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The story of the most abundant substance on Earth, from its origins in the birth of stars billions of years ago to its importance in the living world.Water is so ubiquitous in our lives that it is easy to take for granted. The average American uses ninety gallons of water a day; nearly every liquid we encounter is mostly water--milk, for example, is 87 percent water. Clouds and ice--water in other forms--affect our climate. Water is the most abundant substance on Earth, and the third-most abundant molecule in the universe. In this lavishly illustrated volume, science writer Jack Challoner tells the story of water, from its origins in the birth of stars to its importance in the living world. Water is perhaps the most studied compound in the universe--although mysteries about it remain--and Challoner describes how thinkers from ancient times have approached the subject. He offers a detailed and fascinating look at the structure and behavior of water molecules, explores the physics of wat

Why gender is strange, even when it's played straight, and how race and money are two of its most dramatic ingredients.In this volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series, Kathryn Bond Stockton explores the fascinating, fraught, intimate, morphing matter of gender. Stockton argues for gender's strangeness, no matter how "normal" the concept seems; gender is queer for everyone, she claims, even when it's played quite straight. And she explains how race and money dramatically shape everybody's gender, even in sometimes surprising ways. Playful but serious, erudite and witty, Stockton marshals an impressive array of exhibits to consider, including dolls and their new gendering, the thrust of Jane Austen and Lil Nas X, gender identities according to women's colleges, gay and transgender ballroom scenes, and much more. Stockton also examines gender in light of biology's own strange ways, its out-of-syncness with "male" and "female," explaining attempts to fortify gender with clothing

Writings by thinkers ranging from Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain to Bruno Latour that focus on the interconnections of technology, society, and values.Technological change does not happen in a vacuum; decisi

A guided tour of the rapidly evolving networked world of connected devices, objects, and people that is changing the way we live and work.Since the publication of the original edition of this volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series, the Internet of Things (IoT) has evolved from a novelty (look! my phone connects to my lamp!) to a mainstream technology framework that we rely on every day to accomplish many tasks. This revised and updated edition reports on the latest developments in this rapidly evolving networked world of connected devices, objects, and people that is changing the way we live and work. Business and technology writer Samuel Greengard takes us on a guided tour of the IoT, describing smart lightbulbs, sensors in phones that trigger earthquake warnings, 3D headsets that connect users to business expos through completely immersive virtual reality environments, and more. He offers a clear explanation of the technology that builds and manages the IoT and examines t

An examination of the contradictions within a form of expression that is both public and private, specific and abstract, conventional and countercultural. Snapshots capture everyday occasions. Taken by amateur photographers with simple point-and-shoot cameras, snapshots often commemorate something that is private and personal; yet they also reflect widely held cultural conventions. The poses may be formulaic, but a photograph of loved ones can evoke a deep affective response. In Snapshot Photography, Catherine Zuromskis examines the development of a form of visual expression that is both public and private. Scholars of art and culture tend to discount snapshot photography; it is too ubiquitous, too unremarkable, too personal. Zuromskis argues for its significance. Snapshot photographers, she contends, are not so much creating spontaneous records of their lives as they are participating in a prescriptive cultural ritual. A snapshot is not only a record of interpersonal intimacy but also

How Brazilian postwar avant-garde artists updated modernism in a way that was radically at odds with European and North American art historical narratives. Brazilian avant-garde artists of the postwar era worked from a fundamental but productive out-of-jointness. They were modernist but distant from modernism. Europeans and North Americans may feel a similar displacement when viewing Brazilian avant-garde art; the unexpected familiarity of the works serves to make them unfamiliar. In Constructing an Avant-Garde, S廨gio Martins seizes on this uncanny obliqueness and uses it as the basis for a reconfigured account of the history of Brazil's avant-garde. His discussion covers not only widely renowned artists and groups--including H幨io Oiticica, Lygia Clark, Cildo Meireles, and neoconcretism--but also important artists and critics who are less well known outside Brazil, including M嫫io Pedrosa, Ferreira Gullar, Am璱car de Castro, Lu疄 Sacilotto, Antonio Dias, and Rubens Gerchman. Martins argue

