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This chapter first depicts an increasing diversity of Japanese corporations in which a non-traditional mode, characterized by market monitoring of relational employment, becomes emergent side-by-side with other modes as complements. This mode is interpreted as indicating the increasing essentiality of workers' cognitive assets in corporate cognitive systems, and it is argued that similar phenomena are evolving in other developed economies as well, modifying traditional national models. The chapter discusses the economic merits, social consequences, and political agendas associated with this emergent diversity in the global corporate landscape. Particularly it calls for the re-definition of the role of financial intermediaries and markets as infrastructures complementary to diverse corporate organizations as opposed to being their omnipotent principals.

This chapter proposes two ways to study religion and healing. The first outlines a program that involves an urban ethnographic study of culturally/religiously based approaches to healing in the African Diaspora communities of Boston, Massachusetts. The second relates to ways in which findings from the first kind of course can be incorporated into different levels of medical education, thereby introducing a highly-focused aspect of religious studies into the training of biomedical clinicians.

This chapter discusses the visual world of late prehistoric Europe. It first uses Teniers's painting of the interior of an inn at the beginning of the chapter in order to introduce the topic of light as an important issue in any consideration of seeing in times previous to the ready availability of electric light. It then describes changes in the landscape, in the character of settlements, houses, and in other aspects of the visual environment during the two millennia between the beginning of the Early Bronze Age and the end of the Iron Age. These changes were most often gradual. A number of significant trends are recognizable in the environmental evidence pertaining to changes in the landscape; and there is archaeological evidence pertaining to changes in tool use, the digging of ditches, the building of walls, and the construction of settlements and houses.

Polar aquatic ecosystems are excellent laboratories for biogeochemical research. The polar regions are among the least modified by human activities, so there are opportunities to study biogeochemical processes in the absence of overwhelming anthropogenic influences. In addition, there are abundant freshwater ecosystems in which comparative or experimental work can be conducted, and increasing evidence for environmental change is driving a rapid expansion in polar research. This chapter draws upon extensive surveys of lake chemistry to summarize the biogeochemical composition of polar lakes, and to illustrate the growing potential for cross-system comparisons. It describes the general features of biogeochemical cycles in polar aquatic environments, and the important and sometimes unique controls over biogeochemical processes.

This chapter sets up the book’s main argument by explaining how people in ancient Europe interpreted their landscapes and holy places. Fifth-century Parisians understood their city in several different ways: as a moderately important military and imperial administrative center, as one point in a larger economic network, and as a collection of sacral sites. These three ways of looking at Paris would become important to the story of Gauls’ christianization and Saint Genovefa’s part in it.

This chapter discusses some general techniques and considerations common to managing most habitats. These include principles of managing for different groups, landscape factors, and disturbances; different approaches to grazing, and methods of controlling unwanted plant species. Eradication of rats and cats on islands is also covered, since this affects a number of different habitats, and can be of critical importance in conserving some island endemics and important seabird colonies. The chapter also includes a discussion of the likely effects of climate change on species and habitats, and potential ways to mitigate and compensate for its damaging effects.

The mechanism of evolutionary change can be studied directly through selection experiments in laboratory microcosms. This chapter begins by describing the experimental approach to evolution, and goes on to analyse adaptation over different time scales. The first section in this chapter is about microcosmologica. Subsections here concern Dallinger's experiment; the laboratory microcosm; the inhabitants of the microcosm; the selection experiment; fitness and adaptedness; and microcosm genealogy. The second section is all about sorting (in other words selection of pre-existing variation) and includes subsection on a single episode of selection; the sorting of a single type; the mixture of discrete types; the Fundamental Theorem of Natural Selection; the sorting in finite populations; drift and selection; and fluctuating population size. The third section is on purifying selection (defined as maintaining adaptedness despite genetic deterioration) and this section discusses the following: mutation-drift balance; mutation-selection equilibrium; and Muller's Ratchet. The fourth section is about directional selection (this is restoring adaptedness despite environmental deterioration) and details the probability that a beneficial mutation will be fixed; periodic selection; Fisher's geometrical analogy; the variable-mutation model; the extreme-value mode; clonal interference; the distribution of fitness effects; genetic interference; and the genetic basis of adaptation. The fifth section is about successive substitution and includes detail on phenotypic evolution towards the optimum; adaptive walks; transitivity; and clonal interference. The sixth section, Cumulative adaptation, includes the following: the protein matrix; connectance; synthetic beneficial mutations; functional interaction in a protein structure; the evolution of RNA sequences; reversibility; cumulation; cumulative construction of novel amidases; diminishing returns; and contingency. The last section called Successive substitution at several loci explains genetic interactions; the adaptive landscape; the allele matrix; compensatory mutations; compound structures; processing chains; the effect of mutation in a simple processing chain; the pattern of adaptation; the evolution of metabolic pathways; in vitro selection; genetic changes during adaptation; and repeated adaptation.

