Second Edition of successful, well-reviewed Birkhauser book, which sold 866 copies in North America Provides an up-to-date presentation by including new results, examples, and problems throughout the text The second edition adds a chapter on multiple-precision arithmetic, and new algorithms invented since 1997
China is entering a phase where deep structural changes will arise throughout society. These multi-fold processes will be intertwined in a globalized world, impacted by the transformation of capitalism in the aftermath of the financial crisis and under the threat of severe environmental damage. Focussing on sustainability, this book explores the future of China in light of the successful reforms undertaken in the last thirty years. It combines Chinese economic history and up-to-date macroeconomic theory in order to show how economic transformations and institutional changes are intertwined in developing capitalism under state sovereignty. The book is divided into three parts: Part 1 analyses the structural changes ahead, drawing on the knowledge of the causes of the demise of imperial China and of the social disruptions due to political warfare in the 20th century. Part 2 examines the reasons why the last thirty years of reform were successful and why the present growth regime will undergo a dramatic mutation in future decades. Part 3 seeks to address the question: what type of political economy can support the purpose of achieving "harmonious society"? China's Development will be of interest to students and scholars of Chinese economics, politics, history and development.
During a century, from the Van der Waals mean field description (1874) of gases to the introduction of renormalization group (RG techniques 1970), thermodynamics and statistical physics were just unable to account for the incredible universality which was observed in numerous critical phenomena. The great success of RG techniques is not only to solve perfectly this challenge of critical behaviour in thermal transitions but to introduce extremely useful tools in a wide field of daily situations where a system exhibits scale invariance. The introduction of scaling, scale invariance and universality concepts has been a significant turn in modern physics and more generally in natural sciences. Since then, a new "physics of scaling laws and critical exponents", rooted in scaling approaches, allows quantitative descriptions of numerous phenomena, ranging from phase transitions to earthquakes, polymer conformations, heartbeat rhythm, diffusion, interface growth and roughening, DNA sequence, dynamical systems, chaos and turbulence. The chapters are jointly written by an experimentalist and a theorist. This book aims at a pedagogical overview, offering to the students and researchers a thorough conceptual background and a simple account of a wide range of applications. It presents a complete tour of both the formal advances and experimental results associated with the notion of scaling, in physics, chemistry and biology.
Theory is what remains true when technology is changing. So, it is important to know and master the basic concepts and the theoretical tools that underlie the design of the systems we are using today and the systems we will use tomorrow. This means that, given a computing model, we need to know what can be done and what cannot be done in that model. Considering systems built on top of an asynchronous read/write shared memory prone to process crashes, this monograph presents and develops the fundamental notions that are universal constructions, consensus numbers, distributed recursivity, power of the BG simulation, and what can be done when one has to cope with process anonymity and/or memory anonymity. Numerous distributed algorithms are presented, the aim of which is being to help the reader better understand the power and the subtleties of the notions that are presented. In addition, the reader can appreciate the simplicity and beauty of some of these algorithms.
This book provides the most comprehensive mathematical treatment to date of the Feynman path integral and Feynman's operational calculus. It is accessible to mathematicians, mathematical physicists and theoretical physicists. Including new results and much material previously only available in the research literature, this book discusses both the mathematics and physics background that motivate the study of the Feynman path integral and Feynman's operational calculus, and also provides more detailed proofs of the central results.
This book presents the most important fault-tolerant distributed programming abstractions and their associated distributed algorithms, in particular in terms of reliable communication and agreement, which lie at the heart of nearly all distributed applications. These programming abstractions, distributed objects or services, allow software designers and programmers to cope with asynchrony and the most important types of failures such as process crashes, message losses, and malicious behaviors of computing entities, widely known under the term "Byzantine fault-tolerance". The author introduces these notions in an incremental manner, starting from a clear specification, followed by algorithms which are first described intuitively and then proved correct. The book also presents impossibility results in classic distributed computing models, along with strategies, mainly failure detectors and randomization, that allow us to enrich these models. In this sense, the book constitutes an introduction to the science of distributed computing, with applications in all domains of distributed systems, such as cloud computing and blockchains. Each chapter comes with exercises and bibliographic notes to help the reader approach, understand, and master the fascinating field of fault-tolerant distributed computing.
