bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Serpentine Vegetation of Western North America
Authors: Alexander Earl B. , Coleman Roger G. , Keeler-Wolfe Todd , Harrison Susan P.
Published: November 2020

As discussed in chapter 11, the general patterning of vegetation on serpentine up and down the western North American continent is relatively straightforward. However, many of the distinctive nuances relating to the structure and composition of the vegetation, particularly in comparison to adjacent nonserpentine vegetation have yet to be described. In this chapter we use vegetation as a tool to describe the variation of biotic diversity on serpentine throughout western North America. Vegetation is valuable in this regard because, by describing it, one assembles the information on all plants growing in different patterns in a landscape. This chapter expands on some of the concepts mentioned in chapter 11 and addresses some of the specific questions of interest to ecologists and biologists regarding the influence of serpentine on groups of plant species, using examples from western North America. Western North America provides an excellent template for understanding general questions about serpentine effects on species and vegetation. The broad latitudinal distribution and the local topographic and geologic diversity of serpentine exposures throughout this area produce an array of gradients of temperature, moisture, soil development, disturbance patterns, and day length to produce multiple ecological gradients operating at multiple scales. Also, within western North America a wide number of species from many different genera and families are influenced by serpentine. Vegetation classification is a tool used for several purposes, including efficient communication, data reduction and synthesis, interpretation, and land management and planning. Classifications provide one way of summarizing our knowledge of vegetation patterns. Although there are many different classification concepts, all classifications require the identification of a set of discrete vegetation classes. The fundamental unit of these discrete classes that is identifiable in the field is the stand. A stand is defined by two main unifying characteristics (CNPS 2003): 1. It has compositional integrity. Throughout the site, the combination of plant species is similar. The stand is differentiated from adjacent stands by a shift in plant species composition that may be abrupt or indistinct. That shift relates to a concomitant shift in certain ecological features such as temperature, moisture, or soil fertility that maintain control over the plant species composition.
Effects of Continents and Supercontinents on Climate
Authors: Rogers John J. W. , Santosh M.
Published: November 2020

Continents affect the earth’s climate because they modify global wind patterns, control the paths of ocean currents, and absorb less heat than seawater. Throughout earth history the constant movement of continents and the episodic assembly of supercontinents has influenced both global climate and the climates of individual continents. In this chapter we discuss both present climate and the history of climate as far back in the geologic record as we can draw inferences. We concentrate on longterm changes that are affected by continental movements and omit discussion of processes with periodicities less than about 20,000 years. We refer readers to Clark et al. (1999) and Cronin (1999) if they are interested in such short-term processes as El Nino, periodic variations in solar irradiance, and Heinrich events. The chapter is divided into three sections. The first section describes the processes that control climate on the earth and includes a discussion of possible causes of glaciation that occurred over much of the earth at more than one time in the past. The second section investigates the types of evidence that geologists use to infer past climates. They include specific rock types that can form only under restricted climatic conditions, varieties of individual fossils, diversity of fossil populations, and information that the 18O/16O isotopic system can provide about temperatures of formation of ancient sediments. The third section recounts the history of the earth’s climate and relates changes to the growth and movement of continents. This history takes us from the Archean, when climates are virtually unknown, through various stages in the evolution of organic life, and ultimately to the causes of the present glaciation in both the north and the south polar regions. The earth’s climate is controlled both by processes that would operate even if continents did not exist and also by the positions and topographies of continents. We begin with the general controls, then discuss the specific effects of continents, and close with a brief discussion of processes that cause glaciation. The general climate of the earth is determined by the variation in the amount of sunshine received at different latitudes, by the earth’s rotation, and by the amount of arriving solar energy that is retained in the atmosphere.
Why The Children’s Aid Society Is Involved in This Work
Authors: Coltoff Philip
Published: November 2020

