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.
Geoengineering Discourse Confronting Climate Change
Geoengineering, the idea of addressing climate change through large-scale technological projects, stands out among contested technologies in the degree to which its scope of possibilities and its premise are characterized by global existential risks. Despite controversy, this field has been shifting toward mainstream consideration. Geoengineering Discourse Confronting Climate Change: The Move from Margins to Mainstream in Science, News Media, and Politics examines the trajectory of geoengineering through critical discourse analysis of three key genres: science policy reports, news journalism, and congressional hearings. Brynna Jacobson explores how reports from distinguished scientific societies have constructed certain notions of legitimacy around geoengineering, how narratives within news coverage have reflected and shaped the public discourse and understanding of geoengineering, and how geoengineering has garnered political support from both major political parties in the United States. Through analysis of discursive conventions within these genres, the author reveals the evolution of notions of normalcy, legitimacy, and imperative around the field of geoengineering.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Brain-Computer Interfaces
Stroke and spinal cord injury often result in paralysis with serious negative consequences to the independence and quality of life of those who sustain them. For these individuals, rehabilitation provides the means to regain lost function. Rehabilitation following neurological injuries has undergone revolutionary changes, enriched by neuroplasticity. Neuroplastic-based interventions enhance the efficacy and continue to guide the development of new rehabilitation strategies. This book presents three important technology-based rehabilitation interventions that follow the concepts of neuroplasticity. The book also discusses clinical results related to their efficacy. These interventions are: functional electrical stimulation therapy, which produces coordinated muscle contractions allowing people with paralysis to perform functional movements with rich sensory feedback; robot-assisted therapy, which uses robots to assist, resist, and guide movements with increased intensity while also reducing the physical burden on therapists; and brain-computer interfaces, which make it possible to verify the presence of motor-related brain activity during rehabilitation. Further, the book presents the combined use of these three technologies to illustrate some of the emerging approaches to the neurorehabilitation of voluntary movement. The authors share their practical experiences obtained during the development and clinical testing of functional electrical stimulation therapy controlled by a brain-computer interface as an intervention to restore reaching and grasping.
Interactive Technologies and Autism, Second Edition
This book provides an in-depth review of the historical and state-of-the-art use of technology by and for individuals with autism. The design, development, deployment, and evaluation of interactive technologies for use by and with individuals with autism have been rapidly increasing over the last few decades. There is great promise for the use of these technologies to enrich lives, improve the experience of interventions, help with learning, facilitate communication, support data collection, and promote understanding. Emerging technologies in this area also have the potential to enhance assessment and diagnosis of autism, to understand the nature and lived experience of autism, and to help researchers conduct basic and applied research. The intention of this book is to give readers a comprehensive background for understanding what work has already been completed and its impact as well as what promises and challenges lie ahead. A large majority of existing technologieshave been designed for autistic children, there is increased interest in technology's intersection with the lived experiences of autistic adults. By providing a classification scheme and general review, this book can help technology designers, researchers, autistic people, and their advocates better understand how technologies have been successful or unsuccessful, what problems remain open, and where innovations can further address challenges and opportunities for individuals with autism and the variety of stakeholders connected to them.
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.
Clear Speech
Approximately 10% of North Americans have some communication disorder. These can be physical as in cerebral palsy and Parkinson's disease, cognitive as in Alzheimer's disease and dementia generally, or both physical and cognitive as in stroke. In fact, deteriorations in language are often the early hallmarks of broader diseases associated with older age, which is especially relevant since aging populations across many nations will result in a drastic increase in the prevalence of these types of disorders. A significant change to how healthcare is administered, brought on by these aging populations, will increase the workload of speech-language pathologists, therapists, and caregivers who are often already overloaded. Fortunately, modern speech technology, such as automatic speech recognition, has matured to the point where it can now have a profound positive impact on the lives of millions of people living with various types of disorders. This book serves as a common ground for two communities: clinical linguists (e.g., speech-language pathologists) and technologists (e.g., computer scientists). This book examines the neurological and physical causes of several speech disorders and their clinical effects, and demonstrates how modern technology can be used in practice to manage those effects and improve one's quality of life. This book is intended for a broad audience, from undergraduates to more senior researchers, as well as to users of these technologies and their therapists.
Applying Bio-Measurements Methodologies in Science Education Research
Chemistry for Environmental Scientists
The second edition of this book presents the fundamentals of chemistry in light of their importance for the environment and environmental processes. The new edition includes updated references and a more practical approach to the topic. The comprehensive discussion is structured in three parts: introducing the theory of physical chemistry, evaluating elements and compounds, and presenting principles of environmental chemistry.
