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A Rock Is Lively
by Dianna Hutts Aston Sylvia LongFrom the award-winning creators of An Egg Is Quiet, A Seed Is Sleepy, and A Butterfly Is Patient comes a gorgeous and informative introduction to the fascinating world of rocks. From dazzling blue lapis lazuli to volcanic snowflake obsidian, an incredible variety of rocks are showcased in all their splendor. Poetic in voice and elegant in design, this book introduces an array of facts, making it equally perfect for classroom sharing and family reading.
A Rough Ride to the Future
by James LovelockThe great scientific visionary of our age presents a radical vision of humanity’s future as the thinking brain of our Earth-system.A Rough Ride to the Future introduces two new Lovelockian ideas. The first is that three hundred years ago, when Thomas Newcomen invented the steam engine, he was unknowingly beginning what James Lovelock calls “accelerated evolution.” That is a process that is bringing about change on our planet roughly a million times faster than Darwinian evolution. The second idea is that as part of this process, humanity has the capacity to become the intelligent part of Gaia, the self-regulating earth system whose discovery Lovelock first announced nearly fifty years ago. A Rough Ride to theFuture is also an intellectual autobiography, in which Lovelock reflects on his life as a lone scientist and asks—eloquently—whether his career trajectory is possible in an age of increased bureaucratization. We are now changing the atmosphere again, and Lovelock argues that there is little that can be done about this. But instead of feeling guilty, we should recognize what is happening, prepare for change, and ensure that we survive as a species so we can contribute to—perhaps even guide—the next evolution of Gaia. The road will be rough, but if we are smart enough, life will continue on earth in some form far into the future.Praise for A Rought Ride to the Future“Arresting and disturbing . . . Lovelock writes wonderfully well. With the authority of age, his voice is that of an elder statesman . . . The result is mellifluous and fluent.” —Nature “Though the subject matter could scarcely be more discouraging, Lovelock’s fluent prose and vast range of knowledge make it a surprisingly easy read. . . . His writing has enormous warmth and vitality.” —Financial Times “The most important book for me this year . . . Lovelock is the most prescient of scientists. . . . He has given us a handbook for human survival.” —John Gray, The Guardian“Not simply another look at Mother Nature’s uncertain future, but a revealing glimpse at the life of an outspoken and accomplished man of ideas.” —Publishers Weekly
A Safe and Sustainable World: The Promise Of Ecological Design
by Nancy Jack ToddIn the late sixties, as the world awoke to a need for Earth Day, a pioneering group founded a small non-profit research and education organization they called the New Alchemy Institute. Their aim was to explore the ways a safer and more sustainable world could be created. In the ensuing years, along with scientists, agriculturists, and a host of enthusiastic amateurs and friends, they set out to discover new ways that basic human needs--in the form of food, shelter, and energy--could be met. A Safe and Sustainable World is the story of that journey, as it was and as it continues to be.The dynamics and the resilience of the living world were the Institute's model and inspiration for their research. Central to their efforts then and now is, along with science, a spiritual quest for a more harmonious human role in our planet's future. The results of this work have now entered mainstream science through the emerging discipline of ecological design.Nancy Jack Todd relates a fascinating journey from lofty ideals through the hard realities encountered in learning how to actually grow food, harness the energy of the sun and wind, and design green architecture. She also introduces us to some of the heroes and mentors who played a vital role in those efforts, from Buckminster Fuller to Margaret Mead.Successfully proving through the Institute's designs and investigations that basic land sustainability is achievable, John Todd and the author founded a second non-profit research group, Ocean Arks International. A Safe and Sustainable World demonstrates what has, can, and must be done to integrate human ingenuity and four billion years of evolutionary intelligence into healthy, decentralized, local dreams.
A Science Comic of Urban Metro Structure: Performance Evolution and Sensing Control
by Hehua ZhuThis science comic presents the entire life cycle of the metro system in an accessible and fun way. Just like human beings, a metro system can get sick, and this book introduces its ailments, medical records along with experts’ diagnoses and available treatments. Using cartoons, it enables readers of all levels to quickly understand the scientific secrets behind the metro system. It is based on the results of China’s 973 program, which aims to promote and develop basic scientific research in China.
