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Closing Human Evolution: Life in the Ultimate Age (SpringerBriefs in Evolutionary Biology)
by Ladislav KováčThis volume analyses the evolution of humankind by combining approaches from science and the arts. It offers a novel perspective on the evolution of life on Earth, based on a recent reformulation of the second law of thermodynamics in terms of the "maximum entropy production principle. " In essence, the Earth is but one of many "white holes" in the universe, where life functions as a specific arrangement for the rapid dissipation of energy gradients by generating self-organized structures. Evolution of life in the universe is a creative process of increasing complexity as a Bayesian ratchet of knowledge accumulation, advancing in an evolutionary maze characterized by myriad blind alleys. On Earth, the human species has progressed more than any other by creating artefacts that have become both agents and products of in our cumulative cultural evolution. Culture has dramatically enhanced the rate of dissipation of energy gradients. Extrapolating from the acceleration of cultural evolution suggests that humanity will reach the Civilization Singularity in the middle of the 21st century, a point in time at which the rate of changes, and hence their unpredictability and uncontrollability, will converge to infinity. Humankind has now entered the ultimate age, in which the exuberance and splendour of human feats may be metaphorically likened to fireworks. The author highlights a new role of scientists as intellectuals who can create "music for the fireworks" by analysing the consequences of the astounding dynamics in order to make the closing phase of human evolution a sublime one marked by minimal political and social tensions.
Closing Rice Yield Gaps in Asia: Innovations, Scaling, and Policies for Environmentally Sustainable Lowland Rice Production
by Melanie Connor Martin Gummert Grant Robert SingletonThis open access book contributes not only to the scientific literature on sustainable agricultural development and in particular rice agriculture but also is highly valuable to assist practitioners, projects, and policymakers due to its sections on reducing carbon footprint, agricultural innovations, and lessons learned from a multi-country/multi-stages development project. The scope of the book is conceived as a detailed documentation of the implementation, dissemination, and impact of the CORIGAP project in Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Thailand, China, Vietnam, and Indonesia, with spill-over to Cambodia and the Philippines. It pulls together actionable research findings with the experience of bringing these findings into use. The aim of the book is to provide a wide array of pathways to impact for sustainable rice production in lowland irrigated rice-based agricultural systems. The book is written by local actors of the rice value chain, researchers, and engineers working on a range of best management practices, climate-smart rice production innovations, knowledge translation, and dissemination, as well as decision-making and policy aspects. It is envisioned that the contents of the book can be translated into messages that can help farmers, extension workers, policymakers, and funders of agricultural development, decide on implementing best management practices and climate-smart technologies in their agroecological systems by presenting the technological/practical options along the rice value chain and the partnerships and business models required for their implementation. The book is aimed at practitioners, extension specialists, researchers, and engineers interested in information on current best management practices, sustainable, and climate-smart rice production and constraints that need further investigation. Furthermore, the book is also aimed at policymakers and agricultural development funders required by public opinion and legally binding agreements to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, conserve biodiversity and increase agroecological practices, who are looking for research-based evidence to guide policymaking and implementation.
Closing the Door on Globalization: Internationalism, Nationalism, Culture and Science in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Routledge Studies in the History of Science, Technology and Medicine)
by Cláudia NinhosThis is a book about the tensions and entangled interactions between internationalism and nationalism, and about the effects both had on European scientific and cultural settings from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century. From chemistry to philology the essays tackle different historical case studies exploring how the paths taken by science and culture during the period were affected by nationalism and internationalism.
