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Detection and Its Designs
Narrative and Power in Nineteenth-Century Detective Fiction
Peter Thoms
Ohio University Press, 1998
Detective fiction is usually thought of as genre fiction, a vast group of works bound together by their use of a common formula. But, as Peter Thoms argues in his investigation of some of the most important texts in the development of detective fiction in the nineteenth century, the very works that establish the genre's formulaic structure also subvert that structure. Detection and Its Designs reads early detective fiction as a self-conscious form that is suspicious of the detective it ostensibly celebrates, and critical of the authorial power he wields in attempting to reconstruct the past and script a narrative of the crime.

In readings of Godwin's Caleb Williams, Poe's Dupin stories, Dickens's Bleak House, Collins's The Moonstone, and Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles, Thoms argues that the detective's figurative writing emerges out of a desire to exert control over others and sometimes over himself.

Detection and Its Designs demonstrates that, far from being a naïve form, early detective fiction grapples with the medium of storytelling itself. To pursue these inward-turning fictions is to uncover the detective's motives of controlling the representation of both himself and others, a discovery that in turn significantly undermines the authority of his solutions.
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Exoplanets
Hidden Worlds and the Quest for Extraterrestrial Life
Donald Goldsmith
Harvard University Press, 2018

“How do alien, faraway worlds reveal their existence to Earthlings? Let Donald Goldsmith count the ways. As an experienced astronomer and a gifted storyteller, he is the perfect person to chronicle the ongoing hunt for planets of other stars.” —Dava Sobel

Astronomers have recently discovered thousands of planets that orbit stars throughout our Milky Way galaxy. With his characteristic wit and style, Donald Goldsmith presents the science of exoplanets and the search for extraterrestrial life in a way that Earthlings with little background in astronomy or astrophysics can understand and enjoy.

Much of what has captured the imagination of planetary scientists and the public is the unexpected strangeness of these distant worlds, which bear little resemblance to the planets in our solar system. The sizes, masses, and orbits of exoplanets detected so far raise new questions about how planets form and evolve. Still more tantalizing are the efforts to determine which exoplanets might support life. Astronomers are steadily improving their means of examining these planets’ atmospheres and surfaces, with the help of advanced spacecraft sent into orbits a million miles from Earth. These instruments will provide better observations of planetary systems in orbit around the dim red stars that throng the Milky Way. Previously spurned as too faint to support life, these cool stars turn out to possess myriad planets nestled close enough to maintain Earthlike temperatures.

The quest to find other worlds brims with possibility. Exoplanets shows how astronomers have broadened our planetary horizons, and suggests what may come next, including the ultimate discovery: life beyond our home planet.

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Foliage Penetration Radar
Detection and characterisation of objects under trees
Mark E. Davis
The Institution of Engineering and Technology, 2011
This book covers all aspects of foliage penetration (FOPEN) radar, concentrating on both airborne military radar systems as well as earth resource mapping radars. It is the first concise and thorough treatment of FOPEN, covering the results of a decade-long investment by DARPA in characterizing foliage and earth surface with ultrawideband UHF and VHF synthetic aperture radar (SAR). Comparisons of the technologies for radar design and signal processing are presented, as are specific design approaches for transmitter design for operation in a dense radio frequency spectrum. Adaptive processing to remove the effects of radio and television signals from the system are also covered. In 10 years, FOPEN systems will find use in crop monitoring, land mine remediation, and creating digital maps under trees. This book will be the foundation for continued research for years to come both for radar and systems engineers in defense and earth resources companies. Government researchers, program managers and planners who have an interest in the unique capabilities of this radar technology, as well as university staff and faculty teaching radar and signal processing will find this book a critical part of their learning for years to come.
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Fraud and Misconduct in Research
Detection, Investigation, and Organizational Response
Nachman Ben-Yehuda and Amalya Oliver-Lumerman
University of Michigan Press, 2017
In Fraud and Misconduct in Research, Nachman Ben-Yehuda and Amalya Oliver-Lumerman introduce the main characteristics of research misconduct, portray how the characteristics are distributed, and identify the elements of the organizational context and the practice of scientific research which enable or deter misconduct. Of the nearly 750 known cases between 1880 and 2010 which the authors examine, the overwhelming majority took place in funded research projects and involved falsification and fabrication, followed by misrepresentation and plagiarism. The incidents were often reported by the perpetrator’s colleagues or collaborators. If the accusations were confirmed, the organization usually punished the offender with temporary exclusion from academic activities and institutions launched organizational reforms, including new rules, the establishment of offices to deal with misconduct, and the creation of re-training and education programs for academic staff. Ben-Yehuda and Oliver-Lumerman suggest ways in which efforts to expose and prevent misconduct can further change the work of scientists, universities, and scientific research.

 
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North by 2020
Perspectives on Alaska’s Changing Social-Ecological Systems
Edited by Amy Lauren Lovecraft and Hajo Eicken
University of Alaska Press, 2011

Originating from a series of workshops held at the Alaska Forum of the Fourth International Polar Year, this interdisciplinary volume addresses a host of current concerns regarding the ecology and rapid transformation of the arctic. Concentrating on the most important linked social-ecological systems, including fresh water, marine resources, and oil and gas development, this volume explores opportunities for sustainable development from a variety of perspectives, among them social sciences, natural and applied sciences, and the arts. Individual chapters highlight expressions of climate change in dance, music, and film, as well as from an indigenous knowledge–based perspective.

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The Perfect Murder
A Study in Detection
David Lehman
University of Michigan Press, 2000
In this lively, enjoyable look at the best American and British detective fiction, David Lehman investigates the mystery of mysteries: the profound satisfactions we get from evil, disorder, mayhem, and deception--that we know will be put right by the last page.
As Lehman shows, the detective story draws deeply from ancient storytelling traditions. The mystery's conventions--the locked room, the clue "hidden" in plain sight, the diabolical double, the villainous least likely subject--work on us as childhood fairy tales do; they prey upon our darkest fears, taking us to the brink of the unbearable before restoring a comforting sense of order. The myth of Oedipus, for example, contains the essential elements of a whodunit, with the twist that the murderer the detective pursues is himself.
With their wisecracking gumshoe heroes, Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler fashioned an existential romance out of the detective novel. More recent writers such as Ross MacDonald, P. D. James, and Ruth Rendell have raised the genre to a new level of psychological sophistication. Yet the form evolves still, and Lehman guides us to the epistemological riddles of Jorge Luis Borges and Umberto Eco, who challenge the notion of a knowable truth. Originally published in 1989, this new edition features an additional chapter on the mystery novels of the 1990s.
"A lively study of the development and varieties of the detective story since Poe, its relations with other forms high and low, and the latter-day appropriation of its techniques by such writers as Borges and Eco. . . . A thoroughly intelligent and readable book." --Richard Wilbur, Pulitzer-Prize winning poet
David Lehman is the series editor of both the The Best American Poetry, published by Scribner, and the Poets on Poetry series published by the University of Michigan Press. He is a former Guggenheim Fellow in poetry, a vice president of the National Book Critics Circle, and the author of several books of criticism and collections of poems.
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