bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
A Snapshot of Venice at the Twilight of the Renaissance
Authors: Ferraro Joanne M
Published: November 2023

venice was reputed to be among the most serene republics in Europe, offering safety and tranquillity to the diverse communities of people living within its waters. The sun, however, had almost set on the Renaissance Maritime Republic by the late sixteenth century. The city witnessed riots precipitated by adverse conditions. Foul weather in 1569–1570 and 1590 had brought the hardships off amine, and the collapse of the coinage system in 1602 prompted bakers to refuse debased coins as payment for bread.1 The potential for siege also caused apprehension. The naval conflict with the Turks (1571–1573) had reached the very gates of Venetian frontiers in Istria and Dalmatia, fueling fears of Turkish conquest. Moreover, the city’s economic life sagged from the strains and disruptions of war.2 Then came another form of siege. Fleas infected with Pasteurella pestis inflicted the horrors of plague on the population in 1575–1577 and 1630. Trade and industry fell into a downward spiral after 1580, and by 1620 the city was no longer a European center of economic gravity. Nobles and other prosperous citizens scrambled to convert investment capital into passive income, such as rents and loans, and inherited fortunes took on greater importance, creating fissures among heirs. Textile workers and other artisans also felt the hardships of economic contraction, making it necessary for them to find other income-generating activities in order to subsist. Despite all these setbacks and reversals, however, the Constitution endured, and from the viewpoint of outsiders, Venice bathed in the myth that its inhabitants enjoyed exceptional peace and political continuity.
Perilous Scripts, Forced Unions, and Ragged Wedding Nights
Authors: Ferraro Joanne M
Published: November 2023

camilla belloto, the forty-nine-year-old daughter of a silk weaver, petitioned the Patriarch’s Court in Venice in 1617 in the hopes of obtaining a formal separation from her husband, Angelo de Bollis, a textile worker from the Friulan town of Palmanova.1 The procurator Camilla had engaged, Pietro Abettino (a canon lawyer and a cleric), explained that her relationship with her husband had deteriorated within months of their taking their nuptial vows, twenty-five years earlier. Angelo had reneged on his commitment to support Camilla, and instead, he and his mother had offered his young bride’s sexual services to a gentleman. After six months Camilla abandoned Angelo, taking refoge in her father’s house in the neighboring town of Padua for a year and a half.
Concubines and Courtesans in the Courts
Authors: Ferraro Joanne M
Published: November 2023

“farewell my concubine” might be the refrain a patrician lover sang to his old flame when the candle had lost its flicker, or he had finally succumbed to family pressure to renounce a long-standing, illicit affair. At times fathers and brothers demanded such renunciations. When a son or brother who was not selected to marry appeared to be reneging on his commitment to remain single, simulating marriage with his concubine, the joint family venture became vulnerable to inheritance disputes or dissipation of the patrimony. Thus, father and/or brothers exhorted the family member gone astray to pawn his concubine off on a man oflesser status. From a male patrician perspective, the honor of the wayward woman was restored through legitimate marriage while the interests of the fraterna remained intact. Concttbines, however, did not always willingly go away. Moreover, they so resented being conveniently discarded and shuffled around by their noble lovers that they sought the aid of the Patriarchal Court. Their cases afford us the opportunity to study modes of cohabitation outside the legal, conjugal bond.1 They also cast light on the sexual activity of both married and unmarried patrician males.2
Tales of Violence, Hunger, and Betrayal
Authors: Ferraro Joanne M
Published: November 2023

in 1584, Pasquetta Peregrini decided to change her unhappy domestic circumstances. No longer willing to live with Romano Cavatia, her husband of four years, she initiated proceedings for a separation in the Patriarchal Court.1 Like many other women who left their husbands, Pasquetta retreated for the duration of the ecclesiastical investigation to a place that would preserve her honor and safety, the convent of San Maffei on the island of Murano. A month later she moved to another refuge, the convent of Sant’Andrea.2 There, in June 1584, two months after she had left her husband, Pasquetta told her story to the notary who had come to record her deposition.3
Tearing the Hand Off
Authors: Connelly Matthew
Published: November 2023

On August 25, 1958, Algerian militants launched a wave of attacks across the French metropole. They blew up oil tanks, gunned down policemen, attempted to assassinate Soustelle—whom de Gaulle had just named minister of information—and even planted explosives in the Eiffel Tower. While these last two operations failed, the new offensive succeeded in gaining the attention of the foreign press and foreign capitals. “They have remembered that there is a dirty war going on in Algeria capable of contaminating the West” an FIN bulletm explained. The virus that weakens colonialist France and through her the whole Atlantic Alliance has crossed the Mediterranean.”
Signaling in the Brain
Authors: B.Levitan Irwin , Kaczmarek Leonard K
Published: November 2023