A Sea in Flames: The Deepwater Horizon Oil Blowout
by Carl SafinaCarl Safina has been hailed as one of the top 100 conservations of the 20th century (Audubon Magazine) andA Sea in Flamesis his blistering account of the months-long manmade disaster that tormented a region and mesmerized the nation. Traveling across the Gulf to make sense of an ever-changing story and its often-nonsensical twists, Safina expertly deconstructs the series of calamitous misjudgments that caused theDeepwater Horizonblowout, zeroes in on BP’s misstatements, evasions, and denials, reassesses his own reaction to the government’s crisis handling, and reviews the consequences of the leak-and what he considers the real problems, which the press largely overlooked. Safina takes us deep inside the faulty thinking that caused the lethal explosion. We join him on aerial surveys across an oil-coated sea. We confront pelicans and other wildlife whose blue universe fades to black. Safina skewers the excuses and the silly jargon-like “junk shot” and “top kill”-that made the tragedy feel like a comedy of horrors-and highlighted Big Oil’s appalling lack of preparedness for an event that was inevitable. Based on extensive research and interviews with fishermen, coastal residents, biologists, and government officials,A Sea In Flameshas some surprising answers on whether it was “Obama’s Katrina,” whether the Coast Guard was as inept in its response as BP was misleading, and whether this worst unintended release of oil in history was really America’s worst ecological disaster. Impassioned, moving, and even sharply funny,A Sea in Flamesis ultimately an indictment of America’s main addiction. Safina writes: “In the end, this is a chronicle of a summer of pain-and hope. Hope that the full potential of this catastrophe would not materialize, hope that the harm done would heal faster than feared, and hope that even if we didn’t suffer the absolutely worst-we’d still learn the big lesson here. We may have gotten two out of three. That’s not good enough. Because: there’ll be a next time. ” From the Hardcover edition.
A Sea of Glass: Searching for the Blaschkas' Fragile Legacy in an Ocean at Risk (Organisms and Environments #13)
by Drew HarvellIt started with a glass octopus. Dusty, broken, and all but forgotten, it caught Drew Harvell's eye. Fashioned in intricate detail by the father-son glassmaking team of Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka, the octopus belonged to a menagerie of unusual marine creatures that had been packed away for decades in a storage unit. More than 150 years earlier, the Blaschkas had been captivated by marine invertebrates and spun their likenesses into glass, documenting the life of oceans untouched by climate change and human impacts. Inspired by the Blaschkas' uncanny replicas, Harvell set out in search of their living counterparts. In A Sea of Glass, she recounts this journey of a lifetime, taking readers along as she dives beneath the ocean's surface to a rarely seen world, revealing the surprising and unusual biology of some of the most ancient animals on the tree of life. On the way, we glimpse a century of change in our ocean ecosystems and learn which of the living matches for the Blaschkas' creations are, indeed, as fragile as glass. Drew Harvell and the Blaschka menagerie are the subjects of the documentary Fragile Legacy, which won the Best Short Film award at the 2015 Blue Ocean Film Festival & Conservation Summit. Learn more about the film and check out the trailer here. See the Blaschka collection in person at the Corning Museum of Glass beginning in May 2016. Click here for more information.
