bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
American Hegemony and the Postwar Reconstruction of Science in Europe
Authors: Krige John
Published: December 2018

In 1945, the United States was not only the strongest economic and military power in the world; it was also the world's leader in science and technology. In American Hegemony and the Postwar Reconstruction of Science in Europe, John Krige describes the efforts of influential figures in the United States to model postwar scientific practices and institutions in Western Europe on those in America. They mobilized political and financial support to promote not just America's scientific and technological agendas in Western Europe but its Cold War political and ideological agendas as well.

Drawing on the work of diplomatic and cultural historians, Krige argues that this attempt at scientific dominance by the United States can be seen as a form of "consensual hegemony," involving the collaboration of influential local elites who shared American values. He uses this notion to analyze a series of case studies that describe how the U.S. administration, senior officers in the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations, the NATO Science Committee, and influential members of the scientific establishment—notably Isidor I. Rabi of Columbia University and Vannevar Bush of MIT—tried to Americanize scientific practices in such fields as physics, molecular biology, and operations research. He details U.S. support for institutions including CERN, the Niels Bohr Institute, the French CNRS and its laboratories at Gif near Paris, and the never-established "European MIT." Krige's study shows how consensual hegemony in science not only served the interests of postwar European reconstruction but became another way of maintaining American leadership and "making the world safe for democracy."
Brain and Culture
Authors: Wexler Bruce E.
Published: December 2018

Research shows that between birth and early adulthood the brain requires sensory stimulation to develop physically. The nature of the stimulation shapes the connections among neurons that create the neuronal networks necessary for thought and behavior. By changing the cultural environment, each generation shapes the brains of the next. By early adulthood, the neuroplasticity of the brain is greatly reduced, and this leads to a fundamental shift in the relationship between the individual and the environment: during the first part of life, the brain and mind shape themselves to the major recurring features of their environment; by early adulthood, the individual attempts to make the environment conform to the established internal structures of the brain and mind. In Brain and Culture, Bruce Wexler explores the social implications of the close and changing neurobiological relationship between the individual and the environment, with particular attention to the difficulties individuals face in adulthood when the environment changes beyond their ability to maintain the fit between existing internal structure and external reality. These difficulties are evident in bereavement, the meeting of different cultures, the experience of immigrants (in which children of immigrant families are more successful than their parents at the necessary internal transformations), and the phenomenon of interethnic violence. Integrating recent neurobiological research with major experimental findings in cognitive and developmental psychology—with illuminating references to psychoanalysis, literature, anthropology, history, and politics—Wexler presents a wealth of detail to support his arguments. The groundbreaking connections he makes allow for reconceptualization of the effect of cultural change on the brain and provide a new biological base from which to consider such social issues as "culture wars" and ethnic violence.

Bradford Books imprint
Building IBM
Authors: Pugh Emerson W.
Published: December 2018

No company of the twentieth century achieved greater success and engendered more admiration, respect, envy, fear, and hatred than IBM. Building IBM tells the story of that company—how it was formed, how it grew, and how it shaped and dominated the information processing industry. Emerson Pugh presents substantial new material about the company in the period before 1945 as well as a new interpretation of the postwar era.Granted unrestricted access to IBM's archival records and with no constraints on the way he chose to treat the information they contained, Pugh dispels many widely held myths about IBM and its leaders and provides new insights on the origins and development of the computer industry.Pugh begins the story with Herman Hollerith's invention of punched-card machines used for tabulating the U.S. Census of 1890, showing how Hollerith's inventions and the business he established provided the primary basis for IBM. He tells why Hollerith merged his company in 1911 with two other companies to create the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company, which changed its name in 1924 to International Business Machines. Thomas J. Watson, who was hired in 1914 to manage the merged companies, exhibited remarkable technological insight and leadership—in addition to his widely heralded salesmanship—to build Hollerith's business into a virtual monopoly of the rapidly growing punched-card equipment business. The fascinating inside story of the transfer of authority from the senior Watson to his older son, Thomas J. Watson Jr., and the company's rapid domination of the computer industry occupy the latter half of the book. In two final chapters, Pugh examines conditions and events of the 1970s and 1980s and identifies the underlying causes of the severe probems IBM experienced in the 1990s.
Can We Afford to Grow Older?
Authors: Disney Richard
Published: December 2018

