from planning for older children
Supporting school-aged children’s learning and development in out-of-school time through curriculum planning
Making children’s learning visible through documentation and assessment

This book contains two parts, the first is designed to be used in an introductory programming course for students looking to learn Python, without having any prior experience with programming. Basic programming concepts are discussed, explained, and illustrated with a Python program. Ample programming questions are provided for practice. The second part of the book utilizes machine-learning concepts and statistics to accomplish data-driven resolutions. Python programs are provided to apply scientific computing to conclude statistically driven results.

Why do affluent, liberal, and design-rich cities like Minneapolis have some of the biggest racial disparities in the country? How can designers help to create more equitable communities? Introduction to Design Equity, an open access book for students and professionals, maps design processes and products against equity research to highlight the pitfalls and potentials of design as a tool for building social justice.

Introduction to Earth Science is a 530+ page open textbook designed to provide a comprehensive introduction to Earth Science that can be freely accessed online, read offline, printed, or purchased as a print-on-demand book. It is intended for a typical 1000-level university introductory course in the Geosciences, although its contents could be applied to many other related courses.

This text includes various important features designed to enhance the student learning experience in introductory Earth Science courses. These include a multitude of high-quality figures and images within each chapter that help to clarify key concepts and are optimized for viewing online. Self-test assessment questions are embedded in each online chapter that help students focus their learning. QR codes are provided for each assessment to allow students using print or PDF versions to easily access the quiz from an internet-capable device of their choice.

Adapted from openly-licensed works in geoscience, the sequence of the book differs from mainstream commercial texts in that it has been arranged to present elementary or foundational knowledge regarding rocks and minerals prior to discussion of more complex topics in Earth Science. Unlike prominent commercial texts for Earth Science, this book dedicates an individual chapter to each of the three major rock types, the processes of mass wasting, geological time, Earth history, and the origin of the universe and our solar system. Book content has been further customized to match the Pathways General Education Curriculum at Virginia Tech with a focus on Student Learning Outcomes (SLOs) for Pathways Concept 4, Reasoning in the Natural Sciences.

Are you a professor reviewing or adopting this book for a course?
Instructors adopting or reviewing this text are encouraged to record their use on this form: https://bit.ly/interest_intro_earth_science. This helps the book's sponsors to understand this open textbook's impact.

How to Access the Book
This text is available in multiple formats including PDF, a low-resolution PDF which is faster to download, and ePub [coming mid 2023]. These are available at: https://doi.org/10.21061/introearthscience. The book is also available in HTML/Pressbooks at https://pressbooks.lib.vt.edu/introearthscience. Softcover print versions with color interior are available at the manufacturer’s lowest price at https://www.amazon.com/dp/1957213361. The main landing page for this book is https://doi.org/10.21061/introearthscience.

PDF: ISBN 978-1-957213-34-7
HTML/Pressbooks: ISBN 978-1-957213-33-0
https://pressbooks.lib.vt.edu/introearthscience
Print: ISBN 978-1-957213-36-1 https://www.amazon.com/dp/1957213361
ePub: ISBN 978-1-957213-35-4 [expected mid 2023]

Table of Contents
1. Understanding Science
2. Plate Tectonics
3. Minerals
4. Igneous Processes and Volcanoes
5. Weathering, Erosion, and Sedimentary Rocks
6. Metamorphic Rocks
7. Geologic Time
8. Earth History
9. Crustal Deformation and Earthquakes
10. Mass Wasting
11. Water
12. Coastlines
13. Deserts
14. Glaciers
15. Global Climate Change
16. Energy and Mineral Resources
17. Origin of the Universe and Our Solar System

Find, Adapt, and Share Resources
If you wish to share resources you build from this book or find those shared by other adopters of this book, please join the Instructor Resource Portal in OER Commons at https://www.oercommons.org/groups/introduction-to-earth-science-instructor-group/12785