A Sea without Fish: Life in the Ordovician Sea of the Cincinnati Region (Life of the Past)
by Richard Arnold Davis David L. MeyerA “superbly written, richly illustrated” guide to the animals who lived 450 million years ago—in the fossil-rich area where Cincinnati, Ohio now stands (Rocks & Minerals).The region around Cincinnati, Ohio, is known throughout the world for the abundant and beautiful fossils found in limestones and shales that were deposited as sediments on the sea floor during the Ordovician Period, about 450 million years ago—some 250 million years before the dinosaurs lived. In Ordovician time, the shallow sea that covered much of what is now the North American continent teemed with marine life. The Cincinnati area has yielded some of the world’s most abundant and best-preserved fossils of invertebrate animals such as trilobites, bryozoans, brachiopods, molluscs, echinoderms, and graptolites.So famous are the Ordovician fossils and rocks of the Cincinnati region that geologists use the term “Cincinnatian” for strata of the same age all over North America. This book synthesizes more than 150 years of research on this fossil treasure-trove, describing and illustrating the fossils, the life habits of the animals represented, their communities, and living relatives, as well as the nature of the rock strata in which they are found and the environmental conditions of the ancient sea.“A fascinating glimpse of a long-extinct ecosystem.” —Choice
A Search for Muon Neutrino to Electron Neutrino Oscillations in the MINOS Experiment (Springer Theses)
by Juan Pedro Ochoa-RicouxThe centerpiece of the thesis is the search for muon neutrino to electron neutrino oscillations which would indicate a non-zero mixing angle between the first and third neutrino generations (θ13), currently the "holy grail" of neutrino physics. The optimal extraction of the electron neutrino oscillation signal is based on the novel "library event matching" (LEM) method which Ochoa developed and implemented together with colleagues at Caltech and at Cambridge, which improves MINOS' (Main Injector Neutrino Oscillator Search) reach for establishing an oscillation signal over any other method. LEM will now be the basis for MINOS' final results, and will likely keep MINOS at the forefront of this field until it completes its data taking in 2011. Ochoa and his colleagues also developed the successful plan to run MINOS with a beam tuned for antineutrinos, to make a sensitive test of CPT symmetry by comparing the inter-generational mass splitting for neutrinos and antineutrinos. Ochoa's in-depth, creative approach to the solution of a variety of complex experimental problems is an outstanding example for graduate students and longtime practitioners of experimental physics alike. Some of the most exciting results in this field to emerge in the near future may find their foundations in this thesis.
A Seaside Alphabet (ABC Our Country)
by Donna GrassbyWhether it’s a treasure hunt on Jewell Island, Maine, a sunny afternoon on the rocks at Peggy’s Cove, Nova Scotia, or a dip in the ocean on Prince Edward Island, life by the sea is fun. This gloriously illustrated picture book is a celebration of all things coastal: humpback whales, teeming wildlife, and most of all, people who make their homes by the ocean. Seaside life is shown in twenty-six magnificent illustrations. The alliterative text and the detailed notes at the back make the book as informative as it is beautiful. For those lucky enough to have visited the coast, as well as those who only dream of the sea, this book is a feast for the eyes and for the spirit.
A Season of Flowers (Tilbury House Nature Book #0)
by Michael GarlandMichael Garland (Daddy Played the Blues) displays his impressive illustration range with the stylized, country-quilt, digital collage illustrations of A Season of Flowers. Snowdrops and crocuses yield to tulips and hyacinths, then dogwood blossoms, iris, lupine, daisies, morning glories, daylilies, geraniums, peonies, sunflowers, roses, and chrysanthemums as spring passes to summer, then autumn. At last the garden slumbers into winter under a blanket of snow, preparing next year’s procession of blooms. Like actors crossing a stage, flowers narrate the passing seasons in the first person, each one briefly proclaiming its unique and vital role in the natural world. Backmatter descriptions complete this child’s introduction to a garden year, in which the passage of time is vividly realized. Fountas & Pinnell Level L
A Season on the Wind: Inside the World of Spring Migration