The Children’s Aid Society (CAS), founded in 1853, is one of the largest and oldest child and family social-welfare agencies in the country. It serves 150,000 children and families through a continuum of services—adoption and foster care; medical, mental health, and dental services; summer and winter camps; respite care for the disabled; group work and recreation in community centers and schools; homemaker services; counseling; and court mediation and conciliation programs. The agency’s budget in 2003 was approximately $75 million, financed almost equally from public and private funds. In 1992, after several years of planning and negotiation, CAS opened its first community school in the Washington Heights neighborhood of New York City. If you visit Intermediate School (IS) 218 or one of the many other community schools in New York City and around the country, it may seem very contemporary, like a “school of the future.” Indeed, we at CAS feel that these schools are one of our most important efforts in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Yet community schools trace their roots back nearly 150 years, as previous generations tried to find ways to respond to children’s and families’ needs. CAS’s own commitment to public education is not new. When the organization was founded in the mid-nineteenth century by Charles Loring Brace, he sought not only to find shelter for homeless street children but to teach practical skills such as cobbling and hand-sewing while also creating free reading rooms for the enlightenment of young minds. Brace was actively involved in the campaign to abolish child labor, and he helped establish the nation’s first compulsory education laws. He and his successors ultimately created New York City’s first vocational schools, the first free kindergartens, and the first medical and dental clinics in public schools (the former to battle the perils of consumption, now known as tuberculosis). Yet this historic commitment to education went only so far. Up until the late 1980s, CAS’s role in the city’s public schools was primarily that of a contracted provider of health, mental health, and dental services.
Parent Involvement and Leadership in Action
Authors: Méndez Hersilia
Published: November 2020

From its founding in 1853, The Children’s Aid Society (CAS) identified parent leadership and involvement as a win-win strategy and incorporated it as one of its core components. So naturally, when CAS entered into a partnership with the New York City Board of Education in 1990, parents were invited to be central players from the planning phase onward. When CAS’s first community school, Salomé Ureña de Henriquez Middle Academies (Intermediate School [IS] 218), opened in 1992, a red carpet was extended for parents by other parents and the staff; 11 years later it was still extended, not only at this school but also at nine others in Manhattan and the Bronx, as well as at many adaptation sites around the country and abroad. In its work in community schools, CAS sees parents as assets and key allies, not as burdens; we aim not only to increase the number of parents involved in their children’s education but also to deepen the intensity of their involvement and to encourage greater participation in their children’s future. As we engage parents in skills workshops and advocacy events, we also create a critical link to the home, allowing us to serve and empower whole families and to foster effective leadership in their homes as well as their schools. Most of the CAS community schools are located in low-income neighborhoods that have many recent immigrants; the challenges of meeting the numerous needs inherent in immigrant communities are added to the challenges of involving parents. However, after more than a decade, a number of evaluations and reports show that each year these schools see greater numbers of parents participating in events ranging from parenting training and advocacy events to holiday dinners.1 This level of involvement represents a significant change in school culture; these parents are playing a greater role in their children’s education and in the school as a whole. By 2003 leaders from both the New York City Department of Education and the New York State Department of Education, among others, had recognized the parent involvement strategy at CAS’s community schools as a model to be emulated.
School-Based Health Services
Authors: Colon Beverly A.
Published: November 2020

In order to be successful in school, children must be able to see and hear and must be free of troubling health problems. Our experience with community schools confirms the idea that locating health services within a school provides easy access for students who are not receiving health care elsewhere. However, many problems, such as working with children who lack health insurance and typically end up in the emergency room for episodic care, have to be overcome. More and more of these children and their parents in our schools are recent undocumented immigrants who fear dealing with the health care system. An even larger number of children are simply from “working poor” families in which parents work off the books or for employers that do not or cannot provide health insurance. For those families who are enrolled in public health insurance plans (most typically Medicaid), having that insurance card in hand does not necessarily provide access to care if the family does not know how to negotiate the health care system. Adolescents raise another issue altogether. It has been well documented that adolescents are the largest group of uninsured children. They generally want help with issues they do not want anyone to know about, such as birth control, sexually transmitted diseases, and depression and suicidal thoughts. However, they can, and do, access school-based health centers (SBHCs) for these health needs. The goal of SBHCs is to improve the overall physical and emotional health of children and adolescents. They do this in two important ways—by providing prevention services and by providing direct health care. The majority of school-based clinics are started by a health care provider who has approached a particular school and formed a relationship with the school’s administrators. Such SBHCs are organizationally external to the school system, administered by local health care facilities such as hospitals and community health centers. Once the clinic is in the school, constant outreach to administrators, teachers, and parents must be maintained to remind them that the health center is on-site. The biggest challenge such providers face is the integration of the health services with the activities of the school.
Sustaining Community Schools: Learning from Children’s Aid Society’s Experience
Authors: Quinn Jane
Published: November 2020

