Anton (writing, DePaul U.) synthesizes the research he has done since the beginning on the still-unsolved May 1991 murder of Chicago Divinity School professor Ioan Culianu, a protege of pioneering mythologist Mircea Eliade. Culianu had been taunting the communist government of his native Romania, and Anton suggests the murder was political. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
A new science is reengineering the fabric of life. Synthetic biology offers bold new ways of manufacturing medicines, clothing, foods, fragrances, and fuels, often using microbe fermentation, much like brewing beer. The technology can help confront climate change, break down industrial pollutants, and fight novel viruses. Today, researchers are manipulating life forms and automating evolution to create vegetarian “meat,” renewable construction materials, and cancer treatments. In the process, they are changing our concept of what life science can achieve. Is this a new industrial and information revolution—or dangerous tinkering that could unleash unintended consequences? Programmable Planet is a grand tour through the world of synthetic biology, telling the stories of the colorful visionaries whose ideas are shaping discoveries. Ted Anton explores the field from its beginning in fighting malaria in Africa to the COVID vaccines and beyond. Covering medical and agricultural triumphs and blunders, he examines successes in energy production, plant gene editing, and chemical manufacturing, as well as the most controversial attempts at human gene enhancement. This book reports from the front lines of research, showing policy makers’ struggle to stay abreast of the technologies they aim to regulate. Even-handed, lively, and informative, Programmable Planet gives a glimpse of the promise and problems of a new biology-based industry.
Science is at a crossroads. Cold War-era easy money for grand-scale projects has become a thing of the past. And yet, in this new environment, science seems to be reinvigorating itself, moving away from an overly specialized, bureaucratic mindset to a more streamlined, multidisciplinary approach. In a number of fields, innovative teams led by gifted researchers are combining imaginative methods with inexpensive tools to chip away at the previously impenetrable secrets of the body, the mind, the planet, and the universe. In the process, they are demonstrating the same kind of inspired drive toward discovery that led Galileo to invent the telescope. Bold Science examines this "scientific new wave" by profiling the work of some remarkable researchers: gene hunter Craig Venter, neuroscientist Susan Greenfield, astronomer Geoffrey Marcy, immunologist Polly Matzinger, cosmologist Saul Perlmutter, ecologist Gretchen Daily, and evolutionist Carl Woese. Headstrong, iconoclastic, visionary, these scientists have risen to the pinnacles of their fields at a pivotal moment—and are producing amazing breakthroughs with bold, sometimes controversial methods. In exploring their scientific lives and times, Bold Science shows readers why we are at the dawning of a new era of understanding ourselves and our universe.
People have searched for the fountain of youth everywhere from Bimini to St. Augustine. But for a steadfast group of scientists, the secret to a long life lies elsewhere: in the lowly lab worm. By suppressing the function of just a few key genes, these scientists were able to lengthen worms’ lifespans up to tenfold, while also controlling the onset of many of the physical problems that beset old age. As the global population ages, the potential impact of this discovery on society is vast—as is the potential for profit. With The Longevity Seekers, science writer Ted Anton takes readers inside this tale that began with worms and branched out to snare innovative minds from California to Crete, investments from big biotech, and endorsements from TV personalities like Oprah and Dr. Oz. Some of the research was remarkable, such as the discovery of an enzyme in humans that stops cells from aging. And some, like an oft-cited study touting the compound resveratrol, found in red wine—proved highly controversial, igniting a science war over truth, credit, and potential profit. As the pace of discovery accelerated, so too did powerful personal rivalries and public fascination, driven by the hope that a longer, healthier life was right around the corner. Anton has spent years interviewing and working with the scientists at the frontier of longevity science, and this book offers a behind-the-scenes look at the state-of-the-art research and the impact it might have on global public health, society, and even our friends and family. With spectacular science and an unforgettable cast of characters, The Longevity Seekers has all the elements of a great story and sheds light on discoveriesthat could fundamentally reshape human life.
