Inferring and Explaining is a book in practical epistemology. It examines the notion of evidence and assumes that good evidence is the essence of rational thinking. Evidence is the cornerstone of the natural, social, and behavioral sciences. But it is equally central to almost all academic pursuits and, perhaps most importantly, to the basic need t...
In this bold and original study, Jeff Kochan constructively combines the sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK) with Martin Heidegger's early existential conception of science. Kochan shows convincingly that these apparently quite different approaches to science are, in fact, largely compatible, even mutually reinforcing.
By combining Heid...
This open access book provides an exploration of the consequences of the ontological differences between natural and social objects (sometimes described as objects of nature and objects of thought) in the workings of causal and agency relationships. One of its important and possibly original conclusions is that causal and agency relationships do no...
This book is about making machine learning models and their decisions interpretable. After exploring the concepts of interpretability, you will learn about simple, interpretable models such as decision trees, decision rules and linear regression. Later chapters focus on general model-agnostic methods for interpreting black box models like feature i...
This book offers a completely new approach to learning and teaching the fundamentals of analytical chemistry. It summarizes 250 basic concepts of the field on the basis of slides. Each of the nine chapters offers the following features:
- Introduction: Summary. General scheme. Teaching objectives.
- Text containing the explanation of each slide.
- ...
What does it mean to say that someone is autistic?
Towards an Ethics of Autism is an exploration of this question and many more. In this thoughtful, wide-ranging book, Kristien Hens examines a number of perspectives on autism, including psychiatric, biological, and philosophical, to consider different ways of thinking about autism, as well as it...
What does it mean to be a scientist working today; specifically, a scientist whose subject matter is human life? Scientists often overstate their claim to certainty, sorting the world into categorical distinctions that obstruct rather than clarify its complexities. In this book Daniel Nettle urges the reader to unpick such distinctions - biological...
This book is an overview on CT/X-ray contrast media designed for radiologists and other medical specialists who use contrast media in imaging and interventional procedures as well as related scientists on the use and pharmaceutical aspects of X-ray contrast media. The overall goal of this book is to provide a comprehensive overview relevant for the...
In this edited open access book leading scholars from different disciplinary backgrounds wrestle with social science integration opportunities and challenges. This book explores the growing concern of how best to achieve effective integration of the social science disciplines as a means for furthering natural resource social science and environment...
'This is an excellent and engaging resource on delusions. The idea that delusions should not be seen as radically different from other beliefs… is an important challenge to much contemporary thinking and practice. It should be of interest to anyone studying delusional beliefs, and to all those who aim to help people who are troubled by them....
The book serves both as a reference for
various scaled models with corresponding dimensionless numbers, and as a
resource for learning the art of scaling.
A special feature of the book is the emphasis on how to create software
for scaled models, based on existing software for unscaled models.
Scaling (or non-dimensionalization) is a
mathematical...
Late in a career of more than sixty years, Thomas Burch, an internationally known social demographer, undertook a wide-ranging methodological critique of demography. This open access volume contains a selection of resulting papers, some previously unpublished, some published but not readily accessible [from past meetings of The International Union...
This book demystifies the models we use to simulate present and future climates, allowing readers to better understand how to use climate model results. In order to predict the future trajectory of the Earth's climate, climate-system simulation models are necessary. When and how do we trust climate model predictions? The book offers a framewor...
The EQ-5D instrument, as a standardized, cross-culturally validated measure of self-assessed health has a hugely important role in understanding population health within and across countries. Over the past two decades a wealth of international population health survey data have been accumulated by the EuroQol Group from research conducted in many c...
Designed as an easy-to-use, practical guide to tumors of the eye, lids, and orbit, this book comprehensively addresses surgical treatment and management of diseases related to ophthalmic oncology. Surgical Ophthalmic Oncology: A Collaborative Open Access Reference is an ideal reference for general ophthalmologists, surgeons, fellows and trainees ar...
This book is the first comparative study of public, voluntary and private asylums in nineteenth-century Ireland. Examining nine institutions, it explores whether concepts of social class and status and the emergence of a strong middle class informed interactions between gender, religion, identity and insanity. It questions whether medical and lay e...
