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This book addresses one of the most controversial and polarizing topics of recent years: transgender girls' inclusion in girls' sports. The book explores legal precedent and medical science and explains why neither can answer the question of how eligibility rules should be drawn for girls' sports. The decision is, at core, a political one necessarily reflecting social values and priorities. The book examines positions from the right and left that have dominated the public debate revealing their ideological commitments and logical weak points. With the goal of helping readers clarify their own positions, rather than advocacy, the book provides a framework for thinking about this issue that focuses on the discrete benefits organized sports provides to participants and society more broadly and considers how such benefits can be most fairly and justly allocated to girls and boys – both transgender and cisgender.
Gulliver's Travels is one of the landmarks of world literature. Gulliver's adventures with the tiny but spirited Lilliputians, the giant inhabitants of Brobdingnag, the flying island of Laputa, and the rational horses of Houyhnmhnmland have become globally famous for their satirical wit and visionary creativity. Early editions credited Gulliver himself as the author, and many readers believed him to be a real person. Later commentators have variously described the work as proto-science fiction, as inspired children's literature and as a forerunner of the modern novel. The editor's introduction to this celebratory anniversary edition contextualises Gulliver's Travels in Swift's life and work as a whole while exploring its rich and remarkable afterlife. All the original illustrations and maps are included, as are the frontispiece portraits. Generous annotation explains textual details which might now seem obscure, and appendices contain additional documents and images to enhance contemporary understanding and enjoyment.
Unlock the secrets of scientific articles with CERIC: Claim, Evidence, Reasoning, Implications, and Context. This approachable guide helps readers break down dense articles into their core arguments using a focused hunt-and-seek approach, enabling deeper insight and engagement with the research literature. Each chapter features worked examples drawn from multiple scientific disciplines, pre-empts common misunderstandings, and provides knowledge checks to reinforce learning. Readers emerge able to identify and evaluate claims and evidence, spot gaps in reasoning, and articulate their findings through presentations and literature critiques – skills essential for success in higher education, industry, and informed citizenship. Whether you are an undergraduate tackling your first research article, a graduate student preparing a literature review, or an instructor teaching scientific literacy, the evidence-based CERIC Method transforms reading apprehension into confidence. Accompanying student and instructor supplements can be found online, with further discipline-specific examples and guidance on course preparation and professional development.
What are the key design elements of human language? How does it work? What makes it different from how animals communicate and convey information? How did it evolve, biologically speaking? In what respects do animals fail to do what we humans do so effortlessly? Language is a uniquely human trait, but without a degree in linguistics, it is difficult to comprehend how it works. This fascinating book addresses these and related questions in a lively and engaging way, and demonstrates the 'nuts and bolts' of how language actually works. Readers are introduced to key discoveries in the study of language, such as Chomsky's ideas about 'language faculty', and parallels are drawn with well-known issues in science, such as 'flat earth', the nature-nurture debate, and the teaching of language to apes. Language – something so universal to all human experience – is a fascinating cognitive system, and this book explains how, and why.
R is fast becoming ubiquitous in the environmental sciences to analyse data. This book introduces environmental modeling and R. It assumes no background in either coding or calculus. It offers real-world examples, fully described programs, and detailed exercises. Readers learn how to analyse large datasets, create beautiful images, thoughtfully utilize the benefits of AI, and use techniques like optimization and sensitivity analysis in their modelling of complex environmental systems. Using examples from a range of environmental topics – including ecology, conservation, and climate science - the book will interest readers from a broad range of environmental and conservation sciences. Most graduate programs in environmental science and sustainability use R because it is both open source and powerful. R is common in government and consulting work, so students that go on to more advanced environmental modelling courses and potentially careers in the environmental field will find a grounding in R very useful.
Entertaining usage of language is all around us and can explain more about how language works than we realise. This lively and engaging book explains key linguistic concepts, illustrated throughout with humorous and entertaining examples. Providing an accessible yet comprehensive survey of the field, it is especially helpful for students who might struggle with an overly technical text. Now in its second edition, it has been extensively updated and expanded to be more comprehensive and include culturally relevant content, from memes to smartphone autocorrect errors, to misheard song lyrics. It includes four new chapters on lexical meaning, onomastics, writing systems, and language in the digital world. Key linguistic terminology is clearly introduced throughout, ensuring that students are well equipped for more technical and formal courses in their later studies. With thorough coverage of nearly all linguistic subfields, the book is an ideal text for an introduction to linguistics or language.
