bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Methods of Metaphysics
Authors: Thomasson Amie L.
Published: September 2007

The cluster of theses that underpin the reflective common sense worldview defended in this book has significant consequences regarding the proper methods and limits of metaphysics. This chapter argues that given those theses, the metaphysical side of questions about identity and persistence conditions, ontological status, and existence must be addressed by a form of conceptual analysis whose proper methods and limits are very different from those of the empirical sciences. As a result, radically revisionary answers to any of these questions must be met with suspicion. Moreover, if we properly understand what we are doing in asking questions about existence, we must suspect that many apparent debates in ontology are pseudo-debates in which the disputants talk past each other or try to answer unanswerable questions. The book closes with a sketch of some of these important metaontological consequences that fall out of the work of this book.
Evolution of Fatherhood
Authors: Geary David C.
Published: September 2007

Why is fatherhood found at all in humans? This question is central to our understanding of men and families, because human fathers are a scientific riddle. This is because men's parenting is highly unusual when placed in the context of little, if any, male parenting in at least 95 percent of other mammalian species, including the two species most closely related to humans, that is, chimpanzees and bonobos. This chapter attempts to explain some aspects of this riddle and provides a wider perspective on human fatherhood, its evolution, and its expression in various social and cultural contexts. In the first section, the focus is on the cross-species patterns of male parenting or paternal investment and the implications for understanding the conditions that promote the evolution and proximate expression of this form of parenting. The second consists of an analysis of the evolution and expression of men's parenting.
Violence and Abuse in Families: The Consequences of Paternal Uncertainty
Authors: Goetz Aaron T.
Published: September 2007

To some, it may seem paradoxical that members of a family are often violent and abusive toward one another. For example, why would an individual harm another in whom they have a vested interest, whom they love? One answer that might be offered is that violence and abuse occurs only in families that lack intimacy, love, and care. This answer, however, is wrong. Violence and abuse can occur in even the most loving families and between the most satisfied couples. This chapter discusses why violence and abuse occurs in families, particularly between intimate partners, focusing on the root of most partner violence: paternity uncertainty. It also focuses on physical and sexual intimate partner violence.
The Research Community
Authors: Cohen Emma
Published: September 2007

In this chapter the focus narrows to the stories, beliefs, relationships, and motivations of those who formed the core membership of the terreiro. It describes Afro‐Brazilian religion as it was revealed through interviews, informal stories, personal histories, and daily activities by frequenters, lodgers, and leaders of the terreiro. Together, chapters 2 and 3 provide the essential backdrop for further specific items of description and theoretical considerations in the remainder of the book.
Domestic Financing of Business and Public Investments
Authors: Chung Young‐Iob
Published: September 2007

This chapter analyzes the sources, magnitude, and means of financing investments in public and private enterprises after the Korean War. The analysis considers the credit policies relative to economic sectors (e.g., industry, mining, trade, and agriculture); industrial sectors (e.g., social overhead capital and manufacturing); the nature of investment (e.g., “entrepreneurial”, capital-, and technological-intensities in industries, the scale of business), and loan terms. This chapter also evaluates the criteria used to allocate loans, as well as the sources of financial resources obtained by the domestic lending institutions. The government interest rate policy is also examined.
Foreign Aid, Loans, and Other Sources of Foreign Savings
Authors: Chung Young‐Iob
Published: September 2007

This chapter examines foreign savings/resources in the form of foreign aids, loans, portfolio investment, other miscellaneous venues, as well as Japanese reparations and loan repayment guarantee programs. This is followed by the evaluation of the beneficiaries of government policies and the efficacy of foreign aid as an instrument of investment. Since the South Korean government intervened directly in markets to work out an effective system of incentives and create a favorable environment for maximum business response, the role of the government is examined in detail. The impacts of various venues on investment are assessed.
Creative Suffering of the Triune God
Authors: Schaab Gloria L.
Published: September 2007

The global reality of suffering and death has demanded an authentic theological response in every era and has impelled debate concerning God's relationship to suffering and the conceivability of the suffering of God. In a former age, theology proposed an omnipotent and impassible deus ex machina in answer to this question. However, contemporary theologies have proposed alternatives to this understanding of God in relation to the world. With such theologies, this book proposes that a truly viable response to cosmic suffering is the recognition that God participates in the cruciform existence of the cosmos and its creatures. Informed by the understandings of evolutionary science, grounded within a panentheistic paradigm of the God‐world relationship, and rooted within the Christian theological tradition, this book develops a systematic understanding of the Triune God's intimate involvement with the suffering of the cosmos and its creatures in dialogue with the insights of scientist‐theologian Arthur R. Peacocke. Recognizing that its proposals must demonstrate practical value in response to cosmic and human suffering, the book sets forth a female procreative model of the creative suffering of the Triune God, an ecological ethics based on the midwife model of care, and a pastoral model of threefold suffering in God as steps toward Christian praxis in response to the pain, suffering, and death endemic in cosmic existence and human experience.
Development and the Structured Self
Authors: Gill Christopher
Published: September 2007

