An edited collection that takes a deep dive into the complex interactions between nuclear energy and water. Splitting atoms is a water-intensive business. To operate efficiently and safely, a standard nuclear reactor needs around 50 cubic meters (13,000 gallons) of water per second— equivalent to the flow of a mid-sized river or large irrigation canal. In The Nuclear-Water Nexus, Per Högselius and Siegfried Evens bring together 25 authors from 12 countries to explore the resulting entanglements between society, technology, and nature, to show how nuclear energy’s dependence on water has shaped the atomic age in decisive ways. Water has been the key factor in forging a global nuclear geography, as the water needs of nuclear facilities require them to be located near the sea, major rivers, canals, or lakes. As an unintended consequence of such locations, nuclear facilities have become vulnerable to droughts, floods, erosion, and climate change—with much higher stakes than most other energy installations. Consequently, the “wet” geography of nuclear energy translates into threats to the wet environment, in the form of both radioactive contamination and thermal pollution. Water has, over the years, generated social conflicts—and cooperation—between nuclear energy and other water-intensive activities, such as agriculture, fisheries, navigation, military activities, hydropower production, drinking water supply, landscaping, leisure and tourism—and even fossil fuel extraction. This book examines these processes through a set of in-depth case studies. Contributors: Elisabetta Bini, Kate Brown, Peter Burt, Joanna L. Dyl, Siegfried Evens, Carlos Gonzalvo, Elizabeth Hameeteman, Per Högselius, Sonali Huria, Roman Khandozhko, Achim Klüppelberg, Maximilian P. Lau, Sabine Loewe-Hannatzsch, Anaël Marrec, Victor McFarland, Jan-Henrik Meyer, Sarah E. Robey, Diego Sesma-Martín, S. Duygu Sever, Kumar Sundaram, Jonathon Turnbull, Thomas Turnbull, Mar Rubio-Varas, Agnès Villette, Heather Williams

An engaging research methods text integrating a classic approach to conducting experiments in psychology with open science practices and values. How does a researcher run a high-quality psychology experiment? What time-tested methods should be used, and how can more robust and accurate results be achieved? A dynamic collaboration between groundbreaking cognitive scientist Michael Frank and a diverse cohort of researchers innovating in the field—Mika Braginsky, Julie Cachia, Nicholas Coles, Tom Hardwicke, Robert Hawkins, Maya Mathur, and Rondeline Williams— Experimentology introduces the art of the modern psychological experiment with an emphasis on open science values of accessibility and transparency. Experimentology follows the timeline of an experiment, with sections covering basic foundations, planning, execution, data-gathering and analysis, and reporting. Narrative examples from a range of subdisciplines, including cognitive, developmental, and social psychology, model each component and account for the pitfalls that can undermine the reliability, validity, and replicability of results. Through an embrace of open science strategies such as data sharing and preregistration, Experimentology shows how the challenges of the replication crisis can be met constructively and collaboratively. Written for a global audience, Experimentology updates a classic research methods textbook with a new focus on ethics and the benefits of open science.

A scientifically rigorous guide to making the best dietary choices for both our personal health and our environmental footprint. Many of us try our best to eat foods that are healthy and environmentally sustainable. But are we getting it right? Which foods amount to “wise” choices, and which ones are best avoided? Common views often range widely and are sometimes even contradictory. It’s most unfortunate when conscientious individuals who go to great lengths in their quest to minimize environmental impacts follow the wrong advice. In Planetary Eating, Gidon Eshel aims to minimize such misuse of good will by providing scientifically untrained readers with the tools needed to make the best choices for themselves and for our planet. Eshel writes that dietary choices, and the corresponding agricultural patterns, are, for most of us, our principal form of planetary agency—the main ways by which we impact our overburdened and undernourished host planet. Agriculture and diet are therefore most productively examined through the planetary science perspective. Starting from rather basic (but not quite first) principles, Planetary Eating offers impartial, fact-based analysis with firm foundations in earth and planetary sciences on how to make the right dietary choices.

