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The Right Stuff
by Tom WolfeThe Right Stuff is Tom Wolfe's deft account of a cast of heroes, introduced to America with the explosion of space exploration in the romantic heyday of the 20th century and encapsulated in Neal Armstrong's "one giant step for mankind." <p><p>Beginning with the first experiments with manned space flight in the 1940s, remembering the feats of Chuck Yeager and the breaking of the sound barrier, and focusing in on the brave pilots of the Mercury Project, Wolfe's ability to marry historical fact with dramatic intensity is nowhere more evident than in The Right Stuff. <P><P> <B>Winner of the National Book Award</B>
The Right To Be Forgotten: A Comparative Study of the Emergent Right's Evolution and Application in Europe, the Americas, and Asia (Ius Comparatum - Global Studies in Comparative Law #40)
by Franz WerroThis book examines the right to be forgotten and finds that this right enjoys recognition mostly in jurisdictions where privacy interests impose limits on freedom of expression. According to its traditional understanding, this right gives individuals the possibility to preclude the media from revealing personal facts that are no longer newsworthy, at least where no other interest prevails. Cases sanctioning this understanding still abound in a number of countries. In today’s world, however, the right to be forgotten has evolved, and it appears in a more multi-faceted way. It can involve for instance also the right to access, control and even erase personal data. Of course, these prerogatives depend on various factors and competing interests, of both private and public nature, which again require careful balancing. Due to ongoing technological evolution, it is likely that the right to be forgotten in some of its new manifestations will become increasingly relevant in our societies.
The Right to Oblivion: Privacy and the Good Life
by Lowry PresslyA visionary reexamination of the value of privacy in today’s hypermediated world—not just as a political right but as the key to a life worth living.The parts of our lives that are not being surveilled and turned into data diminish each day. We are able to configure privacy settings on our devices and social media platforms, but we know our efforts pale in comparison to the scale of surveillance capitalism and algorithmic manipulation. In our hyperconnected era, many have begun to wonder whether it is still possible to live a private life, or whether it is no longer worth fighting for.The Right to Oblivion argues incisively and persuasively that we still can and should strive for privacy, though for different reasons than we might think. Recent years have seen heated debate in the realm of law and technology about why privacy matters, often focusing on how personal data breaches amount to violations of individual freedom. Yet as Lowry Pressly shows, the very terms of this debate have undermined our understanding of privacy’s real value. In a novel philosophical account, Pressly insists that privacy isn’t simply a right to be protected but a tool for making life meaningful.Privacy deepens our relationships with others as well as ourselves, reinforcing our capacities for agency, trust, play, self-discovery, and growth. Without privacy, the world would grow shallow, lonely, and inhospitable. Drawing inspiration from the likes of Hannah Arendt, Jorge Luis Borges, and a range of contemporary artists, Pressly shows why we all need a refuge from the world: not a place to hide, but a psychic space beyond the confines of a digital world in which the individual is treated as mere data.
Right Whales (WorldLife Library)
by Phil ClaphamNo species better illustrates the damage done by humans to the great whales than the right whale. Considered by whalers the 'right' whale to kill, this slow, plankton-feeding giant was first hunted in European waters at least a thousand years ago. Huge numbers were slaughtered worldwide until the whaling finally stopped. This unique portrait contains a text packed with facts and field experiences, alongside rare photographs of the whales. It reveals their natural history, discusses their conservation, and informs us that time is running short to help them. Despite over seven decades of protection, most right whale populations are still showing little signs of recovery, and today they are amongst the most endangered of all mammals.