This chapter charts links between the Stoic and Epicurean conception of self that is discussed in Chapters 1 and 2 (the structured self), and their ideas about ethical development. Human beings, while seen as psychophysical and psychological wholes, are also seen as constitutively capable of achieving a fully structured and coherent ethical character. This set of ideas is illustrated especially by reference to the Stoic theory of development as ‘appropriation’. The Stoic theory is seen as embodying a holistic approach both to human psychology and to ideals of ethical character. Stoic and Epicurean ideas about development are also linked with their use of the ‘whole-person’ model of causation and with ‘rich naturalism’, that is, the systematic integration of logic, ethics, and physics. Stoic-Epicurean thinking about development is contrasted with the Platonic-Aristotelian approach, especially as found in Antiochus and Arius Didymus.
Literary Reception: Structured and Unstructured Selves
Authors: Gill Christopher
Published: September 2007

This chapter explores the potential relevance to the interpretation of later Greek and Roman literature of the competing Hellenistic-Roman patterns of thought about the development of character (and about the consequences of failure to develop properly) discussed in Chapters 3 and 4. The presentation of collapse of ethical character in Plutarch’s Lives is taken as illustrating the Platonic-Aristotelian (part-based) pattern of thinking. The depiction of psychological conflict and disintegration in Seneca’s Medea and Phaedra is seen as illustrating the contrasting Stoic (holistic) pattern. Tracing philosophical influence on Virgil’s Aeneid is acknowledged to be more difficult and complex. In the presentation of inner conflict and passions in Dido and Aeneas, there are grounds for seeing the influence of both Platonic-Aristotelian and Stoic-Epicurean patterns. But the latter pattern is presented as ultimately more important for making sense of the distinctive features of Virgil’s portrayal.
The Complexity of Linguistic Structure
Authors: Jackendoff Ray
Published: September 2007

This chapter seeks to establish a baseline of what a theory of linguistic structure must be responsible for. For linguists, the chapter should serve as a reminder of the scope of the enterprise and as an orientation into the outlook of the present study. Topics discussed include the structure of a simple sentence, phonological structure, syntactic structure, semantic/conceptual and spatial structure, connecting the levels, and anaphora and bounded dependencies.
An Evolutionary Perspective on the Architecture
Authors: Jackendoff Ray
Published: September 2007

One of the issues raised by the nativist claim is that the capacity to learn language must have emerged at some point in the evolution of the human species. However, it is difficult to see how a capacity of the complexity usually assumed by linguists could have evolved through natural selection. It turns out that the parallel model offers more attractive possibilities for an incremental evolution of the language capacity. This chapter discusses some possible stages in this evolution, showing how they are reflected in the organization of present day language. A glaring gap in most approaches to generative grammar has been the absence of a theory of semantics of any sophistication.
Parts of Speech
Authors: Croft William
Published: September 2007

Most grammatical theories assume that the parts of speech — noun, verb, adjective — are categories of particular languages, but may be absent in some languages. But standard analyses are arbitrary and inconsistent about the constructions used to define syntactic categories, which leads some theorists to lump words into fewer categories and others to split words into more categories. One can be rigorous and consistent in analysis by using the same constructions across languages, namely the constructions denoting the propositional acts of reference, predication and modification, and comparing the structural coding and behavioral potential of semantic classes of lexical roots. This rigorous approach leads to universal prototypes for noun (reference to an object), verb (predication of an action), and adjective (modification by a property). Language-specific categories are represented as semantic maps on a universal conceptual space, constrained by the part of speech prototypes.
Harmonic morphisms defined by polynomials
Authors: Baird Paul , Wood John C.
Published: September 2007

This chapter establishes the Liouville-type theorem which asserts that any entire (i.e., globally defined) harmonic morphism from a Euclidean space of arbitrary dimension to a Euclidean space of dimension more than two is necessarily polynomial. In fact, the harmonic morphism need only be defined off a closed polar set. It is shown that any horizontally conformal polynomial mapping is necessarily harmonic and, hence, a harmonic morphism. At a critical point of finite order, a horizontally conformal mapping is approximated, at least at the level of the first non-constant term in its Taylor expansion, by a harmonic morphism. Important classes of polynomial harmonic morphisms are classified. This provides information on the local behaviour of a harmonic morphism near a critical point, and leads to global topological restrictions on its domain.
A Freshwater Perspective on Climate Variability and its Effect on Marine Ecosystems
Authors: Hessen Dag O.
Published: September 2007