This book presents all the theoretical and practical basements of heterogeneous kinetics and reactivity of solids. It applies the new concepts of reactivity and spatial function, introduced by the author, for both nucleation and growth processes, with a unified presentation of the reactivity of bulk and powder solids, including gas-solid reactions, thermal decompositions, solid-solid reactions, reactions of solid solutions, and coalescence of solid grains. It also contains many exercises and problems with solutions included, allowing readers to understand and use all the concepts and methods discussed therein.
Gas phase molecular spectroscopy is a powerful tool for obtaining information on the geometry and internal structure of isolated molecules as well as on the interactions that they undergo. It enables the study of fundamental parameters and processes and is also used for the sounding of gas media through optical techniques. It has been facing always renewed challenges, due to the considerable improvement of experimental techniques and the increasing demand for accuracy and scope of remote sensing applications. In practice, the radiating molecule is usually not isolated but diluted in a mixture at significant total pressure. The collisions among the molecules composing the gas can have a large influence on the spectral shape, affecting all wavelength regions through various mechanisms. These must be taken into account for the correct analysis and prediction of the resulting spectra. This book reviews our current experimental and theoretical knowledge and the practical consequences of collisional effects on molecular spectral shapes in neutral gases. General expressions are first given. They are formal of difficult use for practical calculations often but enable discussion of the approximations leading to simplified situations. The first case examined is that of isolated transitions, with the usual pressure broadening and shifting but also refined effects due to speed dependence and collision-induced velocity changes. Collisional line-mixing, which invalidates the notion of isolated transitions and has spectral consequences when lines are closely spaced, is then discussed within the impact approximation. Regions where the contributions of many distant lines overlap, such as troughs between transitions and band wings, are considered next. For a description of these far wings the finite duration of collisions and concomitant breakdown of the impact approximation must be taken into account. Finally, for long paths or elevated pressures, the dipole or polarizability induced by intermolecular interactions can make significant contributions. Specific models for the description of these collision induced absorption and light scattering processes are presented. The above mentioned topics are reviewed and discussed from a threefold point of view: the various models, the available data, and the consequences for applications including heat transfer, remote sensing and optical sounding. The extensive bibliography and discussion of some remaining problems complete the text. - State-of-the-art on the subject - A bibliography of nearly 1,000 references - Tools for practical calculations - Consequences for other scientific fields - Numerous illustrative examples - Fulfilling a need since there is no equivalent monograph on the subject
In America, liberalism brings prosperity to the majority? False. In America, "anything is possible" for those who work hard? False. In America, the unemployment rate is minimal? False. In America, poverty is relative and the poor live "like modest Europeans?" False. In America, those excluded from the health care system receive free care when they really need it? False—really false. In an excellent investigation, with clear and relevant examples, Michel Desmurget shatters the myth of a beautiful and prosperous America where everyone can succeed as long as they are hardworking and courageous. Taking the opposite view of the current dominant discourse on the virtues of the Anglo-Saxon liberal model, the author writes a disconcerting antithesis, based on American researchers, sociologists and journalists who have studied the failures of the American model and who, for the most part, recommend surprisingly European solutions (universal social security, introduction of a minimum wage indexed to inflation, federalized education, etc.). Michel Desmurget is a doctor of neuropsychology. He attended several major American universities (MIT, Emory, UCSF) and is now a research director at INSERM in cognitive neuroscience. He is particularly interested in the problems of brain organization and plasticity. He is the author of the book TV Lobotomy (Max Milo, 2022), which is based in part on his personal history. Exasperated by having to constantly justify the choice not to have television at home—and to prevent his children from having access to it—and not to be seen as a sociopath in the eyes of those around him, he has done a massive job to argue his point.
The Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture (French Academy of Painting and Sculpture)—perhaps the single most influential art institution in history—governed the arts in France for more than 150 years, from its founding in 1648 until its abolition in 1793. Christian Michel's sweeping study presents an authoritative, in-depth analysis of the Académie’s history and legacy. The Académie Royale assembled nearly all of the important French artists working at the time, maintained a virtual monopoly on teaching and exhibitions, enjoyed a priority in obtaining royal commissions, and deeply influenced the artistic landscape in France. Yet the institution remains little understood today: all commentary on it, during its existence and since its abolition, is based on prejudices, both favorable and critical, that have shaped the way the institution has been appraised. This book takes a different approach. Rather than judging the Académie Royale, Michel unravels existing critical discourse to consider the nuances and complexities of the academy’s history, reexamining its goals, the shifting power dynamics both within the institution and in the larger political landscape, and its relationship with other French academies and guilds.
A magisterial history of the artists and writers who left Weimar when the Nazis came to power In 1933 thousands of intellectuals, artists, writers, militants and other opponents of the Nazi regime fled Germany. They were, in the words of Heinrich Mann, “the best of Germany,” refusing to remain citizens in this new state that legalized terror and brutality. Exiled across the world, they continued the fight against Nazism in prose, poetry, painting, architecture, film and theater. Weimar in Exile follows these lives, from the rise of national socialism to their return to a ruined homeland, retracing their stories, struggles, setbacks and rare victories. The dignity in exile of Walter Benjamin, Ernst Bloch, Bertolt Brecht, Alfred Döblin, Hanns Eisler, Heinrich Mann, Thomas Mann, Anna Seghers, Ernst Toller, Stefan Zweig and many others provides a counterpoint to the story of Germany under the Nazis.
Retinal Pharmacotherapy is the first comprehensive book devoted to pharmacologic agents and their rationale and mechanisms of action in selected retinal and uveitic diseases. Drs. Quan Dong Nguyen, Eduardo Buchele Rodrigues, Michel Eid Farah, and William F. Mieler lead an international team of expert contributors to present up-to-date knowledge of new drugs on the market, the science behind the drugs, evidence of how the drugs work, and the reasons why they are effective or not. This user-friendly, all-in-one reference provides you with easy access to practical information on the effective and appropriate use of pharmacologic agents in the management of retinal diseases. Covers all new and existing retinal drugs to keep you current in this expanding area of the treatment of retinal diseases. Discusses the background behind retinal drugs and the various pathways of how they work so you can make thoroughly informed clinical decisions. Presents 400 color photographs and line drawings that illustrate disease appearance before and after treatment and clarify difficult key concepts. Features contributors from Europe, North America, South America, the Middle East, Asia, and Australia for an international approach. Identifies and emphasizes key points clearly in each chapter to improve comprehension and make finding information easier.
A Diplomacy of Hope is the first comprehensive survey of the history of Canadian diplomacy in the area of arms control and disarmament. Taking much of their information from Canadian archival sources, Albert Legault and Michel Fortmann cover all major negotiations on arms control and disarmament in which Canada has participated since 1945.
Constructing Quantum Mechanics is the first of two volumes on the genesis of quantum mechanics. This volume traces the early contributions by Planck, Einstein, and Bohr, all showing the need for drastic changes to the physics of their day. It examines the efforts by Sommerfeld and others to develop a new theory, now known as the old quantum theory. After some striking successes, this theory ran into serious difficulties and ended up serving as the scaffold on which the arch of modern quantum mechanics was built. This volume breaks new ground, both in its treatment of the work of Sommerfeld and his associates, and by offering new perspectives on classic papers by Planck, Einstein, Bohr, and others. Paying close attention to both primary and secondary sources, Constructing Quantum Mechanics provides an in-depth analysis of the heroic struggle to come to terms with the wealth of mostly spectroscopic data that eventually gave us modern quantum mechanics.
For the first time, a critical selection of the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture’s highly influential conférences is available in English. Between 1667 and 1792, the artists and amateurs of the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture in Paris lectured on the Académie’s conférences, foundational documents in the theory and practice of art. These texts and the principles they embody guided artistic practice and art theory in France and throughout Europe for two centuries. In the 1800s, the Académie’s influence waned, and few of the 388 Académie lectures were translated into English. Eminent scholars Christian Michel and Jacqueline Lichtenstein have selected and annotated forty-two of the most representative lectures, creating the first authoritative collection of the conférences for readers of English. Essential to understanding French art of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, these lectures reveal what leading French artists looked for in a painting or sculpture, the problems they sought to resolve in their works, and how they viewed their own and others’ artistic practice.
