Wagering the Land
Wagering the Land: Ritual, Capital, and Environmental Degradation in the Cordillera of Northern Luzon, 1900-1986 by Martin W. Lewis traces the dramatic transformation of Buguias, a highland community in the Philippines, as subsistence agriculture gave way to commercial vegetable production in the decades following World War II. Drawing on years of ethnographic fieldwork and oral histories, Lewis shows how prosperity from the vegetable boom financed spectacular redistributive feasts while simultaneously eroding the ecological foundations of village life through deforestation, soil loss, water shortages, and chemical contamination. Far from displacing "tradition," however, commercialization reinforced the region's ritual economy: ancestors were honored with ever larger sacrifices, and the ethic of gambling--placing one's fortunes at risk in hope of a windfall--became a cultural template that united high-stakes farming with ritual obligation. In Buguias, capital accumulation and religious practice were not opposing forces but mutually sustaining enterprises, producing a distinctive, if fragile, synthesis of market capitalism and ritual Paganism. Structured in two parts, the book reconstructs prewar subsistence systems, social hierarchies, and trade relations before turning to the postwar decades of boom and crisis. Lewis carefully documents how wealthy farmers and traders, rather than impoverished cultivators, were often at the forefront of ecological destruction, bulldozing hilltops, clearing cloud forests, and intensifying chemical use. At the same time, the profits of commercialization underwrote the continuation--and expansion--of prestige feasts that bound community life together. By situating Buguias in the wider context of political ecology and global capitalism, Wagering the Land challenges conventional wisdom that markets inevitably dissolve communal traditions or that environmental decline is primarily a story of poverty at the margins. Instead, Lewis demonstrates how ritual and risk, ecology and economy, fused into a form of "aberrant development" that preserved social order even as it undermined its own material base. This deeply researched and vividly written study offers essential insights for anthropologists, geographers, historians of Southeast Asia, and all readers interested in the complex entanglements of tradition, capitalism, and environmental change. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1992.
Wagering the Land
Wagering the Land: Ritual, Capital, and Environmental Degradation in the Cordillera of Northern Luzon, 1900-1986 by Martin W. Lewis traces the dramatic transformation of Buguias, a highland community in the Philippines, as subsistence agriculture gave way to commercial vegetable production in the decades following World War II. Drawing on years of ethnographic fieldwork and oral histories, Lewis shows how prosperity from the vegetable boom financed spectacular redistributive feasts while simultaneously eroding the ecological foundations of village life through deforestation, soil loss, water shortages, and chemical contamination. Far from displacing "tradition," however, commercialization reinforced the region's ritual economy: ancestors were honored with ever larger sacrifices, and the ethic of gambling--placing one's fortunes at risk in hope of a windfall--became a cultural template that united high-stakes farming with ritual obligation. In Buguias, capital accumulation and religious practice were not opposing forces but mutually sustaining enterprises, producing a distinctive, if fragile, synthesis of market capitalism and ritual Paganism. Structured in two parts, the book reconstructs prewar subsistence systems, social hierarchies, and trade relations before turning to the postwar decades of boom and crisis. Lewis carefully documents how wealthy farmers and traders, rather than impoverished cultivators, were often at the forefront of ecological destruction, bulldozing hilltops, clearing cloud forests, and intensifying chemical use. At the same time, the profits of commercialization underwrote the continuation--and expansion--of prestige feasts that bound community life together. By situating Buguias in the wider context of political ecology and global capitalism, Wagering the Land challenges conventional wisdom that markets inevitably dissolve communal traditions or that environmental decline is primarily a story of poverty at the margins. Instead, Lewis demonstrates how ritual and risk, ecology and economy, fused into a form of "aberrant development" that preserved social order even as it undermined its own material base. This deeply researched and vividly written study offers essential insights for anthropologists, geographers, historians of Southeast Asia, and all readers interested in the complex entanglements of tradition, capitalism, and environmental change. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1992.
Hard to Break
The neuroscience of why bad habits are so hard to break-and how evidence-based strategies can help us change our behavior more effectively We all have habits we'd like to break, but for many of us it can be nearly impossible to do so. There is a good reason for this: the brain is a habit-building machine. In Hard to Break, leading neuroscientist Russell Poldrack provides an engaging and authoritative account of the science of how habits are built in the brain, why they are so hard to break, and how evidence-based strategies may help us change unwanted behaviors. Hard to Break offers a clear-eyed tour of what neuroscience tells us about habit change and debunks "easy fixes" that aren't backed by science. It explains how dopamine is essential for building habits and how the battle between habits and intentional goal-directed behaviors reflects a competition between different brain systems. Along the way, we learn how cues trigger habits; why we should make rules, not decisions; how the stimuli of the modern world hijack the brain's habit machinery and lead to drug abuse and other addictions; and how neuroscience may one day enable us to hack our habits. Shifting from the individual to society, the book also discusses the massive habit changes that will be needed to address the biggest challenges of our time. Moving beyond the hype to offer a deeper understanding of the biology of habits in the brain, Hard to Break reveals how we might be able to make the changes we desire-and why we should have greater empathy with ourselves and others who struggle to do so.
