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The Amazing Planet Earth (Step into Reading)
by StorybotsThe wacky robots from the award-winning apps, videos, and Netflix show, Ask the StoryBots, now star in their own early readers. This one is about our little corner of the solar system!Fans of the StoryBots will recognize the colorful art from their popular outer-space video, &“A Beautiful, Beautiful World&” (The Earth Song), on YouTube. There are eight planets in our solar system, but the most beautiful is the one we call home. This rhyming Step 1 Science Reader will entertain while imparting simple facts about everyone&’s favorite planet. Step 1 Readers feature big type and easy words for children who know the alphabet and are eager to begin reading. Rhyme and rhythmic text paired with picture clues help children decode the story.Accolades for the StoryBots digital media: Appy Award for Best Book AppTeacher's Choice Award Editor&’s Choice—Children&’s Technology Review Family Choice Award Parents&’ Choice AwardCynopsis Kids !magination Award for best educational mobile app
Amazon: Managing Extraordinary Success in 5-D Value
by Benjamin WallIn Amazon: Managing Extraordinary Success in 5-D Value, Benjamin Wall offers structured insights into strategically managing value in the key relationships to customers, personnel, business partners, and investors in order to improve value management at any company.The extraordinary success of Amazon is due to market-leading strength in three &“dimensions&” of value: owning the mightiest supply chain to deliver fastest and cheapest the broadest range of products, enhancing what customers and business partners are doing when using the website / online ecosystem, and knowing how to implement the optimal terms and conditions in the after-sales customer experience. Wall takes a look at the unique managerial skill of Amazon and how each of these organizational areas operates externally and internally according to a separate business logic based on a dimension of value.In an original examination, Wall systematically evaluates Amazon by categorizing and connecting its external and internal success factors to dimensions of value. Each &“score&” on an external success factor is linked to an internal success factor in managing processes, organizational culture, and the business model, so that managers and leaders can enhance their own internal success factors and move towards the same successful external factors. Amazon looks to the future where the near-term promise of the company is evaluated to be in the development from online to omnichannel retail, including the sale of services, by reviving out of Amazon&’s past the fourth dimension of value: feeling how to integrate value. The long-term potential of Amazon is set in the context of a sustainable future for retail, based on trends arising today in meaning across multiple communities, which is the emerging fifth dimension of value. Amazon is projected to operate in this value dimension again as a disruptor, and with Wall&’s help, managers and leaders can reach for the same kind of success.
Amazon Adventure: How Tiny Fish Are Saving the World's Largest Rainforest
by Keith Ellenbogen Sy Montgomery<P>Considered the “lungs of the world,” the Amazon provides a full fifth of the world’s oxygen, and every year unsustainable human practices destroy 2.7 million acres. What can be done to help? That’s where Project Piaba comes in. <P>Join the award-winning author Sy Montgomery and the photographer Keith Ellenbogen as they traverse the river and rainforest to discover how tiny fish, called piabas, can help preserve the Amazon, its animals, and the rich legacy of its people. Amazon Adventure is an eye-opening—and ultimately hopeful—exploration of how humanity’s practices are affecting and shaping not only the Amazon, but our entire environment. <P><B>Winner of the 2018 Riverby Award</b>
Amazon Men: The World's Greatest Forest that Has Eluded and Deluded Explorers for 500 Years
by Adam Courtenay“Captivating . . . An examination of complex and contradictory human responses to the development of the Amazon and to its preservation” (The Australian). Amazon Men is about conquistadors and botanists, colonizers and human rights activists, slave traders and philanthropists—that is, people who have variously tried to conquer, rework, map, enslave, and save this region and its river system, each according to the needs and zeitgeist of their time in history. The environmental battles of today are part of a long-running story that’s been going on since Europeans first discovered this impenetrable ocean of green. For centuries there’s been a war of attrition between the greatest ecosystem and the greatest predator. Up until now, the predator has failed. Amazon Men is about those who’ve tried to conquer and exploit the Amazon—and those who’ve tried to understand and savor it. Conquistadors Francisco de Orellana and Lope de Aguirre play their parts as representatives of the Age of Discovery. Charles Marie de La Condamine is a perfect foil for the Age of Enlightenment. Alexander von Humboldt appears as a scientist of the Romantic age, seeking unity in the midst of chaos. Walter Hardenburg represents the machine age, defying the industrial imperatives of his time to oppose unfettered colonial capitalism. Sydney Possuelo, the greatest living Amazonian explorer, represents the ongoing conflict between modern expansion and environmental causes. What do their experiences tell us about our attitude to the unexplored and unknown? The stories of Amazon Men recount deeds of bravery and acts of brilliance, but also forgotten holocausts where guns, germs, and steel have all played their roles.
