The technical problems confronting different societies and periods, and the measures taken to solve them, form the concern of this annual collection of essays. It deals with the history of technical discovery and change, and explores the relation of technology to other aspects of life.

This book takes the reader on a journey, navigating the enigmatic aspects of cooperation; a journey that starts inside the body and continues via our thoughts to the human super-organism. Cooperation is one of life's fundamental principles. We are all made of parts - genes, cells, organs, neurons, but also of ideas, or 'memes'. Our societies too are made of parts - us humans. Is all this cooperation fundamentally the same process? From the smallest component parts of our bodies and minds to our complicated societies, everywhere cooperation is the organizing principle. Often this cooperation has emerged because the constituting parts have benefited from the interactions, but not seldom the cooperating units appear to lose on the interaction. How then to explain cooperation? How can we understand our intricate societies where we regularly provide small and large favors for people we are unrelated to, know, or even never expect to meet again? Where does the idea come from that it is right to risk one's life for country, religion or freedom? The answers seem to reside in the two processes that have shaped humanity: biological and cultural evolution.

In this age of global communication, local identities and nation-states reassert themselves when cultural boundaries are dissolved and reconstructed. This collection of essays by noted scholars in many fields provides a wide range of theoretical approaches and empirical studies that, together, shed light on how local cultural identities resist the forces of globalization by virtue of tradition, transculturation, domestication and hybridization. Examining how people make sense of the world and their own identities as cultural and national boundaries are crossed, In Search of Boundaries transcends many traditional dichotomies between East and West and, more importantly, between tradition and modernity. Interest in the study of boundaries has grown in sociology, anthropology, geography, and other social sciences, but it has not focused on communication processes. This book fills that void with a series of wide-ranging approaches, from the critical to the liberal, the empirical to the cultural, and the Occidental to the Oriental, and makes a significant contribution to our understanding of the increasingly global nature of nationality, culture, and identity.

The first IVF baby was born in the 1970s. Less than 20 years later, we had cloning and GM food, and information and communication technologies had transformed everyday life. In 2000, the human genome was sequenced. More recently, there has been much discussion of the economic and social benefits of nanotechnology, and synthetic biology has also been generating controversy.
This important volume is a timely contribution to increasing calls for regulation - or better regulation - of these and other new technologies. Drawing on an international team of legal scholars, it reviews and develops the role of human rights in the regulation of new technologies. Three controversies at the intersection between human rights and new technology are given particular attention. First, how the expansive application of human rights could contribute to the creation of a brave new world of choice, where human dignity is fundamentally compromised; second, how new technologies, and our regulatory responses to them, could be a threat to human rights; and, third, how human rights could be used to create better regulation of these technologies.

Spracklen explores the impact of the internet on leisure and leisure studies, examining the ways in which digital leisure spaces and activities have become part of everyday leisure. Covering a range of issues from social media and file-sharing to romance on the Internet, this book presents new theoretical directions for digital leisure.

Our Scientists today, have come to believe in a new god, "The Scientific Method." However, virtually all of the greatest scientists of all time, e.g. Einstein, Franklin, Newton, Euclid, and many more, believed in a personal, omnipotent, omniscient, and all loving God who has provided a place for our ego, soul, spirit, or whatever you choose to call it, following our body's death. This book is dedicated to showing that science and theology are all part of the same. The Story A newspaper reporter from outside our culture is asked to investigate a place referred to as New Jerusalem. He soon learns: What: It is the Heaven that the soals of the followers of Jesus Christ go to following their Earthly body's death and others may go later. When: Does it occur and is it the same for all Where: Is New Jerusalim located, is it perhaps in inter-dimensional space. Why: Has God prepared this for his children? How: Is this process explained scientifically? Is this explanation scientifically reasonable?

Fascination with satellite television and Internet technology has become an obsession. People throughout the world watch television and believe what they see and hear--without realizing that pictures are selected and stories are sometimes distorted. Concurrently, the world's elite are drawn to the increasing availability of news on the Internet, effectively widening the gap between those who have and do not have access to the new technologies. This analysis of the worldwide impact of new communications technologies shows how ordinary citizens can protect themselves from media brainwashing. Interviews from across the globe shed light on this dynamic and on the roles of viewers as victims or victors in different situations. This is a book for the media professional; students and scholars in the fields of journalism, communications, political science, international relations, and business; as well as for government officials and concerned citizens who do not want to be controlled by the media.

