Science & Technology Archives - Page 7 of 9

What’s So Natural About Natural Medicine?

A historical exploration of natural medicine

January 2, 2018 • by Tamara Venit-Shelton

Susannah Meadows’ young son, Shepherd, was afflicted with juvenile idiopathic arthritis. Conventional drug treatments (naproxen and methotrexate) seemed to exacerbate his condition, but after regular doses of an ancient Chinese herbal remedy called “four-marvels powder,” his disease went into remission.[i] In 2013, the New York Times Magazine published an article detailing Shepherd’s miraculous ...

What’s So Natural About Natural Medicine?

Feature

Mapping Climate Justice

Visualizing the Burden of Climate Stabilization

November 28, 2017 • by Julia Puaschunder

First, the principle of climate justice within a country. This means that, as each country moves toward accomplishing their climate justice goals, low- and high-income households should share the same burden proportional to their dispensable income as they do so. This principle can be realized through progressive carbon taxation. In ...

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Financing the Transition to a Low-Carbon Economy

Report and Response

October 23, 2017 • by Michael Flaherty

Once per semester, SCEPA sponsors an event relating to climate change policy and invites some of the most notable names in climate modeling and/or policymaking to give their perspectives on recent developments in climate change scholarship. This most recent event featured Dr. Nebojsa Nakicenovic and Dr. Paolo Galizzi. Dr. Nakicenovic, ...

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Why Does a Historian Write a Memoir?

The adventures of a postmodern historian

September 27, 2017 • by Robert Rosenstone

Aurell shows that professional historians have produced some 450 works of autobiography or memoir, the bulk of them in the last few decades. "It is possible," he suggests, "that no other academic discipline can boast of such a high number of autobiographies written by its professionals." Perhaps, then, my work ...

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For and Against the Anthropocene

A review of ‘Against the Anthropocene: Visual Culture and Environment Today’

September 15, 2017 • by Vince Carducci

Since the turn of the 21st century, many scientists have been arguing for the designation of a new epoch in Earth's geological history, which they term the Anthropocene in acknowledgment of the impact of humans on the planet's evolution. While not yet officially approved by the International Union of Geological ...

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The Climate of Post-Truth Populism

Science vs. the People

June 21, 2017 • by Amanda Machin, Alexander Ruser and Nikolaus von Andrian Werburg

Has politics ever been about telling the truth? Recent declarations of the rise of a “post-truth” era irresistibly provoke this question. Declared the 2016 Word of the Year, “post-truth” describes “circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.” One of ...

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Not Everything Political is Politics

Reflection on the March for Science

June 2, 2017 • by Mark B. Brown

Mark B. Brown is a professor in the Department of Political Science at California State University, Sacramento. He is the author of Science in Democracy: Expertise, Institutions, and Representation (MIT Press, 2009), as well as various publications on the politics of expertise, political representation, and climate change.

Education

Global Climate and Trump

What does Trump Mean for Global Climate Change

May 9, 2017 • by Michael Flaherty

“I just think we have much bigger risks. I mean I think we have militarily tremendous risks. I think we’re in tremendous peril. I think our biggest form of climate change we should worry about is nuclear weapons. The biggest risk to the world, to me -- I know President ...

Science & Technology

A Geology of Media

On Jussi Parikka

February 27, 2017 • by McKenzie Wark

The rabbit hole keeps going, becoming more of a mineshaft. For some the chemical and mineral dimension is also a big part of what appears when one looks behind the sign (Negarestani, Leslie, Kahn), which brings us to Jussi Parikka’s A Geology of Media (U. Minnesota Press, 2015). Which tunnels ...

Education

Citizens of the Cognisphere

February 15, 2017 • by Daniel Sauter

As we prepare a new generation of students for the computational regime (Brueck, 2016) we need to make room for cultural examination and critical reflection—not just to transcribe a liberal arts agenda in "an obligation to develop their abilities to think and live," (Deresiewicz, 2015) —but also to re-instill astonishment and ...

Science & Technology

CRIT: Critical and Radical Information Theory

On Tiziana Terranova

February 13, 2017 • by McKenzie Wark

Contrary to certain popular narratives by latecomers, not everybody went gaga over ‘new media’ back in the late twentieth century. In the cyberculture period, from the popularization of cyberpunk in 1984 to the death of the internet as a purely scientific and military media in 1995, there were plenty of ...

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What Makes Something a Robot?

An Interview with John M. Jordan

January 27, 2017 • by Zed Adams

Zed Adams: In your book, you point out that although it’s easy to identify instances of robots, it’s hard to give a general definition of what makes something a robot. This is intriguing, because it seems like we know what differentiates robots and, say, humans -- at least until we’re ...