bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Group Cognition
Authors: Stahl Gerry
Published: December 2018

Exploring the software design, social practices, and collaboration theory that would be needed to support group cognition; collective knowledge that is constructed by small groups online.

Innovative uses of global and local networks of linked computers make new ways of collaborative working, learning, and acting possible. In Group Cognition Gerry Stahl explores the technological and social reconfigurations that are needed to achieve computer-supported collaborative knowledge building—group cognition that transcends the limits of individual cognition. Computers can provide active media for social group cognition where ideas grow through the interactions within groups of people; software functionality can manage group discourse that results in shared understandings, new meanings, and collaborative learning. Stahl offers software design prototypes, analyzes empirical instances of collaboration, and elaborates a theory of collaboration that takes the group, rather than the individual, as the unit of analysis.

Stahl's design studies concentrate on mechanisms to support group formation, multiple interpretive perspectives, and the negotiation of group knowledge in applications as varied as collaborative curriculum development by teachers, writing summaries by students, and designing space voyages by NASA engineers. His empirical analysis shows how, in small-group collaborations, the group constructs intersubjective knowledge that emerges from and appears in the discourse itself. This discovery of group meaning becomes the springboard for Stahl's outline of a social theory of collaborative knowing. Stahl also discusses such related issues as the distinction between meaning making at the group level and interpretation at the individual level, appropriate research methodology, philosophical directions for group cognition theory, and suggestions for further empirical work.
Growing Artificial Societies
Authors: Epstein Joshua M. , Axtell Robert L.
Published: December 2018

How do social structures and group behaviors arise from the interaction of individuals? Growing Artificial Societies approaches this question with cutting-edge computer simulation techniques. Fundamental collective behaviors such as group formation, cultural transmission, combat, and trade are seen to "emerge" from the interaction of individual agents following a few simple rules.

In their program, named Sugarscape, Epstein and Axtell begin the development of a "bottom up" social science that is capturing the attention of researchers and commentators alike.

The study is part of the 2050 Project, a joint venture of the Santa Fe Institute, the World Resources Institute, and the Brookings Institution. The project is an international effort to identify conditions for a sustainable global system in the next century and to design policies to help achieve such a system.

Copublished with the Brookings Institution

Bradford Books imprint
Growth and Empowerment
Authors: Stern Nicholas , Rogers F. Halsey , Dethier Jean-Jacques
Published: December 2018

Despite significant gains in promoting economic growth and living conditions (or "human progress") globally over the last twenty-five years, much of the developing world remains plagued by poverty and its attendant problems, including high rates of child mortality, illiteracy, environmental degradation, and war. In Growth and Empowerment, Nicholas Stern, Jean-Jacques Dethier, and F. Halsey Rogers propose a new strategy for development. Drawing on many years of work in development economics—in academia, in the field, and at international institutions such as the World Bank—the authors base their strategy on two interrelated approaches: building a climate that encourages investment and growth and at the same time empowering poor people to participate in that growth. This plan differs from other models for development, including the dogmatic approach of market fundamentalism popular in the 1980s and 1990s. Stern, Dethier, and Rogers see economic development as a dynamic process of continuous change in which entrepreneurship, innovation, flexibility, and mobility are crucial components and the idea of empowerment, as both a goal and a driver of development, is central. The book points to the unique opportunity today—after 50 years of successes and failures, and with a growing body of analytical work to draw on—to pursue new development strategies in both research and action.
A History of Online Information Services, 1963–1976
Authors: Bourne Charles P. , Hahn Trudi Bellardo
Published: December 2018

A detailed chronology of the early, pre-Internet years of online information systems and services.

Every field of history has a basic need for a detailed chronology of what happened: who did what when. In the absence of such a resource, fanciful accounts flourish. This book provides a rich narrative of the early development of online information retrieval systems and services, from 1963 to 1976—a period important to anyone who uses a search engine, online catalog, or large database. Drawing on personal experience, extensive research, and interviews with many of the key participants, the book describes the individuals, projects, and institutions of the period. It also corrects many common errors and misconceptions and provides milestones for many of the significant developments in online systems and technology.
How Children Learn the Meanings of Words
Authors: Bloom Paul
Published: December 2018

How do children learn that the word "dog" refers not to all four-legged animals, and not just to Ralph, but to all members of a particular species? How do they learn the meanings of verbs like "think," adjectives like "good," and words for abstract entities such as "mortgage" and "story"? The acquisition of word meaning is one of the fundamental issues in the study of mind.

