Trace metals play key roles in life - all are toxic above a threshold bioavailability, yet many are essential to metabolism at lower doses. It is important to appreciate the natural history of an organism in order to understand the interaction between its biology and trace metals. The countryside and indeed the natural history of the British Isles are littered with the effects of metals, mostly via historical mining and subsequent industrial development. This fascinating story encompasses history, economics, geography, geology, chemistry, biochemistry, physiology, ecology, ecotoxicology and above all natural history. Examples abound of interactions between organisms and metals in the terrestrial, freshwater, estuarine, coastal and oceanic environments in and around the British Isles. Many of these interactions have nothing to do with metal pollution. All organisms are affected from bacteria, plants and invertebrates to charismatic species such as seals, dolphins, whales and seabirds. A
Islam is the religion of the majority of Arab citizens in Israel and since the late 1970s has become an important factor in their political and socio-cultural identity. This leads to an increasing number of Muslims in Israel who define their identity first and foremost in relation to their religious affiliation. By examining this evolving religious identity during the past four decades and its impact on the religious and socio-cultural aspects of Muslim life in Israel, Muhammad Al-Atawneh and Nohad Ali explore the local nature of Islam. They find that Muslims in Israel seem to rely heavily on the prominent Islamic authorities in the region, perhaps more so than minority Muslims elsewhere. This stems, inter alia, from the fact that Muslims in Israel are the only minority that lives in a land they consider to be holy and see themselves as a natural.
Along with windstorms, floods are the most common and widespread of all natural disasters. Although they can often be predicted, they cause loss of life, damage and destruction, as many urban communi
Bioregionalism asks us to reimagine ourselves and the places where we live in ecological terms and to harmonize human activities with the natural systems that sustain life. As one of the originators o
In the first scholarly exposition of Maria Montessori’s moral philosophy, Patrick R. Frierson presents an empirically-grounded ethics that takes its start from our tendency to strive for excellence and emphasizes mutual respect, social solidarity, and love. Laying out a compelling, Montessorian approach to ethical life, Frierson constructs an account of human agency based on children, who when attentively at work on self-chosen tasks, have agency worthy of respect. Through this interpretation of children’s agency, he introduces the core concept of Montessorian “character”: in Montessori’s ethics, character provides the ultimate value worthy of direct respect, and those with character have a natural tendency to respect others. Character is enhanced through corporate forms of agency that Montessori calls “social solidarity.” Weaving this educationalist’s ethics with theory from Nietzsche, Aristotle, Kant, Hegel, and Marx, Frierson places Montessori in the context of the history of phil
Human activities as well as various natural phenomena change the environment and impact on the quality of life. Analysis of those dynamics is required for a better understanding of urban modifications
Growing concerns about climate change and the increasing occurrence of ever more devastating natural disasters in some parts of the world and their consequences for human life, not only in the immedia
In the United States, homeownership is synonymous with economic security and middle-class status. It has played this role in American life for almost a century, and as a result, homeownership's centrality to Americans' economic lives has come to seem natural and inevitable. But this state of affairs did not develop spontaneously or inexorably. On the contrary, it was the product of federal government policies, established during the 1930s and developed over the course of the twentieth century. At the Boundaries of Homeownership traces how the government's role in this became submerged from public view and how several groups who were locked out of homeownership came to recognize and reveal the role of the government. Through organizing and activism, these boundary groups transformed laws and private practices governing determinations of credit-worthiness. This book describes the important policy consequences of their achievements and the implications for how we understand American state
In this ground-breaking new study, Teren Sevea reveals the economic, environmental and religious significance of Islamic miracle workers (pawangs) in the nineteenth- and twentieth-century Malay world. Through close textual analysis of hitherto overlooked manuscripts and personal interaction with modern pawangs readers are introduced to a universe of miracle workers that existed both in the past and in the present, uncovering connections between miracles and material life. Sevea demonstrates how societies in which the production and extraction of natural resources, as well as the uses of technology, were intertwined with the knowledge of charismatic religious figures, and locates the role of the pawangs in the spiritual economy of the Indian Ocean world, across maritime connections and Sufi networks, and on the frontier of the British Empire.
Religion has had notable and renewed prominence in contemporary public and political life. Religious questions have also been freshly examined in philosophy and theology, the natural sciences, the soc
Written in a conversational tone, this classroom-tested text introduces the fundamentals of linear programming and game theory, showing readers how to apply serious mathematics to practical real-life questions by modelling linear optimization problems and strategic games. The treatment of linear programming includes two distinct graphical methods. The game theory chapters include a novel proof of the minimax theorem for 2x2 zero-sum games. In addition to zero-sum games, the text presents variable-sum games, ordinal games, and n-player games as the natural result of relaxing or modifying the assumptions of zero-sum games. All concepts and techniques are derived from motivating examples, building in complexity, which encourages students to think creatively and leads them to understand how the mathematics is applied. With no prerequisite besides high school algebra, the text will be useful to motivated high school students and undergraduates studying business, economics, mathematics, and
Just as with prescription drugs, natural health products can present substantial risks and prompt the same areas of concern. Although some of these effects may be life-threatening, current literature
John Clare (1793–1864) has long been recognized as one of England's foremost poets of nature, landscape and rural life. Scholars and general readers alike regard his tremendous creative output as a testament to a probing and powerful intellect. Clare was that rare amalgam ‒ a poet who wrote from a working-class, impoverished background, who was steeped in folk and ballad culture, and who yet, against all social expectations and prejudices, read and wrote himself into a grand literary tradition. All the while he maintained a determined sense of his own commitments to the poor, to natural history and to the local. Through the diverse approaches of ten scholars, this collection shows how Clare's many angles of critical vision illuminate current understandings of environmental ethics, aesthetics, Romantic and Victorian literary history, and the nature of work.
Although it is a natural and inescapable part of life, death is a subject that is often neglected in psychotherapeutic literature and training. In When Death Enters the Therapeutic Space Laura Barnett
SummaryA fascinating exploration into the natural history of lakes: what they are, how they behave, and how they function within the biosphere.In Lakes: Their Birth, Life, and Death, John Richard Saylor shows us just how deep our connection to these still waters run in a revealing look at lifegiving bodies of water. Think all lakes are the same? Think again. Saylor leads an illuminating tour of the most fascinating lakes around the world. Whether it’s Lake Vostok, located more than two miles beneath the surface of Antarctica, whose water was last exposed to the atmosphere perhaps a million years ago; Lake Baikal in southern Siberia, the world’s deepest and oldest lake formed by a rift in the earth’s crust; or Lake Nyos, the so-called Killer Lake that exploded in 1986, resulting in hundreds of deaths. Along the way we learn all the many forms that lakes take―how they come to be and how they feed and support ecosystems―and what we stand to lose when lakes vanish.
Acclaimed author Luc Sante’s meticulously researched account of the creation of the upstate reservoir system that, in supplying water to New York City, makes its very existence possible―but irreparably altered rural ecosystems and communitiesBy the author of Low Life, the now-classic history of NYC’s outlaw underbelly―a meticulously researched, evocatively illustrated, profoundly meditative account of the city’s upstate reservoirsWithout the upstate reservoir system that brings fresh water to New York City, the city would have faded into insignificance. But this engineering triumph had a cost: From 1907 to 1967, twenty-six upstate villages, farms, forests, and other natural areas were bought for a fraction of their value, demolished, then submerged to create the Catskills and Delaware watershed systems.Compelled to understand “the air of permanent mourning” in their vicinity, Lucy Sante marshals the same gifts that made Low Life a now-classic of NYC history: a meticulously detailed acc
