A veritable rock star in the book world some five centuriesafter his birth, Leonardo Da Vinci is a man for the ages. Millionsof readers hungrily ponder the mysteries behind his sketch-fillednotebooks, radical inventions, and enigmatic paintings. Thisstunning book, like no other on the market, explores the master’sinsights and synthesizes his relationship with art and science in amagnificently illustrated and informative style. Every pageresonates with Leonardo’s genius, demonstrated by his own art andwritings as well as modern diagrams and workable re-creations ofhis inventions. Physicist and artist Bulent Atalay, author of Math and the MonaLisa, deftly explains Leonardo’s interest in topics ranging fromarchitecture to botany to philosophy. Engaging prose and splendidimages point up the science and mathematics underlying Leonardo’sgenius, showing how attention to proportions, patterns, shapes, andsymmetries informed his art. The story flows chronologically, withquotations revealing the near-magical

At the heart of this classic, seminal book is Julian Jaynes'sstill-controversial thesis that human consciousness did not beginfar back in animal evolution but instead is a learned process thatcame about only three thousand years ago and is still developing.The implications of this revolutionary scientific paradigm extendinto virtually every aspect of our psychology, our history andculture, our religion -- and indeed our future.

This rigourous and self-contained book describes mathematicaland, in particular, stochastic methods to assess the performance ofnetworked systems. It consists of three parts. The first part is areview on probability theory. Part two covers the classical theoryof stochastic processes (Poisson, renewal, Markov and queuingtheory), which are considered to be the basic building blocks forperformance evaluation studies. Part three focuses on therelatively new field of the physics of networks. This part dealswith the recently obtained insights that many very different largecomplex networks - such as the Internet, World Wide Web, proteins,utility infrastructures, social networks - evolve and behaveaccording to more general common scaling laws. This understandingis useful when assessing the end-to-end quality of communicationsservices, for example, in Internet telephony, real-time video andinteracting games. Containing problems and solutions, this book isideal for graduate students taking courses in performanceanalys

Structural proof theory is a branch of logic that studies thegeneral structure and properties of logical and mathematicalproofs. This book is both a concise introduction to the centralresults and methods of structural proof theory, and a work ofresearch that will be of interest to specialists. The book isdesigned to be used by students of philosophy, mathematics andcomputer science. The book contains a wealth of results onproof-theoretical systems, including extensions of such systemsfrom logic to mathematics, and on the connection between the twomain forms of structural proof theory - natural deduction andsequent calculus. The authors emphasize the computational contentof logical results. A special feature of the volume is acomputerized system for developing proofs interactively,downloadable from the web and regularly updated.

Rental housing subsidy programmes have been an important partof the American welfare system since the 1930s. The Benefits ofSubsidized Housing Programs: An Intertemporal Approach is anempirical study of the distributive effects of the entire system ofrental housing subsidies for lower-income households based on anational sample. Using the 1977 Annual Housing Survey, ProfessorHammond has evaluated the benefits of all federal, state and localgovernment rental housing subsidy programmes taken as a wholeacross the nation. Additionally, she has estimated the changes inconsumption patterns resulting from these programmes and therelationship between household benefit and household income;household size; age, education, sex, and race of the head of thehousehold; and the geographic location of the household.

How do plant and animal populations change genetically toevolve and adapt to their local environments? How do populationsgrow and interact with one another through competition andpredation? How does behaviour influence ecology and evolution?Introduction to Population Biology covers all these areas and more.Taking a quantitative and Darwinian perspective, the basic theoryof population processes is developed using mathematical models. Toallow students of biology, ecology and evolution to gain a realunderstanding of the subject, key features include: ? step-by-stepinstructions for spreadsheet simulations of many basic equations toexplore the outcomes or predictions of models ? worked examplesshowing how the equations are applied to biological questions ?problem sets together with detailed solutions to help the readertest their understanding ? real-life examples to help the readerrelate the theory to the natural world

In his bestselling The Moral Animal, Robert Wright applied theprinciples of evolutionary biology to the study of the human mind.Now Wright attempts something even more ambitious: explaining thedirection of evolution and human history–and discerning wherehistory will lead us next. In Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny, Wright asserts that, eversince the primordial ooze, life has followed a basic pattern.Organisms and human societies alike have grown more complex bymastering the challenges of internal cooperation. Wright'snarrative ranges from fossilized bacteria to vampire bats, fromstone-age villages to the World Trade Organization, uncovering suchsurprises as the benefits of barbarian hordes and the usefulstability of feudalism. Here is history endowed with moralsignificance–a way of looking at our biological and culturalevolution that suggests, refreshingly, that human morality hasimproved over time, and that our instinct to discover meaning mayitself serve a higher purpose. Insightful, wi

First published by Houghton Mifflin in 1962, Silent Springalerted a large audience to the environmental and human dangers ofindiscriminate use of pesticides, spurring revolutionary changes inthe laws affecting our air, land, and water. "Silent Spring becamea runaway bestseller, with international reverberations . . . Itis] well crafted, fearless and succinct . . . Even if she had notinspired a generation of activists, Carson would prevail as one ofthe greatest nature writers in American letters" (PeterMatthiessen, for Time's 100 Most Influential People of theCentury). This fortieth anniversary edition celebrates RachelCarson's watershed book with a new introduction by the author andactivist Terry Tempest Williams and a new afterword by theacclaimed Rachel Carson biographer Linda Lear, who tells the storyof Carson's courageous defense of her truths in the face ofruthless assault from the chemical industry in the year followingthe publication of Silent Spring and before her untimely death in1964.