According to Paul Bloom, children learn words through sophisticated cognitive abilities that exist for other purposes. These include the ability to infer others' intentions, the ability to acquire concepts, an appreciation of syntactic structure, and certain general learning and memory abilities. Although other researchers have associated word learning with some of these capacities, Bloom is the first to show how a complete explanation requires all of them. The acquisition of even simple nouns requires rich conceptual, social, and linguistic capacities interacting in complex ways.

This book requires no background in psychology or linguistics and is written in a clear, engaging style. Topics include the effects of language on spatial reasoning, the origin of essentialist beliefs, and the young child's understanding of representational art. The book should appeal to general readers interested in language and cognition as well as to researchers in the field.

Bradford Books imprint
Invisible Engines
Authors: Evans David S. , Hagiu Andrei , Schmalensee Richard
Published: December 2018

Harnessing the power of software platforms: what executives and entrepreneurs must know about how to use this technology to transform industries and how to develop the strategies that will create value and drive profits.

Software platforms are the invisible engines that have created, touched, or transformed nearly every major industry for the past quarter century. They power everything from mobile phones and automobile navigation systems to search engines and web portals. They have been the source of enormous value to consumers and helped some entrepreneurs build great fortunes. And they are likely to drive change that will dwarf the business and technology revolution we have seen to this point. Invisible Engines examines the business dynamics and strategies used by firms that recognize the transformative power unleashed by this new revolution—a revolution that will change both new and old industries.

The authors argue that in order to understand the successes of software platforms, we must first understand their role as a technological meeting ground where application developers and end users converge. Apple, Microsoft, and Google, for example, charge developers little or nothing for using their platforms and make most of their money from end users; Sony PlayStation and other game consoles, by contrast, subsidize users and make more money from developers, who pay royalties for access to the code they need to write games. More applications attract more users, and more users attract more applications. And more applications and more users lead to more profits.

Invisible Engines explores this story through the lens of the companies that have mastered this platform-balancing act. It offers detailed studies of the personal computer, video game console, personal digital assistant, smart mobile phone, and digital media software platform industries, focusing on the business decisions made by industry players to drive profits and stay a step ahead of the competition. Shorter discussions of Internet-based software platforms provide an important glimpse into a future in which the way we buy, pay, watch, listen, learn, and communicate will change forever. An electronic version of this book is available under a Creative Commons license.
Islamic Science and the Making of the European Renaissance
Authors: Saliba George
Published: December 2018

The rise and fall of the Islamic scientific tradition, and the relationship of Islamic science to European science during the Renaissance.

The Islamic scientific tradition has been described many times in accounts of Islamic civilization and general histories of science, with most authors tracing its beginnings to the appropriation of ideas from other ancient civilizations—the Greeks in particular. In this thought-provoking and original book, George Saliba argues that, contrary to the generally accepted view, the foundations of Islamic scientific thought were laid well before Greek sources were formally translated into Arabic in the ninth century. Drawing on an account by the tenth-century intellectual historian Ibn al-Naidm that is ignored by most modern scholars, Saliba suggests that early translations from mainly Persian and Greek sources outlining elementary scientific ideas for the use of government departments were the impetus for the development of the Islamic scientific tradition. He argues further that there was an organic relationship between the Islamic scientific thought that developed in the later centuries and the science that came into being in Europe during the Renaissance.

Saliba outlines the conventional accounts of Islamic science, then discusses their shortcomings and proposes an alternate narrative. Using astronomy as a template for tracing the progress of science in Islamic civilization, Saliba demonstrates the originality of Islamic scientific thought. He details the innovations (including new mathematical tools) made by the Islamic astronomers from the thirteenth to sixteenth centuries, and offers evidence that Copernicus could have known of and drawn on their work. Rather than viewing the rise and fall of Islamic science from the often-narrated perspectives of politics and religion, Saliba focuses on the scientific production itself and the complex social, economic, and intellectual conditions that made it possible.
Linearization of Chains and Sideward Movement
Authors: Nunes Jairo
Published: December 2018

This highly original monograph treats movement operations within the Minimalist Program. Jairo Nunes argues that traces are not grammatical primitives and that their properties follow from deeper features of the system, and, in particular, that the phonetic realization of traces is determined by linearization computations coupled with economy conditions regarding deletion. He proposes a version of the copy theory of movement according to which movement must be construed as a description of the interaction of the independent operations Copy, Merge, Form Chain, and Chain Reduction. Empirical evidence to support this claim includes instances of "sideward movement" between subtrees in a derivation. According to this analysis, the linearization of chains in the phonological component constrains sideward movement so that it is possible to account for standard properties of multiple gap constructions, including parasitic gap and ATB constructions, without construction-specific operations or principles that are not independently motivated. Theoretical linguists will find Linearization of Chains and Sideward Movement of great interest both theoretically and empirically. The version of the copy theory of movement proposed by Nunes will stir debate and shape future research in the field.
Machine Musicianship
Authors: Rowe Robert
Published: December 2018