Before The Children’s Aid Society (CAS) opened its first two community schools in Washington Heights (1992–1993), our staff and board had already begun to address the issue of sustainability—that is, how to plan for the long-term development, implementation, assessment, and institutionalization of this new line of work. Internal strategic planning led to decisions by CAS board and staff leadership to realign existing resources in support of this new work, while external planning resulted in explicit partnership agreements, forged in 1990, with the New York City Board of Education and Community School District 6 (see appendix to Coltoff, ch. 1 in this volume) that also set the stage for long-term sustainability. As CAS’s assistant executive director for community schools, my responsibilities include planning and overseeing our sustainability efforts. This chapter describes CAS’s experience in raising funds for its community schools and offers suggestions for how other practitioners might proceed. CAS views sustainability as involving not only aggressive fundraising but also public relations, constituency building, and advocacy, using a conceptual framework developed by the Finance Project, a national research and policy organization. These four components are interrelated; work in one area supports and complements efforts in the other three. For fiscal year 2003–2004, the operating budget for CAS’s 10 community schools totaled almost $13 million, which included approximately $8.6 million for the extended-day, summer camp, teen, parent, and adult education components and $2.8 million for health services (medical, dental, and mental health). In addition, two sites have Early Head Start and Head Start programs operated by CAS; the costs for these programs are covered entirely by federal grants totaling approximately $1.4 million. Because the programs differ, each school has a different budget, but the estimated additional cost per student per year of a fully developed community school is $1,000. CAS generates support for its community schools from a wide variety of sources. During the initial years, core support came primarily from private sources, including foundations, corporations, and individuals; the exception was the health and mental health services, which were financed partially by Medicaid and Child Health Plus (federally supported children’s health insurance), as well as by other public and private sources.
Extended-Service Schools as a District-Wide Strategy
Authors: Payzant Thomas W.
Published: November 2020

Approaches to education reform rarely follow a simple, linear path. Rather than pursuing one approach single-mindedly over an extended period of years, school reform—informed by research, changes in public policy, and differences in the dynamic needs of students from changing communities—tends to be characterized by continuous change and sometimes seems to recycle approaches that have been tried before. For those of us who have worked toward education reform throughout our careers, this process of change does not betray a lack of consistency or commitment but constitutes a necessary response to the continually changing conditions in which public schools must operate. The demographics of our schools are dynamic, particularly because of escalating numbers of immigrants from around the world. Our fiscal circumstances are in continual flux. Community expectations of what schools should provide are subject to change as well, often through a growing national awareness of the connection between the quality of America’s schools and the character of our democratic institutions. Two of the most significant reform strategies to emerge during the past decade may seem contradictory: on the one hand, those strategies that concentrate relentlessly on instructional improvement, and, on the other hand, those that seek to establish the school as a community centerpiece for addressing a broad range of personal, social, and family needs that relate to the health of the community as a whole. At first glance these two strategies—a narrow focus on teaching and learning contrasted with a wider focus through what are called extended-service or full-service schools— appear to be at cross-purposes. Poor student performance, particularly when combined with difficult economic times, gives rise to a set of tough questions that all educational leaders sooner or later must confront: Can schools be all things to all people? Are educators being asked to take on too much? Can schools be expected to solve all of society’s problems with very limited resources? Is it not better for schools to do a few things well, rather than taking on too much and risking superficial results?
Neuropsychological Late Effects
Authors: Mulhern Raymond K. , Butler Robert W.
Published: November 2020

This chapter reviews neuropsychological late effects associated with childhood cancer and its treatment. The study of late effects presupposes that patients are long-term survivors, if not permanently cured, of their disease. Late effects are temporally defined as occurring after the successful completion of medical therapy, usually 2 or more years from the time of diagnosis, and it is generally assumed that late effects are chronic, if not progressive, in their course. This definition serves to separate late effects from those effects of disease and treatment that are acute or subacute and time limited, such as chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting or temporary cognitive changes induced by cancer therapy. Research interest in neuropsychological outcomes, as well as neurological and other functional late effects, has shown an increase commensurate with improvements in effective therapy. For example, 30 years ago when few children were cured of acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), questions related to the ultimate academic or vocational performance of long-term survivors were trivial compared to the need for improved therapy. In contrast, today more than 80% of children diagnosed with ALL can be cured, and issues related to their quality of life as long-term survivors have now received increased emphasis. There is at least comparable attention to neuropsychological status in primary brain tumors. We first provide a brief medical background on the two most frequent forms of childhood cancer, ALL and malignant brain tumors, followed by a review of the current neuropsychological literature. The literature review provides an in-depth analysis of the types of cognitive impairments observed and known or suspected risk factors for impairments. When neurobiological substrates are known, particularly from neuroimaging studies, they are discussed. Finally, we conclude the review with sections that discuss current recommendations for a core battery of neuropsychological assessment of survivors and recommendations for future research. Approximately 20,000 children and adolescents under the age of 20 years were diagnosed with cancer in 1999 (Steen & Mirro, 2000). The most commonly diagnosed cancer in this age group is ALL, a malignant disorder of lymphoid cells found in the bone marrow that migrates to virtually every organ system, including the central nervous system (CNS), via the circulatory system. ALL accounts for one fourth of all childhood cancers and 75% of all cases of childhood leukemia (Margolin, Steuber, & Poplack, 2002).
Loss and Grief
Authors: Breyer Joanna , Sanfeliz Aurora
Published: November 2020