The United States Social Security fund is huge and in trouble. The United Kingdom has experimented with the voluntary contracting out of pensions to the private sector. Chile has privatized its public pension system. Australia has adopted a means-tested public pension system. Japan has the earliest retirement age of any advanced economy; it also has the highest rate of labor force participation by elderly men. Can We Afford to Grow Older? provides a comprehensive, up-to-date survey of the implications of population aging in these and other OECD countries relative to a range of specific interrelated issues—Social Security schemes, employer pensions, educational attainment, wage growth and distribution, economic productivity, consumption, savings, retirement, and health care—all within a realistic framework for modeling and discussing policy. International in scope, filled with rich institutional detail, and built on a solid technical foundation, this will be a standard reference on the economic consequences of aging. Richard Disney adopts a "life-cycle" view of the world which recognizes that individuals often make plans with a forward-looking perspective across the stages of childhood, the peak of economic productivity, and retirement. He stresses the existence of overlapping generations and the reality of generational transactions (which include tax and transfer systems, bequests, and charity to the elderly). And he assumes intertemporal optimization as a useful unifying basis for analyzing social security, private pension schemes, lifetime labor-supply decisions, consumption, and saving. Among the surprising conclusions that emerge is that there is no "crisis of aging"—no adverse effect of aging on productivity. And although there are serious crises in pay-as-you-go social insurance programs and in health care, these have little to do with aging. Moreover, the shift in private provision plans away from traditional defined- benefit plans will continue, along with an interest in privatized pensions instead of social security.
China Shifts Gears
Authors: Gallagher Kelly Sims
Published: December 2018

Chinese production of automobiles rose from 42,000 cars per year in 1990 to 2.3 million in 2004; the number of passenger vehicles on the road doubled every two and a half years through the 1990s and continues to grow. In China Shifts Gears, Kelly Sims Gallagher identifies an unprecedented opportunity for China to "shift gears" and avoid the usual problems associated with the automobile industry—including urban air pollution caused by tailpipe emissions, greenhouse gas emissions, and high dependence on oil imports—while spurring economic development. This transformation will only take place if the Chinese government plays a leadership role in building domestic technological capacity and pushing foreign automakers to transfer cleaner and more energy-efficient technologies to China. If every new car sold in China had the cleanest and most energy-efficient of the automotive technologies already available, urban air pollution could be minimized, emissions of climate-altering greenhouse gases would be lower than projected, and the Chinese auto industry would continue to flourish and contribute to China's steady economic development. But so far, Gallagher finds, the opportunity to shift gears has been missed.

Gallagher looks in detail at three U.S.-Chinese joint ventures: Beijing Jeep, Shanghai GM, and Chang'An Ford. These case studies are based on original research, including interviews with 90 government officials, industry representatives, and experts in both countries. Drawing from the case studies, Gallagher explores the larger issues of the environmental and economic effects of technology transfer in the automobile industry and the policy implications of "leapfrogging" to more advanced technology.
Circuit Complexity and Neural Networks
Authors: Parberry Ian , Garey Michael R. , Meyer Albert
Published: December 2018

Neural networks usually work adequately on small problems but can run into trouble when they are scaled up to problems involving large amounts of input data. Circuit Complexity and Neural Networks addresses the important question of how well neural networks scale - that is, how fast the computation time and number of neurons grow as the problem size increases. It surveys recent research in circuit complexity (a robust branch of theoretical computer science) and applies this work to a theoretical understanding of the problem of scalability. Most research in neural networks focuses on learning, yet it is important to understand the physical limitations of the network before the resources needed to solve a certain problem can be calculated. One of the aims of this book is to compare the complexity of neural networks and the complexity of conventional computers, looking at the computational ability and resources (neurons and time) that are a necessary part of the foundations of neural network learning. Circuit Complexity and Neural Networks contains a significant amount of background material on conventional complexity theory that will enable neural network scientists to learn about how complexity theory applies to their discipline, and allow complexity theorists to see how their discipline applies to neural networks.
Consciousness, Color, and Content
Authors: Tye Michael
Published: December 2018

Experiences and feelings are inherently conscious states. There is something it is like to feel pain, to have an itch, to experience bright red. Philosophers call this sort of consciousness "phenomenal consciousness." Even though phenomenal consciousness seems to be a relatively primitive matter, something more widespread in nature than higher-order or reflective consciousness, it is deeply puzzling.