Although Shakespeare asked this question near the end of the sixteenth century, the answer had been known, at least to some, for more than two millennia. Many ancient Greek scholars, Hippocrates and Plato among them, appreciated that there is something special about the brain, and argued that the brain is responsible for behavior in humans and other animals. We now take it for granted that the brain is the organ that obtains information about the environment, processes and stores this information, and generates behavior. In addition, it is the brain that is responsible for such vaguely defined aspects of behavior as feelings, aspirations, and abstract thoughts, those qualities we consider—with more than a touch of hubris—quintessentially human. Diseases of the brain, which often are associated with aging and hence are on the increase as the human life span lengthens, cause untold suffering for individuals, families, and society as a whole. In essence then, it is the brain that makes us what we are, and indeed it can be argued that all other organs are there simply to support the brain. For this reason understanding the biology of brain function is a major goal of modern science. The brain is one of the last great frontiers in the biological sciences, and the unraveling of its mysteries is comparable in complexity and intellectual challenge to the search for the elementary particles of matter or the effort to explore space.
Ion Channels, Membrane Ion Currents, and the Action Potential
Authors: B.Levitan Irwin , Kaczmarek Leonard K
Published: November 2023

A great deal of what we know about ion channels, including information about selectivity and gating of different types of channels, was already understood long before single channel recording and the application of molecular and structural approaches revolutionized the field. This understanding developed because, for more than 60 years, the voltage clamp invented by K. C. Cole allowed us to record the macroscopic membrane current in some cells. As we discussed in Chapter 4, the macroscopic current is the combined current flowing simultaneously through all the active ion channels in the cell. In the current chapter, we shall expand on this topic, to describe in detail just how such voltage clamp measurements of ion currents have led to a detailed mechanistic understanding of the action potential. Let us begin with a review of the fundamental physicochemical concept of the equilibrium potential, which is essential for understanding all electrical phenomena in biological membranes. We will then go on to consider how voltage‗and time—dependent sodium and potassium currents combine to give rise to the action potential. It is important to keep in mind throughout that there is nothing mysterious about the phenomena we are discussing here they arise logically from the properties of just a few kinds of membrane proteins, the sodium and potassium channel proteins that (as we have seen in Chapter 5) are becoming increasingly understood in molecular detail.
Neurotransmitters and Neurohormones
Authors: B.Levitan Irwin , Kaczmarek Leonard K
Published: November 2023

We have seen in the previous two chapters that a neuron is in large part an elaborate and intricately regulated machine for the secretion of a variety of chemicals. Why do cells go to all this trouble? Although direct electrical connections between nerve cells also play an essential role (see Chapter 8), it is chemical signaling that mediates much of the intercellular communication among nerve cells within the central nervous system. In addition, the transfer of information into the nervous system from sensory organs and the output from the nervous sys tem in the form of muscular contraction are mediated by extracellular chemical messengers. In this chapter we will discuss in a systematic way the different classes of neurotransmitters and neurohormones, some of which we have already met in other contexts. Subsequent chapters will deal with receptors on the target cell that recognize and bind these substances and with the transduction mechanisms that are involved in converting the extracellular chemical signal into an appropriate response (usually electrical) in the target cell.
The Birth and Death of a Neuron
Authors: B.Levitan Irwin , Kaczmarek Leonard K
Published: November 2023

Radical changes in the structure and connections of neurons occur during the development of the nervous system. Immature neurons are subject to chemical and mechanical influences that cause them to migrate to various locations in the nervous system, to extend axonal and dendritic processes toward other cells, and then to make and break synaptic connections with these cells before a final pattern of branching and connections is established. A full account of the different stages of neuronal development is beyond the scope of this book, which focuses on the properties of adult nerve cells. Nevertheless, neuronal plasticity in the adult animal may utilize mechanisms that are active during development, a period of profound plastic changes in neuronal structure and function. Furthermore, many of these mechanisms may also contribute to the maintenance of neuronal form and connections in the adult. In this chapter, we shall therefore first give a brief and general account of the normal course of neuronal development, and discuss some of the molecules involved in the earliest steps of the formation of the nervous system. We shall cover how new neurons come into being, both during development and in the adult. Finally, we shall discuss the mechanisms that lead to the death of a neuron. The following three chapters will cover molecules that determine the existence and properties of select groups of neurons, the growth of axons, and the formation of synaptic contacts.
Introduction
Authors: Feenberg Andrew
Published: November 2023

It is widely believed that technological society is condemned to authoritarian management, mindless work, and equally mindless consumption. Social critics claim that technical rationality and human values contend for the soul of modern man. This book challenges such cliches by reconceptualizing the relation of technology, rationality, and democracy. My theme is the possibility of a truly radical reform of industrial society.
Technology and Transition
Authors: Feenberg Andrew
Published: November 2023

