Unstable Nature
Unstable Nature

Author: Auro Michele Perego

Publisher: CRC Press

Published: 2023-11-20

Total Pages: 140

ISBN-13: 1003805922

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Unstable Nature is a popular science book offering a journey through the concept of instability in modern science with a focus on physics. Conceived for the curious reader wishing to go deeper in the fascinating and not yet popularised world of instabilities, it provides an immersion into paradoxical and unexpected phenomena - some of which hides in plain sight in our daily lives. The book is written without technical jargon, and new concepts and terminology needed for the narrative are introduced gradually based on examples taken from accessible everyday life. The chapters are connected through a path that starts from exploring instabilities at the planetary scale and then passes through a description of unstable dynamics in macroscopic settings such as in human mechanical artifacts, fluid waves, animal skin, vegetation structures, and chemical reactions, finally reaching the sub atomic scale and the biological processes of human thought. Before concluding with some general philosophical remarks, a modern landscape about the possibility of seeing instabilities not only as a detrimental effect but as resources to be harnessed for technology is explored. The book is enriched by a variety of professional anecdotes stemming from the direct research experience of the author. It features numerous connections of scientific concepts presented with other branches of the human experience and knowledge including philosophy, engineering, history of science, biology, chemistry, mathematics and computer science, poetry, and meditation. Key Features: Presents an exciting introduction to the topic, which is accessible to those without a scientific background Explores milestone discoveries in the history of the concept of instability in physics Contains anecdotes of key figures from the field, including James C. Maxwell, Alan Turing, Vladimir Zakharov, Edward Lorenz, Enrico Fermi, and Mary Tsingou

How Nature Works
How Nature Works

Author: Per Bak

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2013-11-11

Total Pages: 229

ISBN-13: 1475754264

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Self-organized criticality, the spontaneous development of systems to a critical state, is the first general theory of complex systems with a firm mathematical basis. This theory describes how many seemingly desperate aspects of the world, from stock market crashes to mass extinctions, avalanches to solar flares, all share a set of simple, easily described properties. "...a'must read'...Bak writes with such ease and lucidity, and his ideas are so intriguing...essential reading for those interested in complex systems...it will reward a sufficiently skeptical reader." -NATURE "...presents the theory (self-organized criticality) in a form easily absorbed by the non-mathematically inclined reader." -BOSTON BOOK REVIEW "I picture Bak as a kind of scientific musketeer; flamboyant, touchy, full of swagger and ready to join every fray... His book is written with panache. The style is brisk, the content stimulating. I recommend it as a bracing experience." -NEW SCIENTIST

The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion
The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion

Author: John Zaller

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1992-08-28

Total Pages: 388

ISBN-13: 9780521407861

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This 1992 book explains how people acquire political information from elites and the mass media and convert it into political preferences.

Stable Peace
Stable Peace

Author: Kenneth E. Boulding

Publisher: University of Texas Press

Published: 2014-12-15

Total Pages: 156

ISBN-13: 1477305718

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The human race has often put a high value on struggle, strife, turmoil, and excitement. Peace has been regarded as a utopian, unattainable, perhaps dull ideal or as some random element over which we have no control. However, the desperate necessities of the nuclear age have forced us to take peace seriously as an object of both personal and national policy. Stable Peace attempts to answer the question, If we had a policy for peace, what would it look like? A policy for peace aims to speed up the historically slow, painful, but persistent transition from a state of continual war and turmoil to one of continual peace. In a stable peace, the war-peace system is tipped firmly toward peace and away from the cycle of folly, illusion, and ill will that leads to war. Boulding proposes a number of modest, easily attainable, eminently reasonable policies directed toward this goal. His recommendations include the removal of national boundaries from political agendas, the encouragement of reciprocal acts of good will between potential enemies, the exploration of the theory and practice of nonviolence, the development of governmental and nongovernmental organizations to promote peace, and the development of research in the whole area of peace and conflict management. Written in straightforward, lucid prose, Stable Peace will be of importance to politicians, policy makers, economists, diplomats, all concerned citizens, and all those interested in international relations and the resolution of conflict.