In 1995 Michael Tye proposed a theory of phenomenal consciousness now known as representationalism. This book is, in part, devoted to a further development of that theory along with replies to common objections. Tye's focus is broader than representationalism, however. Two prominent challenges for any reductive theory of consciousness are the explanatory gap and the knowledge argument. In part I of this book, Tye suggests that these challenges are intimately related. The best strategy for dealing with the explanatory gap, he claims, is to consider it a kind of cognitive illusion. Part II of the book is devoted to representationalism. Part III connects representationalism with two more general issues. The first is the nature of color. Tye defends a commonsense, objectivist view of color and argues that such a view is compatible with modern color science. In the final chapter, Tye addresses the question of where on the phylogenetic scale phenomenal consciousness ceases, arguing that consciousness extends beyond the realm of vertebrates to such relatively simple creatures as the honeybee.

Bradford Books imprint
Designing Sociable Robots
Authors: Breazeal Cynthia
Published: December 2018

Cynthia Breazeal here presents her vision of the sociable robot of the future, a synthetic creature and not merely a sophisticated tool. A sociable robot will be able to understand us, to communicate and interact with us, to learn from us and grow with us. It will be socially intelligent in a humanlike way. Eventually sociable robots will assist us in our daily lives, as collaborators and companions. Because the most successful sociable robots will share our social characteristics, the effort to make sociable robots is also a means for exploring human social intelligence and even what it means to be human.

Breazeal defines the key components of social intelligence for these machines and offers a framework and set of design issues for their realization. Much of the book focuses on a nascent sociable robot she designed named Kismet. Breazeal offers a concrete implementation for Kismet, incorporating insights from the scientific study of animals and people, as well as from artistic disciplines such as classical animation. This blending of science, engineering, and art creates a lifelike quality that encourages people to treat Kismet as a social creature rather than just a machine. The book includes a CD-ROM that shows Kismet in action.

Bradford Books imprint
Digital Libraries
Authors: Arms William Y.
Published: December 2018

The emergence of the Internet and the wide availability of affordable computing equipment have created tremendous interest in digital libraries and electronic publishing. This book is the first to provide an integrated overview of the field, including a historical perspective, the state of the art, and current research. The term "digital libraries" covers the creation and distribution of all types of information over networks, ranging from converted historical materials to kinds of information that have no analogues in the physical world. In some ways digital libraries and traditional libraries are very different, yet in other ways they are remarkably similar. People still create information that has to be organized, stored, and distributed, and they still need to find and use information that others have created. An underlying theme of this book is that no aspect of digital libraries can be understood in isolation or without attention to the needs of the people who create and use information. Although the book covers a wide range of technical, economic, social, and organizational topics, the focus is on the actual working components of a digital library.
Dynamical Systems in Neuroscience
Authors: Izhikevich Eugene M.
Published: December 2018

Explains the relationship of electrophysiology, nonlinear dynamics, and the computational properties of neurons, with each concept presented in terms of both neuroscience and mathematics and illustrated using geometrical intuition.

In order to model neuronal behavior or to interpret the results of modeling studies, neuroscientists must call upon methods of nonlinear dynamics. This book offers an introduction to nonlinear dynamical systems theory for researchers and graduate students in neuroscience. It also provides an overview of neuroscience for mathematicians who want to learn the basic facts of electrophysiology.

Dynamical Systems in Neuroscience presents a systematic study of the relationship of electrophysiology, nonlinear dynamics, and computational properties of neurons. It emphasizes that information processing in the brain depends not only on the electrophysiological properties of neurons but also on their dynamical properties. The book introduces dynamical systems, starting with one- and two-dimensional Hodgkin-Huxley-type models and continuing to a description of bursting systems. Each chapter proceeds from the simple to the complex, and provides sample problems at the end. The book explains all necessary mathematical concepts using geometrical intuition; it includes many figures and few equations, making it especially suitable for non-mathematicians. Each concept is presented in terms of both neuroscience and mathematics, providing a link between the two disciplines.

Nonlinear dynamical systems theory is at the core of computational neuroscience research, but it is not a standard part of the graduate neuroscience curriculum—or taught by math or physics department in a way that is suitable for students of biology. This book offers neuroscience students and researchers a comprehensive account of concepts and methods increasingly used in computational neuroscience.

An additional chapter on synchronization, with more advanced material, can be found at the author's website, www.izhikevich.com.
From Molecule to Metaphor
Authors: Feldman Jerome
Published: December 2018

In From Molecule to Metaphor, Jerome Feldman proposes a theory of language and thought that treats language not as an abstract symbol system but as a human biological ability that can be studied as a function of the brain, as vision and motor control are studied. This theory, he writes, is a "bridging theory" that works from extensive knowledge at two ends of a causal chain to explicate the links between. Although the cognitive sciences are revealing much about how our brains produce language and thought, we do not yet know exactly how words are understood or have any methodology for finding out. Feldman develops his theory in computer simulations—formal models that suggest ways that language and thought may be realized in the brain. Combining key findings and theories from biology, computer science, linguistics, and psychology, Feldman synthesizes a theory by exhibiting programs that demonstrate the required behavior while remaining consistent with the findings from all disciplines.