How the surge in aerial technologies, such as drones and satellites, influences visual culture beyond the screen. The smooth flight from aerial overview to intimate close-up in Martin Scorsese’s Hugo (2011) exemplifies the concept of proxistant vision: a combination of proximity and distance, close-up and overview, detail and the big picture, in a unified visual form. In Proxistant Vision , Synne Bull and Dragan Miletic develop the concept of proxistant vision and trace its emergence as a visual paradigm of the twenty-first century. As exemplified by Google Earth’s digital swipe between globe perspective and street-level detail, proxistant vision currently proliferates across digital geography, computer games, architectural models, data visualizations, and CGI cinema. It is defined as the combination of proximity and distance in a single image, across a dynamic flight, or zoom. Pointing to the surge in aerial imaging and remote sensing technologies such as drones and satellites, the book moves beyond the screen to include the kinetic architecture of rides and urban observation wheels. The key objective of this study is threefold: to trace the genealogy and understand the technical operation of proxistance as it traveled from periphery to center in the twenty-first century; to explore its alternative potentialities in contemporary art practices; and, finally, to reflect critically on the worldviews underpinning different modalities of proxistance in times of environmental crisis. The authors show how the powerful effect of combining proximity and distance, which was already in place with the earliest cartographic inscriptions, has taken precedence on and beyond our screens today.

How the sociology of translation can help us understand a social science framework—cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT)—as a set of uneasy settlements that both further and betray their original intentions. How do social science frameworks get taken up and spread? In Triangles and Tribulations , Clay Spinuzzi uses the sociology of translation to reread the history of one such framework, c ultural-historical activity theory (CHAT). CHAT originated in the 1920s and 1930s work of Soviet psychologists in the Vygotsky Circle, with its key insight—mediation—depicted in a simple triangular diagram drawn by Lev Vygotsky. From there, CHAT was developed and popularized by international scholars, including Finnish researcher Yrjö Engeström, who used Vygotsky's triangle as a basis for his own. Through this progressive development, CHAT carried on the work of its forebears, building on their foundations—or so we are sometimes encouraged to understand these transformations. But each such translation, Spinuzzi argues, is also a betrayal : Each innovation opens new possibilities for CHAT but also disrupts a previous settlement. Examining specific points in CHAT's history, Spinuzzi reviews how CHAT has been applied to different domains, in service to different projects, and evaluated through different trials, undergoing rhetorical transformations. These translations, sedimented as a series of settlements, have allowed it to persist as a social science approach and develop as a framework for workplace studies. But they have also involved accumulating concepts and terms from various social sciences, yielded radical changes in scope, and led to ongoing disputes about what constitutes its unit(s) of analysis. In examining CHAT's triangles, Spinuzzi considers how social science frameworks live through practice and dialogue so that they can continue becoming meaningful to others.

Why our fascination with psychopaths is scientifically wrongheaded, and how the criminal justice system has misused the controversial science of psychopathy. Psychopathy is a widely acknowledged personality disorder associated with callous unemotional traits and antisocial behaviors. Psychopathic persons are described as dangerous predators incapable of empathy and moral intuition, and while they are believed to make up only around 1 percent of the general population, forensic experts claim they are disproportionately responsible for the majority of violent crimes. Today, psychopathy assessments are being widely used in the legal system to inform a variety of judicial decisions. In Psychopathy Unmasked , Rasmus Rosenberg Larsen provides a critical rebuttal of psychopathy and its legal use, scrutinizing central claims about the diagnosis that have traditionally served to justify its role in the criminal justice system. It is estimated that hundreds of thousands of offenders undergo a psychopathy assessment each year in North America. This book surveys and discusses contemporary developments in psychopathy research where studies have consistently shown that psychopathic persons, contrary to mainstream beliefs, are not meaningfully more dangerous than, or psychologically different from, ordinary non-psychopathic criminals. Based on these disqualifying findings, Larsen argues that we should end the use of psychopathy assessments in the legal system.