There are many types of loss, but in most Western cultures, the death of a child is considered the most difficult loss because of the symbolic meaning and value associated with having children (Rubin & Malkinson, 2001). In such cultures, the death of a child is considered “out of order” and shatters basic expectations regarding the sequence and predictability of events (Rando, 1983; Schmidt, 1987). The loss of a child challenges the evolutionary role of the parent as “protector” and may result in feelings of despair, isolation, and guilt (Finkbeiner, 1996). This reaction to losing a child is perhaps related to the lower mortality rate experienced in many Western cultures. Cultures with higher infant mortality rates may view the significance of a child’s death differently (Eisenbruch, 1984a). There are also differences in how people of various ethnic backgrounds experience the loss of a child within the United States (Kalish & Reynolds, 1976). Despite the extensive history of research and writings on loss and bereavement, there is a dearth of controlled studies specific to bereavement in the pediatric oncology population. Ethical and methodological challenges may account for the limited research in this area. In addition, the increase in the survival rate for pediatric oncology patients over the past several decades has resulted in an emphasis on the study of coping and adjustment of survivors. In the United States, mortality rates associated with pediatric cancers have been declining for over a quarter century. Between 1975 and 1995, the overall decline in mortality was nearly 40% (Ries, 1999). Still, an estimated 1,500 deaths were expected in 2003 among children diagnosed with cancer between the ages of birth and 14 years, indicating that clinicians in this field are still frequently confronted with anticipatory grief and subsequent bereavement issues for patients and families (American Cancer Society, 2003). The current chapter provides a brief overview of relevant bereavement literature in the context of describing bereavement in pediatric oncology and introduces a model of coping with bereavement suited to describing the range of reactions to the loss of a child.
Sacred Sea
Authors: Thomson Peter
Published: November 2020

Absoliutno blagopoluchnoe ozero Baikal! the Russian scientist looking out over the great lake says. "Lake Baikal is Perfect!" And humans can never harm it. For a man cut loose from his life in the U.S., Lake Baikal-Siberia's sacred inland sea-becomes a place of pilgrimage, the focal point of a 25,000-mile journey by land and sea in search of connection, permanence, restoration and hope. Following a difficult divorce, veteran environmental journalist Peter Thomson sets off from Boston with his younger brother for one of nature's most remarkable creations, in one of the farthest corners of the planet. Lake Baikal, a gargantuan crack in the Siberian plateau, is the world's largest body of fresh water, its deepest and oldest lake, and a cauldron of evolution, home to hundreds of unique creatures, including the world's only freshwater seal. It's also among the most pristine lakes on earth, with a mythical ability to protect itself from the growing human impact-a "perfect," self-cleansing ecosystem. A trip halfway around the world by train, cargo ship and rubber raft brings the brothers to a place of sublime beauty, deep history and immense natural power. But at Baikal they also find ominous signs that this perfect piece of nature could yet succumb to the even more powerful forces of human hubris, carelessness and ignorance. They find that despite its isolation, Baikal is connected to everything else on Earth, and that it will need the love and devotion of people around the world to protect it. On their trek to and from Siberia the author and his brother also encounter a stream of people who are also lonely, displaced and yearning for something beyond the limits of their own lives, but many of whom are also big-hearted and deeply connected to their own communities and the world around them. What begins as a search for restoration in nature becomes as well a discovery of the restorative power of trust, faith and human connection.
Into the Lake—Shallow
Authors: Thomson Peter
Published: November 2020

