bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Mining Word Meanings
Authors: Wiener Harvey S.
Published: November 2020

Quick now, what's your knee-jerk advice when your child is reading and he asks you the definition of a tough word he can't figure out? "Look it up in a dictionary," right? It's bad advice. It's particularly bad advice for developing readers struggling through a thorny selection and trying to make sense of it. Don't get me wrong—I have nothing against dictionaries. I love dictionaries. They are indispensable language- learning, language-checking tools. Writers, always aiming for precision amid perplexing word choices, could not survive long without dictionaries. For readers, too, dictionaries are important, but not in the ways we typically advise children to use them. Certainly, researchers and very sophisticated readers do use dictionaries as side-by-side companions to books. Watch a thoughtful poetry student reading something by Milton or Housman or Browning and you'll see regular expeditions into a dictionary to check nuances and alternative meanings. For the most part, though, established readers will use a dictionary to check an unfamiliar word after they read a selection and can't figure out the word's meaning. Unfortunately, most classroom dictionary work focuses on having kids look up lists of words. Most often, those words are not connected to any reading exercise; and without a context for word exploration, the activity is an utter waste of time. When the words do relate to content, children are asked to look up the lists of words before reading. Sure, knowing definitions of potentially difficult words can remove some obstacles to comprehension, and I support telling youngsters in advance what a few really difficult or technical key words mean—words whose definitions cannot easily be derived from the context (more on this later) but whose meanings are essential for understanding. Still, you don't want your child slaving over a list of tough words, looking them up and writing definitions, as a necessary precursor to a reading activity. He'll be bored and exhausted by the time he starts the first sentence! In fact, most of us don't often take the advice we give freely to our children.
"Just the Facts, Ma'am" : Reading For Information
Authors: Wiener Harvey S.
Published: November 2020

In the last chapter, we looked at how examining pages before actually reading them provides useful advance preparation for young readers at home. Let's look now at the act of reading itself. How do we get the most out of what we read? Researchers now say that we can best understand what happens when someone reads if we think of reading as a process—a process in which a reader and writer transact information. For the time being, we're going to think of reading exclusively as print-bound. (We'll reconsider this premise later on.) The writer provides words, sentences, and paragraphs. The reader brings to the writer's pages personal experiences and impressions, knowledge of language, individual attitudes, thoughts, and ideas. In reading, both reader and writer engage in a kind of conversation to work out the message together. Not only the writer, but the reader as well, has considerable responsibility in determining meaning. Most enlightened educators no longer regard the old notion of a single, correct, absolute meaning for a piece of writing; readers and writers together shape the ideas captured by the words. The transactional activities involve sophisticated skills, such as what we infer from a reading, what generalizations and conclusions we draw, what judgments we make of the writer's effort—others, too, as you can imagine. We learn the advanced skills as we mature as readers, and I'm going to explore those skills throughout many of the remaining chapters of this book. Yet our ability to reach those more advanced regions of thought rests very much on what we perceive as the writer's essential idea, the nuggets of vital information contained in what we read. In short, we try to see that everything comes together in an answer to this question: "What is the writer trying to say?" Educators usually refer to a reader's basic ability to grasp information—facts, if you will—as literal comprehension. Literal comprehension means understanding the main idea that the writer is trying to convey and knowing the essential details that contribute to and support that main idea.
Introduction
Authors: Moll Don , Moll Edward O.
Published: November 2020

The turtle species that dwell in the world’s rivers, play important, but incompletely understood and largely unappreciated, roles in both the ecology of their respective ecosystems, and in the economy and sociology of the human cultures through which their rivers flow. Accordingly, the precipitous decline of many populations from former levels, and the complete extirpation of some species from large areas of their former ranges is cause for alarm by those concerned, not only with turtles, but with the health and welfare of rivers and humans as well. The causes of these declines are virtually all the result of human activities—including those which involve direct predation on the turtles themselves (and their eggs), removal for the pet trade, and those which result in unfavorable changes in their habitats. The fact that no known modern species has yet been driven to total extinction is testimony to the resiliency and fecundity of river turtle species. This is no cause for complacency—many are almost certainly teetering on the brink now and are facing ever-increasing odds against long-term survival. Some species could be even now beyond hope of recovery, their populations sustained for a time by a relatively few long-lived adults without sufficient collective reproductive “power” to thwart the normal and various mortality sources which plague all turtles, and which their sheer numbers had formerly been able to overcome. However, we are still so ignorant of the population dynamics of these species that we know not which, if any, are doomed. It seems preferable, therefore, as we strive to conserve river turtle stocks that we assume the working philosophy that none is in this category, and focus our efforts and resources toward research and conservation action most likely to return even the most endangered species to robust, sustainable population levels. The roots of the current crisis predate history, beginning with our hominid ancestors, and particularly hunter-gather Homo sapiens’ unparalleled capacity to learn and adapt in order to maximize the harvest of all available food resources.
AWS and UFOs
Authors: Heim Michael
Published: November 2020