Closing the Gap: GEF Experiences in Global Energy Efficiency
by Ming YangEnergy efficiency plays and will continue to play an important role in the world to save energy and mitigate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. However, little is known on how much additional capital should be invested to ensure using energy efficiently as it should be, and very little is known which sub-areas, technologies, and countries shall achieve maximum greenhouse gas emissions mitigation per dollar of investment in energy efficiency worldwide. Analyzing completed and slowly moving energy efficiency projects by the Global Environment Facility during 1991-2010, Closing the Gap: GEF Experiences in Global Energy Efficiency evaluates impacts of multi-billion-dollar investments in the world energy efficiency. It covers the following areas: 1. Reviewing the world energy efficiency investment and disclosing the global energy efficiency gap and market barriers that cause the gap; 2. Leveraging private funds with public funds and other resources in energy efficiency investments; using these funds in tangible and intangible asset investments; 3. Investment effectiveness in dollars per metric ton of CO2 emissions mitigation in 10 energy efficiency sub-areas; 4. Major barriers causing failure and abandonments in energy efficiency investments; 5. Quantification of direct and indirect CO2 emissions mitigations inside and outside a project boundary; and 6. Classification and estimation of CO2 emissions mitigations from tangible and intangible asset investments. Closing the Gap: GEF Experiences in Global Energy Efficiency can serve as a handbook for policymakers, project investors and managers, and project implementation practitioners in need of benchmarks in energy efficiency project investments for decision-making. It can also be used by students, researchers and other professionals in universities and research institutions in methodology development for evaluating energy efficiency projects and programs.
Closing the Knowledge-Implementation Gap in Conservation Science: Interdisciplinary Evidence Transfer Across Sectors and Spatiotemporal Scales (Wildlife Research Monographs #4)
by Catarina C. Ferreira Cornelya F. C. KlütschThis book aims to synthesize the state of the art on biodiversity knowledge exchange practices to understand where and how improvements can be made to close the knowledge-implementation gap in conservation science and advance this interdisciplinary topic. Bringing together the most prominent scholars and practitioners in the field, the book looks into the various sources used to produce biodiversity knowledge - from natural and social sciences to Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Citizen Science - as well as knowledge mobilization approaches to highlight the key ingredients that render successful conservation action at a global scale. By doing so, the book identified major current challenges and opportunities in the field, for different sectors that generate, mobilize, and use biodiversity knowledge (like academia, boundary organizations, practitioners, and policy-makers), to further develop cross-sectorial knowledge mobilization strategies and enhance evidence-informed decision-making processes globally.
Clostridia In Gastrointestinal Disease
by Peter. S. BorrielloThe aim of this book is to bring together the information available on established clostridial diseases of the gastrointestinal tract, including the more recent observations with respect to the mechanisms of action and to critically review the data available which implicate clostridia in the gastrointestinal diseases of unknown etiology such as infantile necrotizing enterocolitis and large bowl cancer. Information on the wide range of gut diseases in animals, both natural and laboratory induced, in which clostridia have been shown to be involved or are being implicated, has been included, as in many instances these observations sever to help delineate the etiologies of human disease.
Clostridium difficile: Methods and Protocols (Methods in Molecular Biology #1476)
by Peter Mullany Adam P. RobertsClostridium difficile, a major nosocomial pathogen shown to be a primary cause of antibiotic-associated disease, has emerged as a highly transmissible and frequently antibiotic-resistant organism, causing a considerable burden on health care systems worldwide. In Clostridium difficile: Methods and Protocols, expert researchers bring together the most recently developed methods for studying the organism, including techniques involving isolation, molecular typing, genomics, genetic manipulation, and the use of animal models. Written in the highly successful Methods in Molecular BiologyTM series format, chapters include brief introductions to their respective topics, lists of the necessary materials and reagents, step-by-step, readily reproducible laboratory protocols, and notes highlighting tips on troubleshooting and avoiding known pitfalls. Authoritative and cutting-edge, Clostridium difficile: Methods and Protocols serves as an ideal guide for scientists now in a position to gain an in-depth understanding of how this organism is transmitted and how it causes disease.