Trust and Digital Business
Trust and Digital Business: Theory and Practice brings together the theory and practice of trust and digital business. The book offers a look at the current state, including a comprehensive overview of both research and practical applications of trust in business. Readers will gain from this book in the following areas: knowledge across disciplines on trust in business, theoretical underpinnings of trust and how it sustains itself through digital dissemination, and empirically validated practice regarding trust and its related concepts. The international team of authors from seven countries (Finland, Germany, Italy, Malaysia, Poland, Turkey, and the U.S.) ensures the diversity and quality of the content.The intended audiences of this book are professionals, scholars, and students.
Concepts and Practices of Stem Education in Asia
Introduction.- Part I Conceptualising STEM education in Asia.- 1 Identifying Effective STEM Programmes and Strategies in Asia.- 2 Interdisciplinary, Integrated, and Transdisciplinary Approaches to Science and Technology Education: When, for Whom, and How?.- 3 Arts Integrated STEM in Korea.- 4 The Status Study of the Researches & Practices on STEM Education Towards Society 5.0 in Japan.- 5 The Consumption and Production of STEM Education in Singapore.- Part II Implementing STEM Education at Different Education Levels in Asia.- 6 Fostering STEM Education for Early Childhood in Thailand.- 7 Innovative Flat Speaker STEM Curriculum for Enhancing Students' Engineering Design and Their Attitudes towards STEM.- 8 Online Real-time Experiments for Enhancing Learning of Interdisciplinary and Disciplinary STEM Subjects at the Secondary Level.- 9 Enhancing STEM Education in Malaysia Through Scientist-teacher-student Partnership (STSP).- 10 Revitalizing STEM Education in Rural Secondary Schools through Mentor-Mentee Outreach Program.- 11 Student Research Tasks on STEM/STEAM and its Educational Effects in Korea.- Part III Preparing teachers for STEM teaching.- 12 Toward STEM Education in Pre-service Math-Science Teacher Program in Indonesia: A Challenging Journey.- 13 Teacher Training and Preparation for STEM Teaching: Challenge and Recommendation.- Epilogue: Way forward for STEM Education in Asia.
Race and Sociocultural Inclusion in Science Communication
Chapter 12 is available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence. Conversations around diversity, equity, and inclusion in science communication are in danger of generating much concern without effecting change and systematic transformations. This radical volume addresses these circular discourses and reveals the gaps in the field. Putting the spotlight on the marginalised voices of so-called 'racialised minorities', and those from Global South regions, it interrogates the global footprint of the science communication enterprise. Moving beyond tokenistic and extractive approaches, this book creates a space for academics and practitioners to challenge issues around race and sociocultural inclusion, providing mutual learning, paradigm-shifting perspectives, and innovative ways forward for the science communication advancement agenda. This work has received Special Recognition from the CIMUSET Award Committee.
The Star Builders
From a young, award-winning scientist, a "thoughtful and illuminating" (Nature) look at one of the most compelling and historic turning points of our time--the race to harness the power of the stars and produce controlled fusion, creating a practically unlimited supply of clean energy. The most important energy-making process in the universe takes place inside stars. The ability to duplicate that process in a lab, once thought impossible, may now be closer than we think. Today, teams of scientists around the world are being assembled by the boldest entrepreneurs, big business, and governments to solve what is the most difficult technological challenge humanity has ever faced: building the equivalent of a star on earth. If their plans to capture star power are successful, they will unlock thousands, potentially millions, of years of clean, carbon-free energy. In The Star Builders, award-winning young plasma physicist Arthur Turrell "offers an optimistic outlook for the future of fusion power and is adamant about the need to invest in it" (The New York Times) in this exciting and game-changing international quest that will make all of us winners.
Forever Safari
The town of Arusha in Tanzania is the staging area for safaris. "Going on safari" is much more than getting into a vehicle to watch animals. It is an anthropological exploration that re-immerses you into a natural and human world now practically depleted and effectively exhausted in the West. In its place we now have sarcasm, cynicism, mental-rational game playing with a distinct lack of heart and soul, and a near extinction of magic and mythic sensibilities. Get out of that rut! Discover Arusha; its mixed undercurrent; an EastSide-flavored Wild West outpost for disaffected expats, for touristic gawk-a-longs, of locals and vocal yocals, do-gooders and hawkers, vendo-strivers and slackers, safari-questers - a cacophony of hope-enmeshed dream wonks situated on frontier edginess, in love's intra-space yet tinged by secrets and longings. Arusha National Park is right here, in the shadow of Mt. Meru. Then go west to explore Tanzania's national parks: e.g., the Serengeti, Tarangire, Lake Manyara, and the Ngorongoro crater; visit the bushmen, the Maasai and the Iraqw tribes in situ. Take a few days to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro. See how Africans live and how they see the world. You'll find a warm and welcoming people and re-discover what it means to be a real human being (at least I did, which prompted me to write this book). A friend passed on his network of friends - faithful safari guides with whom he had worked for many, many years. Gideon and Emmanuel of HM Safaris are older and wiser and more experienced than most of the other safari guides. "Rough it" in a tent camp lodge or stay in 5-star safari lodges between meanderings through the greatest animal reserves on the planet. You can't help but pick up on the Mama Africa magic vibe. And end your adventures on a sunny beach in Zanzibar; visit its spice farms, discover Stone Town, and snorkel over multitudes of starfish. Even visit Kenya and swim with the dolphins if you wish. It's all here. Throw together some friends and make it happen. I guarantee you'll be in good hands and you'll have a blast! Dig out the nitty-gritty in Forever Safari: Honoring an Africa Legacy. Uncovered in this seven-week saga of explorations into East Africa, is a mutuality of destiny, of dreams that triumph over distinctions designed to separate us. The special legacy offered up here is but one of many. Forge your own story in the magisterial mystery of an incredibly vast continent.