Something....-What? —A phenomenon. Something intrusive, something vague but insistent, pushing itself upon us. — Something outside? From afar? Something alien? — Something descending in the night, standing in the shadows at the foot of the bed. —An illusion? Hallucination maybe? A quirky twist of imagination? — No, definitely a presence, something that might be a someone, a someone with wires and electric sensors, probing, penetrating, exploring private parts. Something lifting us off the familiar face of the planet we thought we knew so well, beaming us outside the orbit of our comfortable homes. Definitely something indefinite . . . or someone. —We hear about them only from others who speak about sightings of unidentified objects in the sky, because we do not allow ourselves to be counted among the unstable few who acknowledge the possibility of something outside the circle of our sciences. Those unstable few accept belief in something standing in the shadows at the door. We listen closely to those speaking about incidents of the phenomenon. We do not look. — Something IS out there. We’ve seen and heard it in the night. It’s contacting us. The phenomenon certainly exists in late-night chat like the above. It exists as metaphysical hearsay, as an internal dialogue between what we believe and what we think we are willing to believe. Popular descriptions of “the incident” waver between child-like awe and tongue-in-cheek tabloid humor. Here is where our knowledge, as a culturally defined certainty, becomes most vulnerable. Here we discover the soft edges of knowledge as an established and culturally underwritten form of belief. What a thrill to feel the tug of war on the thin thread of shared belief! A blend of religious archetypes and science-fiction imagery supplies the words for those who tell about the incident. The stories often float up through hypnosis or “recovered memory” hypnotherapy, as in the famous case of Betty and Barney Hill who experienced abduction one September night in New Hampshire in 1961. Researchers have recently plotted consistently recurring patterns in thousands of stories, and the mythic dimension of the story line has not been lost on Hollywood.
Passive Dendritic Trees
Authors: Koch Christof
Published: November 2020

The previous chapter dealt with the solution of the cable equation in response to current pulses and steps within a single unbranched cable. However, real nerve cells possess highly branched and extended dendritic trees with quite distinct morphologies. Figure 3.1 illustrates the fantastic variety of dendritic trees found throughout the animal kingdom, ranging from neurons in the locust to human brain cells and cells from many different parts of the nervous system. Some of these cells are spatially compact, such as retinal amacrine cells, which are barely one-fifth of a millimeter across, while some cells have immense dendritic trees, such as α motoneurones in the spinal cord extending across several millimeters. Yet, in all cases, neurons are very tightly packed: in vertebrates, peak density appears to be reached in the granule cell layer of the human cerebellum with around 5 million cells per cubic millimeter (Braitenberg and Atwood, 1958) while the packing density of the cells filling the 0.25 mm3 nervous system of the housefly Musca domestica is around 1.2 million cells per cubic millimeter (Strausfeld, 1976). The dendritic arbor of some cell types encompasses a spherical volume, such as for thalamic relay cells, while other cells, such as the cerebellar Purkinje cell, fill a thin slablike volume with a width less than one-tenth of their extent. Different cell types do not appear at random in the brain but are unique to specific parts of the brain. By far the majority of excitatory cells in the cortex are the pyramidal cells. Yet even within this class, considerable diversity exists. But why this diversity of shapes? To what extent do these quite distinct dendritic architectures reflect differences in their roles in information processing and computation? What influence does the dendritic morphology have on the electrical properties of the cell, or, in other words, what is the relationship between the morphological structure of a cell and its electrical function? One of the few cases where a quantitative relationship between form and some aspect of neuronal function has been established is the retinal neurons.
Unconventional Computing
Authors: Koch Christof
Published: November 2020

As discussed in the introduction to this book, any (bio)physical mechanism that transforms some physical variable, such as the electrical potential across the membrane, in such a way that it can be mapped onto a meaningful formal mathematical operation, such as delayand- correlate or convolution, can be treated as a computation. Traditionally only Vm, spike trains, and the firing rate f(t) have been thought to play this role in the computations performed by the nervous system. Due to the recent and widespread usage of high-resolution calcium-dependent fluorescent dyes, the concentration of free intracellular calcium [Ca2+]i in presynaptic terminals, dendrites, and cell bodies has been promoted into the exalted rank of a variable that can act as a short-term memory and that can be manipulated using buffers, calcium-dependent enzymes, and diffusion in ways that can be said to instantiate specific computations. But why stop here? Why not consider the vast number of signaling molecules that are localized to specific intra- or extracellular compartments to instantiate specific computations that can act over particular spatial and temporal time scales? And what about the peptides and hormones that are released into large areas of the brain or that circulate in the bloodstream? In this penultimate chapter, we will acquaint the reader with several examples of computations that use such unconventional means. The computation in question constitutes a molecular switch that stores a few bits of information at each of the thousands of synapses on a typical cortical cell. In order to describe its principle of operation, it will be necessary to introduce the reader to some basic concepts in biochemistry. The ability of individual synapses to potentially store analog variables is important enough that this modest intellectual investment will pay off. (For an introduction to biochemistry, consult Stryer, 1995).
Venus
Authors: Yung Yuk L. , DeMore William B.
Published: November 2020

