Natural World  /  Environmental & Earth Sciences
Global Scientific Practice in an Age of Revolutions, 1750-1850 Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 392
ISBN: 9780822944546
Pub Date: 08 Jul 2016
Description:
The century from 1750 to 1850 was a period of dramatic transformations in world history, fostering several types of revolutionary change beyond the political landscape. Independence movements in Europe, the Americas, and other parts of the world were catalysts for radical economic, social, and cultural reform. And it was during this age of revolutions—an era of rapidly expanding scientific investigation—that profound changes in scientific knowledge and practice also took place.
Exploratory Experiments Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 544
ISBN: 9780822944508
Pub Date: 18 May 2016
Description:
The nineteenth century was a formative period for electromagnetism and electrodynamics. Hans Christian Orsted's groundbreaking discovery of the interaction between electricity and magnetism in 1820 inspired a wave of research, led to the science of electrodynamics, and resulted in the development of electromagnetic theory. Remarkably, in response, Andre-Marie Ampere and Michael Faraday developed two incompatible, competing theories.
Andean Wonder Drug, The Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 336
ISBN: 9780822944522
Pub Date: 12 May 2016
Description:
In the eighteenth century, malaria was a prevalent and deadly disease, and the only effective treatment was found in the Andean forests of Spanish America: a medicinal bark harvested from cinchona trees that would later give rise to the antimalarial drug quinine. In 1751, the Spanish Crown asserted control over the production and distribution of this medicament by establishing a royal reserve of "fever trees" in Quito. Through this pilot project, the Crown pursued a new vision of imperialism informed by science and invigorated through commerce.
Old Age, New Science Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 384
ISBN: 9780822944492
Pub Date: 12 May 2016
Description:
Between 1870 and 1940, life expectancy in the United States skyrocketed while the percentage of senior citizens age sixty-five and older more than doubled—a phenomenon owed largely to innovations in medicine and public health. At the same time, the Great Depression was a major tipping point for age discrimination and poverty in the West: seniors were living longer and retiring earlier, but without adequate means to support themselves and their families. The economic disaster of the 1930s alerted scientists, who were actively researching the processes of aging, to the profound social implications of their work—and by the end of the 1950s, the field of gerontology emerged.
What Makes a Good Experiment? Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 384
ISBN: 9780822944416
Pub Date: 03 May 2016
Description:
What makes a good experiment? Although experimental evidence plays an essential role in science, as Franklin argues, there is no algorithm or simple set of criteria for ranking or evaluating good experiments, and therefore no definitive answer to the question. Experiments can, in fact, be good in any number of ways: conceptually good, methodologically good, technically good, and pedagogically important.
Return to Nature? Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 228
ISBN: 9780813166346
Pub Date: 31 Dec 2015
Description:
Sustainability has become a compelling topic of domestic and international debate as the world searches for effective solutions to accumulating ecological problems. In Return to Nature? An Ecological Counterhistory, Fred Dallmayr demonstrates how nature has been marginalized, colonized, and abused in the modern era.
Sacred Mountains Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 212
ISBN: 9780813165998
Pub Date: 18 Dec 2015
Series: Place Matters: New Directions in Appalachian Studies
Illustrations: 6 b&w photos
Description:
On a misty morning in eastern Kentucky, cross-bearing Christians gather for a service on a surface-mined mountain. They pray for the health and renewal of the land and for their communities, lamenting the corporate greed of the mining companies. On another day, in southern West Virginia, Andrew Jordon hosts Bible study in a small cabin overlooking a disused 1,400-acre surface mine.
Science as It Could Have Been Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 472
ISBN: 9780822944454
Pub Date: 30 Nov 2015
Description:
Could all or part of our taken-as-established scientific conclusions, theories, experimental data, ontological commitments, and so forth have been significantly different? Science as It Could Have Been focuses on a crucial issue that contemporary science studies have often neglected: the issue of contingency within science. It considers a number of case studies, past and present, from a wide range of scientific disciplines—physics, biology, geology, mathematics, and psychology—to explore whether components of human science are inevitable, or if we could have developed an alternative successful science based on essentially different notions, conceptions, and results.
