Download or read book The Novel and the Multispecies Soundscape written by Ben De Bruyn and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-05-23 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The contemporary novel is not as silent as we tend to believe, nor does it only attend to human plots and characters. As this book shows, writers in a range of subgenres have devoted considerable attention to the voices of nonhuman animals, and to the histories and technologies of listening that shape twenty-first-century cultures and environments. In doing so, their multispecies novels illuminate the cultural meanings we attach to creatures like dogs, frogs, whales, chimpanzees, and Tasmanian tigers – not to mention various bird species and even plants. At the same time, these stories explore the attitudes of distinct communities of human listeners, ranging from vets and musicians to chimp caretakers and sonar technicians. In highlighting animal sounds and their cultural meanings, these novels by authors including Amitav Ghosh, Julia Leigh, Richard Powers, Karen Joy Fowler, Cormac McCarthy, and Han Kang also enrich pressing debates about species extinction, sound pollution, nonhuman communication, and human-animal relations. As we are violently reshaping the planet, they invite us to reimagine our own humanity and animality – and to rethink how we tell stories about multispecies contact zones and their complex soundscapes.
Download or read book Machine Learning Paradigm for Internet of Things Applications written by Shalli Rani and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2022-02-16 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: MACHINE LEARNING PARADIGM FOR INTERNET OF THINGS APPLICATIONS As companies globally realize the revolutionary potential of the IoT, they have started finding a number of obstacles they need to address to leverage it efficiently. Many businesses and industries use machine learning to exploit the IoT’s potential and this book brings clarity to the issue. Machine learning (ML) is the key tool for fast processing and decision-making applied to smart city applications and next-generation IoT devices, which require ML to satisfy their working objective. Machine learning has become a common subject to all people like engineers, doctors, pharmacy companies, and business people. The book addresses the problem and new algorithms, their accuracy, and their fitness ratio for existing real-time problems. Machine Learning Paradigm for Internet of Thing Applications provides the state-of-the-art applications of machine learning in an IoT environment. The most common use cases for machine learning and IoT data are predictive maintenance, followed by analyzing CCTV surveillance, smart home applications, smart-healthcare, in-store ‘contextualized marketing’, and intelligent transportation systems. Readers will gain an insight into the integration of machine learning with IoT in these various application domains.
Download or read book Planetary Memory in Contemporary American Fiction written by Lucy Bond and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-10-23 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book considers the ways in which contemporary American fiction seeks to imagine a mode of ‘planetary memory’ able to address the scalar and systemic complexities of the Anthropocene – the epoch in which the combined activity of the human species has become a geological force in its own right. Authors examine the recent emergence of a literary and cultural imaginary of planetary memory, an imaginary which attempts to give form to the complex interrelations between human and non-human worlds, between local, national, and global concerns, and, perhaps most importantly, between historical and geological pasts, presents and futures. Chapters highlight distinct regions and landscapes of the US - from the Appalachians, to the South West, the Rust Belt, New York City, Alaska, New Orleans and the Rocky Mountains – in order to examine how the ecological, economic and historical specificity of these environments is underpinned by their implication on networks of planetary significance and scope. Overall, the collection aims to study, develop, and recognise new models of cultural memory and anxious anticipation as they emerge and evolve, thus opening new conversations about practices of remembering and remembrance on an increasingly fragile planet. This book was originally published as a special issue of Textual Practice.
Download or read book Life Re Scaled written by Liliane Campos and published by Open Book Publishers. This book was released on 2022-10-11 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This edited volume explores new engagements with the life sciences in contemporary fiction, poetry, comics and performance. The gathered case studies investigate how recent creative work reframes the human within microscopic or macroscopic scales, from cellular biology to systems ecology, and engages with the ethical, philosophical, and political issues raised by the twenty-first century’s shifting views of life. The collection thus examines literature and performance as spaces that shape our contemporary biological imagination. Comprised of thirteen chapters by an international group of academics, Life, Re-Scaled: The Biological Imagination in Twenty-First-Century Literature and Performance engages with four main areas of biological study: ‘Invisible scales: cells, microbes and mycelium’, ‘Neuro-medical imaging and diagnosis’, ‘Pandemic imaginaries’, and ‘Ecological scales’. The authors examine these concepts in emerging forms such as plant theatre, climate change art, ecofiction and pandemic fiction, including the work of Jeff Vandermeer, Jon McGregor, Jeff Lemire, and Extinction Rebellion’s Red Rebel Brigade performances. This valuable resource moves beyond the biological paradigms that were central to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, to outline the specificity of a contemporary imagination. Life, Re-Scaled is crucial reading for academics, scholars, and authors alike, as it proposes an unprecedented overview of the relationship between literature, performance and the life sciences in the twenty-first century.