What is 'technology'? What does it help us to do? What does it force us to consider about our experience of being in the world? In Challenging the Phenomena of Technology, technology is positioned as an experience with specific features, rather than as a class of objects, and this enables a reflection on the ways in which amateurs and experts interact with the artefacts that all humans rely upon. Using e-readers, such as the Kindle and iPad, as a case study, Hayler argues that the use of technology is both more complicated and more human than public discussion often gives it credit for, forcing us to consider its impacts on perception, cognition, and what it means to know anything at all.

What are we doing on planet earth? Why are we here? Did we evolve? Or, are we created? Many of us, as we age, don't so easily accept many philosophies and teachings about life. We come to realize the degree to which truth is bent and shaped by special interests in social, political, and religious affairs. After 40 years in the making, In Search of Destiny brings to you a gripping scientific and spiritual search for human destiny. Are we here to just be born, grow old, and die on planet earth? Or, is there evidence beyond this? In Search of Destiny draws a decisive conclusion.

A fascinating look at the historical relationship between environmental issues and scientific study, social attitudes, and public policy from the 17th century to the present. The Environment and Science: Social Impact and Interaction explores the history of how science investigates nature and how those studies both shape and are shaped by the social attitudes, philosophies, and politics of their times. It follows the changes in perceptions of the natural world and humankind's place in it from the European colonization of North America through the Industrial Revolution and westward expansion, to the rise of the consumer economy and the recent hardening of the ideological battle lines over environmental policy. Coverage includes the emergence of ecology as a science and conservation as a movement, the long history of conflicts between business interests and environmentalists, and the role of scientific studies in debates over atomic and nuclear power, pesticides, toxic emissions, and other human-made sources of environmental degradation. Biographical sketches of major contributors to the study of human/environment interaction, including Carolus Linnaeus, Henry David Thoreau, Charles Darwin, Rachel Carson, and Barry Commoner Primary source documents from key environmental writers

The book demonstrates that food safety is a multidisciplinary scientific discipline that is specifically designed to prevent foodborne illness to consumers. It is generally assumed to be an axiom by both nonprofessionals and professionals alike, that the most developed countries, through their intricate and complex standards, formal trainings and inspections, are always capable of providing much safer food items and beverages to consumers as opposed to the lesser developed countries and regions of the world. Clearly, the available data regarding the morbidity and the mortality in different areas of the world confirms that in developing countries, the prevalence and the incidence of presumptive foodborne illness is much greater. However, other factors need to be taken into consideration in this overall picture: First of all, one of the key issues in developing countries appears to be the availability of safe drinking water, a key element in any food safety strategy. Second, the availability of healthcare facilities, care providers, and medicines in different parts of the world makes the consequences of foodborne illness much more important and life threatening in lesser developed countries than in most developed countries. It would be therefore ethnocentric and rather simplistic to state that the margin of improvement in food safety is only directly proportional to thelevel of development of the society or to the level of complexity of any given national or international standard. Besides standards and regulations, humans as a whole have evolved and adapted different strategies to provide and to ensure food and water safety according to their cultural and historical backgrounds. Our goal is to discuss and to compare these strategies in a cross-cultural and technical approach, according to the realities of different socio-economic, ethnical and social heritages.

""God made the universe simplistic; man made the understanding of the universe complicated." "The modern world has so many theories-so many voices expounding on how the universe began, how it works, and how it may end-it's no wonder there is mass confusion that can end in miscommunication, hatred, and war. On deeper examination of the facts, however, we find that all these theories and voices have more in common than they believe. In "The Summation of Elohim, " author Deick Conrad Williams simplifies and unifies societal beliefs of science and spirituality-the beliefs of our civilization-and shows how understanding our universe on a new level helps us understand our relationship to God, to each other, and to ourselves.Williams, a philosopher and mathematician who has devoted his life to studying the workings of the universe though the lens of numerous disciplines, first explores the universe's beginnings, the advent of humanity, and how organized religion allowed civilization to flourish. Then, with minimal mathematical equations and ample analogies to modern life, Williams offers fresh, valuable insights on the algorithms governing our universe-and the chaos inherent to its existence. From exploring the chakras and how to produce multiple orgasms to the Freudian id manifest in the seven deadly sins, "The Summation of Elohim" takes an enlightening journey toward understanding our universe and our vital role within it.

The modern world has so many theories-so many voices expounding on how the universe began, how it works, and how it may end-it's no wonder there is mass confusion that can end in miscommunication, hatred, and war. On deeper examination of the facts, however, we find that all these theories and voices have more in common than they believe. In "The Summation of Elohim," author Deick Conrad Williams simplifies and unifies societal beliefs of science and spirituality-the beliefs of our civilization- and shows how understanding our universe on a new level helps us understand our relationship to God, to each other, and to ourselves.