Science Experiments for Kids
Hands-on projects to get kids ages 5 to 10 excited about science. As kids grow older, they become more curious about the world around them, often asking, "How does this work?" Awesome Science Experiments for Kids teaches young brains the nuts and bolts of the scientific method using fun, hands-on experiments designed to show kids how to hypothesize, experiment, and then record their findings. With awesome projects like a Fizzy Rocket, Magnet-Powered Car, and Pencil Sundial, kids will have a blast learning to build, design, and think critically while getting inspired to interact with the world around them and make their own discoveries. Awesome Science Experiments for Kids includes: With 100+ STEAM EXPERIMENTS: With interactive activities for science, technology, engineering, art, and math, kids can learn how and why each project works. Easy-to-follow instructions: Step-by-step experiments simplify engineering to guide kids and make the STEM experiments and art projects clear and simple to do. Refer to real-life photos that show experiments and many of the common household materials they use, as well as some of the final results! From learning how quicksand works to turning a lemon into a battery, these experiments teach budding STEAM kids how cool it is to be curious. Click on buy now and make your children happy.
Philosophy of Science: Perspectives from Scientists
This book describes the framework of a new theory of science.Over the last hundred years, philosophy of science has developed its theory based on what philosophers perceived what science is and what scientists do. It does not address the basic questions that scientists care about. Thus, this book examines the conventional theories of philosophy of science from a completely different point of view and describes the most difficult problems that scientists are concerned about and how science is conducted.This book is based on the lecture notes under the same title in Honors College at the junior level in UMASS Lowell. It is qualified as a required course in Art and Humanity for science and engineering majors.
Coastal Disaster Risk Management in Bangladesh
This book addresses disaster and disaster risk reduction (DRR) practices, constraints and capacity in the context of coastal Bangladesh.
Philosophy of Science
The book provides a succinct and issue-centered introduction to the Western philosophy of science, bringing eight focal issues in the field to the fore and augments each topic by incorporating Chinese perspectives.
The Neuroscience of You
From University of Washington professor Chantel Prat comes The Neuroscience of You, a rollicking adventure into the human brain that reveals the surprising truth about neuroscience, shifting our focus from what's average to an understanding of how every brain is different, exactly why our quirks are important, and what this means for each of us. With style and wit, Chantel Prat takes us on a tour of the meaningful ways that our brains are dissimilar from one another. Using real-world examples, along with take-them-yourself tests and quizzes, she shows you how to identify the strengths and weakness of your own brain, while learning what might be going on in the brains of those who are unlike you. With sections like "Focus," "Navigate," and "Connect," The Neuroscience of You helps us see how brains that are engineered differently ultimately take diverse paths when it comes time to prioritize information, use what they've learned from experience, relate to other people, and so much more. While other scientists focus on how "the" brain works "on average," Prat argues that our obsession with commonalities has slowed our progress toward understanding the very things that make each of us unique and interesting. Her field-leading research, employing cutting-edge technology, reveals the truth: Complicated as it may be, no two brains are alike. And individual differences in brain functioning are as pervasive as they are fundamental to defining what "normal" looks like. Adages such as, "I'm not wired that way" intuitively point to the fact that the brains we're piloting, educating, and parenting are wonderfully distinct, explaining a whole host of phenomena, from how easily a person might learn a second language in adulthood to whether someone feels curious or threatened when faced with new information. This book invites the reader to understand themselves and others by zooming in so close that we all look gray and squishy.
Understanding How Science Explains the World
All people desire to know. We want to not only know what has happened, but also why it happened, how it happened, whether it will happen again, whether it can be made to happen or not happen, and so on. In short, what we want are explanations. Asking and answering explanatory questions lies at the very heart of scientific practice. The primary aim of this book is to help readers understand how science explains the world. This book explores the nature and contours of scientific explanation, how such explanations are evaluated, as well as how they lead to knowledge and understanding. As well as providing an introduction to scientific explanation, it also tackles misconceptions and misunderstandings, while remaining accessible to a general audience with little or no prior philosophical training.
Structure, Evidence, and Heuristic
This book is the first systematic treatment of the philosophy of science underlying evolutionary economics. It does not advocate an evolutionary approach towards economics, but rather assesses the epistemic value of appealing to evolutionary biology in economics more generally.
A Philosopher Looks at Science
What is science and what can it do? Nancy Cartwright here takes issue with three common images of science: that it amounts to the combination of theory and experiment; that all science is basically reducible to physics; and that science and the natural world which it pictures are deterministic. The author's innovative and thoughtful book draws on examples from the physical, life, and social sciences alike, and focuses on all the products of science - not just experiments or theories - and how they work together. She reveals just what it is that makes science ultimately reliable, and how this reliability is nevertheless still compatible with a view of nature as more responsive to human change than we might think. Her book is a call for greater intellectual humility by and within scientific institutions. It will have strong appeal to anyone who thinks about science and how it is practised in society.