The Amazon Várzea: The Decade Past and the Decade Ahead
by Christine Padoch Mauro L. Ruffino Miguel Pinedo-Vasquez Eduardo S. BrondízioThis book takes a multi-disciplinary and critical look at what has changed over the last ten years in one of the world's most important and dynamic ecosystems, the Amazon floodplain or várzea. It also looks forward, assessing the trends that will determine the fate of environments and people of the várzea over the next ten years and providing crucial information that is needed to formulate strategies for confronting these looming realities.
Amazonia and Global Change
by Pedro Silva Dias Mercedes Bustamante John Gash Michael KellerPublished by the American Geophysical Union as part of the Geophysical Monograph Series, Volume 186.Amazonia and Global Change synthesizes results of the Large-Scale Biosphere-Atmosphere Experiment in Amazonia (LBA) for scientists and students of Earth system science and global environmental change. LBA, led by Brazil, asks how Amazonia currently functions in the global climate and biogeochemical systems and how the functioning of Amazonia will respond to the combined pressures of climate and land use change, such asWet season and dry season aerosol concentrations and their effects on diffuse radiation and photosynthesisIncreasing greenhouse gas concentration, deforestation, widespread biomass burning and changes in the Amazonian water cycleDrought effects and simulated drought through rainfall exclusion experimentsThe net flux of carbon between Amazonia and the atmosphereFloodplains as an important regulator of the basin carbon balance including serving as a major source of methane to the troposphereThe impact of the likely increased profitability of cattle ranching.The book will serve a broad community of scientists and policy makers interested in global change and environmental issues with high-quality scientific syntheses accessible to nonspecialists in a wide community of social scientists, ecologists, atmospheric chemists, climatologists, and hydrologists.
Amazonia in the Anthropocene: People, Soils, Plants, Forests
by Nicholas C. KawaWidespread human alteration of the planet has led many scholars to claim that we have entered a new epoch in geological time: the Anthropocene, an age dominated by humanity. <p><p>This ethnography is the first to directly engage the Anthropocene, tackling its problems and paradoxes from the vantage point of the world's largest tropical rainforest. Drawing from extensive ethnographic research, Nicholas Kawa examines how pre-Columbian Amerindians and contemporary rural Amazonians have shaped their environment, describing in vivid detail their use and management of the region's soils, plants, and forests. At the same time, he highlights the ways in which the Amazonian environment resists human manipulation and control--a vital reminder in this time of perceived human dominance. <p><p>Written in engaging, accessible prose, Amazonia in the Anthropocene offers an innovative contribution to debates about humanity's place on the planet, encouraging deeper ecocentric thinking and a more inclusive vision of ecology for the future.
Amazonia, Landscape and Species Evolution
by Frank Wesselingh Carina HoornThe book focuses on geological history as the critical factor in determining the present biodiversity and landscapes of Amazonia. The different driving mechanisms for landscape evolution are explored by reviewing the history of the Amazonian Craton, the associated sedimentary basins, and the role of mountain uplift and climate change.This book provdes an insight into the Meso- and Cenozoic record of Amazonia that was characterized by fluvial and long-lived lake systems and a highly diverse flora and fauna. This fauna includes giants such as the ca. 12 m long caiman Purussaurus, but also a varied fish fauna and fragile molluscs, whilst fossil pollen and spores form relics of ancestral swamps and rainforests.Finally, a review the molecular datasets of the modern Amazonian rainforest and aquatic ecosystem, discussing the possible relations between the origin of Amazonian species diversity and the palaeogeographic, palaeoclimatic and palaeoenvironmental evolution of northern South America. The multidisciplinary approach in evaluating the history of Amazonia has resulted in a comprehensive volume that provides novel insights into the evolution of this region.