Closure: A Story of Everything
by Hilary LawsonFor over 2000 years our culture has believed in the possibility of a single true account of the world. Now this age is coming to a close. As a result there is a deep unease. We are lost both as individuals, and as a culture. In the new relativistic, post-modern era, we have no history, no right or moral action, and no body of knowledge. In their place is a plethora of alternative, and sometimes incompatible theories from 'fuzzy logic' to 'consilience' proposing a theory of everything. Closure is a response to this crisis. It is a radically new story about the nature of ourselves and of the world.Closure exposes the central questions of contemporary philosophy: language and meaning, of the individual and identity, of truth and reality, but it is also philosophical in the broader everyday sense that it enables us to make sense of where and who we are. A central principle, the process of closure, is shown to be at the heart of experience and language. As a theory of knowledge it has dramatic consequences for our understanding of the sciences, involving a reinterpretation of what science does and how it is able to do it. It similarly proposes a profound shift in the role of art and religion. But, above all, it reshapes our understanding of ourselves and the organisation of society, our goals and our capacity to achieve them.A superb new account of how order is created out of disorder, Closure is an exhilarating work of conceptual geography.
Cloud and Precipitation Microphysics: Principles and Parameterizations
by Jerry M. StrakaThis book focuses specifically on bin and bulk parameterizations for the prediction of cloud and precipitation at various scales - the cloud scale, mesoscale, synoptic scale, and the global climate scale. It provides a background to the fundamental principles of parameterization physics, including processes involved in the production of clouds, ice particles, liquid water, snow aggregate, graupel and hail. It presents full derivations of the parameterizations, allowing readers to build parameterization packages, with varying levels of complexity based on information in the book. Architectures for a range of dynamical models are given, in which parameterizations form a significant tool for investigating large non-linear numerical systems. Model codes are available online at www.cambridge.org/9780521883382. Written for researchers and advanced students of cloud and precipitation microphysics, this book is also a valuable reference for all atmospheric scientists involved in models of numerical weather prediction.
Cloud-Based Remote Sensing with Google Earth Engine: Fundamentals and Applications
by Jeffrey A. Cardille Morgan A. Crowley David Saah Nicholas E. ClintonThis book guides its audience—which can range from novice users to experts— though a 55-chapter tour of Google Earth Engine. A sequenced and diverse set of lab materials, this is the product of more than a year of effort from more than a hundred individuals, collecting new exercises from professors, undergraduates, master’s students, PhD students, postdocs, and independent consultants. Cloud Based Remote Sensing with Google Earth Engine is broadly organized into two halves. The first half, Fundamentals, is a set of 31 labs designed to take the reader from being a complete Earth Engine novice to being a quite advanced user. The second half, Applications, presents a tour of the world of Earth Engine across 24 chapters, showing how it is used in a very wide variety of settings that rely on remote-sensing data This is an open access book.
The Cloud Collector's Handbook
by Gavin Pretor-PinneyKeep your head in the clouds with this whimsical guide to the wonders of the sky from an award-winning science writer.In The Cloud Collector’s Handbook, cloud expert Gavin Pretor-Pinney catalogs a variety of clouds and gives readers points for spotting them and recording their finds. This fun and fact-filled book features gorgeous full-color photographs that showcase various types of clouds, from fluffy cumulus to the super rare horseshoe vortex to the wispy noctilucent clouds that hang at the fringes of space.Sure to be a hit with both aspiring and seasoned cloud gazers, this clever handbook comes from the bestselling author, BBC presenter, and founder of the Cloud Appreciation Society.
Cloud Computing for Science and Engineering (Scientific and Engineering Computation)
by Ian Foster Dennis B. GannonA guide to cloud computing for students, scientists, and engineers, with advice and many hands-on examples.The emergence of powerful, always-on cloud utilities has transformed how consumers interact with information technology, enabling video streaming, intelligent personal assistants, and the sharing of content. Businesses, too, have benefited from the cloud, outsourcing much of their information technology to cloud services. Science, however, has not fully exploited the advantages of the cloud. Could scientific discovery be accelerated if mundane chores were automated and outsourced to the cloud? Leading computer scientists Ian Foster and Dennis Gannon argue that it can, and in this book offer a guide to cloud computing for students, scientists, and engineers, with advice and many hands-on examples. The book surveys the technology that underpins the cloud, new approaches to technical problems enabled by the cloud, and the concepts required to integrate cloud services into scientific work. It covers managing data in the cloud, and how to program these services; computing in the cloud, from deploying single virtual machines or containers to supporting basic interactive science experiments to gathering clusters of machines to do data analytics; using the cloud as a platform for automating analysis procedures, machine learning, and analyzing streaming data; building your own cloud with open source software; and cloud security.The book is accompanied by a website, Cloud4SciEng.org, that provides a variety of supplementary material, including exercises, lecture slides, and other resources helpful to readers and instructors.
