42 results for "Environment"

African American Women and Christian Activism New York's Black YWCA, 1905-1945

Judith Weisenfeld
The middle class black women who people Judith Weisenfeld's history were committed both to social action and to institutional expression of their religious convictions. Their story provides an illuminating perspective on the varied forces working to improve quality of life for African Americans in crucial times. When undertaking to help young women migrating to and living alone in New York, Weisenfeld's protagonists chose to work within a national evangelical institution. Their organization of a black chapter of the Young Women's Christian Association in 1905 was a clear step toward establishing a suitable environment for young working women; it was also an expression of their philosophy of social uplift. And predictably it was the beginning of an equal rights struggle--to work as equals with white women activists. Growing and adapting as New York's black community evolved over the decades, the black YWCA assumed a central role both in the community's religious life and as a training ground for social action. Weisenfeld's analysis of the setbacks and successes closes with the National YWCA's vote in 1946 to adopt an interracial charter and move toward integration of local chapters, thus opening the door to a different set of challenges for a new generation of black activists. Weisenfeld's account gives a vibrant picture of African American women as significant actors in the life of the city. And it bears telling witness to the religious, class, gender, and racial negotiations so often involved in American social reform movements.
Harvard University Press 2013-10 239 pages

Psychogeography

Self, Will
Provocateurs Will Self and Ralph Steadman join forces in this post-millennial meditation on the vexed relationship between psyche and place in a globalised world, bringing together for the first time the very best of their 'Psychogeography' columns for the Independent . Ranging from the Scottish Highlands to Istanbul and from Morocco to Ohio, Will Self's engaging and disturbing vision is perfectly counter-pointed by Ralph Steadman's edgy and beautiful artwork.
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC 2015-10-23

Sustainable Energy Solutions for Climate Change

Mark Diesendorf
"Renewable energy expert Mark Diesendorf issues a powerful challenge in this clear and comprehensive guide to the technology and policies we need to adopt to ensure an ecologically sustainable energy future for the planet. Sustainable Energy Solutions for Climate Change brings together the science, technology, economics and policy issues to provide a unique and truly interdisciplinary approach. It details the enormous recent changes in the energy sector and profiles the renewable energy technologies that can transform our fossil-fuelled energy systems into ecologically sustainable ones. The book provides in-depth analysis of: scenarios for transitioning our polluting energy system to one based on the efficient use of renewable energy; sustainable transport and planning for better cities; why nuclear energy is not the answer; the politics and policies of climate change mitigation; myths about wind and solar energy and energy efficiency; what people can do to overcome vested interests and push reluctant governments to take effective action"--
Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group 2014 356 pages

This Crazy Time Living Our Environmental Challenge

Tzeporah Berman,Mark Leiren-Young
Passionate, profound and funny, Berman is inspiring people from all walks of life to get off the sidelines and fight the good fight--and win. This unique book--part manifesto from a leader, part humorous activist memoir from a soccer mom--offers a wryly honest, behind-the-scenes, ultimately uplifting look at the state of the planet. For almost 20 years, Tzeporah Berman has been one of our most influential environmentalists. A founder of ForestEthics and PowerUp Canada, she was instrumental in shaping the tactics and concerns of the modern environmental movement. In her early 20s she faced nearly one thousand criminal charges and 6 years in prison for her role organizing blockades in Canada's rainforest. She later transformed her tactics and sat down with CEOs and political leaders to reshape their policies and practices. In her new role at Greenpeace International she is fighting the problem of our time: climate change. This Crazy Time is an impassioned plea for a better world.
Alfred A. Knopf Canada 2012-06-19 384 pages

Hidden Histories of Science

Robert B. Silvers
We often think of science as continuously advancing. In this collection of essays, five world-renowned writers explore obscure and neglected episodes in the history of science which suggest instead that the process of understanding the significance of scientific discoveries can be erratic, contradictory, even irrational. Jonathan Miller, Oliver Sacks, and Daniel Kevles show how promising new ideas may at first fail to be noticed or accepted, and then, years after they have been dismissed or forgotten, are recognized in a different form as important. R.C. Lewontin and Stephen Jay Gould discuss the ways that words and images used by scientists and popularizers alike, from the murals on the walls of natural history museums to such ubiquitous terms as "adaptation" and "environment," reflect serious and often unacknowledged distortions in the way we conceive of both individual organisms and the natural history of the world. These essays demonstrate that science is, in the words of Oliver Sacks, "a human enterprise through and through, an organic, evolving, human growth, with sudden spurts and arrests, and strange deviations, too. It grows out of its past, but never outgrows it, any more than we outgrow our childhood."
New York Review of Books 1995 193 pages

