After introducing the concept of the birthing pool in the 1970s, Michel Odent has continuously expanded his interest in the mysterious connections between humans and water. In Planet Ocean he shows that the evolution of the oceans – particularly the fluctuations of sea levels – and the evolution of humans are inseparable. The oceans are the givers and sustainers of life, holding ninety-five per cent of the planet’s habitable space within their immense depths. Odent steers us towards a radically new vision of human nature. Our defining feature – a supersized brain – becomes a leitmotif that enables links between topics as diverse as our nutritional needs, our relationship with sea mammals, and the way members of our species give birth. He relates ‘transcendent emotional states’ with what the French writer Romain Rolland referred to as ‘the oceanic feeling’ – both suggesting the absence of limits. Access to such states can be associated with, for example, a ‘foetus ejection reflex’. This leads to the extraordinary conclusion that swimming – as learnt behaviour among humans – the birth process and access to transcendence are interrelated topics for students of human nature. Planet Ocean is a fascinating interdisciplinary study that demonstrates our manifold connections to water and suggests their relevance to everyday life.
Anyone who has been employed by an organization knows not every official workplace regulation must be followed. When management consistently overlooks such breaches, spaces emerge in which both workers and supervisors engage in officially prohibited, yet tolerated practices--gray zones. When discovered, these transgressions often provoke disapproval; when company materials are diverted in the process, these breaches are quickly labeled theft. Yet, why do gray zones persist and why are they unlikely to disappear? In Moral Gray Zones, Michel Anteby shows how these spaces function as regulating mechanisms within workplaces, fashioning workers' identity and self-esteem while allowing management to maintain control. The book provides a unique window into gray zones through its in-depth look at the manufacture and exchange of illegal goods called homers, tolerated in a French aeronautic plant. Homers such as toys for kids, cutlery for the kitchen, or lamps for homes, are made on company time with company materials for a worker's own purpose and use. Anteby relies on observations at retirees' homes, archival data, interviews, and surveys to understand how plant workers and managers make sense of this tacit practice. He argues that when patrolled, gray zones like the production of homers offer workplaces balanced opportunities for supervision as well as expression. Cautioning against the hasty judgment that gray zone practices are simply wrong, Moral Gray Zones contributes to a deeper understanding of the culture, group dynamics, and deviance found in organizations.
In this unique book, Michel Thellier has combined recent discoveries with older data dealing with plant memory and its potential role on plant acclimatization to environment stimuli. By placing memory within an evolutionary frame, the author persuades us that a new way of research has opened in plant physiology.Detailing experiments in a simplified manner, that general readers with an interest in this topic will find it easy to follow.
To meet the challenge of feeding ever increasing human population, efficient, economical and environment friendly disease control methods are required. Pests are responsible for heavy crop losses and reduced food supplies, poorer quality of agricultural products, economic hardship for growers and processor. Generally, chemical control methods are neither always economical nor are they effective and may have associated unwanted health, safety and environmental risks. Biological control involves use of beneficial microorganism to control plant pathogens and diseases they cause and offers an environmental friendly approach to the effective management of plant diseases. This book provides a comprehensive account of interaction of host and its pathogens, induced host resistance, development of biological control agents for practical applications, the underlying mechanism and signal transduction. The book is useful to all those working in academia or industry related to crop protection.