Venus has been visited by a number of spacecraft. Those most important in advancing our understanding of the atmosphere include Mariner 10 (1974), Pioneer Venus (1978- 1992), and the series of Venera probes by the former USSR (1982-1986). The Pioneer Venus orbiter conducted more than a decade of monitoring of the upper atmosphere of Venus. The spacecraft data are supplemented by telescopic and satellite (in Earth orbit) observations. The astronomical data for Venus are summarized in table 8.1. Venus is a close but slightly smaller sibling of Earth. The radius is 6051 km, as compared to Earth's 6371 km. The mass is 4.87 x 1024 kg, a little less than Earth's 5.98 x 1024 kg. The gravity of Venus is 8.87 ms-2, as compared to Earth's 9.82 ms-2. The dynamical and orbital parameters of Venus are very different from those of Earth. The rotation of Venus is retrograde, with a period of 225 days. The planet has little obliquity, and its orbit is close to being circular. Thus there is little seasonal variation in insolation over a Cytherian year. Perhaps the greatest surprise about Venus is its dense, dry, and hot atmosphere of 92 bar (see figure 8.1). This is all the more surprising because the planet is completely covered by thick clouds. Figure 8.2 shows the altitude profiles of three modes of cloud particles in the middle atmosphere. The high albedo of Venus implies that the planet receives less energy from the sun than Earth despite its closer proximity to the sun. However, the surface of Venus is hot, with a temperature of 733 K, attributed to the greenhouse effect. The bulk of our knowledge of the atmosphere of Venus is derived from observations in the middle atmosphere (60-100 km altitude). At cloud-top levels (65 km), groundbased ultraviolet (UV) observations revealed a 4-5 day period, east-to-west circulation that is 60 times faster than the solid surface. The mechanism for generating this superrotation is not well understood. The net result of this rotation is that it gives the upper atmosphere an effective diurnal cycle of 4-5 days.
Cataclysm!: The Hotspot Reaches Yellowstone
Authors: Smith Robert B. , Siegel Lee J.
Published: November 2020

Epicenters from numerous earthquakes fall approximately along two parallel lines that stretch from southeast to northwest through Yellowstone National Park. During the past 630,000 years, lava flowed from eruptive vents located roughly along the same lines. The alignment of earthquakes and small volcanoes suggests that zones of weakness are deep beneath them within the Earth. Those zones may be the still-active roots of faults that once ran along the base of towering mountains. Such mountains would have made ancient Yellowstone resemble today’s Grand Teton National Park. Indeed, a few million years ago these mountains may have stretched northward through Yellowstone and hooked up with the Gallatin Range, which now extends from Montana south into Yellowstone’s northwest corner. So why is today’s Yellowstone Plateau relatively flat? What happened to the mountains that once may have rose thousands of feet skyward like the Tetons do today? The answer, quite simply, is that they were destroyed 2 million years ago during a caldera eruption, which is the largest, most catastrophic kind of volcanic outburst—an explosion so cataclysmic that it dwarfs any eruption in historic time. North America had continued its southwestward slide over the Yellowstone hotspot. After blasting and repaving the Snake River Plain, the hotspot was finally beneath the place for which it later was named. The power of its rising heat and hot rock began to shape Yellowstone into what it is today. The first eruptive blast at Yellowstone 2 million years ago left a gigantic hole in the ground—a hole larger than the state of Rhode Island. The huge crater, known as a caldera, measured about 5o miles long, 40 miles wide, and hundreds of yards deep. It extended from Island Park in Idaho to the central part of Yellowstone in Wyoming. During the volcanic cataclysm, hot ash and rock blew into the heavens over Yellowstone, then rained like hell from the sky. As heavier pumice and ash particles debris piled up on the ground, their heat welded the debris together to form a layer of solid rock called ash-flow tuff or welded tuff.
The Broken Earth: Why the Tetons Are Grand
Authors: Smith Robert B. , Siegel Lee J.
Published: November 2020

