Download or read book Information Processing in the Visual Systems of Arthropods written by Rüdiger Wehner and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is now generally accepted for a variety of reasons - morphological as well as physiologica- that the visual systems of arthropods provide a suitable model for the study of information proces sing in neuronal networks. Unlike the neurophysiology of the visual pathway in the frog and the cat which is more than adequately documented, recent work on the compound eye and optical ganglia of spiders, crustaceans, and insects has scarcely been summarized. In order to fill this void so that others, especially vertebrate neurophysiologists may become familiar with the advan tages of these systems, our group at Zurich University organized here in March 1972, a European meeting to discuss the anatomical. ! neurophysiological and behavioral knowledge on the compound eye and the visual. pathway of arthropods. Systems analysis was regarded as the main theme of the conference, but systems analysis of a network of neurons cannot be done as a mere "black-box" maneuver. The conference therefore tried to reconcile neurophysiology and behavioral analysis in order to make predictions about a necessary and sufficient neural structure. The "wiring dia grams" of such a structure might then be confirmed histologically. Hence the aim of the conferen ce was not to deal only with the structure and function of the compound eye - i. e.
Download or read book Ambivalences of Creating Life written by Kristin Hagen and published by Springer. This book was released on 2015-08-27 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Synthetic biology" is the label of a new technoscientific field with many different facets and agendas. One common aim is to "create life", primarily by using engineering principles to design and modify biological systems for human use. In a wider context, the topic has become one of the big cases in the legitimization processes associated with the political agenda to solve global problems with the aid of (bio-)technological innovation. Conceptual-level and meta-level analyses are needed: we should sort out conceptual ambiguities to agree on what we talk about, and we need to spell out agendas to see the disagreements clearly. The book is based on the interdisciplinary summer school "Analyzing the societal dimensions of synthetic biology", which took place in Berlin in September 2014. The contributions address controversial discussions around the philosophical examination, public perception, moral evaluation and governance of synthetic biology.
Download or read book Information Processing in the Visual Systems Arthropods written by and published by . This book was released on 1972 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book A Critical Revision of the Genus Aristida written by Jan Theodoor Henrard and published by . This book was released on 1926 with total page 780 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Defuturing written by Tony Fry and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2020-08-20 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Once one understands the nature and magnitude of defuturing as the negation of world futures, how one has to account for the history and making of the material world – including design - dramatically changes. Defuturing as our condition forces the generation of a new philosophy of design.” With these thoughts this book presents a radically new understanding of the history, context and futures of designing. First published in 1999, now reissued with a new preface by the author, Defuturing: A New Design Philosophy is a prescient and powerful account of what it means to comprehend that we live in world that is taking away futures for ourselves and non-human others. Arguing that designing is doubly implicated in this process, first in its roles in helping to create the unsustainable, but second, re-thought through the lens of defuturing, as a mode of acting in the world that can help contest the negation of the world, Defuturing transforms our comprehension of designing and of how futures can be constituted. Working not through abstract theorizing but through the analysis of concrete examples, the book uses historical material on design to expose the archaeology of defuturing. Shattering the illusion that the future simply “is”, Defuturing confronts designing with the challenge of remaking while offering the elements of a new practical reasoning of design acting.
Download or read book Adorno s Theory of Philosophical and Aesthetic Truth written by Owen Hulatt and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2016-09-27 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Adorno's Theory of Philosophical and Aesthetic Truth, Owen Hulatt undertakes an original reading of Theodor W. Adorno's epistemology and its material underpinnings, deepening our understanding of his theories of truth, art, and the nonidentical. Hulatt's novel interpretation casts Adorno's theory of philosophical and aesthetic truth as substantially unified, supporting the thinker's claim that both philosophy and art are capable of being true. For Adorno, truth is produced when rhetorical "texture" combines with cognitive "performance," leading to the breakdown of concepts that mediate the experience of the consciousness. Both philosophy and art manifest these features, although philosophy enacts these conceptual issues directly, while art does so obliquely. Hulatt builds a robust argument for Adorno's claim that concepts ineluctably misconstrue their objects. He also puts the still influential thinker into conversation with Hegel, Husserl, Frazer, Sohn-Rethel, Benjamin, Strawson, Dahlhaus, Habermas, and Caillois, among many others.