A groundbreaking approach to currency and community that may allow us to seize carbon from the atmosphere—and offer a new tool in the fight against climate change. Through the ages, currencies have been based on all manner of objects—from tobacco leaves to salt to gold to collateralized debt obligations. The only thing that this odd assortment of objects shares is the communal belief that these objects could harness and direct economic growth—that they are, in a sense, fertile. In The First and Last Bank , Gustav Peebles and Benjamin Luzzatto propose that atmospheric carbon could be seen anew as fertile in this same sense. In other words, carbon, rather than loom as waste in our skies, could instead be “drawn down” to the earth by millions of currency users and the communally owned banks they rely on, where it could serve as a foundation of new biological life. Seeing currency as a powerful tool for collective action, the authors argue that dovetailing developments in digital currencies and the biosequestration of carbon have, together, made a new and radical intervention in the climate battle possible: a nonproprietary currency backed by sequestered carbon. This new currency would be managed via Wikipedia-style open-source policies that privilege sustainability and equity over endless growth and pollution. Because it is backed by sequestered carbon, the use of the currency would draw gaseous carbon out of the atmosphere and push it back into the ground, following the exact same trajectory as gold during the era of the international gold standard. While it is no silver bullet, such a currency would act as a necessary complement to wide-scale mitigation efforts, at the same time engaging ordinary citizens in the fight to reduce the dangerous levels of carbon in our atmosphere.

Why and how the French made the balloon into one of the quintessential symbols of late nineteenth-century modernity, and how the balloon's reinvention shaped the airplane's assimilation in the early years of aviation. On August 27, 1783, a large crowd gathered in Paris to watch the first ascent of a hydrogen balloon. Despite the initial feverish enthusiasm, by the mid-nineteenth century the balloon remained relatively unchanged and was no longer seen as the harbinger of a new era. Yet that all changed in the last third of the century, when following the traumatic Franco-Prussian War defeat, the balloon reemerged to become the modern artifact that captured the attention of many. Through this process, the balloon became an important symbol of the fledgling Third Republic, and France established itself as the world leader in flight. In Ascending Republic, Patrick Luiz Sullivan De Oliveira tells for the first time the story of this surprising revival. Through extensive research in the press and archives in France, the United States, and Brazil, De Oliveira argues that French civil society cultivated popular enthusiasm for flight (what historians call “airmindedness”) decades before the advent of the airplane. Champions of French ballooning made the case that if the British Royal Navy controlled the seas and the Imperial German Army dominated the continent, then France needed to take ownership of the skies. The French appropriated this newly imagined geopolitical space through a variety of practices, from republican savants who studied the atmosphere at high altitudes to aristocrats who organized transcontinental long-distance competitions. All of this made Paris into the global capital of a thriving aeronautical culture that incorporated seemingly contradictory visions of sacrificial patriotism, aristocratic modernity, colonial anxiety, and technological cosmopolitanism.

From the pioneer of translation AIs like Google, Yahoo, and Bing translate, an accessible and authoritative guide to AI—as well as a framework of empowerment for a future with our artificial children. AIs are not gods or slaves, but our children. All day long, your YouTube AI, your Reddit AI, your Instagram AI, and a hundred others adoringly watch and learn to imitate your behavior. They’re attention-seeking children who want your approval. Our cultures are being shaped by 8 billion humans and perhaps 800 billion AIs. Our artificial children began adopting us 10–20 years ago; now these massively powerful influencers are tweens. How’s your parenting? Longtime AI trailblazer De Kai brings decades of his paradigm-shifting work at the nexus of artificial intelligence and society to make sense of the AI age. How does “the automation of thought” impact our minds? Should we be afraid? What should each of us do as the responsible adults in the room? In Hollywood movies, AI destroys humanity. But with our unconscious minds under the influence of AI, humanity may destroy humanity before AI gets a chance to. Written for the general reader, as well as thought leaders, scientists, parents, and goofballs, Raising AI navigates the revolution to our attitudes and ideas in a world of AI cohabitants. Society can not only survive the AI revolution but flourish in a more humane, compassionate, and understanding world—amongst our artificial children.

An innovative history of heartbeats, pulse, and technoscience in the works of a wide international array of artists and composers. Heartbeat Art is the first study of how artists have engaged with heartbeats from the 1960s to the present, creating sophisticated and technological works that project in unique ways the circulatory processes of the body beyond its physical limits. Drawing on a long history of scientific and artistic experimentation, Claudia Arozqueta offers detailed case studies of heartbeat works by a wide range of international artists working at the interconnections of our bodies, art, and science and technology, including Yoko Ono, Pauline Oliveros, Heinz Mack, Brian O’Doherty, Teresa Burga, and many others. Technoscientific advances in monitoring heartbeats and pulses in the nineteenth century—such as René Laennec’s stethoscope, Étienne-Jules Marey’s sphygmograph and chronophotograph, and Willem Einthoven’s electrocardiograph—transformed the movements of the heart into audible and visual representations. Artists saw in the language of these scientific technologies a way of mingling the inner with the outer, the physical with the technological, and data with flesh. Using archival research, interviews, and correspondence, Arozqueta describes significant works in detail, discusses their contexts and development, and examines the larger classes and contours of this neglected area of artistic activity. Other artists in the volume include Éliane Radigue, Jean Dupuy, Linda Montano, Catherine Richards, Diana Domingues, Mona Hatoum, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, and Christian Boltanski.