There are several points of departure when assessing the effects of climatic variations from a limnological perspective. First, to which extent do climatic effects on freshwaters per se impact marine ecosystems? Second, can the study of enclosed and comparatively simple ecosystems of lakes be used to gain insights in marine effects? And third, are there any pronounced and general differences in expected responses between limnetic and marine ecosystems? This chapter explores these subjects, focusing on the riverine efflux to marine areas. It is shown that climatic fluctuations indeed may influence marine ecosystems indirectly by way of freshwater systems. Processes related to weathering rate, temperature changes, and precipitation are key determinants of the fluxes of dissolved organic carbon and key nutrients to coastal marine regions, and thus play an important role in regulating productivity in the ecosystems of such areas.
What are the Ecological Effects of Climate Variation in the North Atlantic?
Authors: Harris Roger
Published: September 2007

This final chapter draws insight from the subjects covered and looks towards the challenges ahead with respect to achieving further understanding of how climate affects the ecological patterns and dynamics in marine systems. It begins with a list containing one key point from each of the main Chapters (1-10), followed by a more general discussion. Although the focus has been throughout on the marine or marine-based systems of the North Atlantic, many of the findings reported apply to other regions and systems of the world.
Population genetics
Authors: Wayne Robert K. , Geffen Eli , Vilà Carles
Published: September 2007

This chapter discusses patterns of genetic variation and subdivision in a wide variety of canids. The influence of demographic history and ecological and topographic barriers on levels of variation, and the effect of interspecific hybridization on the genetic composition of canid populations are discussed. Case studies on the Ethiopian wolf, African wild dog, grey wolf, African jackals, kit fox and swift fox, Island fox, Darwin's fox, Arctic fox, and red fox are reviewed, each ending with a discussion of conservation implications.
Arctic foxes
Authors: Angerbjörn Anders , Hersteinsson Pall , Tannerfeldt Magnus
Published: September 2007

This chapter examines the life history characteristics of two Arctic fox populations, a relatively stable one in Iceland and a fluctuating one in Sweden. Intraspecific variation in reproductive and social strategies of Arctic foxes in Sweden and Iceland suggests that adaptations to different resource distributions in have resulted in divergence in strategies between the two populations. In Sweden, where food availability fluctuates widely in time but less in space, the foxes have adopted the ‘jackpot’ strategy which exhibits enormous variation in reproductive output from year to year with much inter-annual variation in cub and juvenile survival, depending on food availability. In Iceland, on the other hand, where food availability is predictable in time and space, reproductive output is stable with small litter sizes, high cub survival, and intermediate dispersal distances, and female yearlings frequently use their natal territories as a base while searching for a vacant territory or mate in the neighbourhood.
BEARING OF INTERPRETATIONS OF PROBABILITY ON STATISTICAL INDUCTION
Authors: Chatterjee Shoutir Kishore
Published: September 2007

Objective statistical induction may be behavioural, instantial, or pro-subjective (Bayesian), depending on the form of judging inferential uncertainty. In the behavioral case, the unknown parameters are fixed and uncertainty is judged by measures of procedural trustworthiness (like significance and confidence levels, power and risk functions), interpreted through repeated conceptual experimentation. Various principles are invoked for optimizing the procedure in different problems. The instantial approach (likelihood inference, P-value testing, and fiducial inference) remains pegged to the instance at hand without visualizing repetition, and weighs uncertainty in non-standard ways, although often like the behavioural approach, it also has to appeal to sampling theory. In the pro-subjective Bayesian approach, the unknown parameters are subjectively random with a known prior distribution, and inference is based on their posterior distribution. Various kinds of priors (improper/proper, impersonal/personal) fit in different tastes and situations. The subjective approach, based on a fully known subjective probability model, ‘previses’ about future observables, conditionally fixing the observations, often assuming exchangeability to simplify the process. Comparison of the different approaches shows that each has a natural setting in which it is advantageous.
PREHISTORY, BEGINNING OF HISTORY, AND THE TODDLING PERIOD
Authors: Chatterjee Shoutir Kishore
Published: September 2007

Although probabilistic reasoning was implicit in man’s behaviour in uncertain situations even in primitive times, and can be traced in some ancient texts and medieval writings, probability as a branch of knowledge began with the studies of games of chance by Cardano (16th century) and Pascal, Fermat, and Huygens (middle of the 17th century). Around the latter time, studies of empirical frequencies of births, deaths, and survivals on the basis of the London Bills of Mortality were made by John Graunt, and Huygens, while reviewing Graunt’s work, pointed out its possible probabilistic interpretation. James Bernoulli derived his limit theorem while trying to demonstrate the connection mathematically. Thus, by the early 18th century, the standard probabilistic concepts and operations, and the interpretations of probability both as degree of belief and long-term relative frequency, became well-established.
PRO-SUBJECTIVE APPROACH LOSES AS SAMPLING THEORY GAINS GROUND
Authors: Chatterjee Shoutir Kishore
Published: September 2007

