Science

Human genetics has blossomed from an obscure branch of biological science and occasional explanation for exceedingly rare disorders to a field all of its own that affects everyone. Human Genetics: The Basics introduces the key questions and issues in this emerging field, including:

Written in an engaging, narrative manner, this concise introduction is an ideal starting point for anyone who wants to know more about genes, DNA, and the genetic ties that bind us all.

This is the first book to offer a comprehensive exploration of new methods in inverse problems in electromagnetics. The book provides systematic descriptions of the most important practical inverse problems, and details new methods to solve them. Also included are descriptions of the properties of inverse problems and known solutions, as well as reviews of the practical implementation of these methods in electric circuit theory and electromagnetic fields theory. This comprehensive collection of modern theoretical ideas and methods to solve inverse problems will be of value to both students and working professionals.

This book deals with a particular class of approximation methods in the context of light scattering by small particles. Soft particles occur in ocean optics, biomedical optics, atmospheric optics and in many industrial applications.

This class of approximations has been termed as eikonal or soft particle approximations. The study of these approximations is very important because soft particles occur abundantly in nature.

Light allows us to see everything around us, but humans can only see a sliver of all light, known as the electromagnetic spectrum. Here, Kim Arcand and Megan Watzke present the subject of light as never before. Organized along the order of the electromagnetic spectrum, each chapter focuses on a different type of light. From radio waves, harnessed for telecommunications, to X-rays, which let us peer inside the human body and view areas around black holes in deep space, Arcand and Watzke show us all the important ways light impacts us. An introductory chapter describes what light is and how it behaves, while hundreds of full-color photographs and illustrations demonstrate concepts and make for a stunning book that's a joy to read and browse.

In 1714, England's Parliament offered a huge reward to anyone whose method of measuring longitude could be proven successful. The scientific establishment -- from Galileo to Sir Isaac Newton -- had mapped the heavens in its certainty of a celestial answer. In stark contrast, one man, John Harrison, dared to imagine a mechanical solution -- a clock that would keep precise time at sea, something no clock had been able to do on land. And the race was on.

Written by a sociologist, a graph theorist, and a statistician, this title provides social network analysts and students with a solid statistical foundation from which to analyze network data. Clearly demonstrates how graph-theoretic and statistical techniques can be employed to study some important parameters of global social networks. The authors uses real life village-level social networks to illustrate the practicalities, potentials, and constraints of social network analysis ("SNA"). They also offer relevant sampling and inferential aspects of the techniques while dealing with potentially large networks.

Intended Audience

This supplemental text is ideal for a variety of graduate and doctoral level courses in social network analysis in the social, behavioral, and health sciences

Now in paperback! US bestselling author of Mother Earth Spirituality returns with a call for a spiritual awakening to create a new global culture.

Beginning with the ways of the Lakota Sioux and branching outward, Sioux tribal leader Ed McGaa, known as Eagle Man, shows the error of using animals and the natural world as a whole for economic and political gain. He then offers everyday lessons and values gleaned from Nature that endure for all times and people.

In this call for spiritual awakening, McGaa explains how we can create a new global culture based not on dominance over nature for economic and political gain, but on values that endure for all times and all people. Nature's Way explores Native American belief systems, oppression of Native Americans by the dominant society, the desacralisation of Nature, and the complicity of institutional religion.

Taking on religion, politics, and culture, McGaa provides a template for readers - a path designed by Nature that anyone can follow. Using the lessons of eagle, bear, lion, wolf, orca, owl, tiger, buffalo, rat, deer - even the cottonwood tree, Nature's Way teaches all of us how we can overcome religious intolerance, treat women and men equally, preserve our environment, and live in peace.

The compelling story If one of history's most intriguing yet little-known natural philosophers -- a sixteenth-century Dominican priest whose radical theories influenced some of the greatest thinkers in Western culture -- and the world's first martyr to science

A visionary and rationalist philosopher, Giordano Bruno did not limit himself to one discipline; instead, his erudite intellect accepted nothing and challenged everything in his pursuit of an all-embracing system of thought. It was an openmindedness that brought him patronage from some of the most powerful figures of the day, such as Henry III of France and Elizabeth I of England, but that also put him into direct conflict with the Catholic Church, which defrocked and excommunicated him. Returning to Italy after years spent enjoying intellectual freedom in France, England, and Germany, Bruno was arrested by the Inquisition and tried as a heretic. He endured almost eight years of imprisonment and brutal torture before being burned at the stake in Rome in 1600. And although the Vatican now says that it "regrets" burning Bruno, to this day it has refused to clear him of the charge of heresy.

But the Inquisition's attempts to obliterate Bruno failed, a. his philosophy and influence spread: Galileo, Isaac Newton, Christian Huygens, and Gottfried Leibniz all built upon his ideas; his thought experiments predated the work of such twentieth-century luminaries as Karl Popper; his religious thinking inspired such radicals as Baruch Spinoza; and his work on the art of memory had a profound effect on, among others, William Shakespeare.

The Pope and the Heretic chronicles the work, life, and extraordinary legacy of a genius whose musings helped bring about the modern world. Michael White brilliantly pieces together Bruno's dramatic final years, his capture, and his trial and explains why the Catholic Church felt so threatened by Bruno that it made him a martyr to free thought.

"In the task of reshaping the world model of scientists and others, only commitment to the discipline of science will do. It can be combined with enough controlled lunacy to bring conventionally self-evident ideas of reality into question (in mathematics this has always been a winning mixture), but it has to produce testable predictions."

"What we are now looking at is the prospect of 'Jungian physics' a physics model which also addresses the image-forming mechanism and possibly even the non-locality of mind."

"The hard-hat model of an objective reality has had to yield to a growing perception that the objective is, in form at least, a construct: what we appear to see is a function of the manner of seeing (hardly a new idea to Greek philosophy), but with the awkward complication that the cogitating I arises from the structures which it sees and orders."