Author: Wiebe E. Bijker File Type: pdf Today, scientific advice is asked for (and given) on questions ranging from stem-cell research to genetically modified food. And yet it often seems that the more urgently scientific advice is solicited, the more vigorously scientific authority is questioned by policy makers, stakeholders, and citizens. This book examines a paradox how scientific advice can be influential in society even when the status of science and scientists seems to be at a low ebb. The authors do this by means of an ethnographic study of the creation of scientific authority at one of the key sites for the interaction of science, policy, and society the scientific advisory committee. The Paradox of Scientific Authority offers a detailed analysis of the inner workings of the influential Health Council of the Netherlands (the equivalent of the National Academy of Science in the United States), examining its societal role as well as its internal functioning, and using the findings to build a theory of scientific advising. The question of scientific authority has political as well as scholarly relevance. Democratic political institutions, largely developed in the nineteenth century, lack the institutional means to address the twenty-first centurys pervasively scientific and technological culture and science and technology studies (STS) grapples with the central question of how to understand the authority of science while recognizing its socially constructed nature.About the AuthorWiebe E. Bijker is Professor of Technology and Society at the University of Maastricht. He is the author of Bicycles, Bakelites, and Bulbs Toward a Theory of Sociotechnical Change (MIT Press, 1997) and other books.Roland Bal is Professor in and Founding Chair of the Department of Healthcare Governance of the Institute of Health Policy and Management, Rotterdam.Ruud Hendriks is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Maastricht.

Author: Neil Campbell File Type: pdf Affective Critical Regionality offers a new approach to developing a sharper, more nuanced understanding of the relations between place, space, memory and affect. It builds on the authors extensive work on the American West, where he developed the idea of expanded critical regionalism to underline the West as multiple, dynamic and relational engaged in global local processes, tensions between the rooted and the routed, and increasingly as relevant to debates around the politics of precarity and vulnerability. This book uses affective critical regionality to enable a re-valuing of the local as a powerful means to appreciate the everyday and the over-looked as vital elements within a more inclusive understanding of how we live. Exploring a variety of cultural materials including fiction, memoir, theory, poetry and film it demonstrates how this approach can deepen our understanding of, and simultaneously provoke new relations with, place. Moving beyond the US context through its use of international theoretical voices and texts, it will show how the concept is applicable to other cultural spheres. **ReviewReaching across a diversity of writings Campbell brings the idea of the region into life in a newly human way, situating it amongst the variety of what makes up being alive. The text persistently inspires and enriches. He meshes the variety of key sources and with unusual clarity unpacks the idea of how affect works the writing affective in itself. (David Crouch, Emeritus Professor of Cultural Geography, University of Derby) This book is a powerful intervention of a singular kind in the work of configuring possibilities for knowledge and action. It arrays the intensities and infusions of regionality across a vast arc of zones, genres and ways of being, catching up not the boundaries and traces of place but its unfolding, its alchemy, in difference, edging, agitations and intricate infrastructures of surprise. In Campbells cartographic mapping, affective regionalities are made of knots, speeds, loops, gestures, sonorities and muscle. They whisper a minor language for remaking the world. (Kathleen Stewart, Professor of Anthropology, University of Texas) Like the concept of regionality itself, Campbells prose, both in its theoretical brilliance and scintillating close readings of diverse texts, fractures the totalizing frame of regionalism with an affective intensity that is contagious as well as entirely persuasive. In addition to its many local insights, this book is remarkable for its re-imagining of the political possibilities of regionality as an energized sense of care. A scintillating, ultimately humane achievement, Affective Critical Regionality further solidifies Campbells status as a groundbreaking scholar not only of the U.S. West but also of critical regionalist studies more generally. (Stephen Tatum, Professor of English, University of Utah, Author of In the Remington Moment) About the AuthorNeil Campbell is Professor of American Studies and Research Manager at the University of Derby, U.K. He has published widely in American Studies, including the books American Cultural Studies with Alasdair Kean (Routledge, 2011), American Youth Cultures (ed, Edinburgh University Press, 2004) and co-editor of Issues on Americanisation and Culture (Edinburgh University Press, 2004). His major research project is an interdisciplinary trilogy of books on the contemporary American West. The first two are The Cultures of the American New West (EdinburghColumbia UP, 2000) and The Rhizomatic West (Nebraska, 2008) and he has just completed the final part, Post-Westerns, on cinematic representation of the New West. He is, with Christine Berberich & Robert Hudson, co-editor of Land & Identity Theory, Memory, and Practice (Rodopi, 2012) and with Alfredo Cramerotti co-editor of Photocinema (Intellect, 2013). Affective Landscapes also edited with Christine Berberich & Robert Hudson is forthcoming with Ashgate in 2014 as is the special section on affective landscapes in the Journal Cultural Politics.

Author: Lawrence M. Krauss File Type: pdf What warps when youre traveling at warp speed? What is the difference between a wormhole and a black hole? Are time loops really possible, and can I kill my grandmother before I am born? Anyone who has ever wondered could this really happen? will gain useful insights into the Star Trek universe (and, incidentally, the real world of physics) in this charming and accessible guide. Lawrence M. Krauss boldly goes where Star Trek has gone-and beyond. From Newton to Hawking, from Einstein to Feynman, from Kirk to Picard, Krauss leads readers on a voyage to the world of physics as we now know it and as it might one day be.Amazon.com ReviewSure, we all know Star Trek is fiction, but warp drives and transporters and holodecks dont seem altogether implausible. Are any of these futuristic inventions fundamentally outlawed by physics as we understand it today? The Physics of Star Trek takes a lighthearted look at this subject, speculating on how the wonders of Star Trek technology might actually work--and, in some cases, revealing why the inventions are impossible or impractical even for an advanced civilization. (Example dematerializing a person for transport would require about as much energy as is released by a 100-megaton hydrogen bomb). The Physics of Star Trek deserves merit for providing a refresher course on topics such as relativity and antimatter, but lets face it the reason most people will want to read this book is simply that its fun to poke holes in the premises of their favorite science fiction shows! From Publishers WeeklyEven those who have never watched an episode of Star Trek will be entertained and enlightened by theoretical physicist Krausss adventurous investigation of interstellar flight, time travel, teleportation of objects and the possibility of extraterrestrial life. Case Western Reserve professor Krauss maintains that Star Treks writers were sometimes far ahead of scientists?and famed astrophysicist Stephen Hawkings foreword, endorsing the possibilities of faster-than-light travel and journeying back in time, supports that notion. On the other hand, Krauss also argues that the show is riddled with bloopers and huge improbabilities, as when the Voyagers crew escapes from a black holes interior. This informal manual for Trekkers offers a porthole on the wonders of the universe as it ponders the potential existence of aliens, wormholes that allow astronauts to tunnel through space, other dimensions and myriad baby universes. $75,000 adpromo BOMC and QPB alternates Astronomy Book Club dual main selection Library of Science, Natural Science Book Club and Newbridge Computer Book Club alternates. 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. Explaining the intricacies of warp speed and showing the difference between a holodeck and a hologram, an easy-to-understand introduction to the arcane world of physics from a renowned physicist uses Star Trek to build and frame his discussion. 125,000 first printing. $75,000 adpromo.

Author: Jean-Francois Lyotard File Type: pdf Many definitions of postmodernism focus on its nature as the aftermath of the modern industrial age when technology developed. This book extends that analysis to postmodernism by looking at the status of science, technology, and the arts, the significance of technocracy, and the way the flow of information is controlled in the Western world. Language NotesText English, French (translation)