Now in its second edition, this book provides a detailed introduction to the theory of jet bundles. It is written for mathematicians and physicists who wish to study differential equations, particularly those associated with the calculus of variations, in a modern geometric way. A knowledge of differential geometry is assumed, although introductory chapters include the necessary background of fibred manifolds, and on vector and affine bundles. The book explores how first-order jets may be considered as the natural generalisation of vector fields for studying variational problems in field theory, and so many of the constructions are introduced in the context of first- or second-order jets, before being described in their full generality. It features a proof of the local exactness of the variational bicomplex. This edition includes new chapters on velocity bundles and bundles of contact elements, together with updated material on the calculus of variations.
Aimed at practising biologists, especially graduate students and researchers in ecology, this revised and expanded 3rd edition continues to explore cause-effect relationships through a series of robust statistical methods. Every chapter has been updated, and two brand-new chapters cover statistical power, Akaike information criterion statistics and equivalent models, and piecewise structural equation modelling with implicit latent variables. A new R package (pwSEM) is included to assist with the latter. The book offers advanced coverage of essential topics, including d-separation tests and path analysis, and equips biologists with the tools needed to carry out analyses in the open-source R statistical environment. Writing in a conversational style that minimises technical jargon, Shipley offers an accessible text that assumes only a very basic knowledge of introductory statistics, incorporating real-world examples that allow readers to make connections between biological phenomena and the underlying statistical concepts.
Literary and archaeological evidence suggests that the Roman world was profoundly unequal. What did this mean in material terms for people at the bottom of the social hierarchy? Astrid Van Oyen here investigates the lived experiences of non-elite people in the Roman world through qualitative analysis of archaeological data. Supported by theoretical insights from the material turn, development economics, and feminist studies, her study of precarity cuts across the experiences of workers, the enslaved, women, and conquered populations. Van Oyen considers how precarity shaped these people's relation to production, consumption, time, place, and community. Drawing on empirically rich archaeological data from Roman Italy, Britain, Gaul, and the Iberian Peninsula, Van Oyen challenges long-held assumptions and generates new insights into the lives of the non-elite population. Her novel approaches will inspire future studies, enabling archaeologists, historians, and anthropologists to retrieve the unheard voices of the past.
Written by a team of leading experts, this groundbreaking handbook provides the first comprehensive and current account of Natural Linguistics. It offers a state-of-the-art survey of the theoretical developments that have arisen from, or are related to, the framework of Natural Phonology – across subfields as diverse as phonology, morphology, morphophonology, syntax, pragmatics and text linguistics. The handbook is split into five parts, with chapters covering the origins, foundational principles, semiotic, cognitive and functional bases of Natural Linguistics, as well as external evidence for the theory, and a critical appraisal of its position amongst modern linguistic theories. It fills a gap in the available accounts of modern linguistic theories and demonstrates the potential of the theory to a wider audience, addressing both advocates of the school, and those who are open to alternative approaches to linguistic science. It will be a definitive reference work on Natural Linguistics for years to come.
This book offers a comprehensive introduction to Markov decision process and reinforcement learning fundamentals using common mathematical notation and language. Its goal is to provide a solid foundation that enables readers to engage meaningfully with these rapidly evolving fields. Topics covered include finite and infinite horizon models, partially observable models, value function approximation, simulation-based methods, Monte Carlo methods, and Q-learning. Rigorous mathematical concepts and algorithmic developments are supported by numerous worked examples. As an up-to-date successor to Martin L. Puterman's influential 1994 textbook, this volume assumes familiarity with probability, mathematical notation, and proof techniques. It is ideally suited for students, researchers, and professionals in operations research, computer science, engineering, and economics.