Marx created Marxism by conjoining a philosophical critique of alienation with the aspirations of the labor movement. The critique was directed at the enslavement of human beings to machines in modern industrial civilization. Workers’ aspirations for democracy and economic justice appeared quite modest in comparison with this speculative attack on industrialism itself. Yet so long as conservative regimes opposed even their most elementary demands, it could be argued that workers’ pursuit of a better life depended on general civilizational change.
“Every man knows where and how beauty gives him pleasure” Beauty Discourse and the Logic of Aesthetics
Authors: Jones Amelia
Published: November 2023

Each of these great figures in the history of aesthetics-Immanuel Kant, Johann Winckelmann, and John Ruskin-acknowledges the profound instability of beauty as a mode of appreciating objects and images that seduce us (in texts from 1790, 1764, and 1849, respectively).1 There is tension in their acknowledgments, however; while proclaiming the contingency of beauty, each goes on to attempt to recuperate some kind of authority for himself as its arbiter.
Beautiful Identities: When History Turns State’s Evidence
Authors: Noriega Chon A
Published: November 2023

Buried in the Federal Trade Commission Library are several intragovernmental documents from the 1960s and 1970s that can be found in no other archive, but that signal an attempt within the state itself to create an autonomous space outside its own corporate liberalism and the emerging global media. That space was an aesthetic space, instrumental neither for political representation nor for mass communication; instead it served the needs of a social movement for beautiful identities. That space is now called “Chicano cinema” and its mode-initially at least-is that of the documentary. and its location, television.
Functional Equations
Authors: Falmagne Jean-Claude
Published: November 2023

It sometimes happens that theories in psychology or other empirical sciences are formalized by equations involving unknown functions. For instance, the theorist may be reluctant to make specific assumptions regarding the form of the functions involved in a mathematical model. The equations themselves often reduce the possibilities, however, and occasionally the restrictions are so severe as to restrict all forms to but a few. The most celebrated case in psychophysics involves the connection between Weber’s law and the so-called Fechner’s problem. The restrictions there are such as to yield a logarithm as the only possible form for a function, which Fechner interpreted as measuring the magnitude of the sensation evoked by a stimulus (cf. Chapters 4 and 5). Many other examples will be encountered in this book. This chapter discusses some useful results for analyzing such questions. The term functional equations describes the part of mathematics devoted to the discussion of problems of this kind, in which the unknowns are not numbers, but the form of the functions entering in an equation, or a system of equations. For a systematic treatment of functional equations, see for example, Aczél (1966).
Models of Discrimination
Authors: Falmagne Jean-Claude
Published: November 2023

In Chapter 4, we considered a forced-choice paradigm, in which a subject is presented with pairs (a,b) of stimuli (a,b are real numbers, representing the stimulus values on some physical scale). The subject’s task is to select one of the two stimuli as exceeding the other, in terms of some subjective attribute such as loudness or perceived weight, depending on the nature of the stimuli. The basic theoretical notion was a probability P  a,b that the subject chooses a over b.
Signal Detection Theory
Authors: Falmagne Jean-Claude
Published: November 2023

Any psychophysical task has cognitive components, this term covering a variety of such factors as response bias, guessing strategy, motivation, etc. So far in our approach to psychophysical theory, we have implicitly assumed that such factors could be bypassed or controlled by careful experimental design. In fact, we have ignored them. This position is not without its weaknesses; an example will make this clear.
Psychophysics with Several Variables or Channels
Authors: Falmagne Jean-Claude
Published: November 2023

We consider here a number of paradigms and models designed to analyze how a subject integrates the information flowing from several sensory inputs. Examples of how this may arise have been encountered in earlier chapters. In the yes/no paradigm discussed in Chapter 10, for instance, the subject had to detect a stimulus s embedded in a “masking” noise n. The subject’s responses were regarded as resulting from some operation combining, on the sensory side, the effect of both sand n on the organism, and on the cognitive side, factors affecting decision making.
Killers of Conviction Groups, Ideology, and Extraordinary Evil
Authors: Waller James
Published: November 2023

One of the ways in which we explain extraordinary human evil is to focus on the means by which groups make that evil possible. Intuitively, many of us recognize that we are vulnerable to losing ourselves in a group. There seems to be something about the nature of the collective—a small band of marauders, an army battalion, a mob, a social or political organization, an office staff, a nation—that brings out our worst tendencies. A long line of scholarly interest in the collective has legitimized that intuition.
The Dead End of Demonization
Authors: Waller James
Published: November 2023

Hannah Arendt was one of about 37,000 German Jews who emigrated from Germany in 1933. She first went to France, where, with Youth Aliyah, she worked for the immigration of Jewish refugee children into Palestine. Interned during the war at Gurs, in Vichy France, she escaped, made her way to the United States in 1941, and secured U.S. citizenship in 1951.
Asset or Disruption? Narcissism in the Workplace
Authors: Ronningstam Elsa
Published: November 2023