Quagmire
Quagmire

Author: David Andrew Biggs

Publisher: University of Washington Press

Published: 2012-03-15

Total Pages: 322

ISBN-13: 0295801549

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Winner of the 2012 George Perkins Marsh Prize for Best Book in Environmental History In the twentieth century, the Mekong Delta has emerged as one of Vietnam’s most important economic regions. Its swamps, marshes, creeks, and canals have played a major role in Vietnam’s turbulent past, from the struggles of colonialism to the Cold War and the present day. Quagmire considers these struggles, their antecedents, and their legacies through the lens of environmental history. Beginning with the French conquest in the 1860s, colonial reclamation schemes and pacification efforts centered on the development of a dense network of new canals to open land for agriculture. These projects helped precipitate economic and environmental crises in the 1930s, and subsequent struggles after 1945 led to the balkanization of the delta into a patchwork of regions controlled by the Viet Minh, paramilitary religious sects, and the struggling Franco-Vietnamese government. After 1954, new settlements were built with American funds and equipment in a crash program intended to solve continuing economic and environmental problems. Finally, the American military collapse in Vietnam is revealed as not simply a failure of policy makers but also a failure to understand the historical, political, and environmental complexity of the spaces American troops attempted to occupy and control. By exploring the delta as a quagmire in both natural and political terms, Biggs shows how engineered transformations of the Mekong Delta landscape - channelized rivers, a complex canal system, hydropower development, deforestation - have interacted with equally complex transformations in the geopolitics of the region. Quagmire delves beyond common stereotypes to present an intricate, rich history that shows how closely political and ecological issues are intertwined in the human interactions with the water environment in the Mekong Delta. Watch the book trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gp1-UItZqsk

Unstable Ground
Unstable Ground

Author: Alex Alvarez

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2017-07-25

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 1442265698

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Unstable Ground looks at the human impact of climate change and its potential to provoke some of the most troubling crimes against humanity—ethnic conflict, war, and genocide. Alex Alvarez provides an essential overview of what science has shown to be true about climate change and examines how our warming world will challenge and stress societies and heighten the risk of mass violence. Drawing on a number of recent and historic examples, including Darfur, Syria, and the current migration crisis, this book illustrates the thorny intersections of climate change and violence. The author doesn’t claim causation but makes a compelling case that changing environmental circumstances can be a critical factor in facilitating violent conflict. As research suggests climate change will continue and accelerate, understanding how it might contribute to violence is essential in understanding how to prevent it.

Unstable Earth
Unstable Earth

Author: Mary Colson

Publisher:

Published: 2014-07-24

Total Pages: 32

ISBN-13: 9780750283625

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Examining the causes and effects of the depletion of the ozone layer, this book asks what will happen to people, animals and the environment if it disappears. It imagines scenarios at varying stages in the future and examines whether and how disaster can be averted.

Experimental Architecture
Experimental Architecture

Author: Rachel Armstrong

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-06-11

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 1351272462

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In this ground-breaking book, the first to provide an overview of the theory and practice of experimental architecture, Rachel Armstrong explores how interdisciplinary, design-led research practices are beginning to redefine the possibilities of architecture as a profession. Drawing on experts from disciplines as varied as information technology, mathematics, poetry, graphic design, scenography, bacteriology, marine applied science and robotics, Professor Armstrong delineates original, cutting-edge architectural experiments through essays, quotes, poetry, equations and stories. Written by an acknowledged pioneer of architectural experiment, this visionary book is ideal for students and researchers wishing to engage in experimental, practice-based architectural and artistic research. It introduces radical new ideas about architecture and provides ideas and inspiration which students and researchers can apply in their own work and proposals, while practitioners can draw on it to transform their creative assumptions and develop thereby a distinctive "edge" to stand out in a highly competitive profession.

The Mirage of a Space between Nature and Nurture
The Mirage of a Space between Nature and Nurture

Author: Evelyn Fox Keller

Publisher: Duke University Press

Published: 2010-06-11

Total Pages: 118

ISBN-13: 082239281X

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In this powerful critique, the esteemed historian and philosopher of science Evelyn Fox Keller addresses the nature-nurture debates, including the persistent disputes regarding the roles played by genes and the environment in determining individual traits and behavior. Keller is interested in both how an oppositional “versus” came to be inserted between nature and nurture, and how the distinction on which that opposition depends, the idea that nature and nurture are separable, came to be taken for granted. How, she asks, did the illusion of a space between nature and nurture become entrenched in our thinking, and why is it so tenacious? Keller reveals that the assumption that the influences of nature and nurture can be separated is neither timeless nor universal, but rather a notion that emerged in Anglo-American culture in the late nineteenth century. She shows that the seemingly clear-cut nature-nurture debate is riddled with incoherence. It encompasses many disparate questions knitted together into an indissoluble tangle, and it is marked by a chronic ambiguity in language. There is little consensus about the meanings of terms such as nature, nurture, gene, and environment. Keller suggests that contemporary genetics can provide a more appropriate, precise, and useful vocabulary, one that might help put an end to the confusion surrounding the nature-nurture controversy.