In the first half of the 19th century, Laplace, Gauss, and a number of other contributors enriched statistical thought. The quest for a suitable model for the distribution of observational errors led to Gauss’s derivation of the normal model from the ‘A. M. postulate’. Laplace’s derivation of the Central Limit Theorem gave further support to the model. Different methods of curve fitting, of which the Least Squares method — which was heuristically proposed by Legendre and to which Gauss provided first a Bayesian and then a sampling theory justification — was the most important. During this period, Laplace worked on the large sample sampling theory approach to inference, and both he and Gauss introduced the idea of relative efficiency of estimates in the context of particular problems. In fact, the seeds of some later concepts like that of sufficiency, variance component models, and diffusion processes can be found in works carried out at this time.
Dynamics of Viscous Compressible Fluids
Authors: Feireisl Eduard
Published: September 2007

The book presents and develops the most recent ideas and concepts of the mathematical theory of viscous, compressible, and heat conducting fluids. Two main objectives are pursued: (i) global existence theory within the framework of variational solutions for the full Navier-Stokes-Fourier system supplemented with large data, and (ii) optimal existence results for barotropic flows with respect to the available a priori estimates.
INTRODUCTION
Authors: Modersitzki Jan
Published: September 2007

This chapter states the problem of image registration and presents various applications, including remote sensing and medical image registration. Three examples which serve as test cases throughout the book are introduced and explained: an academical test case, modified X-rays of hands, and magnetic resonance images of a female breast. Using these examples, this chapter explains the key issues of image registration: the formalization of similarity or distance of images and the reasonability of transformations. The overall organization of the book is outlined and an overview of the contents of the following chapters is provided.
SAM EDWARDS AND THE TURBULENCE THEORY
Authors: Sreenivasan Katepalli R. , Eyink Gregory L.
Published: September 2007

The contributions of Sam Edwards to field-theoretic methods in the statistical theory of turbulent fluid dynamics are briefly assessed in this chapter and connected to later developments in the subject.
THE ENTRY OF FIELD THEORY INTO POLYMER SCIENCE
Authors: Ball R. C.
Published: September 2007

Two papers by Sam Edwards in 1965-66 changed the face of polymer theory with the introduction of field theoretical methods. Using these, he identified what is now known as universal regimes and opened polymer science up to theoretical physics.
REPRINT THE THEORY OF POLYMER SOLUTIONS AT INTERMEDIATE CONCENTRATION
Authors: Edwards S. F.
Published: September 2007

This chapter presents a paper arguing that polymer solutions can be classified into three broad types which may be characterized in terms of N the total number of (micro) molecules, n the number of polymer chains, l the effective length of a micromolecule, V the excluded volume per micromolecule, and V the total volume. The types are: (i) dense solutions in which V/N < v; (ii) intermediate concentrations in which L  9/5  v  3/5  l  -3/5 > V/n > v or (Ll)1/2 > V/n > v according to the magnitude of v, i.e., L  -1/10  v  -1/5  l  7/10 greater than 1 or less than 1; and (iii) dilute solutions in which V/n < L  9/5  v  3/5  l  -3/5. The intermediate case is discussed in detail and an expression for the partial pressure of the molecules is obtained. A discussion is given of the way this expression fails as one enters regions (i) and (iii).
REPRINT THEORY OF SPIN GLASSES
Authors: Edwards S. F. , Anderson P. W.
Published: September 2007

This paper presents a new theory of the class of dilute magnetic alloys, called the spin glasses, which offers a simple explanation of the cusp found experimentally in the susceptibility. The argument is that because the interaction between the spins dissolved in the matrix oscillates in sign according to distance, there will be no mean ferro- or antiferromagnetism, but there will be a ground state with the spins aligned in definite directions, even in a situation where these directions appear to be at random. At the critical temperature, the existence of these preferred directions affects the orientation of the spins, leading to a cusp in the susceptibility. This cusp is smoothed by an external field.
REMARKS ON THE EDWARDS–ANDERSON PAPER
Authors: Anderson P. W.
Published: September 2007

This chapter presents a brief history of the inspirations and ideas behind the famous seminal spin glass paper of Edwards and Anderson, together with some of the further work it stimulated.
REPRINT THE SURFACE STATISTICS OF A GRANULAR AGGREGATE
Authors: Edwards S. F. , Wilkinson D. R.
Published: September 2007

This paper examines the problem of the surface fluctuations in a settled granular material. A simple model is given which describes the process by which a particle settles and comes to rest on the existing surface of the packing, and from this a set of Langevin equations for the Fourier modes of the surface are derived. These equations imply that the Fourier amplitudes behave like the velocities of a set of independent Brownian particles. This results in logarithmically divergent surface fluctuations if the flux of particles onto the surface is random, the divergence being removed by a more accurate description of the settling material, for example by having the granules fall through a sieve.
REPRINT THEORY OF POWDERS
Authors: Edwards S. F. , Oakeshott R. B. S.
Published: September 2007

