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Author: Ann-Christine Duhaime
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Published: 2022-10-18
Total Pages: 337
ISBN-13: 0674247728
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe human brain evolved to prioritize short-term rewards over long-term goals. But while this adaptation served our ancestors well, it is maladaptive in the face of a slow-moving climate crisis. Luckily, brains can adjust. Ann-Christine Duhaime explores how we can reframe what we find rewarding to counteract climate change.
Author: Robert R. Hoffman
Publisher: MIT Press
Published: 2023-08-15
Total Pages: 501
ISBN-13: 026254881X
DOWNLOAD EBOOKA detailed study of research on the psychology of expertise in weather forecasting, drawing on findings in cognitive science, meteorology, and computer science. This book argues that the human cognition system is the least understood, yet probably most important, component of forecasting accuracy. Minding the Weather investigates how people acquire massive and highly organized knowledge and develop the reasoning skills and strategies that enable them to achieve the highest levels of performance. The authors consider such topics as the forecasting workplace; atmospheric scientists' descriptions of their reasoning strategies; the nature of expertise; forecaster knowledge, perceptual skills, and reasoning; and expert systems designed to imitate forecaster reasoning. Drawing on research in cognitive science, meteorology, and computer science, the authors argue that forecasting involves an interdependence of humans and technologies. Human expertise will always be necessary.
Author: Jennifer M. Groh
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Published: 2014-11-05
Total Pages: 265
ISBN-13: 067474487X
DOWNLOAD EBOOKKnowing where things are seems effortless. Yet our brains devote tremendous computational power to figuring out the simplest details about spatial relationships. Going to the grocery store or finding our cell phone requires sleuthing and coordination across different sensory and motor domains. Making Space traces this mental detective work to explain how the brain creates our sense of location. But it goes further, to make the case that spatial processing permeates all our cognitive abilities, and that the brain’s systems for thinking about space may be the systems of thought itself. Our senses measure energy in the form of light, sound, and pressure on the skin, and our brains evaluate these measurements to make inferences about objects and boundaries. Jennifer Groh describes how eyes detect electromagnetic radiation, how the brain can locate sounds by measuring differences of less than one one-thousandth of a second in how long they take to reach each ear, and how the ear’s balance organs help us monitor body posture and movement. The brain synthesizes all this neural information so that we can navigate three-dimensional space. But the brain’s work doesn’t end there. Spatial representations do double duty in aiding memory and reasoning. This is why it is harder to remember how to get somewhere if someone else is driving, and why, if we set out to do something and forget what it was, returning to the place we started can jog our memory. In making space the brain uses powers we did not know we have.
Author: Patrice Newell
Publisher: Penguin Group Australia
Published: 2019-06-18
Total Pages: 271
ISBN-13: 1760144134
DOWNLOAD EBOOKIn an era of rapid climate change, this vital account of how agriculture can address major issues is an Australian story with global ramifications. Patrice is at the frontline of enormous challenges, from water scarcity and land stewardship to food security and the rural-urban divide. The devastation of drought and the crises created by industrial-scale chemically-dependent primary production are discussed and alternatives proposed – along with bold ideas for new sources of energy. Patrice has travelled the world exploring best practice and invested heavily in organic methods on her farm. She believes we can produce enough good food to feed the world without further environmental wreckage or loss of bio-diversity. With glimpses of the individuals who make working the farm so rewarding, Who's Minding the Farm? provides a window into the pains, pleasures and politics of life on the land, and promotes new ways of thinking, no matter where you live. Who’s minding the farm? A shared responsibility for us all.
Author: John S. Allen
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Published: 2012-05-15
Total Pages: 268
ISBN-13: 0674069870
DOWNLOAD EBOOKIn this gustatory tour of human history, John S. Allen demonstrates that the everyday activity of eating offers deep insights into human beings’ biological and cultural heritage. We humans eat a wide array of plants and animals, but unlike other omnivores we eat with our minds as much as our stomachs. This thoughtful relationship with food is part of what makes us a unique species, and makes culinary cultures diverse. Not even our closest primate relatives think about food in the way Homo sapiens does. We are superomnivores whose palates reflect the natural history of our species. Drawing on the work of food historians and chefs, anthropologists and neuroscientists, Allen starts out with the diets of our earliest ancestors, explores cooking’s role in our evolving brain, and moves on to the preoccupations of contemporary foodies. The Omnivorous Mind delivers insights into food aversions and cravings, our compulsive need to label foods as good or bad, dietary deviation from “healthy” food pyramids, and cross-cultural attitudes toward eating (with the French, bien sûr, exemplifying the pursuit of gastronomic pleasure). To explain, for example, the worldwide popularity of crispy foods, Allen considers first the food habits of our insect-eating relatives. He also suggests that the sound of crunch may stave off dietary boredom by adding variety to sensory experience. Or perhaps fried foods, which we think of as bad for us, interject a frisson of illicit pleasure. When it comes to eating, Allen shows, there’s no one way to account for taste.