This book takes readers into the latest discoveries about early microbial life, where findings from the earth's furthest extremes are seeking to reshape the future of our planet and ourselves. As scientists take the next step in applying the lessons of popular and controversial research, the world's tiniest, and sometimes most dangerous, microorganisms are being tapped as allies in achieving better health and sustainable energy, while revealing fundamental clues to the mystery of where we came from.--Provided by publisher.
From the fertile crescent to the far east, the great adventures of Holmes and Watson during the three-year gap between Holmes's "death" and his dramatic return. What exactly happened during Sherlock Holmes's “great hiatus” after his supposed death and triumphant return three years later? Riccardi images his travels in Europe and Asia during those years in nine original short stories set in places as far flung as Sumatra and Tibet. Given the uncertain grip of the British empire over its colonies, the murders and other mayhem Holmes confronts often have potentially grave political repercussions. Filled with local color and Holmes’ signature wit and logic, Sherlockians the world over will relish this missing chapter in the life of the world’s greatest detective.
Dive deep into the stories that began it all. Ted Dekker's first novels--collected together for the first time. This trilogy is the collection of three gripping, psychological thrillers that peel back the skin of this world to reveal a supernatural reality rarely seen. A daring wager of life and death in Denver. An unfathomable leap of faith in a small Balkan village near the end of WWII. A global struggle for power that begins deep in the Amazon jungle. All three stories are bound together by one family's timeless, harrowing discovery of love and all that is unseen. The Heaven Trilogy offers a window into a world more real and vital than most people ever discover here on earth. A hidden world where the real dramas of the universe--and our daily lives--continually unfold. "Well, well, well, guess what I've found. A fiction writer with a rare knack for a compelling story. Expansive...Clever...A provocative read." --Best-selling author Frank Peretti for Heaven's Wager "Don't miss this book. Don't miss this author's writing. And don't miss the point. Beautiful and suspenseful. I'll have to read this one agian."--Eric Wilson, author of the Jerusalem Unded Trilgoy, for When Heaven Weeps
A great writer' 'A music journalist of integrity' 'There's only one Ted Kessler!' Paul Weller Billy Childish Liam Gallagher Paper Cuts is the inside story of the slow death of the British music press. But it's also a love letter to it, the tale of how music magazines saved one man's life. Ted Kessler left home and school around his seventeenth birthday, determined 'to be someone who listened to music professionally'. Paper Cuts tells how Kessler found redemption through music and writing and takes us on a journey alongside the stars he interviewed and the work-place dramas he navigated as a senior staffer at NME through the boom-time '90s and on to the monthly Q in 2004, where he worked for sixteen years before it folded with him at its helm as editor in 2020. We travel in time alongside musical heroes Paul Weller, Kevin Rowland, Mark E Smith, and to Cuba twice, first with Shaun Ryder and Bez, then with Manic Street Preachers. We spend long, mad nights out with Oasis and The Strokes, quality time with Jeff Buckley and Florence Welch, and watch Radiohead deliver cold revenge upon Kessler in public. A story about love and death, about what it's like when a music writer shacks up with a conflict of interest, and what happens when your younger brother starts appearing on the cover of the magazines you work for, this is the memoir of "a delinquent doofus" whose life was both rescued and defined by music magazines.
A practical and expertly illustrated field guide to over one hundred grasses, sedges, and rushes "No one will be able to claim that the identification of grasses, sedges, and rushes, which are of fundamental importance both environmentally and economically, are simply 'too difficult' after they have learned to use this excellent guide."--Peter Raven, President Emeritus, Missouri Botanical Garden This elegant and easy-to-use guide is an updated and amended revision of Lauren Brown's seminal Grasses: An Identification Guide, which was first published in 1979. While maintaining the spirit and goals of the original edition--a portable, straightforward, and user-friendly guide for naturalists and plant enthusiasts--the new edition features more than one hundred grasses, sedges, and rushes that are presented with line drawings and color photographs, concise descriptions, and details on the uses of various plants throughout history. In addition, the authors are careful to highlight the subtle differences in similar species to avoid confusion, as well as offering relevant notes on plant survival strategies, invasiveness, and how different plants fit within the broader ecological landscape. Devoid of technical jargon, this volume is an indispensable tool for those curious about the often-overlooked grasses, sedges, and rushes that surround us.