Amazonian Geographies: Emerging Identities and Landscapes
by Jacqueline M. Vadjunec and Marianne SchminkAmazonia exists in our imagination as well as on the ground. It is a mysterious and powerful construct in our psyches yet shares multiple (trans)national borders and diverse ecological and cultural landscapes. It is often presented as a seemingly homogeneous place: a lush tropical jungle teeming with exotic wildlife and plant diversity, as well as the various indigenous populations that inhabit the region. Yet, since Conquest, Amazonia has been linked to the global market and, after a long and varied history of colonization and development projects, Amazonia is peopled by many distinct cultural groups who remain largely invisible to the outside world despite their increasing integration into global markets and global politics. Millions of rubber tappers, neo-native groups, peasants, river dwellers, and urban residents continue to shape and re-shape the cultural landscape as they adapt their livelihood practices and political strategies in response to changing markets and shifting linkages with political and economic actors at local, regional, national, and international levels.This book explores the diversity of changing identities and cultural landscapes emerging in different corners of this rapidly changing region.This book was published as a special issue of the Journal of Cultural Geography.
Amazonian Mammals: Current Knowledge and Conservation Priorities
by Wilson R. Spironello Adrian A. Barnett Jessica W. Lynch Paulo E. D. Bobrowiec Sarah A. BoyleThe mammal fauna of the Brazilian Amazon is one of the most diverse on Earth with over 450 known species. Bringing together more than 70 of the world’s top experts on Amazonian mammals, this book unites, for the first time, up-to-date data on the current state of knowledge on the ecology of all groups of non-rodent mammals in the Brazilian Amazon, analyses the effectiveness of current conservation programmes and identifies research and conservation priorities for the future.
Ambit Stochastics (Probability Theory and Stochastic Modelling #88)
by Fred Espen Benth Ole E. Barndorff-Nielsen Almut E. VeraartDrawing on advanced probability theory, Ambit Stochastics is used to model stochastic processes which depend on both time and space. This monograph, the first on the subject, provides a reference for this burgeoning field, complete with the applications that have driven its development. Unique to Ambit Stochastics are ambit sets, which allow the delimitation of space-time to a zone of interest, and ambit fields, which are particularly well-adapted to modelling stochastic volatility or intermittency. These attributes lend themselves notably to applications in the statistical theory of turbulence and financial econometrics. In addition to the theory and applications of Ambit Stochastics, the book also contains new theory on the simulation of ambit fields and a comprehensive stochastic integration theory for Volterra processes in a non-semimartingale context. Written by pioneers in the subject, this book will appeal to researchers and graduate students interested in empirical stochastic modelling.
Ambit Stochastics (Probability Theory and Stochastic Modelling #88)
by Fred Espen Benth Almut E. Veraart Ole E. Barndorff-NielsenDrawing on advanced probability theory, Ambit Stochastics is used to model stochastic processes which depend on both time and space. This monograph, the first on the subject, provides a reference for this burgeoning field, complete with the applications that have driven its development. Unique to Ambit Stochastics are ambit sets, which allow the delimitation of space-time to a zone of interest, and ambit fields, which are particularly well-adapted to modelling stochastic volatility or intermittency. These attributes lend themselves notably to applications in the statistical theory of turbulence and financial econometrics. In addition to the theory and applications of Ambit Stochastics, the book also contains new theory on the simulation of ambit fields and a comprehensive stochastic integration theory for Volterra processes in a non-semimartingale context. Written by pioneers in the subject, this book will appeal to researchers and graduate students interested in empirical stochastic modelling.