Choosing Down Syndrome
An argument that more people should have children with Down syndrome, written from a pro-choice, disability-positive perspective. The rate at which parents choose to terminate a pregnancy when prenatal tests indicate that the fetus has Down syndrome is between 60 and 90 percent. In Choosing Down Syndrome, Chris Kaposy offers a carefully reasoned ethical argument in favor of choosing to have such a child. Arguing from a pro-choice, disability-positive perspective, Kaposy makes the case that there is a common social bias against cognitive disability that influences decisions about prenatal testing and terminating pregnancies, and that more people should resist this bias by having children with Down syndrome.Drawing on accounts by parents of children with Down syndrome, and arguing for their objectivity, Kaposy finds that these parents see themselves and their families as having benefitted from having a child with Down syndrome. To counter those who might characterize these accounts as based on self-deception or expressing adaptive preference, Kaposy cites supporting evidence, including divorce rates and observational studies showing that families including children with Down syndrome typically function well. Himself the father of a child with Down syndrome, Kaposy argues that cognitive disability associated with Down syndrome does not lead to diminished well-being. He argues further that parental expectations are influenced by neoliberal ideologies that unduly focus on the supposed diminished economic potential of a person with Down syndrome.Kaposy does not advocate restricting access to abortion or prenatal testing for Down syndrome, and he does not argue that it is ethically mandatory in all cases to give birth to a child with Down syndrome. People should be free to make important decisions based on their values. Kaposy's argument shows that it may be consistent with their values to welcome a child with Down syndrome into the family.
Science, Truth, and Meaning: From Wonder to Understanding
Science, Truth, and Meaning presents a scientific and philosophical examination of our place in the world. It also celebrates how diverse, scientific knowledge is interconnected and reducible to common foundations.The book focuses on aspects of scientific truth that relate to our understanding of reality, and confronts whether truth is absolute or relative to what we are. Hence, it assesses the meaning of the scientific deductions we have made and how they have profoundly influenced our conception of life and existence.The subtitle is 'From Wonder to Understanding', which is a paraphrased quote from Einstein, who said that the search for scientific truth is " ... a continual flight from wonder to understanding".In addressing the goal of advancing our understanding of our place in the world, this book also reveals the development and details of diverse sciences, their connections and achievements, and that while perhaps the same fundamental questions exist, they are seen in the light of an ever-refined scientific perspective on reality.Why the book is needed: many popular science books have been written, aimed at different levels of subject expertise, and nearly all treat their specific subject in isolation. Few attempt to link different sciences to their common foundations, and those that do are written by physicists. Since human knowledge is derived by, and relates to, the biological organism that human beings are, then such a book written from a biological perspective represents a novel perspective on the integration of science, and addresses new questions. This is such a book.Impressive aspects: the depth, breadth, consistency, and clarity of the work.
Mathematics and Metaphilosophy
This Element discusses the problem of mathematical knowledge, and its broader philosophical ramifications. It argues that the challenge to explain the (defeasible) justification of our mathematical beliefs ('the justificatory challenge'), arises insofar as disagreement over axioms bottoms out in disagreement over intuitions. And it argues that the challenge to explain their reliability ('the reliability challenge'), arises to the extent that we could have easily had different beliefs. The Element shows that mathematical facts are not, in general, empirically accessible, contra Quine, and that they cannot be dispensed with, contra Field. However, it argues that they might be so plentiful that our knowledge of them is unmysterious. The Element concludes with a complementary 'pluralism' about modality, logic and normative theory, highlighting its surprising implications. Metaphysically, pluralism engenders a kind of perspectivalism and indeterminacy. Methodologically, it vindicates Carnap's pragmatism, transposed to the key of realism.
Agetech, Cognitive Health, and Dementia
This book explores the ways in which AgeTech can contribute to healthy cognitive aging and support the independence of people with dementia. Technology can play a key role in supporting the health, independence, and well-being of older adults, particularly as a response to rapid worldwide population aging. AgeTech refers to the use of technologies, such as information and communication technologies (ICTs), robotics, mobile technologies, artificial intelligence, ambient systems, and pervasive computing to drive technology-based innovation to benefit older adults. AgeTech has the potential to provide new ways of meeting the growing demands on health and social care services to support people to stay healthy and active. As such, AgeTech represents an increasingly important market sector within world economies. The book also addresses some of the research, innovation, and policy challenges that need to be resolved if technology-based products and services are to fulfill their potential anddeliver real-world impacts to improve the lives of older adults and their carers, thus promoting more inclusive communities for the benefit of all.
Perspectival Realism
What does it mean to be a realist about science if one takes seriously the view that scientific knowledge is always perspectival, namely historically and culturally situated? In Perspectival Realism, Michela Massimi explores how scientific knowledge grows and evolves thanks to a plurality of epistemic communities occupying a number of scientific perspectives. The result is a philosophical view that goes under the name of "perspectival realism", and it offers a new lens for thinking about scientific knowledge, realism and pluralism in science. Perspectival Realism begins with an exploration of how epistemic communities often resort to several models and a plurality of practices, drawing on examples from nuclear physics, climate science, and developmental psychology. Massimi explains the perspectival nature of scientific representation, the role of scientific models as inferential blueprints, and the variety of scientific realism that naturally accompanies such a view. Perspectival realism is realism about phenomena (rather than about theories or unobservable entities). This novel realist view places epistemic communities and their situated knowledge center stage. The result is a portrait of scientific knowledge as a collaborative inquiry, where the reliability of science is made possible by a plurality of historically and culturally situated scientific perspectives. Along the way, Massimi offers insight into the nature of scientific modelling, scientific knowledge qua modal knowledge, data-to-phenomena inferences, and natural kinds as sortal concepts. Perspectival Realism offers a realist view that takes the multicultural nature of science seriously and couples it with cosmopolitan duties about how one ought to think about scientific knowledge and the distribution of benefits gained from scientific advancements. This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations.
