This book is on inertial confinement fusion, an alternative way to produce electrical power from hydrogen fuel by using powerful lasers or particle beams. Two huge laser facilities are presently under construction to show that this method works. It involves the compression of tiny amounts (micrograms) of fuel to thousand times solid density and pressures otherwise existing only in the centre of stars. Thanks to advances in laser technology, it is now possible to produce such extreme states of matter in the laboratory. Recent developments have boosted laser intensities again with new possibilities for laser particle accelerators, laser nuclear physics, and fast ignition of fusion targets. This is a reference book for those working on beam plasma physics, be it in the context of fundamental research or applications to fusion energy or novel ultra-bright laser sources. The book combines quite different areas of physics: beam target interaction, dense plasmas, hydrodynamic implosion and instabilities, radiative energy transfer as well as fusion reactions. Particular attention is given to simple and useful modeling, including dimensional analysis and similarity solutions. Both authors have worked in this field for more than 20 years. They want to address in particular those teaching this topic to students and all those interested in understanding the technical basis.

Sex is a fundamentally important biological variable. Recent years have seen significant progress in the integration of sex in many aspects of basic and clinical research, including analyses of sex differences in brain function. Significant advances in the technology available for studying the endocrine and nervous systems are now coupled with a more sophisticated awareness of the interconnections of these two communication systems of the body. A thorough understanding of the current knowledge, conceptual approaches, methodological capabilities, and challenges is a prerequisite to continued progress in research and therapeutics in this interdisciplinary area.
Sex Differences in the Brain provides scientists with the basic tools for investigating sex differences in brain and behavior and insight into areas where important progress in understanding physiologically relevant sex differences has already been made. This book was edited and co-authored by members of the Isis Fund Network on Sex, Gender, Drugs and the Brain, sponsored by the Society for Womens Health Research.
The book is arranged in three parts. The first part of the book introduces the study of sex differences in the brain, with an overview of how the brain, stress systems, and pharmacogenetics differ in males and females and how this information is important for the study of behavior and neurobiology of both genders. The second part presents examples of sex differences in neurobiology and behavior from both basic and clinical research perspectives, covering both humans and nonhuman animals. The final part discusses sex differences in the neurobiology of disease and neurological disorders.
For interestedindividuals as well as those who are considering conducting research at the intersections of endocrinology, neuroscience, and other areas of biomedicine, the study of sex differences offers exciting and challenging questions and perspectives. This book is intended as a guide and resource for clinicians, scientists, and students.

From the beginnings of industrial capitalism to contemporary disputes over evolution, nature has long been part of the public debate over the social good. As such, many natural scientists throughout American history have understood their work as a cultural activity contributing to social stability and their field as a powerful tool for enhancing the quality of American life. In the late Victorian era, interwar period, and post-war decades, massive social change, economic collapse and recovery, and the aftermath of war prompted natural scientists to offer up a civic-minded natural science concerned with the political well-being of American society. In Science and the Social Good, John P. Herron explores the evolving internal and external forces influencing the design and purpose of American natural science, by focusing on three representative scientists-geologist Clarence King, forester Robert Marshall, and biologist Rachel Carson-who purposefully considered the social outcomes of their work.
As comfortable in the royal courts of Europe as the remote field camps of the American West, Clarence King was the founding director of the U.S. Geological Survey, and used his standing to integrate science into late nineteenth century political debates about foreign policy, immigration, and social reform. In the mid-1930s, Robert Marshall founded the environmental advocacy group, The Wilderness Society, which transformed the face of natural preservation in America. Committed to social justice, Marshall blended forest ecology and pragmatic philosophy to craft a natural science ethic that extended the reach of science into political discussions about the restructuring of society prompted by urbanization and economic crisis. Rachel Carson deservedly gets credit for launching the modern environmental movement with her 1962 classic Silent Spring. She made a generation of Americans aware of the social costs inherent in the human manipulation of the natural world and used natural science to critique established institutions and offer an alternative vision of a healthy and diverse society. As King, Marshall, and Carson became increasingly wary of the social costs of industrialization, they used their scientific work to address problems of ecological and social imbalance. Even as science became professionalized and compartmentalized. these scientists worked to keep science relevant to broader intellectual debates.
John Herron offers a new take on King, Marshall, and especially Carson and their significance that emphasizes the importance of their work to environmental, political, and cultural affairs, while illuminating the broader impact of natural science on American culture.