Musicians begin formal training by acquiring a body of musical concepts commonly known as musicianship. These concepts underlie the musical skills of listening, performance, and composition. Like humans, computer music programs can benefit from a systematic foundation of musical knowledge. This book explores the technology of implementing musical processes such as segmentation, pattern processing, and interactive improvisation in computer programs. It shows how the resulting applications can be used to accomplish tasks ranging from the solution of simple musical problems to the live performance of interactive compositions and the design of musically responsive installations and Web sites. Machine Musicianship is both a programming tutorial and an exploration of the foundational concepts of musical analysis, performance, and composition. The theoretical foundations are derived from the fields of music theory, computer music, music cognition, and artificial intelligence. The book will be of interest to practitioners of those fields, as well as to performers and composers.The concepts are programmed using C++ and Max. The accompanying CD-ROM includes working versions of the examples, as well as source code and a hypertext document showing how the code leads to the program's musical functionality.
Mind and Hand
Authors: Stratton Julius A. , Mannix Loretta H. , Stratton Catherine
Published: December 2018

The intellectual heritage of MIT: an account of "the flow of ideas" about science and education that shaped the Institute as it emerged and that inspires it today.

The motto on the seal of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, "Mens et Manus"—"mind and hand"—signals the Institute's dedication to what MIT founder William Barton Rogers called "the most earnest cooperation of intelligent culture with industrial pursuits." Mind and Hand traces the ideas about science and education that have shaped MIT and defined its mission—from the new science of the Enlightenment era and the ideals of representative democracy spurred by the Industrial Revolution to new theories on the nature and role of higher education in nineteenth-century America. MIT emerged in mid-century as an experiment in scientific and technical education, with its origins in the tension between these old and new ideas.

Mind and Hand was undertaken by Julius Stratton after his retirement from the presidency of MIT and continued by Loretta Mannix after his death; Philip N. Alexander, of the MIT Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies, stepped in to complete the project. The combined efforts of these three authors have given us what Julius Stratton envisioned—"a coherent account of the flow of ideas" from which MIT emerged.
Onflow
Authors: Pred Ralph Jason
Published: December 2018

Understanding consciousness by taking the stream of consciousness seriously; a general characterization of experience and a detailed description of experience from within, drawing on theories of William James, Alfred North Whitehead, John Searle, and Gerald Edelman.

In Onflow, Ralph Pred supplies an account of the nature of consciousness that grapples with "the raw unverbalized stream of experience." Unlike other recent philosophical accounts of consciousness, Pred's analysis deals with the elusive and commonly neglected continuities in the stream of consciousness. Pred offers a general characterization and analysis of experience as well as a highly detailed interpretation of experience from within. Determined to make "conceptual contact" with the immediacy of actual experience, Pred carries forward the radical empiricism pioneered by William James (who coined the term "stream of consciousness") and draws on the process philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead.

To help readers apprehend the formation of conscious thoughts, the intertwining of perception and action, and the working of consciousness in onflowing experience, Pred applies methods of analysis developed in John Searle's theory of intentionality to James's views, thereby showing how intentional states are embedded in the stream of consciousness. Then, calling on Whitehead's treatment of lived moments as acts of experience, Pred provides an account of consciousness that at once deals with conscious thoughts as they emerge from and function in embodied, socialized experience and illustrates how language distorts our understanding of experience and subjectivity. Finally, he details striking parallels between this account and Gerald Edelman's biological theory of consciousness, and, in contrasting the two, argues for a revitalized version of the experiental monism originally formulated by James.

Bradford Books imprint
The Paradox of Self-Consciousness
Authors: Bermúdez José Luis
Published: December 2018

In this book, José Luis Bermúdez addresses two fundamental problems in the philosophy and psychology of self-consciousness: (1) Can we provide a noncircular account of fully fledged self-conscious thought and language in terms of more fundamental capacities? (2) Can we explain how fully fledged self-conscious thought and language can arise in the normal course of human development? Bermúdez argues that a paradox (the paradox of self-consciousness) arises from the apparent strict interdependence between self-conscious thought and linguistic self-reference. The paradox renders circular all theories that define self-consciousness in terms of linguistic mastery of the first-person pronoun. It seems to follow from the paradox of self-consciousness that no such account or explanation can be given.