Drawing together decades of research, Steve Smith explores the survival and adaptation of folk beliefs in Mao's China in the face of seismic social change and growing political repression. Bringing an oftenneglected aspect of modern Chinese history to the fore, he shows how folk religion maintained a vital presence in everyday life. In myriad ways, through Buddhism, Daoism, and Confucianism, spirit mediums and spirit healing, divination, geomancy, and the reform of traditional marriage and funeral rites, rituals, and beliefs provided resources for adaptation and resistance to the regime. Nevertheless the survival of folk religion must be set against the secularizing forces that the regime unleashed. This unique history gives readers a vivid sense of life under Mao Zedong as vibrant, contentious, and resilient – a far cry from stereotypes of a secular, regimented, and monochrome society.
Most women initially discuss health-related matters with a primary care clinician and can have a plethora of sex-specific medical needs throughout the life course. With greater expectations for GPs and allied health professionals to manage many women's health conditions, this is an invaluable guide for primary care practitioners looking to deliver holistic care to their female patients. This new edition has been thoroughly updated with the most recent guidelines, covering topics such as contraceptive choices, infertility, breast conditions, pregnancy and menopause, along with specific diseases such as ovarian cysts and ovarian cancer. There is a spotlight on the early diagnosis of endometriosis as well as the need for wider menopausal and psychosexual care. Chapters include a list of key points as well as patient cases to illustrate the application of the content. The book is invaluable for primary care clinicians and those preparing for the DRCOG and MRCGP examinations.
Set in the postcolonial city of Kinshasa (DR Congo), this ethnography explores how people with disabilities navigate debates about the just distribution of resources where there is little state organised welfare, and public perception of disability swings between the 'deserving' and 'undeserving'. Tracing a historic increase of disability due to polio and its long-term effects, this book examines two controversial livelihood activities that serve as informal alternatives to state support: a specialized form of international border brokerage across the Congo River, and a unique practice of bureaucratized begging that imitates state tax collection and humanitarian fundraising. Clara Devlieger examines how such activities shape ways that disabled people conceive the idea of becoming 'valuable people' in local terms: by supporting loved ones, many achieve high esteem against expectations, while adapting exclusionary models of urban personhood to include disability. Devlieger offers a new understanding of the complex dynamic between the imagined role of the state, international discourses of rights, and local experiences of disability.
This book is the first comprehensive account of the triumphs and follies of the Sheppard-Towner Act of 1921-the first federal policy aimed at improving health outcomes for mothers and babies. Michelle Bezark insightfully weaves together the experiences of advocates and federal agents maneuvering around Congress to pass the law; state-level administrators' accounts of implementing its programs at the local level; and individual mothers' and children's experiences of the programs on the ground. This approach reveals the political, technical, and legal challenges of passing and administering early federal social welfare policy, and what this policy provided for-and required of-citizens. In reconstructing the full lifecycle of the law, Bezark tells the untold history of an important federal policy and provides a critical case study for how one group of reformers built out administrative capacity at every level of governance from scratch.
In this landmark contribution to the study of modern China, Steve Smith examines the paradox of 'supernatural politics'. He shows that we cannot understand the meaning of the Communist revolution to the Han Chinese without exploring their belief in gods, ghosts and ancestors. China was a religious society when the Communist Party took power in 1949, and it sought to erode the influence of the minority religions of Buddhism, Daoism, Catholicism and Protestantism. However, it was the folk religion of the great majority that seemed to symbolize China's backwardness. Smith explores the Party's efforts to eliminate belief in supernatural entities and cosmic forces through propaganda campaigns and popularizing science. Yet he also shows how the Party engaged in 'supernatural politics' to expand its support, utilizing imagery, metaphors and values that resonated with folk religion and Confucianism. Folk religion is thus essential to understanding the transformative experience of revolution.
How is ethnic and racial discrimination impacting our young people? Scholars around the world have found that discriminatory interactions of this nature have detrimental impacts on youth and their development. In this handbook, the world's leading experts on this topic examine the current state of the science, presenting current research and tracing foundational theories, empirical findings, multilevel methods, and intervention strategies for children, adolescents, and young adults. Covering multiple ethnic and racial groups across the United States and globally, chapters highlight both universal and distinct experiences and provide an in-depth overview of how race-related stressors affect youth outcomes. The text also offers clear conceptual frameworks, methodological guidance, and future-facing strategies to strengthen research, policy, and practice. With its expansive international scope and interdisciplinary depth, it is an essential resource for graduate students and scholars across developmental psychology, child development, human development and family studies, sociology, and ethnic studies.