Epigenetics in the age of Twitter: pop culture and modern science

Weissmann, Gerald
"America's most interesting and important essayist." --Eric Kandel, Nobel Prize-winning author of The Age of Insight "[Gerald Weissmann] bridges the space between science and the humanities, and particularly between medicine and the muses, with wit, erudition, and, most important, wisdom." --Adam Gopnik Epigenetics, which attempts to explain how our genes respond to our environment, is the latest twist on the historic nature vs. nurture debate. In addressing this and other controversies in contemporary science, Gerald Weissmann taps what he calls "the social network of Western Civilization," including the many neglected women of science: from the martyred Hypatia of Alexandria, the first woman scientist, to the Nobel laureates Marie Curie, Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard, and Elizabeth Blackburn, among other luminaries in the field. Always instructive and often hilarious, this is a one-volume introduction to modern biology, viewed through the lens of contemporary mass media and the longer historical tradition of the Scientific Revolution. Whether engaging in the healthcare debate or imagining the future prose styling of the scientific research paper in the age of Twitter, Weissmann proves himself as an incisive cultural critic and satirist. Gerald Weissmann (August 7, 1930 - July 10, 2019) was a physician, scientist, editor, and essayist whose collections include The Fevers of Reason: New and Selected Essays ; Epigenetics in the Age of Twitter: Pop Culture and Modern Science ; Mortal and Immortal DNA: Science and the Lure of Myth ; and Galileo's Gout: Science in an Age of Endarkenment .
Bellevue Literary Press 2012 256 pages

Helping Young Refugees and Immigrants Succeed Public Policy, Aid, and Education

G. Holton
In a unique effort, this book brings together, for the first time, scholarly analyses by eminent researchers of the historical, social, legal, and cultural influences on the young newcomers' lives as well as reports by practitioners in major aid organizations about the concrete work that their organizations have been carrying out.
Palgrave Macmillan US 2010-10-18 316 pages

The Qualitative-Quantitative Distinction in the Social Sciences

B. Glassner,Jonathan Moreno
Without of course adopting a Platonic metaphysics, the eighteenth-century philosophes were Grecophiles who regarded the Athenian philosophers as their intellectual forbearers and mentors. So powerful was their identification with c1assification that ancient ideas were taken as keys to the design of the modem world, but usually the ideas were taken separately and as divided from their systematic context. The power of number was an idea the En lightenment thinkers deployed with their legendary passion and vigor, particularly as an instrument for social reconstruction. It is no exaggemtion to say that the role of quantities in contemporary social scientific theorizing cannot be understood with any depth absent a recollection of the philosophes' axial development of the notion of quantification. It is a commonplace that for the philosophes progress required releasing human abilities to have power over nature. Aprerequisite for this power was knowledge of the underlying causes of natural events, knowledge that required quantitative precision. Enlightenment thinkers were sufficiently aware of themselves as products of their time to appreciate the importance of a liberal social environment to the knowledge enterprise; the supposition that the reverse is also the case, that enhanced knowledge could advance social conditions, came easily.
Springer Netherlands 2010-12-25 236 pages

Ivory Bridges Connecting Science and Society

Gerhard Sonnert,Gerald Holton
A study of two bridges between science and society: governmental science policy and scientists' voluntary public-interest associations. According to a widespread stereotype, scientists occupy an ivory tower, isolated from other parts of society. To some extent this is true, and the resulting freedom to pursue curiosity-driven research has made possible extraordinary scientific advances. The spinoffs of "pure" science, however, have also had powerful impacts on society, and the potential for future impacts is even greater. The public and many policymakers, as well as many researchers, have paid insufficient attention to the mechanisms for interchange between science and society that have developed since World War II. Ivory Bridges examines two such mechanisms: governmental science policy (often involving the participation of "scientist administrators") and scientists' voluntary public-interest associations. The examination of science policy is guided by the notion of "Jeffersonian science"---defined as basic research on topics identified as being in the national interest. The book illustrates the concept with a historical case study of the Press-Carter Initiative of the late 1970s and proposes that a Jeffersonian approach would make a valuable addition to future science policy. The book also looks at the activities of citizen-scientists who have organized themselves to promote the welfare of society. It shows that their numerous and diverse organizations have made major contributions to the commonweal and that they have helped to prevent science from becoming either too subservient to government or too autonomous. An extensive appendix profiles a wide variety of these organizations.
MIT Press 2002-03-15 240 pages

Our Synthetic Environment

Murray Bookchin,Lewis Herber
2018 Reprint of 1962 Edition. Full facsimile of the original edition, not reproduced with Optical Recognition software. Bookchin wrote Our Synthetic Environment under the pseudonym Lewis Herber. This was one of the first books of the modern period in which an author espoused an ecological and environmentalist worldview. It predates Silent Spring (1962) by Rachel Carson, a more widely known book on the same topic widely credited as starting the environmental movement. "At the time of its publication, Our Synthetic Environment was the most comprehensive and enlightened book on the environmental crisis. Many other books on this topic have been published since, but none, I believe, as comprehensive." --René Dubos
Martino Fine Books 2018-07-11 328 pages