Cloud Empires: How Digital Platforms Are Overtaking the State and How We Can Regain Control
by Vili LehdonvirtaThe rise of the platform economy into statelike dominance over the lives of entrepreneurs, users, and workers.The early Internet was a lawless place, populated by scam artists who made buying or selling anything online risky business. Then Amazon, eBay, Upwork, and Apple established secure digital platforms for selling physical goods, crowdsourcing labor, and downloading apps. These tech giants have gone on to rule the Internet like autocrats. How did this happen? How did users and workers become the hapless subjects of online economic empires? The Internet was supposed to liberate us from powerful institutions. In Cloud Empires, digital economy expert Vili Lehdonvirta explores the rise of the platform economy into statelike dominance over our lives and proposes a new way forward. Digital platforms create new marketplaces and prosperity on the Internet, Lehdonvirta explains, but they are ruled by Silicon Valley despots with little or no accountability. Neither workers nor users can &“vote with their feet&” and find another platform because in most cases there isn&’t one. And yet using antitrust law and decentralization to rein in the big tech companies has proven difficult. Lehdonvirta tells the stories of pioneers who helped create—or resist—the new social order established by digital platform companies. The protagonists include the usual suspects—Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Travis Kalanick of Uber, and Bitcoin&’s inventor Satoshi Nakamoto—as well as Kristy Milland, labor organizer of Amazon&’s Mechanical Turk, and GoFundMe, a crowdfunding platform that has emerged as an ersatz stand-in for the welfare state. Only if we understand digital platforms for what they are—institutions as powerful as the state—can we begin the work of democratizing them.
Cloud Ethics: Algorithms and the Attributes of Ourselves and Others
by Louise AmooreIn Cloud Ethics Louise Amoore examines how machine learning algorithms are transforming the ethics and politics of contemporary society. Conceptualizing algorithms as ethicopolitical entities that are entangled with the data attributes of people, Amoore outlines how algorithms give incomplete accounts of themselves, learn through relationships with human practices, and exist in the world in ways that exceed their source code. In these ways, algorithms and their relations to people cannot be understood by simply examining their code, nor can ethics be encoded into algorithms. Instead, Amoore locates the ethical responsibility of algorithms in the conditions of partiality and opacity that haunt both human and algorithmic decisions. To this end, she proposes what she calls cloud ethics—an approach to holding algorithms accountable by engaging with the social and technical conditions under which they emerge and operate.
Cloud of the Impossible: Negative Theology and Planetary Entanglement
by Catherine KellerCatherine Keller is professor of constructive theology at Drew University. Her work interweaves process relationalism and poststructuralist philosophy with an evolving feminist cosmopolitics. At once constructive and deconstructive in approach, it engages questions of ecological, social, and spiritual practice amidst an irreducible indeterminacy. Among her many books are Apocalypse Now & Then; God and Power; and The Face of the Deep: A Theology of Becoming.
Cloud Security: Concepts, Applications and Perspectives (Cyber Ecosystem and Security)
by Brij B GuptaCloud computing is an indispensable part of the modern Information and Communication Technology (ICT) systems. Cloud computing services have proven to be of significant importance, and promote quickly deployable and scalable IT solutions with reduced infrastructure costs. However, utilization of cloud also raises concerns such as security, privacy, latency, and governance, that keep it from turning into the predominant option for critical frameworks. As such, there is an urgent need to identify these concerns and to address them.Cloud Security: Concepts, Applications and Perspectives is a comprehensive work with substantial technical details for introducing the state-of-the-art research and development on various approaches for security and privacy of cloud services; novel attacks on cloud services; cloud forensics; novel defenses for cloud service attacks; and cloud security analysis. It discusses the present techniques and methodologies, and provides a wide range of examples and illustrations to effectively show the concepts, applications, and perspectives of security in cloud computing. This highly informative book will prepare readers to exercise better protection by understanding the motivation of attackers and to deal with them to mitigate the situation. In addition, it covers future research directions in the domain. This book is suitable for professionals in the field, researchers, students who are want to carry out research in the field of computer and cloud security, faculty members across universities, and software developers engaged in software development in the field.