After presenting the essential results on language, learning, neural computation, the biology of neurons and neural circuits, and the mind/brain, Feldman introduces specific demonstrations and formal models of such topics as how children learn their first words, words for abstract and metaphorical concepts, understanding stories, and grammar (including "hot-button" issues surrounding the innateness of human grammar). With this accessible, comprehensive book Feldman offers readers who want to understand how our brains create thought and language a theory of language that is intuitively plausible and also consistent with existing scientific data at all levels.

Bradford Books imprint
Gaussian Processes for Machine Learning
Authors: Rasmussen Carl Edward , Williams Christopher K. I.
Published: December 2018

A comprehensive and self-contained introduction to Gaussian processes, which provide a principled, practical, probabilistic approach to learning in kernel machines.

Gaussian processes (GPs) provide a principled, practical, probabilistic approach to learning in kernel machines. GPs have received increased attention in the machine-learning community over the past decade, and this book provides a long-needed systematic and unified treatment of theoretical and practical aspects of GPs in machine learning. The treatment is comprehensive and self-contained, targeted at researchers and students in machine learning and applied statistics. The book deals with the supervised-learning problem for both regression and classification, and includes detailed algorithms. A wide variety of covariance (kernel) functions are presented and their properties discussed. Model selection is discussed both from a Bayesian and a classical perspective. Many connections to other well-known techniques from machine learning and statistics are discussed, including support-vector machines, neural networks, splines, regularization networks, relevance vector machines and others. Theoretical issues including learning curves and the PAC-Bayesian framework are treated, and several approximation methods for learning with large datasets are discussed. The book contains illustrative examples and exercises, and code and datasets are available on the Web. Appendixes provide mathematical background and a discussion of Gaussian Markov processes.
High-Level Vision
Authors: Ullman Shimon
Published: December 2018

Shimon Ullman focuses on the processes of high-level vision that deal with the interpretation and use of what is seen in the image.

In this book, Shimon Ullman focuses on the processes of high-level vision that deal with the interpretation and use of what is seen in the image. In particular, he examines two major problems. The first, object recognition and classification, involves recognizing objects despite large variations in appearance caused by changes in viewing position, illumination, occlusion, and object shape. The second, visual cognition, involves the extraction of shape properties and spatial relations in the course of performing visual tasks such as object manipulation, planning movements in the environment, or interpreting graphical material such as diagrams, graphs and maps.

The book first takes up object recognition and develops a novel approach to the recognition of three-dimensional objects. It then studies a number of related issues in high-level vision, including object classification, scene segmentation, and visual cognition. Using computational considerations discussed throughout the book, along with psychophysical and biological data, the final chapter proposes a model for the general flow of information in the visual cortex.

Understanding vision is a key problem in the brain sciences, human cognition, and artificial intelligence. Because of the interdisciplinary nature of the theories developed in this work, High-Level Vision will be of interest to readers in all three of these fields.

Bradford Books imprint
The Human Semantic Potential
Authors: Regier Terry
Published: December 2018

Drawing on ideas from cognitive linguistics, connectionism, and perception, The Human Semantic Potential describes a connectionist model that learns perceptually grounded semantics for natural language in spatial terms. Languages differ in the ways in which they structure space, and Regier's aim is to have the model perform its learning task for terms from any natural language. The system has so far succeeded in learning spatial terms from English, German, Russian, Japanese, and Mixtec.

The model views simple movies of two-dimensional objects moving relative to one another and learns to classify them linguistically in accordance with the spatial system of some natural language. The overall goal is to determine which sorts of spatial configurations and events are learnable as the semantics for spatial terms and which are not. Ultimately, the model and its theoretical underpinnings are a step in the direction of articulating biologically based constraints on the nature of human semantic systems.

Along the way Regier takes up such substantial issues as the attraction and the liabilities of PDP and structured connectionist modeling, the problem of learning without direct negative evidence, and the area of linguistic universals, which is addressed in the model itself. Trained on spatial terms from different languages, the model permits observations about the possible bases of linguistic universals and interlanguage variation.

Bradford Books imprint
Improvisational Design
Authors: Ishizaki Suguru
Published: December 2018

A theoretical framework for the design of digital communication.