La amenaza del cambio climático
by Tim Flannery¿Qué significa el cambio climático? ¿Cómo afectará el calentamiento global a nuestras vidas? ¿Es la causa de las tormentas extremas y de las sequías cada vez más frecuentes? ¿Son inevitables estos sucesos? Con este libro, Tim Flannery responde a cuestiones tan urgentes como éstas y otras muchas. Para ayudarnos a comprender el dilema al que nos enfrentamos, nos cuenta con detalle la fascinante historia del clima y su posible futuro, pues si seguimos quemando combustibles fósiles, aumentarán los niveles de gases de efecto invernadero en la atmósfera y esto provocará un calentamiento del planeta aún mayor. A pesar de que cada país se ve influido de manera diferente por estos efectos no deseados, todos tenemos algo en común: la amenaza del cambio climático. La nueva meteorología que estamos generando pone en peligro el futuro de nuestra civilización. Tenemos que ser conscientes de que el estado de la atmósfera y del subsuelo, del agua y de la tierra depende de nosotros. Pero este reconocido científico va más allá de relatar la historia del clima y no pierde el optimismo. Con gran entusiasmo, Flannery muestra cómo podemos colaborar en la lucha contra estos problemas y nos transmite su confianza en una futura solución si todos nos implicamos. Nos sorprenderá lo mucho que aún podemos hacer. La amenaza del cambio climático nos puede cambiar la vida. Reseñas:«Por fin una explicación clara sobre una de las cuestiones más importantes y polémicas de la actualidad.»Jared Diamond «Éste es el libro que el mundo ha estado esperando -y necesitando- durante décadas. Por fin un libro que presenta, para el público general, la prueba irrefutable de que el cambio climático ya se está produciendo, y la necesidad de ser muy serios con este tema... rápidamente.»Peter Singer «Todo aquel que lea La amenaza del cambio climático podrá apreciar la fragilidad de nuestro clima y comprender que es ésta la generación que debe actuar para protegerla.»Tony Blair
Amerasia
by Elizabeth Horodowich Alexander NagelA connected world as imagined by early modern European artists, mapmakers, and writers, where Asia and the Americas were on a continuumAmerica and Asia mingled in the geographical and cultural imagination of Europe for well over a century after 1492. Through an array of texts, maps, objects, and images produced between 1492 and 1700, this compelling and revelatory study immerses the reader in a vision of a world where Mexico really was India, North America was an extension of China, and South America was marked by a variety of biblical and Asian sites. It asks, further: What does it mean that the Amerasian worldview predominated at a time when Europe itself was coming into cultural self-definition? Each of the chapters focuses on a particular artifact, map, image, or book that illuminates aspects of Amerasia from specific European cultural milieus. Amerasia shows how it was possible to inhabit a world where America and Asia were connected either imaginatively when viewed from afar, or in reality when traveling through the newly encountered lands. Readers will learn why early modern maps regularly label Mexico as India, why the “Amazonas” region was named after a race of Asian female warriors, and why artifacts and manuscripts that we now identify as Indian and Chinese are entangled in European collections with what we now label Americana.Elizabeth Horodowich and Alexander Nagel pose a dynamic model of the world and of Europe’s place in it that was eclipsed by the rise of Eurocentric colonialist narratives in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. To rediscover this history is an essential part of coming to terms with the emergent polyfocal global reality of our own time.
America Latina. Entre Trump y China: El cambio esperado
by Luis Alberto LacalleLa segunda entrega de la saga de Gabriel Keller, un asesino serial montevideano y gris. Otra magnífica novela negra de Hugo Burel. El Uruguay, junto con sus vecinos latinoamericanos, está siendo testigo de una particular e interesante coyuntura histórica: mientras asiste al derrumbamiento de los gobiernos populistas de izquierda, los vecinos del norte eligen un presidente polémico y altisonante, que propone estrategias de repliegue y foco en la producción interna.En este especial contexto, las fuerzas dormidas de China avanzan para expandir su influencia en América Latina, eligiendo al Uruguay como estratégica puerta de entrada. ¿Qué implicancias tendrá para nuestra región este avance? ¿Representa una oportunidad o una amenaza? ¿Qué actitud debería asumir el gobierno y la diplomacia al respecto? El Dr. Luis Alberto Lacalle, apelando a su amplia experiencia como gobernante y líder político, y haciendo gala de un agudo sentido analítico, reflexiona sobre las motivaciones de estos movimientos y aventura propuestas para el mejor futuro del país y la región.