The Poetry and Music of Science
What human qualities are needed to make scientific discoveries, and which to make great art? Many would point to 'imagination' and 'creativity' in the second case but not the first. This book challenges the assumption that doing science is in any sense less creative than art, music or fictional writing and poetry, and treads a historical and contemporary path through common territories of the creative process. The methodological process called the 'scientific method' tells us how to test ideas when we have had them, but not how to arrive at hypotheses in the first place. Hearing the stories that scientists and artists tell about their projects reveals commonalities: the desire for a goal, the experience of frustration and failure, the incubation of the problem, moments of sudden insight, and the experience of the beautiful or sublime. Selected themes weave the practice of science and art together: visual thinking and metaphor, the transcendence of music and mathematics, the contemporary rise of the English novel and experimental science, and the role of aesthetics and desire in the creative process. Artists and scientists make salient comparisons: Defoe and Boyle; Emmerson and Humboldt, Monet and Einstein, Schumann and Hadamard. The book draws on medieval philosophy at many points as the product of the last age that spent time in inner contemplation of the mystery of how something is mentally brought out from nothing. Taking the phenomenon of the rainbow as an example, the principles of creativity within constraint point to the scientific imagination as a parallel of poetry.
What It Means to Be Human and What That Has to Do with the Ineffable
This is a book for those deconstructing their religious, nationalistic, socioeconomic, and occupational identities, and the subsequent stories we've come to believe about what kind of world we live in. For those searching for meaning in the here and now, to those ready to rediscover and redefine what it means to be human. From ancient mythology to neuroscience, this book attempts to grapple with the human experience across culture, politics, and religious demographics. "If the choice is to be correct or compassionate, to be consecrated or complete, to be content or conscious, the choice is simple, but not easy."
Space-Perception and the Philosophy of Science
Drawing on the phenomenological tradition in the philosophy of science and philosophy of nature, Patrick Heelan concludes that perception is a cognitive, world-building act, and is therefore never absolute or finished.
Planting Nature
Trees hold a powerful place in American constructions of what is good in nature and the environment. As we attempt to cope with environmental crises, trees are increasingly enlisted with great fervor as agents of our stewardship over nature. In this innovative and impassioned book, Shaul E. Cohen exposes the way that environmental stewardship is undermined through the manipulation of trees and the people who plant them by a partnership of big business, the government, and tree-planting groups. He reveals how positive associations and symbols that have been invested in trees are exploited by an interlocking network of government agencies, private timber companies, and nongovernmental organizations to subvert the power of people who think that they are building a better world. Planting Nature details the history of tree planting in the United States and the rise of popular sentiment around trees, including the development of the Arbor Day holiday and tree-planting groups such as the National Arbor Day Foundation and American Forests. Drawing from internal papers, government publications, advertisements, and archival documents, Cohen illustrates how organizations promote tree planting as a way of shifting attention away from the causes of environmental problems to their symptoms, masking business-as-usual agendas. Ultimately, Planting Nature challenges the relationships between a "green" public, the organizations that promote their causes, and the "powers that be," providing a cautionary tale of cooperation and deception that cuts across the political spectrum.
Scientonomy
During the so-called 'historical turn' in the philosophy of science, philosophers and historians boldly argued for general patterns throughout the history of science. From Kuhn's landmark "Structure of Scientific Revolutions" until the "Scrutinizing Science" project led by Larry Laudan, there was optimism that there could be a general theoretical approach to understanding the process of scientific change. This optimism gradually faded as historians and philosophers began to focus on the details of specific case studies located within idiosyncratic historical, cultural, and political contexts, and abandoned attempts to uncover general patterns of how scientific theories and methods change through time. Recent research has suggested that while we have learned a great deal about the diversity and complexity of scientific practices across history, the push to abandon hope for a broader understanding of scientific change was premature. Because of this, philosophers, historians, and social scientists have become interested in reviving the project of understanding the mechanism of scientific change while respecting the diversity and complexity that has been unveiled by careful historical research over the past few decades. The chapters in this volume consider a particular proposal for a general theory of how scientific theories and methods change over time, first articulated by Hakob Barseghyan in "The Laws of Scientific Change" and since developed in a series of papers by a variety of members of the scientonomy community. The chapters consider a wide range of issues, from conceptual and historical challenges to the posited intellectual patterns in the history of science, to the possibility of constructing a general theory of scientific change, to begin with. Offering a new take on the project of constructing a theory of scientific change and integrating historical, philosophical, and social studies of science, this volume will be of interest to historians, philosophers, and sociologists of science.
Balance
Living is a balancing act. Ordinary activities like walking, running, or riding a bike require the brain to keep the body in balance. A dancer's poised elegance and a tightrope walker's breathtaking performance are feats of balance. Language abounds with expressions and figures of speech that invoke balance. People fret over work-life balance or try to eat a balanced diet. The concept crops up from politics-checks and balances, the balance of power, balanced budgets-to science, in which ideas of equilibrium are crucial. Why is balance so fundamental, and how do physical and metaphorical balance shed light on each other?Paul Thagard explores the physiological workings and metaphorical resonance of balance in the brain, the body, and society. He describes the neural mechanisms that keep bodies balanced and explains why their failures can result in nausea, falls, or vertigo. Thagard connects bodily balance with leading ideas in neuroscience, including the nature of consciousness. He analyzes balance metaphors across science, medicine, economics, the arts, and philosophy, showing why some aid understanding but others are misleading or harmful. Thagard contends that balance is ultimately a matter of making sense of the world. In both literal and metaphorical senses, balance is what enables people to solve the puzzles of life by turning sensory signals or an incongruous comparison into a coherent whole.Bridging philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience, Balance shows how an unheralded concept's many meanings illuminate the human condition.
