In August 2015, while we were writing this book, a group of sustainability activists were gathering in the grounds of a borrowed château on the outskirts of Paris. They were intent upon ‘eco-hacking’ the future. What this meant was turning the château into a temporary innovation camp, equipped with the tools for develop-ing a variety of technologies of practical and symbolic…
So warned the appalled editor of theChurch of England Magazine in 1840, after leaving a talk in a socialist hall by the London wine merchant and museum owner William Devonshire Saull (1783–1855). It was a reminder that the new science of the earth was not only startling and fashionable, but dangerous in dirty hands. Dissidents were harnessing geological armaments for use against t…
When Augustus De Morgan died in 1871, he was described as ‘one of the profoundest mathematicians in the United Kingdom’ and even as ‘the greatest of our mathematicians’. But he was far more than just a mathematician. Because much of his voluminous written output on various subjects was scattered throughout journals and encyclopaedias, the breadth of his interests and contributions has b…
Maps in this book were reproduced by Paul Heggarty from maps provided by chapter authors, by converting them into a GIS (Geographic Information System) database, collated and enriched for South America for the purposes of this book. All data used on the maps are thus geo- referenced – set to actual latitude and longitude coordi-nates – as precisely as possible. Individual p…
Across North and South America, Indigenous people play a dual political role, building self-governing structures in their own nations and participating in the elections of settler states. Doing Democracy Differently asks how states are responding to demands for Indigenous representation and autonomy and in what ways the ongoing project of decolonization may unsettle the practice of democracy. B…
The Research Defence Society (RDS) was founded in 1908 by Dr Stephen Paget, son of the eminent Victorian surgeon, Sir James Paget. Its role was to defend scientists conducting medical research using animals and to inform the public about the importance of animal experimentation. In its first year it attracted a membership of 2000 which included scientists in th…
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) initiative has the potential to set the direction for a future world that works for everyone. The SDGs were approved by 193 United Nations member countries in September 2016 to help guide global and national development policies in the period to 2030. The 17 goals build on the successes of the Millennium Development Goals, while also includin…
In 1887, as a result of the federalization of Buenos Aires carried out at the begin-ning of the decade, the government of the Province of Buenos Aires transferred to the national government additional land to enlarge the capital, from which, a year later, its definitive limits were to be drawn (the current General Paz Avenue).1The municipality had until then a little over 4,000 he…
rantor, on the one hand, can be understood as the Empire in its most unbridled form, colonising and governing all surrounding worlds and extracting from them what the Empire required for its own inhabitants. This intensity was matched only by the sheer precarity it dealt, leading to a coup staged by rebel leader Gilmer, displacing Trantor and the imperial family. Over time it was the farmers, …
Rice is cultivated in tropical Asia (South and Southeast Asia) over an area of about 88.7 million ha, with an annual total production of nearly 183.8 million tons of rough rice, an average productivity of 2.7 t/ha (Table 1). Only 14% of the rice area in tropical Asia supports 2 crops of rice per year under irrigation. The remaining riceland is entirely rainfed, with varying water regimes. In ar…