On a summer morning when the breeze blows cool, it is easy to re the lakes and sagebrush-covered glacial plains of Wyoming’s Jackson Hole sit at nearly 7,000 feet elevation. Yet the altitude of this gorgeous valley is diminished by the view to the west: The precipitous east front of the Teton Range towers above the valley floor, with 13,770-foot Grand Teton and other rugged, snowclad peaks catching the first golden rays of daybreak. This is one of the most spectacular mountain vistas in America. Whether at chill dawn, in glistening light after a torrential afternoon thunderstorm, or during summer evenings when the sun descends behind the lagged Tetons, it is a view that brings solace and peace. Yet the serene splendor of Grand Teton National Park belies a hidden fury. It is not volcanism, which is concealed beneath the gentle pine-covered Yellowstone Plateau to the north. Instead, this defiant topography was born of seismic disaster as the Teton fault repeatedly and violently broke the earth, producing a few thousand magnitude-7 to -7.5 earthquakes during the past 13 million years. During each major jolt, Jackson Hole dropped downward and the Teton Range rose upward, increasing the vertical distance between the valley and the mountains by 3 to 6 feet and sometimes more. Now, after 13 million years of earthquakes, the tallest peaks tower almost 7,000 feet above the valley floor. Actual movement on the fault has been even greater. Jackson Hole dropped downward perhaps 16,000 feet during all those earthquakes. Rock eroded from the Teton Range and other mountains by streams and glaciers filled Jackson Hole with thousands of feet of sediment, disguising how much the valley sank. Combine the uplift of the mountains and the sinking of Jackson Hole, and the best estimate—although still plagued by uncertainty—is that movement on the Teton fault has totaled 23,000 feet during the past 13 million years. That is a tiny fraction of Earth’s 4.6-billion-year history. Consider the effects of repeated episodes of mountain-building during eons before the Teton fault was born: The oldest rocks high in the Teton Range are 2.8-billion-year-old gneisses and schists and 2.4-billion-year-old granites.
Introduction
Authors: Sikorski Krzysztof A.
Published: November 2020

This monograph is devoted to studying worst case complexity results and optimal or nearly optimal methods for the approximation of solutions of nonlinear equations, approximation of fixed points, and computation of the topological degree. The methods are “global” in nature. They guarantee that the computed solution is within a specified error from the exact solution for every function in a given class. A common approach in numerical analysis is to study the rate of convergence and/or locally convergent methods that require special assumptions on the location of initial points of iterations to be “sufficiently” close to the actual solutions. This approach is briefly reviewed in the annotations to chapter 2, as well as in section 2.1.6, dealing with the asymptotic analysis of the bisection method. Extensive literature exists describing the iterative approach, with several monographs published over the last 30 years. We do not attempt a complete review of this work. The reader interested in this classical approach should consult the monographs listed in the annotations to chapter 2. We motivate our analysis and introduce basic notions in a simple example of zero finding for continuous function with different signs at the endpoints of an interval. Example 3.1 We want to approximate a zero of a function f from the class F = {f : [0,1] → R : f(0) ,< 0 and f(1) > 0, continuous}.By an approximate solution of this problem we understand any point x = x (f) such that the distance between x and some zero ∝ = ∝(f) of the function f , f (∝ ) = 0, is at most equal to a given small positive number ∈,|x — ∝ ≤ ∈. To compute x we first gather some information on the function f by sampling f at n sequentially chosen points ti in the interval [0,1]. Then, based on this information we select x. To minimize the time complexity we must select the minimal number of sampling points, that guarantee computing x(f) for any function f in the class F. This minimal number of samples (in the worst case) is called the information complexity of the problem.
Introduction: Understanding Technology
Authors: Pool Robert
Published: November 2020

This is a very different book from the one I began writing four years ago. That happens sometimes, usually when an author doesn't really understand a subject or when he discovers something else more interesting along the way, and in my case it was both. Allow me to explain. In 1991 the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation provided grants to some two dozen writers to create a series of books on technology. Because technology has shaped the modern world so profoundly, Sloan wanted to give the general, nontechnical reader some place to go in order to learn about the invention of television or the history of X-rays or the development of birth control pills. This would be it. Sloan asked that each book in the series focus on one particular technology and that all of the books be accessible to readers with no background in science or engineering, but otherwise the foundation left it up to the writers to decide what to write about and how. Various authors agreed to produce books on vaccines, modern agriculture, radar, fiber optics, the transistor, the computer, software, biotechnology, commercial aviation, the railroads, and other modern technologies. I took on nuclear power. At the time, I planned to produce a straightforward treatment of the commercial nuclear industry—its history, its problems, and its potential for the future. I knew that nuclear power was controversial, and I believed that both sides in the debate over its use were shading the truth somehow. My job would be to delve into the technical details, figure out what was really going on, and report back to the readers. To keep the book as lively and readable as possible, I would sprinkle anecdotes and colorful characters throughout, but the book's heart would be a clear, accurate account of the engineering practices and scientific facts that underlie nuclear technology. Given this information, readers could then form their own opinions on the nuclear conundrum. There was nothing original about this approach.
Recent Advances in Vadose Zone Flow and Transport Modeling
Authors: Van Genuchten M. Th. , Sudicky E. A.
Published: November 2020