The Parrot in the Mirror
How similar are your choices, behaviours, and lifestyle to those of a parrot? We humans are not like other mammals. We look like them, but we don't act like them. In fact, many of our defining human traits: our longevity, intelligence, monogamy and childrearing, and learning and language, all deep parts of what it means to be human, are far more similar to birds than to our fellow mammals. These similarities originate not from shared ancestors but from parallel histories. Our evolutionary stories have pushed humans and birds to the same solutions. In this book, Antone Martinho-Truswell explores these similarities to argue that we can learn a great deal about ourselves by thinking of the human species as 'the bird without feathers'. This is also a book about convergent evolution - evolution that drives very different species to very similar outcomes and behaviours. The traits we share with birds but not mammals are the result of similar, specific pressures that demanded similar solutions - and exploring these similarities can help us understand both why we evolved to be the way we are, and also how very unusual some of our behaviours are in the animal kingdom, Drawing on a rich array of examples across the natural world, Martinho-Truswell also demonstrates the ways in which parrots are our biological mirror image; an evolutionary parallel to ourselves. In contemplating what we share with the birds, and especially the parrots, we understand how close nature came to creating another lineage of radical intelligence on Earth, and we also come to better understand ourselves.
Evolution, Morality and the Fabric of Society
Recent interest in the evolution of the social contract is extended by providing a throughly naturalistic, evolutionary account of the biological underpinnings of a social contract theory of morality. This social contract theory of morality (contractevolism) provides an evolutionary justification of the primacy of a moral principle of maximisation of the opportunities for evolutionary reproductive success (ERS), where maximising opportunities does not entail an obligation on individuals to choose to maximise their ERS. From that primary principle, the moral principles of inclusion, individual sovereignty (liberty) and equality can be derived. The implications of these principles, within contractevolism, are explored through an examination of patriarchy, individual sovereignty and copulatory choices, and overpopulation and extinction. Contractevolism is grounded in evolutionary dynamics that resulted in humans and human societies. The most important behavioural consequences of evolution to contractevolism are reciprocity, cooperation, empathy, and the most important cognitive consequences are reason and behavioural modification.
Genetic Testing and the Use of Information
We are in the early years of a technological revolution arising from our understanding of the genetic meaning of life. Scientists' ability to manipulate and decode genes is advancing at an extraordinary pace - so fast we are often unprepared to handle the many vexing legal, economic, ethical and social issues they raise. The combination of genetic research and information technology raises often chilling questions of privacy and genetic discrimination. Should individuals be allowed personal property rights to their DNA, cells or tissues? How should policymakers regulate the biotechnology industry to maximize safety without stifling innovation? What are the appropriate uses of gene therapy and other genetic manipulations?
A Sense of Self
A twinge of sadness, a rush of love, a knot of loss, a whiff of regret. Memories have the power to move us, often when we least expect it, a sign of the complex neural process that continues in the background of our everyday lives. This process shapes us: filtering the world around us, informing our behavior and feeding our imagination.Psychiatrist Veronica O'Keane has spent many years observing how memory and experience are interwoven. In this rich, fascinating exploration, she asks, among other things: Why can memories feel so real? How are our sensations and perceptions connected with them? Why is place so important in memory? Are there such things as "true" and "false" memories? And, above all, what happens when the process of memory is disrupted by mental illness? O'Keane uses the broken memories of psychosis to illuminate the integrated human brain, offering a new way of thinking about our own personal experiences.Drawing on poignant accounts that include her own experiences, as well as what we can learn from insights in literature and fairytales and the latest neuroscientific research, O'Keane reframes our understanding of the extraordinary puzzle that is the human brain and how it changes during its growth from birth to adolescence and old age. By elucidating this process, she exposes the way that the formation of memory in the brain is vital to the creation of our sense of self.
Green Lewisham
In Green Lewisham we are invited to explore the surprisingly numerous green spaces in the Borough of Lewisham in south east London. Rivers, trees, grassy glades and wildlife are round almost every corner, hidden between houses and alongside railway lines and all lying less than ten miles from Trafalgar Square in central London. We have a brief history behind the many calming and natural sites and the photographs tempt us to go walking every day, and at all times of the year, as the trees change from bare branches to green leaves and then the brilliant jewel-like colours of the autumn. Discover herons and egrets, swans, and many, many species of birds as well as the ever-present ring-necked parakeets. Walk along the centuries-old River Ravensbourne and its tributaries, or find stunning views of London from the hilltops.Lewisham is celebrated as the London Borough of Culture in 2022. Candy Blackham has given us a unique book which opens our eyes to appreciating and enjoying the natural, green spaces in this special year.