Author: David Macauley
Publisher: Guilford Press
Published: 1996-03-30
Total Pages: 372
ISBN-13: 9781572300590
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis volume examines the works of some of the most influential Western philosophers of ecology, tracing their influence on movements including deep ecology, ecological feminism, bioregionalism, and critical postmodern ecology. Leading authorities examine, critique, and build on the insights of thinkers such as Hobbes, Heidegger, Bloch, Jonas, Mumford, Ehrlich, and Bookchin. Topics discussed include the claims and merits of anthropocentric, biocentric, and ecocentric positions; rationality and its relationship to knowledge, technology, and social change; and what our conceptions of nature tell us about our vision of politics and society.
Author: Siegfried Fred Singer
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Published: 2007
Total Pages: 282
ISBN-13: 9780742551176
DOWNLOAD EBOOKArgues that global warming is a natural, cyclical phenomenon that has not been caused by human activities and that its negative consequences have been greatly overestimated.
Author: Carl D. Marci MD
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Published: 2022-05-17
Total Pages: 281
ISBN-13: 0674275861
DOWNLOAD EBOOKLiving in an age of digital distraction has wreaked havoc on our brains—but there’s much we can do to restore our tech–life balance. We live in a world that is always on, where everyone is always connected. But we feel increasingly disconnected. Why? The answer lies in our brains. Carl D. Marci, MD, a leading expert on social and consumer neuroscience, reviews the mounting evidence that overuse of smart phones and social media is rewiring our brains, resulting in a losing deal: we are neglecting the relationships that sustain us and keep us healthy in favor of weaker and more ephemeral ties. The ability to connect and form strong social bonds is fundamental to human experience and emerged through unique structures in our brains. But ever-more-powerful technologies and ubiquitous access to media have hijacked our need to connect intimately and emotionally with others. The quick highs of clicking “like” and swiping right overstimulate the same neurological reward centers associated with social relationships. The habits that accompany our digital lifestyles are putting tremendous pressure on critical components of the brain associated with attention, emotion, and memory, changing how we process information and altering how we communicate and relate, even at a physiological level. As a psychiatrist working at the forefront of research on the impact of digital technology, Marci has seen this transformation up close and developed a range of responses. Rewired provides scientifically supported solutions for everyone who wants to restore their tech–life balance—from parents concerned about their children’s exposure to the internet to stressed workers dealing with the deluge of emails and managing the expectation of 24/7 availability.
Author: Harrison Fraker
Publisher: Oro Editions
Published: 2020-10
Total Pages: 240
ISBN-13: 9781951541330
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis book calls attention to the public space of cities. It proposes that the environmental performance of public space is underdeveloped, and is primed to play a more integrated role in combatting the urgency of climate change, while also creating a more meaningful experience of the city. The approach is influenced by recent insights from neuroscience that are generating a growing body of evidence for the underlying bodily basis of mind and meaning imply a reformulation of urban design theory. Minding the City is an effort to refocus the subject of urban design on the tangible and visceral experience of public space, to remind urban designers that our concept of the city is grounded in bodily experience. It discusses emerging insights from neuroscience and their potential impact on urban design in detail, not as a formula for design, but to bring awareness, a new sensibility to the design process. It uses a set of case studies to illustrate how the insights from neuroscience are operative in how we experience and value the built environment. It finishes with an exploration of the sensory and aesthetic potential of sustainable systems and then illustrates, through a series of urban design studies, how they might be used to create better environmental performance while creating more meaningful, even poetic urban spaces.
Author: Robert B. Campenot
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Published: 2016-02-15
Total Pages: 353
ISBN-13: 0674495586
DOWNLOAD EBOOKLike all cellular organisms humans run on electricity. Cells work like batteries: slight imbalances of electric charge across cell membranes, caused by ions moving in and out of cells, result in sensation, movement, awareness, and thinking—the things we associate with being alive. Robert Campenot offers an accessible overview of animal electricity.