Drawing on recent work in empirical psychology and philosophy, the author argues that any explanation of fully fledged self-consciousness that answers these two questions requires attention to primitive forms of self-consciousness that are prelinguistic and preconceptual. Such primitive forms of self-consciousness are to be found in somatic proprioception, the structure of exteroceptive perception, and prelinguistic forms of social interaction. The author uses these primitive forms of self-consciousness to dissolve the paradox of self-consciousness and to show how the two questions can be given an affirmative answer.

Bradford Books imprint
Participatory IT Design
Authors: Bødker Keld , Kensing Finn , Simonsen Jesper
Published: December 2018

A state-of-the-art method for introducing new information technology systems into an organization, illustrated by case studies drawn from a ten-year research project.

The goal of participatory IT design is to set sensible, general, and workable guidelines for the introduction of new information technology systems into an organization. Reflecting the latest systems-development research, this book encourages a business-oriented and socially sensitive approach that takes into consideration the specific organizational context as well as first-hand knowledge of users' work practices and allows all stakeholders—users, management, and staff—to participate in the process. Participatory IT Design is a guide to the theory and practice of this process that can be used as a reference work by IT professionals and as a textbook for classes in information technology at introductory through advanced levels. Drawing on the work of a ten-year research program in which the authors worked with Danish and American companies, the book offers a framework for carrying out IT design projects as well as case studies that stand as examples of the process.

The method presented in Participatory IT Design—known as the MUST method, after a Danish acronym for theories and methods of initial analysis and design activities—was developed and tested in thirteen industrial design projects for companies and organizations that included an American airline, a multinational pharmaceutical company, a national broadcasting corporation, a multinational software house, and American and Danish universities. The first part of the book introduces the concepts and guidelines on which the method is based, while the second and third parts are designed as a practical toolbox for utilizing the MUST method. Part II describes the four phases of a design project—initiation, in-line analysis, in-depth analysis, and innovation. Part III explains the method's sixteen techniques and related representation tools, offering first an overview and then specific descriptions of each in separate sections.
Prenatal Testosterone in Mind
Authors: Baron-Cohen Simon , Lutchmaya Svetlana , Knickmeyer Rebecca
Published: December 2018

This pioneering study looks at the effects of prenatal testosterone on postnatal development and behavior. Hormonal effects on behavior have long been studied in animals; the unique contribution of this book is to suggest a connection between human fetal hormones and later behavior. It details for the first time testosterone's effect on social and language development, opening a new avenue of research for cognitive neuroscience.

The authors look at samples of amniotic fluid taken during amniocentesis at 16 weeks' gestation, and relate the fetal level of testosterone (which is present in fetuses of both sexes, although in different quantities) to behavior at ages 1, 2, and 4 years. They argue that the amniotic fluid provides a window into the child's past—a chemical record of that child's time in the womb—that allows informed prediction about the child's future brain, mind, and behavior. This is not the retrospective speculation of psychoanalysis, they point out, but an opportunity to study development prospectively and trace developmental precursors and causes of later cognition.

The study suggests that prenatal levels of testosterone affect a range of later behaviors in children, from the inclination to make eye contact with others to the size of the vocabulary. It also suggests that prenatal testosterone level may be related to the development of typically "masculine" and "feminine" behaviors. The study's ongoing research explores whether fetal testosterone has any link with the risk of developing autism. Connecting endocrinology and psychology, the authors propose that there is a biological component to behaviors often thought to be produced by the social environment.

Bradford Books imprint
The Privatization of the Oceans
Authors: Hannesson Rőgnvaldur
Published: December 2018

Rich with detail and provocatively argued, this study of the development of property rights in the world's fisheries tells the story of one industry's evolution and provides a useful illustration of the forces that shape economic institutions. The emergence of exclusive individual rights of access in the fishing industry began after the revolution in the international law of the sea that took place in the 1970s, when the offshore area controlled by a nation for fish and other resources expanded from 3 miles to 200 miles. Rögnvaldur Hannesson compares the subsequent development of private property rights in the fisheries to the historic enclosures and clearances of common land in England and Scotland and finds many parallels, including bitter fights over access rights and the impossibility of accommodating all those who want to stake a claim. Overall benefit to society in the form of increased efficiency, he points out, does not mean that all benefit equally. After tracing the development of the law of the sea since the sixteenth century, Hannesson considers what form property rights in fisheries might take and examines the forces behind the establishment of exclusive use rights to fish. He argues that one form of exclusive use rights, individual transferable quotas (ITQs), best promotes efficiency in the use of fish resources. He presents case studies of ITQ development, ranging from successful establishment in Canada and New Zealand to failures in Chile and Norway to experiments with ITQs in Iceland and the United States. The development of economic institutions, he concludes, is an evolutionary process subject to contradictory influences.
Rationality and Logic
Authors: Hanna Robert
Published: December 2018

An argument that logic is intrinsically psychological and human psychology is intrinsically logical, and that the connection between human rationality and logic is both constitutive and mutual.