America the Possible: Manifesto for a New Economy
by James Gustave SpethIn this third volume of his award-winning American Crisis series, James Gustave Speth makes his boldest and most ambitious contribution yet. He looks unsparingly at the sea of troubles in which the United States now finds itself, charts a course through the discouragement and despair commonly felt today, and envisions what he calls America the Possible, an attractive and plausible future that we can still realize. The book identifies a dozen features of the American political economy—the country's basic operating system—where transformative change is essential. It spells out the specific changes that are needed to move toward a new political economy—one in which the true priority is to sustain people and planet. Supported by a compelling "theory of change" that explains how system change can come to America, the book also presents a vision of political, social, and economic life in a renewed America. Speth envisions a future that will be well worth fighting for. In short, this is a book about the American future and the strong possibility that we yet have it in ourselves to use our freedom and our democracy in powerful ways to create something fine, a reborn America, for our children and grandchildren.
American Agriculture, Water Resources, and Climate Change (National Bureau of Economic Research Conference Report)
by Gary D. Libecap and and Ariel DinarA collection of the most advanced and authoritative agricultural-economic research in the face of increasing water scarcity. Agriculture has been critical in the development of the American economy. Except in parts of the western United States, water access has not been a critical constraint on agricultural productivity, but with climate change, this may no longer be the case. This volume highlights new research on the interconnections between American agriculture, water resources, and climate change. It examines climatic and geologic factors that affect the agricultural sector and highlights historical and contemporary farmer responses to varying conditions and water availability. It identifies the potential effects of climate change on water supplies, access, agricultural practices, and profitability, and analyzes technological, agronomic, management, and institutional adjustments. Adaptations such as new crops, production practices, irrigation technologies, water conveyance infrastructure, fertilizer application, and increased use of groundwater can generate both social benefits and social costs, which may be internalized with various institutional innovations. Drawing on both historical and present experiences, this volume provides valuable insights into the economics of water supply in American agriculture as climate change unfolds.
American Architects and the Single-Family Home: Lessons Learned from the Architects' Small House Service Bureau
by Lisa M. TuckerAmerican Architects and the Single-Family Home explains how a small group of architects started the Architects’ Small House Service Bureau in 1919 and changed the course of twentieth-century residential design for the better. Concepts and principles they developed related to public spaces, private spaces, and service spaces for living; details about the books they published to promote good design; as well as new essays from contemporary practitioners will inspire your own designs. More than 200 black and white images.
American Burial Ground: A New History of the Overland Trail (America in the Nineteenth Century)
by Sarah KeyesIn popular mythology, the Overland Trail is typically a triumphant tale, with plucky easterners crossing the Plains in caravans of covered wagons. But not everyone reached Oregon and California. Some 6,600 migrants perished along the way and were buried where they fell, often on Indigenous land. As historian Sarah Keyes illuminates, their graves ultimately became the seeds of U.S. expansion.By the 1850s, cholera epidemics, ordinary diseases, and violence had remade the Trail into an American burial ground that imbued migrant deaths with symbolic power. In subsequent decades, U.S. officials and citizens leveraged Trail graves to claim Native ground. Meanwhile, Indigenous peoples pointed to their own sacred burial grounds to dispute these same claims and maintain their land. These efforts built on anti-removal campaigns of the 1820s and 30s, which had established the link between death and territorial claims on which the significance of the Overland Trail came to rest.In placing death at the center of the history of the Overland Trail, American Burial Ground offers a sweeping and long overdue reinterpretation of this historic touchstone. In this telling, westward migration was a harrowing journey weighed down by the demands of caring for the sick and dying. From a tale of triumph comes one of struggle, defined as much by Indigenous peoples’ actions as it was by white expansion. And, finally, from a migration to the Pacific emerges instead a trail of graves. Graves that ultimately undergirded Native dispossession.
American Cities and Technology: Wilderness to Wired city (Cities and Technology)
by Gerrylynn K. Roberts Philip SteadmanDesigned to be used on its own or as a companion volume to the American Cities and Technology textbook. Chronologically, this volume ranges from the earliest technological dimensions of Amerindian settlements to the 'wired city' concept of the 1960s and internet communications of the 1990s.Its focus extends beyond the US to include telecomunications in Asian cities in the late 20th century. The topics covered:* the rise of the skyscraper*the coming of the automobile age* relations between private and public transport* the development of infrastructural technologies and systems* the implications of electronic communications* the emergence of city planning.