Vocational activities and professional careers are usually associated with healthy narcissistic investment. For most people, the capacity to work— that is, to create, produce, collaborate, accomplish, achieve, and succeed—is a source of personal pride and satisfaction. The meaning of work and its impact on an individual’s self-esteem are a relatively new topic of clinical investigation. Axelrod (1999) noted that, “[i]n adulthood, the ego ideal is, in part, a repository of images and fantasies associated with successful working … The fuller articulation of coherent, realistic, yet highly personal ideals is an important part of all work-related interventions and has significant benefits for self-esteem” (p. 11). Levine (1997) identified work as an arena for self-esteem regulation and ego identity and for definition of the self. Kohut (1977) suggested that an integration of ambition and guiding ideals into meaningful goal-oriented work contributes to increased self-cohesiveness and psychological health. He also pointed out that good work could improve shattered self-esteem. Work has long been considered an essential part of psychiatric rehabilitation. Recent studies have pointed to the importance of work for life quality and self-esteem in psychiatrically disabled people. Van Dongen (1996) found that work provided distraction from symptoms and contributed to better mental health. Arns and Linney (1993) reported that improvement in vocational status resulted in higher self-efficacy, self-esteem, and life satisfaction.
Determination of Genealogical Relationships from Genetic Data: A Review of Methods and Applications
Authors: Morin Phillip A
Published: November 2023

The concept of kinship has been central to investigating the remarkably varied social structures of primates. Genealogical relationships between individuals are predicted, from the first principles of evolutionary theory, to be critical influences on the nature of social relationships. Sociobiological/socioecological theory in particular predicts that kinship should have primary importance for the cohesion of groups, dominance, inbreeding avoidance, and coalitional behavior (Hamilton 1964, Wrangham 1980, Trivers 1985, Silk 1987).
War
Authors: Bremer Francis J
Published: November 2023

As he walked from his home to the town dock near Edward Bendal’s home on the morning of April 10, 1637, John Winthrop received a lukewarm reception. Though his reputation had risen in the colony as a whole— he had recently been elected deputy governor—divisions in Boston had cost him much of his popularity. But that was far from his mind on this April day that had a touch of winter still in the air. As commander of one of the colony’s militia regiments, he was going to the dock to see the departure of twenty soldiers for the relief of the Connecticut settlements.
War Clouds and Concerns
Authors: Bremer Francis J
Published: November 2023

It is a fine June day in 1643. John and Margaret, their sons Samuel and Adam, and Adam’s wife were enjoying the day in their orchard on Governor’s Island. From the high point on which they stood they could see the town of Boston, which John had done so much to develop. Closer, to the north, was Charlestown, where he and the early settlers had first lived. Toward the mouth of the harbor was Castle Island, whose fortifications had recently been abandoned by order of the General Court. The threat from Charles I had subsided, and because no one wanted to pay the taxes, the defensive works in the harbor had been abandoned. Winthrop and his fellow Bostonians disagreed with the decision and had been trying to find a way to reestablish the fort on Castle Island without openly defying the wishes of the court, but so far they had failed.
Public Opinion and Congressional Action on Labor Market Opportunities, 1942-2000
Authors: Burstein Paul
Published: November 2023

Most of those who study the impact of public opinion on public policy believe that the more salient the issue, the greater the impact of public opinion (Jones 1994; Page and Shapiro 1983). If this is true, groups with public support would want to increase the salience of issues on which they want action, whereas their opponents would want the issues decided as quietly as possible (Schattschneider 1960 ). Because salience appears so important to the outcome of political conflict, those who study democratic politics (Hilgartner and Bosk 1988; Jones 1994) have devoted their attention to determining why some issues become the object of intense public concern yet others do not.
The Semi-Sovereign Public
Authors: Page Benjamin I
Published: November 2023

More than forty years ago, E. E. Schattschneider the great advocate of responsible parties and governmental responsiveness to ordinary citizens-wrote about the “semi-sovereign people” of the United States. He maintained that the public can exert substantial control over government policymaking, particularly when issues are made highly visible through conflict and when citizens are mobilized by competitive, unified, programmatic political parties.
Cancer
Authors: Tibbs Tiffany L , Tarr Kathleen L
Published: November 2023

Few words evoke as much emotion as the word cancer, especially when it is uttered in reference to one’s own or a loved one’s health. These feel-ings are understandable as cancer occurs fre-quently and remains one of the leading causes of death for all age groups. In 2002, for example, it was estimated that there would be 1,284,900 new cases of cancer and 555,500 deaths in the United States alone (Jemal, Thomas, Murray, & Thun, 2002). Cancer most recently ranked as the second leading cause of death in both adults and children (Jemal et al., 2002).
Domestic Violence
Authors: Hamberger L Kevin , Patel Darshana
Published: November 2023

Domestic violence is assaultive behavior that functions to dominate, control, and punish an-other in an intimate, supposedly peer relationship (Ganley, 1989). Domestic violence does not con-sist of a specific action or set of actions. Rather, domestic violence consists of a pattern of behav-iors that occurs over time and has a specific func-tion, namely, to dominate, control, or punish an-other. The function of the assaultive behavior is what actually defines it as battering or abusive.
Rape, Sexual Assault, and PTSD: Strategies for the Primary Care Psychologist
Authors: Clum Gretchen A , Chrestman Kelly R , Resick Patricia A
Published: November 2023