There is increasing interest in applying the methods of statistical mechanics and of transport theory to systems which are neither atomistic, nor in equilibrium, but which still fulfill a remaining tenet of statistical physics which is that systems can be completely defined by a very small number of parameters and can be constructed in a reproducible way. Powders fall into this category. This chapter sets up a framework for describing the state of the powder, basing the development on anologies with statistical mechanics. It is argued that powders have an entropy, but it will be the volume which plays the role of the energy in normal statistical mechanics: the energy corresponding to the powder's thermal temperature of 300 K is negligible. In statistical mechanics, the most fundamental entry is via the microcanonical ensemble. This is a closed system, contained in a volume V, which is assumed to take up all configurations subject to the Hamiltonian function taking the value E with equal probability.
Countershading and counterillumination
Authors: Ruxton Graeme D. , Sherratt Thomas N. , Speed Michael P.
Published: September 2007

This chapter considers if and why lightening the ventral regions (through pigmentation or bioluminescence) can act to make an organism more difficult to detect as a three-dimensional object. The most common explanation for this is that countershading acts to cancel out shadowing since more organisms are generally lit from above. This and alternative hypotheses are compared to the available empirical data in an attempt to evaluate the importance of countershading to crypsis and its ecological distribution.
Invitation to Fixed-Parameter Algorithms
Authors: Niedermeier Rolf
Published: September 2007

This book provides an introduction to the concept of fixed-parameter tractability. The corresponding design and analysis of efficient fixed-parameter algorithms for optimally solving combinatorially explosive (NP-hard) discrete problems is a vividly developing field, with a growing list of applications in various contexts such as network analysis or bioinformatics. The book emphasizes algorithmic techniques over computational complexity theory. It is divided into three parts: a broad introduction that provides the general philosophy and motivation; followed by coverage of algorithmic methods developed over the years in fixed-parameter algorithmics forming the core of the book; and a discussion of the essentials of parameterized hardness theory with a focus on W[1]-hardness which parallels NP-hardness, then stating some relations to polynomial-time approximation algorithms, and finishing up with a list of selected case studies to show the wide range of applicability of the presented methodology.
TREE DECOMPOSITIONS OF GRAPHS
Authors: Niedermeier Rolf
Published: September 2007

This chapter provides an introduction to tree decomposition and treewidth, important concepts from modern graph theory. Treewidth is one of the best studied and most significant structural parameters. The construction of tree decompositions is briefly discussed, followed by special considerations applying to planar graphs. The main focus of the chapter is on dynamic programming on tree decompositions, here demonstrated for the problems Vertex Cover and Dominating Set. The chapter closes by sketching the relationship to monadic second-order logic and some related graph width parameters.
CONTINUITY ON THE REAL LINE AND IN FORMAL SPACES
Authors: Palmgren Erik
Published: September 2007

Brouwer introduced his axioms for intuitionism to regain central results on continuity. Special axioms were avoided instead in Bishop's development of constructive analysis. Bishop in fact modified the definition of continuous function on the real numbers to mean uniformly continuous on each finite and closed interval. Though a successful move in the context of metric spaces, this seems to lead to difficulties when considering general spaces, in particular as the composition of two continuous functions needs not to be continuous. Though little emphasized, the continuous functions of the category of locales or formal spaces agree with Bishop's definition of continuous function on real numbers. Proving this within the framework of (Bishop) constructive mathematics is the purpose of the present chapter. The upshot is that for formal spaces, it is not necessary to adopt special axioms to obtain a good category.
The Evolution of Organ Systems
Authors: Schmidt-Rhaesa Andreas
Published: September 2007

The field of systematics has developed remarkably over the last few decades. A multitude of new methods and contributions from diverse biological fields — including molecular genetics and developmental biology — have provided a wealth of phylogenetic hypotheses, some confirming traditional views and others contradicting them. There is now sufficient evidence to draw up a ‘tree of life’ based on fairly robust phylogenetic relationships. This book aims to apply these new phylogenies to an evolutionary interpretation of animal organ systems and body architecture. Organs do not appear suddenly during evolution: instead they are composed of far simpler structures. In some cases, it is even possible to trace particular molecules or physiological pathways as far back as pre-animal history. What emerges is a fascinating picture, showing how animals have combined ancestral and new elements in novel ways to form constantly changing responses to environmental requirements. The book starts with a general overview of animal systematics to set the framework for the discussion of organ system evolution. The chapters deal with the general organization, integument, musculature, nervous system, sensory structures, body cavities, excretory, respiratory and circulatory organs, the intestinal and reproductive system, and spermatozoa. Each organ system is presented with its function, the diversity of forms that are realized among metazoan animals, and the reconstruction of its evolution.
The phylogenetic frame
Authors: Schmidt-Rhaesa A.
Published: September 2007