A New Approach to Science
This book enriches the four causes of Aristotelian thought--i.e., the material, formative, efficient and final causes (Duque, 1.992) - and a previously suggested fifth cause (Duque, 1.999), the Maturity Cause, using the same methodology discovered while working with the four causes. Each of the five causes is associated with one or two methods of science and to a set of human faculties. The four causes taught by the Greeks are associated with the qualitative, the formative method, the experimental, the explicative method, and the exploratory and propositional methods which emerge from the Maturity Cause. The full conceptual framework based on the five causes is a useful tool for solving every day common issues as well as for resolving large individual and collective challenges.The outcome of a New Approach to Science, which fuses notions from the Book of Creation and the Book of Revelation in a conceptual framework to perceive, interpret and transform reality, profoundly questions how science is conceived today.Shogui Effendi in The World Order of Baha'u'llah said: "science and religion, (are) the two most potent forces in human life". What would be the synergic effect when they become reconciled?The example of how usefull the New Approach to Science is, focuses on the situation of the farmers of the world: In order to think about agriculture as a way to "lay a foundation for system" as 'Abdu'l-Bah獺 explained in "Foundations of World Unity", one has to examine the systems of education and labor. An educational system which revolves around agriculture should focus on monitoring and evaluating the teaching of the methods of sciences to the youth of the world, especially the daughters and sons of the farmers, so they can discover the potential of biodiversity and its results in terms of generating employment.For example: there are close to 300,000 species of plants and there are scores of different chemical compounds in a leaf of a plant, each one of them with different potentialities. The same thing applies to the possible combinations of those scores of different chemical compounds; each has its potential for agriculture, nutrition, health or industrial uses. John McMurry said referring to the plant kingdom: "It has been estimated that well over 300,000 secondary metabolites exist, and it is thought that their primary function is to increase the likelihood of an organism's survival by repelling or attracting other organisms." How many beneficial species of insects, bacteria, viruses and fungus do we know?Because my work has been dedicated to the relentlessly persecuted Bah獺'穩s of Iran, I suggest this endeavor to be the continuation of the "Education is not a crime" initiative, and I would certainly love to be part of it.The proceeds of you buying this book will be mainly directed towards the development of a curriculum in order to contribute to the teaching of the methods of sciences to the youth of the world.
Random Thoughts
Life has a way of presenting people and events into our lives that inspire and confound us at times. Our perceptions and opinions are in constant flux, influenced by our environment and circumstances. Random Thoughts is a collection of short essays gathered over the past decade or so, inspired by conversations with many people on social media and forums. They cover many subjects and philosophies. MY hope is that they will cause you to question what has been fed to you by media and the status quo of society.
Geoengineering Discourse Confronting Climate Change
This research examines the trajectory of the contested field of geoengineering through critical discourse analysis of relevant science policy reports, news media journalism, and congressional hearings. The analysis reveals the evolution of notions of normalcy, legitimacy, and imperative around the controversial field of geoengineering.
The Science of the Racer's Brain
This book takes what is known about expert cognition and brain function and asks: can we use this information to understand motor racing in a new way?Assuming no prior knowledge of driving techniques or of neuroscience, the authors break down for you the cognitive processes of the elite racing driver. Layer by layer the skills and expertise, and the sophisticated brain mechanisms behind them, are revealed in a fresh and unique way. ​​​​​​​Written by a cognitive scientist and a race driver performance analyst, fully referenced, and illustrated with 32 figures, this title blends the wonder of science with the passion and excitement of motorsport!
Don't Digitise Your Rubbish
The mining industry has a problem. It has worthy aspirations for high technology, digitisation, and a progressive performance culture, but it lacks the necessary operating platform to support and enable this. Despite its many successes in a tough working environment, the industry is experiencing declining productivity, and most businesses struggle to achieve stable, predictable operations and continuous, sustainable improvement. In Don't Digitise Your Rubbish, Andy Sherring explains what lies behind this paradox-why it has occurred; why it is such an important issue right now; what is missing; and how to go about fixing it-presenting a fundamentally better way of setting up operations for short-term and long-term success. Built on Sherring's extensive thought-leadership in this space, this is the mining industry's definitive book about integration and using it as the vehicle for transformational change. It is an essential step for any business aspiring to true operational excellence. And anyone who is planning for a digital future should read this first.
2D Materials
The book explains, in an easy way, the diffi cult to grasp concepts behind 2D exotic material properties for physicists, materials scientists, and engineers. This is a new class of phenomena highlighted in 2D materials with strong implications on physics. Physics, also for complex phenomena, is explained in easy terms that are ideal for newcomers to the fi eld and advanced students alike. Theory and specifi c examples of materials and their intriguing properties are discussed focusing on the structure property relationships that govern materials science. Applications for each phenomenon are evoked and a roadmapping is performed.