The air smells of rain and autumn decay and sends cold, sharp fingers poking through our clothes as the Lonesome Boatman steers our little craft along the shore of the Holy Nose. Beyond the gunwales of the boat, spears of orange and emerald march up the steep hillside—the ubiquitous larch and birch, cedar and fir, muted under the thick sky. And behind this abrupt shoreline rises a dark mountain chain that extends fifty kilometers southwest along the length of the peninsula, mirroring the ridges of the Barguzin chain across the bay to the east and the unseen peaks of the Primorsky, Baikal, and Khamar Daban ranges hugging the lake’s western and southern shores. This is the vertiginous lay of the land around nearly all of Baikal’s shoreline. It’s not just the clear and deep water that can make one’s head spin. On all sides, mountains rear up five, six, and seven thousand feet above the lake, and then plunge past the surface and on toward the depths with barely a pause to acknowledge the change from air to water. Bobbing in a boat on its surface, you get the peculiar feeling that Baikal is itself contained by some larger vessel. One English word that I’ve heard used to describe the lake basin, in keeping with the notion of Baikal being a “sacred sea,” is “chalice,” like some kind of holy vessel cradling these mystical waters. You get the peculiar feeling, as well, that the world begins and ends here. There are no landmarks that are not part of the Baikal ecosystem, not a spot of earth on which a drop of falling rain doesn’t flow into Baikal. And despite the lake’s magnitude, it’s actually a very small world, at least the part that humans can occupy. Around most of the lake there’s almost no “shore” to speak of, just a narrow margin at the base of the mountains here and there where humans can get a toehold at the edge of the abyss.
In Brown's Wake
Authors: Minow Martha
Published: November 2020

What is the legacy of Brown vs. Board of Education? While it is well known for establishing racial equality as a central commitment of American schools, the case also inspired social movements for equality in education across all lines of difference, including language, gender, disability, immigration status, socio-economic status, religion, and sexual orientation. Yet more than a half century after Brown, American schools are more racially separated than before, and educators, parents and policy makers still debate whether the ruling requires all-inclusive classrooms in terms of race, gender, disability, and other differences. In Brown's Wake examines the reverberations of Brown in American schools, including efforts to promote equal opportunities for all kinds of students. School choice, once a strategy for avoiding Brown, has emerged as a tool to promote integration and opportunities, even as charter schools and private school voucher programs enable new forms of self-separation by language, gender, disability, and ethnicity. Martha Minow, Dean of Harvard Law School, argues that the criteria placed on such initiatives carry serious consequences for both the character of American education and civil society itself. Although the original promise of Brown remains more symbolic than effective, Minow demonstrates the power of its vision in the struggles for equal education regardless of students' social identity, not only in the United States but also in many countries around the world. Further, she urges renewed commitment to the project of social integration even while acknowledging the complex obstacles that must be overcome. An elegant and concise overview of Brown and its aftermath, In Brown's Wake explores the broad-ranging and often surprising impact of one of the century's most important Supreme Court decisions.
Silent Covenants
Authors: Bell Derrick
Published: November 2020

When the landmark Supreme Court case of Brown vs. Board of Education was handed down in 1954, many civil rights advocates believed that the decision, which declared public school segregation unconstitutional, would become the Holy Grail of racial justice. Fifty years later, despite its legal irrelevance and the racially separate and educationally ineffective state of public schooling for most black children, Brown is still viewed by many as the perfect precedent. Here, Derrick Bell shatters the shining image of this celebrated ruling. He notes that, despite the onerous burdens of segregation, many black schools functioned well and racial bigotry had not rendered blacks a damaged race. He maintains that, given what we now know about the pervasive nature of racism, the Court should have determined instead to rigorously enforce the "equal" component of the "separate but equal" standard. Racial policy, Bell maintains, is made through silent covenants--unspoken convergences of interest and involuntary sacrifices of rights--that ensure that policies conform to priorities set by policy-makers. Blacks and whites are the fortuitous winners or losers in these unspoken agreements. The experience with Brown, Bell urges, should teach us that meaningful progress in the quest for racial justice requires more than the assertion of harms. Strategies must recognize and utilize the interest-convergence factors that strongly influence racial policy decisions. In Silent Covenants, Bell condenses more than four decades of thought and action into a powerful and eye-opening book.
Resurrecting Jerusalem
Authors: Beinart Julian
Published: November 2020

Jerusalem is the greatest site of physical destruction and renewal known to history. For some 4,000 years it suffered wars, earthquakes, and fires, not to mention twenty sieges, two periods of total desolation, eighteen reconstructions, and at least eleven transitions from one religious faith to another. This cycle of trauma has resulted in a variety of outcomes; among them are demolition without reconstruction, repeated renewal, no destruction at all, and the conscious maintenance of ruins. This chapter explores how these divergent responses to disaster are linked to the most important buildings of the three great monotheistic religions, for which Jerusalem remains a place of special significance. In the stories and laws embedded in the documents of these religions there are clues as to how they propose to help their followers respond to losses, including the loss of life, property, territory, religious artifacts, and psychological well-being. In the loss and restitution of the major temples, churches, mosques, and synagogues, there is a similar tie between religious propositions and building form. In the story of the earliest city in the Bible, there is a tussle between God’s punishment of man and man’s restitution. First, God is angry and Adam is sent from Eden. Then Adam’s son Cain commits murder and is also banished, but he builds the first city and names it Enoch after his son. The first city is thus created by a criminal, but the city later becomes the place of God. There is a parallel ambiguity about Jerusalem in the texts. God is angry and he destroys, but he also loves and rehabilitates: “Here [in Jerusalem] was born the rumor of a single invisible God, a father figure, authoritarian—at once petulant and magnanimous, vindictive and merciful. . . . the sadomasochism of ‘in my wrath I smote thee, but in my favour I had mercy’ was first articulated in religious terms.” For the twentieth-century theologian Jacques Ellul, Jerusalem is God’s singular creation, “his own city” to be both destroyed and restored as a model for all cities. In many of the destructions of Jerusalem, brutal violence was accompanied by regret or piety.
Echoes of Life
Authors: Gaines Susan M. , Eglinton Geoffrey , Rullkötter Jürgen
Published: November 2020