Traditional visual design expresses information in fixed forms, such as print or film, so the message can be stored or distributed. With interactive media and continuously updated information, communication entails a new, more dynamic set of design problems. In this book Suguru Ishizaki offers a theoretical framework for dealing with the challenges and opportunities of what he calls "dynamic design." His approach incorporates a community of collaborating agents that control design solutions in response to a changing context. He illustrates his ideas with several examples, such as expressive e-mails and responsive maps. The book will be of particular interest to interaction designers, visual designers, software engineers, and human-computer interaction experts.
Information Politics on the Web
Authors: Rogers Richard
Published: December 2018

Does the information on the Web offer many alternative accounts of reality, or does it subtly align with an official version? In Information Politics on the Web, Richard Rogers identifies the cultures, techniques, and devices that rank and recommend information on the Web, analyzing not only the political content of Web sites but the politics built into the Web's infrastructure. Addressing the larger question of what the Web is for, Rogers argues that the Web is still the best arena for unsettling the official and challenging the familiar.

Rogers describes the politics at work on the Web as either back-end—the politics of search engine technology—or front-end—the diversity, inclusivity, and relative prominence of sites publicly accessible on the Web. To analyze this, he developed four "political instruments," or software tools that gather information about the Web by capturing dynamic linking practices, attention cycles for issues, and changing political party commitments. On the basis of his findings on how information politics works, Rogers argues that the Web should be, and can be, a "collision space" for official and unofficial accounts of reality. (One chapter, "The Viagra Files" offers an entertaining analysis of official and unofficial claims for the health benefits of Viagra.) The distinctiveness of the Web as a medium lies partly in the peculiar practices that grant different statuses to information sources. The tools developed by Rogers capture these practices and contribute to the development of a new information politics that takes into account and draws from the competition between the official, the non-governmental, and the underground.
An Introduction to Computational Learning Theory
Authors: Kearns Michael J. , Vazirani Umesh
Published: December 2018

Emphasizing issues of computational efficiency, Michael Kearns and Umesh Vazirani introduce a number of central topics in computational learning theory for researchers and students in artificial intelligence, neural networks, theoretical computer science, and statistics.

Emphasizing issues of computational efficiency, Michael Kearns and Umesh Vazirani introduce a number of central topics in computational learning theory for researchers and students in artificial intelligence, neural networks, theoretical computer science, and statistics. Computational learning theory is a new and rapidly expanding area of research that examines formal models of induction with the goals of discovering the common methods underlying efficient learning algorithms and identifying the computational impediments to learning. Each topic in the book has been chosen to elucidate a general principle, which is explored in a precise formal setting. Intuition has been emphasized in the presentation to make the material accessible to the nontheoretician while still providing precise arguments for the specialist. This balance is the result of new proofs of established theorems, and new presentations of the standard proofs. The topics covered include the motivation, definitions, and fundamental results, both positive and negative, for the widely studied L. G. Valiant model of Probably Approximately Correct Learning; Occam's Razor, which formalizes a relationship between learning and data compression; the Vapnik-Chervonenkis dimension; the equivalence of weak and strong learning; efficient learning in the presence of noise by the method of statistical queries; relationships between learning and cryptography, and the resulting computational limitations on efficient learning; reducibility between learning problems; and algorithms for learning finite automata from active experimentation.
Journey to Data Quality
Authors: Lee Yang W. , Pipino Leo L. , Wang Richard Y. , Funk James D.
Published: December 2018

A guide for assessing an organization's data quality practice and a roadmap for implementing a viable data and information quality management program, based on rigorous research and drawing on real-world examples.

All organizations today confront data quality problems, both systemic and structural. Neither ad hoc approaches nor fixes at the systems leve—installing the latest software or developing an expensive data warehouse—solve the basic problem of bad data quality practices. Journey to Data Quality offers a roadmap that can be used by practitioners, executives, and students for planning and implementing a viable data and information quality management program. This practical guide, based on rigorous research and informed by real-world examples, describes the challenges of data management and provides the principles, strategies, tools, and techniques necessary to meet them. The authors, all leaders in the data quality field for many years, discuss how to make the economic case for data quality and the importance of getting an organization's leaders on board. They outline different approaches for assessing data, both subjectively (by users) and objectively (using sampling and other techniques). They describe real problems and solutions, including efforts to find the root causes of data quality problems at a healthcare organization and data quality initiatives taken by a large teaching hospital. They address setting company policy on data quality and, finally, they consider future challenges on the journey to data quality.
Language Development and Learning to Read
Authors: McGuinness Diane
Published: December 2018

Research on reading has tried, and failed, to account for wide disparities in reading skill even among children taught by the same method. Why do some children learn to read easily and quickly while others, in the same classroom and taught by the same teacher, don't learn to read at all? In Language Development and Learning to Read, Diane McGuinness examines scientific research that might explain these disparities. She focuses on reading predictors, analyzing the effect individual differences in specific perceptual, linguistic, and cognitive skills may have on a child's ability to read. Because of the serious methodological problems she finds in the existing research on reading, many of the studies McGuinness cites come from other fields—developmental psychology, psycholinguistics, and the speech and hearing sciences—and provide a new perspective on which language functions matter most for reading and academic success.