An update and revised guide by the host of National Public Radio's Performance Today recommends the best recordings of the three hundred most important classical works, and provides background information on each composer. Original.
If you thought Sherlock Holmes was dead—think again . . . Sherlock Holmes’s fatal plunge over the Reichenbach Falls during his struggle with his archenemy, Moriarty, has been widely reported. But Holmes escaped and is still alive. In his immediate circle, only Holmes’s brother, the lethargic genius Mycroft, knows of his survival. Even Dr. Watson thinks the great detective is gone. But among his enemies, Sebastian Moran, Moriarty’s chief henchman, knows of Holmes’s probable escape and waits for their inevitable meeting. From 1891 to 1894, Holmes wanders through Asia alone, armed only with his physical strength and endurance and his revered cold logic and rationality . . . For Holmes’s fans throughout the world, these stories fill an enigmatic gap, the cause of so much speculation in the great detective’s career. “Mischievous, cunning and magnetically fascinating, Sherlock Holmes’ lost meanderings in the Far East are richly rewarding for Holmes fans, armchair travellers and historians alike. Ted Riccardi conjures up the quirky, beloved detective’s missing years solving intoxicatingly labyrinthine puzzles amidst the devilry of The Great Game.” —Isabella Tree, award-winning author and conservationist
The Microbrewing scene has changed beyond recognition since this book was first published in 2007. The number of small independent breweries throughout the UK is now at over 2,000, with more opening every month. This handbook guides you through the practicalities of starting your own microbrewery; from how to brew, through to finding a place of your own.
From the author of Exhalation, an award-winning short story collection that blends "absorbing storytelling with meditations on the universe, being, time and space ... raises questions about the nature of reality and what it is to be human" (The New York Times). Stories of Your Life and Others delivers dual delights of the very, very strange and the heartbreakingly familiar, often presenting characters who must confront sudden change—the inevitable rise of automatons or the appearance of aliens—with some sense of normalcy. With sharp intelligence and humor, Chiang examines what it means to be alive in a world marked by uncertainty, but also by beauty and wonder. An award-winning collection from one of today's most lauded writers, Stories of Your Life and Others is a contemporary classic. Includes “Story of Your Life”—the basis for the major motion picture Arrival
Ludvig Korotski is the ex-station head of the KGB in Berlin. He is approached by an old adversary who offers him a contract to to kill people in Britain. All is going well until one of his agents tries to kill ex-SAS Colonel Harriman...
A collection of science fiction short stories, including "Story of Your Life," in which a linguist's insight into the language of alien lifeforms on Earth and its nonlinear structure help her deal with her divorce and death of her daughter."--Publisher.
This new book by Lyubov Mincheva and Ted Gurr examines the political economy of transborder violence on the European Periphery that poses grave threats to domestic and international security in Europe and elsewhere. The units of analysis are unholy alliances, i.e. hybrid transborder militant and criminal networks, which have been active in the 1990s and the first decade of the 2000s. The concept of Unholy Alliances is extended to also include the trans-state criminal syndicates that arise in failed and dysfunctional states, or operate within the global illicit economy. It also addresses the question of what reigns supreme in securing the militants' long term success: money; or social endowment, including strong identity networks
Previously published as Stories of Your Life and Others. Includes "Story Of Your Life," the basis for the major motion picture Arrival, starring Amy Adams, Forest Whitaker, Jeremy Renner, and directed by Denis Villeneuve. “A swell movie adaptation always sends me to the source material, so Arrival had me pick up Ted Chiang's Stories of Your Life and Others: lean, relentless, and incandescent.” —Colson Whitehead, GQ Ted Chiang has long been known as one of the most powerful science fiction writers working today. Offering readers the dual delights of the very strange and the heartbreakingly familiar, Arrival presents characters who must confront sudden change. In "Story of Your Life," which provides the basis for the film Arrival, alien lifeforms suddenly appear on Earth. When a linguist is brought in to help communicate with them and discern their intentions, her new knowledge of their language and its nonlinear structure allows her to see future events and all the joy and pain they may bring. In each story of this incredible collection, with sharp intelligence and humor, Ted Chiang examines what it means to be alive in a world marked by uncertainty, but also by wonder.
