Author : P. Kabat
Genre : Bioclimatology
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN : 3540424008
Type book : PDF, Epub, Kindle and Mobi
File Download : 598 page
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This book presents a state-of-the-art scientific overview of the influence of terrestrial vegetation and soils within the Earth system. It deals especially with interactions between the terrestrial biosphere and the atmosphere via the hydrological cycle and their interlinkage with anthropogenic activities. Measurements gathered in integrated field experiments in the Sahel, the Amazon, North America and South-east Asia confirm the importance of these interactions, but a substantial data consolidation effort still needs to be undertaken. Observations are complemented by modelling studies, including regional models that simulate flows and transport in river catchments, coupled land-cover and regional climate systems, and Earth-system and global circulation models. Water, nutrient and sediment fluxes in river basins are also discussed and are shown to be highly impacted and regulated by humans through land use, pollution and river engineering. Finally, the book discusses environmental vulnerability and methodologies for assessing the risks associated with regional and global climatic and environmental variability and change.The editors emphasise that the results reported in this book are based on the research work of many individual scientists and teams around the world associated with the objectives of the IGBP-BAHC and WCRP-GEWEX international research programmes.

Author : David Burden
Genre : Computers
Publisher : CRC Press
ISBN : 9781351365260
Type book : PDF, Epub, Kindle and Mobi
File Download : 308 page
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Virtual Humans provides a much-needed definition of what constitutes a ‘virtual human’ and places virtual humans within the wider context of Artificial Intelligence development. It explores the technical approaches to creating a virtual human, as well as emergent issues such as embodiment, identity, agency and digital immortality, and the resulting ethical challenges. The book presents an overview of current research and practice in this area, and outlines the major challenges faced by today’s developers and researchers. The book examines the possibility for using virtual humans in a variety of roles, from personal assistants to teaching, coaching and knowledge management, and the book situates these discussions around familiar applications (e.g. Siri, Cortana, Alexa) and the portrayal of virtual humans within Science Fiction. Features Presents a comprehensive overview of this rapidly developing field Provides an array of relevant, real-life examples from expert practitioners and researchers from around the globe in how to create the avatar body, mind, senses and ability to communicate Intends to be broad in scope yet practical in approach, so that it can serve the needs of several different audiences, including researchers, teachers, developers and anyone with an interest in where these technologies might take us Covers a wide variety of issues which have been neglected in other research texts; for example, definitions and taxonomies, the ethical challenges of virtual humans and issues around digital immortality Includes numerous examples and extensive references

Author : Fred H. Smith
Genre : Science
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
ISBN : 9781118659908
Type book : PDF, Epub, Kindle and Mobi
File Download : 480 page
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This update to the award-winning The Origins of ModernHumans: A World Survey of the Fossil Evidence covers the mostaccepted common theories concerning the emergence of modern Homosapiens—adding fresh insight from top young scholars onthe key new discoveries of the past 25 years. The Origins of Modern Humans: Biology Reconsidered allowsfield leaders to discuss and assess the assemblage of hominidfossil material in each region of the world during the Pleistoceneepoch. It features new fossil and molecular evidence, such as theevolutionary inferences drawn from assessments of modern humans andlarge segments of the Neandertal genome. It also addresses theimpact of digital imagery and the more sophisticated morphometricsthat have entered the analytical fray since 1984. Beginning with a thoughtful introduction by the authors onmodern human origins, the book offers such insightful chaptercontributions as: Africa: The Cradle of Modern People Crossroads of the Old World: Late Hominin Evolution in WesternAsia A River Runs through It: Modern Human Origins in East Asia Perspectives on the Origins of Modern Australians Modern Human Origins in Central Europe The Makers of the Early Upper Paleolithic in WesternEurasia Neandertal Craniofacial Growth and Development and ItsRelevance for Modern Human Origins Energetics and the Origin of Modern Humans Understanding Human Cranial Variation in Light of Modern HumanOrigins The Relevance of Archaic Genomes to Modern Human Origins The Process of Modern Human Origins: The Evolutionary andDemographic Changes Giving Rise to Modern Humans The Paleobiology of Modern Human Emergence Elegant and thought provoking, The Origins of Modern Humans:Biology Reconsidered is an ideal read for students, gradstudents, and professionals in human evolution andpaleoanthropology.

Author : Scott Solomon
Genre : Social Science
Publisher : Yale University Press
ISBN : 9780300224504
Type book : PDF, Epub, Kindle and Mobi
File Download : 240 page
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An evolutionary biologist provides surprising insights into the changing nature of Homo sapiens in this “important and an entertaining read" (Choice). In Future Humans, evolutionary biologist Scott Solomon draws on recent discoveries to examine the future evolution of our species. Combining knowledge of our past with current trends, Solomon offers convincing evidence that evolutionary forces are still affecting us today. But how will modernization—including longer lifespans, changing diets, global travel, and widespread use of medicine and contraceptives—affect our evolutionary future? Solomon presents an entertaining and accessible review of the latest research on human evolution in modern times, drawing on fields from genomics to medicine and the study of our microbiome. Drawing together topics ranging from the rise of online dating and Cesarean sections to the spread of diseases such as HIV and Ebola, Solomon suggests that we are entering a new phase in human evolutionary history—one that makes the future less predictable and more interesting than ever before.