American City Politics (Library Of Political Studies)
by Peter J MadgwickThis book begins with an introductory outline of the structure of the city politics of the United States. There is a study of the city in the federal system, including the politics of feudal aid. This is followed by four case studies: the political roles of mayor, manager, boss and adminstrator-entrepreneur in the city. Madgwick concludes with some comparative reflections indicating the significance of this study for British local government. This book was first published in 1970.
American Colonial Spaces in the Philippines: Insular Empire (Routledge Research in Historical Geography)
by Scott KirschAmerican Colonial Spaces in the Philippines tells the story of U.S. colonialists who attempted, in the first decades of the twentieth century, to build an enduring American empire in the Philippines through the production of space. From concrete interventions in infrastructure, urban planning, and built environments to more abstract projects of mapping and territorialization, the book traces the efforts of U.S. Insular Government agents to make space for empire in the Philippines through forms of territory, map, landscape, and road, and how these spaces were understood as solutions to problems of colonial rule. Through the lens of space, the book offers an original history of a highly transformative, but largely misunderstood or forgotten, imperial moment, when the Philippine archipelago, made up of thousands of islands and an ethnically and religiously diverse population of more than seven million, became the unlikely primary setting for U.S. experimentation with formal colonial governance. Telling that story around key figures including Cameron Forbes, Daniel Burnham, Dean Worcester, and William Howard Taft, the book provides distinctive chapters dedicated to spaces of territory (sovereignty), maps (knowledge), landscape (aesthetics), and roads (circulation), suggesting new and integrative historical geographical approaches. This book will be of interest to students of Cultural, Historical, and Political Geography, American History, American Studies, Philippine Studies, Southeast Asia/Philippines; Asian Studies as well as general readers interested in these areas.
American Covenant: National Parks, Their Promise, and Our Nation's Future
by Michael A Soukup Gary E MachlisAn intimate and candid account of our national parks and their strengths, vulnerabilities, and essential role in American life Part memoir, part critique, and paean to the value of national parks, American Covenant distills the experience and insights from two long careers in conservation. Michael A. Soukup and Gary E. Machlis show how the national parks are essential to maintaining the essence of our national heritage, and key to America&’s future in a changing climate and political landscape. Sharing real-world examples of both victories and defeats in protecting national parks, this candid, thoughtful book reminds us that the national parks are a promise—a covenant—within and between generations of Americans. The book is also a call to revitalize, reconstitute, reconfigure, and reform the National Park Service, which the authors believe is governed too much by outdated management practices and politics instead of a foundation of expertise and science.
American Earth: Environmental Writing Since Thoreau
by Bill Mckibben Al GoreAs America and the world grapple with the consequences of global environmental change, writer and activist Bill McKibben offers this unprecedented, provocative, and timely anthology, gathering the best and most significant American environmental writing from the last two centuries. Classics of the environmental imagination'the essays of Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, and John Burroughs; Aldo Leopold's A Sand County Almanac; Rachel Carson's Silent Spring are set against the inspiring story of an emerging activist movement, as revealed by newly uncovered reports of pioneering campaigns for conservation, passages from landmark legal opinions and legislation, and searing protest speeches. Here are some of America's greatest and most impassioned writers, taking a turn toward nature and recognizing the fragility of our situation on earth and the urgency of the search for a sustainable way of life. Thought-provoking essays on overpopulation, consumerism, energy policy, and the nature of "nature" join ecologists' memoirs and intimate sketches of the habitats of endangered species. The anthology includes a detailed chronology of the environmental movement and American environmental history, as well as an 80-page color portfolio of illustrations.
American Environmental Policy, 1990-2006: Beyond Gridlock
by Christopher Mcgrory Klyza David J. SousaThe "golden era" of American environmental law making, between 1964 and 1980, saw twenty-two pieces of major environmental legislation passed by bipartisan majorities in Congress and signed into law by presidents of both parties.