Download or read book Adorno s Aesthetic Theory written by Lambert Zuidervaart and published by Mit Press. This book was released on 1993 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first book to offer readers a guide through the vast labyrinth of Theodor Adorno's Aesthetic Theory, putting the work into historical context and outlining the main ideas and the relevant debates it participated in or spawned.Lambert Zuidervaart is Professor of Philosophy at Calvin College.
Download or read book Adorno s Modernism written by Espen Hammer and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-09-25 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book is a study of Adorno's aesthetics, its philosophical background, and its account of aesthetic modernism.
Download or read book Advances in Robotics written by Calin Ciufudean and published by Createspace Independent Pub. This book was released on 2013-03-15 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Advances in Robotics - Modeling, Control and Applications is suitable for advanced undergraduate students and postgraduate students. It takes a practical approach rather than a conceptual approach. It offers a truly reader-friendly way to get to the subject, providing a definitive guide in this vibrant and evolving discipline. This book is an invaluable companion for students from their first encounter with the subject to more advanced studies, while the high quality artworks are designed to present the key concepts with simplicity, clarity and consistency. There are totally 18 chapters in this book. Chapter 1 proposes a simple control system for a biped robot using nonlinear oscillators based on the physiological concept of central pattern generator and physiological evidence of phase resetting. Chapter 2 presents work that attempts to extract principles by which spiders and other species achieve these features. Chapter 3 proposes methods for a robot manipulator with a racket to do two kinds of ball juggling, the paddle juggling and the wall juggling, based on discrete control systems of states of the hit ball. Chapter 4 proposed a new control algorithm in a robot arm based on active tactile slippage sensation. Chapter 5 provides a look at some possibilities of modern voice analysis technologies in the field of ambient assisted living, which seems to be a promising application for robotic systems. Chapter 6 focuses on adaptive filtering techniques for acoustics application. Adaptive acoustic in an important topic for signal processing in robots since robot sound inputs are usually recollected through acoustic sensors. Chapter 7 aims at examining the method and equipment of preliminary-announcement of the upcoming operation of a mobile robot moving on a two-dimensional plane to those who are in the surroundings. Chapter 8 introduces two kinds of instruction learning systems for partner robots: (1) a hand image instruction learning system; and (2) three kinds of voice learning systems, using Kohonen's self-organizing map (SOM) and its variations such as Transient-SOM (T-SOM), Parameter-less SOM (PL-T-SOM) and Parameter-less Growing SOM (PL-G-SOM). Chapter 9 presents the study on throw-over movement informing a receiver of the object landing distance as an example of the informative motion for human synergetic robots. In Chapter 10, the author examines the application of a touch screen to an operational interface of a mobile robot remote operation system. Chapter 11 describes low processing approach for identification of obstacles in a robotic soccer team. Chapter 12 couples a general purpose stat/space representation with a reactive algorithm for mobile robot navigation In Chapter 13, the author designs an general-purposed affective behavior decision system based on linear dynamics to solve the limitation that affective model is difficult to be applied to various social robots without redesigning. Chapter 14 proposes a control mechanism based on multiple-criteria decision making for autonomous control of ambient environment. Chapter 15 proposes an information gathering support system in post-disaster environment by utilizing a robot sensor network in which a teleoperated mobile robot deploys wireless sensor nodes (SNs). Chapter 16 proposes fault accommodation procedure in discrete-event robots. Chapter 17 deals with application of robotic technology for performing risky tasks, mainly for de-mining operations. Finally, Chapter 18 briefly describes an application of robot in medial health.