Psychologists in primary care settings are in a unique position to address the potentially perva-sive effects of sexual assault and abuse in a large segment of the victimized population. There are two factors that make the primary care setting an important venue for identification and treatment of sexual assault victims: First, the sexual assault victim is more likely to seek care in medical set-tings than in mental health settings; second, vic-tims report poorer health and greater physical symptoms than nonvictims. Both of these factors suggest that identification of the sexual assault or abuse victim in primary care settings can lead not only to appropriate psychological interventions, but also set the stage for an integration of psycho-logical and medical care services that can address a fuller spectrum of problems.
Columbus’s Hurricane
Authors: Emanuel Kerry
Published: November 2023

Based on his first few voyages, Christopher Columbus concluded that the weather in the New World is benign: “In all the Indies, I have always found May-like weather,” he commented. Although sailing through hurricane-prone waters during the most dangerous summer months, he did not have any serious hurricane encounters during his first three voyages. (But in June 1495, on his second voyage, three of his four ships were sunk in Isabela Harbor, on the south side of Hispaniola, by what seems to have been a waterspout.) During these voyages, Columbus heard from native inhabitants about horrible tempests they called “Huracán,” the word for their god of evil (Chapter 3), and he probably learned from them the portents to look for. By the time of his fourth voyage to the New World, in 1502, Columbus had had a serious falling-out with the bureaucrats appointed by Spain to govern the fledgling colonies and to extract gold and other commodities from the native inhabitants. Among the more unfriendly of these exploiters was Don Nicolas de Orvando, the governor of Hispaniola, with whom Columbus had been forbidden contact by his Spanish sovereigns. But as Columbus entered the outer roadstead of Santa Domingo, he recognized the ominous signs of an approaching violent storm: an oily swell emanating from the southeast and a developing veil of cirrostratus overhead. Concerned for the safety of his men and ships, he sent a message to Governor Orvando begging to be allowed to seek refuge in Santa Domingo harbor. Columbus had observed that the governor was preparing a large fleet of some 30 boats to set sail for Spain, carrying large quantities of gold and slaves, and warned him to postpone the trip and to take measures to secure the ships. Refusing both the request and the advice, Orvando read Columbus’s note aloud to his minions, who roared with laughter at the forecast by the amateur meteorologist from Genoa.
The Tempest
Authors: Emanuel Kerry
Published: November 2023

Hurricanes often entrain seeds, insects, and small birds into their immense circulations, carrying them far from their native habitats to distant lands, where they may take root and colonize. Here is the story of how one hurricane blew a ship off course, depositing its human cargo on an isolated tropical island where they founded a colony that persists to this day. This story almost certainly served as the inspiration for William Shakespeare’s last play. On June 2, 1609, a fleet of seven tall ships, two with pinnaces in tow, sailed from the English port of Plymouth, bound for America. With their cargo of nearly six hundred passengers, they had been sent by the Virginia Company of London to fortify the Jamestown settlement. The lead ship, the three-hundred-ton Sea Venture, was the largest in the fleet and carried Sir Thomas Gates, the newly appointed governor of the colony, and Sir George Somers, admiral of the Virginia Company. The first few days of the voyage were uneventful, but as the fleet drew near the Azores, a hurricane scattered the ships. They continued on toward the west, lost to the sight of each other. All but one of the original ships made it to Jamestown; the Sea Venture never arrived and was presumed lost. What actually happened aboard the Sea Venture is described in vivid detail in a letter sent back to England by William Strachey, who had been appointed secretary to the deputy governor of Virginia.
Taking Aim: How Hurricanes Move
Authors: Emanuel Kerry
Published: November 2023

In the early days of hurricane prediction, forecasters felt lucky if they could locate a hurricane with reasonable certainty. Often, they first learned of storms after they had made landfall and already taken many lives. But thanks to telegraphy, reconnaissance aircraft, radar, and satellites, storms can now be located accurately. The problem is to forecast where the storms will go. Many of the great hurricane tragedies since the middle of the twentieth century can be traced to a failure to do this. The physics of hurricane motion presents an interesting scientific problem. To a first approximation, hurricanes move with the airflow in which they are embedded, averaged through the depth of the storm. By “airflow in which they are embedded,” we mean the large-scale flow of the tropical atmosphere that would exist in the absence of the storm. Look, for example, at Figure 8.5, which shows airflow near the surface of the Pacific Ocean. In the far western North Pacific, the swirl of a typhoon can be seen within the general east-to-west airflow.
The Labor Day Hurricane of 1935
Authors: Emanuel Kerry
Published: November 2023

