What do fishing with an otter, sitting atop a mountain at dawn
with eighty Taiwanese backpackers, and driving home from Aldo
Leopold's Shack have to say about the evolution of a personal
...environmental philosophy? Essays to My Daughter on Our
Relationship With the Natural World provides a series of
reflections by an environmental educator about lessons learned from
time spent in nature. Originally conceived as personal letters to
the author's daughter, this collection presents ethical questions
outdoor enthusiasts regularly face as they work and play in the
natural world.
The essays in this book explore environmentalism in a modern-day
context, with topics including sustainability education, the
current relevance of environmental writers from the past, and the
uncertainty of what is meant by words like "naturalist,"
"solitude," and "wilderness." There is no attempt to direct readers
to any particular environmental philosophy. Instead, Simpson
encourages readers to articulate their own perspective based on
personal experiences in nature. Though Essays to My
Daughter is written by a father to his daughter, the insights
within the volume-and the questions they provoke-are valuable to
all members of the next generation as they grapple with their own
relationship to the natural world.
Rethinking Japan Stockwin, Arthur; Ampiah, Kweku
2017., 2017, 2017-02-15
eBook
The authors argue that with the election of the Abe Government in December 2012, Japanese politics has entered a radically new phase they describe as the “2012 Political System.” The system began ...with the return to power of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), after three years in opposition, but in a much stronger electoral position than previous LDP-based administrations in earlier decades. Moreover, with the decline of previously endemic intra-party factionalism, the LDP has united around an essentially nationalist agenda never absent from the party’s ranks, but in the past was generally blocked, or modified, by factions of more liberal persuasion. Opposition weakness following the severe defeat of the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) administration in 2012 has also enabled the Abe Government to establish a political stability largely lacking since the 1990s. The first four chapters deal with Japanese political development since 1945 and factors leading to the emergence of Abe Shinzō as Prime Minister in 2012. Chapter 5 examines the Abe Government’s flagship economic policy, dubbed “Abenomics.” The authors then analyse four highly controversial objectives promoted by the Abe Government: revision of the 1947 ‘Peace Constitution’; the introduction of a Secrecy Law; historical revision, national identity and issues of war apology; and revised constitutional interpretation permitting collective defence. In the final three chapters they turn to foreign policy, first examining relations with China, Russia and the two Koreas, second Japan and the wider world, including public diplomacy, economic relations and overseas development aid, and finally, the vexed question of how far Japanese policies are as reactive to foreign pressure. In the Conclusion, the authors ask how far right wing trends in Japan exhibit common causality with shifts to the right in the United States, Europe and elsewhere. They argue that although in Japan immigration has been a relatively minor factor, economic stagnation, demographic decline, a sense of regional insecurity in the face of challenges from China and North Korea, and widening gaps in life chances, bear comparison with trends elsewhere. Nevertheless, they maintain that “a more sane regional future may be possible in East Asia.”
ABSTRACT
3A 1954+319 has been classified for a long time as a symbiotic X-ray binary, hosting a slowly rotating neutron star and an aged M red giant. Recently, this classification has been revised ...thanks to the discovery that the donor star is an M supergiant. This makes 3A 1954+319 a rare type of high-mass X-ray binary consisting of a neutron star and a red supergiant donor. In this paper, we analyse two archival and still unpublished XMM–Newton and NuSTAR observations of the source. We perform a detailed hardness ratio-resolved spectral analysis to search for spectral variability that could help investigating the structures of the inhomogeneous M supergiant wind from which the neutron star is accreting. We discuss our results in the context of wind-fed supergiant X-ray binaries and show that the newest findings on 3A 1954+319 reinforce the hypothesis that the neutron star in this system is endowed with a magnetar-like magnetic field strength (≳ 1014 G).
The symbiotic X-ray binary (SyXB) 4U 1954+319 is a rare system hosting a peculiar neutron star (NS) and an M-type optical companion. Its ~5.4 hr NS spin period is the longest among all known ...accretion-powered pulsars and exhibited large (~7%) fluctuations over 8 yr. A spin trend transition was detected with Swift/BAT around an X-ray brightening in 2012. The source was in quiescent and bright states before and after this outburst based on 60 ks Suzaku observations in 2011 and 2012. The observed continuum is well described by a Comptonized model with the addition of a narrow 6.4 keV Fe-K alpha line during the outburst. Spectral similarities to slowly rotating pulsars in high-mass X-ray binaries, its high pulsed fraction (~60%-80%), and the location in the Corbet diagram favor high B-field (gap10 super(12) G) over a weak field as in low-mass X-ray binaries. The observed low X-ray luminosity (10 super(33)-10 super(35) erg s super(-1)), probable wide orbit, and a slow stellar wind of this SyXB make quasi-spherical accretion in the subsonic settling regime a plausible model. Assuming a ~10 super(13) G NS, this scheme can explain the ~5.4 hr equilibrium rotation without employing the magnetar-like field (-10 super(16) G) required in the disk accretion case. The timescales of multiple irregular flares (~50 s) can also be attributed to the free-fall time from the Alfven shell for a ~10 super(13) G field. A physical interpretation of SyXBs beyond the canonical binary classifications is discussed.
This year marks the 70th anniversary of the Bell Telephone Laboratories "Solar Battery." This event was noted in the New York Times on March 26, 1954–and the device was a tipping point for ...photovoltaics technology. The Bell team was led by Daryl Chapin, Calvin Fuller, and Gerald Pearson. This humble mW sized device was foundational to the terawatts of PV cumulatively installed today.
Loss is the core experience which determines the identity of Kazuo Ishiguro's narrators and shapes their subsequent lives. Whether a traumatic ordeal, an act of social degradation, a failed ...relationship or a loss of home, the painful event serves as a sharp dividing line between the earlier, meaningful past and the period afterwards, which is infused with a sense of lack, dissatisfaction and nostalgia. Ishiguro's narrators have been unable to confine their loss to the past and remain preoccupied by its legacy, which ranges from suppressed guilt to a keen sense of failure or disappointment. Their immersion in the past finds expression in the narratives which they weave in order to articulate, justify or merely understand their experiences. Their reconstructions of the past are interpreted as exercises in misremembering and self-deception which enable them to sustain their illusions and save them from despair. Revisiting Loss is the first book-length study of memory encompassing Ishiguro's entire novelistic output. It adopts a highly interdisciplinary approach, combining a selection of philosophical (Jacques Derrida, Paul Ricoeur, and Jean Starobinski) and psychological perspectives (Sigmund Freud, Frederic Bartlett, Jacques Lacan, and Daniel L. Schacter). The book offers a thoroughly researched critical survey drawing on all published critical monographs and collections of academic articles on Ishiguro's work.
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