A general formal theory of causal reasoning as a logical study of causal models, reasoning, and inference.In this book, Alexander Bochman presents a general formal theory of causal reasoning as a logical study of causal models, reasoning, and inference, basing it on a supposition that causal reasoning is not a competitor of logical reasoning but its complement for situations lacking logically sufficient data or knowledge. Bochman also explores the relationship of this theory with the popular structural equation approach to causality proposed by Judea Pearl and explores several applications ranging from artificial intelligence to legal theory, including abduction, counterfactuals, actual and proximate causality, dynamic causal models, and reasoning about action and change in artificial intelligence. As logical preparation, before introducing causal concepts, Bochman describes an alternative, situation-based semantics for

Can we change the minds of science deniers? Encounters with flat earthers, anti-vaxxers, coronavirus truthers, and others."Climate change is a hoax--and so is coronavirus." "Vaccines are bad for you." These days, many of our fellow citizens reject scientific expertise and prefer ideology to facts. They are not merely uninformed--they are misinformed. They cite cherry-picked evidence, rely on fake experts, and believe conspiracy theories. How can we convince such people otherwise? How can we get them to change their minds and accept the facts when they don't believe in facts? In this book, Lee McIntyre shows that anyone can fight back against science deniers, and argues that it's important to do so. Science denial can kill. Drawing on his own experience--including a visit to a Flat Earth convention--as well as academic research, McIntyre outlines the common themes of science denialism, present in misinformation campaigns ranging from tobacco companies' denial in the 1950s that smoking c

A concise overview of machine learning--computer programs that learn from data--the basis of such applications as voice recognition and driverless cars.Today, machine learning underlies a range of app

In 1937, H. G. Wells proposed a predigital, freely available World Encyclopedia to represent a civilization-saving World Brain.In a series of talks and essays in 1937, H. G. Wells proselytized for wha

A prominent critic and theorist considers the criteria of value for collecting and storing works of art.In the world of contemporary art, serious art is produced primarily with the aim of being collec

A comprehensive introduction to the mathematical foundations of movement and actuation that apply equally to animals and machines.This textbook offers a computational framework for the sensorimotor st

The industry bible for communication design and illustration professionals, with updated information, listings, and pricing guidelines.Graphic Artists Guild Handbook is the industry bible for communic

Images and text capture the astonishing beauty of the chemical processes that create snowflakes, bubbles, flames, and other wonders of nature.Chemistry is not just about microscopic atoms doing inscru

How conflicting ideas of nature threaten to fracture America's identity.Amber waves of grain, purple mountain majesties: American invest much of their national identity in sites of natural beauty. And yet American lands today are torn by conflicts over science, religion, identity, and politics. Creationists believe that the Biblical flood carved landscapes less than 10,000 years ago; environmentalists protest pipelines; Western states argue that the federal government's land policies throttle free enterprise; Native Americans demand protection for sacred sites. In this book, David Nye looks at Americans' irreconcilably conflicting ideas about nature.A landscape is conflicted when different groups have different uses for the same location—for example, when some want to open mining sites that others want to preserve or when suburban development impinges on agriculture. Some landscapes are so degraded from careless use that they become toxic “anti-landscapes.” Nye traces these conflicts t

How to understand a media environment in crisis, and how to make things better by approaching information ecologically.Our media environment is in crisis. Polarization is rampant. Polluted information

Exploring more than seventy-five well-known paradoxes in mathematics, philosophy, physics, and the social sciences showing how reason and logic can dispel the illusion of contradiction.Paradox is a so

Black, Indigenous, and Peoples of Color--reimagine library and information science through the lens of critical race theory.In Knowledge Justice, Black, Indigenous, and Peoples of Color scholars use c