In Rationality and Logic, Robert Hanna argues that logic is intrinsically psychological and that human psychology is intrinsically logical. He claims that logic is cognitively constructed by rational animals (including humans) and that rational animals are essentially logical animals. In order to do so, he defends the broadly Kantian thesis that all (and only) rational animals possess an innate cognitive "logic faculty." Hanna's claims challenge the conventional philosophical wisdom that sees logic as a fully formal or "topic-neutral" science irreconcilably separate from the species- or individual-specific focus of empirical psychology.Logic and psychology went their separate ways after attacks by Frege and Husserl on logical psychologism—the explanatory reduction of logic to empirical psychology. Hanna argues, however, that—despite the fact that logical psychologism is false—there is an essential link between logic and psychology. Rational human animals constitute the basic class of cognizers or thinkers studied by cognitive psychology; given the connection between rationality and logic that Hanna claims, it follows that the nature of logic is significantly revealed to us by cognitive psychology. Hanna's proposed "logical cognitivism" has two important consequences: the recognition by logically oriented philosophers that psychologists are their colleagues in the metadiscipline of cognitive science; and radical changes in cognitive science itself. Cognitive science, Hanna argues, is not at bottom a natural science; it is both an objective or truth-oriented science and a normative human science, as is logic itself.

Bradford Books imprint
Relativism and the Foundations of Philosophy
Authors: Hales Steven D.
Published: December 2018

A defense of the view that philosophical propositions are true in some perspectives and false in others, arguing that the rationalist, intuition-driven method of acquiring basic beliefs favored by analytic philosophy is not epistemically superior to such alternate belief-acquiring methods as religious revelation and the ritual use of hallucinogens.

The grand and sweeping claims of many relativists might seem to amount to the argument that everything is relative—except the thesis of relativism. In this book, Steven Hales defends relativism, but in a more circumscribed form that applies specifically to philosophical propositions. His claim is that philosophical propositions are relatively true—true in some perspectives and false in others. Hales defends this argument first by examining rational intuition as the method by which philosophers come to have the beliefs they do. Analytic rationalism, he claims, has a foundational reliance on rational intuition as a method of acquiring basic beliefs. He then argues that there are other methods that people use to gain beliefs about philosophical topics that are strikingly analogous to rational intuition and examines two of these: Christian revelation and the ritual use of hallucinogens. Hales argues that rational intuition is not epistemically superior to either of these alternative methods. There are only three possible outcomes: we have no philosophical knowledge (skepticism); there are no philosophical propositions (naturalism); or there are knowable philosophical propositions, but our knowledge of them is relative to doxastic perspective. Hales defends relativism against the charge that it is self-refuting and answers a variety of objections to this account of relativism. Finally, he examines the most sweeping objection to relativism: that philosophical propositions are not merely relatively true, because there are no philosophical propositions—all propositions are ultimately empirical, as the naturalists contend. Hales's somewhat disturbing conclusion—that intuition-driven philosophy does produce knowledge, but not absolute knowledge—is sure to inspire debate among philosophers.

Bradford Books imprint
The Spatial Economy
Authors: Fujita Masahisa , Krugman Paul , Venables Anthony J.
Published: December 2018

The authors show how a common approach that emphasizes the three-way interaction among increasing returns, transportation costs, and the movement of productive factors can be applied to a wide range of issues in urban, regional, and international economics.

Since 1990 there has been a renaissance of theoretical and empirical work on the spatial aspects of the economy—that is, where economic activity occurs and why. Using new tools—in particular, modeling techniques developed to analyze industrial organization, international trade, and economic growth—this "new economic geography" has emerged as one of the most exciting areas of contemporary economics.