Righting America at the Creation Museum (Medicine, Science, and Religion in Historical Context)
by Susan L. Trollinger William Vance Trollinger Jr.What does the popularity of the Creation Museum tell us about the appeal of the Christian right?On May 28, 2007, the Creation Museum opened in Petersburg, Kentucky. Aimed at scientifically demonstrating that the universe was created less than ten thousand years ago by a Judeo-Christian god, the museum is hugely popular, attracting millions of visitors over the past eight years. Surrounded by themed topiary gardens and a petting zoo with camel rides, the site conjures up images of a religious Disneyland. Inside, visitors are met by dinosaurs at every turn and by a replica of the Garden of Eden that features the Tree of Life, the serpent, and Adam and Eve.In Righting America at the Creation Museum, Susan L. Trollinger and William Vance Trollinger, Jr., take readers on a fascinating tour of the museum. The Trollingers vividly describe and analyze its vast array of exhibits, placards, dioramas, and videos, from the Culture in Crisis Room, where videos depict sinful characters watching pornography or considering abortion, to the Natural Selection Room, where placards argue that natural selection doesn’t lead to evolution. The book also traces the rise of creationism and the history of fundamentalism in America.This compelling book reveals that the Creation Museum is a remarkably complex phenomenon, at once a "natural history" museum at odds with contemporary science, an extended brief for the Bible as the literally true and errorless word of God, and a powerful and unflinching argument on behalf of the Christian right.
Rights and Liberties In The Biotech Age: Why We Need a Genetic Bill of Rights
by Sheldon Krimsky Peter Shorett"Rights and Liberties in the Biotech Age" is the first book reaching broadly into biotechnology that imbeds the issues into a rights framework for the social management of technology. The contributors to the volume comprise prominent university scientists, civil rights lawyers, and public interest activists who bring their perspectives to issues where science and civil liberties meet head on. This book explores the impact of new genetic technologies on how people define their 'personhood' and their basic civil liberties. It questions the thesis of 'scientism' where 'rights' must adapt and conform to technological changes. Instead, the authors explore the expansion of human rights in the face of new biomedical and bio-agricultural advances so that 'rights' and not 'technologies' are at the forefront of discussion.
Rights for Intelligent Robots?: A Philosophical Inquiry into Machine Moral Status
by Kęstutis MosakasIn recent years, the question of human moral duties toward robots has gained momentum in scholarly research due to great advancements in the fields of artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics. Although the current machines fall short of the level of sophistication and human likeness portrayed in science fiction (e.g., the Westworld series or the movie Blade Runner 2049), they are increasingly assuming roles in our society in various important areas, including manufacturing, healthcare, education, customer service, entertainment, and many others. This book makes a meaningful contribution to the ongoing philosophical discourse surrounding the moral treatment of robots. By providing a rigorous and systematic examination of key moral concepts (e.g., moral rights, moral status, moral considerability, and moral value) within the context of robotics and exploring other closely related issues (e.g., the moral implications of artificial consciousness and the associated epistemic challenges), this book offers fresh insights into the necessary and sufficient conditions for machine moral status and rights.
Rights for Robots: Artificial Intelligence, Animal and Environmental Law
by Joshua C. GellersBringing a unique perspective to the burgeoning ethical and legal issues surrounding the presence of artificial intelligence in our daily lives, the book uses theory and practice on animal rights and the rights of nature to assess the status of robots. Through extensive philosophical and legal analyses, the book explores how rights can be applied to nonhuman entities. This task is completed by developing a framework useful for determining the kinds of personhood for which a nonhuman entity might be eligible, and a critical environmental ethic that extends moral and legal consideration to nonhumans. The framework and ethic are then applied to two hypothetical situations involving real-world technology—animal-like robot companions and humanoid sex robots. Additionally, the book approaches the subject from multiple perspectives, providing a comparative study of legal cases on animal rights and the rights of nature from around the world and insights from structured interviews with leading experts in the field of robotics. Ending with a call to rethink the concept of rights in the Anthropocene, suggestions for further research are made. An essential read for scholars and students interested in robot, animal and environmental law, as well as those interested in technology more generally, the book is a ground-breaking study of an increasingly relevant topic, as robots become ubiquitous in modern society.