The most intense hurricane ever to affect the United States roared ashore in the middle Florida Keys on the evening of Labor Day,September 2, 1935, wiping several islands clean of all vegetation and buildings, and killing at least 423 people. Its central pressure of 892 mb (26.35”) was the lowest recorded in any storm to strike the United States and the lowest ever recorded in the Atlantic region until 1988, when Hurricane Gilbert squeaked by with a central pressure of 888 mb. Among the casualties were many World War I veterans who had been sent to the Keys to help build a highway and, some say, to prevent them from publicizing their grievances and embarrassing the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt. It so damaged the massive Key West Extension of Henry Flagler’s Florida East Coast Railway that it was never rebuilt. The storm killed more than half those residing in the Middle Keys. In 1935 the population of the Florida Keys was burgeoning, thanks to their deserved reputation as a tropical paradise and to their new accessibility, owing to the railway line built at the staggering cost of $49 million by the great tycoon Henry Flagler. Begun in 1905 and finished in 1912, the system of bridges and viaducts linking the many islands was an engineering marvel. The finest Belgian and German cement was used for the bridge piers, the steel came from Carnegie, and the marl road bed fill was quarried and dredged from the Keys themselves. But at least two hundred workers lost their lives in the project, many during the hurricanes of 1906, 1909, and 1910.
Rain
Authors: Emanuel Kerry
Published: November 2023

Hurricanes are usually thought of primarily as wind storms. Virtually all metaphorical use of the word hurricane in literary works evokes violent wind. Yet some of the worst tropical cyclone catastrophes are caused not by winds but by torrential rain. Curiously, some of the most devastating floods are produced by tropical cyclones of sub-hurricane strength. A recent and especially tragic example is that of Hurricane Mitch of 1998, the deadliest Atlantic hurricane since the Great Hurricane of 1780 (Chapter 11). Floods produced by Mitch killed more than 11,000 people in Central America, and the president of Honduras declared that Mitch destroyed 50 years of progress in that country. Mitch developed as a rare Category 5 hurricane in the central Caribbean, with sustained winds in excess of 175 mph. It drifted slowly southward over Honduras and neighboring countries, producing rainfall rates of 1 to 2 ft per day and precipitation totals of as much as 75 in. The resulting floods and mud slides virtually destroyed the entire infrastructure of Honduras and devastated parts of Nicaragua, Guatemala, Belize, and El Salvador. Whole villages together with their inhabitants were swept away by the resulting flash floods and mudflows.
Into the Maelstrom: A Photo Essay
Authors: Emanuel Kerry
Published: November 2023

What is it like to fly into a hurricane? No words or pictures can fully convey the terrible threedimensional beauty of this natural wonder; one simply has to go there. On these pages are some of the more striking photographs taken on reconnaissance missions together with the words of one of those privileged few witnesses of this great natural spectacle. These photos were taken in many different storms, but have been arranged to convey a typical sequence of scenes one might encounter on a hurricane reconnaissance mission. The first sign of the storm are the outer bands of cumulus and cumulonimbus, aligned with the surface wind, and high, icy cirrus flowing out of the storm’s core.
Forecasting Hurricanes
Authors: Emanuel Kerry
Published: November 2023

No natural phenomenon poses a greater challenge to forecasters than the hurricane. Earthquakes cause comparable damage, but at present there is little scientific basis for their prediction. Lightning and flash floods kill more people in the United States than hurricanes, but they evolve so rapidly that forecasters can do little more than predict the conditions that favor them. Major river floods are often devastating, but evolve slowly enough that there is usually ample time for evacuation, and little doubt about where they will occur. The problem with hurricanes is that we can forecast them with some skill, yet they move and evolve fast enough that decisions must be made quickly but with incomplete knowledge. Partial knowledge poses a greater problem than either complete ignorance or full knowledge. If we knew for sure a hurricane was coming, we would get out of the way, however inconvenient.
Hurricane Andrew, 1992
Authors: Emanuel Kerry
Published: November 2023

In the forty years from 1926 to 1966, Dade County, Florida, where Miami is located, was struck by hurricanes 13 times. But there were no hurricanes at all for the next 25 years, during which the county’s population more than doubled. This lull in hurricane activity proved to be the proverbial calm before the storm, writ large, and it induced a sense of complacency among all but the oldest residents. While building codes actually became more stringent during this lull, enforcement waned, and by the late 1980s, there were only 16 building inspectors for a population of well over 1 million. It was as though the storm gods had primed south Florida for catastrophe. That catastrophe was Hurricane Andrew, the costliest natural disaster in U.S. history and the third most intense hurricane ever to strike the country. Remarkably, only 26 died in Florida as a direct result of the storm, but tens of thousands were left homeless, and at least 40 more died in the aftermath. Andrew changed the face of south Florida, and brought about sea changes in the insurance and construction industries.
Introduction
Authors: Schulkin Jay
Published: November 2023

