Thomas F. Glick

Urban Ecosystems and Island Biogeography

In urban areas, continuing fragmentation of natural habitat, disturbance, and increasing isolation of individual ‘habitat islands’, has brought on almost general reduction in species richness. Sensitive species are being replaced by aggressive synanthropic ones. Continued loss seems inevitable, but reducing the rate of that loss is a worthwhile conservation goal. It is imperative that the numerous and varied habitats within each urban area be considered as interrelated and not as separate units. Island biogeography models supply the means for unifying the disparate elements in urban ecological studies and can provide a useful strategy for conservation. It is difficult to define colonization, extinction, and equilibrium, in disturbed, often transient, urban habitats. Pseudo- and successional turnover dominate. The occupation of each ‘habitat island’ is a function of its own geography and of its position relative to other ‘islands’. Each habitat may serve as isolated ‘island’, ‘stepping-stone’, or ‘corridor’, depending on its spatial relationships with other ‘habitat islands’ and with the nature of each organism present. ‘Habitat islands’ in small cities appear to function like large or near oceanic islands, while those in large cities seem to respond like small or distant oceanic islands. In all cases, the analogy with land-bridge islands is appropriate. Continuing urbanization is leading to reduced ‘habitat island’ size, and increasing the isolation of units from one another and from the surrounding rural ‘reservoir’.

The Comparative Reception of Relativity

Stanley Goldberg/Putting New Wine in Old Bottles: The Assimilation of Relativity in America.- Jose M. Sanchez-Ron/The Reception of Special Relativity in Great Britain.- Lewis Pyenson/The Relativity Revolution in Germany.- Michel Paty/The Scientific Reception of Relativity in France.- Michel Biezunski/Einsteins Reception in Paris in 1922.- Barbara J. Reeves/Einstein Politicized: The Early Reception of Relativity in Italy.- Thomas F. Glick/Relativity in Spain.- V.P. Vizginand G.E. Gorelik/The Reception of the Theory of Relativity in Russia and the USSR.- Bronis?aw ?Redniawa/The Reception of the Theory of Relativity in Poland.- Tsutomu Kaneko/Einsteins Impact on Japanese Intellectuals.- Thomas F. Glick/Cultural Issues in the Reception of Relativity.

Medieval Science, Technology, and Medicine : An Encyclopedia

Medieval Science, Technology, and Medicine details the whole scope of scientific knowledge in the medieval period in more than 300 A to Z entries. This resource discusses the research, application of knowledge, cultural and technology exchanges, experimentation, and achievements in the many disciplines related to science and technology. Coverage includes inventions, discoveries, concepts, places and fields of study, regions, and significant contributors to various fields of science. There are also entries on South-Central and East Asian science. This reference work provides an examination of medieval scientific tradition as well as an appreciation for the relationship between medieval science and the traditions it supplanted and those that replaced it. For a full list of entries, contributors, and more, visit the Routledge Encyclopedias of the Middle Ages website.

From Muslim fortress to Christian castle: social and cultural change in medieval Spain

Issues in Spanish medieval history provincial Roman Spain the Visigothic occupation and reorganization of the 5th century Visigothic state and society the Arab conquest and reorganization of the 8th-10th centuries social and institutional organization of the countryside urbanization and commerce - history and archaeology cultures in conflict - creative exchanges, hostile interactions the Christian conquest and reorganization of the 13th century.

Acculturation as an Explanatory Concept in Spanish History

This essay can best be considered an anthropological venture in the field of recent and contemporary Spanish historiography. Our aim is twofold: an understanding of the nature of Spanish historical interpretation as it is elaborated by national historians; the examination of certain phases of intercultural contact critical in the formation of a distinct Spanish cultural form.

The Naked Science: Psychoanalysis in Spain, 1914–1948

The effort to implant secular science in Spain was stymied throughout the nineteenth century by a ruling conservative elite which held that “science without religion is blind” and viewed the practice of science divorced from an explicitly Catholic, Thomist philosophical framework as being the equivalent of civil subversion. Medical doctors, in particular, were held to be subversive; in the aftermath of the conservative overthrow of the liberal government in 1824 all professors of the Madrid Medical College were either imprisoned or removed from their chairs. The liberal revolution of 1868, which briefly overthrew the Bourbons and their conservative supporters and installed the short-lived First Republic, was universally regarded by Spanish scientists as having opened the door to new ideas. Chief among these was Darwinism, anathema to Catholic conservatives because of its challenge to Biblical dogma. There had been virtually no discussion of this heretical idea before the revolution, and it was freely discussed in its wake.

Islamic and Christian Spain in the Early Middle Ages: Comparative Perspectives on Social and Cultural Formation

Recognizing the mannerism ways to acquire this ebook islamic and christian spain in the early middle ages comparative perspectives on social and cultural formation is additionally useful. You have remained in right site to start getting this info. get the islamic and christian spain in the early middle ages comparative perspectives on social and cultural formation associate that we provide here and check out the link.

The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II. Vol. II.

The focus of Fernand Braudels great work is the Mediterranean world in the second half of the sixteenth century, but Braudel ranges back in history to the world of Odysseus and forward to our time, moving out from the Mediterranean area to the New World and other destinations of Mediterranean traders. Braudels scope embraces the natural world and material life, economics, demography, politics, and diplomacy.

O Programa Brasileiro de genética evolucionária de populações, de Theodosius Dobzhansky

In the 1940s and 50s the Rockefeller Foundation established a program for the development of population genetics at the Universidade de Sao Paulo under the direction of the Russian/North American geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky. The great success of this program was said to have been the result of the kind of research organization, in teams, that Dobzhansky introduced. An evaluation of this conclusion is analyzed, based on the reminiscence of the Swiss geneticist, Hans Burla, a foreign member of the original Dobzhansky group.

Introduction: Cacao Culture: Case Studies in History 1

An informal survey of twenty restaurants in Boston, Massachusetts reveals that each establishment includes on their menu at least one dessert that features chocolate. To celebrate the approaching Valentine’s Day, The Food Network ran twelve hours of chocolate-centric television programs on February 11, 2007. In the Netherlands, a Dutch journalist, in attempt to raise awareness of child labor in the cacao/chocolate industry in the Ivory Coast, requested an Amsterdam court to convict him for consuming chocolate.2 Clearly, chocolate is iconic in western culture (and some might argue, diet) at best as a luxurious treat and a symbol of romance and love. At worst, it represents a fetishized commodity and the exploitation of third-world labor and economies. These meanings and uses of cacao developed over millennia and in a quite different cultural milieu. Cacao’s geographic and cultural roots are in Mesoamerica. Its consumption spread to Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries and, more recently, to several African countries. Cacao reflects these differing spatial, temporal, social, and cultural contexts. When we say that cacao is iconic, what we really mean is that at the heart of the complicated relationship between cacao and culture has been its capacity to encode cultural and social specificity over the centuries, not unlike the way wine does. Indeed, the French chocolatier, Valrhona, describes its chocolate “in a similar fashion to wine with the labeling of such creations as grand cru, single origin, single estate and even vintage chocolate.”3