Rigor Mortis: How Sloppy Science Creates Worthless Cures, Crushes Hope, and Wastes Billions
by Richard HarrisAn award-winning science journalist pulls the alarm on the dysfunction plaguing scientific research--with lethal consequences for us allAmerican taxpayers spend $30 billion annually funding biomedical research. By some estimates, half of the results from these studies can't be replicated elsewhere-the science is simply wrong. Often, research institutes and academia emphasize publishing results over getting the right answers, incentivizing poor experimental design, improper methods, and sloppy statistics. Bad science doesn't just hold back medical progress, it can sign the equivalent of a death sentence. How are those with breast cancer helped when the cell on which 900 papers are based turns out not to be a breast cancer cell at all? How effective could a new treatment for ALS be when it failed to cure even the mice it was initially tested on? In Rigor Mortis, award-winning science journalist Richard F. Harris reveals these urgent issues with vivid anecdotes, personal stories, and interviews with the nation's top biomedical researchers. We need to fix our dysfunctional biomedical system-now.
Rigorous Time Slicing Approach to Feynman Path Integrals
by Daisuke FujiwaraThis book proves that Feynman's original definition of the path integral actually converges to the fundamental solution of the Schr#65533;dinger equation at least in the short term if the potential is differentiable sufficiently many times and its derivatives of order equal to or higher than two are bounded. The semi-classical asymptotic formula up to the second term of the fundamental solution is also proved by a method different from that of Birkhoff. A bound of the remainder term is also proved. The Feynman path integral is a method of quantization using the Lagrangian function, whereas Schr#65533;dinger's quantization uses the Hamiltonian function. These two methods are believed to be equivalent. But equivalence is not fully proved mathematically, because, compared with Schr#65533;dinger's method, there is still much to be done concerning rigorous mathematical treatment of Feynman's method. Feynman himself defined a path integral as the limit of a sequence of integrals over finite-dimensional spaces which is obtained by dividing the time interval into small pieces. This method is called the time slicing approximation method or the time slicing method. This book consists of two parts. Part I is the main part. The time slicing method is performed step by step in detail in Part I. The time interval is divided into small pieces. Corresponding to each division a finite-dimensional integral is constructed following Feynman's famous paper. This finite-dimensional integral is not absolutely convergent. Owing to the assumption of the potential, it is an oscillatory integral. The oscillatory integral techniques developed in the theory of partial differential equations are applied to it. It turns out that the finite-dimensional integral gives a finite definite value. The stationary phase method is applied to it. Basic properties of oscillatory integrals and the stationary phase method are explained in the book in detail. Those finite-dimensional integrals form a sequence of approximation of the Feynman path integral when the division goes finer and finer. A careful discussion is required to prove the convergence of the approximate sequence as the length of each of the small subintervals tends to 0. For that purpose the book uses the stationary phase method of oscillatory integrals over a space of large dimension, of which the detailed proof is given in Part II of the book. By virtue of this method, the approximate sequence converges to the limit. This proves that the Feynman path integral converges. It turns out that the convergence occurs in a very strong topology. The fact that the limit is the fundamental solution of the Schr#65533;dinger equation is proved also by the stationary phase method. The semi-classical asymptotic formula naturally follows from the above discussion. A prerequisite for readers of this book is standard knowledge of functional analysis. Mathematical techniques required here are explained and proved from scratch in Part II, which occupies a large part of the book, because they are considerably different from techniques usually used in treating the Schr#65533;dinger equation.
Ring Resonator Systems to Perform Optical Communication Enhancement Using Soliton
by Iraj Sadegh Amiri Abdolkarim AfroozehThe title explain new technique of secured and high capacity optical communication signals generation by using the micro and nano ring resonators. The pulses are known as soliton pulses which are more secured due to having the properties of chaotic and dark soliton signals with ultra short bandwidth. They have high capacity due to the fact that ring resonators are able to generate pulses in the form of solitons in multiples and train form. These pulses generated by ring resonators are suitable in optical communication due to use the compact and integrated rings system, easy to control, flexibility, less loss, application in long distance communication and many other advantages. Using these pulses overcome the problems such as losses during the propagation, long distances, error detection, using many repeaters or amplifiers, undetectable received signals, pulse broadening, overlapping and so on. This book show how to generate soliton pulses using ring resonators in the micro and nano range which can be used in optical communication to improve the transmission technique and quality of received signals in networks such as WiFi and wireless communication.
Ring! Ring!
by Gill GuileThis board book will captivate and amuse. The repetitive "Ring! Ring!" and simple storyline will encourage basic reading skills.