Download or read book The Cambridge Companion to Adorno written by Tom Huhn and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2004-07-05 with total page 524 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The great German philosopher and aesthetic theorist Theodor Wiesengrund Adorno (1903–69) was one of the main philosophers of the first generation of the Frankfurt School of critical theory. An accomplished musician, Adorno first focused on the theory of culture and art. Later he turned to the problem of the self-defeating dialectic of modern reason and freedom. In this collection of essays, imbued with the most up-to-date research, a distinguished roster of Adorno specialists explore the full range of his contributions to philosophy, history, music theory, aesthetics and sociology. New readers will find this the most convenient and accessible guide to Adorno currently available. Advanced students and specialists will find a conspectus of recent developments in the interpretation of Adorno.
Download or read book Walter Benjamin s First Philosophy written by Nathan Ross and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-02-10 with total page 203 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a study of Walter Benjamin’s first philosophy in two senses: it focuses on his early philosophy as a source of insight into his later works, and it explores his thinking about the nature of truth, method, experience, the relation of body and mind, and the limits of human knowledge. While most attention is paid to Benjamin’s later works, his writings from roughly 1914-1925 explore philosophical themes and develop a critical method. This book argues that this early work founds a series of original and lasting questions and insights. Benjamin understands experience as a broken continuum of diverse forms of spiritual expression, each of which is ephemeral. This leads Benjamin to a series of thought figures: the notion of language as a medium of experience; a philosophy of perception based in the natural history of the human body; an emphasis on mimesis as a faculty of creative assimilation; and a discovery of memory as a power for excavation of meaning in past experience. This book demonstrates that the need for a new understanding of the metaphysical structure of experience, as well as a new conception of truth, play a special role in shaping Benjamin’s subsequent work. Walter Benjamin’s First Philosophy will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working on the thought of Walter Benjamin, 20th-century Continental philosophy, comparative literature, and modern German thought.
Download or read book The Semblance of Subjectivity written by Tom Huhn and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The essays are organized around the twin themes of semblance and subjectivity. Whereas the concept of semblance, or illusion, points to Adorno's links with Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud, the concept of subjectivity recalls his lifelong struggle with a philosophy ofconsciousness stemming from Kant, Hegel, and Lukacs.
Download or read book Report of the Expert Meeting on Ciguatera Poisoning written by Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and published by Food & Agriculture Org.. This book was released on 2020-06-01 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Phytoplankton blooms, micro-algal blooms, toxic algae, red tides, or harmful algae, are all terms for naturally occurring phenomena that have occurred throughout recorded history. About 300 hundred species of micro algae are reported at times to form mass occurrence, so called blooms. Nearly one fourth of these species are known to produce toxins. Even non-toxic algal blooms can have devastating impacts when they lead to kills of fish and invertebrates by generating anoxic conditions. Some algal species, although non-toxic to humans, can produce exudates that can cause damage to the delicate gill tissues of fish (raphidophytes Chattonella, Heterosigma, and dinoflagellates Karenia, Karlodinium) . Aquatic animals can suffer devastating mortalities, which could lead economical and food losses, and eventually became a food security problem. Of greatest concern to humans are algal species that produce potent neurotoxins that can find their way through shellfish and fish to human consumers where they evoke a variety of gastrointestinal and neurological illnesses (paralytic shellfish poisoning (PSP), amnesic shellfish poisoning (ASP), diarrhoeic shellfish poisoning (DSP), neurotoxic shellfish poisoning (NSP), azaspiracid shellfish poisoning (AZP) and ciguatera fish poisoning (CFP)). Worldwide, ciguatoxins are estimated to cause around 50 000 cases of ciguatera fish poisoning annually; neurological effects may last for weeks or even years and one percent of these cases are fatal . Climate change and costal water over enrichment create an enabling environment for harmful algal blooms, which seem to have become more frequent, more intense and more widespread in the past decades.
