Author : Jon Gjerde
Publisher : Univ of North Carolina Press
Page : 454 pages
File Size : 30,24 MB
Release : 1999-02-01
Category : History
ISBN : 9780807848074
In the century preceding World War I, the American Middle West drew thousands of migrants both from Europe and from the northeastern United States. In the American mind, the region represented a place where social differences could be muted and a distinct
Author : Malcolm K. Hughes
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
Page : 365 pages
File Size : 24,15 MB
Release : 2010-10-28
Category : Science
ISBN : 1402057253
A top priority in climate research is obtaining broad-extent and long-term data to support analyses of historical patterns and trends, and for model development and evaluation. Along with directly measured climate data from the present and recent past, it is important to obtain estimates of long past climate variations spanning multiple centuries and millennia. These longer time perspectives are needed for assessing the unusualness of recent climate changes, as well as for providing insight on the range, variation and overall dynamics of the climate system over time spans exceeding available records from instruments, such as rain gauges and thermometers. Tree rings have become increasingly valuable in providing this long-term information because extensive data networks have been developed in temperate and boreal zones of the Earth, and quantitative methods for analyzing these data have advanced. Tree rings are among the most useful paleoclimate information sources available because they provide a high degree of chronological accuracy, high replication, and extensive spatial coverage spanning recent centuries. With the expansion and extension of tree-ring data and analytical capacity new climatic insights from tree rings are being used in a variety of applications, including for interpretation of past changes in ecosystems and human societies. This volume presents an overview of the current state of dendroclimatology, its contributions over the last 30 years, and its future potential. The material included is useful not only to those who generate tree-ring records of past climate-dendroclimatologists, but also to users of their results-climatologists, hydrologists, ecologists and archeologists. ‘With the pressing climatic questions of the 21st century demanding a deeper understanding of the climate system and our impact upon it, this thoughtful volume comes at critical moment. It will be of fundamental importance in not only guiding researchers, but in educating scientists and the interested lay person on the both incredible power and potential pitfalls of reconstructing climate using tree-ring analysis.’, Glen M. MacDonald, UCLA Institute of the Environment, CA, USA ‘This is an up-to-date treatment of all branches of tree-ring science, by the world’s experts in the field, reminding us that tree rings are the most important source of proxy data on climate change. Should be read by all budding dendrochronology scientists.’, Alan Robock, Rutgers University, NJ, USA
Author : Robert Southey
Publisher :
Page : 456 pages
File Size : 46,53 MB
Release : 1829
Category : Social problems
ISBN :
Author : National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine
Publisher : National Academies Press
Page : 273 pages
File Size : 39,12 MB
Release : 2019-04-27
Category : Computers
ISBN : 030947969X
Quantum mechanics, the subfield of physics that describes the behavior of very small (quantum) particles, provides the basis for a new paradigm of computing. First proposed in the 1980s as a way to improve computational modeling of quantum systems, the field of quantum computing has recently garnered significant attention due to progress in building small-scale devices. However, significant technical advances will be required before a large-scale, practical quantum computer can be achieved. Quantum Computing: Progress and Prospects provides an introduction to the field, including the unique characteristics and constraints of the technology, and assesses the feasibility and implications of creating a functional quantum computer capable of addressing real-world problems. This report considers hardware and software requirements, quantum algorithms, drivers of advances in quantum computing and quantum devices, benchmarks associated with relevant use cases, the time and resources required, and how to assess the probability of success.
Author : Eli Cook
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Page : 365 pages
File Size : 45,57 MB
Release : 2017-09-25
Category : History
ISBN : 0674982541
How did Americans come to quantify their society’s progress and well-being in units of money? In today’s GDP-run world, prices are the standard measure of not only our goods and commodities but our environment, our communities, our nation, even our self-worth. The Pricing of Progress traces the long history of how and why we moderns adopted the monetizing values and valuations of capitalism as an indicator of human prosperity while losing sight of earlier social and moral metrics that did not put a price on everyday life. Eli Cook roots the rise of economic indicators in the emergence of modern capitalism and the contested history of English enclosure, Caribbean slavery, American industrialization, economic thought, and corporate power. He explores how the maximization of market production became the chief objective of American economic and social policy. We see how distinctly capitalist quantification techniques used to manage or invest in railroad corporations, textile factories, real estate holdings, or cotton plantations escaped the confines of the business world and seeped into every nook and cranny of society. As economic elites quantified the nation as a for-profit, capitalized investment, the progress of its inhabitants, free or enslaved, came to be valued according to their moneymaking abilities. Today as in the nineteenth century, political struggles rage over who gets to determine the statistical yardsticks used to gauge the “health” of our economy and nation. The Pricing of Progress helps us grasp the limits and dangers of entrusting economic indicators to measure social welfare and moral goals.
