الصفحة 8
الصفحة 8
Meaning in Action : Constructions, Narratives, and Representations
are far from genetically ? xing what behavioral preferences they may possess. Instead, learning mechanisms offer a ? exible way of attaining locally important cultural knowledge within temporal windows of opportunity as has been convi- ingly shown by research in language and culture attainment. Similar mechanisms are likely to exist for other social capacities, such as mate preferences, for example. It is this role of our biological inheritance that social science must appreciate in order to furnish a more complete understanding of human behavior. Within the natural range of variation of capacities and armed with biologically conditioned learning mechanisms we live out lives of meaning – in which we hold some things to be real, rational, valuable or morally right, and others not. It is this world of meaning in which we ? nd love and hate, struggles for justice, power, and money, and the dramas that lend to life both its depth and passion.
Meaning and Use
The second Jerusalem Philosophical Encounter was held in Jerusalem on April 25-28, 1976, The topic of the symposiumwas Meaning and Use. For Bar-Hillel, the question 'meaning or use?' was of great importance, one which he took as a question of priorities. Which approach to natural language is prior: the formal, semantical approach, which accords a central position to the truth functional concept of meaning and to the theory of reference, or rather the alternative approach which accords the central position to linguistic commu nication and prefers dealing with speech acts to dealing with Statements? Bar Hillel's answer to this question, in his later years, can be summed up by our title, meaning and use: neither approach deserves priority, each is equally necessary, and they both complement each other.
Mathematics and Mechanics of Granular Materials
Granular or particulate materials arise in almost every aspect of our lives, including many familiar materials such as tea, coffee, sugar, sand, cement and powders. At some stage almost every industrial process involves a particulate material, and it is usually the cause of the disruption to the smooth running of the process. In the natural environment, understanding the behaviour of particulate materials is vital in many geophysical processes such as earthquakes, landslides and avalanches. This book is a collection of current research from some of the major contributors in the topic of modelling the behaviour of granular materials. Papers from every area of current activity are included, such as theoretical, numerical, engineering and computational approaches. This book illustrates the numerous diverse approaches to one of the outstanding problems of modern continuum mechanics.
Is it Safe to Eat? : Enjoy Eating and Minimize Food Risks
The author, discusses - in his easily understandable, ranging from GM food to natural toxins passionate, yet authoritative and informative book. But in contrast to many other authors, Ian Shaw sets the risks of food, foodborne pathogens and food contaminats in the context of life’s risks. Enjoyment of food and eating is a benefit that far outweighs the risks, at least if everybody is aware of those risks and uses measures to minimize them.
Iron Nutrition in Plants and Rhizospheric Microorganisms
This book uses an interdisciplinary approach to provide a comprehensive review on the status of iron nutrition in plants. International scientists discuss research on acquisition of iron by strategy I and strategy II plants. These reviews summarize a variety of plant species and include both laboratory and field observations. Topics covered in this book include: plants as a source of iron for animals and humans, iron translocation in the plants, iron-stimulated activities that influence crop yield and fruit tree productivity, iron uptake by plants as influenced by microorganisms (i.e. free living soil microorganisms, symbiotic nitrogen-fixing and pathogenic bacteria), the role of plant hormones in iron transport, iron-metal competition in phytoremediation, root zone activities involving interactions between minerals and organic matter, the role of microbial siderophores in rhizospheric iron cycling, iron storage as phytoferritin, proteomic and metabolic studies associated with iron stress response, methods for studying iron metabolism including stable isotopes, and the correction of iron deficiency through the use of synthetic or natural chelates.
IoT and AI Technologies for Sustainable Living : A Practical Handbook
Brings together all the latest methodologies, tools and techniques related to the Internet of Things and Artificial Intelligence in a single volume to build insight into their use in sustainable living. The areas of application include agriculture, smart farming, healthcare, bioinformatics, self-diagnosis systems, body sensor networks, multimedia mining, and multimedia in forensics and security. Provides a comprehensive discussion of modeling and implementation in water resource optimization, recognizing pest patterns, traffic scheduling, web mining, cyber security and cyber forensics. It will help develop an understanding of the need for AI and IoT to have a sustainable era of human living. The tools covered include genetic algorithms, cloud computing, water resource management, web mining, machine learning, block chaining, learning algorithms, sentimental analysis and Natural Language Processing (NLP).
Invasive Plants : Ecological and Agricultural Aspects
The study of plant invasions is the science that attempts to understand causes and consequences of plant introductions outside of their native areas. contributing authors have strived to provide up-to-date reviews and discussions of invasion-related research involving natural and agroecosystems. Readers will get a unique perspective on ecological and agricultural aspects of plant invasions through employing general principles of ecology to plant invasions.