The fate and transport of a variety of chemicals migrating from industrial and municipal waste disposal sites, or applied to agricultural lands, is increasingly becoming a concern. Once released into the subsurface, these chemicals arc subject to a large number of simultaneous physical, chemical, and biological processes, including sorption-desorption, volatilization, and degradation. Depending upon the type of organic chemical involved, transport may also be subject to multiphase flow that involves partitioning of the chemical between different fluid phases. Many models of varying degree of complexity and dimensionality have been developed during the past several decades to quantify the basic physicochemical processes affecting transport in the unsaturated zone. Models for variably saturated water flow, solute transport, aqueous chemistry, and cation exchange were initially developed mostly independently of each other, and only recently has there been a significant effort to couple the different processes involved. Also, most solute transport models in the past considered only one solute. For example, the processes of adsorption- desorption and cation exchange were often accounted for by using relatively simple linear or nonlinear Freundlich isotherms such that all reactions between the solid and liquid phases were forced to be lumped into a single distribution coefficient, and possibly a nonlinear exponent. Other processes such as precipitation-dissolution, biodegradation, volatilization, or radioactive decay were generally simulated by means of simple first- and/or zero-order rate processes. These simplifying approaches were needed to keep the mathematics relatively simple in view of the limitations of previously available computers. The problem of coupling models for water flow and solute transport with multicomponent chemical equilibrium and nonequilibrium models is now increasingly being addressed, facilitated by the introduction of more powerful computers, development of more advanced numerical techniques, and improved understanding of the underlying transport processes. One major frustrating issue facing soil scientists and hydrologists in dealing with the unsaturated zone, both in terms of modeling and experimentation, is the overwhelming heterogeneity of the subsurface environment.
Coupling Vapor Transport and Transformation of Volatile Organic Chemicals
Authors: El-Farhan Yassar H. , Scow Kate M.
Published: November 2020

Volatile organic chemicals (VOCs) are the most prevalent group of organic goundwater contaminants and originate primarily from industrial sources (Westerick et al., 1984). Many VOCs are aliphatics, of which a number are halogenated, and aromatics, which may or may not be chlorinated. As a class, these chemicals are highly volatile, many are relatively insoluble, and some have densities greater than that of water. The high volatility of these chemicals has supported a belief that fluxes of these materials from soil to the atmosphere arc so great that their persistence in soil is short-lived and the probability of groundwater contamination is small. However, groundwater monitoring data show that this is not the case and that many of these chemicals are posing potential threats to human health and the environment through contamination of water supplies (U.S. EPA, 1980). Even though VOCs are so widespread in the environment, our ability to adequately predict their transport and transformation in soil and the vadose zone is greatly lacking. This problem is further compounded by the fact that most sites are not contaminated with single compounds, but with mixtures of VOCs. As will be discussed later, the presence of other VOCs greatly complicates our ability to predict the behavior, both physical and biological, of a given chemical. Microbial communities play a pivotal role in the duration of contaminants from natural and managed environments and thus in reducing human exposure to toxins. A broad range of bioremediation approaches exist for contaminated soils and vadose material (Nelson et al., 1987, 1988; Marker and Kim 1990; Gibson and Sayler, 1992) and range from unmanaged to highly engineered systems. The unmanaged biodegradation of pollutants by indigenous microbial communities is increasingly becoming a remediation option in certain cases and is called “passive” or “intrinsic” bioremediation. Biostimulation usually involves additions of nutrients, electron acceptors, or cosubstrates to enhance the activity of indigenous microbial communities.
Geopolitics and the Green Revolution
Authors: Perkins John H.
Published: November 2020

During the last 100 years, the worldwide yields of cereal grains, such as wheat and rice, have increased dramatically. Since the 1950s, developments in plant breeding science have been heralded as a "Green Revolution" in modern agriculture. But what factors have enabled and promoted these technical changes? And what are the implications for the future of agriculture? This new book uses a framework of political ecology and environmental history to explore the "Green Revolution's" emergence during the 20th century in the United States, Mexico, India, and Britain. It argues that the national security planning efforts of each nation were the most important forces promoting the development and spread of the "Green Revolution"; when viewed in the larger scheme, this period can be seen as the latest chapter in the long history of wheat use among humans, which dates back to the neolithic revolution. Efforts to reform agriculture and mitigate some of the harsh environmental and social consequences of the "Green Revolution" have generally been insensitive to the deeply embedded nature of high yielding agriculture in human ecology and political affairs. This important insight challenges those involved in agriculture reform to make productivity both sustainable and adequate for a growing human population.
Political Ecology and the Yield Transformation
Authors: Perkins John H.
Published: November 2020