The authors show how seemingly disparate models reflect a few basic themes, and in so doing they develop a common "grammar" for discussing a variety of issues. They show how a common approach that emphasizes the three-way interaction among increasing returns, transportation costs, and the movement of productive factors can be applied to a wide range of issues in urban, regional, and international economics. This book is the first to provide a sound and unified explanation of the existence of large economic agglomerations at various spatial scales.
State-Space Models with Regime Switching
Authors: Kim Chang-Jin , Halbert Daniel C R.
Published: December 2018

Both state-space models and Markov switching models have been highly productive paths for empirical research in macroeconomics and finance. This book presents recent advances in econometric methods that make feasible the estimation of models that have both features. One approach, in the classical framework, approximates the likelihood function; the other, in the Bayesian framework, uses Gibbs-sampling to simulate posterior distributions from data.

The authors present numerous applications of these approaches in detail: decomposition of time series into trend and cycle, a new index of coincident economic indicators, approaches to modeling monetary policy uncertainty, Friedman's "plucking" model of recessions, the detection of turning points in the business cycle and the question of whether booms and recessions are duration-dependent, state-space models with heteroskedastic disturbances, fads and crashes in financial markets, long-run real exchange rates, and mean reversion in asset returns.
Sweet Anticipation
Authors: Huron David
Published: December 2018

The psychological theory of expectation that David Huron proposes in Sweet Anticipation grew out of the author's experimental efforts to understand how music evokes emotions. These efforts evolved into a general theory of expectation that will prove informative to readers interested in cognitive science and evolutionary psychology as well as those interested in music. The book describes a set of psychological mechanisms and illustrates how these mechanisms work in the case of music. All examples of notated music can be heard on the Web.

Huron proposes that emotions evoked by expectation involve five functionally distinct response systems: reaction responses (which engage defensive reflexes); tension responses (where uncertainty leads to stress); prediction responses (which reward accurate prediction); imagination responses (which facilitate deferred gratification); and appraisal responses (which occur after conscious thought is engaged). For real-world events, these five response systems typically produce a complex mixture of feelings. The book identifies some of the aesthetic possibilities afforded by expectation, and shows how common musical devices (such as syncopation, cadence, meter, tonality, and climax) exploit the psychological opportunities. The theory also provides new insights into the physiological psychology of awe, laughter, and spine-tingling chills. Huron traces the psychology of expectations from the patterns of the physical/cultural world through imperfectly learned heuristics used to predict that world to the phenomenal qualia we experienced as we apprehend the world.

Bradford Books imprint
Tectonic Faults
Authors: Custance Gloria
Published: December 2018

Scientists examine tectonic faulting on all scales—from seismic fault slip to the formation of mountain ranges—and discuss its connection to a wide range of global phenomena, including long-term climate change and evolution.

Tectonic faults are sites of localized motion, both at the Earth's surface and within its dynamic interior. Faulting is directly linked to a wide range of global phenomena, including long-term climate change and the evolution of hominids, the opening and closure of oceans, and the rise and fall of mountain ranges. In Tectonic Faults, scientists from a variety of disciplines explore the connections between faulting and the processes of the Earth's atmosphere, surface, and interior. They consider faults and faulting from many different vantage points—including those of surface analysts, geochemists, material scientists, and physicists—and in all scales, from seismic fault slip to moving tectonic plates. They address basic issues, including the imaging of faults from Earth's surface to the base of the lithosphere and deeper, the structure and rheology of fault rocks, and the role of fluids and melt on the physical properties of deforming rock. They suggest strategies for understanding the interaction of faulting with topography and climate, predicting fault behavior, and interpreting the impacts on the rock record and the human environment. Using an Earth Systems approach, Tectonic Faults provides a new understanding of feedback between faulting and Earth's atmospheric, surface, and interior processes, and recommends new approaches for advancing knowledge of tectonic faults as an integral part of our dynamic planet.
Tracing Genres through Organizations
Authors: Spinuzzi Clay
Published: December 2018

A sociocultural study of workers' ad hoc genre innovations and their significance for information design.

In Tracing Genres through Organizations, Clay Spinuzzi examines the everyday improvisations by workers who deal with designed information and shows how understanding this impromptu creation can improve information design. He argues that the traditional user-centered approach to design does not take into consideration the unofficial genres that spring up as workers write notes, jot down ideas, and read aloud from an officially designed text. These often ephemeral innovations in information design are vital components in a genre ecology (the complex of artifacts mediating a given activity). When these innovations are recognized for what they are, they can be traced and their evolution as solutions to recurrent design problems can be studied. Spinuzzi proposes a sociocultural method for studying these improvised innovations that draws on genre theory (which provides the unit of analysis, the genre) and activity theory (which provides a theory of mediation and a way to study the different levels of activity in an organization).