Describes a new plan to improve the current election system under which every voter gains and no state loses its current Electoral College benefits, which has a chance to be introduced in the form of a constitutional amendment.
Provides explanations of why the National Popular Vote plan may violate the Equal Protection Clause from the Fourteenth A...
This book examines the methodological complications of using complexity science concepts within the social science domain. The opening chapters take the reader on a tour through the development of simulation methodologies in the fields of artificial life and population biology, then demonstrates the growing popularity and relevance of these method...
This book offers something for everyone working with market segmentation: practical guidance for users of market segmentation solutions; organisational guidance on implementation issues; guidance for market researchers in charge of collecting suitable data; and guidance for data analysts with respect to the technical and statistical aspects of mark...
This book disseminates some of the results of the European H2020 AiRT Project (Technology transfer of RPAs for the creative industry). In particular, it presents findings related to mitigating safety and security concerns when civil drones are piloted by the service sector (mainly, the creative industry). European policies regarding drones generall...
For cloud users and providers alike, security is an everyday concern, yet there are very few books covering cloud security as a main subject. This book will help address this information gap from an Information Technology solution and usage-centric view of cloud infrastructure security. The book highlights the fundamental technology components nece...
This book presents a multidisciplinary perspective on chance, with contributions from distinguished researchers in the areas of biology, cognitive neuroscience, economics, genetics, general history, law, linguistics, logic, mathematical physics, statistics, theology and philosophy. The individual chapters are bound together by a general introductio...
This survey on the modernity of ethnomathematics addresses numerous themes related to both ethnomathematics and mathematics education. It offers a broader view of mathematics, including ideas, procedures, concepts, processes, methods, and practices rooted in distinct cultural environments. In addition, by reflecting on the social and political dime...
This book provides a concise explanation of the fundamentals and background of the surround sound recording and playback technology Ambisonics. It equips readers with the psychoacoustical, signal processing, acoustical, and mathematical knowledge needed to understand the inner workings of modern processing utilities, special equipment for recording...
Complexity science uses computation to explore the physical and social sciences. In Think Complexity, you'll use graphs, cellular automata, and agent-based models to study topics in physics, biology, and economics.
Whether you're an intermediate-level Python programmer or a student of computational modeling, you'll delve into exam...
Recent reductions in public funding for audiovisual products have led to dramatic changes in the industry. The lack of interaction between the industry and capital markets has made sourcing funds for audiovisual products especially difficult.
This book explains why the distance between the audiovisual and financial markets exists, and considers th...
This book presents computer programming as a key method for solving mathematical problems. This second edition of the well-received book has been extensively revised: All code is now written in Python version 3.6 (no longer version 2.7). In addition, the two first chapters of the previous edition have been extended and split up into five new chapte...
This free book collects the major discussions in divorce research in Europe. It starts with an understanding of divorce trends. Why was divorce increasing so rapidly throughout the US and Europe and do we see signs of a turn? Do cohabitation breakups influence divorce trends or is there a renewed stability on the partner market?In terms of divorce...
This book about the Zadeh Project demonstrates and explores a core question in clinical ethics: how can ethics consultants be accountable in the face of a robust plurality of ethical standpoints, especially those that underwrite practices and methods for doing ethics consultation as well as those viewpoints and values encountered in daily clinical ...
This free book presents an overview and step-by-step explanation of process management. It starts with the individual participants' perspectives on their work in a process and its structuring and harmonization, and then moves on to its specification in a model and how it is embedded in the organizational and IT environment of the company. Last...
This open access book provides an alternative theoretical framework of irregular migration that allows to overcome many of the contradictions and theoretical impasses displayed by the majority of approaches in current literature. The analytical framework allows moving from an interpretation biased by methodological nationalism, to a more general sy...
Are humans violent or peaceful by nature? We are both.
In this ambitious and wide-ranging book, Agner Fog presents a ground-breaking new argument that explains the existence of differently organised societies using evolutionary theory. It combines natural sciences and social sciences in a way that is rarely seen.
According to a concept called...