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6 books match the query 'Applied Sciences'

cover of A New Basis for Animal Ethics: Telos and Common Sense

A New Basis for Animal Ethics

Telos and Common Sense

Bernard E. Rollin

University of Missouri Press, 2016

This book, the culmination of forty years of theorizing about the moral status of animals, explicates and justifies society’s moral obligation to animals in terms of the commonsense metaphysics and ethics ofAristotle’s concept of telos. Rollin uses this concept to assert that humans have a responsibility to treat animals ethically. Aristotle used the concept, from the Greek word for "end" or "purpose," as the core explanatory concept for the world we live in. We understand what an animal is by what it does. This is the nature of an animal, and helps us understand our obligations to animals.
 
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cover of Archaeologies of Touch: Interfacing with Haptics from Electricity to Computing

Archaeologies of Touch

Interfacing with Haptics from Electricity to Computing

David Parisi

University of Minnesota Press, 2018

A material history of haptics technology that raises new questions about the relationship between touch and media

Since the rise of radio and television, we have lived in an era defined increasingly by the electronic circulation of images and sounds. But the flood of new computing technologies known as haptic interfaces—which use electricity, vibration, and force feedback to stimulate the sense of touch—offering an alternative way of mediating and experiencing reality. 

In Archaeologies of Touch, David Parisi offers the first full history of these increasingly vital technologies, showing how the efforts of scientists and engineers over the past three hundred years have gradually remade and redefined our sense of touch. Through lively analyses of electrical machines, videogames, sex toys, sensory substitution systems, robotics, and human–computer interfaces, Parisi shows how the materiality of touch technologies has been shaped by attempts to transform humans into more efficient processors of information. 

With haptics becoming ever more central to emerging virtual-reality platforms (immersive bodysuits loaded with touch-stimulating actuators), wearable computers (haptic messaging systems like the Apple Watch’s Taptic Engine), and smartphones (vibrations that emulate the feel of buttons and onscreen objects), Archaeologies of Touch offers a timely and provocative engagement with the long history of touch technology that helps us confront and question the power relations underpinning the project of giving touch its own set of technical media.

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cover of Cooperation and Collective Action: Archaeological Perspectives

Cooperation and Collective Action

Archaeological Perspectives

David M. Carballo

University Press of Colorado, 2013

Past archaeological literature on cooperation theory has emphasized competition's role in cultural evolution. As a result, bottom-up possibilities for group cooperation have been under theorized in favor of models stressing top-down leadership, while evidence from a range of disciplines has demonstrated humans to effectively sustain cooperative undertakings through a number of social norms and institutions. Cooperation and Collective Action is the first volume to focus on the use of archaeological evidence to understand cooperation and collective action.

Disentangling the motivations and institutions that foster group cooperation among competitive individuals remains one of the few great conundrums within evolutionary theory. The breadth and material focus of archaeology provide a much needed complement to existing research on cooperation and collective action, which thus far has relied largely on game-theoretic modeling, surveys of college students from affluent countries, brief ethnographic experiments, and limited historic cases. In Cooperation and Collective Action, diverse case studies address the evolution of the emergence of norms, institutions, and symbols of complex societies through the last 10,000 years. This book is an important contribution to the literature on cooperation in human societies that will appeal to archaeologists and other scholars interested in cooperation research.

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cover of George Washington Carver: In His Own Words, Second Edition

George Washington Carver

In His Own Words, Second Edition

Gary R. Kremer

University of Missouri Press, 2017

George Washington Carver (1864-1943) is best known for developing new uses for agricultural crops and teaching methods of soil improvement to southern farmers. This annotated selection of his letters and other writings from the collections at the Tuskegee Institute and the George Washington Carver National Monument in Diamond, Missouri, reveals the forces that shaped his creative genius—including the influence of persistent racism. His letters also show us Carver’s deep love for his fellow man, whether manifested in his efforts to treat polio victims in the 1930s or in his emotionally charged friendships that lasted a lifetime.
 
With a new chapter on the oral history interviews Dr. Kremer conducted (several years after publication of the first edition) with people who knew Carver personally, and the addition of newly uncovered documents and a bank of impressive photographs of Carver and some of his friends, this second edition of our classic title commemorates the 75th anniversary of Carver’s death on January 5, 2018.
 
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cover of The Story of Coal and Iron in Alabama

The Story of Coal and Iron in Alabama

Ethel Armes

University of Alabama Press, 2011

“The principal authority for the general treatment of the history of coal, and of iron and steel, in
Alabama is the work of Miss Ethel Armes. The Story of Coal and Iron in Alabama is a comprehensive
and scholarly work portraying in attractive style the growth of the mineral industries in its
relation to the development of the state and of the South, in preparation of which the author spent
more than five years.”
—Thomas McAdory Owen, History of Alabama and Dictionary of Alabama Biography

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cover of Thermal Microwave Radiation: Applications for remote sensing

Thermal Microwave Radiation

Applications for remote sensing

C. Mätzler

The Institution of Engineering and Technology, 2006

This book combines theoretical concepts with experimental results on thermal microwave radiation to advance the understanding of the complex nature of terrestrial media. With the emphasis on radiative transfer models the book covers the most urgent needs for the transition from the experimental phase of microwave remote sensing to operational applications. All terrestrial aspects are covered from the clear to the cloudy atmosphere, precipitation, ocean and land surfaces, vegetation, snow and ice.
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