Download or read book Consequences of Enlightenment written by Anthony J. Cascardi and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1999-02-04 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is the relationship between contemporary intellectual culture and the European Enlightenment it claims to reject? In Consequences of Enlightenment, Anthony Cascardi revisits the arguments advanced in Horkheimer and Adorno's seminal work Dialectic of Enlightenment. Cascardi argues against the view that postmodern culture has rejected Enlightenment beliefs and explores instead the continuities contemporary theory shares with Kant's failed ambition to bring the project of Enlightenment to completion. He explores the link between aesthetics and politics in thinkers as diverse as Habermas, Derrida, Arendt, Nietzsche, Hegel, and Wittgenstein in order to reverse the tendency to see works of art simply in terms of the worldly practices among which they are situated.
Download or read book Synthetic Biology written by Bernd Giese and published by Springer. This book was released on 2014-09-27 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Synthetic Biology is already an object of intensive debate. However, to a great extent the discussion to date has been concerned with fundamental ethical, religious and philosophical questions. By contrast, based on an investigation of the field’s scientific and technological character, this book focuses on new functionalities provided by synthetic biology and explores the associated opportunities and risks. Following an introduction to the subject and a discussion of the most central paradigms and methodologies, the book provides an overview of the structure of this field of science and technology. It informs the reader about the current stage of development, as well as topical problems and potential opportunities in important fields of application. But not only the science itself is in focus. In order to investigate its broader impact, ecological as well as ethical implications will be considered, paving the way for a discussion of responsibilities in the context of a field at a transitional crossroads between basic and applied science. In closing, the requirements for a suitable regulatory framework are discussed. The book is intended as a source of information and orientation for researchers, students and practitioners in the natural sciences and technology assessment; for members of scientific and technological, governmental and funding institutions; and for members of the general public interested in essential information on the current status, prospects and implications of synthetic biology.
Download or read book Yvain written by Chretien de Troyes and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 1987-09-10 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The twelfth-century French poet Chrétien de Troyes is a major figure in European literature. His courtly romances fathered the Arthurian tradition and influenced countless other poets in England as well as on the continent. Yet because of the difficulty of capturing his swift-moving style in translation, English-speaking audiences are largely unfamiliar with the pleasures of reading his poems. Now, for the first time, an experienced translator of medieval verse who is himself a poet provides a translation of Chrétien’s major poem, Yvain, in verse that fully and satisfyingly captures the movement, the sense, and the spirit of the Old French original. Yvain is a courtly romance with a moral tenor; it is ironic and sometimes bawdy; the poetry is crisp and vivid. In addition, the psychological and the socio-historical perceptions of the poem are of profound literary and historical importance, for it evokes the emotions and the values of a flourishing, vibrant medieval past.
Download or read book The Seine River Basin written by Nicolas Flipo and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-01-30 with total page 430 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This open access book reviews the water-agro-food and socio-eco-system of the Seine River basin (76,000 km2), and offers a historical perspective on the river’s long-term contamination. The Seine basin is inhabited by circa 17 million people and is impacted by intensive agricultural practices and industrial activities. These pressures have gradually affected its hydrological, chemical and ecological functioning, leading to a maximum chemical degradation between the 1960s and the 1990s. Over the last three decades, while major water-quality improvements have been observed, new issues (e.g. endocrine disruptors, microplastics) have also emerged. The state of the Seine River network, from the headwaters to estuary, is increasingly controlled by the balance between pressures and social responses. This socio-ecosystem provides a unique example of the functioning of a territory under heavy anthropogenic pressure during the Anthropocene era. The achievements made were possible due to the long-term PIREN Seine research program, established in 1989 and today part of the French socio-ecological research network “Zones Ateliers”, itself part of the international Long-term Socio-economic and Ecological Research Network (LTSER). Written by experts in the field, the book provides an introduction to the water budget and the territorial metabolism of the Seine basin, and studies the trajectories and impact of various pollutants in the Seine River. It offers insights into the ecological functioning, the integration of agricultural practices, the analysis of aquatic organic matter, and the evolution of fish assemblages in the Seine basin, and also presents research perspectives and approaches to improve the water quality of the Seine River. Given its scope, it will appeal to environmental managers, scientists and policymakers interested in the long-term contamination of the Seine River.