Williams, a philosopher and mathematician who has devoted his life to studying the workings of the universe though the lens of numerous disciplines, first explores the universe's beginnings, the advent of humanity, and how organized religion allowed civilization to flourish. Then, with minimal mathematical equations and ample analogies to modern life, Williams offers fresh, valuable insights on the algorithms governing our universe-and the chaos inherent to its existence.

From exploring the chakras and how to produce multiple orgasms to the Freudian id manifest in the seven deadly sins, "The Summation of Elohim" takes an enlightening journey toward understanding our universe and our vital role within it.

This book provides a sociological analysis of the controversy surrounding GM crops in Telangana, India. There is much debate as to whether GM technology holds the key to improving the welfare of poor farmers globally or serves primarily to increase the profits of multinational corporations while enhancing cultivator risk. Desmond's study is located in the economically vulnerable and politically volatile district of Warangal in Telangana, a context associated with high numbers of farmer suicides. Uniquely foregrounding the perspectives of cultivators and the landless, Desmond explores how GM crops are variously legitimated and delegitimated in three Warangal villages by those whose livelihoods are at stake in the debate, but whose voices are rarely heard within it. This book will be significant for those with an interest in GM crops, power and knowledge and their relation to understandings of development, democracy and risk management worldwide.

This collection examines implications of technological automation to global prosperity and peace. Focusing on robots, information communication technologies, and other automation technologies, it offers brief interventions that assess how automation may alter extant political, social, and economic institutions, norms, and practices that comprise the global political economy. In doing so, this collection deals directly with such issues as automated production, trade, war, state sanctioned robot violence, financial speculation, transnational crime, and policy decision making. This interdisciplinary volume will appeal to students, scholars and practitioners grappling with political, economic, and social problems that arise from rapid technological change that automates the prospects for human prosperity and peace.

No rational mind - given the evidence of buttons and buttonholes in an article of clothing - would deny that both "intelligence" and "design" played roles in the fabrication of such a garment, but - mystery of mysteries - the brightest and most educated in our culture, reject such considerations for all the infinitely more complex living organisms, insisting (dogmatically) that they somehow "evolved" by haphazard, sequential, random mutations. A challenge is therefore, proposed - to anyone anti-"Intelligent Designer," who believes he has not been "brain-washed," but who has at least a "hair-line crack" to open-mindedness - to refute the material herein - the non-factuality and astronomical improbabilities of pure random-chance-mutations of individual elements (among the multi-billions in the DNA helix) as a credible belief system in explaining: the spider, butterfly, or bacterium flagellum (Pajaro Dunes Micro-Biology Conference - scientists challenging Darwinism); male-female sexuality feelings: irresistible sex-drive before; gratification after - evoking propagation and proliferation of mammalian species; the (simple, yet ever so complex) umbilical cord concept for mammals - from kittens to humans? This book is a scholarly review (in layman terms) of all pertinent aspects of Science versus Bible in all applicable fields: Archaeology, Astronomy, Biology, Cosmology, Egyptology, Paleontology, Physics, etc., with over 300 references to the arcane writings of world-class scientists, historians, mathematicians and adventurers.

Digital Broadcasting presents an introduction to how the classic notion of 'broadcasting' has evolved and is being reinterpreted in an age of digitization and convergence. The book argues that 'digital broadcasting' is not a contradiction in terms, but-on the contrary-both terms presuppose and need each other. Drawing upon an interdisciplinary and international field of research and theory, it looks at current developments in television and radio broadcasting on the level of regulation and policy, industries and economics, production and content, and audience and consumption practices.

An observatory and a lighthouse form the nexus of this major new investigation of science, religion, and the state in late Ottoman Egypt. Astronomy, imperial bureaucrats, traditionally educated Muslim scholars, and reformist Islamic publications, such as The Lighthouse, are linked to examine the making of knowledge, the performance of piety, and the operation of political power through scientific practice. Contrary to ideas of Islamic scientific decline, Muslim scholars in the nineteenth century used a dynamic tradition of knowledge to measure time, compute calendars, and predict planetary positions. The rise of a 'new astronomy' is revealed to owe much to projects of political and religious reform: from the strengthening of the multiple empires that exercised power over the Nile Valley; to the 'modernization' of Islamic centers of learning; to the dream of a global Islamic community that would rely on scientific institutions to coordinate the timing of major religious duties.