This monograph collects, for the first time, the main architectural production since its creation in 2001 by the French studio ANMA, based in Paris and directed by Nicolas Michelin. With a work based mainly on architectural competitions won, this office has been positioned in the French landscape as an essential reference of the current architecture of the city, highlighting its transformation and urban renewal. The publication collects and develops 22 selected projects, among which the recently completed and brand new Ministry of Defense in Paris, works of urban restructuring and housing as the "Bassin à Flot" of Bordeaux or the rehabilitation of the National Library of Strasbourg stand out with its imposing staircase. Each work is approached on the basis of its "8 themes" explained in the prologue, and marks the repertoire of solutions and a unique way to approach a project whether it is a new plant, rehabilitation or urban planning. Bilingual edition: Spanish & English
Noise is ubiquitous in nature and in man-made systems. Noise in oscillators perturbs high-technology devices such as time standards or digital communication systems. The understanding of its algebraic structure is thus of vital importance. The book addresses both the measurement methods and the understanding of quantum, 1/f and phase noise in systems such as electronic amplifiers, oscillators and receivers, trapped ions, cosmic ray showers and in commercial applications. A strong link between 1/f noise and number theory is emphasized. The twenty papers in the book are comprehensive versions of talks presented at a school in Chapelle des Bois (Jura, France) held from April 6 to 10, 1999, by engineers, physisicts and mathematicians.
If you were to travel the world, you would quickly come to realize that the vast majority of humanity has the same list of wants and needs: food, shelter, water, education, justice and safety, to name a few. Joys and sorrows, hopes and desperations are also similar in many ways. Even though it sometimes justifies our personal paradigm to believe differently, WE ARE ALL FUNDAMENTALLY THE SAME. If at the core we are all the same, why then is it that we collectively are having such a hard time? Essentially, this last question is where the inspiration for this book comes from. The content of the book comes from the author’s decades of research, observations and experiences gained while living and working in more than nine different countries, visiting over sixty countries spread on six continents. A love, a passion and ultimately, a belief that humanity has the power to choose to create a better life for all is the driving force behind this exploration of human suffering and how to ultimately rise above it. This need for a better life for all has never been as apparent as it is now. Our collective denial of the reality of suffering is being confronted. We are starting to realize that there is no choice but to deal with it: problems are not going away but rather, they seem to be multiplying exponentially. Perhaps we live in times where it has become luxurious thinking to believe that someone else will fix the environment, the economy, social injustices, international conflicts, human trafficking, or poverty. It is time for greatness on a mass level to be expressed. This book is meant to appeal to the heart more than the mind. The expression ‘analyzing something to death’ couldn’t be more appropriate than now. All potential progress seems to be continuously stalled with the belief that there is a need to generate more data to really understand the problems. Will we die as a species because of our mind’s obsession for analysis or will our hearts see through the smoke of insanity, put out the fires so that at some point, hopefully sooner than later, the mind will be able to see clearly through its confusion. Ultimately, the question is how will we individually and collectively deal with the problems currently facing humanity? This question is essentially addressed to the vast majority of humanity as most are suffering from the excessive greed that has swept the planet. There are countless ways one can contribute to the betterment of the world. It always starts with people taking one small step to make a difference. It starts with YOU! Never underestimate the power that one person has to change the world. The purpose of the book is threefold: to bring about an awareness of the current situation on the planet so that people can start to question their current paradigm and see how they feed into the problems rather than help solve them; to encourage a new level of personal responsibility that is necessary in any time of change or crisis; and provide information and tools to help in the transformational process by empowering people. The book is divided into three parts: Part 1: It’s All About Me, Isn’t It? – The Individual Part 2: What About the Others? – The Collective Part 3: Together – The Individual and the Collective Each part has a different number of chapters. The general book outline follows: Foreword: This part introduces why the book was written. The foreword sets the stage for what is to come in the book and encourages the reader to read right through as some chapters are more challenging than others and that the solutions proposed are spread throughout the book. Part 1: It’s All About Me, I
This book on medicinal plant biotechnology covers recent developments in this field. It includes a comprehensive up-to-date survey on established medicinal plants and on molecules which gained importance in recent years. No recently published book has covered these carefully selected topics. The contributing scientists have been selected on the basis of their involvement in the related plant material as evident by their internationally recognised published work.