Download or read book Stethoscope written by Anna Harris and published by Reaktion Books. This book was released on 2022-11-28 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A surprising investigation of a scientific instrument long at the pulse of medicine. This book explores the colorful past, present, and future of an instrument that is, quite literally, close to our hearts. The stethoscope has become the symbol of medicine itself—how did this come to be? What makes the stethoscope such a familiar yet charismatic object? Drawing from a range of fields including history, anthropology, science, technology, and sound studies, the book illustrates the variety of roles the stethoscope has played over time. It shows that the stethoscope is not, and has never been, a single entity. It is used to a variety of ends, serves several purposes, and is open to many interpretations. This variability is the key to the stethoscope’s enduring presence in the medical and popular imagination.
Download or read book Literature and the Anthropocene written by Pieter Vermeulen and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-04-30 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Anthropocene has fundamentally changed the way we think about our relation to nonhuman life and to the planet. This book is the first to critically survey how the Anthropocene is enriching the study of literature and inspiring contemporary poetry and fiction. Engaging with topics such as genre, life, extinction, memory, infrastructure, energy, and the future, the book makes a compelling case for literature’s unique contribution to contemporary environmental thought. It pays attention to literature’s imaginative and narrative resources, and also to its appeal to the emotions and its relation to the material world. As the Anthropocene enjoins us to read the signals the planet is sending and to ponder the traces we leave on the Earth, it is also, this book argues, a literary problem. Literature and the Anthropocene maps key debates and introduces the often difficult vocabulary for capturing the entanglement of human and nonhuman lives in an insightful way. Alternating between accessible discussions of prominent theories and concise readings of major works of Anthropocene literature, the book serves as an indispensable guide to this exciting new subfield for academics and students of literature and the environmental humanities.
Download or read book Vulnerable Earth written by Pramod K. Nayar and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2024-05-31 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shows how the literature of climate crisis foregrounds a feature that humans and nonhumans, share, differentially, with the planet: vulnerability.
Download or read book Principles of Soundscape Ecology written by Bryan C. Pijanowski and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2024-05-28 with total page 530 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From a founding figure in the field, the definitive introduction to an exciting new science. What do the sounds of a chorus of tropical birds and frogs, a clap of thunder, and a cacophony of urban traffic have in common? They are all components of a soundscape, acoustic environments that have been identified by scientists as a combination of the biophony, geophony, and anthrophony, respectively, of all of Earth’s sound sources. As sound is a ubiquitous occurrence in nature, it is actively sensed by most animals and is an important way for them to understand how their environment is changing. For humans, environmental sound is a major factor in creating a psychological sense of place, and many forms of sonic expression by people embed knowledge and culture. In this book, soundscape ecology pioneer Bryan C. Pijanowski presents the definitive text for both students and practitioners who are seeking to engage with this thrilling new field. Principles of Soundscape Ecology clearly outlines soundscape ecology’s critical foundations, key concepts, methods, and applications. Fundamentals include concise and valuable descriptions of the physics of sound as well as a thorough elucidation of all sounds that occur on Earth. Pijanowski also presents a rich overview of the ecological, sociocultural, and technical theories that support this new science, illustrating the breadth of this amazingly transdisciplinary field. In methods, he describes the principles of data mining, signal processing, and mixed methods approaches used to study soundscapes in ecological, social, or socio-ecological contexts. The final section focuses on terrestrial, aquatic, urban, and music applications, demonstrating soundscape ecology’s utility in nearly all spaces.