Cloud-Service-Zertifizierung: Ein Rahmenwerk und Kriterienkatalog zur Zertifizierung von Cloud-Services
by Sebastian Lins Stephan Schneider Ali SunyaevDieses Buch liefert ein Rahmenwerk zur Zertifizierung von Services in der Cloud. Herzstück dabei ist ein umfangreicher Kriterienkatalog zum Assessment von Cloud-Services, der im Forschungsprojekt „Value4Cloud“ , gefördert vom Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Technologie, entwickelt wurde. Cloud-Service-Anwender werden bei der Bewertung, dem Vergleich und der Auswahl von Services unterstützt. Das Buch eignet sich auch für Cloud-Service-Anbieter zum Self-Assessment und zur Verbesserung der eigenen Services.
Cloud-Service-Zertifizierung: Ein Rahmenwerk und Kriterienkatalog zur Zertifizierung von Cloud-Services
by Stephan Schneider Ali SunyaevDie Auslagerung von Services in die Cloud ist mit Risiken verbunden. Dieses Buch liefert ein Rahmenwerk zur Zertifizierung von Services in der Cloud. Herzstück dabei ist ein umfangreicher Kriterienkatalog zum Assessment von Cloud-Services. Dabei wendet sich das Buch an Cloud-Service-Anwender und unterstützt bei der Bewertung, dem Vergleich und der Auswahl von Angeboten. Gerade in kritischen Bereichen wie Sicherheit, Verfügbarkeit und Vertragsfragen unterstützt der Katalog bei der Definition von eigenen Anforderungen. Das Buch eignet sich jedoch auch für Cloud-Service-Anbieter, die es zum Self-Assessment und zur Verbesserung der eigenen Services nutzen können. Das Buch fasst eines der Ergebnisse des dreijährigen Forschungsprojekts ,,Value4Cloud" zusammen, das im Rahmen des Technologieprogramms ,,Trusted Cloud" vom Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Technologie gefördert wurde. Es liefert mit 219 Zertifizierungskriterien und einem Zertifizierungsrahmenwerk einen wichtigen Beitrag zum Assessment von Cloud-Services und der Verbesserung von Cloud-Service-Zertifizierungen.
Clouds in a Glass of Beer: Simple Experiments in Atmospheric Physics
by Craig F. BohrenEver wonder why steam rises from a bowl of hot soup or why a greenhouse retains heat? And have you ever puzzled over the real meaning of "once in a blue moon" or why sand is darker when it's wet than when it's dry? And just why, exactly, do bubbles appear in a glass of beer when you add salt to it?These and many other baffling questions are answered in this engaging book by a physics professor at Pennsylvania State University. Ranging from playful to serious, Professor Bohren's lively and entertaining discussions employ a liberal mixture of humor and anecdote to debunk a host of scientific myths and render science lessons thoroughly understandable. Chapters include "On a Clear Day You Can't See Forever," "A Murder in Ceylon." "The Green Flash," "Physics on a Manure Heap," " Indoor Rainbows," and "Multiple Scattering at the Breakfast Table.""The book rings with a unifying tone: the science of the everyday physical world is fun. And so is the book," writes Jearl Walker, a member of the Physics Department at Cleveland State University. Beginning physics and general readers will be fascinated by the scientific knowledge gained from this work; and science teachers will find it a treasure trove of ideas for simple, vivid classroom demonstrations.
Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 3: Planet of the Pies
by Judi BarrettWhen astronauts land on Mars, their first discovery is a substance not unlike pie filling, and Kate and Henry are eager to go taste some, but Grandpa, who may have some inside information, discourages them.