by Kenn KaufmanA close study of one season along Lake Erie that reveals the amazing science and magic of spring bird migration, and the perils of human encroachment. “Kenn Kaufman knows his birds and their miraculous journeys—and he feels them deeply, too. An enlightening, thought-provoking, and poignant read.” —Jennifer Ackerman, author of The Genius of BirdsEvery spring, billions of birds sweep north, driven by ancient instincts to return to their breeding grounds. This vast parade often goes unnoticed, except in a few places where these small travelers concentrate in large numbers. One such place is along Lake Erie in northwestern Ohio. There, the peak of spring migration is so spectacular that it attracts bird watchers from around the globe, culminating in one of the world’s biggest birding festivals. Millions of winged migrants pass through the region, some traveling thousands of miles, performing epic feats of endurance and navigating with stunning accuracy. Now climate change threatens to disrupt patterns of migration and the delicate balance between birds, seasons, and habitats. But wind farms—popular as green energy sources—can be disastrous for birds if built in the wrong places. This is a fascinating and urgent study of the complex issues that affect bird migration.“Kaufman soars above his Ohio home place and artfully shares the world of birds and the miraculous feats of migration that persist amidst constant conservation struggles and hard-won successes.” —J. Drew Lanham, author of The Home Place“A Season on the Wind will transform the way we see birds and the season of spring!” —Melissa Groo, wildlife photographer and conservationist
A Second Course in Topos Quantum Theory
by Cecilia FloriThis advanced course, a sequel to the first volume of this lecture series on topos quantum theory, delves deeper into the theory, addressing further technical aspects and recent advances. These include, but are not limited to, the development of physical quantities and self-adjoint operators; insights into the quantization process; the description of an alternative, covariant version of topos quantum theory; and last but not least, the development of a new concept of spacetime. The book builds on the concepts introduced in the first volume (published as Lect. Notes Phys. 868), which presents the main building blocks of the theory and how it could provide solutions to interpretational problems in quantum theory, such as: What are the main conceptual issues in quantum theory? And how can these issues be solved within a new theoretical framework of quantum theory? These two volumes together provide a complete, basic course on topos quantum theory, offering a set of mathematical tools to readers interested in tackling fundamental issues in quantum theory in general, and in quantum gravity in particular. From the reviews of the first volume: The book is self-contained and can be used as a textbook or self-study manual teaching the usage of category theory and topos theory, in particular in theoretical physics or in investigating the foundations of quantum theory in mathematically rigorous terms. [The] book is a very welcome contribution. Frank Antonsen, Mathematical Reviews, December, 2013
A Sense of Urgency: How the Climate Crisis Is Changing Rhetoric
by Debra HawheeA study of how the climate crisis is changing human communication from a celebrated rhetorician. Why is it difficult to talk about climate change? Debra Hawhee argues that contemporary rhetoric relies on classical assumptions about humanity and history that cannot conceive of the present crisis. How do we talk about an unprecedented future or represent planetary interests without privileging our own species? A Sense of Urgency explores four emerging answers, their sheer novelty a record of both the devastation and possible futures of climate change. In developing the arts of magnitude, presence, witness, and feeling, A Sense of Urgency invites us to imagine new ways of thinking with our imperiled planet.
A Sense of Wonder Towards Nature: Healing the Planet through Belonging
by Haydn WashingtonEnvironmental scientist and writer Haydn Washington argues that we will not solve the environmental crisis unless we change our worldview and ethics, and to do so we must rejuvenate our sense of wonder at nature. This book focuses on humanity’s relation with nature, and the sense of wonder and belonging common to indigenous cultures and children everywhere. Drawing on events in the author’s own four decades working to protect wild places, and the current literature on wonder, it examines what a sense of wonder is, what it has been called in different cultures, and our high points of wonder at nature. It also looks at the ‘Great Divide’ in worldview between anthropocentrism and ecocentrism, and considers the problem of anthropocentric theory in academia, arguing that the focus should instead be on harmony with nature. The book concludes with an examination of why wonder has become buried in Western society and considers ways in which it can be revived, including rituals and education. It also considers how wonder helps humanity to become ‘whole’. The final chapter presents the road back to wonder and how wonder towards nature can be restored in Western society. This book will be of great interest to environmental scientists, conservation biologists, environmental philosophers and ecological ethicists, as well as environmentalists, educators, eco-psychologists, and students looking at sustainability, deep ecology, and environmental philosophy and ethics.