Download or read book Ecoacoustics written by Almo Farina and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2017-07-24 with total page 367 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The sounds produced by geophonic, biophonic and technophonic sources are relevant to the function of natural and human modified ecosystems. Passive recording is one of the most non-invasive technologies as its use avoids human intrusion during acoustic surveys and facilitates the accumulation of huge amounts of acoustical data. For the first time, this book collates and reviews the science behind ecoaucostics; illustrating the principles, methods and applications of this exciting new field. Topics covered in this comprehensive volume include; the assessment of biodiversity based on sounds emanating from a variety of environments the best technologies and methods necessary to investigate environmental sounds implications for climate change and urban systems the relationship between landscape ecology and ecoacoustics the conservation of soundscapes and the social value of ecoacoustics areas of potential future research. An invaluable resource for scholars, researchers and students, Ecoacoustics: The Ecological Role of Sounds provides an unrivalled set of ideas, tools and references based on the current state of the field.
Download or read book Posthumanism and Latin x American Science Fiction written by Antonio Córdoba and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-11-23 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume explores how Latin American and Latinx creators have engaged science fiction to explore posthumanist thought. Contributors reflect on how Latin American and Latinx speculative art conceptualizes the operations of other, non-human forms of agency, and engages in environmentalist theory in ways that are estranging and open to new forms of species companionship. Essays cover literature, film, TV shows, and music, grouped in three sections: “Posthumanist Subjects” examines Latin(x) American iterations of some of the most common figurations of the posthuman, such as the cyborg and virtual environments and selves; “Slow Violence and Environmental Threats” understands that posthumanist meditations in the hemisphere take place in a material and cultural context shaped by the catastrophic destruction of the environment; the chapters in “Posthumanist Others” shows how the reimagination of the self and the world that posthumanism offers may be an opportunity to break the hold that oppressive systems have over the ways in which societies are constructed and governed.
Download or read book English Fiction and the Evolution of Language 1850 1914 written by Will Abberley and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-05-21 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores how Victorian fiction and science imagined the evolution of language, from primordial noise to modern English.
Download or read book The Great Animal Orchestra written by Bernie Krause and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2012-03-19 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A "passionate amalgam of science and autobiography" that will leave you hearing -- and seeing -- nature as never before (New York Times Book Review). Musician and naturalist Bernie Krause is one of the world's leading experts in natural sound, and he's spent his life discovering and recording nature's rich chorus. Searching far beyond our modern world's honking horns and buzzing machinery, he has sought out the truly wild places that remain, where natural soundscapes exist virtually unchanged from when the earliest humans first inhabited the earth. Krause shares fascinating insight into how deeply animals rely on their aural habitat to survive and the damaging effects of extraneous noise on the delicate balance between predator and prey. But natural soundscapes aren't vital only to the animal kingdom; Krause explores how the myriad voices and rhythms of the natural world formed a basis from which our own musical expression emerged. From snapping shrimp, popping viruses, and the songs of humpback whales -- whose voices, if unimpeded, could circle the earth in hours -- to cracking glaciers, bubbling streams, and the roar of intense storms; from melody-singing birds to the organlike drone of wind blowing over reeds, the sounds Krause has experienced and describes are like no others. And from recording jaguars at night in the Amazon rain forest to encountering mountain gorillas in Africa's Virunga Mountains, Krause offers an intense and intensely personal narrative of the planet's deep and connected natural sounds and rhythm. The Great Animal Orchestra is the story of one man's pursuit of natural music in its purest form, and an impassioned case for the conservation of one of our most overlooked natural resources-the music of the wild.
Download or read book Soundscape Ecology written by Almo Farina and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-10-28 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Soundscape Ecology represents a new branch of ecology and it is the result of the integration of different disciplines like Landscape ecology, Bioacoustics, Acoustic ecology, Biosemiotics, etc. The soundscape that is the object of this discipline, is defined as the acoustic context resulting from natural and human originated sounds and it is considered a relevant environmental proxy for animal and human life. With Soundscape Ecology Almo Farina means to offer a new cultural tool to investigate a partially explored component of the environmental complexity. For this he intends to set the principles of this new discipline, to delineate the epistemic domain in which to develop new ideas and theories and to describe the necessary integration with all the other ecological/environmental disciplines. The book is organized in ten chapters. The first two chapters delineate principles and theory of soundscape ecology. Chapters three and four describe the bioacoustic and communication theories. Chapter five is devoted to the human dimension of soundscape. Chapters six to eight regard the major sonic patterns like noise, choruses and vibrations. Chapter nine is devoted to the methods in soundscape ecology and finally chapter ten describes the application of the soundscape analysis.