Author : Asa K. Cusack
Publisher : University of London Press
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 29,61 MB
Release : 2018
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 9781908857224
This edited collection is only the second academic publication dedicated solely to Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA), the "Left Turn" regional project founded by Venezuela and Cuba in 2004 and since expanded to Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, and much of the Anglophone Caribbean. As ALBA celebrates its first decade, this book offers a considered, critical, and comprehensive account of the project. This work provides insights into all manner of unanswered questions: among others, the roles and involvement of member-states both central and peripheral; the nature of ALBA governance; the sustainability of the project; its effect on domestic politics; and the true nature and extent of specific initiatives. Bringing together scholars from across ideological divides, the book provides a comprehensive analysis of ALBA's successes and failures, evaluating the project's viability and mapping possible future trajectories. The opacity of ALBA and its member-states, and the perplexing lack of research into ALBA despite its significance, makes the contribution of this edited volume a particularly valuable one.
Author : John Podesta
Publisher : Crown
Page : 258 pages
File Size : 22,5 MB
Release : 2008-08-19
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 0307405699
AMERICA IS FACING UNPRECEDENTED CHAL LENGES—new threats to our economic well-being, our environment, and our security. The American people are looking for real answers; the next president must mobilize our government and our citizens in ways that no president has done since FDR. America needs the power of progress . . . once again. At the turn of the twentieth century, the American Dream was beginning to dim in a nation riven by growing inequalities in wealth and run by a powerful network of privileged industrialists and their political allies. But that era also gave birth to a renaissance in American political thought that forever changed our nation. At a time when conservative ideology served as an excuse for the accumulation of wealth and privilege, the original Progressive movement created a new political order built on America’s basic principles—justice and equality for all, economic opportunity, and a commitment to the common good. The lives of all Americans have been profoundly improved by the achievements of progressive reformers, from the eight-hour workday and voting rights to our victory in the Cold War and the economic gains middle-class Americans enjoyed under our most recent progressive president, Bill Clinton. Today’s challenges demand a second great Progressive era. America needs an economy in which workers at every income level share in our riches; a climate policy that stops global warming and ends our addiction to fossil fuels; and American leadership in the global fight against terrorism, nuclear proliferation, and poverty. In The Power of Progress, John Podesta—former Clinton chief of staff—along with his colleague, John Halpin, explains how progressive values changed America in the wake of the Gilded Age and how these values will reshape America after the Bush presidency. Tapping the spirit of great progressive leaders from Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt to Martin Luther King Jr., The Power of Progress provides the road map toward a government responsive to the needs of its citizens; one that is focused on our generation’s greatest challenges: combating global warming, growing our economy and expanding the middle class, and meeting America’s twenty-first-century security challenges.
Author : Andrew R. Highsmith
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 399 pages
File Size : 22,13 MB
Release : 2016-12-30
Category : History
ISBN : 022641955X
Flint, Michigan, is widely seen as Detroit s Detroit: the perfect embodiment of a ruined industrial economy and a shattered American dream. In this deeply researched book, Andrew Highsmith gives us the first full-scale history of Flint, showing that the Vehicle City has always seen demolition as a tool of progress. During the 1930s, officials hoped to renew the city by remaking its public schools into racially segregated community centers. After the war, federal officials and developers sought to strengthen the region by building subdivisions in Flint s segregated suburbs, while GM executives and municipal officials demolished urban factories and rebuilt them outside the city. City leaders later launched a plan to replace black neighborhoods with a freeway and new factories. Each of these campaigns, Highsmith argues, yielded an ever more impoverished city and a more racially divided metropolis. By intertwining histories of racial segregation, mass suburbanization, and industrial decline, Highsmith gives us a deeply unsettling look at urban-industrial America."
Author : Michael Pacione
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 292 pages
File Size : 38,80 MB
Release : 2013-01-11
Category : Science
ISBN : 1135734917
Historical geography has been a major area of activity in recent years. Much of the recent work and research findings have been extremely valuable to historians and archaeologists and as background to the study of contemporary geography. This reissue, first published in 1987, presents an overview of contemporary developments in all the major branches of the discipline. As such it provides a valuable introduction to the subject, a review of the latest state of the art and a pointer to future research directions.
Author : Mariam K. Chamberlain
Publisher : Russell Sage Foundation
Page : 444 pages
File Size : 25,77 MB
Release : 1989-03-16
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 1610441141
The role of women in higher education, as in many other settings, has undergone dramatic changes during the past two decades. This significant period of progress and transition is definitively assessed in the landmark volume, Women in Academe. Crowded out by returning veterans and pressed by social expectations to marry early and raise children, women in the 1940s and 1950s lost many of the educational gains they had made in previous decades. In the 1960s women began to catch up, and by the 1970s women were taking rapid strides in academic life. As documented in this comprehensive study, the combined impact of the women's movement and increased legislative attention to issues of equality enabled women to make significant advances as students and, to a lesser extent, in teaching and academic administration. Women in Academe traces the phenomenal growth of women's studies programs, the notable gains of women in non-traditional fields, the emergence of campus women's centers and research institutes, and the increasing presence of minority and re-entry women. Also examined are the uncertain future of women's colleges and the disappointingly slow movement of women into faculty and administrative positions. This authoritative volume provides more current and extensive data on its subject than any other study now available. Clearly and objectively, it tells an impressive story of progress achieved—and of important work still to be done.