A Space for Science The Development of the Scientific Community in Brazil

Simon Schwartzman
A Space for Science is a new version of Formação da Comunidade Cientifica no Brasil (published only in Portuguese in 1979 and now out of print), which became a standard reference for studies of the development of scientific traditions and competence in Brazil and, by extension, for other developing countries. Based on dozens of interviews with several generations of Brazilian scientists, it offers a wealth of information and insight about the motivations, attitudes, values, and perceptions of the scientists who, working in this kind of environment, face challenges and endure frustrations not known to their colleagues in wealthier industrialized countries. The book focuses on the development of natural sciences in Brazil from the nineteenth century, with emphasis on the cultural, institutional, and social contexts that facilitated or hindered their growth and institutionalization, and offers an analysis of their current predicaments. It also provides an account of the importance to Brazil of foreign-trained scientists and foreign models of research and higher education. This new English version contains background information on Brazilian society and politics, a new introduction, and two new chapters on most recent developments. These changes, along with substantial revisions to the text, make this a new book even for the Brazilian reader.
Pennsylvania State University Press 1991 300 pages

Microorganisms to Combat Pollution

E. Rosenberg
This volume contains material first presented at an international workshop on the 'Use of Microorganisms to Combat Pollution', held in Israel, May 10--18, 1992. The workshop was sponsored by the Bat-Sheva de Rothschild Foundation for the Advancement of Science and included microbiologists, biochemists and geneticists from universities, environmental agencies and the military. Each of the contributors to this volume is an ack nowledged expert on the treatment of one or more types of pollution using microorganisms or their enzymes. This book differs from most published symposia proceedings in the breadth of coverage of each subject. Most of the chapters are divided into three parts: (a) A general presentation of the source and toxicity of the pollutant, (b) a review of the current state-of-the-science on the biodegradation of that pollutant and (c) the authors' unique research experiences on the problem. In several examples, the authors have presented data from both laboratory studies and field trials. Thus, the book contains not only the theoretical background on the biodegradation of pollutants, but also practical experiences in applying this knowledge to solving significant pollution problems.
Springer 2011-12-10 292 pages

Studyguide for Earth Evolution of a Habitable World by Jonathan I. Lunine, Isbn 9780521644235

Cram101 Textbook Reviews Staff,Jonathan I. Lunine,Cram101 Textbook Reviews
Never HIGHLIGHT a Book Again! Virtually all of the testable terms, concepts, persons, places, and events from the textbook are included. Cram101 Just the FACTS101 studyguides give all of the outlines, highlights, notes, and quizzes for your textbook with optional online comprehensive practice tests. Only Cram101 is Textbook Specific. Accompanys: 9780521644235 .
Cram101 Incorporated 2012-09 104 pages

From the Atomic Bomb to the Landau Institute Autobiography. Top Non-Secret

Isaak M. Khalatnikov
The book is an expanded autobiography of the famous theoretical physicist Isaak Khalatnikov. He worked together with L.D. Landau at the Institute for Physical Problems lead by P.L. Kapitza. He is the co-author of L.D. Landau in a number of important works. They worked together in the frame of the so-called Nuclear Bomb Project. After the death of L.D. Landau, I.M. Khalatnikov initiated the establishment of the Institute for Theoretical Physics, named in honour of L.D. Landau, within the USSR Academy of Sciences. He headed this institute from the beginning as its Director. The institute inherited almost all traditions of the Landau scientific school and played a prominent role in the development of theoretical physics. So, this is a story about how the institute was created, how it worked, and about the life of the physicists in the "golden age" of the Soviet science. A separate chapter is devoted to today ́s life of the institute and the young generation of physicists working now in science. It is an historically interesting book on the development of Soviet and Russian science and presents the background of the Soviet nuclear bomb program in the cold war age. In war times, Khalatnikov was a chief of the military staff of nuclear research. He writes about the internal conditions of Soviet society, the way of operating of the Soviet authorities and ways for scientists to interact with them. It gives many interesting insights into the development of superconductivity and superfluidity. The book is written by the most experienced and best informed person among the few living Russian scientists in the environment of Landau. Many stories of the book were never published before and considered as "top secret".
Springer Berlin Heidelberg 2014-06-11 216 pages

Science of the Earth, climate, and energy

Cole, Milton W.,Lueking, Angela D.,Goodstein, David L.
Whether on personal health, politics, or climate change, we are constantly bombarded with more numerous 'breaking news' articles than we have time for. In such an environment, how can we tell which to read, or which is even true.Science of the Earth, Climate and Energy helps readers understand major issues that affect us individually and the world as a whole.In language that a non-scientist can follow easily, the book first explains the general principles of science, its nature and how it works, with a certain degree of emphasis on the meaning of the words 'uncertainty' and 'fact, before it goes into the related topics of the earth, its climate and energy sources at a level that does not require a background in science. Finally, the book addresses what individuals and societies can do to mitigate problems associated with both climate change and limited resources.Related Link(s)
World Scientific 2018 562 pages