This chapter presents the available data for the reconstruction of a tree. It shows that there is a robust backbone, along with several areas of uncertainty. Such controversies are discussed which provide alternative interpretations of the evolution of organ systems. The chapter starts with some general remarks on the current problems of phylogeny reconstruction. The phylogenetic relationships of all major taxa are then discussed in detail. This gives a presentation of the tree that is used as a basis for the book. Not one particular tree is used, but several areas are considered, in particular the position of acoelomorphs, the Ecdysozoa/Articulata debate, and the position of tentaculate taxa are regarded as not fully settled and treated with care.
Twenty-first century atmospheric change and deforestation: potential impacts on tropical forests
Authors: Cramer Wolfgang , Bondeau Alberte , Schaphoff Sibyll , Lucht Wolfgang , Smith Ben , Sitch Stephen
Published: September 2007

This chapter quantifies the relative roles of carbon dioxide (CO2), temperature, rainfall, and deforestation on the future extent and condition of tropical rainforests, and examines the magnitude of their feedbacks on atmospheric CO2 concentrations. A dynamic global vegetation model is applied using multiple scenarios of tropical deforestation (extrapolated from two estimates of current rates) and multiple scenarios of changing climate (derived from four independent off-line general circulation model simulations). Results show that deforestation is likely to produce large losses of carbon, despite the uncertainty concerning exact deforestation rates. Estimates of additional carbon emissions during the 21st century, for all climate and deforestation scenarios, range from 101 to 367 Gt C, resulting in CO2 concentration increases above background values by between 29 and 129 ppm. Notwithstanding this range of uncertainty, continued tropical deforestation will most certainly play a very large role in the build-up of future greenhouse gas concentrations.
Climate change and speciation in neotropical seasonally dry forest plants
Authors: Pennington R. Toby , Lavin Matt , Prado Darién E. , Pendry Colin A. , Pell Susan K.
Published: September 2007

Historical climate changes have had a major effect on the distribution and evolution of plant species in the neotropics. What is more controversial is whether relatively recent and rapid Pleistocene climatic changes have driven speciation, or whether neotropical species diversity is more ancient. This question is addressed using evolutionary rates analysis of nuclear ribosomal internal transcribed spacers (ITS) sequence data on diverse taxa occupying neotropical seasonally dry forests: Ruprechtia (Polygonaceae), robinioid legumes (Leguminosae), Chaetocalyx and Nissolia (Leguminosae), and Loxopterygium (Anacardiaceae). Species diversifications in these taxa occurred both during and before the Pleistocene in Central America, but were primarily pre-Pleistocene in South America. This indicates plausibility both for models that predict tropical species diversity to be recent and that invoke a role for Pleistocene climatic change, and those that consider it ancient and implicate geological factors such as the Andean orogeny and the closure of the Panama Isthmus.
STRING THEORY AND GAUGE THEORY
Authors: Mariño Marcos
Published: September 2007

This chapter examines the relationship between gauge theories and topological strings. A precise correspondence between string theory and gauge theory was formulated by 't Hooft (1974), who used as a starting point the double-line formulation of perturbation theory. The perturbative expansion of a gauge theory with gauge group U(N) can be rewritten in terms of an expansion of double-line Feynman diagrams. This issue has been illustrated in the cases of matrix models and Chern-Simons theory, but it is clear that such a reorganization of the expansion can be made for any U(N) gauge theory, as the double-line representation of the graphs only exploits the underlying gauge symmetry. One important question that needs to be addressed is whether it is possible to make more precise this analogy between U(N) gauge theories and open string theories. Two different topological string theories are considered.
The Porous Medium Equation
Authors: Vazquez Juan Luis
Published: September 2007

The heat equation is one of the three classical linear partial differential equations of second order that form the basis of any elementary introduction to the area of PDEs, and only recently has it come to be fairly well understood. This book provides a presentation of the mathematical theory of the nonlinear heat equation usually called the Porous Medium Equation (PME). This equation appears in a number of physical applications, such as to describe processes involving fluid flow, heat transfer, or diffusion. Other applications have been proposed in mathematical biology, lubrication, boundary layer theory, and other fields. Each chapter contains a detailed introduction and is supplied with a section of notes, providing comments, historical notes or recommended reading, and exercises.
4 Forms of Institutional Investor Engagement
Authors: Martin Roderick , Casson Peter D. , Nisar Tahir M.
Published: September 2007

Institutional investors adopt different methods of engagement. Much investor engagement is routine and informal; other engagement is extraordinary and arises from specific circumstances, such as firms adopting remuneration policies which are viewed as inconsistent with ‘best City practice’. Routine engagement is conducted by individual investors. But extraordinary engagement is usually conducted through collective organizations, such as the Institutional Shareholders' Committee, as a means of reducing the costs of monitoring and intervening and addressing ‘free rider’ problems.
5 Private Equity Investor Engagement
Authors: Martin Roderick , Casson Peter D. , Nisar Tahir M.
Published: September 2007

