Other countries have openly announced and welcomed the ET presence. When will America own up to the truth? Or will it be forced under exceptional circumstances to begin a communication with our cosmic counterparts? The author provides insights and historical references concerning the potential cultural impact of the extraterrestrial presence in this millennium with the USA as the leading country in the epicenter of economic, social and geopolitical changes. An official contact with an advanced society may bring opportunity or risk depending on how we face the challenges on our planet and most importantly within ourselves. This book summarizes more than thirty years of study and research about UFOs and looks at the forthcoming possibilities.
Vision is the process of extracting behaviorally-relevant information from patterns of light that fall on retina as the eyes sample the outside world. Traditionally, nonhuman primates (macaque monkeys, in particular) have been viewed by many as the animal model-of-choice for investigating the neuronal substrates of visual processing, not only because their visual systems closely mirror our own, but also because it is often assumed that “simpler” brains lack advanced visual processing machinery. However, this narrow view of visual neuroscience ignores the fact that vision is widely distributed throughout the animal kingdom, enabling a wide repertoire of complex behaviors in species from insects to birds, fish, and mammals. Recent years have seen a resurgence of interest in alternative animal models for vision research, especially rodents. This resurgence is partly due to the availability of increasingly powerful experimental approaches (e.g., optogenetics and two-photon imaging) that are challenging to apply to their full potential in primates. Meanwhile, even more phylogenetically distant species such as birds, fish, and insects have long been workhorse animal models for gaining insight into the core computations underlying visual processing. In many cases, these animal models are valuable precisely because their visual systems are simpler than the primate visual system. Simpler systems are often easier to understand, and studying a diversity of neuronal systems that achieve similar functions can focus attention on those computational principles that are universal and essential. This Research Topic provides a survey of the state of the art in the use of animal models of visual functions that are alternative to macaques. It includes original research, methods articles, reviews, and opinions that exploit a variety of animal models (including rodents, birds, fishes and insects, as well as small New World monkey, the marmoset) to investigate visual function. The experimental approaches covered by these studies range from psychophysics and electrophysiology to histology and genetics, testifying to the richness and depth of visual neuroscience in non-macaque species.
In Global Visions of Violence, the editors and contributors argue that violence creates a lens, bridge, and method for interdisciplinary collaboration that examines Christianity worldwide in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. By analyzing the myriad ways violence, persecution, and suffering impact Christians and the imagination of Christian identity globally, this interdisciplinary volume integrates the perspectives of ethicists, historians, anthropologists, and ethnographers to generate new conversations. Taken together, the chapters in this book challenge scholarship on Christian growth that has not accounted for violence while analyzing persecution narratives that can wield data toward partisan ends. This allows Global Visions of Violence to push urgent conversations forward, giving voice to projects that illuminate wide and often hidden landscapes that have been shaped by global visions of violence, and seeking solutions that end violence and turn toward the pursuit of justice, peace, and human rights among suffering Christians.
This edited volume is the first of its kind to bridge the epistemological gap between primate ethologists and primate neurobiologists. Leading experts in several fields review work ranging from primate foraging behavior to the neurophysiology of motor control, from vocal communication to the functions of the auditory cortex.
The U.S. role in the world refers to the overall character, purpose, or direction of U.S. participation in international affairs and the country's overall relationship to the rest of the world. The U.S. role in the world can be viewed as establishing the overall context or framework for U.S. policymakers for developing, implementing, and measuring the success of U.S. policies and actions on specific international issues, and for foreign countries or other observers for interpreting and understanding U.S. actions on the world stage. While descriptions of the U.S. role in the world since the end of World War II vary in their specifics, it can be described in general terms as consisting of four key elements: global leadership; defense and promotion of the liberal international order; defense and promotion of freedom, democracy, and human rights; and prevention of the emergence of regional hegemons in Eurasia. The issue for Congress is whether the U.S. role in the world is changing, and if so, what implications this might have for the United States and the world. A change in the U.S. role could have significant and even profound effects on U.S. security, freedom, and prosperity. It could significantly affect U.S. policy in areas such as relations with allies and other countries, defense plans and programs, trade and international finance, foreign assistance, and human rights. Some observers, particularly critics of the Trump Administration, argue that under the Trump Administration, the United States is substantially changing the U.S. role in the world. Other observers, particularly supporters of the Trump Administration, while acknowledging that the Trump Administration has changed U.S. foreign policy in a number of areas compared to policies pursued by the Obama Administration, argue that under the Trump Administration, there has been less change and more continuity regarding the U.S. role in the world. Some observers who assess that the United States under the Trump Administration is substantially changing the U.S. role in the world-particularly critics of the Trump Administration, and also some who were critical of the Obama Administration-view the implications of that change as undesirable. They view the change as an unnecessary retreat from U.S. global leadership and a gratuitous discarding of long-held U.S. values, and judge it to be an unforced error of immense proportions-a needless and self-defeating squandering of something of great value to the United States that the United States had worked to build and maintain for 70 years. Other observers who assess that there has been a change in the U.S. role in the world in recent years-particularly supporters of the Trump Administration, but also some observers who were arguing even prior to the Trump Administration in favor of a more restrained U.S. role in the world-view the change in the U.S. role, or at least certain aspects of it, as helpful for responding to changed U.S. and global circumstances and for defending U.S. interests. Congress's decisions regarding the U.S role in the world could have significant implications for numerous policies, plans, programs, and budgets, and for the role of Congress relative to that of the executive branch in U.S. foreign policymaking.
When the Europeans first arrived in America, they had a number of preconceptions, prejudices, expectations and hopes about what life in the New World would be like. This book examines the different visions and representations of America conveyed in the writings of Spanish conquistador Á?lvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca and the Pilgrim leader William Bradford, taking both writers within their respective literary and historical contexts. Anthologies of American literature have consistently ignored Spanish-language achievements on the grounds of a restrictive interpretation of American literature based on linguistic boundaries. Consequently, Spanish-language texts such as Cabeza de Vaca's or the account by the Hidalgo de Elvas, to name but two examples, have been marginalized in the narrative of American literary history. In seeking to redress this neglect, Galisteo contributes to scholarship which seeks to analyze Early America as a whole, including not only Anglo American perspectives but also the Spanish American aspect of the colonization process.
Author: United States. Congress. House. Committee on Government Reform and Oversight. Subcommittee on National Security, International Affairs, and Criminal Justice
Intended to fill a gap in the literature on immigration, this work provides a variety of perspectives among those who agree that immigrants have rights, but may differ in how to assert those rights. The contributions challenge the historic and ongoing struggle of migrants rights.
"By closely examining a variety of Protestant schools, education expert Steven Vryhof uncovers the complexities, subtleties, and nuances of faith-based education that often elude those concerned only with producing higher test scores, a "moral environment," or a competitive workforce. Through candid interviews with parents of children in faith-based schools, Vryhof also answers questions that other interested parents may have about the benefits of faith-based education for their own children."--Jacket.
Comprehensively illustrated and written by leading researchers, this invaluable publication features papers from the annual Evolutionary Biology meetings in Marseilles. It includes a description of the life and work of the celebrated biologist J.B.S. Haldane.