After defining terms and describing the method of genre tracing, the book shows the methodology at work in four interrelated studies of traffic workers in Iowa and their use of a database of traffic accidents. These workers developed an ingenious array of ad hoc innovations to make the database better serve their needs. Spinuzzi argues that these inspired improvisations by workers can tell us a great deal about how designed information fails or succeeds in meeting workers' needs. He concludes by considering how the insights reached in studying genre innovation can guide information design itself.
Understanding Intelligence
Authors: Pfeifer Rolf , Scheier Christian
Published: December 2018

The book includes all the background material required to understand the principles underlying intelligence, as well as enough detailed information on intelligent robotics and simulated agents so readers can begin experiments and projects on their own.

By the mid-1980s researchers from artificial intelligence, computer science, brain and cognitive science, and psychology realized that the idea of computers as intelligent machines was inappropriate. The brain does not run "programs"; it does something entirely different. But what? Evolutionary theory says that the brain has evolved not to do mathematical proofs but to control our behavior, to ensure our survival. Researchers now agree that intelligence always manifests itself in behavior—thus it is behavior that we must understand. An exciting new field has grown around the study of behavior-based intelligence, also known as embodied cognitive science, "new AI," and "behavior-based AI."

This book provides a systematic introduction to this new way of thinking. After discussing concepts and approaches such as subsumption architecture, Braitenberg vehicles, evolutionary robotics, artificial life, self-organization, and learning, the authors derive a set of principles and a coherent framework for the study of naturally and artificially intelligent systems, or autonomous agents. This framework is based on a synthetic methodology whose goal is understanding by designing and building.

The book includes all the background material required to understand the principles underlying intelligence, as well as enough detailed information on intelligent robotics and simulated agents so readers can begin experiments and projects on their own. The reader is guided through a series of case studies that illustrate the design principles of embodied cognitive science.

Bradford Books imprint
Visual Agnosia
Authors: Farah Martha J.
Published: December 2018

The cognitive neuroscience of human vision draws on two kinds of evidence: functional imaging of normal subjects and the study of neurological patients with visual disorders. Martha Farah's landmark 1990 book Visual Agnosia presented the first comprehensive analysis of disorders of visual recognition within the framework of cognitive neuroscience, and remains the authoritative work on the subject. This long-awaited second edition provides a reorganized and updated review of the visual agnosias, incorporating the latest research on patients with insights from the functional neuroimaging literature. Visual agnosia refers to a multitude of different disorders and syndromes, fascinating in their own right and valuable for what they can tell us about normal human vision. Some patients cannot recognize faces but can still recognize other objects, while others retain only face recognition. Some see only one object at a time; others can see multiple objects but recognize only one at a time. Some do not consciously perceive the orientation of an object but nevertheless reach for it with perfected oriented grasp; others do not consciously recognize a face as familiar but nevertheless respond to it autonomically. Each disorder is illustrated with a clinical vignette, followed by a thorough review of the case report literature and a discussion of the theoretical implications of the disorder for cognitive neuroscience.

The second edition extends the range of disorders covered to include disorders of topographic recognition, and both general and selective disorders of semantic memory, as well as expanded coverage of face recognition impairments. Also included are a discussion of the complementary roles of imaging and patient-based research in cognitive neuroscience, and a final integrative chapter presenting the "big picture" of object recognition as illuminated by agnosia research.

Bradford Books imprint
Wireless
Authors: Hong Sungook
Published: December 2018

A new look at the early history of wireless communication.

By 1897 Guglielmo Marconi had transformed James Clerk Maxwell's theory of electromagnetic waves into a workable wireless telegraphy system, and by 1907 Lee de Forest had invented the Audion, a feedback amplifier and oscillator that opened the way to practical radio transmission. Fifteen years after Marconi's invention, wireless had become an essential means of communication, as well as a hobby for many.

This book offers a new perspective on the early days of wireless communication. Drawing on previously untapped archival evidence and recent work in the history and sociology of science and technology, it examines the substance and context of both experimental and theoretical aspects of engineering and scientific practices in the first years of this technology. It offers new insights into the relationship between Marconi and his scientific advisor, the physicist John Ambrose Fleming (inventor of the vacuum tube). It includes the full story of the infamous 1903 incident in which Marconi's opponent Nevil Maskelyne interfered with Fleming's public demonstration of Marconi's syntonic (tuning) system at the Royal Institution by sending derogatory messages from his own transmitter. The analysis of the Maskelyne affair highlights the struggle between Marconi and his opponents, the efficacy of early syntonic devices, Fleming's role as a public witness to Marconi's private experiments, and the nature of Marconi's "shows." It also provides a rare case study of how the credibility of an engineer can be created, consumed, and suddenly destroyed. The book concludes with a discussion of de Forest's Audion and the shift from wireless telegraphy to radio.
The Privacy Advocates
Authors: Bennett Colin J.
Published: December 2018

An analysis of the people and groups who have emerged to challenge the increasingly intrusive ways personal information is captured, processed, and disseminated.