Author : Julie Urbanik
Genre : Nature
Publisher : ABC-CLIO
ISBN : 9781440838354
Type book : PDF, Epub, Kindle and Mobi
File Download : 466 page
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An engaging and at times sobering look at the coexistence of humans and animals in the 21st century and how their sometimes disparate needs affect environments, politics, economies, and culture worldwide. • Includes excerpts from 20 primary source documents related to animals • Offers a comprehensive look at a variety of aspects of human-animal relationships • Discusses how human actions affect the survival of other species, such as the northern spotted owl and bluefin tuna

Author : Michael Jenkins
Genre : Business & Economics
Publisher : Emerald Group Publishing
ISBN : 9781800712621
Type book : PDF, Epub, Kindle and Mobi
File Download : 220 page
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Expert Humans: Critical Leadership Skills for a Disrupted World examines the critical leadership concepts of Altruism, Compassion and Empathy (ACE) and their application to the great disruptors of today.

Author : Kristin Asdal
Genre : Social Science
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN : 9781317119432
Type book : PDF, Epub, Kindle and Mobi
File Download : 198 page
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Human-animal co-existence is central to a politics of life, how we order societies, and to debates about who ’we’ humans think ’we’ are. In other words, our ways of understanding and ordering human-animal relations have economic and political implications and affect peoples’ everyday lives. By bringing together historically-oriented approaches and contemporary ethnographies which engage with science and technology studies (STS), this book reflects the multi-sited, multi-species, multi-logic and multiple ways in which lives are and have been assembled, disassembled, practised and possibly policed and politicized. Instead of asking only how control and knowledge are and have been extended over life, the chapters in this book also look at what happens when control fails, at practices which defy orders, escape detection, fail to produce or only loosely hang together. In doing so the book problematises and extends the Foucauldian notion of biopolitics that has been such a central analytical concept in studies of human-animal relations and provides a unique resource of cases and theoretical refinements regarding the ways in which we live together with more than human others .

Author : Cecily Maller
Genre : Social Science
Publisher : Springer
ISBN : 9783319921891
Type book : PDF, Epub, Kindle and Mobi
File Download : 272 page
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The robots are coming! So too is the ‘age of automation’, the march of ‘invasive’ species, more intense natural disasters, and a potential cataclysm of other unprecedented events and phenomena of which we do not yet know, and cannot predict. This book is concerned with how to account for these non-humans and their effects within theories of social practice. In particular, this provocative collection tackles contemporary debates about the roles, relations and agencies of constantly changing, disruptive, intelligent or otherwise 'dynamic' non-humans, such as weather, animals and automated devices. In doing so contributors challenge and take forward existing understandings of dynamic non-humans in theories of social practice by reconsidering their potential roles in everyday life. The book will benefit sociology, geography, science and technology studies, and human- (and animal-) computer interaction design scholars seeking to make sense of the complex entanglement of non-human phenomena and things in the performance of social practices.

Author : Michael Hauskeller
Genre : Philosophy
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN : 9781317547174
Type book : PDF, Epub, Kindle and Mobi
File Download : 240 page
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Developments in medical science have afforded us the opportunity to improve and enhance the human species in ways unthinkable to previous generations. Whether it's making changes to mitochondrial DNA in a human egg, being prescribed Prozac, or having a facelift, our desire to live longer, feel better and look good has presented philosophers, medical practitioners and policy-makers with considerable ethical challenges. But what exactly constitutes human improvement? What do we mean when we talk of making "better" humans? In this book Michael Hauskeller explores these questions and the ideas of human good that underpin them. Posing some challenging questions about the nature of human enhancement, he interrogates the logic behind its processes and examines the justifications behind its criteria. Questioning common assumptions about what constitutes human improvement, Hauskeller asks whether the criteria proposed by its advocates are convincing. The book draws on recent research as well as popular representations of human enhancement from advertising to the internet, and provides a non-technical and accessible survey of the issues for readers and students interested in the ethics and politics of human enhancement.

Author : Thomas S. Bianchi
Genre : Science
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN : 9780199764174
Type book : PDF, Epub, Kindle and Mobi
File Download : 185 page
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Humans have had a long relationship with the ebb and flow of tides on river deltas around the world. The fertile soils of river deltas provided early human civilizations with a means of farming crops and obtaining seafood from the highly productive marshes and shallow coastal waters associated with deltas. However, this relationship has at times been both nurturing and tumultuous for the development of early civilizations. The vicissitudes of seasonal changes in river flooding events as well as frequently shifting deltaic soils made life for these early human settlements challenging. These natural transient processes that affect the supply of sediments to deltas today are in many ways very similar to what they have been over the millennia of human settlements. But something else has been altered in the natural rhythm of these cycles. The massive expansion of human populations around the world in both the lower and upper drainage basins of these large rivers have changed the manner in which sediments and water are delivered to deltas. Because of the high density of human populations found in these regions, humans have developed elaborate hydrological engineering schemes in an attempt to "tame" these deltas. The goal of this book is to provide information on the historical relationship between humans and deltas that will hopefully encourage immediate preparation for coastal management plans in response to the impending inundation of major cities, as a result of global change around the world.