The Political Economy of the World Trading System is a comprehensive textbook account of the economics, institutional mechanics and politics of the world trading system. This third edition has been expanded and updated to cover developments in the World Trade Organisation (WTO) since its formation, including the Doha Round, presenting the essentials of trade negotiations and the WTO's rules and disciplines. The authors focus in particular on the WTO's role as the primary organisation through which trading nations manage their commercial interactions and the focal point for cooperation on policy responses to the rapidly changing global trading environment. It is the forum in which many features of the globalisation process are considered, and it currently faces an unprecedented set of challenges. The increasing importance of countries in Asia, Latin America and Africa in international trade relations, the revealed preference towards regionalism, intensification of trade conflicts, the role of business groups and NGOs in trade policy formation and negotiations, and pressures for more leadership in an institution threatened by paralysis are examples of issues that are discussed in some detail; all are critical for the operation of the system and for international business in the coming decade. This edition also includes numerous real-world examples to illustrate how the WTO impinges on business, workers and households, written from the perspective of managers and business associations. An insider's view of the institutional history of the WTO allows the authors to use a variety of conceptual tools to analyse the working of the WTO in a non-technical manner. Suggestions for Further Reading at the end of each chapter and an extensive bibliography make the volume suitable both for introductory and postgraduate courses on international economics and business, international relations, and international economic law.
Formal Languages, Automaton and Numeration Systems presents readers with a review of research related to formal language theory, combinatorics on words or numeration systems, such as Words, DLT (Developments in Language Theory), ICALP, MFCS (Mathematical Foundation of Computer Science), Mons Theoretical Computer Science Days, Numeration, CANT (Combinatorics, Automata and Number Theory). Combinatorics on words deals with problems that can be stated in a non-commutative monoid, such as subword complexity of finite or infinite words, construction and properties of infinite words, unavoidable regularities or patterns. When considering some numeration systems, any integer can be represented as a finite word over an alphabet of digits. This simple observation leads to the study of the relationship between the arithmetical properties of the integers and the syntactical properties of the corresponding representations. One of the most profound results in this direction is given by the celebrated theorem by Cobham. Surprisingly, a recent extension of this result to complex numbers led to the famous Four Exponentials Conjecture. This is just one example of the fruitful relationship between formal language theory (including the theory of automata) and number theory.
In the popular imagination, the business media, and the schools of business and management that train new generations of entrepreneurs and executives, achieving extraordinary success in business is attributed to far-sighted individuals who have taken bold risks, provided innovative leadership, and introduced new products, services, or ideas superior to those of the competition. Amid the growing skepticism about the means by which vast amounts of wealth are accumulated and its consequences, however, this belief is long overdue for reevaluation. In From Predators to Icons, Michel Villette, a sociologist, and Catherine Vuillermot, a business historian, examine the careers of thirty-two of today's wealthiest global executives--including Warren Buffett, Ingvar Kamprad, Bernard Arnault, Jim Clark, and Richard Branson--in order to challenge the conventional explanations for their extreme success and come to a better understanding of modern business practices. In contrast to the familiar image of the entrepreneur as a visionary with a plan, Villette and Vuillermot instead discover a far less dramatic process of improvised adaptations gradually assembled into a coherent course of conduct. And rather than being risk-takers, those who are most successful in business are risk-minimizers. Huge gains, these case studies reveal, are most reliably obtained in circumstances where the entrepreneur has established careful provisions for risk reduction. As for the view that innovation makes success possible, the authors find that because innovation is an expensive process that takes a long time to produce profits, innovators first of all require capital; success makes innovation possible. The necessary resources, they show, are most often derived from what they provocatively term "predation" ruthlessly taking advantage of imperfections, weaknesses, and vulnerabilities within the market or among competitors. Finally, From Predator to Icon considers the "practical ethics" implemented during the phase in which capital is most rapidly accumulated, as well as the social consequences of these activities. Drawing on interviews with some of their subjects and, crucially, close readings of the authorized biographies and other hagiographic accounts of these figures, which eliminates the bias of malicious interpretations, Villette and Vuillermot provide revelatory insights about the creation and maintenance of business wealth that will be profitably read by both the captains and the critics of contemporary capitalism.
