An incisive investigation of the often fraught student-transfer pathways from community colleges to four-year institutions--and a blueprint for process reform   In Discredited, education scholars Lauren Schudde and Huriya Jabbar illuminate the successes and failures of the systems that support student transfer among postsecondary institutions. Summarizing the key challenges of various transfer pathways, Schudde and Jabbar show how the current decentralized, bureaucracy-ridden, and often confusing process undermines equity and access in higher education. They illustrate how transfer success is closely tied to how educational institutions disseminate information about credit portability, especially for vertical transfer between community colleges and destination universities, in which prospective transfer students often confront hidden curricula and unfounded biases about their academic preparedness.   This deeply considered work is grounded in hundreds of interviews of students and personnel, data from a six-year longitudinal study in Texas, and a synthesis of five decades of research on college transfer. Presenting a field perspective, Schudde and Jabbar use strategic action fields, a framework that considers how rules and norms are maintained in an existing power structure, to examine the political-ecological contexts in which transfer-intending students and transfer-related college personnel interact within and across organizations. They frame transfer policy as a complex public higher education issue rather than an isolated community college problem.   Schudde and Jabbar call for transfer reform and offer insight into how transfer outcomes could be improved through better transparency, centralized policy, and even government intervention.

Nature has gone feral. How can we re-attune ourselves to the new nature? A field guide can help. While the global scientific community recently made headlines by ruling the Anthropocene--an era many date to the Industrial Revolution when human action truly began to transform the planet--did not qualify for a geological epoch quite yet, understanding the nature of human transformation of the Earth is more important than ever. The effects of human activity are global in scope, but take shape within distinct social and ecological "patches," discontinuous regions within which the key actors may not be human, but the plants, animals, fungi, viruses, plastics, and chemicals creating our new world. Field Guide to the Patchy Anthropocene takes stock of our current planetary crisis, leading readers through a series of sites, thought experiments, and genre-stretching descriptive practices to nurture a revitalized natural history. Field guides teach us how to notice, name, and so better appreciate more-than-human worlds. They hone our powers of observation and teach us to see the world anew. Field-based observations and place-based knowledge cultivation--getting up-close and personal with patchy dynamics--are vital to truly grapple with the ecological challenges and the historical conjunctures that are bringing us to multiple catastrophic tipping points. How has commercial agriculture runoff given rise to comb jellies in the Black Sea? What role did the Atlantic slave trade play in the worldwide spread of virus-carrying mosquitoes? How did the green revolution transform the brown planthopper into a superpredator in Philippine rice fields? Questions like these open up new ways of understanding, and ways of living through, the epoch that human activity has ushered in. This Field Guide shifts attention away from knowledge extractive practices of globalization to encourage skilled observers of many stripes to pursue their commitments to place, social justice, and multispecies community. It is through attention to the beings, places, ecologies, and histories of the Anthropocene that we can reignite curiosity, wonder, and care for our damaged planet.

The true story of five castaways abandoned on the Falkland Islands during the War of 1812--a tale of treachery, shipwreck, isolation, and the desperate struggle for survival. In Left for Dead, Eric Jay Dolin--"one of today's finest writers about ships and the sea" (American Heritage)--tells the true story of a wild and fateful encounter between an American sealing vessel, a shipwrecked British brig, and a British warship in the Falkland archipelago during the War of 1812. Fraught with misunderstandings and mistrust, the incident left three British sailors and two Americans, including the captain of the sealer, Charles H. Barnard, abandoned in the barren, windswept, and inhospitable Falklands for a year and a half. With deft narrative skill and unequaled knowledge of the very pith of the seafaring life, Dolin describes in vivid and harrowing detail the increasingly desperate existence of the castaways during their eighteen-month ordeal--an all-too-common fate in the Great Age of Sail. A tale of intriguing complexity, with surprising twists and turns throughout--involving greed, lying, bullying, a hostile takeover, stellar leadership, ingenuity, severe privation, endurance, banishment, the great value of a dog, the birth of a baby, a perilous thousand-mile open-ocean journey in a seventeen-foot boat, an improbable rescue mission, and legal battles over a dubious and disgraceful wartime prize--Left for Dead shows individuals in wartime under great duress acting both nobly and atrociously, and offers a unique perspective on a pivotal era in American maritime history.

 

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A cosmic perspective on carbon--its importance in the universe and our lives When we think of carbon, we might first think of a simple element near the top of the periodic table: symbol C, atomic number 6. Alternatively, we might think of something more tangible--a sooty piece of coal or a sparkling diamond, both made of carbon. Or, as Earth's temperature continues to rise alarmingly, we might think of the role carbon plays in climate change. Yet carbon's story begins long ago, far from earthly concerns. In The Sixth Element, astronomers Theodore Snow and Don Brownlee tell the story of carbon from a cosmic perspective--how it was born in the fiery furnaces of stars, what special chemical and physical properties it has, and how it forms the chemical backbone of the planets and all life as we know it. Foundational to every part of our lives, from our bodies to the food, tools, and atmosphere that sustain our existence, carbon is arguably humankind's most important element. Snow and Brownlee offer readers the ideal introduction to the starry element that made our world possible and shapes our lives. They first discuss carbon's origin, discovery, and unique ability to bond with other elements and form countless molecules. Next, they reveal carbon's essential role in the chemical evolution of the universe and the formation and evolution of galaxies, stars, planets, and life, and then, more generally, its technological uses and its influence on Earth's climate. Bringing readers on a historical, scientific, and cross-disciplinary journey, The Sixth Element illuminates the cosmic wonder that is carbon.

A compelling and pragmatic argument: solutions to yesterday's environmental problems reveal today's path forward.   We solved planet-threatening problems before, Susan Solomon argues, and we can do it again. Solomon knows firsthand what those solutions entail. She first gained international fame as the leader of an expedition to Antarctica in 1986, making discoveries that were key to healing the damaged ozone layer. She saw a path--from scientific and public awareness to political engagement, international agreement, industry involvement, and effective action. Solomon, an atmospheric scientist and award-winning author, connects this career-defining triumph to the inside stories of other past environmental victories--against ozone depletion, smog, pesticides, and lead--to extract the essential elements of what makes change possible.  The path to success begins when an environmental problem becomes both personal and perceptible to the general public. Lawmakers, diplomats, industries, and international agencies respond to popular momentum, and effective change takes place in tandem with consumer pressure when legislation and regulation yield practical solutions. Healing the planet is a long game won not by fear and panic but by the union of public, political, and regulatory pressure. Solvable is a book for anyone who has ever despaired about the climate crisis. As Solomon reminds us, doom and gloom get us nowhere, and idealism will only take us so far. The heroes in these stories range from angry mothers to gang members turned social activists, to upset Long Island birdwatchers to iconoclastic scientists (often women) to brilliant legislative craftsmen. Solomon's authoritative point of view is an inspiration, a reality check, a road map, and a much-needed dose of realism. The problems facing our planet are Solvable. Solomon shows us how.

What is our universe made of? How did it get here, and how will it end? Why are many scientists currently so excited about these questions? And why is everybody else so scared of the one subject - physics - that promises to give us all the answers?This book is here to help. Its main aim is to explain a remarkable new idea that has arisen in recent years, that tells us all of our current theories of nature are much more closely related than previously thought possible. It will tell you where these theories come from, why understanding them has traditionally been so difficult, and about the tantalising new hints that our understanding of nature is about to significantly change.More than this, the book will explain quite why it is so important that more people join the greatest pursuit of knowledge that our species has ever seen. Practical advice is given on how to become a scientist, so that people from all backgrounds may be inspired to become the leading thinkers of the future.

 

 

 

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