This book takes a fresh look at understanding how financial markets behave. Using recent ideas from the highly-topical science of complexity and complex systems, the book provides the basis for a unified theoretical description of how today's markets really work. Since financial markets are an excellent example of a complex system, the book also doubles as a science textbook.

The pendulum is a unique physical system which exhibits remarkably varied and complex behavior under many different conditions. It is also a system which, in its many manifestations, has left a significant imprint on human thought and culture. Using graphs, figures, and narrative to explain scientific ideas and models, Gregory Baker gives a lucid account of the physics of the pendulum, showing the reader how the context of the pendulum progresses over four centuries from that of a simple system of classical physics, to that of a chaotic system, and eventually to that of a modern quantum system. He also describes its fascinating presence in cultural history, from its role in timekeeping and measurements of the earth to its importance as a literary symbol of doom.
Seven 'tales', detailing different important facets of the pendulum, show the exciting diversity of the science of the pendulum, and its untold significance in the history of human intellectual development.

In recent years, India's ''sacred groves,'' small forests or stands of trees set aside for a deity's exclusive use, have attracted the attention of NGOs, botanists, specialists in traditional medicine and anthropologists. Environmentalists disillusioned by the failures of massive state-sponsored solutions to ecological problems have hailed them as an exemplary form of traditional community resource management. For, in spite of pressures to utilize their trees for fodder, housing and firewood, the religious taboos surrounding sacred groves have led to the conservation of pockets of abundant flora in areas otherwise denuded by deforestation. Drawing on fieldwork conducted in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu over seven years, Eliza F. Kent offers a compelling examination of the religious and social context in which sacred groves take on meaning for the villagers who maintain them, and shows how they have become objects of fascination and hope for Indian environmentalists. Sacred Groves and Local Gods traces a journey through Tamil Nadu, exploring how the localized meanings attached to forested shrines are changing under the impact of globalization and economic liberalization. Confounding simplistic representations of sacred groves as sites of a primitive form of nature worship, the book shows how local practices and beliefs regarding sacred groves are at once more imaginative, dynamic, and pragmatic than previously thought. Kent argues that rather than being ancient in origin, as previously asserted by scholars, the religious beliefs, practices, and iconography found in sacred groves suggest origins in the politically de-centered eighteenth century, when the Tamil country was effectively ruled by local chieftains. She analyzes two projects undertaken by environmentalists that seek to harness the traditions surrounding sacred groves in the service of forest restoration and environmental education.

Conjugated polymers have important technological applications, including solar cells and light emitting devices. They are also active components in many important biological processes. In recent years there have been significant advances in our understanding of these systems, owing to both improved experimental measurements and the development of advanced computational techniques. The aim of this book is to describe and explain the electronic and optical properties of conjugated polymers. It focuses on the three key roles of electron-electron interactions, electron-nuclear coupling, and disorder in determining the character of the electronic states, and it relates these properties to experimental observations in real systems. A number of important optical and electronic processes in conjugated polymers are also described. The second edition has a more extended discussion of excitons in conjugated polymers. There is also a new chapter on the static and dynamical localization of excitons.

While politicians, entrepreneurs, and even school children could tell you that sustainability is an important and nearly universal value, many of them, and many of us, may struggle to define the term, let alone trace its history. What is sustainability? Is it always about the environment? What science do we need to fully grasp what it requires? What does sustainability mean for business? How can governments plan for a sustainable future? This short, accessible book written in the signature question-and-answer format of the What Everyone Needs to Know (R) series tackles these and numerous other questions. Sustainability is a porous topic, which has been adapted and reshaped for developing ecological models, improving corporate responsibility, setting environmental and land-use policies, organizing educational curricula, and reimagining the goals of governance and democracy. Where other treatments of this topic tend to focus on just one application of sustainability, this primer encompasses everything from global development and welfare to social justice and climate change. With chapters that discuss sustainability in the contexts of profitable businesses, environmental risks, scientific research, and the day-to-day business of local government, it gives readers a deep understanding of one of the most essential concepts of our time. Bringing to bear experience in natural resource conservation, agriculture, the food industry, and environmental ethics, authors Paul B. Thompson and Patricia E. Norris explain clearly what sustainability means, and why getting it right is so important for the future of our planet.