This book, now in its 2nd edition, is devoted to the arithmetical theory of Siegel modular forms and their L-functions. The central object are L-functions of classical Siegel modular forms whose special values are studied using the Rankin-Selberg method and the action of certain differential operators on modular forms which have nice arithmetical properties. A new method of p-adic interpolation of these critical values is presented. An important class of p-adic L-functions treated in the present book are p-adic L-functions of Siegel modular forms having logarithmic growth. The given construction of these p-adic L-functions uses precise algebraic properties of the arithmetical Shimura differential operator. The book will be very useful for postgraduate students and for non-experts looking for a quick approach to a rapidly developing domain of algebraic number theory. This new edition is substantially revised to account for the new explanations that have emerged in the past 10 years of the main formulas for special L-values in terms of arithmetical theory of nearly holomorphic modular forms.
A “well-researched, elegantly written” study of the life and work of 19th-century French author Gustave Flaubert (Roger Pearson, University of Oxford). Michel Winock’s biography situates Gustave Flaubert’s life and work in France’s century of great democratic transition. Flaubert did not welcome the egalitarian society predicted by Tocqueville. Wary of the masses, he rejected the universal male suffrage hard won by the Revolution of 1848, and he was exasperated by the nascent socialism that promoted the collective to the detriment of the individual. But above all, he hated the bourgeoisie. Vulgar, ignorant, obsessed with material comforts, impervious to beauty, the French middle class embodied for Flaubert every vice of the democratic age. His loathing became a fixation—and a source of literary inspiration. Flaubert depicts a man whose personality, habits, and thought are a stew of paradoxes. The author of Madame Bovary and Sentimental Education spent his life inseparably bound to solitude and melancholy, yet he enjoyed periodic escapes from his “hole” in Croisset to pursue a variety of pleasures: fervent friendships, society soirées, and a whirlwind of literary and romantic encounters. He prided himself on the impersonality of his writing, but he did not hesitate to use material from his own life in his fiction. Nowhere are Flaubert’s contradictions more evident than in his politics. An enemy of power who held no nostalgia for the monarchy or the church, he was nonetheless hostile to collectivist utopias. Despite declarations of the timelessness and sacredness of Art, Flaubert could not transcend the era he abominated. Rejecting the modern world, he paradoxically became its celebrated chronicler and the most modern writer of his time. Praise for Flaubert “This generous study ingeniously builds a narrative around Flaubert’s own words—from not only the novels but also voluminous correspondence and unpublished work. Adding light background and analysis, Winock allows the mind of the Master to shine.” —The New Yorker “It is precisely the historical background of Flaubert’s times, both its conscious and its invisible impingements on the writer’s sensibility, on which Winock is especially revelatory . . . Michel Winock has written a compelling and stylish biography, and Nicholas Elliott has brought it into English with flair and skill.” —Bruce Whiteman, Hudson Review “Noted French historian Winock’s biography succeeds in presenting a fresh portrait of a man plagued by paradoxes . . . Winock provides absorbing background related to the country’s social and political scenes that occurred during his subject’s lifetime.” —Erica Swenson Danowitz, Library Journal
The interplay between words, computability, algebra and arithmetic has now proved its relevance and fruitfulness. Indeed, the cross-fertilization between formal logic and finite automata (such as that initiated by J.R. Büchi) or between combinatorics on words and number theory has paved the way to recent dramatic developments, for example, the transcendence results for the real numbers having a "simple" binary expansion, by B. Adamczewski and Y. Bugeaud. This book is at the heart of this interplay through a unified exposition. Objects are considered with a perspective that comes both from theoretical computer science and mathematics. Theoretical computer science offers here topics such as decision problems and recognizability issues, whereas mathematics offers concepts such as discrete dynamical systems. The main goal is to give a quick access, for students and researchers in mathematics or computer science, to actual research topics at the intersection between automata and formal language theory, number theory and combinatorics on words. The second of two volumes on this subject, this book covers regular languages, numeration systems, formal methods applied to decidability issues about infinite words and sets of numbers.