Invariant Manifolds for Physical and Chemical Kinetics
By bringing together various ideas and methods for extracting the slow manifolds the authors show that it is possible to establish a more macroscopic description in nonequilibrium systems. The book treats slowness as stability. A unifying geometrical viewpoint of the thermodynamics of slow and fast motion enables the development of reduction techniques, both analytical and numerical. Examples considered in the book range from the Boltzmann kinetic equation and hydrodynamics to the Fokker-Planck equations of polymer dynamics and models of chemical kinetics describing oxidation reactions. Special chapters are devoted to model reduction in classical statistical dynamics, natural selection, and exact solutions for slow hydrodynamic manifolds. The book will be a major reference source for both theoretical and applied model reduction. Intended primarily as a postgraduate-level text in nonequilibrium kinetics and model reduction, it will also be valuable to PhD students and researchers in applied mathematics, physics and various fields of engineering.
Introductory Lectures on Fluctuations of Lévy Processes with Applications
Lévy processes are the natural continuous-time analogue of random walks and form a rich class of stochastic processes around which a robust mathematical theory exists. Their mathematical significance is justified by their application in many areas of classical and modern stochastic models including storage models, renewal processes, insurance risk models, optimal stopping problems, mathematical finance and continuous-state branching processes.The book aims to be mathematically rigorous while still providing an intuitive feel for underlying principles. The results and applications often focus on the case of Lévy processes with jumps in only one direction.
Introduction to toxicology
Charts the evolution of the field of toxicology, from the use of natural toxins by ancient tribes through the developments established by Paracelsus, and progresses through to the current topics in the public interest. For centuries, the study of toxicology has fascinated students. The book begins with basic toxicological principles, including an historical summary, dose-response relationships (NEW chapter), exposure-response relationships (NEW chapter), disposition, and metabolism of xenobiotic toxic substances. Other important new chapters include target organ toxicity, toxicity of carcinogenic agents and new and updated concepts in toxicity testing, and antidotes and treatment of poisonings. In all, nine new or expanded chapters from the third edition are advanced. Current concerns about the effects of therapeutic drugs, carcinogens, industrial toxins, pesticides, and herbicides on human health, animal welfare, and the stability and maintenance of the ecosystem continue to highlight toxicology as an important and growing scientific discipline.
Introduction to Symplectic Dirac Operators
One of the basic ideas in differential geometry is that the study of analytic properties of certain differential operators acting on sections of vector bundles yields geometric and topological properties of the underlying base manifold. Symplectic spinor fields are sections in an L^2-Hilbert space bundle over a symplectic manifold and symplectic Dirac operators, acting on symplectic spinor fields, are associated to the symplectic manifold in a very natural way. Hence they may be expected to give interesting applications in symplectic geometry and symplectic topology. These symplectic Dirac operators are called Dirac operators, since they are defined in an analogous way as the classical Riemannian Dirac operator known from Riemannian spin geometry. They are called symplectic because they are constructed by use of the symplectic setting of the underlying symplectic manifold. This volume is the first one that gives a systematic and self-contained introduction to the theory of symplectic Dirac operators and reflects the current state of the subject. At the same time, it is intended to establish the idea that symplectic spin geometry and symplectic Dirac operators may give valuable tools in symplectic geometry and symplectic topology,
Introduction to Partial Differential Equations: A Computational Approach
Mathematics is playing an ever more important role in the physical and biological sciences, provoking a blurring of boundaries between scientific disciplines and a resurgence of interest in the modern as well as the cl- sical techniques of applied mathematics. This renewal of interest, both in research and teaching, has led to the establishment of the series: Texts in Applied Mathematics (TAM). The development of new courses is a natural consequence of a high level of excitement on the research frontier as newer techniques, such as numerical and symbolic computer systems, dynamical systems, and chaos mix with and reinforce the traditional methods of applied mathematics. Thus, the purpose of this textbook series is to meet the current and future needs of these advances and encourage the teaching of new courses.
Introduction to development engineering
Introduces the emerging field of development engineering and its constituent theories, methods, and applications. It is both an instructional text for students and a resource for researchers and practitioners involved in the design and scaling of technologies for low-resource communities. The scope is broad, ranging from the development of mobile applications for low-literacy users to hardware and software solutions for providing electricity and water in remote environments. It is also highly interdisciplinary, drawing on methods and theories from the social sciences as well as engineering and the natural sciences.