Clubroot Disease of Crucifers: Biology, Ecology and Disease Management
by Govind Singh Saharan Naresh K. Mehta Prabhu Dayal MeenaThe book is presenting a comprehensive information on fundamental, and applied knowledge of Plasmodiophora brassicae Woronin. infecting cruciferous crops, and weeds. Clubroot of crucifers has spread over more than 88 countries of the world with average annual loss of cruciferous crops from 10-15 per cent at global level. It is considered as a disease of cultivation since once introduced in a field, its inoculum piles up year by year in the form of resilient resting spores of P. brassicae which spreads in the field through field operations. This disease is very unique since the pathogen can survive in the soil in the rhizosphere of non-host plants in addition to its main host cruciferous species, cultivated or wild. This book complies inclusive information about the disease, its geographical distribution, symptoms, host range, yield losses, and disease assessment scales. The book also explores host-parasite interactions in the form of seed infection, disease cycle, process of infection, pathogenesis, epidemiology and forecasting. Chapters discuss the genetic and molecular mechanisms of host-parasite relationships, management practices including cultural, chemical, biological control practices, and other integrated approaches. The book is immensely useful to researchers, teachers, extension specialists, farmers, and all others who are interested to grow healthy and profitable cruciferous crops all over the world. Also the book serves as additional reading material for undergraduate and graduate students of agriculture and especially plant pathology. National and international agricultural scientists, policy makers will also find this to be a useful read.
Clues to the Universe
by Christina LiThis stellar debut about losing and finding family, forging unlikely friendships, and searching for answers to big questions will resonate with fans of Erin Entrada Kelly and Rebecca Stead.The only thing Rosalind Ling Geraghty loves more than watching NASA launches with her dad is building rockets with him. When he dies unexpectedly, all Ro has left of him is an unfinished model rocket they had been working on together.Benjamin Burns doesn’t like science, but he can’t get enough of Spacebound, a popular comic book series. When he finds a sketch that suggests that his dad created the comics, he’s thrilled. Too bad his dad walked out years ago, and Benji has no way to contact him.Though Ro and Benji were only supposed to be science class partners, the pair become unlikely friends, and Ro even figures out a way to reunite Benji and his dad. But Benji hesitates, which infuriates Ro. Doesn’t he realize how much Ro wishes she could be in his place?As the two face bullying, grief, and their own differences, Benji and Ro try to piece together clues to some of the biggest questions in the universe.A Washington Post KidsPost Summer Book Club selection * A Junior Library Guild Selection * A Bank Street Best Book of the Year
The Cluster Active Archive
by C. Philippe Escoubet Harri Laakso Matthew TaylorSince the year 2000 the ESA Cluster mission has been investigating the small-scale structures and processes of the Earth's plasma environment, such as those involved in the interaction between the solar wind and the magnetospheric plasma, in global magnetotail dynamics, in cross-tail currents, and in the formation and dynamics of the neutral line and of plasmoids. This book contains presentations made at the 15th Cluster workshop held in March 2008. It also presents several articles about the Cluster Active Archive and its datasets, a few overview papers on the Cluster mission, and articles reporting on scientific findings on the solar wind, the magnetosheath, the magnetopause and the magnetotail.
Cluster Analysis in Neuropsychological Research: Recent Applications
by Daniel N. Allen Gerald GoldsteinCluster analysis is a multivariate classification technique that allows for identification of homogenous subgroups within diverse samples based on shared characteristics. In recent years, cluster analysis has been increasingly applied to psychological and neuropsychological variables to address a number of empirical questions. This book provides an overview of cluster analysis, including statistical and methodological considerations in its application to neurobehavioral variables. First, an introduction to cluster analysis is presented that emphasizes issues of relevance to neuropsychological research, including controversies surrounding it use. Cluster analysis is then applied to clinical disorders that do not have an associated prototypical neuropsychological profile, including traumatic brain injury, schizophrenia, and health problems associated with homelessness. In a second application, cluster analysis is used to investigate the course of normal memory development. Finally, cluster analysis is applied to classification of brain injury severity in children and adolescents who sustained traumatic brain injury.