Handbook of Evidence-Based Practice in Clinical Psychology, Volume 1 covers the evidence-based practices now identified for treating children and adolescents with a wide range of DSM disorders. Topics include fundamental issues, developmental disorders, behavior and habit disorders, anxiety and mood disorders, and eating disorders. Each chapter provides a comprehensive review of the evidence-based practice literature for each disorder and then covers several different treatment types for clinical implementation. Edited by the renowned Peter Sturmey and Michel Hersen and featuring contributions from experts in the field, this reference is ideal for academics, researchers, and libraries.
From the acclaimed author of Blue, a beautifully illustrated history of the color white in visual culture, from antiquity to today As a pigment, white is often thought to represent an absence of color, but it is without doubt an important color in its own right, just like red, blue, green, or yellow—and, like them, white has its own intriguing history. In this richly illustrated book, Michel Pastoureau, a celebrated authority on the history of colors, presents a fascinating visual, social, and cultural history of the color white in European societies, from antiquity to today. Illustrated throughout with a wealth of captivating images ranging from the ancient world to the twenty-first century, White examines the evolving place, perception, and meaning of this deceptively simple but complex hue in art, fashion, literature, religion, science, and everyday life across the millennia. Before the seventeenth century, white’s status as a true color was never contested. On the contrary, from antiquity until the height of the Middle Ages, white formed with red and black a chromatic triad that played a central role in life and art. Nor has white always been thought of as the opposite of black. Through the Middle Ages, the true opposite of white was red. White also has an especially rich symbolic history, and the color has often been associated with purity, virginity, innocence, wisdom, peace, beauty, and cleanliness. With its striking design and compelling text, White is a colorful history of a surprisingly vivid and various color.
Based on more than 30 years of research on differential theories of gratings, this book describes developments in differential theory for applications in spectroscopy, acoustics, X-ray instrumentation, optical communication, information processing, photolithography, high-power lasers, high-precision engineering, and astronomy. Introducing the Fast Fourier Factorization approach to improve the convergence of a truncated series, the book examines multilayers, stacked gratings, crossed gratings, photonic crystals, and isotropic and anisotropic materials; techniques and examples in grating design; and Maxwell equations in a truncated Fourier space.
Although a sophisticated body of international social security law is active and growing, a number of States still appear unable to honour it. This thorough, well-researched survey and analysis of existing international social security law – its sources, its content, its historical development – is thus especially valuable for its informed consideration of the barriers to the law’s full effectiveness. Part of the renowned multi-volume Encyclopaedia of Laws, the book focuses on the analysis of the International Labour Organization (ILO) Conventions and Recommendations on Social Security. It examines the most recent public debates on social protection (dealing with health insurance, unemployment benefits, pension age, minimum income, social security benefits in case of expatriation, parental leave, and much more), includes an updated bibliography, and opens some perspectives for the future work of the global institutions. It integrates the latest instruments, in particular ILO Recommendation No. 202 concerning national floors of social protection. Even in the absence of ratification and therefore of legal force, international social security standards are invaluable benchmarks in comparative law. Indeed, ILO standards are both useful instruments of analysis and excellent yardsticks for identifying common denominators among national systems. For these reasons this book will be welcomed by legislators, government officials, employers’ organizations, trade unions, and the judiciary, as well as by human resources managers and academics.
The primary objective of this essential text is to emphasize the deep relations existing between the semiring and dioïd structures with graphs and their combinatorial properties. It does so at the same time as demonstrating the modeling and problem-solving flexibility of these structures. In addition the book provides an extensive overview of the mathematical properties employed by "nonclassical" algebraic structures which either extend usual algebra or form a new branch of it.
This book is the first scientific study of present-day French anti-Semitism. As from the beginning of the 21st century France has been witness to a renewal of anti-Semitism which owes as much to internal developments in French society as to global factors and in particular to the conflict in the Middle East.