In 1936 a German chemist identified certain organic molecules that he had extracted from ancient rocks and oils as the fossil remains of chlorophyll--presumably from plants that had lived and died millions of years in the past. It was another twenty-five years before this insight was developed and the term "biomarker" coined to describe fossil molecules whose molecular structures could reveal the presence of otherwise elusive organisms and processes. Echoes of Life is the story of these molecules and how they are illuminating the history of the earth and its life. It is also the story of how a few maverick organic chemists and geologists defied the dictates of their disciplines and--at a time when the natural sciences were fragmenting into ever-more-specialized sub-disciplines--reunited chemistry, biology and geology in a common endeavor. The rare combination of rigorous science and literary style--woven into a historic narrative that moves naturally from the simple to the complex--make Echoes of Life a book to be read for pleasure and contemplation, as well as education.
The Easiest Hard Problem: Number Partitioning
Authors: Mertens Stephan
Published: November 2020

The number partitioning problem (NPP) is defined easily: Given a list a1, a2, . . . , an of positive integers, find a partition, that is, a subset A {1,..., n}, minimizing the discrepancy Number partitioning is of considerable importance, both practically and theoretically. Its practical applications range from multiprocessor scheduling and the minimization of VLSI circuit size and delay [102, 504], to public key cryptography [387], to choosing up sides in a ball game [237]. Number partitioning is also one of Garey and Johnson's six basic NP-hard problems that lie at the heart of the theory of NP-completeness [191, 388], and is in fact the only one of these problems that actually deals with numbers. Hence, it is often chosen as a base for NP-completeness proofs of other problems involving numbers, such as bin packing, multiprocessor scheduling [38], quadratic programming, and knapsack problems. The computational complexity of the NPP depends on the type of input numbers {a1, a2 , . . . , an}. Consider the case where the values of aj are positive integers bounded by a constant A. Then the discrepancy E can take on at most nA different values, so the size of the search space is O(nA) instead of O(2n) and it is straightforward to devise an algorithm that explores this reduced space in time polynomial in nA [191]. Of course, such an algorithm does not prove P = NP: a concise encoding of an instance requires O(nlog2 A) bits, and A is not bounded by any power of Iog2 A. This feature of the NPP is called pseudopoly nomiality. The NP-hardness of the NPP becomes apparent when input numbers are of a size exponentially large in n or, after division by the maximal input number, of exponentially high precision. To study typical properties of the NPP, the input numbers are often taken to be independent, identically distributed random variables. Under this probabilistic assumption, the minimal discrepancy E0 is a stochastic quantity.
Catastrophe
Authors: Posner Richard A.
Published: November 2020

Catastrophic risks are much greater than is commonly appreciated. Collision with an asteroid, runaway global warming, voraciously replicating nanomachines, a pandemic of gene-spliced smallpox launched by bioterrorists, and a world-ending accident in a high-energy particle accelerator, are among the possible extinction events that are sufficiently likely to warrant careful study. How should we respond to events that, for a variety of psychological and cultural reasons, we find it hard to wrap our minds around? Posner argues that realism about science and scientists, innovative applications of cost-benefit analysis, a scientifically literate legal profession, unprecedented international cooperation, and a pragmatic attitude toward civil liberties are among the keys to coping effectively with the catastrophic risks.
Finding Faults in California
Authors: Hough Susan Elizabeth , Bilham Roger G.
Published: November 2020