Observing Bioethics examines the history of bioethics as a discipline related not only to modern biology, medicine, and biotechnology, but also to the core values and beliefs of American society and its courts, legislatures, and media. The book is written from the perspective of two social scientists--a sociologist of medicine(Renee C. Fox) and a historian of medicine (Judith P. Swazey)--who have participated in bioethics since the emergence of this multidisciplinary field more than 30 years ago.
Fox and Swazey draw on first-hand observations and experiences in a variety of American bioethical settings; face-to-face interviews with first- and second-generation figures in the genesis and early unfolding of bioethics; a detailed examination of the theatrical media coverage of what was considered to be a banner event in the annals of bioethics (the creation and birth of the cloned sheep, Dolly); case studies of how bioethics has internationally developed; and a large corpus of primary documents and secondary source materials.
While recognizing the intellectual, moral, and sociological importance of American bioethics, Fox and Swazey are critical of its characteristics. Foremost among these are what they identify as the problems of thinking socially, culturally, and internationally in American bioethics; the 'tenuous interdisciplinarity' of the field; and the troubling extent to which the 'culture wars' have penetrated bioethics.
This book will appeal to a wide range of doctors, scientists, and academics who are involved in the history and sociology of bioethics.

This book discusses the study and analysis of the physical aspects of social systems and models, inspired by the analogy with familiar models of physical systems and possible applications of statistical physics tools. Unlike the traditional analysis of the physics of macroscopic many-body or condensed matter systems, which is now an established and mature subject, the upsurge in the physical analysis and modelling of social systems, which are clearly many-body dynamical systems, is a recent phenomenon. Though the major developments in sociophysics have taken place only recently, the earliest attempts of proposing "Social Physics" as a discipline are more than one and a half centuries old. Various developments in the mainstream physics of condensed matter systems have inspired and induced the recent growth of sociophysical analysis and models. In spite of the tremendous efforts of many scientists in recent years, the subject is still in its infancy and major challenges are yet to be taken up. An introduction to these challenges is the main motivation for this book.

This book describes the basic concepts of various physical phenomena in semiconductors and their modulated structures under high magnetic fields. The topics cover magneto-transport phenomena, cyclotron resonance, far-infrared spectroscopy, magneto-optical spectroscopy, diluted magnetic semiconductors in high magnetic fields, as well as the recent advances in the experimental techniques needed for high field experiments. Starting from the introductory part describing the basic theoretical background, each chapter introduces typical experimental data which were actually obtained in very high magnetic fields mostly in the pulsed field range up to several megagauss (20-100T). The book has both the character of a textbook and a monograph. For researchers and students with an interest in semiconductor physics or in high magnetic fields, it will serve as a useful guide.

For the calculus-based General Physics course primarily taken by engineers and science majors (including physics majors). This long-awaited and extensive revision maintains Giancoli's reputation for creating carefully crafted, highly accurate and precise physics texts. Physics for Scientists and Engineers combines outstanding pedagogy with a clear and direct narrative and applications that draw the student into the physics. The new edition also features an unrivaled suite of media and on-line resources that enhance the understanding of physics. This book is written for students. It aims to explain physics in a readable and interesting manner that is accessible and clear, and to teach students by anticipating their needs and difficulties without oversimplifying. Physics is a description of reality, and thus each topic begins with concrete observations and experiences that students can directly relate to. We then move on to the generalizations and more formal treatment of the topic. Not only does this make the material more interesting and easier to understand, but it is closer to the way physics is actually practiced.