McGuinness first examines the phonological development theory—the theory that phonological awareness follows a developmental path from words to syllables to phonemes—which has dominated reading research for thirty years, and finds that research evidence from other disciplines does not support the theory. McGuinness then looks at longitudinal studies on the development of general language function, and finds a "tantalizing connection" between core language functions and reading success. Finally, she analyzes mainstream reading research, which links reading ability to specific language skills, and the often flawed methodology used in these studies. McGuinness's analysis shows the urgent need for a shift in our thinking about how to achieve reading success.

Bradford Books imprint
Learning with Kernels
Authors: Schölkopf Bernhard , Smola Alexander J.
Published: December 2018

A comprehensive introduction to Support Vector Machines and related kernel methods.

In the 1990s, a new type of learning algorithm was developed, based on results from statistical learning theory: the Support Vector Machine (SVM). This gave rise to a new class of theoretically elegant learning machines that use a central concept of SVMs—-kernels—for a number of learning tasks. Kernel machines provide a modular framework that can be adapted to different tasks and domains by the choice of the kernel function and the base algorithm. They are replacing neural networks in a variety of fields, including engineering, information retrieval, and bioinformatics.

Learning with Kernels provides an introduction to SVMs and related kernel methods. Although the book begins with the basics, it also includes the latest research. It provides all of the concepts necessary to enable a reader equipped with some basic mathematical knowledge to enter the world of machine learning using theoretically well-founded yet easy-to-use kernel algorithms and to understand and apply the powerful algorithms that have been developed over the last few years.
Making Medical Decisions for the Profoundly Mentally Disabled
Authors: Cantor Norman L.
Published: December 2018

A legal and moral analysis of medical decision making on behalf of those with such severe cognitive impairments that they cannot exercise self-determination.

In this book, Norman Cantor analyzes the legal and moral status of people with profound mental disabilities—those with extreme cognitive impairments that prevent their exercise of medical self-determination. He proposes a legal and moral framework for surrogate medical decision making on their behalf. The issues Cantor explores will be of interest to professionals in law, medicine, psychology, philosophy, and ethics, as well as to parents, guardians, and health care providers who face perplexing issues in the context of surrogate medical decision making.

The profoundly mentally disabled are thought by some moral philosophers to lack the minimum cognitive ability for personhood. Countering this position, Cantor advances both theoretical and practical arguments for according them full legal and moral status. He also argues that the concept of intrinsic human dignity should have an integral role in shaping the bounds of surrogate decision making. Thus, he claims, while profoundly mentally disabled persons are not entitled to make their own medical decisions, respect for intrinsic human dignity dictates their right to have a conscientious surrogate make medical decisions on their behalf. Cantor discusses the criteria that bind such surrogates. He asserts, contrary to popular wisdom, that the best interests of the disabled person are not always the determinative standard: the interests of family or others can sometimes be considered. Surrogates may even, consistent with the intrinsic human dignity standard, sometimes authorize tissue donation or participation in nontherapeutic medical research by profoundly disabled persons. Intrinsic human dignity limits the occasions for such decisions and dictates close attention to the preferences and feelings of the profoundly disabled persons themselves. Cantor also analyzes the underlying philosophical rationale that makes these decision-making criteria consistent with law and morals.
Making Silicon Valley
Authors: Lécuyer Christophe
Published: December 2018

In Making Silicon Valley, Christophe Lécuyer shows that the explosive growth of the personal computer industry in Silicon Valley was the culmination of decades of growth and innovation in the San Francisco-area electronics industry. Using the tools of science and technology studies, he explores the formation of Silicon Valley as an industrial district, from its beginnings as the home of a few radio enterprises that operated in the shadow of RCA and other East Coast firms through its establishment as a center of the electronics industry and a leading producer of power grid tubes, microwave tubes, and semiconductors. He traces the emergence of the innovative practices that made this growth possible by following key groups of engineers and entrepreneurs. He examines the forces outside Silicon Valley that shaped the industry—in particular the effect of military patronage and procurement on the growth of the industry and on the development of technologies—and considers the influence of Stanford University and other local institutions of higher learning.