Something quite remarkable happened during the past century, and especially since 1950. Yields rose dramatically in the basic cereal crops such as wheat, rice, and maize, and in other crops as well. Casual inquiry to an agricultural expert about the source of the increase is likely to bring a response such as, “Well, farmers now use better plant varieties and more fertilizer than they used to, so the yields went up.” At the simplest level, this response is perfectly adequate and true. Better varieties and more fertilizer have made it possible to get larger harvests from the same plot of ground. Unfortunately, the simple answer immediately provokes yet further questions: How did farmers obtain the new and better plant varieties? Why did they use more fertilizer? When did farmers start changing their practices? Where? Why? Who helped them? The last question quickly leads the inquiry into the realm of agricultural science, because scientists enabled farmers to change their practices. Especially important were plant breeders and soil fertility experts. Thus a new realm of questions is opened: How did scientists discover the methods for higher yields? When did they do their research? Where? Why? Who paid for the research? Why? What is the significance of this scientific change? These questions seem simple, but agriculture is a tricky topic to address. It generates an inordinate number of paradoxes, puzzles, and ironies, which makes answering the queries difficult. Consider, for example, just a few: . . . Agriculture was once the place where the vast majority of human beings worked and lived, but now it increasingly provides a place for only a small minority of people. Agriculture’s harvests are the only source from which most people obtain enough food to stay alive, but few nonfarmers understand or care about its workings. Agriculture is often considered to be a landscape that is alive, verdant, lush, and redolent of wholesome naturalness, but in reality it represents the complete destruction, indeed obliteration, of natural ecosystems and wildlife habitat. . . .
Wheat, People, and Plant Breeding
Authors: Perkins John H.
Published: November 2020

Selecting improved varieties of wheat from among existing wheat plants is an ancient art that dates back thousands of years. In contrast, the deliberate generation of new varieties by controlled breeding is more recent. Wheat breeding developed from an arcane art practiced only by a few isolated individuals into a global community of professional scientists in the period from about the mid-eighteenth century to about 1925, but especially from about 1875 to 1925. Wheat improvement, however, ultimately involved more than just finding or creating varieties with greater utility. A relationship between people and wheat developed over the millennia that increasingly left both species in a state of ever higher mutual dependency. Put another way, wheat and people coevolved in ways that left neither much ability to prosper without the other. Professional wheat breeders occupied a pivotal role in this ongoing coevolutionary process, especially after the nineteenth century. An understanding of wheat breeding thus depends upon understanding how wheat and people “grew up together.” Wheat in everyday English designates a particular grassy plant that produces a starchy grain or seed. Most people think of wheat primarily in terms of this grain, which is used to make bread, cookies (biscuits), pastries, and pasta. Consumers easily distinguish between wheat and other grains such as rice, oats, maize, rye, and barley as they appear in manufactured products or as ready-to-consume grain in food stores. In contrast to their savvy as consumers, most urban dwellers probably could not differentiate between these grains in the farmer's field, particularly between wheat, rye, and barley. Nor could they necessarily give a good explanation of why wheat is particularly suitable for the products in which it is used. Moreover, they probably would be unfamiliar with other uses of wheat, such as using the grain for feed or the straw for fodder and roof thatching. Finally, in all likelihood these consumers would be hard-pressed to give details about the quantities of grain that can be obtained per hectare per year or much about how yields have increased in recent decades. In short, most consumers know and appreciate wheat but only on rather narrow and unsophisticated grounds.
Science and the Green Revolution 1945-1975
Authors: Perkins John H.
Published: November 2020

In the years after the end of World War II, farmers, agricultural scientists, and policy makers in many countries all knew, or learned, that higher yields of wheat were what they wanted, and they were successful in achieving them. Their specific motivations were different, but their objectives were not. Not only were the objectives clear, but a central method by which the higher yields were to be achieved was plant breeding. Plant breeding itself was an applied science that had to be nested within organizations that supported it and its allies in the agricultural, biological, and engineering sciences. By 1950 wheat breeders believed that the number of factors governing yield was small, which meant that the research avenues likely to be fruitful were also few in number. The amount of water available and the responsiveness to soil fertility, especially nitrogen, were in most cases the key ingredients for higher yields. For wheat, the ability of the plant to resist invasion by fungal pathogens was almost as important as water and soil fertility. Water and fertility were needed in every crop year, but damage from fungal pathogens varied with weather. Thus plant disease was not necessarily a destructive factor every year. Control of water, soil fertility, and plant disease was therefore at the center of research programs in wheat breeding. A wheat breeder would find success if his or her program produced new varieties that gave higher yields within the context of water, soil fertility, and plant disease existing in the area. Ancillary questions also existed and in some cases matched the major factors in importance. Weed control was always a problem, so high-yielding wheat had to have some capacity to resist competition from weeds. Similarly, in some areas and some years, insects could cause damage. Wheat varieties therefore had to be able to withstand them somehow. Other factors of importance to wheat breeders were habit of growth and the color and quality of the grain. Winter wheats were useful in climates that had winters mild enough to allow planting in the fall and thus higher yields the next summer.
The European Herpetofauna: Paleocene Through Pliocene
Authors: Holman J. Alan
Published: November 2020