Today, personal information is captured, processed, and disseminated in a bewildering variety of ways, and through increasingly sophisticated, miniaturized, and distributed technologies: identity cards, biometrics, video surveillance, the use of cookies and spyware by Web sites, data mining and profiling, and many others. In The Privacy Advocates, Colin Bennett analyzes the people and groups around the world who have risen to challenge the most intrusive surveillance practices by both government and corporations. Bennett describes a network of self-identified privacy advocates who have emerged from civil society—without official sanction and with few resources, but surprisingly influential. A number of high-profile conflicts in recent years have brought this international advocacy movement more sharply into focus. Bennett is the first to examine privacy and surveillance not from a legal, political, or technical perspective but from the viewpoint of these independent activists who have found creative ways to affect policy and practice. Drawing on extensive interviews with key informants in the movement, he examines how they frame the issue and how they organize, who they are and what strategies they use. He also presents a series of case studies that illustrate how effective their efforts have been, including conflicts over key-escrow encryption (which allows the government to read encrypted messages), online advertising through third-party cookies that track users across different Web sites, and online authentication mechanisms such as the short-lived Microsoft Passport. Finally, Bennett considers how the loose coalitions of the privacy network could develop into a more cohesive international social movement.
Avant-garde Videogames
Authors: Schrank Brian
Published: December 2018

An exploration of avant-garde games that builds upon the formal and political modes of contemporary and historical art movements.

The avant-garde challenges or leads culture; it opens up or redefines art forms and our perception of the way the world works. In this book, Brian Schrank describes the ways that the avant-garde emerges through videogames. Just as impressionism or cubism created alternative ways of making and viewing paintings, Schrank argues, avant-garde videogames create alternate ways of making and playing games. A mainstream game channels players into a tightly closed circuit of play; an avant-garde game opens up that circuit, revealing (and reveling in) its own nature as a game.

We can evaluate the avant-garde, Schrank argues, according to how it opens up the experience of games (formal art) or the experience of being in the world (political art). He shows that different artists use different strategies to achieve an avant-garde perspective. Some fixate on form, others on politics; some take radical positions, others more complicit ones. Schrank examines these strategies and the artists who deploy them, looking closely at four varieties of avant-garde games: radical formal, which breaks up the flow of the game so players can engage with its materiality, sensuality, and conventionality; radical political, which plays with art and politics as well as fictions and everyday life; complicit formal, which treats videogames as a resource (like any other art medium) for contemporary art; and complicit political, which uses populist methods to blend life, art, play, and reality—as in alternate reality games, which adapt Situationist strategies for a mass audience.
Off-Track Profs
Authors: Cross John G. , Goldenberg Edie N.
Published: December 2018

An investigation of non-tenure-track faculty at ten elite research universities and the implications for undergraduate education, institutional governance, and American preeminence in higher education.

Much attention has been paid to the increasing proportion of non-tenure-track faculty—adjuncts, lecturers, and others—in American higher education. Critics charge that universities exploit “contingent faculty” and graduate students, engaging in a type of bait and switch to attract applicants (advertising institutional standing based on distinguished faculty who seldom teach undergraduates), and as a result provide undergraduates with an inadequate educational experience.

This book, by two experienced academic administrators, investigates the expanding role of part-time and non-tenure-track instructors in ten elite research universities and the consequences of this trend for the quality of the educational experience, the functioning of the university, and the excellence of the academic environment. The authors discover, to their surprise, that the existing data on the workforce in higher education is ambiguous (different institutions use different terms for non-tenure track instructors; some even omit them from faculty data reports), making comparisons suspect. Many academic administrators are unaware of the tenured/nontenured breakdown of their own faculties and the hiring practices of their own universities.

The authors look closely at the teaching workforce at Berkeley, Illinois, Michigan, Virginia, Washington, Cornell, Duke, MIT, Northwestern, and Washington University, believing that these outstanding universities provide a strong test case of resistance to pressures on the traditional tenure system. They describe hiring trends and what drives them, explain why they matter if we want to improve undergraduate education, support collegiality on campus, trust in academic governance, prevent the erosion of tenure, and preserve America's global leadership in higher education.