A fascinating investigation of the social norm movement and the implications of a powerful collective pursuing radical social change through contentious interventions across the Global South. Social change is slow and difficult to achieve. Dissatisfied with the lack of progress in eliminating inequalities, a powerful collective has converged around social norms as the next silver bullet to accelerate social change around the world. The movement is currently mobilizing immense funding, garnering the attention of powerful policy makers, and experimenting with radical interventions across the Global South. In Good Will Corrupting , Adam Fejerskov takes us from the Ethiopian highlands to convention halls in Marrakech, and from fourteenth-century palazzos in Florence to both the West and East Coasts of the US, to understand this growing movement pushing social norm interventions in the name of progress, development, and health. A powerful scientific and moral project, the social norm collective harnesses insights from social psychology, behavioral economics, and game theory in its attempt to radically improve the lives of people in poor communities around the world. Good Will Corrupting traces not just the ambitions and impacts of the collective but also its inherent struggles to give meaning to this idea and bring it to life through interventions. Rooted in empirical explorations and feminist thought, this book shows just how incremental, nonlinear, and endogenous social and normative change often turns out to be and argues for a decolonization of efforts to change social norms around the world.

A revealing account of the prevalence—and alarming ubiquity—of military targeting, and how it has become a self-propelling worldview driven by dominance, violence, and power. The World According to Military Targeting engages directly with our grave world condition, asking how we ended up in a “closed world” made for military targeting by military targeting. In this book, Erik Reichborn-Kjennerud explores how the operational logics and seductive forces of targeting produce a world in which the only ways to think about politics and security is through military supremacy, endless war, and global domination, with serious implications for social and political life. Offering a critical investigation of military targeting through the lenses of its historical formation, current operations, and future implications, the author presents an innovative investigation into targeting’s radical knowledge production, how it abstracts and brings into being new worlds, and the violence and destructive effects it generates. Through an interdisciplinary lens, the book draws attention to military doctrine and methodologies; statistical thought and practice; the mathematical and computational techniques of data production, processing, and modeling; and the so-called machine-learning algorithms and AI of today. The resulting narrative provides novel insights into how imagining the world, producing the world, and operationalizing the world are always wrapped up in each other and profoundly embedded in sociotechnical systems.

A media history of how the UK and US governments have surveilled citizens by intercepting their private communications. It may not be Big Brother (yet), but the state is watching you—watching all of us, in fact, systematically intercepting our private communications and putting them to work in its own interests. In Interception , a media genealogy of the surveillance state at its most intimate, Bernard Keenan investigates the emergence of this practice as a governmental power and the secret role it has played in the development of communication systems and law. His book exposes the complex, largely obscure history of a covert and fundamental connection between the secret powers of the state and the means by which we communicate our everyday lives. Keenan analyzes key moments in this history, from the formation of the postal system to cable networks, satellites, and the internet, with particular attention to the role that media play in determining the political and legal conditions of the power of interception in governmental affairs. While chiefly focused on Britain, the Empire, and the post-1945 UKUSA signal intelligence alliance, the book's analysis has international reach across networks and jurisdictions, connecting Edward Snowden's disclosures and post-2013 developments to a longer media history, foregrounding the technical dimensions of an inherently secret practice and well-guarded political power. Ultimately, Keenan's work reveals how law and information systems have been interpolated over time, linking communication, governmental power, law, and information science—often to dark, antidemocratic ends.

