Famous Planet Earth Caves - The new series presents important caves or rock shelters in any kind of rock types all over the world. Each book focuses on a single cave presentation covering different and most important disciplines of a cave: Geology (e.g. cave genesis, sedimentology, speleothems) such as Hydrogeology (e.g. speleothems for climate reconstructions, aquifer reconstructions), Paleontology (e.g. cave bear or carnivore dens), Archeology (e.g. Palaeolithic to Medieval camp or burial sites) and modern Biology (e.g. bat caves). The books are scientific chaptered monographs, sometimes of show caves, but often of non- or difficult to access caves. The well-illustrated books are written in a mixed scientific and popular scientific way for a better understanding and larger readership, especially speleologists and natural scientists all over the world.

Famous Planet Earth Caves presents information about geologically important caves or rock shelters in different kinds of rock formations all over the world. Each volume of this series is a focused monograph on a single cave. The series covers many disciplines that can be applied to study a cave: geology (cave genesis, sedimentology, speleothems), hydrogeology (speleothems for climate reconstructions, aquifer reconstructions), paleontology (cave bear or carnivore dens), archeology (Palaeolithic to Medieval camp or burial sites) and modern biology. Each volume is beautifully illustrated and written in a simple manner that will be of interest to general readers, speleologists and natural scientists, alike. This volume gives details of Hermann’s cave in Rübeland near Wernigerode, Germany. It is one of the largest show caves in Germany and Europe. The cave gives us information about the region in the Ice Age dating back to 350.000 years (which implies its significance in the Late Pleistocene epoch). The cave is a beautiful granite (Brocken Peak) and limestone rock and valley cut landscape. The volume presents information about the Late Pleistocene fauna discovered within the cave and other archaeological findings. Specifically, the volume gives details about the small and large cave bear species within the cave, their ecological relationship to the region (including interactions with steppe lions and Cromagnon humans), and their survival in taiga forest mountain areas of central Europe. This volume continues the premise of the book series on bringing information about fossils and archaeological records of well-known caves to light and will give readers an interesting peek into Hermann’s cave by bringing some of its Ice Age stories to life.

This book represents the first multidisciplinary scientific work on a deep volcanic maar lake in comparison with other similar temperate lakes. The syntheses of the main characteristics of Lake Pavin are, for the first time, set in a firmer footing comparative approach, encompassing regional, national, European and international aquatic science contexts. It is a unique lake because of its permanently anoxic monimolimnion, and furthermore, because of its small surface area, its substantially low human influence, and by the fact that it does not have a river inflow. The book reflects the scientific research done on the general limnology, history, origin, volcanology and geological environment as well as on the geochemistry and biogeochemical cycles. Other chapters focus on the biology and microbial ecology whereas the sedimentology and paleolimnology are also given attention. This volume will be of special interest to researchers and advanced students, primarily in the fields of limnology, biogeochemistry, and aquatic ecology.

Santo, the largest island in the South Pacific nation of Vanuatu, is an extraordinary geographical and cultural microcosm, combining reefs, caves, mountains, and satellite isles--with human history that dates back 3,000 years. Collecting contributions from more than one hundred authors, The Natural History of Santo is the result of a 2006 Santo expedition, which brought together scientists, volunteers, and students from twenty-five countries. This lavishly illustrated book pays homage to the biodiversity of this "planet-island" and bridges the gaps between scientific knowledge, conservation, and education.

The Educated Mind offers a bold and revitalizing new vision for today's uncertain educational system. Kieran Egan reconceives education, taking into account how we learn. He proposes the use of particular "intellectual tools"—such as language or literacy—that shape how we make sense of the world. These mediating tools generate successive kinds of understanding: somatic, mythic, romantic, philosophical, and ironic. Egan's account concludes with practical proposals for how teaching and curriculum can be changed to reflect the way children learn. "A carefully argued and readable book. . . . Egan proposes a radical change of approach for the whole process of education. . . . There is much in this book to interest and excite those who discuss, research or deliver education."—Ann Fullick, New Scientist "A compelling vision for today's uncertain educational system."—Library Journal "Almost anyone involved at any level or in any part of the education system will find this a fascinating book to read."—Dr. Richard Fox, British Journal of Educational Psychology "A fascinating and provocative study of cultural and linguistic history, and of how various kinds of understanding that can be distinguished in that history are recapitulated in the developing minds of children."—Jonty Driver, New York Times Book Review