Sin. Many Christians today have lost the ability to talk about it in personal terms. For the last quarter century the theological establishment, like society, has consigned the human predicament to structures of political and economic oppression or to systemic evil such as race and gender discrimination. In the process, people have lost interest in the internal workings of the human soul, attributing the evils of our world to social forces beyond the scope of personal responsibility.
Many of the oldest and largest Western cities today are undergoing massive economic decline. The State and the City deals with a key issue in the political economy of cities—the role of the state. Ted Robert Gurr and Desmond S. King argue that theoreticians from both the left and the right have underestimated the significance of state action for cities. Grounding theory in empirical evidence, they argue that policies of the local and national state have a major impact on urban well-being. Gurr and King's analysis assumes modern states have their own interests, institutional momentum, and the capacity to act with relative autonomy. Their historically based analysis begins with an account of the evolution of the Western state's interest in the viability of cities since the industrial revolution. Their agument extends to the local level, examining the nature of the local state and its autonomy from national political and economic forces. Using cross-national evidence, Gurr and King examine specific problems of urban policy in the United States and Britain. In the United States, for example, they show how the dramatic increases in federal assistance to cities in the 1930s and the 1960s were made in response to urban crises, which simultaneously threatened national interests and offered opportunities for federal expansion of power. As a result, national and local states now play significant material and regulatory roles that can have as much impact on cities as all private economic activities. A comparative analysis of thirteen American cities reflects the range and impact of the state's activities at the urban level. Boston, they argue, has become the archetypical postindustrial public city: half of its population and personal income are directly dependent on government spending. While Gurr and King are careful to delineate the limits to the extent and effectiveness of state intervention, they conclude that these limits are much broader than formerly thought. Ultimately, their evidence suggests that the continued decline of most of the old industrial cities is the result of public decisions to allow their economic fate to be determined in the private sector.
Yeatman has created a thorough narrative that will be satisfying to readers who know little about the James brothers and those who have read everything about them. Included are 32 pages of rare illustrations and photos of the people, places, and artifacts associated with the notorious James bandits.
TEMPORARY Bergman looks at the representation of criminals in early modern Spanish theatre and the connection between criminality, the portrayal of criminal heroes on stage, and public displays of law enforcement within and outside the playhouse. His main purpose is to see to how Baroque spectacle (a term of art in theatre that refers to a particular event, often in expressions of popular culture) appears either to align itself, work against, or be independent of the social means of control of the day. His main argument is that that the propaganda power of early modern Spanish spectacle has been vastly overstated. Ted L. L. Bergman is a Lecturer in Spanish, University of St Andrews.
All of a sudden I was moving faster than usual. The other passengers standing on the subway platform seemed rooted to their places. It took me only seconds to reach the top of the six flights of stairs, and then I was out of the station and moving down Fulton Street at better than forty miles an hour! What was happening to me? It was as though I were the helpless passenger in a runaway car. Something else had assumed control and was guiding me. My body turned into an office building and raced down the corridor to a room where a man was sitting at a console. He'd begun to swing around in his chair when my mouth opened, and a thin, blood-red ray shot out, cleaving the man from head to abdomen. Then it was over. My mouth closed, and I stood there, stunned. Up to today I was Bob Tanner, an average, sane Citizen. Now what was I, man or murder machine?