April 18, 1906. “At 5:15 this morning . . . I thought I heard the alarm go off. I reached over to stop it and to my great surprise it was rolling from one side of the stand to the other, & then to the floor. I looked out the window . . . in time to see a few chemnies [sic] sway around and fall. The picture & bed & dresser & chairs were dancing around the room. . . . A house caught fire about 5 blocks off. . . .Then to make matters worse, there was no water when the fire dept. arrived.” April 18. “Within moments, during this period of the city’s greatest emergency, the unusual silence of the [fire] alarm bell told its own story. The system was destroyed as was the function of the city’s 30,000 telephones.” April 18, 7:00 A.M. “The Federal Troops, the members of the Regular Police Force and all Special Police Officers have been authorized [by San Francisco Mayor E. E. Schmitz] to KILL any and all persons found engaged in Looting or in the Commission of Any Other Crime.” April 19. “I have seen the most awful sights to day that I ever saw in my life! . . . It is impossible for you to conceive or in any small degree realize the terrible disaster that has befallen San Francisco. I can’t & I’ve seen it. . . .When I left this afternoon fully 2/3 of San Francisco was in ruins. The streets have great cracks in them & the Car tracks are twisted by the earthquake & heat. The flames are spreading in all directions even against a fresh north wind.” May 5, 1906.“Day and night the dead calm continued, and yet, near to the flames, the wind was often a gale, so mighty was the suck.” May 13. “We have not got our thoughts collected since the big quake—not quite—it has been 24 days since the big awful earthquake and we have had more then 24 earthquakes in them 24 days, small ones.
A Guide to Informatics in Flow Cytometry
Authors: Treister Adam
Published: November 2020

Flow cytometry is a result of the computer revolution. Biologists used fluorescent dyes in microscopy and medicine almost a hundred years before the first flow cytometer. Only after electronics became sophisticated enough to control individual cells and computers became fast enough to analyze the data coming out of the instrument, and to make a decision in time to deflect the stream, did cell sorting become viable. Since the 1970s, the capabilities of computers have grown exponentially. According to the famed Moore’s Law, the size of the computer, as tracked by the number of transistors on a chip, doubles every 18 months. This rule has held for three decades so far, and new technologies continue to appear to keep that growth on track. The clock speed of chips is now measured in gigahertz—billions of instructions per second—and hard drives are now available with capacities measured in terabytes. Having computers so powerful, cheap, and ubiquitous changes the nature of scientific exploration. We are in the early steps of a long march of biotechnology breakthroughs spawned from this excess of compute power. From genomics to proteomics to high-throughput flow cytometry, the trend in biological research is toward massproduced, high-volume experiments. Automation is the key to scaling their size and scope and to lowering their cost per test. Each step that was previously done by human hands is being delegated to a computer or a robot for the implementation to be more precise and to scale efficiently. From making sort decisions in milliseconds to creating data archives that may last for centuries, computers control the information involved with cytometry, and software controls the computers. As the technology matures and the size and number of exper iments increase, the emphasis of software development switches from instrument control to analysis and management. The challenge for computers is not in running the cytometer any more. The more modern challenge for informatics is to analyze, aggregate, maintain, access, and exchange the huge volume of flow cytometry data. Clinical and other regulated use of cytometry necessitates more rigorous data administration techniques. These techniques introduce issues of security, integrity, and privacy into the processing of data.
Applications of Flow Cytometry in Animal Reproduction
Authors: Garner Duane L. , Seidel George E.,Jr.
Published: November 2020

Animals use many highly specialized cells to carry out their reproductive functions. These cells include not only germ-line cells—spermatozoa/oocytes—but also a variety of supporting cells of the remaining organs of the reproductive system and their precursors, thereby making production of viable offspring possible. Reproductive processes, at least in nonhuman mammals, also require functional mammary glands for adequate nourishment of newborn offspring. Specific analyses or sorting of the specialized cells of the reproductive system can provide a means of monitoring and modifying reproductive processes in animals and man. Male gametes are relatively small, haploid cells suspended in fluid secretions from the testes and accessory reproductive organs. Fully functional, mature spermatozoa are incapable of dividing; thus, these terminal gametes are readily quantified and characterized by flow cytometry. Many thousands to millions of spermatozoa can be readily analyzed and sorted. This situation differs markedly from most other kinds of cells, with which cell division and cell cycle differences can make interpretations of data more difficult. Many of the cells of the reproductive and endocrine systems of mammals have been studied by flow analyses. Female gametes, however, are relatively large, often exceeding 100 min diameter, and therefore are not readily analyzed using flow cytometry. Although the oocytes themselves usually are not useful targets, some of the supporting cumulus cells surrounding developing oocytes can be analyzed and thereby provide useful information about that particular ovarian follicle. The functional status of these specialized cells is an indicator of the health of the follicle and of the likelihood that the associated oocyte can produce viable offspring. Reproductive functions in animals are controlled by various widely distributed cellular components of the endocrine system including the hypothalamus, the pituitary gland, the gonads, and the placenta. Such regulatory cells can be isolated and cultured and have their in vitro function monitored, using flow cytometric analysis of their internal components and surface receptors. The supporting cells of animal reproductive systems make possible the production of viable offspring. The functional status of these supporting cells can be evaluated by flow analyses, including the epithelial cervical cells of the female tract, and most accessory tissues, including the male accessory sex glands.
Laughing Gas, Viagra, and Lipitor
Authors: Li Jie Jack
Published: November 2020