The Ringing Cedars of Russia (The Ringing Cedars Series #2)
by Vladimir Megré John Woodsworth Leonid SharashkinAfter rising rapidly to the top of national best-seller lists, first-time author Vladimir Megre has some explaining to do.
The Riot And The Dance: A Natural History Of Life To The Praise Of Our Creator
by Gordon WilsonIf you thought biology was the province of secular scientists, think again: The Riot and the Dance is biology like you've never seen it before. With over 130 original illustrations and several hundred figures total, this book is first and foremost an approachable and readable explanation of the basics of biology. But Dr. Wilson doesn't dumb down the concepts, either. Using analogies, anecdotes, and simple, personable language, Dr. Wilson teaches students the bottom-line themes and key details of biology. The Riot and the Dance is not a pile of disconnected facts: it is an integrated foundation for understanding biological life, and it will stir up curiosity about all life from fungus firearms to familiar vertebrates -- that, along with a greater desire to praise the Creator of it all. In "Part 1: The Living Cell," non-major college biology students or high school students will be introduced to: - the basics of cellular and molecular biology, including the "motors" of flagella and other awe-inspiring nano-machines - the "how and why" of photosynthesis, cellular respiration, the central dogma, mitosis, meiosis, recombinant DNA technology, Mendelian genetics, and more... "Part 2: The Diversity of Life," gives a fascinating tour of: - the major phyla of all six taxonomic kingdoms - important concepts in the creation/evolution debate - an exciting survey of God's living handiwork, including the tiny, deadly Trypanosoma, fungus firearms, sedentary sponges, and bizarre echinoderms; along with unfamiliar facts about the life-cycles and habits of vertebrates and plants - the basics of ecology, such as symbiotic relationships, food webs, and the interdependency of life - a biblical approach to conservation, and much more...
Riot Control Agents: Issues in Toxicology, Safety & Health
by Eugene J. Olajos Woodhall StopfordThe proliferation and sophistication of riot control chemicals mean that all parties need to understand the responsible use and effects of such compounds. This book provides practical information on the history, chemistry, and biology of riot control agents and discusses their biological actions, risk assessment issues, and recent technical develop
Riparian Areas: Functions and Strategies for Management
by Committee on Riparian Zone Functioning Strategies For ManagementThe Clean Water Act (CWA) requires that wetlands be protected from degradation because of their important ecological functions including maintenance of high water quality and provision of fish and wildlife habitat. However, this protection generally does not encompass riparian areas--the lands bordering rivers and lakes--even though they often provide the same functions as wetlands. Growing recognition of the similarities in wetland and riparian area functioning and the differences in their legal protection led the NRC in 1999 to undertake a study of riparian "areas, which has culminated in Riparian Areas: Functions and Strategies for Management. The report is intended to heighten awareness of riparian areas commensurate with their ecological and societal values. The primary conclusion is that, because riparian areas perform a disproportionate number of biological and physical functions on a unit area basis, restoration of riparian functions along America's waterbodies should be a national goal.
Riparian Areas of the Southwestern United States: Hydrology, Ecology, and Management
by Peter F. Ffolliott Malchus B. Baker Leonard F. DeBano Daniel G. NearyThe demand for water resulting from massive population and economic growth in the southwestern U.S. overwhelmed traditional uses of riparian areas. As a consequence, many of these uniquely-structured ecosystems have been altered or destroyed. Within recent years people have become increasingly aware of the many uses and benefits of riparian zones a
The Rise and Fall of Carbon Emissions Trading (Energy, Climate and the Environment)
by Declan KuchThis book presents the results of the first full-scale emissions trading schemes in Australia and internationally, arguing these schemes will not be sufficient to 'civilize markets' and prevent dangerous climate change. Instead, it articulates the ways climate policy needs to confront the collective nature of our predicament.