A Sexta Extinção
by Elizabeth KolbertLeitura recomendada por Yuval Noah Harari, Al Gore, Bill Gates e Barack Obama, A Sexta Extinção é considerado um dos livros de divulgação científica mais importantes dos últimos anos, tendo sido finalista do National Book Critics Award e vencedor do Prémio Pulitzer para obras de não-ficção. Nos últimos 500 milhões de anos, a Terra passou por cinco extinções em massa, nas quais a diversidade da vida no planeta se reduziu drástica e subitamente. Atualmente, e pela primeira vez na História, decorre um processo de extinção em massa provocado por uma única espécie: o Homem. Nos últimos dois séculos, provocámos danos irreparáveis no clima e ecossistema global; como consequência direta, mais de um quarto de todos os mamíferos da Terra está hoje em vias de extinção, tal como acontece com 40% dos anfíbios, um terço dos corais e dos tubarões, um quinto dos répteis e um sexto das aves. Considerado um dos livros de divulgação científica mais relevantes dos últimos anos, A Sexta Extinção é leitura recomendada por personalidades como YuvalNoah Harari, Al Gore, Bill Gates ou Barack Obama. Neste seu valioso trabalho, Elizabeth Kolbert combina os resultados de uma extensa investigação no terreno com a história das ideias e o trabalho de geólogos, botânicos e biólogos marinhos, produzindo um documento inédito e, mais do que isso, um apelo urgente para que, repensando o nosso papel no planeta, não deixemos como derradeiro legado uma sexta extinção. «Um livro maravilhoso e um aviso muito claro de que mudanças repentinas são possíveis de ocorrer. Já aconteceram no passado e podem vir a repetir-se.» Barack Obama «Um livro que altera de forma radical o nosso modo de ver o mundo.» The Seattle Times «As longas viagens que Elizabeth Kolbert realizou durante a pesquisa para este livro e o tratamento detalhado tanto dos factos históricos como dos científicos, fazem de A Sexta Extinção um contributo muito valioso para a compreensão das nossas circunstâncias atuais.» Al Gore, The New York Times Book Review «Kolbert mostra nestas páginas que é capaz de escrever poeticamente sobre os animais em vias de extinção, mas o verdadeiro poder deste livro reside nos factos científicos e no contexto histórico apresentados pela autora, ao documentar as perdas crescentes que o Homem está a provocar.» The New York Times
A Shepherd's Life
by W. H. HudsonConsidered a classic at the time of its publication in 1910, A Shepherd's Life is a rare account of the lives of those who lived on and worked the land in nineteenth-century rural Britain. A masterful work of prose, W. H. Hudson focuses on the story of one man, a Wiltshire shepherd named Caleb Bawcombe, whose tales of sheep dogs, farmer's wives, poachers and local fairs become a sublime account of a way of life that has largely disappeared from these shores.
A Short Guide to Climate Change Risk (Short Guides to Business Risk)
by Nigel ArnellClimate change poses a risk to business operations and to markets, and a poor business response to this risk can lead to reputational damage, or worse. At the same time, climate change can bring opportunities for some businesses. In this addition to Gower’s series of Short Guides to Business Risk, Professor Arnell, one of the world’s leading experts in the field, reviews this critical area of risk posed to businesses and other organisations by climate change and considers how they can respond to this threat. A Short Guide to Climate Change Risk focuses on the impacts and consequences of climate change rather than on business use of energy or business and 'sustainability' issues. The author examines the advantages and disadvantages of different approaches to addressing these risks, with international case study examples. With chapters on the nature, science and politics of climate change, on the assessment and management of climate change risks, and recommendations for incorporating climate change risks into a Company Risk Management System, this concise guide serves the needs of business students and practitioners across a wide range of sectors, public and private.
A Short History of Geomorphology (Routledge Library Editions: Geology #26)
by Keith J. TinklerThis book, first published in 1985, is a comprehensive guide to the main ideas in the history of geomorphology. It traces the development of thinking on landforms, with material ranging from the ancient world to the present day. The main areas covered are the Renaissance, the explosive growth of the Natural Sciences in the nineteenth century and the impact of the Second World War. The papers and theories of specialists like James Hutton, John Playfair and W.M. Davies are presented and discussed and the final chapters reflect on future change, based on the past and speculation on possible developments. Balance is maintained between the dual importance and dominance of English and North American contributions to the subject, and quite substantial research was undertaken to provide a more complete approach to some areas hitherto neglected.