Lécuyer argues that Silicon Valley's emergence and its growth were made possible by the development of unique competencies in manufacturing, in product engineering, and in management. Entrepreneurs learned to integrate invention, design, manufacturing, and sales logistics, and they developed incentives to attract and retain a skilled and motivated workforce. The largest Silicon Valley firms—including Eitel-McCullough (Eimac), Litton Industries, Varian Associates, Fairchild Semiconductor, and Intel—dominated the American markets for advanced tubes and semiconductors and, because of their innovations in manufacturing, design, and management, served as models and incubators for other electronics ventures in the area.
The Mathematics of Marriage
Authors: Gottman John M. , Murray James D. , Swanson Catherine C. , Tyson Rebecca , Swanson Kristin R.
Published: December 2018

Divorce rates are at an all-time high. But without a theoretical understanding of the processes related to marital stability and dissolution, it is difficult to design and evaluate new marriage interventions. The Mathematics of Marriage provides the foundation for a scientific theory of marital relations. The book does not rely on metaphors, but develops and applies a mathematical model using difference equations. The work is the fulfillment of the goal to build a mathematical framework for the general system theory of families first suggested by Ludwig Von Bertalanffy in the 1960s.The book also presents a complete introduction to the mathematics involved in theory building and testing, and details the development of experiments and models. In one "marriage experiment," for example, the authors explored the effects of lowering or raising a couple's heart rates. Armed with their mathematical model, they were able to do real experiments to determine which processes were affected by their interventions.

Applying ideas such as phase space, null clines, influence functions, inertia, and uninfluenced and influenced stable steady states (attractors), the authors show how other researchers can use the methods to weigh their own data with positive and negative weights. While the focus is on modeling marriage, the techniques can be applied to other types of psychological phenomena as well.

Bradford Books imprint
Mind in a Physical World
Authors: Kim Jaegwon
Published: December 2018

This book, based on Jaegwon Kim's 1996 Townsend Lectures, presents the philosopher's current views on a variety of issues in the metaphysics of the mind—in particular, the mind-body problem, mental causation, and reductionism.

This book, based on Jaegwon Kim's 1996 Townsend Lectures, presents the philosopher's current views on a variety of issues in the metaphysics of the mind—in particular, the mind-body problem, mental causation, and reductionism. Kim construes the mind-body problem as that of finding a place for the mind in a world that is fundamentally physical. Among other points, he redefines the roles of supervenience and emergence in the discussion of the mind-body problem. Arguing that various contemporary accounts of mental causation are inadequate, he offers his own partially reductionist solution on the basis of a novel model of reduction. Retaining the informal tone of the lecture format, the book is clear yet sophisticated.

Bradford Books imprint
The Myth of Pain
Authors: Hardcastle Valerie Gray
Published: December 2018

Valerie Gray Hardcastle argues that both professional and lay definitions of pain are wrongheaded—with consequences for how pain and pain patients are treated, how psychological disorders are understood, and how clinicians define the mind/body relationship.

Pain, although very common, is little understood. Worse still, according to Valerie Gray Hardcastle, both professional and lay definitions of pain are wrongheaded—with consequences for how pain and pain patients are treated, how psychological disorders are understood, and how clinicians define the mind/body relationship.

Hardcastle offers a biologically based complex theory of pain processing, inhibition, and sensation and then uses this theory to make several arguments: (1) psychogenic pains do not exist; (2) a general lack of knowledge about fundamental brain function prevents us from distinguishing between mental and physical causes, although the distinction remains useful; (3) most pain talk should be eliminated from both the folk and academic communities; and (4) such a biological approach is useful generally for explaining disorders in pain processing. She shows how her analysis of pain can serve as a model for the analysis of other psychological disorders and suggests that her project be taken as a model for the philosophical analysis of disorders in psychology, psychiatry, and neuroscience.

Bradford Books imprint
Personnel Economics
Authors: Lazear Edward P.
Published: December 2018

Contrary to popular opinion, human resources, in general, and personnel, in particular, are well-suited to economic analysis. Edward Lazear, who founded the subfield of personnel economics, provides a quick introduction for economists who have not studied the area.

Contrary to popular opinion, human resources, in general, and personnel, in particular, are well-suited to economic analysis. Edward Lazear, who founded the subfield of personnel economics, provides a quick introduction for economists who have not studied the area. He clearly and engagingly summarizes his and others' work that has taken place during the past fifteen years, including recent advances in the field.