A rich and imaginative discovery of how ink has shaped culture and why it is here to stay. Ink is so much a part of daily life that we take it for granted, yet its invention was as significant as the wheel. Ink not only recorded culture, it bought political power, divided peoples, and led to murderous rivalries. Ancient letters on a page were revered as divine light, and precious ink recipes were held secret for centuries. And, when it first hit markets not so long ago, the excitement over the disposable ballpoint pen equalled that for a new smartphone—with similar complaints to the manufacturers. Curious about its impact on culture, literature, and the course of history, Ted Bishop sets out to explore the story of ink. From Budapest to Buenos Aires, he traces the lives of the innovators who created the ballpoint pen—revolutionary technology that still requires exact engineering today. Bishop visits a ranch in Utah to meet a master ink-maker who relishes igniting linseed oil to make traditional printers' ink. In China, he learns that ink can be an exquisite object, the subject of poetry, and a means of strengthening (or straining) family bonds. And in the Middle East, he sees the world's oldest Qur'an, stained with the blood of the caliph who was assassinated while reading it. An inquisitive and personal tour around the world, Ink asks us to look more closely at something we see so often that we don't see it at all.
Artistic Creation and Ethical Criticism, a study in philosophical aesthetics, investigates an idea that underpins the ethical criticism of art but that is rarely acknowledged and poorly understood - namely, that the ethical criticism of art involves judgments not only of the attitudes a work endorses or solicits, but of what artists do to create the work. The book pioneers an innovative production-oriented approach to the study of the ethical criticism of art - one that will provide a detailed philosophical account of the intersection of ethics and artistic creation as well as conceptual tools that can guide future philosophizing and criticism. Ted Nannicelli offers three arguments concerning the ethical criticism of art. First, he argues that judgments of an artwork's ethical value are already often made in terms of how it was created, and examines why some art forms more readily lend themselves to this form of ethical appraisal than others. He then asserts that production-oriented evaluations of artworks are less contested than other sorts of ethical criticism and so lead to certain practical consequences-from censure, dismissal, and prosecution to shifts in policy and even legislation. Finally, Nannicelli defends the production-oriented approach, arguing that it is not only tacit in many of our art appreciative practices, but is in fact rationally warranted. There are many cases in which we should ethically critique artworks in terms of how they are created because this approach handles cases that other approaches cannot and results in plausible judgments about the works' relative ethical and artistic value. The concise, powerful arguments presented here will appeal to moral philosophers, philosophers of art and aesthetics, and critics interested in the intersection of artistic production and criticism and ethics.
Turn blah photos into dazzling images Photoshop Elements offers enough of the power you’ll find in full Photoshop to make both basic and artistic edits to your photos. Photoshop Elements 2019 For Dummies helps you learn how to use Photoshop Elements to take your shots to stunning new heights! Photoshop Elements 2019 For Dummies offers photographers of all skill levels the power to turn run-of-the-mill digital pictures into beautiful photographs. This friendly and helpful guidebook directs you on how to harness all the tools this powerful software has to offer. Simple explanations for handling image editing Steps for giving your photos a digital makeover Ways to turn your photos into works of art Guidance on fixing your pics with one click No matter if you're a photo editing newcomer looking for advice on making the most common fixes or an experienced editor in need of a road map to this version of Photoshop Elements, this book has you covered!
American leaders have cooperated with regimes around the world that are, to varying degrees, repressive or corrupt. Such cooperation is said to serve the national interest. But these partnerships also contravene the nation’s commitments to democratic governance, civil liberties, and free markets. During the Cold War, policymakers were casual about sacrificing important values for less-than-compelling strategic rationales. Since the 9/11 attacks, similar ethical compromises have taken place, although policymakers now seem more selective than their Cold War–era counterparts. Americans want a foreign policy that pursues national interests while observing American values. How might that reconciliation of interest and morality be accomplished? In Perilous Partners, authors Ted Galen Carpenter and Malou Innocent provide a strategy for resolving the ethical dilemmas between interests and values faced by Washington. They propose maintaining an arm’s-length relationship with authoritarian regimes, emphasizing that the United States must not operate internationally in ways that routinely pollute American values. It is a strategy based on ethical pragmatism, which is the best way to reconcile America’s strategic interests and its fundamental values. Perilous Partners creates a strategy for conducting an effective U.S. foreign policy without betraying fundamental American values.
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