In both Europe and North America, modern herpetological families and genera became established quite early in the Cenozoic, and modern species occurred as early as the Miocene. Because of deteriorating climates that began late in the Eocene, a marked decrease in herpetological diversity occurred in the Oligocene in both continents. However, both areas became herpetologically enriched in the Miocene. In post-Miocene times Europe was isolated from Africa and warm areas in the east by the Mediterranean Sea and eastern mountain ranges, and a depauperate herpetofauna developed there that continued into recent times. In North America, however, with its vast, accessible southern land mass, the richness of the Miocene herpetofauna (with the exception of several archaic colubrid genera [Parmley and Holman, 1995] that became extinct in the the Miocene) persisted into modern times. The following discussion of changes in the European herpetofauna in the Cenozoic era has been synthesized from Auge (1986), Ballón (1991a), Bailon ct al. (1988), Barbadillo et al. (1997), Crochet et al. (1981), Estes (1981, 1982, 1983), Fritz (1995), Holman (1995c), Milncr (1986), Milner et al. (1982), Mlynarski (1976), Rage (1984a, 1984c, 1986, 1993), Rage and Auge (1993), Rage and Ford (1980), Roček (1994), Sanchiz. (1977b, in press), Sanchiz and Mlynarski (1979), Sanchiz and Roček (1996), Spinar (1972), Szyndlar (1984, 1991b, 1991c), and Szyndlar and Bohme (1993). Because of the high probability that herpetological fossils have been identified correctly at the family level, herpetological families arc used here to reflect the taxonomic diversity of the European herpetofauna from the Paleocene through the Pliocene. In a following section, the earliest appearance of herpetological genera and species in the European Tertiary arc discussed. Extinct families are prefixed with an asterisk (*). Families that became extinct in Europe in the Cenozoic but presently occur elsewhere are prefixed with a number sign (#). Two primitive, extinct, presumably permanently aquatic salamander families, me *Albanerpetontidae and *Batrachosauroididae (the latter also known from the Tertiary of North America) made limited appearances in the Cenozoic of Europe. The *Albanerpetontidae occurred only in the Middle Miocene (having reappeared from the Cretaceous), and the *Batrachosauroididae occurred from the Upper Paleocene to the Lower Eocene.
A Bestiary—Annotated Taxonomic Accounts
Authors: Holman J. Alan
Published: November 2020

This chapter consists of annotated taxonomic accounts of Pleistocene amphibians and reptiles recorded from the study area (see Fig. 1). General external characters, habits, and distributional patterns of modern taxa of amphibians and reptiles that occur in the British and European Pleistocene in this and following chapters are from the author's unpublished field notes and photographs as well as the following sources: Arnold and Burton (1978), Ballasina (1984), Beebee (1983), Berger et al. (1969), Duellman (1993), Duellman and Trueb (1986), Engelmann et al. (1986), Ernst and Barbour (1989), Escriva (1987), Estes (1981, 1983), Frazer (1983), Frost (1985), Gunther (1996), Halliday and Adler (1986), Hellmich (1962), Hvass (1972), King and Burke (1989), Matz (1983), Noble (1931), Smith (1964), Sparreboom (1981), and Zug (1993). The reader is cautioned not to attempt to identify Pleistocene amphibian and reptile fossils solely on the basis of skeletal characters discussed or skeletal figures presented in this book—or in other publications. To identify Pleistocene amphibian and reptile fossils accurately, it is necessary to compare them with adequate modern and fossil skeletal material. Pleistocene locality numbers below correspond with locality numbers in Chapter 5. Pleistocene caudate amphibians are usually identified on the basis of individual trunk vertebrae (see Holman, 1995c, p. 83). Figure 3 illustrates the important features of a trunk vertebra of Triturus cristatus from the Middle Pleistocene of Cudmore Grove, Essex, England.
Herpetological Population Adjustments in the Pleistocene of Britain and Europe
Authors: Holman J. Alan
Published: November 2020

Compared to herpetological population adjustment patterns in North America (sec Holman, 1995c), the patterns in Britain and central and northern Europe seem to be rather straightforward. Basically, (1) very few herpetological species were present in ice-free areas during full glacial times, and (2) formerly glaciated areas were reinvaded by species from the south during warming cycles. Moreover, during climatic optimal warm times, several southern species existed well north of their present ranges. The invasion of southern Europe by northern populations in cold times is taken for granted (e.g., Rocek, 1995), although, as addressed in this chapter, it is difficult to document this in the fossil record. As indicated by geological and fossil evidence, the British Islands were connected to continental Europe during much of the Pleistocene. Although sea level changes in the British late Pleistocene arc a subject of some controversy (Stuart, 1982), it is generally agreed that Britain first separated from Ireland and then from the continent early in the Holocene. The classic idea is that the very depauperate British heretofauna of the cold part of the Devensian (last glacial stage) became somewhat, but not fully enriched by herpetological species during a warming trend that began about 10,000 ybp and lasted until about 8,500 ybp. The fact that Ireland has a much poorer modern herpetofauna (Triturus vulgaris, the rare Bufo calamita, Rana temporaria, and Lacerta vivipara) than Britain, which has six native species of amphibians and six native species of reptiles (Fra/,er, 1983; Smith, 1964), is attributed to Ireland's early separation from Britain. The Irish herpetofauna suggests that this separation occurred rather soon after the final withdrawal of the Devensian (last glacial) ice sheet. One of the most common questions asked about snakes, especially near St. Patrick's Day, is, "Have there ever been any snakes in Ireland?" No fossil snakes have ever been found in Ireland. But since Ireland lacks a terrestrial fossil record during most of the time that snakes have existed, it would seem that snakes could have lived in Ireland during some part of geological time. As far as I am aware, the few Pleistocene deposits containing herpetological remains in Ireland represent very late Devensian (last glacial) times.
Leipzig, 1991 Of Laughter and Forgetting: A Faculty-Student Conflict of Generations
Authors: Rodden John G.
Published: November 2020