Some intellectual traditions have rendered the body as dumb and inert, or as the seducer of reason and temperance. Others have elevated it beyond reason. A middle ground is surely more reflective of our current understanding of the mind-body interplay, a mind integrated within a body, adapting in concert to changing circumstances, directing the organism to approach or avoid the objects and people around it. Information-processing systems are pervasive in the central nervous system and are inherently part of the body’s sensibility. This seems such obvious, common sense. Yet what lingers still is an insidious separation of cognition from the bodily sensibilities, often so ingrained that it goes unnoticed or trivialized.
Demythologizing the Emotions
Authors: Schulkin Jay
Published: November 2023

The emotions are an integral part of who we are (Darwin, 1872/1965; Davidson, Sherer, & Goldsmith, 2003). Emotions are diverse (e.g., Darwin, 1872/1965; Ekman, 1972; Oehman, 1997), and they can be subtle (cf. BenZeev, 2000; Kagan, 1998; Sabini & Silver, 1998; Solomon, 1980, 1990, 1999). Demythologizing the emotions, like demythologizing reason in general, is depicting them less as perfect systems and more as good enough problemsolving devices (Simon, 1956, 1967, 1979). They are rich in expression and essential for human health and well-being and represent beautiful forms of intelligence and adaptation (Nussbaum, 2001). The emotions evolved, in part, to solidify approach and avoidance behavioral responses. The emotions reflect visceral information processing in the central nervous system, the experiences that we have, the behavioral expressions. A partial list of the emotions is depicted in table 2.1. It represents a wide range of emotions, and no single definition of emotion can capture them all.
Introduction: Toward an Emergentist Worldview
Authors: Davies Paul
Published: November 2023

It takes only a casual observation of the physical universe to re- veal that it is awesomely complex. On an everyday scale of size we see clouds and rocks, snowflakes and whirlpools, trees and people and marvel at the intricacies of their structure and behavior. Shrinking the scale of size we encounter the living cell, with its elaborate customized molecules, many containing thousands of atoms arranged with precise specificity. Extending our compass to the cosmos, we find complexity on all scales, from the delicate filigree patterns on the surface of Jupiter to the organized majesty of spiral galaxies.
Randomness and Mathematical Proof
Authors: Chaitin Gregory J
Published: November 2023

The first is obviously constructed according to a simple rule; it consists of the number 01 repeated 10 times. If one were asked to speculate on how the series might continue, one could predict with considerable confidence that the next two digits would be O and 1. Inspection of the second series of digits yields no such comprehensive pattern. There is no obvious rule governing the formation of the number, and there is no rational way to guess the succeeding digits. The arrangement seems haphazard; in other words, the sequence appears to be a random as sortment of Os and ls.
The Emergence of Autonomous Agents
Authors: Kauffman Stuart
Published: November 2023

In my previous two books, I laid out some of the growing reasons to think that evolution was even richer than Darwin supposed. Modern evolutionary theory, based on Darwin’s concept of descent with heritable variations that are sifted by natural selection to retain the adaptive changes, has come to view selection as the sole source of order in biological organisms. But the snowflake’s delicate sixfold symmetry tells us that order can arise without the benefit of natural selection.
Complexity and the Arrow of Time
Authors: Davies Paul
Published: November 2023

In 1854, in one of the bleakest pronouncements in the history of science, the German physicist Hermann von Helmholtz claimed that the universe must be dying. He based his prediction on the second law of thermodynamics, according to which there is a natural tendency for order to give way to chaos. It is not hard to find examples in the world around us: people grow old, snowmen melt, houses fall down, cars rust, and stars burn out. Although islands of order may appear in restricted regions (e.g., the birth of a baby, crystals emerging from a solute) the disorder of the environment will always rise by an amount sufficient to compensate.
Can Evolutionary Algorithms Generate Specified Complexity?
Authors: Dembski William A
Published: November 2023

In The Fifth Miracle Paul Davies suggests that any laws capable of explaining the origin of life must be radically different from scientific laws known to date (Davies 1999). The problem, as he sees it, with currently known scientific laws, like the laws of chemistry and physics, is that they cannot explain the key feature of life that needs to be explained; that feature is specified complexity. Life is both complex and specified. The basic intuition here is straightforward. A short word like the definite article “the” is specified without being complex (it conforms to an independently given pattern but is simple). A long sequence of random letters is complex without being specified (it requires a complicated instruction-set to characterize but conforms to no independently given pattern). A Shakespearean sonnet is both complex and specified.
The Second Law of Gravitics and the Fourth Law of Thermodynamics
Authors: Stewart Ian
Published: November 2023

There is a fundamental difference between galaxies and systems that are normally dealt with in statistical mechanics, such as molecules in a box. This difference lies in the nature of the forces that act between the constituent particles. The force between two gas molecules is small unless the molecules are very close to each other, when they repel each other strongly. Consequently gas molecules are subject to violent and short-lived accelerations as they collide with one another, interspersed with longer periods when they move at nearly constant velocity. The gravitational force that acts between the stars of a galaxy is of an entirely different nature ... the net gravitational force acting on a star in a galaxy is determined by the gross structure of the galaxy rather than by whether the star happens to lie close to some other star.
From Anthropic Design to Self-Organized Complexity
Authors: Gregersen Niels Henrik
Published: November 2023