The Rise and Fall of Charles Lindbergh
by Candace FlemingSIX STARRED REVIEWS!Discover the dark side of Charles Lindbergh--one of America's most celebrated heroes and complicated men--in this riveting biography from the acclaimed author of The Family Romanov.First human to cross the Atlantic via airplane; one of the first American media sensations; Nazi sympathizer and anti-Semite; loner whose baby was kidnapped and murdered; champion of Eugenics, the science of improving a human population by controlled breeding; tireless environmentalist. Charles Lindbergh was all of the above and more. Here is a rich, multi-faceted, utterly spellbinding biography about an American hero who was also a deeply flawed man. In this time where values Lindbergh held, like white Nationalism and America First, are once again on the rise, The Rise and Fall of Charles Lindbergh is essential reading for teens and history fanatics alike.
The Rise and Fall of COMSAT: Technology, Business, and Government in Satellite Communications
by David J. WhalenAfter pioneering this technology and growing the market, COMSAT fell prey to changes in government policy and to its own lack of entrepreneurial talent. The author explores the factors which contributed to this rise and fall of COMSAT.
The Rise and Fall of Imperial Chemical Industries: Synthetics, Sensism and the Environment
by Esther LeslieThis book provides a history of Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI), a large Britain- based chemical firm which was a major industrial player in the twentieth century. Once a model for Britain’s industrial reach and dominance, ICI collapsed in the mid-2000s, with some still profitable elements sold off to other chemical firms. The book focuses on the firm’s origin site in the Northeast of England, around Middlesbrough, engaging the remnants of the company magazine, oral histories and social media posts, and material artifacts in the world, to relate a history of the social, environmental, cultural and imaginative and bodily impact of the presence (and then absence) of ICI. This unique work is open to coincidence and speculation, drawing on science fictional and urban myth narratives which emanate from the area. Through the lens of global narratives of industrial and philosophical innovation, it inquires into uncommon and diverse themes, such as the manufacture of Quorn, the place of photographic mediation of the factory, and industrial disease. Setting out from a context of heavy industry and material processing, the book seeks to stimulate poetic and creative thinking around the ways in which people’s lives were enmeshed with synthetic chemicals and the dreams that seemed to ooze and seep from them as by-products.
The Rise and Fall of the Biopsychosocial Model: Reconciling Art and Science in Psychiatry
by S. Nassir Ghaemi2010 Outstanding Academic Title, Choice MagazineThis is the first book-length historical critique of psychiatry’s mainstream ideology, the biopsychosocial (BPS) model. Developed in the twentieth century as an outgrowth of psychosomatic medicine, the biopsychosocial model is seen as an antidote to the constraints of the medical model of psychiatry. Nassir Ghaemi details the origins and evolution of the BPS model and explains how, where, and why it fails to live up to its promises. He analyzes the works of its founders, George Engel and Roy Grinker Sr., traces its rise in acceptance, and discusses its relation to the thought of William Osler and Karl Jaspers. In assessing the biopsychosocial model, Ghaemi provides a philosophically grounded evaluation of the concept of mental illness and the relation between evidence-based medicine and psychiatry. He argues that psychiatry's conceptual core is eclecticism, which in the face of too much freedom paradoxically leads many of its adherents to enact their own dogmas. Throughout, he makes the case for a new paradigm of medical humanism and method-based psychiatry that is consistent with modern science while incorporating humanistic aspects of the art of medicine.Ghaemi shows how the historical role of the BPS model as a reaction to biomedical reductionism is coming to an end and urges colleagues in the field to embrace other, less-eclectic perspectives.