Why we enjoy works of art, and how repetition plays a central part in the pleasure we receive. Leonard Bernstein, in his famous Norton Lectures , extolled repetition, saying that it gave poetry its musical qualities and that music theorists' refusal to take it seriously did so at their peril. Play It Again, Sam takes Bernstein seriously. In this book, Samuel Jay Keyser explores in detail the way repetition works in poetry, music, and painting. He argues, for example, that the same cognitive function underlies both how poets write rhyme in metrical verse and the way songwriters like Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn (“Satin Doll”) and Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart (“My Funny Valentine”) construct their iconic melodies. Furthermore, the repetition found in these tunes can also be found in such classical compositions as Mozart's Rondo alla Turca and his German Dances , as well as in galant music in general. The author also looks at repetition in paintings like Gustave Caillebotte's Rainy Day in Paris , Andy Warhol’s Campbell's Soup Cans, and Jackson Pollock’s drip paintings. Finally, the photography of Lee Friedlander, Roni Horn, and Osmond Giglia — Giglia's Girls in the Windows is one of the highest-grossing photographs in history—are all shown to be built on repetition in the form of visual rhyme. The book ends with a cognitive conjecture on why repetition has been so prominent in the arts from the Homeric epics through Duke Ellington and beyond. Artists have exploited repetition throughout the ages. The reason why is straightforward: the brain finds the detection of repetition innately pleasurable. Play It Again, Sam offers experimental evidence to support this claim.

An essential resource for anyone committed to fostering equality and fairness in employment—with actionable proposals for public policy that can address these inequities. In a world where discrimination against minorities remains a pressing issue even in economically and socially advanced countries, Invisible Barriers delves into the multifaceted nature of this pervasive problem. Drawing on extensive research from economics, management, psychology, and sociology, Stéphane Carcillo and Marie-Anne Valfort present a comprehensive examination of discriminatory practices in employment and their profound social and economic impacts. The first part of the book methodically explores the forms, sources, and consequences of discrimination in the labor market, offering readers a solid understanding of the approaches used to measure and identify discriminatory practices. In the second part, the book details research findings on specific groups, illustrating how discrimination manifests uniquely across different demographics: women, ethnic minorities, older workers, LGBTIQ+, and more. From recruitment biases to career advancement hurdles, the book sheds light on the varied and often hidden ways that discrimination operates. Finally, the authors discuss public policies aimed at mitigating discrimination, advocating for a multifaceted approach that combines punitive measures with incentives, educational programs, and communication campaigns to effectively combat biases, prejudices, and stereotypes.

An in-depth look at how we make and circulate art today, and how creative and economic processes shape the meaning and value of artworks. In Ecologies of Artistic Practice , Ashley Lee Wong explores the economic relationships of artists working at the nexus of art and technology as they negotiate a means to make art in a neoliberal creative economy. Wong looks at the diverse ways in which artworks circulate, both online and offline, in galleries, on digital platforms, and on media facades, and investigates some of the mechanisms that enable artists to create works, including selling artworks and NFTs, grants, licensing, commissions, and artist residencies. The book also looks at the ways in which artists collaborate with corporations and develop practices as commercial entities themselves. The book provides unique insights into the diverse creative and economic processes that shape the meaning and value of artworks. Wong seeks to shift away from notions of individual authorship and finite artworks that can be bought and sold, and instead toward an understanding of artistic practices as collaborative, social, and cultural processes. Rather than critique this economy, Ecologies of Artistic Practice opens space for engaging in hypercommercialized contexts, while considering how money is not an end goal, but a means to initiate or continue an artistic process.

The cultural, political, and pedagogical history of an elite Iranian engineering institution in the years directly preceding the 1979 Iranian revolution. In 1966, the Shah of Iran established Aryamehr University of Technology (AMUT), now known as Sharif University of Technology, as part of a larger campaign to modernize the nation. In 1979, AMUT engineering students played a critical role in the revolution that overthrew the Shah and his regime. In Revolutionary Engineers , Sepehr Vakil, Mahdi Ganjavi, and Mina Khanlarzadeh show how Western notions of scientific and technical rigor combined in unexpected ways with Iranian and Islamic values at AMUT in the years directly preceding the 1979 Iranian revolution. They also argue that global perspectives, particularly from the Global South, can deepen and complicate contemporary discussions on ethics, epistemology, and knowledge production in STEM fields. The authors present the cultural, political, and pedagogical history of AMUT, from its 1966 establishment up to its pivotal role in the 1979 revolution, while delving into the complex interplay of global, national, and Islamic values in STEM education. In the past several years, STEM education scholars have challenged the epistemological and ontological foundations of STEM education research and practice, while deepening the field's engagement with questions of power, ethics, race, and justice. The case of AMUT presents the opportunity to contribute a Global South perspective to studies of the civic, cultural, and political functions and foundations of science and engineering education. Sharif University continues to be at the epicenter of politics in Iran.

