The Oikos Project: Oikos and Protozoa


Book Description

The Oikos Project and the two plays Oikos and Protozoa are an attempt to take responsibility for creating a different future in relation to the coming threat of climate change. Can we createa future based less on material gain and more on being in sympathy with our only planet? OIKOS Salil, a highly-successful businessman, has it all worked out: career, family, river-view des-res in Chiswick and a beautiful mistress. So why is he increasingly haunted by ghosts from the Old Country? When the Thames bursts its banks and his family scramble to keep their heads above water, the very foundations of his perfect life are threatened and Salil is forced to look to both his future and his past for redemption. PROTOZOA When the United Kingdom disappears in The Floods, Cordelia is determined to rebuild her grand house at any cost. When Sheann emerges half dead from the black waters, she will do anything to find her lost child. In this strange, formless new world, Inspector John Hall, born again out of the mud and slurry, will stop at nothing to ensure the survival of his citizens. If civilisation was to disappear tomorrow, how would we rebuild it? As Cordelia, Sheann and Hall’s lives collide in a volatile, repressive and increasingly familiar world, who are the women on the other side of the shrinking, fetid river who watch and wait?




Ecodramaturgies


Book Description

This book addresses theatre’s contribution to the way we think about ecology, our relationship to the environment, and what it means to be human in the context of climate change. It offers a detailed study of the ways in which contemporary performance has critiqued and re-imagined everyday ecological relationships, in more just and equitable ways. The broad spectrum of ecologically-oriented theatre and performance included here, largely from the UK, US, Canada, Europe, and Mexico, have problematised, reframed, and upended the pervasive and reductive images of climate change that tend to dominate the ecological imagination. Taking an inclusive approach this book foregrounds marginalised perspectives and the multiple social and political forces that shape climate change and related ecological crises, framing understandings of the earth as home. Recent works by Fevered Sleep, Rimini Protokoll, Violeta Luna, Deke Weaver, Metis Arts, Lucy + Jorge Orta, as well as Indigenous activist movements such as NoDAPL and Idle No More, are described in detail.




The Oikos Project: Oikos and Protozoa


Book Description

The Oikos Project and the two plays Oikos and Protozoa are an attempt to take responsibility for creating a different future in relation to the coming threat of climate change. Can we createa future based less on material gain and more on being in sympathy with our only planet? OIKOS Salil, a highly-successful businessman, has it all worked out: career, family, river-view des-res in Chiswick and a beautiful mistress. So why is he increasingly haunted by ghosts from the Old Country? When the Thames bursts its banks and his family scramble to keep their heads above water, the very foundations of his perfect life are threatened and Salil is forced to look to both his future and his past for redemption. PROTOZOA When the United Kingdom disappears in The Floods, Cordelia is determined to rebuild her grand house at any cost. When Sheann emerges half dead from the black waters, she will do anything to find her lost child. In this strange, formless new world, Inspector John Hall, born again out of the mud and slurry, will stop at nothing to ensure the survival of his citizens. If civilisation was to disappear tomorrow, how would we rebuild it? As Cordelia, Sheann and Hall’s lives collide in a volatile, repressive and increasingly familiar world, who are the women on the other side of the shrinking, fetid river who watch and wait?




Small-Scale Public Transportable and Pre-Fabricated Buildings


Book Description

This book investigates the design, operation and use of contemporary transportable buildings, and explores how functional performance can be assessed in small-scale examples for public use alongside their relationship to other design elements. The research focuses on three case studies, Chengdu Hualin Elementary School, Exxopolis and Kreod, that do not require a high-technology building environment or complex construction skills. Transportable buildings are defined as those that are transported in a number of parts for assembly on site. Contemporary transportable buildings respond to ecological issues, social impacts, technological innovation and economic demands. They can be used to measure a society’s development in environmental sustainability, innovation and economic growth through various forms. Small-scale transportable buildings fulfil many temporary habitation needs in diverse roles, such as non-emergency transitional housing, ephemeral exhibition buildings and seasonal entertainment facilities. Small-Scale Public Transportable and Pre-Fabricated Buildings will be a useful research text for academics and students in architecture, design and sustainable building performance.




The Oberon Book of Modern Monologues for Women


Book Description

Monologues are an essential part of every actor’s toolkit. Actors are required to perform monologues regularly throughout their career: preparing for drama school entry, showcasing skills for agents or auditioning for a role. Following on from the bestselling first volume (2008), this book showcases selected monologues from some of the finest modern plays by some of today’s leading contemporary playwrights. These monologues contain a diverse range of quirky and memorable characters that cross cultural and historical boundaries. The pieces are helpfully organised into age-specific groups: ‘Teens’, ‘Twenties’, ‘Thirties’ and ‘Forties plus’.