Mainstream economic theory has been considered too abstract to be of much practical use in the hiring, organizing, and motivating of employees, leaving the field of personnel to industrial psychologists and sociologists. In this book Edward Lazear shows that economic analysis can be extended to an important, but traditionally neglected, class of practical problems. He shows that by adding more detail and structure to their theory, economists can make specific predictions and prescriptions for personnel issues that arise in business on a daily basis. Lazear focuses on compensation and its relation to worker motivation, selection, and teamwork. He also discusses job design, job evaluation, institutional arrangements, and directions for future research.
Presumptive Meanings
Authors: Levinson Stephen C.
Published: December 2018

This is the first extended discussion of preferred interpretation in language understanding, integrating much of the best research in linguistic pragmatics from the last two decades.

When we speak, we mean more than we say. In this book Stephen C. Levinson explains some general processes that underlie presumptions in communication. This is the first extended discussion of preferred interpretation in language understanding, integrating much of the best research in linguistic pragmatics from the last two decades. Levinson outlines a theory of presumptive meanings, or preferred interpretations, governing the use of language, building on the idea of implicature developed by the philosopher H.P. Grice. Some of the indirect information carried by speech is presumed by default because it is carried by general principles, rather than inferred from specific assumptions about intention and context. Levinson examines this class of general pragmatic inferences in detail, showing how they apply to a wide range of linguistic constructions. This approach has radical consequences for how we think about language and communication.

Bradford Books imprint
The Price of Smoking
Authors: Sloan Frank A. , Ostermann Jan , Conover Christopher , Taylor Donald H , Picone Gabriel
Published: December 2018

What does a pack of cigarettes cost a smoker, the smoker's family, and society? This longitudinal study on the private and social costs of smoking calculates that the cost of smoking to a 24-year-old woman smoker is $86,000 over a lifetime; for a 24-year-old male smoker the cost is $183,000. The total social cost of smoking over a lifetime—including both private costs to the smoker and costs imposed on others (including second-hand smoke and costs of Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security)—comes to $106,000 for a woman and $220,000 for a man. The cost per pack over a lifetime of smoking: almost $40.00. The first study to quantify the cost of smoking in this way, or in such depth, this accessible book not only adds a weapon to the arsenal of antismoking messages but also provides a framework for assessment that can be applied to other health behaviors. The findings on the effects of smoking on Medicare and Medicaid will be surprising and perhaps controversial, for the authors estimate the costs to be much lower than the damage awards being paid to 46 states as a result of the 1998 Master Settlement Agreement.
Privacy on the Line
Authors: Diffie Whitfield , Landau Susan
Published: December 2018

A penetrating and insightful study of privacy and security in telecommunications for a post-9/11, post-Patriot Act world.

Telecommunication has never been perfectly secure. The Cold War culture of recording devices in telephone receivers and bugged embassy offices has been succeeded by a post-9/11 world of NSA wiretaps and demands for data retention. Although the 1990s battle for individual and commercial freedom to use cryptography was won, growth in the use of cryptography has been slow. Meanwhile, regulations requiring that the computer and communication industries build spying into their systems for government convenience have increased rapidly. The application of the 1994 Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act has expanded beyond the intent of Congress to apply to voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and other modern data services; attempts are being made to require ISPs to retain their data for years in case the government wants it; and data mining techniques developed for commercial marketing applications are being applied to widespread surveillance of the population.

In Privacy on the Line, Whitfield Diffie and Susan Landau strip away the hype surrounding the policy debate over privacy to examine the national security, law enforcement, commercial, and civil liberties issues. They discuss the social function of privacy, how it underlies a democratic society, and what happens when it is lost. This updated and expanded edition revises their original—and prescient—discussions of both policy and technology in light of recent controversies over NSA spying and other government threats to communications privacy.
Programming with Constraints
Authors: Marriott Kimbal , Stuckey Peter
Published: December 2018

The job of the constraint programmer is to use mathematical constraints to model real world constraints and objects. In this book, Kim Marriott and Peter Stuckey provide the first comprehensive introduction to the discipline of constraint programming and, in particular, constraint logic programming. The book covers the necessary background material from artificial intelligence, logic programming, operations research, and mathematical programming. Topics discussed range from constraint-solving techniques to programming methodologies for constraint programming languages. Because there is not yet a universally used syntax for constraint logic programming languages, the authors present the programs in a way that is independent of any existing programming language. Practical exercises cover how to use the book with a number of existing constraint languages.