A Short History of Progress: Fifteenth Anniversary Edition (The CBC Massey Lectures)
by Ronald WrightNow more relevant than ever, Ronald Wright’s #1 national bestseller, A Short History of Progress. The fifteenth anniversary edition includes a new introduction warning of the accelerating patterns of progress and disaster.Each time history repeats itself, so it’s said, the price goes up. The twentieth century was a time of runaway growth in human population, consumption, and technology, placing a colossal load on all natural systems, especially earth, air, and water — the very elements of life. The most urgent questions of the twenty-first century are: Where will this growth lead? Can it be consolidated or sustained? And what kind of world is our present bequeathing to our future?In his #1 national bestseller A Short History of Progress Ronald Wright argues that our modern predicament is as old as civilization, a 10,000-year experiment we have participated in but seldom controlled. Only by understanding the patterns of triumph and disaster that humanity has repeated around the world since the Stone Age can we recognize the experiment’s inherent dangers, and, with luck and wisdom, shape its outcome. In his new introduction to the fifteenth anniversary edition, Wright looks at the past fifteen years of human innovation — and asks whether we can still get the future right.
A Short Introduction to Climate Change
by Tony EggletonA Short Introduction to Climate Change provides a clear, balanced and well documented account of one of the most important issues of our time. It covers developments in climate science over the past 250 years and shows that recent climate change is more than the result of natural variability. It explains the difference between weather and climate by examining changes in temperature, rainfall, Arctic ice and ocean currents. It also considers the consequences of our use of fossil fuels and discusses some of the ways to reduce further global warming. Tony Eggleton avoids the use of scientific jargon to provide a reader-friendly explanation of the science of climate change. Concise but comprehensive, and richly illustrated with a wealth of full-colour figures and photographs, A Short Introduction to Climate Change is essential reading for anyone who has an interest in climate science and in the future of our planet.
A Short Introduction to Mathematical Concepts in Physics
by Jim NapolitanoMathematics is the language of physics and yet, mathematics is an enormous subject. This textbook provides an accessible and concise introduction to mathematical physics for undergraduate students taking a one semester course. It assumes the reader has studied a year of introductory physics and three semesters of basic calculus, including some vector calculus, but no formal training in differential equations or matrix algebra. It equips readers with the skills and foundational knowledge they need for courses that follow in classical mechanics, electromagnetism, quantum mechanics, and thermal physics. This book exposes students early on to the kinds of mathematical manipulations they will need in upper-level courses in physics. It can also serve as a useful reference for their further studies. Key features: Accompanied by homework problems and a solutions manual for instructors, available upon qualifying course adoption Bridges the gap between calculus and physics, explaining fundamental mathematics (differentiation, integration, infinite series) in physical terms Explores quick extensions into mathematics useful in physics, not typically taught in math courses, including the Gamma Function, hyperbolic functions, Gaussian integrals, Legendre polynomials, functions of a complex variable, and probability distribution functions
A Short Journey from Quarks to the Universe (SpringerBriefs in Physics)
by Eleftherios N. EconomouThis book takes the reader for a short journey over the structures of matter showing that their main properties can be obtained even at a quantitative level with a minimum background knowledge. The latter, besides some high school physics and mathematics, consists of the three cornerstones of science presented in chapters 1 to 3, namely the atomic idea, the wave-particle duality, and the minimization of energy as the condition for equilibrium. Dimensional analysis employing the universal constants and combined with "a little imagination and thinking", to quote Feynman, allows an amazing short-cut derivation of several quantitative results concerning the structures of matter. This book is expected to be of interest to physics, engineering, and other science students and to researchers in physics, material science, chemistry, and engineering who may find stimulating the alternative derivation of several real world results, which sometimes seem to pop out the magician's hat.
A Small Farm Future: Making the Case for a Society Built Around Local Economies, Self-Provisioning, Agricultural Diversity and a Shared Earth
by Chris SmajeIn a time of looming uncertainties, what would a truly resilient society look like? In a groundbreaking debut, farmer and social scientist Chris Smaje argues that organising society around small-scale farming offers the soundest, sanest and most reasonable response to climate change and other crises of civilisation—and will yield humanity’s best chance at survival. Drawing on a vast range of sources from across a multitude of disciplines, A Small Farm Future analyses the complex forces that make societal change inevitable; explains how low-carbon, locally self-reliant agrarian communities can empower us to successfully confront these changes head on; and explores the pathways for delivering this vision politically. Challenging both conventional wisdom and utopian blueprints, A Small Farm Future offers rigorous original analysis of wicked problems and hidden opportunities in a way that illuminates the path toward functional local economies, effective self-provisioning, agricultural diversity and a shared earth.