Making Sense of the Senses
Making Sense of the Senses provides an easily understandable and engaging overview of the senses. The book allows readers insights into how humans and other animals perceive the world, reflecting a level of knowledge similar to that acquired by studying neuroscience at an undergraduate level. In order to offer an accessible introduction to the science, it uses relatable examples to uncover the history, evolution, and biological principles of the way we see, smell, hear, taste, touch and more.Rather than only focusing on the five primary senses you can see on the cover, Making Sense of the Senses dives deep into the various methods through which life across the planet surveys the world, and guides the reader through the lesser-known methods through which we humans interpret our surroundings. In this way, we come across some amazing abilities that we often forget we possess.Humans are nevertheless rather average creatures compared to many sensory specialists. So when we compare our relatively modest capabilities to those of other species across the animal kingdom, we are forced to yield our anthropocentric sense of supremacy. This book will introduce how biological life developed the capacity to detect magnetic fields, radioactivity, and many more phenomena that until recently were inaccessible to humans.By contextualising and comparing how the senses operate, this book covers the sensory systems in a way no popular science book has previously done. If you are starting your career in neuroscience, or simply want to learn more about the ways our biology guides us through life, Making Sense of the Senses will change the way you think about our perception of the world.
Academics in Exile
Restrictions on academic freedom, persecution and armed conflict have forced many scholars into exile. So far, the professional trajectories of these scholars and their contributions to knowledge exchange have not been studied comprehensively. The contributors to this volume address the situations and networks of scholars in exile, the challenges they face in their host countries and the opportunities they use. These issues are highly relevant to discussions about the moral economies of higher education institutions and support programs. Although the contributions largely focus on Germany as a host country, they also offer telling examples of forced mobility in the Global South, including both contemporary and historical perspectives.
Natural Born Monads
We are still looking for a satisfactory definition of what makes an individual being a human individual. The understanding of human beings in terms of organism does not seem to be satisfactory, because of its reductionistic flavor. It satisfies our need for autonomy and benefits our lives thanks to its medical applications, but it disappoints our needs for conscious and free, self-determination. For similar reasons, i.e. because of its anti-libertarian tone, an organicistic understanding of the relationship between individual and society has also been rejected, although no truly satisfactory alternative for harmonizing individual and social wellness has been put forth. Thus, a reassessment of the very concepts of individual and organism is needed. In this book, the authors present a specific line of thought which started with Leibniz' concept of monad in 17th century, continued through Kant and Hegel, and as a result reached the first Eastern country to attempt to assimilate, as well as confront, with Western philosophy and sciences, i.e. Japan. The line of thought we are tracing has gone on to become one the main voices in current debates in the philosophy of biology, as well as philosophical anthropology, and social philosophy. As a whole, the volume offers a both historical, and systematic account of one specific understanding of individuals and their environment, which tries to put together its natural embedding, as well as its dialectical nature. Such a historical, systematic map will also allow to better evaluate how life sciences impact our view of our individual lives, of human activities, of institutions, politics, and, finally, of humankind in general.
Straight Flossin' and Other Stories of the American West
Sifting through the scraps of the the American Dream and discovering those who still hope...Stories of driving the open road, bird counts, rat research, close calls with fires and skunks, mixing it up with the local color, the eternal search for shade...and a grand finale at a frenetic ecological conference in Portland.
Mechanisms in Science
In recent years what has come to be called the 'New Mechanism' has emerged as a framework for thinking about the philosophical assumptions underlying many areas of science, especially in sciences such as biology, neuroscience, and psychology. This book offers a fresh look at the role of mechanisms, by situating novel analyses of central philosophical issues related to mechanisms within a rich historical perspective of the concept of mechanism as well as detailed case studies of biological mechanisms (such as apoptosis). It develops a new position, Methodological Mechanism, according to which mechanisms are to be viewed as causal pathways that are theoretically described and are underpinned by networks of difference-making relations. In contrast to metaphysically inflated accounts, this study characterises mechanism as a concept-in-use in science that is deflationary and metaphysically neutral, but still methodologically useful and central to scientific practice.
Handbook of Collective Intelligence
Experts describe the latest research in a rapidly growing multidisciplinary field, the study of groups of individuals acting collectively in ways that seem intelligent. Intelligence does not arise only in individual brains; it also arises in groups of individuals. This is collective intelligence: groups of individuals acting collectively in ways that seem intelligent. In recent years, a new kind of collective intelligence has emerged: interconnected groups of people and computers, collectively doing intelligent things. Today these groups are engaged in tasks that range from writing software to predicting the results of presidential elections. This volume reports on the latest research in the study of collective intelligence, laying out a shared set of research challenges from a variety of disciplinary and methodological perspectives. Taken together, these essays--by leading researchers from such fields as computer science, biology, economics, and psychology--lay the foundation for a new multidisciplinary field.Each essay describes the work on collective intelligence in a particular discipline--for example, economics and the study of markets; biology and research on emergent behavior in ant colonies; human-computer interaction and artificial intelligence; and cognitive psychology and the "wisdom of crowds" effect. Other areas in social science covered include social psychology, organizational theory, law, and communications.ContributorsEytan Adar, Ishani Aggarwal, Yochai Benkler, Michael S. Bernstein, Jeffrey P. Bigham, Jonathan Bragg, Deborah M. Gordon, Benjamin Mako Hill, Christopher H. Lin, Andrew W. Lo, Thomas W. Malone, Mausam, Brent Miller, Aaron Shaw, Mark Steyvers, Daniel S. Weld, Anita Williams Woolley
Bioinformatics and Biomedical Engineering
This volume constitutes the proceedings of the 9th International Work-Conference on IWBBIO 2020, held in Maspalomas, Gran Canaria, Spain, in June 2022. The total of 75 papers presented in the proceedings, was carefully reviewed and selected from 212 submissions. The papers cover the latest ideas and realizations in the foundations, theory, models, and applications for interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary research encompassing disciplines of computer science, mathematics, statistics, biology, bioinformatics, and biomedicine.