The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: A New History of a Lost World
by Steve Brusatte"THE ULTIMATE DINOSAUR BIOGRAPHY," hails Scientific American: A sweeping and revelatory new history of the age of dinosaurs, from one of our finest young scientists."This is scientific storytelling at its most visceral, striding with the beasts through their Triassic dawn, Jurassic dominance, and abrupt demise in the Cretaceous." — Nature <P><P>The dinosaurs. Sixty-six million years ago, the Earth’s most fearsome creatures vanished. Today they remain one of our planet’s great mysteries. Now The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs reveals their extraordinary, 200-million-year-long story as never before.In this captivating narrative (enlivened with more than seventy original illustrations and photographs), Steve Brusatte, a young American paleontologist who has emerged as one of the foremost stars of the field—naming fifteen new species and leading groundbreaking scientific studies and fieldwork—masterfully tells the complete, surprising, and new history of the dinosaurs, drawing on cutting-edge science to dramatically bring to life their lost world and illuminate their enigmatic origins, spectacular flourishing, astonishing diversity, cataclysmic extinction, and startling living legacy. <P><P>Captivating and revelatory, The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs is a book for the ages.Brusatte traces the evolution of dinosaurs from their inauspicious start as small shadow dwellers—themselves the beneficiaries of a mass extinction caused by volcanic eruptions at the beginning of the Triassic period—into the dominant array of species every wide-eyed child memorizes today, T. rex, Triceratops, Brontosaurus, and more. <P><P>This gifted scientist and writer re-creates the dinosaurs’ peak during the Jurassic and Cretaceous, when thousands of species thrived, and winged and feathered dinosaurs, the prehistoric ancestors of modern birds, emerged. The story continues to the end of the Cretaceous period, when a giant asteroid or comet struck the planet and nearly every dinosaur species (but not all) died out, in the most extraordinary extinction event in earth’s history, one full of lessons for today as we confront a “sixth extinction.” <P><P>Brusatte also recalls compelling stories from his globe-trotting expeditions during one of the most exciting eras in dinosaur research—which he calls “a new golden age of discovery”—and offers thrilling accounts of some of the remarkable findings he and his colleagues have made, including primitive human-sized tyrannosaurs; monstrous carnivores even larger than T. rex; and paradigm-shifting feathered raptors from China. <P><P>An electrifying scientific history that unearths the dinosaurs’ epic saga, The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs will be a definitive and treasured account for decades to come.
The Rise and Fall of the Fifth Force
by Allan Franklin Ephraim FischbachThisbook provides the reader with a detailed and captivating account of the storywhere, for the first time, physicists ventured into proposing a new force ofnature beyond the four known ones - the electromagnetic, weak and strongforces, and gravitation - based entirely on the reanalysis of existingexperimental data. Back in 1986, EphraimFischbach, Sam Aronson, Carrick Talmadge and their collaborators proposed amodification of Newton's Law of universal gravitation. Underlying this proposalwere three tantalizing pieces of evidence: 1) an energy dependence of the CP (particle-antiparticleand reflection symmetry) parameters, 2) differences between the measurements ofG, the universal gravitational constant, in laboratories and in mineshafts, and3) a reanalysis of the Eötvos experiment, which had previously been used toshow that the gravitational mass of an object and its inertia mass were equalto approximately one part in a billion. The reanalysis revealed that, contrary to Galileo'sposition, the force of gravity was in fact very slightly different fordifferent substances. The resulting Fifth Force hypothesis included thiscomposition dependence and also added a small distance dependence to theinverse-square gravitational force. Over the next four yearsnumerous experiments were performed to test the hypothesis. By 1990 there wasoverwhelming evidence that the Fifth Force, as initially proposed, did notexist. This book discusses how the Fifth Force hypothesis came to be proposedand how it went on to become a showcase of discovery, pursuit and justificationin modern physics, prior to its demise. In this new and significantly expandededition, the material from the first edition is complemented by two essays, onecontaining Fischbach's personal reminiscences of the proposal, and a second onthe ongoing history and impact of the Fifth Force hypothesis from 1990 to thepresent.
The Rise and Fall of the German Combinatorial Analysis (Frontiers in the History of Science)
by Eduardo NobleThis text presents the ideas of a particular group of mathematicians of the late 18th century known as “the German combinatorial school” and its influence. The book tackles several questions concerning the emergence and historical development of the German combinatorial analysis, which was the unfinished scientific research project of that group of mathematicians. The historical survey covers the three main episodes in the evolution of that research project: its theoretical antecedents (which go back to the innovative ideas on mathematical analysis of the late 17th century) and first formulation, its consolidation as a foundationalist project of mathematical analysis, and its dissolution at the beginning of the 19th century. In addition, the book analyzes the influence of the ideas of the combinatorial school on German mathematics throughout the 19th century.