Featuring the latest research findings and exploring the fascinating interplay of modernist authors and intellectual luminaries, from Beckett and Kafka to Derrida and Adorno, this bold new collection of essays gives students a deeper grasp of key texts in modernist literature. Provides a wealth of fresh perspectives on canonical modernist texts, featuring the latest research data Adopts an original and creative thematic approach to the subject, with concepts such as race, law, gender, class, time, and ideology forming the structure of the collection Explores current and ongoing debates on the links between the aesthetics and praxis of authors and modernist theoreticians Reveals the profound ways in which modernist authors have influenced key thinkers, and vice versa
In this masterful account, a historian of science surveys the molecular biology revolution, its origin and continuing impact. Since the 1930s, a molecular vision has been transforming biology. Michel Morange provides an incisive and overarching history of this transformation, from the early attempts to explain organisms by the structure of their chemical components, to the birth and consolidation of genetics, to the latest technologies and discoveries enabled by the new science of life. Morange revisits A History of Molecular Biology and offers new insights from the past twenty years into his analysis. The Black Box of Biology shows that what led to the incredible transformation of biology was not a simple accumulation of new results, but the molecularization of a large part of biology. In fact, Morange argues, the greatest biological achievements of the past few decades should still be understood within the molecular paradigm. What has happened is not the displacement of molecular biology by other techniques and avenues of research, but rather the fusion of molecular principles and concepts with those of other disciplines, including genetics, physics, structural chemistry, and computational biology. This has produced decisive changes, including the discoveries of regulatory RNAs, the development of massive scientific programs such as human genome sequencing, and the emergence of synthetic biology, systems biology, and epigenetics. Original, persuasive, and breathtaking in its scope, The Black Box of Biology sets a new standard for the history of the ongoing molecular revolution.
In 1913, Russian imperial marines stormed an Orthodox monastery at Mt. Athos, Greece, to haul off monks engaged in a dangerously heretical practice known as Name Worshipping. Exiled to remote Russian outposts, the monks and their mystical movement went underground. Ultimately, they came across Russian intellectuals who embraced Name Worshipping—and who would achieve one of the biggest mathematical breakthroughs of the twentieth century, going beyond recent French achievements. Loren Graham and Jean-Michel Kantor take us on an exciting mathematical mystery tour as they unravel a bizarre tale of political struggles, psychological crises, sexual complexities, and ethical dilemmas. At the core of this book is the contest between French and Russian mathematicians who sought new answers to one of the oldest puzzles in math: the nature of infinity. The French school chased rationalist solutions. The Russian mathematicians, notably Dmitri Egorov and Nikolai Luzin—who founded the famous Moscow School of Mathematics—were inspired by mystical insights attained during Name Worshipping. Their religious practice appears to have opened to them visions into the infinite—and led to the founding of descriptive set theory. The men and women of the leading French and Russian mathematical schools are central characters in this absorbing tale that could not be told until now. Naming Infinity is a poignant human interest story that raises provocative questions about science and religion, intuition and creativity.
Horses were first domesticated about 6,000 years ago on the vast Eurasian steppe, yet only in the last two decades have scientists begun to explore the mental capacities of these animals. In The Mind of the Horse, Michel-Antoine Leblanc presents an encyclopedic synthesis of scientific knowledge about equine behavior and cognition, providing experts and enthusiasts alike with an up-to-date understanding of how horses perceive, think about, and adapt to their physical and social worlds. Much of what we think we know about "the intelligence of the horse" derives from fragmentary reports and anecdotal evidence. Putting this accumulated wisdom to the test, Leblanc introduces readers to rigorous experimental investigations into how horses make sense of their world under varying conditions. He describes the anatomical and neurophysiological characteristics of the horse's brain, and compares these features with those of other species, to gain an evolutionary perspective. A horseman himself, Leblanc also considers the opinions of renowned riding masters, as well as controversies surrounding the horse's extraordinary mental powers that have stirred in equestrian and scientific circles. The Mind of the Horse brings together in one volume the current state of equine research and will likely stimulate surprising new discoveries.
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