Bioinformatics and Biomedical Engineering
This volume constitutes the proceedings of the 9th International Work-Conference on IWBBIO 2020, held in Maspalomas, Gran Canaria, Spain, in June 2022. The total of 75 papers presented in the proceedings, was carefully reviewed and selected from 212 submissions. The papers cover the latest ideas and realizations in the foundations, theory, models, and applications for interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary research encompassing disciplines of computer science, mathematics, statistics, biology, bioinformatics, and biomedicine.
Wildlife of Florida's Springs
Florida is home to no fewer than 700 freshwater springs, more than any place in the world! From the famed manatee to the obscure freshwater jellyfish, the springs provide sustenance to an abundance of wild, marine and insect life. This beautiful guide features over 150 species, over 130 original illustrations, and includes listings of commonly and not-so-commonly encountered "critters" living in and near Florida's springs.
Smartphones as Mobile Minilabs in Physics
This book presents more than 70 physics experiments from iPhysicsLabs-column of the Journal The Physics Teacher. The articles are aimed at physics lecturers, trainee teachers and teachers who want to take their classes to the next level using digital devices. The experiments can easily be performed and analyzed using smartphones or tablets. The topics span from mechanics, optics, thermodynamics, astrophysics and astronomy to acoustics, electrodynamics and electronics.Authors worldwide have contributed to this series of articles. To celebrate the 10th anniversary of iPhysicsLabs, Jochen Kuhn and Patrik Vogt have collected more than 70 most popular and interesting articles for this book.
Before The Saltwater Came
America's vanishing wetlands are an issue at the forefront of the nation's consciousness. Join La Loutre, the grandmotherly otter, as she gently tells of her life in the Louisiana marsh - and how wetland loss is affecting her family, other wildlife, plants and humans. A story as suitable for adults as it is for children; easy to read with fun illustrations.
Trends in Teaching Experimentation in the Life Sciences
This book is a guide for educators on how to develop and evaluate evidence-based strategies for teaching biological experimentation to thereby improve existing and develop new curricula. It unveils the flawed assumptions made at the classroom, department, and institutional level about what students are learning and what help they might need to develop competence in biological experimentation.Specific case studies illustrate a comprehensive list of key scientific competencies that unpack what it means to be a competent experimental life scientist. It includes explicit evidence-based guidelines for educators regarding the teaching, learning, and assessment of biological research competencies. The book also provides practical teacher guides and exemplars of assignments and assessments. It contains a complete analysis of the variety of tools developed thus far to assess learning in this domain.This book contributes to the growth of public understanding of biological issuesincluding scientific literacy and the crucial importance of evidence-based decision-making around public policy. It will be beneficial to life science instructors, biology education researchers and science administrators who aim to improve teaching in life science departments.Chapters 6, 12, 14 and 22 are available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.
Algorithms and Methods in Structural Bioinformatics
1. Protein-Ligand Binding with Applications in Molecular Docking2. Explaining Small Molecule Binding Specificity with Volumetric Representations of Protein Binding Sites3. Machine Learning-based Approaches for Protein Conformational Exploration4. Low Rank Approximation Methods for Identifying Impactful Pairwise Protein Mutations5. Detection and analysis of amino acid insertions and deletions6. DeepTracerWeb Service for Fast and Accurate De Novo Protein Complex Structure Prediction from Cryo-EM
Computational Methods in Synthetic Biology
This second edition book provides complete coverage of the computational approaches currently used in Synthetic Biology. New chapters detail computational methods and algorithms for the design of bio-components, insight on CAD programs, analysis techniques, and distributed systems. Written in the highly successful Methods in Molecular Biology series format, chapters include introductions to their respective topics, application details for both the expert and non-expert reader, and tips on troubleshooting and avoiding known pitfalls. Authoritative and practical, Computational Methods in Synthetic Biology, Second Edition aims to feature a broad overview of the research areas that can be met in the area of in silico Synthetic Biology.
Manatee Insanity
The quiet manatee has long been a flash point of frequent environmental debates. It is Florida's most famous endangered species, as well as its most controversial. Manatees appear on hundreds of license plates, attract hordes of tourists, and expose the uneasy relationships between science and the law and between freedom and responsibility like no other animal.As passions have flared and resentments have grown, the battle over manatee protection has evolved into a war, and no reporter has followed the story more closely than Craig Pittman, the first environmental writer to explore the complex history, culture, and science of the controversies and concerns surrounding this remarkable creature.With an abiding interest in the uncertain fate of this unique species, Manatee Insanity provides the first in-depth history of the attempts to provide legal protection for the manatee. Pittman follows Florida's gentle giants through time and space, detailing interactions with a variety of human actors, from Jacques-Yves Cousteau to Jeb Bush to Jimmy Buffett, from a popular children's book author to a federal lawman who dressed in a gorilla suit for the ultimate undercover assignment.
