front cover of Bioluminescence
Bioluminescence
Living Lights, Lights for Living
Thérèse Wilson and J. Woodland Hastings
Harvard University Press, 2013

Bioluminescence is everywhere on earth—most of all in the ocean, from angler fish in the depths to the flashing of dinoflagellates at the surface. Here, Thérèse Wilson and Woody Hastings explore the natural history, evolution, and biochemistry of the diverse array of organisms that emit light.

While some bacteria, mushrooms, and invertebrates, as well as fish, are bioluminescent, other vertebrates and plants are not. The sporadic distribution and paucity of luminous forms calls for explanation, as does the fact that unrelated groups evolved completely different biochemical pathways to luminescence. The authors explore the hypothesis that many different luciferase systems arose in the early evolution of life because of their ability to remove oxygen, which was toxic to life when it first appeared on earth. As oxygen became abundant and bioluminescence was no longer adequate for oxygen removal, other antioxidant mechanisms evolved and most luminous species became extinct. Those light-emitting species that avoided extinction evolved uses with survival value for the light itself. Today’s luminous organisms use bioluminescence for defense from predators, for their own predatory purposes, or for communication in sexual courtship.

Bioluminescence was earlier viewed as a fascinating feature of the living world, but one whose study seemed unlikely to contribute in any practical way. Today, bioluminescence is no longer an esoteric area of research. Applications are numerous, ranging from the rapid detection of microbial contamination in beef and water, to finding the location of cancer cells, to working out circuitry in the brain.

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front cover of Cities in Asia by and for the People
Cities in Asia by and for the People
Edited by Yves Cabannes, Mike Douglass, and Rita Padawangi
Amsterdam University Press, 2018
This book examines the active role of urban citizens in constructing alternative urban spaces as tangible resistance towards capitalist production of urban spaces that continue to encroach various neighborhoods, lanes, commons, public land and other spaces of community life and livelihoods. The collection of narratives presented here brings together research from ten different Asian cities and re-theorises the city from the perspective of ordinary people facing moments of crisis, contestations, and cooperative quests to create alternative spaces to those being produced under prevailing urban processes. The chapters accent the exercise of human agency through daily practices in the production of urban space and the intention is not one of creating a romantic or utopian vision of what a city "by and for the people" ought to be. Rather, it is to place people in the centre as mediators of city-making with discontents about current conditions and desires for a better life.
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front cover of In for the Long Haul
In for the Long Haul
The Life of John Ruan
William B. Friedricks
University of Iowa Press, 2003

Driven by grit and determination during the Depression, John Ruan parlayed a one-truck business into Ruan Transportation Management Systems, one of the nation’s leading trucking, leasing, and logistics companies. The trucking business made John Ruan one of the wealthiest and most influential people in Iowa and was the foundation for his vast fortune which included interests in insurance, banking, financial services, international trade, and real estate.

In the 1970s and 80s, Ruan led Des Moines’s renaissance with the construction of the 36-story original Ruan Center, the Marriott Hotel tower, and the Two Ruan Center office complex. But his contributions reached far beyond the confines of Iowa. As a philanthropist, Ruan was a long-time sponsor of the World Food Prize, which recognizes the importance of a nutritious and sustainable food supply for all people.

Based on extensive interviews with Ruan, family members, business associates, friends, and colleagues, as well as privately held papers and archives, In for the Long Haul presents a discerning portrait of this hard-charging yet compassionate businessman.

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front cover of Science, Bread, and Circuses
Science, Bread, and Circuses
Folkloristic Essays on Science for the Masses
Gregory Schrempp
Utah State University Press, 2014

In Science, Bread, and Circuses, Gregory Schrempp brings a folkloristic viewpoint to the topic of popular science, calling attention to the persistence of folkloric form, idiom, and worldview within the increasingly important dimension of popular consciousness defined by the impact of science.

Schrempp considers specific examples of texts in which science interpreters employ folkloric tropes—myths, legends, epics, proverbs, spectacles, and a variety of gestures from religious traditions—to lend credibility and appeal to their messages. In each essay he explores an instance of science popularization rooted in the quotidian round: variations of proverb formulas in monumental measurements, invocations of science heroes like saints or other inspirational figures, the battle of mythos and logos in parenting and academe, the meme's involvement in quasi-religious treatments of the problem of evil, and a range of other tropes of folklore drafted to serve the exposition of science.

Science, Bread, and Circuses places the relationship of science and folklore at the very center of folkloristic inquiry by exploring a range of attempts to rephrase and thus domesticate scientific findings and claims in folklorically imbued popular forms.


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front cover of Teaching U.S.-Educated Multilingual Writers
Teaching U.S.-Educated Multilingual Writers
Pedagogical Practices from and for the Classroom
Mark Roberge, Kay M. Losey, Margi Wald
University of Michigan Press, 2015
This volume was born to address the lack of classroom-oriented scholarship regarding U.S.-educated multilingual writers. Unlike prior volumes about U.S.-educated multilinguals, this book focuses solely on pedagogy--from classroom activities and writing assignments to course curricula and pedagogical support programs outside the immediate classroom. Unlike many pedagogical volumes that are written in the voice of an expert researcher-theorist, this volume is based on the notion of teachers sharing practices with teachers
 
All of the contributors are teachers who are writing about and reflecting on their own experiences and outcomes and interweaving those experiences and outcomes with current theory and research in the field. The volume thus portrays teachers as active, reflective participants engaged in critical inquiry. Contributors represent community college, college, and university contexts; academic ESL, developmental writing, and first-year composition classes; and face-to-face, hybrid, and online contexts.
 
This book was developed primarily to meet the needs of practicing writing teachers in college-level ESL, basic writing, and college composition classrooms, but will also be useful to pre-service teachers in TESOL, Composition, and Education graduate programs.  
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front cover of With All, and for the Good of All
With All, and for the Good of All
The Emergence of Popular Nationalism in the Cuban Communities of the United States, 1848–1898
Gerald E. Poyo
Duke University Press, 1989
Cuban-Americans are beginning to understand their long-standing roots and traditions in the United States that reach back over a century prior to 1959. This is the first book-length confirmation of those beginnings, and its places the Cuban hero and revolutionary thinker José Martí within the political and socioeconomic realities of the Cuban communities in the United States of that era. By clarifying Martí’s relationship with those communities, Gerald E. Poyo provides a detailed portrait of the exile centers and their role in the growth and consolidation of nineteenth-century Cuban nationalism.
Poyo differentiates between the development of nationalist sentiment among liberal elites and popular groups and reveals how these distinct strains influenced the thought and conduct of Martí and the successful Cuban revolution of the 1890s.
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