This chapter argues for the need for everyday aesthetics for pragmatic reasons by taking the environmental ramifications of our everyday aesthetic tastes and decisions as an example. We make aesthetic judgments, positive or negative, on natural creatures, landscapes, built environments, and consumer goods, which determine our attitude and subsequent actions regarding them. The consequences of such judgments and actions are often environmentally unsound, though we are seldom aware of them. In addition to raising consciousness about the environmental impact of our actions, our everyday aesthetics must be guided toward environmentally sound ends because of the power of our aesthetic judgments to influence, and sometimes determine, our actions. By reviewing an example of utilizing the power of the aesthetic toward a social agenda, such as 19th-century American landscape aesthetics promotion of national identity and pride, the specific tenets of green aesthetics, as well as strategies to avoid, are outlined.

This chapter introduces the concept of regional variation in landscape character and reviews past literature and current debates on the subject. The processes whereby cultural landscapes can change over time are reviewed. The strongly interdisciplinary approach of this book is introduced, along with its case‐studies in Somerset, the South‐West, East Anglia, and Essex, and south‐east Monmouthshire and Pembrokeshire in South Wales.

This chapter examines the landscape of Somerset, which lies at the south‐western limit of landscapes that in the medieval period were characterized by villages and open fields. The topographical regions within the county are introduced, followed by a characterization of the historic landscape (the present patterns of fields, roads, settlements, land‐uses, etc.). Possible explanations for the regional variation in landscape character within Somerset are reviewed. There is now considerable evidence for villages and common fields existed by the tenth century though only to the east of the Blackdown and Quantock Hills.

The chapter presents the landscapes and soils, and discusses the interaction between land, water and men in the Low Countries. This interaction contributed to the wide diversity of landscapes found here, with the medieval Low Countries consisting of some 25 distinctive regions. The chapter discusses how these regions were occupied and reclaimed after the post‐Roman population low, and describes the ethnic composition and the growth of the population in the early Middle Ages. Occupation was concentrated in a few fertile and easy to reclaim regions, while others remained virtually empty. Some coastal regions, which formed a kind of frontier area, were occupied in the high Middle Ages, often requiring challenging hydrological tasks. In all these regions, which formed the stage for further development, growing population pressure and increasing interference with nature caused ecological problems, but associations and authorities were mostly able to limit the negative effects.

China is the largest and, arguably, the most consequential nation for American interests. It has a huge conventional and nuclear military establishment, is a permanent member of the UN Security Council, is a major economic power, and has enormous influence in the Far East, especially in North Korea. Its explosion of religious devotion has disoriented Chinese officials, leading to quixotic attempts at control and management of religious communities. Such efforts, in turn, routinely lead to persecution of Tibetan Buddhists, Uighur Muslims and Christians. This chapter, centered on the author's travels in China, describes the religious landscape and offers new ways to “think with the Chinese” about their religious “problem.” For American diplomacy, the solution lies in the economy, law, scholarship, education and civil society. The stakes are high: if China cannot come to see the growing percentages of religious adherents as resources rather than threats, the result could be catastrophic—for China, its religious citizens, and U.S. interests.