Private equity funds contribute heavily to the performance of the firms in which they invest beyond the provision of capital. Through detailed examination of seven case studies of private equity funds and portfolio companies, this chapter shows how private equity funds provide ‘commercial savvy’ and international connections to the companies in which they invest, as well as sector-specific knowledge. The funds may involve themselves in areas traditionally considered as matters of concern to investors, such as corporate strategy, and in matters normally considered the province of managers, such as innovation and employee skill development.
On Not Being Archilochus: Horace'sEpodes
Authors: Harrison S.J.
Published: September 2007

Horace's Epodes both incorporate and react against their archaic model Archilochus, and also interact significantly with other contemporary genres (Vergil's Eclogues and love-elegy). The second half of the book shows especially generic uncertainty; an interesting and rich generic mixture results.
3 The Palaeography of Vindolanda
Authors: Terras Melissa M.
Published: September 2007

This chapter focuses on the methodologies used to collate data sets needed to train a system to read unknown characters contained within the stylus tablets. The Vindolanda ink texts are the major significant body of contemporaneous documents to the stylus tablets, and it is demonstrated that the stylus tablets should contain similar Old Roman Cursive character forms. The construction of a corpus of annotated images, based on the ink tablet letter forms, and the gathering of linguistic information from the Vindolanda ink texts that have already been read provided the information needed to train the system. Techniques included knowledge elicitation exercises with experts to gain an understanding of the types of information used to describe and identify ORC character forms; the construction of an encoding scheme; and the adoption and adaptation of an image markup tool to enable the annotation of images of the Vindolanda texts, producing textual descriptions of the letter forms in Extensible Markup Language (XML). This resulted in a corpus of 1700 individual ORC characters. Additional linguistic analysis of the Vindolanda ink texts provided lexicostatistics (word lists, word frequency, and letter frequency) regarding the language used at Vindolanda.
Plant genomes
Authors: Murphy Denis J.
Published: September 2007

This chapter looks at plant genomes, especially those unusual aspects of their organization that have enabled some species to adapt so successfully to cultivation by humans. Vavilov and others demonstrated that humans only ever domesticated a small range of crop species in a limited number of ‘centres of origin’. These crops often have large polyploid genomes and readily hybridize with other species to create new genetic combinations that can rapidly adapt to the new environments created by artificial cultivation. Genomic research shows that unlike the vast majority of animals, plants are able to duplicate their genomes and to hybridize across species to produce viable offspring with new genetic characteristics, such as domestication-related traits.
Agriculture: a mixed blessing
Authors: Murphy Denis J.
Published: September 2007

Although agriculture acted as a spur to many aspects of social and technological development, increasing reliance on a narrow range of food crops had many downsides that sometimes caused people to revert to hunter gathering. The restricted nutrient content of some crops, especially cereals, led to a reduction in human stature and an increase in degenerative diseases. People adapted both behaviourally and genetically to their increasing reliance on crops and livestock. Genetic changes in various populations included reduced maxillo-facial structures, lactose tolerance, malarial resistance, and partial resistance to zoonoses. Although many of these changes had an adverse impact on human wellbeing at the individual level, the greater size and techno-social complexity of agrarian based societies enabled them to out-compete hunter-gatherers. Despite their superior individual fitness, hunter-gatherers were fewer in number, less well organized, and lacked access to new technologies developed by their sicklier but formidably equipped agrarian neighbours.
Agricultural improvement and the rise of crop breeding
Authors: Murphy Denis J.
Published: September 2007

The Renaissance provided some stimulus to European agriculture but a far more profound phenomenon after 1550 CE was a ‘neonaissance’ involving the creation and publishing de novo of reliable knowledge based on systematic observation. This was paralleled by the emergence of an entrepreneurial culture, especially in the maritime nations of England and the Netherlands, that encouraged exploration and agrarian innovation for private profit. In England, land enclosure began as a way to establish farming as a profitable business venture rather than as a socially based subsistence activity. Practical scientific breeding began to emerge in the 17th century with a newly united Britain and the independent Netherlands as major centres. This process was assisted by improved literacy and the establishment of agricultural and scientific societies, such as the Royal Society in London.
Agricultural improvement in modern times
Authors: Murphy Denis J.
Published: September 2007

Modern agriculture has created the world we live in today, most notably by enabling farmers to feed a population of over six billion, possibly rising to ten billion by 2050. Key advances have been made in the management of crops, the more efficient use of inputs such as minerals and fertilizers, and in the breeding of new high-yield varieties that have enabled food production to be trebled over the past fifty years while the human population has only doubled. By enhancing or creating new genetic variation, scientific breeders have increased cereal yields three- to five-fold since 1965, and new molecular methods of screening and selection promise further yield gains in the future. Meanwhile, advanced DNA technologies may enable us to domesticate some of the thousands of potentially valuable food crops that, due to their recalcitrant genomic organizations, have previously eluded the best efforts of breeders to bring them into useful cultivation.
Accounting for Emergence and Novelty in Boston and Bay Area Biotechnology*
Authors: Owen-Smith Jason , Powell Walter W.
Published: September 2007