On a warm October afternoon in Leipzig, a hunched-over figure sits in the shadow of the monumental plastic sculpture “Aufbruch” (“Beginning”), a legacy of socialist realism that depicts a group of people struggling to move forward, as if awakening to political consciousness. Heike is tense; she gazes fixedly down at the ground, her hands clasped tightly in front of her. She is brooding on her quarter-century in the SED as a student and then professor here at Karl-Marx Universität—now, in 1991, again called Leipzig University. “Nie wieder,” repeats Heike. “Never again.” Never would she join the reconstituted SED, now called the PDS. Never again would she join any party or movement, of whatever political stripe. She is not quoting the campaign slogan used by the CDU in March 1990—already a bygone era—but is simply expressing a personal statement. Politics holds no interest for her. Her experience in the SED has disillusioned her toward—or, as she says, “inoculated” her against—party and ideological appeals. Permanently. “I have learned my lesson,” Heike says. Looking up, she follows my gaze to the grotesque socialist realist sculpture, remarking that, since the Wende in 1989, she has been looking at it with a new eye. Across the courtyard stands a much older sculpture: a towering statue of Leibniz. Heike turns to it, deliberately, as if appealing to the wise old Leipzig professor—indeed to the classical spirit of the Enlightenment itself—for guidance and support. I’m still thinking about the marches that brought down the SED regime and East Germany itself, only two Octobers ago. Just a few yards beyond Leibniz is the sacred spot where the already historic marches arose and the “We are The People” chants against the Honecker regime began. Heike, 46, a wissenschaftliche Assistentin (lecturer) in Slavic literature at the University, speaks in soft German—entirely free of Americanisms, unlike the speech of most West Germans—about her decades in the Party. Pale yet animated, her face is vital with expression, if lined with years; like many eastern German women, she wears no makeup.
Berlin, 1994 No Difficulties with the Truth? The Last Testament of Philosopher-Dissident Wolfgang Harich
Authors: Rodden John G.
Published: November 2020

“Peace Street.” As we drive up to the home of Wolfgang Harich, 72, one of the leading intellectual controversialists in postwar Germany—indeed a one-man battlefield where DDR history and identity have fought themselves out—I remark to my friend Ulrike on the ironies of his address. It seemed to evoke what Harich wished for himself, after decades of struggle to regain his good name: to rest in peace. And that he not, as he once said, “go dishonored to the grave.” Ulrike, 35, a western Berlin linguist, is interested in hearing more about Harich’s history. The DDR itself is like a dream to her, she says—let alone such distant events such as Harich’s arrest and trial for sedition in 1956/57. She doesn’t remember ever paying much attention to the DDR; East Berlin was just a few streets yet a world away. She does not know much about DDR history, but as a Berliner, she says, she has always felt some special bond to “the east.” She too is eager to meet Wolfgang Harich, the man whose comprehensive reform proposals constituted the only Party attempt at internal restructuring of the DDR before its collapse in 1989/90. I talk about Harich’s reputation as a young man—what I’ve heard of it from acquaintances, such as Monika Hüchel, wife of the poet Peter Hüchel and a former colleague of Harich at the Tägliche Rundschau. Harich was “quite a ladies’ man,” she noted, very much a bon vivant, glittering in his wit and repartee amid the rubble in postwar Berlin. Brilliant, gossipy, impulsive, principled, rational, visionary, high-minded, refractory, moralizing, self-righteous: Harich, son of the distinguished literary critic Walther Harich—who died when Harich was a small boy—came from a well-to-do German bourgeois family and seemed in the late 1940s a throwback to an earlier era of broadly cultivated European intellectuals. I had long hoped to meet Wolfgang Harich—ever since I had read the 1956 Spiegel cover story about him—in which the editor of the Deutsche Rundschau had called him “an intellectual phenomenon,” “a pure intellect on two feet,” and “a genius, an intellectual Wunderkind.”