Attribution
This work includes content from multiple sources reproduced under the terms of Creative Commons licenses, Public Domain, and Fair Use. Specifically: Chapters 1-16 are adapted from An Introduction to Geology https://slcc.pressbooks.pub/introgeology (CC BY NC SA) by Chris Johnson, Matthew D. Affolter, Paul Inkenbrandt, and Cam Mosher. Chapter 17 is adapted from Section 22.1 of Chapter 22 “The Origin of Earth and the Solar System” by Karla Panchuk in Physical Geology, 2nd edition (CC BY) by Steven Earle https://opentextbc.ca/physicalgeology2ed/part/chapter-22-the-origin-of-earth-and-the-solar-system, with Sections 7.1, 7.2, 7.3, and 7.4 of Chapter 7 “Other Worlds: An Introduction to the Solar System” https://openstax.org/books/astronomy-2e/pages/7-1-overview-of-our-planetary-system from OpenStax Astronomy, 2nd edition https://openstax.org/details/books/astronomy-2e (CC BY). And, figures are from a variety of sources; references at the end of each chapter describe the terms of reuse for each figure. Version notes located at the end of the book describe author changes made to these materials by chapter.

About the Author
Laura Neser, Ph.D. is an Instructor in the Department of Geosciences at Virginia Tech. Dr. Neser earned her B.S. in Geosciences at Virginia Tech in the spring of 2008 and completed her Ph.D. in Geological Sciences at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) in 2014. Her doctoral research focused on the structural geology, sedimentology, and stratigraphy of formations that were deposited along the flanks of the Beartooth Mountains as they rose during late Paleocene-Eocene time. Dr. Neser has worked as an athletic tutor and online instructor at The University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill, NC), in temporary positions as an Adjunct Instructor at Chowan University (Murfreesboro, NC) and Full-Time Lecturer at Indiana State University (Terre Haute, IN), and as a Professor at Seminole State College (Sanford, FL) before starting as an Instructor at Virginia Tech in the fall of 2021.

Although she is currently focused on teaching online sections of Introduction to Earth Science, Earth Resources, Society and the Environment, and Climate History, her teaching background is significantly broader and includes Environmental ‬Science, Astronomy, Environmental ‬Ethics, Earth History, Structural Geology, and Field Geology‬.

Suggested Citation
Neser, Laura (2023). Introduction to Earth Science. Blacksburg: Virginia Tech Department of Geosciences. https://doi.org/10.21061/introearthscience. Licensed with CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0.

Report Errors: https://bit.ly/report_error_intro_earth_science
View Errata: https://bit.ly/errata_intro_earth_science

Funding and Project Support
This publication was made possible in part through funding and publishing support provided by the Open Education Initiative of the University Libraries at Virginia Tech.

Accessibility Statement
Virginia Tech Publishing is committed to making its publications accessible in accordance with the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. The Pressbooks (HTML) and ePub versions of this text are tagged structurally and include alternative text, which allows for machine readability.

Disclaimer
This work may contain components (e.g., illustrations, or quotations) not covered by the license. Every effort has been made to clearly identify these components but ultimately it is your responsibility to independently evaluate the copyright status of any work or component part of a work you use, in light of your intended use. Please check the references at the end of each chapter before redistributing.

This book presents standard intermediate microeconomics material and some material that, in the authors' view, ought to be standard but is not. Introductory economics material is integrated. Standard mathematical tools, including calculus, are used throughout. The book easily serves as an intermediate microeconomics text, and can be used for a relatively sophisticated undergraduate who has not taken a basic university course in economics.

Becoming a Professional

Short Description:
This book was written to provide students with an introduction to the field of education. The book is broken into chapters that focus on questions students may have about education in general. Although some chapters may go into more depth than others, this is created as an introductory text.

Long Description:
This book was written to provide students with an introduction to the field of education. The book is broken into chapters that focus on questions students may have about education in general. Although some chapters may go into more depth than others, this is created as an introductory text.

Word Count: 44468

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