Download or read book Red Sorghum written by Mo Yan and published by Penguin. This book was released on 1994-04-01 with total page 461 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The acclaimed novel of love and resistance during late 1930s China by Mo Yan, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature Spanning three generations, this novel of family and myth is told through a series of flashbacks that depict events of staggering horror set against a landscape of gemlike beauty, as the Chinese battle both Japanese invaders and each other in the turbulent 1930s. A legend in China, where it won major literary awards and inspired an Oscar-nominated film directed by Zhang Yimou, Red Sorghum is a book in which fable and history collide to produce fiction that is entirely new—and unforgettable.
Download or read book The Tungara Frog written by Michael J. Ryan and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1985 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a Panamanian pond, male túngara frogs (Physalaemus pustulosus) gather in choruses, giving their "advertisement" call to the females that move among them. If a female chooses to make physical contact with a male, he will clasp her and eventually fertilize her eggs. But in vying for the females, the males whose calls are most attractive may also attract the interest of another creature: the fringe-lipped bat, a frog eater. In the Túngara Frog, the most detailed and informative single study available of frogs and their reproductive behavior, Michael J. Ryan demonstrates the interplay of sexual and natural selection. Using techniques from ethology, behavioral ecology, sensory physiology, physiological ecology, and theoretical population genetics in his research, Ryan shows that large males with low-frequency calls mate most successfully. He examines in detail a number of explanations for the females' preferences, and he considers possible evolutionary forces leading to the males' success. Though certain vocalizations allow males to obtain mates and thus should be favored by sexual selection, this study highlights two important costs of such sexual displays: the frogs expand considerable energy in their mating calls, and they advertise their whereabouts to predators. Ryan considers in detail how predators, especially the frige-lipped bat (Trachops cirrhosus), affect the evolution of the túngara frog's calls.
Download or read book The Mind of Plants written by John C. Ryan and published by . This book was released on 2021-10-12 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The idea that plants have a mind of their own has been a prominent feature of some Indigenous narratives, literary works, and philosophical discourses. Recent scientific research in the field of plant cognition similarly highlights the capacity of botanical life to discern between options and learn from prior experiences or, in other words, to think. The Mind of Plants offers an accessible account of the idea of "the plant mind" by bringing together short essays and poems on plants and their interactions with humans. The texts interpret the theme broadly--from the ways that humans mind and unmind plants to the mindedness or unmindedness of plants themselves. Authors from the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences have written about their personal connections to particular plants, reflecting upon their research on plant studies in a style amenable to a broad audience. Each of the authors has selected a plant that functions as a guiding thread to their interpretation of "the mind of plants." From the ubiquitous rose to the ugly hornwort, from the Amazonian ayahuasca to tobacco, the texts reflect the multifarious interactions between humans and flora. These personal narratives, filled with anecdotes, experiences, and musings, offer cutting-edge insights into the different meanings and dimensions of "the mind of plants." Contributors to The Mind of Plants are key figures in the fields of ethnobotany, ethnopharmacology, plant behavior and cognition, and critical plant studies. Included are simple, thumbnail-style, black-and-white illustrations of the plants to enhance readers' appreciation of the narratives.
Download or read book Nature s Music written by Peter R. Marler and published by Elsevier. This book was released on 2004-10-05 with total page 504 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The voices of birds have always been a source of fascination. Nature’s Music brings together some of the world’s experts on birdsong, to review the advances that have taken place in our understanding of how and why birds sing, what their songs and calls mean, and how they have evolved. All contributors have strived to speak, not only to fellow experts, but also to the general reader. The result is a book of readable science, richly illustrated with recordings and pictures of the sounds of birds. Bird song is much more than just one behaviour of a single, particular group of organisms. It is a model for the study of a wide variety of animal behaviour systems, ecological, evolutionary and neurobiological. Bird song sits at the intersection of breeding, social and cognitive behaviour and ecology. As such interest in this book will extend far beyond the purely ornithological - to behavioural ecologists psychologists and neurobiologists of all kinds. * The scoop on local dialects in birdsong * How birdsongs are used for fighting and flirting * The writers are all international authorities on their subject
