With the rapid growth of new evidence from astronomy, space science and biology that supports the theory of life as a cosmic rather than terrestrial phenomenon, this book discusses a set of crucial data and pictures showing that life is still arriving at our planet. Although it could spark controversy among the most hardened sceptics this book will have an important role in shaping future science in this area.
This book surveys the models for the origin of life and presents a new model starting with shaped droplets and ending with life as polygonal Archaea; it collects the most published micrographs of Archaea (discovered only in 1977), which support this conclusion, and thus provides the first visual survey of Archaea. Origin of Life via Archaea’s purpose is to add a new hypothesis on what are called “shaped droplets”, as the starting point, for flat, polygonal Archaea, supporting the Vesicles First hypothesis. The book contains over 6000 distinct references and micrographs of 440 extant species of Archaea, 41% of which exhibit polygonal phenotypes. It surveys the intellectual battleground of the many ideas of the origin of life on earth, chemical equilibrium, autocatalysis, and biotic polymers. This book contains 17 chapters, some coauthored, on a wide range of topics on the origin of life, including Archaea’s origin, patterns, and species. It shows how various aspects of the origin of life may have occurred at chemical equilibrium, not requiring an energy source, contrary to the general assumption. For the reader’s value, its compendium of Archaea micrographs might also serve many other interesting questions about Archaea. One chapter presents a theory for the shape of flat, polygonal Archaea in terms of the energetics at the surface, edges and corners of the S-layer. Another shows how membrane peptides may have originated. The book also includes a large table of most extant Archaea, that is searchable in the electronic version. It ends with a chapter on problems needing further research. Audience This book will be used by astrobiologists, origin of life biologists, physicists of small systems, geologists, biochemists, theoretical and vesicle chemists.
Though more than forty years old, the space age has just begun, and questions about its future abound. What will replace the Space Shuttle? Will the International Space Station justify its $100 billion potential cost? Are asteroids real threats to Earth or just the subject of science fiction movies? Will humans land on Mars? Will the search for extraterrestrial life be rewarded? In Space Policy in the Twenty-First Century, W. Henry Lambright brings together ten top-ranking observers of United States space exploration to address these and other issues relating to the future of the space program. While the U.S. no longer competes with the Soviets for technological "firsts," they argue, ideology and national image remain at the core of space policy, with other factors playing subordinate roles. Reminding readers of the historical highlights, the authors pose searching questions about the priorities and applications of space science, manned vs. unmanned flights, and commercial access to the space enterprise. Contributors include: Christopher F. Chyba, SETI Institute and Stanford University; Ronald J. Deibert, University of Toronto; Daniel H. Deudney, the Johns Hopkins University; W. Henry Lambright, Syracuse University; Roger D. Launius, NASA; Karl A. Leib, Syracuse University; John M. Logsdon, George Washington University; Howard E. McCurdy, American University; Scott N. Pace, White House Office of Science and Technology Policy; and Debora L. VanNijnatten, Wilfrid Laurier University.
Michel Foucault’s work is rich with implications and insights concerning spatiality, and has inspired many geographers and social scientists to develop these ideas in their own research. This book, the first to engage Foucault’s geographies in detail from a wide range of perspectives, is framed around his discussions with the French geography journal Hérodote in the mid 1970s. The opening third of the book comprises some of Foucault’s previously untranslated work on questions of space, a range of responses from French and English language commentators, and a newly translated essay by Claude Raffestin, a leading Swiss geographer. The rest of the book presents specially commissioned essays which examine the remarkable reception of Foucault’s work in English and French language geography; situate Foucault’s project historically; and provide a series of developments of his work in the contemporary contexts of power, biopolitics, governmentality and war. Contributors include a number of key figures in social/spatial theory such as David Harvey, Chris Philo, Sara Mills, Nigel Thrift, John Agnew, Thomas Flynn and Matthew Hannah. Written in an open and engaging tone, the contributors discuss just what they find valuable - and frustrating - about Foucault’s geographies. This is a book which will both surprise and challenge.
The book presents high quality research papers presented by experts in the International Conference on Internet Computing and Information Communications 2012, organized by ICICIC Global organizing committee (on behalf of The CARD Atlanta, Georgia, CREATE Conferences Inc). The objective of this book is to present the latest work done in the field of Internet computing by researchers and industrial professionals across the globe. A step to reduce the research divide between developed and under developed countries.
Analyses by the Israeli sociologist Michael Feige embraced every aspect of the State of Israel. He examined the ever-changing and complex identity of Israelis; how they remember and commemorate themselves; the long- and short-term conceptions of time of the left- and right-wing political movements; the spacial concept of the settlers; myths underlying the lives and deaths of its citizens; and the dialectical vicissitudes of the real and imagined Israel. The book contains material from Professor Feiges literary output, contextualized in an Introduction by David Ohana. Chapters delve into the meaning of Israeli signs and symbols; the semiotics of secular spaces (sites of disasters and graves of political and religious leaders); the semiotics of historical time and daily existence; forms of commemoration (of figures like David Ben-Gurion, Yitzhak Rabin, airforce pilots, a female settler and a peace activist). Feige scrutinized communities formed around political cells, the processes of fragmentation and globalization in Israel, the traumas and scars from the Yom Kippur War, the evacuation of settlements, and the killing of Yitzhak Rabin. Feiges scrutiny illuminated Israeli society in myriad ways. He was a sociologist among historians and a historian among sociologists, and internationally acknowledged as having an extraordinary ability to convey sociological meaning and structure to Israels radical political culture as expressed in its social actions and underlying mythology. Semiotics of Israeli Space and Time is not only an essential sociological toolbox for students and an historical masterpiece for the wider Israeli public to better understand the society to which they belong, but a commemorative volume to honour his life and work. Michael was murdered on 8 June 2016 when two Palestinian gunmen opened fire in the Sarona Market in Tel Aviv.