I Am Made of Mountains
This lyrical picture book celebrates the beauty of nature while exploring the diverse landscapes of the National Parks across the United States of America. From the volcanos of Haleakalā National Park in Hawai'i to waterfalls of Yosemite to the churning ocean at Acadia National Park in Maine, I Am Made of Mountains takes readers on a tour to honor America's great outdoors. Sixteen parks are highlighted, and the story follows a different child visiting each park and exploring the natural wonders of each location. The lyrical text paired with the expansive illustrations is an ode to the outdoors that will inspire nature lovers and National Park visitors of all ages.
Decolonizing Environmental Education for Different Contexts and Nations
As Dominant Western Worldviews (DWWs) proliferate through ongoing structures of globalization, neoliberalism, extractive capitalism, and colonialism, they inevitably marginalize those deemed as 'Other' (Indigenous, Black, Minority Ethnic, non-Western communities and non-human 'Others', including animals, plants, technologies, and energies). Environmental Education (EE) is well-positioned to trouble and minimize the harmful human impacts on social and ecological systems, yet the field is susceptible to how DWWs constrain and discipline what counts as viable knowledge, with a consequence of this being the loss of situated knowledges. To understand the relationships between DWW and situated knowledges and to thread an assemblage of ontological views that exist in unique contexts and nations, authors in this book take up decolonizing methodologies that expand across theories of Indigenous Knowledges (IK), Traditional Ecological Knowledges (TEK), two-eyed seeing, hybridity, and posthumanism. As EE opens to emplaced and situated socio-cultural and material stories, it opens to opportunities to attend more meaningfully to planetary social and ecological crisis narratives through contingent, contextualised, and relevant actions.
Conversations About Neuroscience
This compendium includes the following 5 complete books featuring renowned neuroscientists Lisa Feldman Barrett, Jennifer Groh, Kalanit Grill-Spector, John Duncan and Miguel Nicolelis providing fully accessible insights into cutting-edge academic research while revealing the inspirations and personal journeys behind their research. The books are explicitly designed to provide a unique window into frontline research and scholarship that wouldn't otherwise be experienced through standard lectures and textbooks. A detailed preface highlights the connections between the different books and all five books are broken into chapters with a detailed introduction and questions for discussion at the end of each chapter: I. Constructing Our World: The Brain's-Eye View - A conversation with Lisa Feldman Barrett, University Distinguished Professor in Psychology at Northeastern University. This wide-ranging conversation explores Feldman Barrett's research on how the brain works and the development of her theory of emotion: every moment of our life, our brain is anticipating and making sense of sensory inputs from its environment-the combination of the internal environment of the body and the external environment-and our brain uses conceptual knowledge to perform those tasks.II. Knowing One's Place: Space and the Brain - A conversation with Jennifer Groh, Professor of Psychology & Neuroscience at Duke University. After an inspiring story about her academic journey, this conversation examines Jennifer Groh's extensive research on how the brain combines various streams of sensory input to determine and predict where things are, together with the corresponding implications for a wide range of issues, from neuroplasticity to evolutionary mechanisms.III. Vision and Perception - A conversation with Kalanit Grill-Spector, Professor in Psychology and the Stanford Neurosciences Institute at Stanford University. Kalanit Grill-Spector is a vision specialist with a background in computational neuroscience. Her research examines how the brain processes visual information and perceives it. Topics covered include: how functional imaging techniques are used to visualize the brain in action and how it functions to recognize people, objects and places; how the anatomical and functional properties of the brain change from infancy to childhood through adulthood, and how this development is related to improved visual recognition abilities.IV. Investigating Intelligence - A conversation with John Duncan, Professor of Neuroscience, University of Cambridge. This detailed conversation examines important questions in neuroscience such as: What is intelligence and what does IQ testing tell us? Can intelligence be measured and improved? What role does our frontal lobe play in executive control? Further topics covered include: impairments following brain damage, functional brain imaging, and the brain basis for attention, intelligence and cognitive control.V. Minds and Machines - A conversation with Miguel Nicolelis, Professor of Neurobiology, Neurology, Neurosurgery, Biomedical Engineering, Neuroscience at Duke University. This comprehensive conversation dives into Nicolelis' extensive research activities and how he has been blurring the line between science fiction and science fact, developing increasingly sophisticated ways of harnessing the thoughts of rats, monkeys and humans to drive mechanical devices in the rapidly emerging field of brain-machine interfaces (BMI).
Nature-Inspired Algorithms
The text discusses nature inspired algorithms and their applications in a comprehensive manner. It will be an ideal reference text for graduate students in the field of electrical engineering, electronics engineering, computer science and engineering.
Zero-Effort Technologies
This book introduces zero-effort technologies (ZETs), an emerging class of technologies that require little or no effort from the people who use them. ZETs use advanced computing techniques, such as computer vision, sensor fusion, decision-making and planning, machine learning, and the Internet of Things to autonomously perform the collection, analysis, and application of data about the user and/or his/her context. This book begins with an overview of ZETs, then presents concepts related to their development, including pervasive intelligent technologies and environments, design principles, and considerations regarding use. The book discusses select examples of the latest in ZET development before concluding with thoughts regarding future directions of the field.
