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Our brains do amazing things: they determine our actions, our thoughts and our feelings. We may not always realise it, but the brain is central to the way we experience life. So what happens when brain circuits break? What are the consequences for our behaviour and personality? From Parkinson's disease to Tourette's syndrome, and depression to psychopathy, Broken Brains reveals the mysteries of brain function – and dysfunction. In this no-nonsense introduction, Ian Mitchell takes you on a tour through the sometimes devastating, and sometimes bizarre, effects of what happens when brains break down. Highly readable and packed with anecdotes and real examples from neurosurgery, it brings biological psychology to life, making it the perfect introduction to understanding the brain and what happens when things go wrong.
The Justice Factory is the book the judges tried to ban. It lifts the veil on the personality of the senior judges in Scotland, while explaining how they relate to the American and English traditions of judging. The reason for the attempted ban is that this is the first book to be published in the English-speaking world about the personality of judges and the practice of judging which relies for its primary source on the judges themselves. It is a novel attempt to see the rule of law and the threats to it from the point of view of those who have to defend it.Despite this, one of the most senior judes in recent Britsih history wrote to me after reading the book saying: "All in all a very interesting, although rather mischievous, book. Thank you for bringing it to my attention." - Lord Hope, an ex-Lord President of the Court of Session, and Deputy President of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom
Isles of the West describes a three-month voyage made in the summer of 1996 around the Hebrides. The author's aim was to explore the major issues peculiar to the islands as the century dawns. How does land reform, for example, look from the point of view of the islanders? Does nature conservation actually help the environment? Is the commercial promotion of 'heritage' a blessing or a curse? Interwoven with the beauty of the islands and the seductive feeling of freedom which comes from making long voyages in small boats is the nagging worry that alien forces, both Scottish and European, sentimental and mercenary, are distorting the indigenous society by imposing outside ideas on communities which are valued in part because they are so free of external pressures. Who are these bodies, both public and private, that want to save the islands from the islanders? Ian Mitchell's controversial book examines these conflicts and describes how pleasant it can be to worry about the future while lolling on the sun-drenched deck of a gently moving sailing boat.
"The castles and other properties owned and managed by the National Trust for Scotland are precious jewels in the crown of the nation's heritage. Ensuring they provide a wonderful experience for visitors requires expertise and enthusiasm from many people, mostly unseen, who offer specialist knowledge and long-term thinking. This book pays tribute to the craftspeople, gardeners, foresters, managers, guides, surveyors, architects, archaeologists, conservators, planners and more, who have made the Trust's properties so very special to so many people."--Provided by publisher.
Design and Use of Assistive Technology assesses major hurdles in the design and use of assistive technologies, while also providing guidelines and recommendations to improve these technologies. This volume takes an interdisciplinary approach to solving the major issues surrounding designing and using assistive technologies for the physically impaired by blending engineering, computer science and medicine. The most difficult problems in assistive technologies, such as privacy concerns in data gathering and analysis, inherent heterogeneity of the user population, knowledge transfer of novel technologies and incorporation of the user perspective into the design process are all addressed. The bo...
This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Hybrid Systems: Computation and Control, HSCC 2007, held in Pisa, Italy in April 2007. Among the topics addressed are models of heterogeneous systems, computability and complexity issues, real-time computing and control, embedded and resource-aware control, control and estimation over wireless networks, and programming languages support and implementation.
One of Mark Cuban’s top reads for better understanding A.I. (inc.com, 2021) Your comprehensive entry-level guide to machine learning While machine learning expertise doesn’t quite mean you can create your own Turing Test-proof android—as in the movie Ex Machina—it is a form of artificial intelligence and one of the most exciting technological means of identifying opportunities and solving problems fast and on a large scale. Anyone who masters the principles of machine learning is mastering a big part of our tech future and opening up incredible new directions in careers that include fraud detection, optimizing search results, serving real-time ads, credit-scoring, building accurate a...
“If you liked Chaos, you’ll love Complexity. Waldrop creates the most exciting intellectual adventure story of the year” (The Washington Post). In a rarified world of scientific research, a revolution has been brewing. Its activists are not anarchists, but rather Nobel Laureates in physics and economics and pony-tailed graduates, mathematicians, and computer scientists from all over the world. They have formed an iconoclastic think-tank and their radical idea is to create a new science: complexity. They want to know how a primordial soup of simple molecules managed to turn itself into the first living cell—and what the origin of life some four billion years ago can tell us about the ...
Acclaimed hillwalking writers Ian R Mitchell and George Rodway tell the fascinating story of Aberdeen-born Alexander Kellas, and his contribution to mountaineering from the 20th century to the present day. Now a largely neglected figure, Kellas is the pioneer of high altitude physiology, his climbing routes still in evidence today. Follow Kellas' journey, which takes him from the Scottish Cairngorms to the Himalaya, and discover how his struggles and explorations have impacted upon mountaineering today.