A leading cancer specialist tells the compelling stories of three adult leukemia patients and their treatments, the disease itself, and the drugs developed to treat it.When you are told that you have

A general organismic-causal theory that explicates working memory and executive function developmentally, clarifying the nature of human intelligence.In The Working Mind, Juan Pascual-Leone and Janice

Why simple technological solutions to complex social issues continue to appeal to politicians and professionals who should (and often do) know better.Why do we keep trying to solve poverty with techno

Quantum computing explained in terms of elementary linear algebra, emphasizing computation and algorithms and requiring no background in physics.This introduction to quantum algorithms is concise but

A key text by a leading figure in Italian socialist feminism that remains relevant today, addressing the exploitation of women in the workplace and at home.Anna Kuliscioff (c. 1854-1925) was a promine

An investigation of hate speech: legal approaches, current controversies, and suggestions for limiting its spread.Hate speech can happen anywhere--in Charlottesville, Virginia, where young men in khak

An introduction to annotation as a genre--a synthesis of reading, thinking, writing, and communication--and its significance in scholarship and everyday life.Annotation--the addition of a note to a te

In the bestselling tradition of Stuff Matters and The Disappearing Spoon: a clever and engaging look at materials, the innovations they made possible, and how these technologies changed us.In The Alch

A rigorous and comprehensive textbook covering the major approaches to knowledge graphs, an active and interdisciplinary area within artificial intelligence.The field of knowledge graphs, which allows

The new edition of a comprehensive, accessible, and hands-on text in historical linguistics, revised and expanded, with new material and a new layout. This accessible, hands-on textbook not only introduces students to the important topics in historical linguistics but also shows them how to apply the methods described and how to think about the issues. Abundant examples from a broad range of languages and exercises allow students to focus on how to do historical linguistics. The book is distinctive for its integration of the standard topics with others now considered important to the field, including syntactic change, grammaticalization, sociolinguistic contributions to linguistic change, distant genetic relationships, areal linguistics, and linguistic prehistory.

How we can harness cutting-edge biology and manufacturing to fight waste and pollution.In Nature, there is little chemical waste; nearly every atom is a resource to be utilized by organisms, ensuring

The history and controversial roots of the social design movement, explored through the life and work of its leading pioneer, Victor Papanek.In Victor Papanek: Designer for the Real World, Alison Clar

An authoritative and unbiased guide to nuclear technology and the controversies that surround it.Are you for nuclear power or against it? What's the basis of your opinion? Did you know a CT scan gives

The relationship of the dead body with technology through history, from nineteenth-century embalming machines to the death-prevention technologies of today.Death and the dead body have never been more

The definitive and essential collection of classic and new essays on analytic theories of truth, revised and updated, with nineteen new chapters.The question "What is truth?" is so philosophical it ca

An argument for reimagining skill in a way that can extend economic opportunity to workers at the bottom of the labor market.America has a jobs problem--not enough well-paying jobs to go around and no

Why the microbiome--our rich inner ecosystem of microorganisms--may hold the keys to human health.We are at the dawn of new scientific revolution. Our understanding of how to treat and prevent disease

A bold new spatial perspective on modern sculpture, with 800 color images of work by artists including Henry Moore, Lygia Clark, Anish Kapoor, and Ana Mendieta.This monumental, richly illustrated volu

A roadmap for how we can rebuild America's working class by transforming workforce education and training.The American dream promised that if you worked hard, you could move up, with well-paying worki

Hackers as vital disruptors, inspiring a new wave of activism in which ordinary citizens take back democracy.Hackers have a bad reputation, as shady deployers of bots and destroyers of infrastructure.

A data-driven exploration of how children’s language learning varies across different languages, providing both a theoretical framework and reference.The Wordbank Project examines variability and cons

An examination of dating app culture in China, across user demographics--straight women, straight men, queer women, and queer men.In this exploration of dating app culture in China, Lik Sam Chan argue