Introducing Biological Rhythms : A Primer on the Temporal Organization of Life, with Implications for Health, Society, Reproduction, and the Natural Environment
Biological rhythms are a fundamental property of all life and encompass a wide range of frequencies, from seconds to a century or more. Introducing Biological Rhythms is a primer that serves to introduce individuals to the area of biological rhythms. It describes the major characteristics and discusses the implications and applications of these rhythms, while citing scientific results and references. Also, the primer includes essays that provide in-depth historic and other background information for those interested in more specific topics or concepts. Introducing Biological Rhythms covers a basic cross-section of the field of chronobiology clearly enough so that it can be understood by a novice, or an undergraduate student, but it is also sufficiently technical and detailed for the scientist.
Intraspecific Genetic Diversity : Monitoring, Conservation, and Management
Population and evolutionary genetics have been quickly developing ?elds of biological research over the past decades. This book compiles our current understanding of genetic processes in natural populations. In addition, the book provides the author’s original ideas and concepts based on the data obtained by himself and his close coworkers. The author introduces his pioneering concept of population genetic stability,and much of thebook is concerned with the factors and conditions of such stability. Why does genetic stability matter so much? Altukhov argues that the sustainable use of natural resources, including genetic resources of popu- tions, critically depends on the maintenance of their stability. The preser- tion of well-adapted genetic characteristics from one generation to the next is essential for this stability. Traditionally, population genetics has been - cusedonevolution andthe role of evolutionary factorsinshapinggenetic structures of populations. While the idea of a population as a dynamic unit of evolution has been widely accepted, the signi?cance of genetic stability and its implications for the long-term survival of populations and species have not been fully appreciated.
Intraseasonal Variability in the Atmosphere-Ocean Climate System
As the first comprehensive and authoritative review of intra-seasonal variability (ISV), this multi-author work balances coverage of observation, theory and modeling and provides a single source of reference for all those interested in this important, multi-faceted natural phenomenon and its relation to major short-term climatic variations. Commencing with an overview of ISV and observations from an historical perspective, the book offers successive chapters that deal with the role of ISV in monsoon variability on the monsoon regions of South Asia, East Asia and South America, in North America, and in the oceans. The coupling between ocean and atmosphere is considered, together with the function of angular momentum and Earth rotation.
Internationalisation of European ICT Activities : Dynamics of Information and Communications Technology
The internationalisation of information and communication technologies has accelerated since the 1990s in Europe and worldwide. Taking a close look at the empirical analysis of competitive trade positions, trends in foreign direct investment and the internationalisation of research and development in ICT brings many new insights about the expansion, innovation and adjustment in the EU’s most dynamic sector. Moreover, the analysis discusses case studies on key players in ICT and suggests major policy conclusions for a field considered fundamental in the context of the EU’s Lisbon Agenda. The theoretical and empirical analysis gives a new and differentiated picture of European ICT where the links between telecommunications dynamics, software innovation and digital services are crucial. Outsourcing, insourcing and offshoring are natural elements of a new digital international division of labour which require reforms in both the EU member countries and at the supranational level.
International Perspectives on Natural Disasters : Occurrence, Mitigation, and Consequences
Reports of natural disasters fill the media with regularity. Places in the world are affected by natural disaster events every day. Such events include earthquakes, cyclones, tsunamis, wildfires – the list could go on for considerable length. In the 1990s there was a concentrated focus on natural disaster information and mitigation during the International Decade for Natural Disasters Reduction (IDNDR). The information was technical and provided the basis for major initiatives in building structures designed for seismic safety, slope stability, severe storm warning systems, and global monitoring and reporting. Mitigation, or planning in the event that natural hazards prevalent in a region would suddenly become natural disasters, was a major goal of the decade-long program. During the IDNDR, this book was conceptualized, and planning for its completion began.
International conference on terrain and geohazard challenges facing onshore oil and gas pipelines : Evaluation, routing, resign, construction, operation ; Proceedings of a three day international conference on terrain and geohazard challenges facing onshore oil and gas pipelines, organised by the Institution of Civil Engineers in association with BP Exploration and held at the Institution of Civil Engineers, London, UK, on 2 – 4 June 2004
To access global oil and gas deposits, major pipelines must traverse remote regions with extreme terrains. There are a significant number of pipeline projects, active or planned, in tropical jungles, mountains and deserts, in permafrost and in areas of wetland. Each of these natural environments is associated with a range of geohazards, which may include landslides, soil erosion, karst, river migration, and seismic or volcanic activity. At the same time, society demands increasing availability and reliability of supply, together with improved environmental standards, all making for substantial challenges.
Interlocal Adaptations to Climate Change in East and Southeast Asia : Sharing Lessons of Agriculture, Disaster Risk Reduction, and Resource Management
This Obook’s main focus is agriculture and natural resource management, disaster risk reduction, and human resource development in the countries of East and Southeast Asia and Japan.