The stories behind drug discovery are fascinating, full of human and scientific interest. This is a book on the history of drug discovery that highlights the intellectual splendor of discoverers as well as the human frailty associated them. History is replete with examples of breakthrough medicines that have saved millions of lives. Ether as an anesthetic by Morton; penicillin as an antibiotic by Fleming; and insulin as an anti-diabetic by Banting are just a few examples. The discoverers of these medicines are doubtlessly benefactors to mankind--for instance, without penicillin, 75% of us probably would not be alive because some of our parents or grandparents would have succumbed to infections. Dr. Jack Li, a medicinal chemist who is intimately involved with drug discovery, has assembled an astounding amount of facts and information behind important drugs through extensive literature research and interviews with many inventors of the drugs including Viagra and Lipitor. There have been many myths and inaccuracies associated with those legendary drugs. The inventors perspectives afforded this book an invaluable accuracy and insight because history is not history unless it is true. The text is supplemented by many anecdotes, pictures and postage stamps. Both specialist and layman will find Laughing Gas, Viagra, and Lipitor informative and entertaining. Students in chemistry, pharmacy, and medicine, workers in healthcare and high school science teachers will find this book most useful.
The Long Arm of the Law
Authors: Raustiala Kal
Published: November 2020

Rene Martin Verdugo-Urquidez was driving in San Felipe, Mexico on a winter’s day in 1986 when he was stopped by several Mexican police officers. The officers arrested Verdugo-Urquidez, placed him in the back of an unmarked car, and forced him to lie down on the seat with his face covered by a jacket. A Mexican citizen, Verdugo-Urquidez was believed to be one of the leading members of a major drug cartel and was suspected of participating in the brutal murder of Enrique Camarena-Salazar, an agent of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA). After a two-hour drive north the Mexican officers walked Verdugo-Urquidez to the international border, where he was transferred to U.S. Border Patrol agents. He was then brought to a federal detention center in San Diego. Working with the Mexican Federal Judicial Police, DEA agents based in Mexico searched Verdugo-Urquidez’s residences in Mexicali and San Felipe, where they found incriminating documents relating to drug trafficking. This seemingly smooth example of international police cooperation ran into a hurdle once Verdugo-Urquidez faced trial in the United States. His lawyers sought to suppress the evidence, arguing that it had been obtained without a warrant and in violation of the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition against “unreasonable searches and seizures.” The district court agreed, declaring that the Fourth Amendment applied to the search in Mexico. The court called the search a “joint venture” of the DEA and the Mexican police. Because the DEA had failed to obtain a warrant, and because the search was improperly handled, the district court held that the incriminating evidence had to be suppressed pursuant to what is usually called the “exclusionary rule.” The Reagan administration immediately appealed the ruling. Drug trafficking had become a major concern of the United States in the 1980s, and the DEA overseas activities at issue in the Verdugo-Urquidez case were an important front line in what was commonly termed the war on drugs. If the Constitution regulated searches and seizures outside the United States, the DEA and other agencies would have to revamp their approach to foreign criminal investigations.
The Physical Geography of South America
Authors: Veblen Thomas , Young Kenneth , Orme Antony
Published: November 2020

The Physical Geography of South America, the eighth volume in the Oxford Regional Environments series, presents an enduring statement on the physical and biogeographic conditions of this remarkable continent and their relationships to human activity. It fills a void in recent environmental literature by assembling a team of specialists from within and beyond South America in order to provide an integrated, cross-disciplinary body of knowledge about this mostly tropical continent, together with its high mountains and temperate southern cone. The authors systematically cover the main components of the South American environment - tectonism, climate, glaciation, natural landscape changes, rivers, vegetation, animals, and soils. The book then presents more specific treatments of regions with special attributes from the tropical forests of the Amazon basin to the Atacama Desert and Patagonian steppe, and from the Atlantic, Caribbean, and Pacific coasts to the high Andes. Additionally, the continents environments are given a human face by evaluating the roles played by people over time, from pre-European and European colonial impacts to the effects of modern agriculture and urbanization, and from interactions with El Niño events to prognoses for the future environments of the continent.