For the calculus-based General Physics course primarily taken by engineers and science majors (including physics majors). This long-awaited and extensive revision maintains Giancoli's reputation for creating carefully crafted, highly accurate and precise physics texts. Physics for Scientists and Engineers combines outstanding pedagogy with a clear and direct narrative and applications that draw the student into the physics. The new edition also features an unrivaled suite of media and on-line resources that enhance the understanding of physics. This book is written for students. It aims to explain physics in a readable and interesting manner that is accessible and clear, and to teach students by anticipating their needs and difficulties without oversimplifying. Physics is a description of reality, and thus each topic begins with concrete observations and experiences that students can directly relate to. We then move on to the generalizations and more formal treatment of the topic. Not only does this make the material more interesting and easier to understand, but it is closer to the way physics is actually practiced.

In recent decades there has been an explosion in work in the social and physical sciences describing the similarities between human and nonhuman as well as human and non-animal thinking. This work has explicitly decentered the brain as the sole, self-contained space of thought, and it has found thinking to be an activity that operates not only across bodies but also across bodily or cellular membranes, as well as multifaceted organic and inorganic environments. For example, researchers have looked at the replication and spread of slime molds (playfully asking what would happen if they colonized the earth) to suggest that they exhibit 'smart behavior' in the way they move as a potential way of considering the spread of disease across the globe. Other scholars have applied this model of non-human thought to the reach of data mining and global surveillance. In The Biopolitics of Alphabets and Embryos, Ruth Miller argues that these types of phenomena are also useful models for thinking about the growth, reproduction, and spread of political thought and democratic processes. Giving slime, data and unbounded entities their political dues, Miller stresses their thinking power and political significance and thus challenges the anthropocentrism of mainstream democratic theories. Miller emphasizes the non-human as highly organized, systemic and productive of democratic growth and replication. She examines developments such as global surveillance, embryonic stem cell research, and cloning, which have been characterized as threats to the privacy, dignity, and integrity of the rational, maximizing and freedom-loving democratic citizen. By shifting her level of analysis from the politics of self-determining subjects to the realm of material environments and information systems, Miller asks what might happen if these alternative, nonhuman thought processes become the normative thought processes of democratic engagement.

Chemometrics and Chemoinformatics gives chemists and other scientists an introduction to the field of chemometrics and chemoinformatics. Chemometrics is an approach to analytical chemistry based on the idea of indirect observation. Measurements related to the chemical composition of a substance are taken, and the value of a property of interest is inferred from them through some mathematical relation. Basically, chemometrics is a process. Measurements are made, data is collected, and information is obtained to periodically assess and acquire knowledge. This, in turn, has led to a new approach for solving scientific problems: (1) measure a phenomenon or process using chemical instrumentation that generates data inexpensively, (2) analyze the multivariate data, (3) iterate if necessary, (4) create and test the model, and (5) develop fundamental multivariate understanding of the process. Chemoinformatics is a subfield of chemometrics, which encompasses the analysis, visualization, and use of chemical structural information as a surrogate variable for other data or information. The boundaries of chemoinformatics have not yet been defined. Only recently has this term been coined. Chemoinformatics takes advantage of techniques from many disciplines such as molecular modeling, chemical information, and computational chemistry. The reason for the interest in chemoinformatics is the development of experimental techniques such as combinatorial chemistry and high-throughput screening, which require a chemist to analyze unprecedented volumes of data. Access to appropriate algorithms is crucial if such experimental techniques are to be effectively exploited for discovery. Many chemists want to use chemoinformatic methods in their work but lack the knowledge required to decide which techniques are the most appropriate.

Three-fourths of scientific research in the United States is funded by special interests. Many of these groups have specific practical goals, such as developing pharmaceuticals or establishing that a pollutant causes only minimal harm. For groups with financial conflicts of interest, their scientific findings often can be deeply flawed.
To uncover and assess these scientific flaws, award-winning biologist and philosopher of science Kristin Shrader-Frechette uses the analytical tools of classic philosophy of science. She identifies and evaluates the concepts, data, inferences, methods, models, and conclusions of science tainted by the influence of special interests. As a result, she challenges accepted scientific findings regarding risks such as chemical toxins and carcinogens, ionizing radiation, pesticides, hazardous-waste disposal, development of environmentally sensitive lands, threats to endangered species, and less-protective standards for workplace-pollution exposure. In so doing, she dissects the science on which many contemporary scientific controversies turn. Demonstrating and advocating "liberation science," she shows how practical, logical, methodological, and ethical evaluations of science can both improve its quality and credibility -- and protect people from harm caused by flawed science, such as underestimates of cancers caused by bovine growth hormones, cell phones, fracking, or high-voltage wires.
This book is both an in-depth look at the unreliable scientific findings at the root of contemporary debates in biochemistry, ecology, economics, hydrogeology, physics, and zoology -- and a call to action for scientists, philosophers of science, and all citizens.