In this book, Michel Innocent Peya focuses on "climate finance" and the withdrawal and return of the world's leading power, the United States, in the battle against climate change, by assessing its real financial impact in order to fight collectively against the ultimatum given by nature. The States are determined to take up the challenge and assume their responsibilities, as the Biden administration has done, in order to wage the "people's battle" against global warming and the perils that it may cause in the medium term. A vibrant appeal is launched to all the world's decision-makers as well as to state and non-state actors. As the years go by, the planet is experiencing rising temperatures and precipitation is constantly increasing. These are the results of a multiform pollution that threatens the existence of nations. Our beautiful nature is being devastated by greenhouse gas emissions and ever-increasing waste. The few world powers, those that can be qualified as major polluters, are few in number but threaten the balance of our system to the detriment of collective well-being. What will become of our planet, our environment, if the community of polluters continues to refuse to take its responsibilities?
This book presents current knowledge of seed fate in both natural and human-disturbed landscapes, from various regions of the world. Habitats considered range from mountain and arid deserts in the temperate zone, to savanna and lowland rainforests in tropical regions of the world. Particular attention is paid to plant diversity conservation when seed removal is affected by factors such as hunting, habitat fragmentation or intensive logging. Contributors include leading scientists involved in research on seed ecology and on animal-plant relationships from the perspective of both primary and secondary seed dispersal, and predation.
This atlas moves and transforms itself to explain the diverse nature of our planet. With pop-up charts of each continent, and individual countries and themes investigated, it provides a fun way for children to learn as they set off on a journey of discovery around the globe.
International Conference in Honor of Jean-Michel Combes on Transport and Spectral Problems in Quantum Mechanics, September 4-6, 2006, Université de Cergy-Pointoise, Cergy-Pointoise, France
International Conference in Honor of Jean-Michel Combes on Transport and Spectral Problems in Quantum Mechanics, September 4-6, 2006, Université de Cergy-Pointoise, Cergy-Pointoise, France
This volume consists of refereed research articles written by some of the speakers at this international conference in honor of the sixty-fifth birthday of Jean-Michel Combes. The topics span modern mathematical physics with contributions on state-of-the-art results in the theory of random operators, including localization for random Schrodinger operators with general probability measures, random magnetic Schrodinger operators, and interacting multiparticle operators with random potentials; transport properties of Schrodinger operators and classical Hamiltonian systems; equilibrium and nonequilibrium properties of open quantum systems; semiclassical methods for multiparticle systems and long-time evolution of wave packets; modeling of nanostructures; properties of eigenfunctions for first-order systems and solutions to the Ginzburg-Landau system; effective Hamiltonians for quantum resonances; quantum graphs, including scattering theory and trace formulas; random matrix theory; and quantum information theory. Graduate students and researchers will benefit from the accessibility of these articles and their current bibliographies.
Important advances in tropical plant breeding achieved by French research teams of Cirad, Inra and Ird, in collaboration with counterpart staff in tropical countries, are reviewed in the present publication. All 24 chapters focus on different plants, and include: in-depth analysis of trait diversity in cultivated forms and links with related wild species; overviews of breeding techniques and biotechnological innovations utilized by breeders; assessment of genetic progress, based on examples from varietal improvement and extension programmes.
The title of this timely and thought-provoking book, a French bestseller, refers to schoolgirls sending text messages to their friends on their smart phones. Michel Serres, one of France's most important living intellectuals, uses this image to get at something far broader: that humans are formed and shaped by technologies, and that with the advent of computers, smart phones, and the Internet, a new human is being born. These new humans beings are our children—thumbelina (petite poucette) and tom thumb (petit poucet)—but technologies have been changing so fast that parents scarcely know their children. Serres documents this cultural revolution, arguing that there have been several similar revolutions in the past: from oral cultures to cultures focused on reading and writing; the advent of the printing press; and now the complex changes brought about by the new information technologies—changes that are taking place at an accelerated pace and that affect us all.