Around 1980 a fascinating new species of scientific exploration emerged: the computer-aided studies of complex, self-organizing systems. Complex systems consist of a huge number of variegated and constantly interacting elements. Their elements and agents are too many and too different to be appropriately analyzed in a bottom-up way, and unexpected properties emerge as the concerted result of the interactions within the systems. Think of the circularity between RNA and DNA in cells, the interaction of ants in their communities, neurons in brains, or the myriads of interactions in modem city life. Even though complex systems are highly different in nature and scope, the general lesson is that more comes out of less. While the material constituents remain the same, the organization of matter grows exponentially, and does so by self-organization.
Citizens’ Democracy and Citizen Disempowerment
Authors: Gans Herbert J
Published: November 2023

According to the American Dream, American democracy belongs to its citizens and America might therefore be called a “citizens’ democracy. “ The country is formally considered a representative democracy, but the representatives are supposed to be guided by the citizenry, through voting and participating in other ways. Elected officials from the president on down may ultimately make the decisions, but they are still seen as doing the citizens’ bidding: acting as surrogates for them between elections. Although elected representatives stand in for the citizenry, they too are supposed to “belong “ to the citizens. Journalists also follow the Dream, but they add an informational provision. The country’s democracy may belong directly or indirectly to its citizens, but the democratic process can only be truly meaningful if these citizens are informed. Journalism’s job is to inform them.1 As New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis ended his last column before retirement, “The most important office in a democracy, Justice Louis Brandeis said, is the office of citizen. “2 In an earlier column, he defined the journalist’s role: “The theory of democracy is that the citizens are the ultimate sovereign. But in today’s world, individuals cannot personally observe events and reach decisions in a forum, as in ancient Athens. They necessarily depend on the press to be informed.
The Peculiar Present of American Capital Punishment
Authors: Zimring Franklin E
Published: November 2023

The United States Government was about to make history in the spring of 2001, and it looked like a public relations bonanza for capital punishment. The pending execution of Timothy McVeigh seemed like an ideal case to launch a program of lethal injections as criminal punishment by the national government of the United States. The McVeigh case combined a terrible crime with a defiantly guilty defendant and none of the problems of discrimination and uncertainty that bedevil most executions. McVeigh had detonated the bomb that killed 168 occupants of the Oklahoma City Federal Building in 1995. The defendant had planned to kill hundreds of people he did not know to express his anger at the U.S. government’s behavior two years before in Waco, Texas. He was adequately defended at trial by a team of competent lawyers, at a cost to government that exceeded 100 times what states such as Texas and Virginia pay for defense services in death cases. McVeigh had publicly acknowledged his guilt and moved up the date of his execution by abandoning legal appeals, thus providing a grateful federal government with a mass murderer of women and children for the first federal execution since 1963. Even better, this defendant was not retarded and was not a member of a disadvantaged minority.
The No-Win 1990s
Authors: Zimring Franklin E
Published: November 2023

The 1990S should have been the decade when the death penalty was restored as a normal part of the criminal justice process. The decade began in the fifteenth year after the Supreme Court of the United States had authorized a resumption of executions in its 1976 decisions. All the major systemic constitutional challenges to the death penalty had been rejected by 1988, and a steady stream of death sentences since the 1970s had built up a backlog of more than 2000 prisoners awaiting execution. By 1990, thirty-seven states had recent death penalty legislation, and thirty-four of those states had prisoners on death row. Yet only thirteen of the thirty-seven death penalty states had conducted an execution by the end of 1989. It appeared that a determined U.S. Supreme Court and strong pro–death penalty public opinion would end this log jam in the 1990s.
Ralph Ellison, 1913-1994 A Brief Biography
Authors: Graham Maryemma , Mack Jeffery Dwayne
Published: November 2023

When one thinks of the African-American writers who began writing in the period just before the flowering of the Civil Rights movement in the mid-r95os, one most often thinks of Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, and James Baldwin. Of the three, it was Ellison who found through language a way of encompassing the strange and the familiar and who inspired a new confidence in the infinite possibilities of black folk expression. Although he could trace his lineage, like Wright, to the black belt South, he was decidedly not one of its products. Neither was he descended, like Baldwin, from the great mass of African Americans who headed north during the Great Migration. Ralph Ellison, with the telltale middle name of Waldo, was a midwesterner, a lineage he very proudly claimed, one that by his own admission gave new and by no means unproblematic meaning to the categories ‘black” and ‘:American.” A staunch advocate of the rugged individualism he inherited from his Oklahoma childhood, Ellison brought a unique perspective to the literature he began to create in the r93os. It was a perspective he honed while living in Harlem, the place that took him in when he had to leave a southern black college penniless, forsaking his degree.