Safe Water, Sanitation, and Early Childhood Malnutrition in East Africa


Book Description

To understand safe water and sanitation in East Africa, it is important to consider the contributions of African feminist analysis. This perspective will unveil inequities in the distribution of resources, demonstrate how localized solutions which are driven by women’s collaborative work have had an impact by temporarily easing the burden, and paint a multilayered picture of the lives of women and girls who are the predominant providers of water to households. This book explores the effects of water and sanitation quality and availability on early childhood morbidity in East Africa from an African feminist sociological perspective. It presents a framework that considers the ways that the development industry, neoliberalism, neocolonial relations, gender, class, ethnicity, globalization, and other dimensions of oppression intersect to impact upon the experiences and agency of women and children accessing clean water and safe sanitation and reducing early childhood morbidity in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. This work offers a vital contribution to the social scientific literature by adapting the vibrant intellectual work of African feminists to a quantitative methodology and enlarging the scope of empirically and theoretically grounded studies within the field of environmental sociology.




Parasites and the Behavior of Animals


Book Description

When a parasite invades an ant, does the ant behave like other ants? Maybe not-and if it doesn't, who, if anyone, benefits from the altered behaviors? The parasite? The ant? Parasites and the Behavior of Animals shows that parasite-induced behavioral alterations are more common than we might realize, and it places these alterations in an evolutionary and ecological context. Emphasizing eukaryotic parasites, the book examines the adaptive nature of behavioral changes associated with parasitism, exploring the effects of these changes on parasite transmission, parasite avoidance, and the fitness of both host and parasite. The behavioral changes and their effects are not always straightforward. To the extent that virulence, for instance, is linked to parasite transmission, the evolutionary interests of parasite and host will diverge, and the current winner of the contest to maximize reproductive rates may not be clear, or, for that matter, inevitable. Nonetheless, by affecting susceptibility, host/parasite lifespan and fecundity, and transmission itself, host behavior influences parameters that are basic to our comprehension of how parasites invade host populations, and fundamentally, how parasites evolve. Such an understanding is important for a wide range of scientists, from ecologists and parasitologists to evolutionary, conservation and behavioral biologists: The behavioral alterations that parasites induce can subtly and profoundly affect the distribution and abundance of animals.




Parasite Diversity and Diversification


Book Description

By joining phylogenetics and evolutionary ecology, this book explores the patterns of parasite diversity while revealing diversification processes.




Modern Soil Microbiology, Second Edition


Book Description

In the ten years since the publication of Modern Soil Microbiology, the study of soil microbiology has significantly changed, both in the understanding of the diversity and function of soil microbial communities and in research methods. Ideal for students in a variety of disciplines, this second edition provides a cutting-edge examination of a fascinating discipline that encompasses ecology, physiology, genetics, molecular biology, and biotechnology, and makes use of biochemical and biophysical approaches. The chapters cover topics ranging from the fundamental to the applied and describe the use of advanced methods that have provided a great thrust to the discipline of soil microbiology. Using the latest molecular analyses, they integrate principles of soil microbiology with novel insights into the physiology of soil microorganisms. The authors discuss the soil and rhizosphere as habitats for microorganisms, then go on to describe the different microbial groups, their adaptive responses, and their respective processes in interactive and functional terms. The book highlights a range of applied aspects of soil microbiology, including the nature of disease-suppressive soils, the use of biological control agents, biopesticides and bioremediation agents, and the need for correct statistics and experimentation in the analyses of the data obtained from soil systems.




The Significance and Regulation of Soil Biodiversity


Book Description

The sustainability of both natural and managed ecosystems is strongly influenced by soil biological processes. A major question in soil biology and ecosystem ecology is the extent to which these processes are affected by the function and structure of the soil's biotic community. The Significance and Regulation of Soil Biodiversity presents the discussions of a group of soil biologists and ecosystem ecologists in which they synthesize available information, present innovative methodologies, and develop cross-taxa and cross-habitat collaborations to advance our understanding of soil biodiversity. The volume addresses the extent and regulation of soil biodiversity and describes initial approaches to the linking of soil biodiversity and ecosystem function. Audience: Researchers and students in a wide range of environmental scientific disciplines.