The development of the biotech industry in Boston and the San Francisco Bay area, the two most prominent biotech clusters in the United States, are compared. Their analysis rests on three presumptions: high-tech clusters in particular require both the presence of networks and spatial density, inter-organizational networks serve the dual purposes of being locus of innovation and the underlying support structure that host the institutional and social context necessary for innovation, and, finally, the form and substance of innovation in successful clusters vary over time and with patterns of emergence. It is concluded that a process of convergence has been going on over the last twelve years. Consequently, even though path-dependence and variety in culture and norms determine the trajectory, clusters may still be quite comparable in terms of performance.
The Emergence of Ireland's ICT Clusters: The Role of Foreign Direct Investment
Authors: Barry Frank
Published: September 2007

The emergence of the Irish ICT-cluster is claimed to be driven by the presence of foreign anchor firms, for example Intel. These firms also acted as incubators for domestic entrepreneurs. Half of the Irish manufacturing labour force is now employed in foreign-owned firms, with the bulk in ICT. The ICT cluster (both hardware and software) is agglomerated around Dublin. Already in the mid-1990s Ireland had become host to the most important ICT-cluster in Europe. Equally transformative was institutional reform and fiscal policy that also paved the way for future tax reductions, a newly developed ‘social partnership model’ of wage determination and Ireland's EU-membership in 1973 which guaranteed access to the European markets.
Clusters and Clustering: Stylized Facts, Issues, and Theories
Authors: Orsenigo Luigi
Published: September 2007

This chapter presents a survey of factors associated with the crafting of new innovative high-technology clusters. The evidence strongly supports the view that there are strong agglomeration forces in high-technology sectors, mainly related to the concentration of scientific knowledge. Adequate incentive structures and entrepreneurial activity are also important, as are spin-offs from highly capable universities and research centres. Thus, the emergence of clusters is not a purely random phenomenon. Initial conditions and ‘endowments’ play a crucial role in defining the geography of innovation. However, these do not suffice to account either for the genesis of clusters, neither for the failures. The literature forcefully points to the observation that processes are the essence of what clusters are made of.
The Role of Public Policy in Emerging Clusters
Authors: Carlsson Bo
Published: September 2007

The question asked in the last chapter concerns how to design a public policy in a non-deterministic, evolutionary, and highly complex world. That is, a world where the most desirable outcomes are unknown but there may be many possible acceptable outcomes, and where change is characterized by both path dependence and unpredictability. Based on the case studies previously presented, the conclusion is that policy interventions exaggerate the system characteristics in cluster policies at the expense of incentives on the level of individuals, potential entrepreneurs, and firms. Particularly in Europe, with its tradition of governmentally administrated and targeted policies, there is a risk of downplaying the role of individual initiatives in the creation of clusters.
Introduction: the enigma of sexual size dimorphism
Authors: Fairbairn Daphne J.
Published: September 2007

This introductory chapter opens by describing general patterns of variation in sexual size dimorphism (SSD), with emphasis on several taxa (plants, fishes, and aquatic invertebrates) not included in the survey chapters that follow. It also highlights recently documented examples of extreme SSD, such as Lamprologus callipterus, a shell-brooding cichlid fish, where males are >12 times heavier than females, and the blanket octopus (Tremoctopus violaceous), where females can be 40,000 times larger than the dwarf males. The chapter then develops the two major integrative themes of the book: discovering the adaptive significance of SSD and determining the importance of genetic constraints in shaping its evolution. After briefly summarizing the contributions of the chapters to these themes, the chapter closes by discussing methodological difficulties associated with estimating adult body size and SSD in natural populations.
Sexual size dimorphism and offspring vulnerability in birds
Authors: Kalmbach Ellen , Benito Maria M.
Published: September 2007

This chapter uses recent experimental and observational studies of birds to explore patterns of sex-specific offspring vulnerability (increased mortality and reduced fledging mass under poor conditions) in relation to sexual size dimorphism (SSD). The results show size-dependent modulation of male fledgling mass but size-independent mass reduction in females. Overall, growth is more phenotypically plastic in males than in females. Comparisons of fledging mass reached in ‘good’ and ‘poor’ environments suggest that having to grow large is mainly disadvantageous when coupled with the male phenotype. Differences in environmental sensitivity between the two sexes during ontogeny, either in the form of increased mortality or reduced body size, will tend to reduce dimorphism during development, affecting adult SSD. These results suggest that environmental conditions during ontogeny contribute significantly to variation in SSD within bird species, particularly when comparisons are made among environments or between generations.