Trees have played countless roles in human history - by turns hopeful symbols of freedom, pioneering space travellers, keepers of ancient history and accessories to murder. From art to politics, science to crime, these are the stories of the trees that have shaped life on Earth. Neurobiologist and philosopher Stefano Mancuso brings his signature charm and eye for unforgettable detail to tell eight stories of trees that have rooted themselves in human history - from the red spruces that were made into Stradivarius' violins to the wooden ladder that solved 'The Crime of the Century'. Combining scientific vigour with his inimitable voice, Mancuso reveals the amazing ways that the world's green-print has shaped the course of our lives, issuing a passionate rallying cry for greater care and attention towards the plants that have helped us survive and thrive.

It was the middle of the nineteenth century when Lafanu Brown audaciously decided to become an artist. In the wake of the American Civil War, life was especially tough for Black women, but she didn't let that stop her. The daughter of a Native American woman and an African-Haitian man, Lafanu had the rare opportunity to study, travel, and follow her dreams, thanks to her indomitable spirit, but not without facing intolerance and violence. Now, in 1887, living in Rome as one of the city's most established painters, she is ready to tell her fiance about her difficult life, which began in a poor family forty years earlier. In 2019, an Italian art curator of Somali origin is desperately trying to bring to Europe her younger cousin, who is only sixteen and has already tried to reach Italy on a long, treacherous journey. While organizing an art exhibition that will combine the paintings of Lafanu Brown with the artworks of young migrants, the curator becomes more and more obsessed with the life and secrets of the nineteenth-century painter.Weaving together these two vibrant voices, Igiaba Scego has crafted a powerful exploration of what it means to be "other," to be a woman, and particularly a Black woman, in a foreign country, yesterday and today.

Glory (La gloria) is Giuseppe Berto’s testamentary novel. The first-person narration of the Gospel in the voice of Judas Iscariot constitutes Berto’s closing argument in a life-long debate with Christianity. His interpretation of the gospel story is certainly unconventional, even oppositional. Rather than a rejection of the Christian faith in which he was raised and educated, however, Berto fashions an alternative account to the four canonical gospels that ultimately constructs a competing view of the human condition and of humanity’s prospects for redemption. In Berto’s parodic rendition of the Christian gospel, Judas, after a lifetime of tormented interrogation, decides to embrace the ambiguity of the human condition, which is, as he describes it, a liminal existence played out over a long and trying transition of unknown and unknowable duration, between the original paradise of the Garden of Eden and the final redemption at the end of days—a period otherwise known as history.       

Glory (La gloria) is Giuseppe Berto’s testamentary novel. The first-person narration of the Gospel in the voice of Judas Iscariot constitutes Berto’s closing argument in a life-long debate with Christianity. His interpretation of the gospel story is certainly unconventional, even oppositional. Rather than a rejection of the Christian faith in which he was raised and educated, however, Berto fashions an alternative account to the four canonical gospels that ultimately constructs a competing view of the human condition and of humanity’s prospects for redemption. In Berto’s parodic rendition of the Christian gospel, Judas, after a lifetime of tormented interrogation, decides to embrace the ambiguity of the human condition, which is, as he describes it, a liminal existence played out over a long and trying transition of unknown and unknowable duration, between the original paradise of the Garden of Eden and the final redemption at the end of days—a period otherwise known as history.       

As plants see it, humans are not the masters of the Earth but only one of its most unpleasant and irksome residents. They have been on the planet for only about 300,000 years ago (nothing compared to the three billon years of plant evolution), yet have changed the conditions of the planet so drastically as to make it a dangerous place for their own survival. It's time for the plants to offer advice. In this playful, philosophical manifesto, Stefano Mancuso, expert on plant intelligence, presents a new constitution on which to build our future as beings respectful of the Earth and its inhabitants. These eight articles - the fundamental pillars on which plant life is based - must henceforth regulate all living beings.

Trees have played countless roles in human history - by turns hopeful symbols of freedom, pioneering space travellers, keepers of ancient history and accessories to murder. From art to politics, science to crime, these are the stories of the trees that have shaped life on Earth. Neurobiologist and philosopher Stefano Mancuso brings his signature charm and eye for unforgettable detail to tell eight stories of trees that have rooted themselves in human history - from the red spruces that were made into Stradivarius' violins to the wooden ladder that solved 'The Crime of the Century'. Combining scientific vigour with his inimitable voice, Mancuso reveals the amazing ways that the world's green-print has shaped the course of our lives, issuing a passionate rallying cry for greater care and attention towards the plants that have helped us survive and thrive.