Crown and the Cosmos, The Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 328
ISBN: 9780822944430
Pub Date: 18 Nov 2015
Description:
Despite its popular association today with magic, astrology was once a complex and sophisticated practice, grounded in technical training provided by a university education. The Crown and the Cosmos examines the complex ways that political practice and astrological discourse interacted at the Habsburg court, a key center of political and cultural power in early modern Europe. Like other monarchs, Maximilian I used astrology to help guide political actions, turning to astrologers and their predictions to find the most propitious times to sign treaties or arrange marriage contracts.
World's Fairs on the Eve of War Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 216
ISBN: 9780822944447
Pub Date: 06 Nov 2015
Description:
Since the first world's fair in London in 1851, at the dawn of the era of industrialization, international expositions served as ideal platforms for rival nations to showcase their advancements in design, architecture, science and technology, industry, and politics. Before the outbreak of World War II, countries competing for leadership on the world stage waged a different kind of war—with cultural achievements and propaganda—appealing to their own national strengths and versions of modernity in the struggle for power. World's Fairs on the Eve of War examines five fairs and expositions from across the globe—including three that were staged (Paris, 1937; Dusseldorf, 1937; and New York, 1939-40), and two that were in development before the war began but never executed (Tokyo, 1940; and Rome, 1942).
Animals in the Neolithic of Britain and Europe Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 192
ISBN: 9781842172148
Pub Date: 31 Aug 2015
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Series: Neolithic Studies Group Seminar Papers
Description:
The twelve papers in this edited volume originated from the Neolithic Studies Group seminar held at the British Museum on 10th November 2003 on the subject of Animals in the Neolithic. This book includes most of the papers delivered and debated at the meeting and others contributed later. The aim of the book is to cover the range of current approaches to animals in the Neolithic, and to encompass as wide a geographical scope as possible in Europe.
Soviet Space Mythologies Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 256
ISBN: 9780822963639
Pub Date: 26 Jun 2015
Description:
From the start, the Soviet human space program had an identity crisis. Were cosmonauts heroic pilots steering their craft through the dangers of space, or were they mere passengers riding safely aboard fully automated machines? Tensions between Soviet cosmonauts and space engineers were reflected not only in the internal development of the space program but also in Soviet propaganda that wavered between praising daring heroes and flawless technologies.
The Vandana Shiva Reader Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 364
ISBN: 9780813153292
Pub Date: 27 Jan 2015
Series: Culture of the Land
Illustrations: 6 figures, 60 tables
Description:
"Her great virtue as an advocate is that she is not a reductionist. Her awareness of the complex connections among economy and nature and culture preserves her from oversimplification. So does her understanding of the importance of diversity.
Quaternary Research in Britain and Ireland" Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 200
ISBN: 9789088902574
Pub Date: 10 Dec 2014
Imprint: Sidestone Press
Description:
During the later part of the last century there was rapid development of the study and understanding of the changing environments of the last 2 million years. This came to provide a firm background for today’s knowledge of the significance and importance of climatic change. Interdisciplinary research has been a prominent, if not essential, contributor to the successes achieved.
Classification of Sex, The Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 256
ISBN: 9780822963035
Pub Date: 31 Jul 2014
Description:
Alfred C. Kinsey’s revolutionary studies of human sexual behavior are world-renowned. His meticulous methods of data collection, from comprehensive entomological assemblies to personal sex history interviews, raised the bar for empirical evidence to an entirely new level.
Bluegrass Land and Life Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 304
ISBN: 9780813155593
Pub Date: 15 Jul 2014
Illustrations: Illus
Description:
The Inner Bluegrass Region of Kentucky is a shining jewel of geography -- synonymous in the minds of many with the state of Kentucky. It is unique in many respects: the character of its land, its native vegetation, and its indigenous animal life. The way of life developed by its human inhabitants over the past two hundred years, especially its focus on the Thoroughbred horse, is also unique.