Tools of Chemistry Education Research meets the current need for information on more in-depth resources for those interested in doing chemistry education research. Renowned chemists Diane M. Bunce and Renee S. Cole present this volume as a continuation of the dialogue started in their previous work, Nuts and Bolts of Chemical Education Research. With both volumes, new and experienced researchers will now have a place to start as they consider new research projects in chemistry education. Tools of Chemistry Education Research brings together a group of talented researchers to share their insights and expertise with the broader community. The volume features the contributions of both early career and more established chemistry education researchers, so as to promote the growth and expansion of chemistry education. Drawing on the expertise and insights of junior faculty and more experienced researchers, each author offers unique insights that promise to benefit other practitioners in chemistry education research.

Professor Atiyah is one of the greatest living mathematicians and is well known throughout the mathematical world. He is a recipient of the Fields Medal, the mathematical equivalent of the Nobel Prize, and is still at the peak of his career. His huge number of published papers, focusing on the areas of algebraic geometry and topology, have here been collected into six volumes, divided thematically for easy reference by individuals interested in a particular subject. From 1977 onwards his interest moved in the direction of gauge theories and the interaction between geometry and physics.

Current Legal Issues, like its sister volume Current Legal Problems, is based upon an annual colloquium held at University College London. Each year, leading scholars from around the world gather to discuss the relationship between law and another discipline of thought. Each colloquium examines how the external discipline is conceived in legal thought and argument, how the law is pictured in that discipline, and analyses points of controversy in the use, and abuse, of extra-legal arguments within legal theory and practice.
Law and Bioethics, the latest volume in the Current Legal Issues series, contains a broad range of essays by scholars interested in the interactions between law and bioethics. It includes studies examining the regulation of stem cell research, human rights and bioethics, the regulation of reproductive technologies, and distributive justice in healthcare and pandemic planning.

For thousands of years, one scientific puzzle has fascinated and perplexed the greatest philosophers, mathematicians, physicists, and psychologists - why do the moon and sun appear so much larger on the horizon than when high up in the sky? Now, two leading psychologists have provided a compelling account of this fascinating illusion. Taking us through the history, the characters involved, the attempts made to explain the illusion, through to modern day studies of visual perception, the book is the most comprehensive account of this puzzle so far. This is a work which will remain, for some time to come, the definitive book on a mystery that has fascinated and tested the greatest minds throughout the ages. Accessibly written, it will appeal to readers of popular science, along with those within the disciplines of psychology, mathematics, astronomy, and philosophy, from undergraduate upwards.

The Motoneurone and its Muscle Fibres presents a state-of-the-art summary of knowledge concerning the motoneurones, vital for innervating and commanding skeletal muscles. No muscle action would be possible without motoneurones. These cells are therefore absolutely essential for the execution of normal behaviour and for life support. It is their degeneration that leads to various kinds of motoneurone disease (e.g. ALS) that are often ultimately lethal. However, the study of motoneurones is also important for general insights as to how neurones work, because the motoneurone is probably the best understood kind of nerve cell so far in neuroscience. Motoneurones of the spinal cord were the first type of central nerve cell to be subjected to detailed physiological measurements, and much is known about how their activity is regulated by synapses from other central neurones. For most of the individual neurones within the central nervous system, the precise functional tasks are difficult to define. However, for motoneurones much is now known about their short- and long-term interactions with their main targets, the skeletal muscle fibres. Functions of neurones must be analyzed in relation to the response properties of their target cells. Therefore, this book deals with both, summarizing classical as well as recent knowledge concerning the motoneurone and its muscle fibres. This is the first time that so many aspects of this broad subject matter are treated in one comprehensive monograph.