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At head of title: National Cooperative Highway Research Program.
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Plant neurobiology is a newly emerging field of plant sciences. It covers signalling and communication at all levels of biological organization – from molecules up to ecological communities. In this book, plants are presented as intelligent and social organisms with complex forms of communication and information processing. Authors from diverse backgrounds such as molecular and cellular biology, electrophysiology, as well as ecology treat the most important aspects of plant communication, including the plant immune system, abilities of plants to recognize self, signal transduction, receptors, plant neurotransmitters and plant neurophysiology. Further, plants are able to recognize the identity of herbivores and organize the defence responses accordingly. The similarities in animal and plant neuronal/immune systems are discussed too. All these hidden aspects of plant life and behaviour will stimulate further intense investigations in order to understand the communicative plants in their whole complexity.
In Atmospheric Noise, Marina Peterson traces entanglements of environmental noise, atmosphere, sense, and matter that cohere in and through encounters with airport noise since the 1960s. Exploring spaces shaped by noise around Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), she shows how noise is a way of attuning toward the atmospheric: through noise we learn to listen to the sky and imagine the permeability of bodies and matter, sensing and conceiving that which is diffuse, indefinite, vague, and unformed. In her account, the “atmospheric” encompasses the physicality of the ephemeral, dynamic assemblages of matter as well as a logic of indeterminacy. It is audible as well as visible, heard as much as breathed. Peterson develops a theory of “indefinite urbanism” to refer to marginalized spaces of the city where concrete meets sky, windows resonate with the whine of departing planes, and endangered butterflies live under flight paths. Offering a conceptualization of sound as immanent and non-objectified, she demonstrates ways in which noise is central to how we know, feel, and think atmospherically.
"In the decade since the American Psychiatric Association condemned the use of psychiatric institutions for the suppression of political dissent, the practice has continued to spread in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Alexander Podrabinek wrote this account after working as a medical assistant and pursued his research while undergoing police harrassment. He has since been arrested and is in exile in Russia. The manuscript was smuggled out, translated, and published in this country. Podrabinek recounts the historical absence of a civil liberties tradition in Russia, asserting that compulsory psychiatric treatment was not needed in Czarist or early Communist times as liquidation was more efficient. Nonetheless, shortly after the revolution of 1917, punitive hospitalizations began, and a network of "special psychiatric hospitals" developed to confine thousands of dissidents and "socially dangerous individuals." Punitive Medicine contains many quotations from former inmates or "patient-prisoners," photographs of hospitals and ex-inmates, and also pictures"--
The application of probability and statistics to an ever-widening number of life-decisions serves to reproduce, reinforce, and widen disparities in the quality of life that different groups of people can enjoy. As a critical technology assessment, the ways in which bad luck early in life increase the probability that hardship and loss will accumulate across the life course are illustrated. Analysis shows the ways in which individual decisions, informed by statistical models, shape the opportunities people face in both market and non-market environments. Ultimately, this book challenges the actuarial logic and instrumental rationalism that drives public policy and emphasizes the role that the mass media play in justifying its expanded use. Although its arguments and examples take as their primary emphasis the ways in which these decision systems affect the life chances of African-Americans, the findings are also applicable to a broad range of groups burdened by discrimination.
The opportunities opened up by the Gorbachev reforms have shown that religion is one of the most significant dynamic forces in Soviet society. Yet few scholars have attempted to relate the study of churches and religious movements in recent centuries to the politics and culture of the Soviet Union. To remedy this deficiency, leading western experts on Christianity in the Eastern Slav lands gathered at a conference in London on the occasion of the millennium of the baptism of Rus'. Their papers present unexpected and fascinating insights into an under-rated but crucial aspect of the life of the Soviet peoples.
The book presents the fundamental aspects of surface segregation theory. The material is presented in a self-contained manner and mathematical procedures are worked through in some cases in order to provide the reader with the necessary opportunity to realize the restrictions under which the expressions are valid.