This important book develops an evolutionary conception of growth in East Asia, in which technology, organizations and institutions interact and co-evolve to advance productivity. Episodic crises are seen as disruptions which bring to the fore structural and institutional flaws that need reform.The author begins with a thorough analysis of the neo-classical theory of technical change and shows that it fails to capture crucial aspects of the various learning processes involved. He goes on to develop a comprehensive framework for understanding technological progress. Productivity growth is seen as deriving from knowledge hard-coded in equipment and structures, and soft-coded in human skill, organizations and institutions that guide economic activity. The role of exports in promoting faster growth is also examined, as are the channels of technological capability acquisition. This book will be welcomed by academics, policymakers, students, government bodies and business people interested in East Asian growth and in understanding technological change in general.

This book proposes a new angle on the controversy over evolution as a biological theory, creation as a theological/worldview doctrine and evolutionism, creationism and Intelligent Design theory as social ideologies. Rather than presenting a polemic that will enrage or delight one camp or another, this book proposes that a cease-fire is possible.

A biologist and a Christian theologian examine the scientific and philosophical implications and potential impacts of genetic technologies. God, Science, and Designer Genes: An Exploration of Emerging Technologies provides a unique approach to the central ethical dilemma in contemporary science, offering both an up-to-date account of the current state of genetic technologies and insightful discussions of the moral/theological questions these technologies raise. Coauthored by professors of biology and theology, God, Science, and Designer Genes examines a range of from-the-headlines issues, including the relationship between science and religion, "designing" our children, stem-cell research, cloning, genetics and behavior, genetics and privacy, and using genetic technologies for social justice. Who should benefit-personally and financially-from DNA technology? Who might be harmed? How do we protect individual rights and guard against discrimination? How will embryo modification affect the identity of those so modified? God, Science, and Designer Genes gives readers an eloquent, thoughtful, and objective foundation for considering these and other questions about the potential conflict between scientific achievement, personal faith, and social responsibility. A series of chapters combining basic scientific discussions of DNA technologies with ethical discussions of the social issues they are raising Five hypothetical case studies that provide realistic contexts for exploring specific issues related to genetic technologies An extensive bibliography of current and significant books, journals and websites with regard to genetic technologies A comprehensive index

In light of new biomedical technologies, such as artificial reproduction, stem cell research, genetic selection and design, the question of what we owe to future persons-and unborn life more generally-is as contested as ever. In A Theory of Unborn Life: From Abortion to Genetic Manipulation, author Anja J. Karnein provides a novel theory that shows how our commitments to persons can help us make sense of our obligations to unborn life. We should treat embryos that will develop into persons in anticipation of these persons. But how viable is this theory? Moreover, what does it mean to treat embryos in anticipation of the future persons they will develop into? Exploring the attractiveness of this approach for Germany and the U.S. - two countries with very different legal approaches to valuing unborn life-Karnein comes to startling conclusions to some of today's greatest ethical and legal debates. Under Karnein's theory, abortion and stem cell research are legitimate, since embryos that do not have mothers willing to continue to assist their growth have no way of developing into persons. However, Karnein also contends that where the health of embryos is threatened by third parties or even by the women carrying them, embryos need to be treated with the same care due to the children that emerge from them. In the case of genetic manipulation, it is important to respect future persons like our contemporaries, respecting their independence as individuals as well as the way they enter this world without modification. Genetic interventions are therefore only legitimate for insuring that future persons have the necessary physical and mental endowment to lead independent lives so as to be protected from being dominated by their contemporaries. Evincing polarization and dogma, Karnein's clean, philosophically-driven analysis provides a sound ethical foundation for the interpretation of any variety of legal dilemmas surrounding unborn life.

The Ten Assumptions of Science presents the logically coherent set of assumptions destined to define 21st century scientific philosophy. Glenn Borchardt first explains why assumptions and not absolutes are necessary for scientific thinking. By exploring the opposition between deterministic and indeterministic views, he clearly shows how critical choices among underlying assumptions either clarify or muddle scientific analysis. He shows how customary mixtures of deterministic and indeterministic assumptions are responsible for the current confusion in modern physics. According to Dr. Borchardt, only rare physicists and philosophers have an inkling of the nature of time, space, energy, and matter. The need for reassessing our fundamental assumptions is indicated by the present sorry state of cosmology. Otherwise intelligent scientists promulgate the idea that the universe expanded from a tiny singularity smaller than the period at the end of this sentence. At the very least, adherence to Borchardt's assumptions will contribute to the rejection of the Big Bang Theory, which has surpassed the flat Earth theory as the greatest embarrassment to serious thinkers everywhere. scientific philosophy, it is an astounding eye-opener for the educated reader with an interest in science and philosophy.