Location: Outpost Station 9: Mission: Water Salvage: Log: 141C Tranquility was one of those out the way planets in a system far out of reach from the normal space lanes. Loners, dreamers ...whoever they were, chose to colonize this world. Thirty cycles ago something went terribly wrong. It was rumored their terraformer reactor went critical, and few escaped the chain reaction that clouded the atmosphere with a planet-wide sand storm. A decade of hard labor evaporated overnight. What wasn't buried under the ocean of sand was left to fry under the twin suns. Human explorers began to wander back into the forgotten zone. No one knew of the machines that had evolved. or the war that raged beyond the edge of the universe ...where mankind did not belong.
Michel François a combiné une multitude d'éléments apparemment disparates dans un livre : êtres humains et animaux, objets organiques et artificiels composés de matériaux en tous genres. Cet ouvrage présente à la fois son art de la photo et les photos de son art.
What should we learn from Martian Chronicles, this seminal classic of science fiction? Find everything you need to know about this work in a complete and detailed analysis. You will find in particular in this sheet: - A complete summary - A presentation of the main characters such as Captain Wilder and Jeff Spender - An analysis of the specificities of the work : The science fiction as a total literary genre; An acerbic rereading of the colonization of America; A pacifist and humanist novel A reference analysis to quickly understand the meaning of the work.
this book is devoted to the Congo basin, the second largest reserve in the world: its natural ressources, its mysteries, legal and institutional framworks, national, subregional and international levels that protect it. The basin of Congo is an African opportunity for the whole world. its preservation and its protection over time are an action of conscience, will, commitment, determination ans sacrifies for the benefit of humanity.
What is ecology-and how can you help save the planet? Do you know how many litres of water are wasted if a tap drips for one day? Which gases make up the earth's atmosphere? Is nuclear power good or bad? Ecology looks at the relationship between living things and the environment. This book shows why we should take care of our environment-and how understanding ecology can help save the earth. This series has been published in 12 languages including several outside Europe. The translation is relevant to the southern hemisphere and will be suitable for use in New Zealand schools
Every man should be a dreamer. Every man has a conception of his ideal world. The Ecology Defence and Environment Nursing (EDEN) brought its author to a blank drawing board. The activist group joined as a nation, survived a nuclear holocaust, and rebuilt the country from the ruins of the planet. The challenge repeats itself when humankind is forced to flee the doomed solar system from an incoming danger. In various galactic environments, often hostile, will humankind survive? Will men return to warfare measures against one another as the number of colonies multiply on foreign planets? Will the human race maintain common values despite the growing distance between their frontiers? Will they return to a double-faced justice system to match the color of the day? As foreign civilizations unite, this last volume of The Eden Democratic Kingdom trilogy keeps the door open to another adventure series: The Eden Galactic Confederation.
Jointly published with INRA, Paris. The use of haploid plants is of increasing importance in plant biology and plant breeding. This book illustrates how the advances in plant molecular and cell biology provide an exciting means for the analysis of androgenesis in terms of pollen development and the initiation of embryogenesis. It provides both an appraisal of techniques and their practical application, and is the most up-to-date source of information about the biology of gametophytes.
If you're aware of the tremendous improvements achieved in productivity and quality as a result of employee involvement, then you'll appreciate the great value of creating a visual factory. This book explains why conventional work areas, where fragmented information flows from "top to bottom," must be replaced by the "visual workplace," where information flows in every direction. It details how visual management can make the factory a place where workers and supervisors freely communicate so that every employee can take improvement action. The author's year-long worldwide research resulted in an abundance of practical recommendations. The communication techniques he suggests will: Foster cohesion within groups of employees. Turn fault-based into fact based communication. Overcome such problems as absenteeism and high defect rates. Stimulate an unending flow of suggestions from employees. A valuable resource for plant, operations, and human relations managers, this text discusses how successful companies develop meeting and communication areas, communicate work standard production controls such as kanban, and make goals and progress visible. Over 200 diagrams and photos illustrate the numerous visual techniques discussed.
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