A Sociolegal Analysis of Formal Land Tenure Systems: Learning from the Political, Legal and Institutional Struggles of Timor-Leste (Law, Development and Globalization)
by Bernardo Ribeiro AlmeidaThis sociolegal study focuses on the political, legal and institutional problems and dilemmas of regulating land tenure. By studying the development of the Timorese formal land tenure system, this book engages in the larger debate about the role of state systems in addressing and aggravating social problems such as insecurity, poverty, inequality, destruction of nature, and cultural and social estrangement. Land tenure issues in Timor-Leste are complex and deeply shaped by the nation’s history. Taking an insider’s perspective based on the author’s experience in Timorese state administration, and through the investigation of five analytical themes –political environment, lawmaking, legal framework, institutional framework, and social relationships and practices– this book studies the development of the Timorese formal land tenure system from independence in 2002 to 2018. It shows how political, legal, and administrative decisions on land administration are made, what and who influences them, which problems and dilemmas emerge, and how the formal system works in practice. The result is a portrait of a young nation grappling with the enormous task of creating a land tenure system that can address the needs of its citizens in the wake of centuries of socio-political tumult and huge fluctuations in resources. The book concludes by highlighting the importance of lawmaking and how abuses of power can be curbed by adequate administrative processes and laws. Finally, it argues that land administration is primarily a political matter. The political dimension of technical solutions must be considered if we aim to achieve fairer formal land tenure systems. The pertinence of the topics covered, the multi-disciplinary perspective, and the research methodology followed make this book appealing to a variety of readers, including international organizations, practitioners, academics and students engaged in land administration, post-colonial and -conflict issues, lawmaking, rule of law, public administration and issues of access and exclusion.
A Statistical Mechanical Interpretation of Algorithmic Information Theory (SpringerBriefs in Mathematical Physics #36)
by Kohtaro TadakiThis book is the first one that provides a solid bridge between algorithmic information theory and statistical mechanics. Algorithmic information theory (AIT) is a theory of program size and recently is also known as algorithmic randomness. AIT provides a framework for characterizing the notion of randomness for an individual object and for studying it closely and comprehensively. In this book, a statistical mechanical interpretation of AIT is introduced while explaining the basic notions and results of AIT to the reader who has an acquaintance with an elementary theory of computation.A simplification of the setting of AIT is the noiseless source coding in information theory. First, in the book, a statistical mechanical interpretation of the noiseless source coding scheme is introduced. It can be seen that the notions in statistical mechanics such as entropy, temperature, and thermal equilibrium are translated into the context of noiseless source coding in a natural manner. Then, the framework of AIT is introduced. On this basis, the introduction of a statistical mechanical interpretation of AIT is begun. Namely, the notion of thermodynamic quantities, such as free energy, energy, and entropy, is introduced into AIT. In the interpretation, the temperature is shown to be equal to the partial randomness of the values of all these thermodynamic quantities, where the notion of partial randomness is a stronger representation of the compression rate measured by means of program-size complexity. Additionally, it is demonstrated that this situation holds for the temperature itself as a thermodynamic quantity. That is, for each of all the thermodynamic quantities above, the computability of its value at temperature T gives a sufficient condition for T to be a fixed point on partial randomness.In this groundbreaking book, the current status of the interpretation from both mathematical and physical points of view is reported. For example, a total statistical mechanical interpretation of AIT that actualizes a perfect correspondence to normal statistical mechanics can be developed by identifying a microcanonical ensemble in the framework of AIT. As a result, the statistical mechanical meaning of the thermodynamic quantities of AIT is clarified. In the book, the close relationship of the interpretation to Landauer's principle is pointed out.