First published in 1993, with a new and updated preface, this book is based on two years of intensive field study in Kruger National Park in South Africa. Ted Bailey examines leopard population characteristics, activity and habitat use patterns, movements, feeding ecology, and social organization, and provides new information on leopard mortality, scavenging, and relationships to other large predators and to humans. Illustrated with photographs, maps, graphs, charts, and tables. For professional wildlife biologists, students, and others concerned with the natural history of large carnivores. Ted Bailey is a retired Kenai National Wildlife Refuge wildlife biologist who has lived on the Kenai Peninsula in Alaska for more than 27 years. He is an adjunct instructor at the Kenai Peninsula College. "Bailey has added a substantial and high-quality work." Science 1994 264:1004-1005 "The leopard remains an enigma in conservation. It is a difficult task for biologists and managers to balance their desires to protect such a species and also promote systems increasing the values people place on the species. It may be the mystery and chase that elevate the value of the trophy, be it fur or photographic. This book provides clues for many new mysteries around the leopard. J Wildlife Management 1995 59:191-192 "It represents simply the most comprehensive treatise on the leopard available to date." Julian C. Kerbis Peterhans, Center for Evolutionary and Environmental Biology, The Field Museum

The Anthropocene is a volatile and potentially catastrophic age demanding new ways of thinking about relations between humans and the nonhuman world. This book explores how responses to environmental challenges are hampered by a grief for a pristine and certain past, rather than considering the scale of the necessary socioeconomic change for a 'future' world. Conceptualisations of human-nature relations must recognise both human power and its embeddedness within material relations. Hope is a risky and complex process of possibility that carries painful emotions; it is something to be practised rather than felt. As centralised governmental solutions regarding climate change appear insufficient, intellectual and practical resources can be derived from everyday understandings and practices. Empirical examples from rural and urban contexts and with diverse research participants - indigenous communities, climate scientists, weed managers, suburban householders - help us to consider capacity, vulnerability and hope in new ways.

When reconstructing the past, the archaeologist needs to take into account all kinds of relevant information. Where no written sources are available, the natural sciences play an indispensable role. Troia is a remarkable site in this respect. The present excavation project at Troia, under the directorship of Manfred Korfmann, integrates various disciplines including geoarchaeology, archaeobotany, zooarchaeology, anthropology, geophysical prospection as well as chemical and technological studies of metal, stone and pottery. Hardly any other archaeological project is supported so intensely and on such a broad scale by archaeometric investigations as the international research group in Troia. In April 2001 an International Symposium was held in Heidelberg, Germany, with the aim of promoting scientific discussion and providing synopses of the various disciplines engaged in Troia. This volume contains most of the contributions presented at the symposium. Due to its broad natural scientific as well as its cultural-historic scope, not only will the specialist but also the interested layman find the book rewarding.

This book presents a psychoanalysis of technoscience. Basic concepts and methods developed by Freud, Jung, Bachelard and Lacan are applied to case histories (palaeoanthropology, classical conditioning, virology). Rather than by disinterested curiosity, technoscience is driven by desire, resistance and the will to control. Moreover, psychoanalysis focusses on primal scenes (Dubois' quest for the missing link, Pavlov's discovery of the conditioned reflex) and opts for triangulation: comparing technoscience to "different scenes" provided by novels, so that Dubois's work is compared to missing link novels by Verne and London and Pavlov's experiments with Skinner's Walden Two, while virology is studied through the lens of viral fiction.

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. Why did such highly abstract ideas as truth, knowledge, or justice become so important to us? What was the point of coming to think in these terms? In The Practical Origins of Ideas Matthieu Queloz presents a philosophical method designed to answer such questions: the method of pragmatic genealogy. Pragmatic genealogies are partly fictional, partly historical narratives exploring what might have driven us to develop certain ideas in order to discover what these do for us. The book uncovers an under-appreciated tradition of pragmatic genealogy which cuts across the analytic-continental divide, running from the state-of-nature stories of David Hume and the early genealogies of Friedrich Nietzsche to recent work in analytic philosophy by Edward Craig, Bernard Williams, and Miranda Fricker. However, these genealogies combine fictionalizing and historicizing in ways that even philosophers sympathetic to the use of state-of-nature fictions or real history have found puzzling. To make sense of why both fictionalizing and historicizing are called for, this book offers a systematic account of pragmatic genealogies as dynamic models serving to reverse-engineer the points of ideas in relation not only to near-universal human needs, but also to socio-historically situated needs. This allows the method to offer us explanation without reduction and to help us understand what led our ideas to shed the traces of their practical origins. Far from being normatively inert, moreover, pragmatic genealogy can affect the space of reasons, guiding attempts to improve our conceptual repertoire by helping us determine whether and when our ideas are worth having.