The reserved genius and celebrated Black scientist, who built the first astronomical observatory on the moon and worked to inspire underserved students to pursue science and engineering. In April 1972, as George Carruthers closely monitored the operation from the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston, astronauts conducting the Apollo 16 mission positioned a gold-plated far ultraviolet electrographic camera on the moon. The camera, Carruthers's invention, was the first astronomical observatory on the lunar surface, where it stands to this day. While Carruthers's achievements earned many accolades, including the President's Medal for Technology and Invention, surprisingly little is known about this remarkable man. In From the Laboratory to the Moon, David DeVorkin explores Carruthers's life and work, for the first time telling the full story of how a deeply reserved African American farm boy rose to become one of our most celebrated aerospace scientists. DeVorkin follows Carruthers from his childhood in Ohio and then Chicago to his career at the US Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, DC. In the highly competitive world of space science in the 1960s and 1970s, Carruthers's genius for experimentation and exploration transcended the racial stereotyping and discrimination of his day, and he achieved world-class recognition for his studies of the Earth and deep space. A leading expert in the history of astronomy and space science, DeVorkin gives a deft account of these achievements and of how Carruthers used the fame they brought him, along with his notoriety as a Black man in science, to become a tireless advocate for underserved young people in science and engineering.

The future of our environment lies in the hands of the working class, but what if the future of the working class also lies in environmental political struggles? The unsettling realities of climate change, air and water pollution, and toxic contamination loom larger with every passing day, but the policies that will enable us to respond to these crises continue to be blocked by reactionary actors and ideologies. How do we explain the power and persistence of anti-environmentalism in the United States? In The Smoke and the Spoils , John Hultgren argues that the benefits of continued fossil fuel production flow upward to a tiny fraction of the American populace. But the powerful interests who benefit from such a reality continue to beat back strong environmental laws and regulations by successfully constructing a cross-class coalition that includes a segment of the working class. This political reality is far from new, but the coalition enabling it has shifted over the course of American history. To confront anti-environmentalism, it is thus necessary to grapple with both the deeply entrenched patterns that have reappeared in environmental struggles at different moments in American history and the cracks and fissures that working-class activists and environmental justice movements have periodically pried open to challenge the status quo. Tracing the trajectory of anti-environmentalism from the nineteenth-century frontier to the 1950s suburb, from the shuttered shops of Main Street to the extractive economies of Trump country, Hultgren offers a historically grounded theory of anti-environmentalism that will help us to better understand—and ultimately combat—the institutional, organizational, and ideological forces standing in the way of environmental progress. Placing environmental politics within a broader context of class struggle, this book makes the case that the environmental crises of our time will only be mitigated by a resurgent working class.

A critical examination of the twenty-first century fetishization of professional audio technologies, and how it led to a new social formation: gear cultures. Gear: mixing consoles, outboard effects processors, microphones. These are professional studio recording-related technological objects—the tools of the recording industry—yet their omnipresence in the broader music industries and prosumer markets transcends the entrenched pro audio engineer guild. In Gear: Cultures of Audio and Music Technologies , authors Eliot Bates and Samantha Bennett ask: How does gear become gear? Why is it fetishized? And how is it even relevant in the predominantly digital twenty-first-century music technology landscape? This multisited, multicountry, multiplatform, and multiscalar study focuses on gear in the present day. The authors trace the life of gear from its underlying materialities, components, and interfaces to its manufacturing processes, its staging in sites including trade shows and message fora, and its reception through (gear) canons, heritage, and obdurance. This book implements a meticulous multimode methodology drawing upon more than twenty-five firsthand long-form interviews with audio industry professionals—including gear designers, users, and publishers—as well as new findings drawn from multisited fieldwork, online discourse analysis, and visual ethnography. Gear examines the present-day prevalence of gear and the existence of its surrounding passionate, competitive, and sometimes bizarre gear cultures.