THE MYTHS SURROUNDING THE WORLD'S FAVOURITE DISH, DEBUNKED Did Marco Polo bring pasta back from China, or is that a myth? How did the Neapolitan "macharoni" turn into the ubiquitous spaghetti? Is it even an Italian dish? Hundreds of shapes and thousands of recipes give expression to the culture and products of the country's regions. But spaghetti with tomato sauce remains Italy's identity dish par excellence. Massimo Montanari goes in search of the dish's true origins, tracing its history along the multiple, intricate routes taken by its raw ingredients to merge and become a distinctive element of culinary tradition. It took almost two thousand years and input from the Far East, the Arabic world, and the Americas, for the dish to take centre stage. Its development is the result of chance encounters, unplanned exchanges, and unpredictable intersections. As we dig in search of spaghetti's origins, we find its strands wrap right around the world. "Learned and entertaining."-Il Giornale

Heir to the FIBA button factory in Lombardy, Augustus is profiting from Italy’s postwar industrial boom. Yet the dreamy young man is far from your stereotypical industrialist. He is less interested in making money than in talking to the birds in the surrounding garden and in making love to a beautiful factory worker named Palmira. But when the money-hungry Palmira schemes to have him institutionalized, Augustus finds a new love among his fellow mental patients: flute-playing flower child Serafina. Can Augustus and Serafina find a way to break free and express their love of each other and of nature in this crazy world?    Newly translated into English, Giuseppe Berto’s charming 1973 novel Oh, Serafina! was one of the first works of Italian literature to deal with ecological themes while also questioning the destructive effects of industrial capitalism, the many forms spirituality might take, and the ways our society defines madness. This translation includes a foreword from literary scholar Matteo Gilebbi that provides biographical, historical, and philosophical context for appreciating this whimsical fable of ecology, lunacy, and love.   

Networked computers are ubiquitous, and are subject to attack, misuse, and abuse. One method to counteracting this cyber threat is to provide security analysts with better tools to discover patterns, detect anomalies, identify correlations, and communicate their findings. Visualization for computer security (VizSec) researchers and developers are doing just that. VizSec is about putting robust information visualization tools into the hands of human analysts to take advantage of the power of the human perceptual and cognitive processes in solving computer security problems. This volume collects the papers presented at the 4th International Workshop on Computer Security - VizSec 2007.

This volumecontains the paperspresented at VizSec 2008, the 5th International Workshop on Visualization for Cyber Security, held on September 15, 2008 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. VizSec 2008 was held in conjunction with the 11thInternationalSymposiumonRecentAdvancesinIntrusionDetection(RAID). There were 27 submissions to the long and short paper categories. Each submission was reviewed by at least 2 reviewers and, on average, 2.9 program committee members. The program committee decided to accept 18 papers. The program also included an invited talk and a panel. The keynote address was given by Ben Shneiderman, University of Maryland at College Park, on the topic InformationForensics: HarnessingVisualizationto SupportDiscovery.The panel, on the topic The Need for Applied Visualization in Information Security Today, wasorganizedandmoderatedbyTobyKohlenbergfromIntelCorporation. July 2008 John R. Goodall Conference Organization Program Chairs John R. Goodall Secure Decisions division of Applied Visions Gregory Conti United States Military Academy Kwan-Liu Ma University of California at Davis Program Committee Stefan Axelsson Blekinge Institute of Technology Richard Bejtlich General Electric Kris Cook Paci?c Northwest National Laboratory David Ebert Purdue University Robert Erbacher Utah State University Deborah Frincke Paci?c Northwest National Laboratory Carrie Gates CA Labs John Gerth Stanford University Barry Irwin Rhodes University Daniel Keim University of Konstanz Toby Kohlenberg Intel Corporation Stuart Kurkowski Air Force Institute of Technology Kiran Lakkaraju University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Ra?ael Marty Splunk Douglas Maughan Department of Homeland Security John McHugh Dalhousie University Penny Rheingans UMBC Lawrence Rosenblum National Science Foundation George Tadda Air Force Research Lab Daniel Tesone Applied Visions Alfonso Valdes SRI Internatio

An award-winning writer travels the eastern front of Europe, where the push/pull between old empires and new possibilities has never been more evident. Paolo Rumiz traces the path that has twice cut Europe in two-first by the Iron Curtain and then by the artificial scaffolding of the EU-moving through vibrant cities and abandoned villages, some places still gloomy under the ghost of these imposing borders, some that have sought to erase all memory of it and jump with both feet into the West (if only the West would have them). In The Fault Line, he is a sublime and lively guide through these unfamiliar landscapes, piecing together an atlas that has been erased by modern states, delighting in the discovery of communities that were once engulfed by geopolitics then all but forgotten, until now. The farther south he goes, the more he feels he is traveling not along some abandoned Eastern frontier, but right in the middle of things: Mitteleuropa wasn't to be found in Viennese cafes but much farther east, beyond even Budapest and Warsaw. As in Ukraine, these remain places in flux, where the political and cultural values of the East and West have stared each other down for centuries. Rumiz gives a human face not just to what the Cold War left behind but to the ancient ties of empire and ethnicity that are still at the root of modern politics in flash-point areas such as this.

The fascinating stories behind the essential seven units of measurement that allow us to understand the physical world   “Entertaining popular science and a literate tale of why things are as they are.�—Kirkus Reviews   From the beginning of history, measurement has been interwoven into the human experience, shaping our understanding of nature, personal relationships, and the supernatural. We measure the world to know our past, comprehend the present, and plan the future.   Renowned physicist Piero Martin explores how scientific knowledge is built around seven key pillars of measurement: the meter for length; the second for time; the kilogram for mass; the kelvin for temperature; the ampere for electricity; the mole for quantity of substance; and the candela for luminous intensity. Martin examines the history and function of these units and illustrates their applications in rich vignettes on a range of topics—from quarks to black holes, from a glass of wine to space exploration. He delves into not only the all-important numbers but also anecdotes that underline each unit’s special quality. At the same time, he explains how each unit contributes to important aspects of science, from classical physics to quantum mechanics, from relativity to chemistry, from cosmology to elementary particle physics, and from medicine to modern technology. Martin eloquently shows how the entire universe can be measured and understood using just seven units.

The notion of 'representative democracy' seems unquestionably familiar today, but how did the Victorian era - the epoch when the modern democratic state was made - understand democracy, parliamentary representation, and diversity? In the famous nineteenth-century debates about representation and parliamentary reform, two interlocked ideals were of the greatest importance: descriptive representation, that the House of Commons 'mirror' the diversity that marked society, and deliberation within the legislative assembly. These ideals presented a major obstacle to the acceptance of a democratic suffrage, which it was widely feared would produce an unrepresentative and un-deliberative House of Commons. Here, Gregory Conti examines how the Victorians conceived the representative and deliberative functions of the House of Commons and what it meant for parliament to be the 'mirror of the nation'. Combining historical analysis and political theory, he analyses the fascinating nineteenth-century debates among contending schools of thought over the norms and institutions of deliberative representative government, and explores the consequences of recovering this debate.

What are the limits to parliamentary sovereignty? When should the people be able to vote directly on issues? The constitutional theorist Albert Venn Dicey (1835-1922) was a cogent advocate of the referendum. While his enthusiasm for the institution was widely acknowledged in his own day, thereafter this dimension of his career has been largely neglected. This fall into obscurity is partly explained by the fact that Dicey never collected his writings on referendums into a single volume. Consequently, when the prolonged constitutional crisis over Brexit brought references to Dicey beyond the province of academic law and into public debate, the invocation of his legacy was less than satisfactory. This timely modern edition brings together Dicey's sophisticated and intricate writings on the referendum, and it covers his attempts to construct a credible theory of democracy on a new intellectual and institutional basis. An original scholarly introduction analyzes Dicey's thought in light of its contemporary context.

Taking its place alongside works by Ernst Junger, Robert Graves, and Erich Maria Remarque, Emilio Lussu's memoir is one of the most affecting accounts to come out of the First World War. A classic in Italy but virtually unknown in the English-speaking world, it reveals, in spare and detached prose, the almost farcical side of the war as seen by a Sardinian officer fighting the Austrian army on the Asiago plateau in northeastern Italy, the front so poignantly evoked by Ernest Hemingway in A Farewell to Arms. For Lussu, June 1916 to July 1917 was a year of continuous assaults on impregnable trenches, absurd missions concocted by commanders full of patriotic rhetoric and vanity but lacking in tactical skill, and episodes often tragic and sometimes grotesque, where the incompetence of his own side was as dangerous as the attacked waged by the enemy. A rare firsthand account of the Italian front, Lussu's memoir succeeds in staging a fierce indictment of the futility of war in a dry, often ironic style that sets his tale wholly apart from the Western Front of Remarque, and adds an astonishingly modern voice to the literature of the Great War.

Networked computers are ubiquitous, and are subject to attack, misuse, and abuse. One method to counteracting this cyber threat is to provide security analysts with better tools to discover patterns, detect anomalies, identify correlations, and communicate their findings. Visualization for computer security (VizSec) researchers and developers are doing just that. VizSec is about putting robust information visualization tools into the hands of human analysts to take advantage of the power of the human perceptual and cognitive processes in solving computer security problems. This volume collects the papers presented at the 4th International Workshop on Computer Security - VizSec 2007.