Uncertain Peril

Author : Claire Hope Cummings
Publisher : Beacon Press
ISBN 13 : 0807085812
Total Pages : 189 pages
Book Rating : 4.13/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Uncertain Peril written by Claire Hope Cummings and published by Beacon Press. This book was released on 2009-03-01 with total page 189 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Life on earth is facing unprecedented challenges from global warming, war, and mass extinctions. The plight of seeds is a less visible but no less fundamental threat to our survival. Seeds are at the heart of the planet's life-support systems. Their power to regenerate and adapt are essential to maintaining our food supply and our ability to cope with a changing climate. In Uncertain Peril, environmental journalist Claire Hope Cummings exposes the stories behind the rise of industrial agriculture and plant biotechnology, the fall of public interest science, and the folly of patenting seeds. She examines how farming communities are coping with declining water, soil, and fossil fuels, as well as with new commercial technologies. Will genetically engineered and "terminator" seeds lead to certain promise, as some have hoped, or are we embarking on a path of uncertain peril? Will the "doomsday vault" under construction in the Arctic, designed to store millions of seeds, save the genetic diversity of the world's agriculture? To answer these questions and others, Cummings takes readers from the Fertile Crescent in Iraq to the island of Kaua'i in Hawai'i; from Oaxaca, Mexico, to the Mekong Delta in Vietnam. She examines the plight of farmers who have planted transgenic seeds and scientists who have been persecuted for revealing the dangers of modified genes. At each turn, Cummings looks deeply into the relationship between people and plants. She examines the possibilities for both scarcity and abundance and tells the stories of local communities that are producing food and fuel sustainably and providing for the future. The choices we make about how we feed ourselves now will determine whether or not seeds will continue as a generous source of sustenance and remain the common heritage of all humanity. It comes down to this: whoever controls the future of seeds controls the future of life on earth. Uncertain Peril is a powerful reminder that what's at stake right now is nothing less than the nature of the future.

Author : National Research Council
Publisher : National Academies Press
ISBN 13 : 030928290X
Total Pages : 275 pages
Book Rating : 4.01/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Levees and the National Flood Insurance Program written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2013-08-18 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Federal Emergency Management Agency's (FEMA) Federal Insurance and Mitigation Administration (FIMA) manages the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), which is a cornerstone in the U.S. strategy to assist communities to prepare for, mitigate against, and recover from flood disasters. The NFIP was established by Congress with passage of the National Flood Insurance Act in 1968, to help reduce future flood damages through NFIP community floodplain regulation that would control development in flood hazard areas, provide insurance for a premium to property owners, and reduce federal expenditures for disaster assistance. The flood insurance is available only to owners of insurable property located in communities that participate in the NFIP. Currently, the program has 5,555,915 million policies in 21,881 communities3 across the United States. The NFIP defines the one percent annual chance flood (100-year or base flood) floodplain as a Special Flood Hazard Area (SFHA). The SFHA is delineated on FEMA's Flood Insurance Rate Maps (FIRM's) using topographic, meteorologic, hydrologic, and hydraulic information. Property owners with a federally back mortgage within the SFHAs are required to purchase and retain flood insurance, called the mandatory flood insurance purchase requirement (MPR). Levees and floodwalls, hereafter referred to as levees, have been part of flood management in the United States since the late 1700's because they are relatively easy to build and a reasonable infrastructure investment. A levee is a man-made structure, usually an earthen embankment, designed and constructed in accordance with sound engineering practices to contain, control, or divert the flow of water so as to provide protection from temporary flooding. A levee system is a flood protection system which consists of a levee, or levees, and associated structures, such as closure and drainage devices, which are constructed and operated in accordance with sound engineering practices. Recognizing the need for improving the NFIP's treatment of levees, FEMA officials approached the National Research Council's (NRC) Water Science and Technology Board (WSTB) and requested this study. The NRC responded by forming the ad hoc Committee on Levee and the National Flood Insurance Program: Improving Policies and Practices, charged to examine current FEMA treatment of levees within the NFIP and provide advice on how those levee-elated policies and activities could be improved. The study addressed four broad areas, risk analysis, flood insurance, risk reduction, and risk communication, regarding how levees are considered in the NFIP. Specific issues within these areas include current risk analysis and mapping procedures behind accredited and non-accredited levees, flood insurance pricing and the mandatory flood insurance purchase requirement, mitigation options to reduce risk for communities with levees, flood risk communication efforts, and the concept of shared responsibility. The principal conclusions and recommendations are highlighted in this report.

Author : Noah Webster
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 2132 pages
Book Rating : 4.47/5 ( download)

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Download or read book International Dictionary of the English language written by Noah Webster and published by . This book was released on 1891 with total page 2132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : Howard Wainer
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780691137599
Total Pages : 288 pages
Book Rating : 4.95/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Picturing the Uncertain World written by Howard Wainer and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the publisher. This book explores how graphs can serve as maps to guide us when the information we have is ambiguous or incomplete. Using a visually diverse sampling of graphical display, from heartrending autobiographical displays of genocide in the Kovno ghetto to the "Pie Chart of Mystery" in a New Yorker cartoon, Wainer illustrates the many ways graphs can be used--and misused--as we try to make sense of an uncertain world. Picturing the Uncertain World takes readers on an extraordinary graphical adventure, revealing how the visual communication of data offers answers to vexing questions yet also highlights the measure of uncertainty in almost everything we do. Are cancer rates higher or lower in rural communities? How can you know how much money to sock away for retirement when you don't know when you'll die? And where exactly did nineteenth-century novelists get their ideas? These are some of the fascinating questions Wainer invites readers to consider. Along the way he traces the origins and development of graphical display, from William Playfair, who pioneered the use of graphs in the eighteenth century, to instances today where the public has been misled through poorly designed graphs.

Author : Jim Butcher
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 9780451462343
Total Pages : 358 pages
Book Rating : 4.43/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Grave Peril written by Jim Butcher and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2008 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After Chicago's ghost population starts going seriously postal, resident wizard Harry Dresden much figure out who is stirring them up and why they all seem to be somehow connected to him.

Author : James Franklin
Publisher : JHU Press
ISBN 13 : 1421418819
Total Pages : 767 pages
Book Rating : 4.10/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Science of Conjecture written by James Franklin and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2015-08-01 with total page 767 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How did we make reliable predictions before Pascal and Fermat's discovery of the mathematics of probability in 1654? What methods in law, science, commerce, philosophy, and logic helped us to get at the truth in cases where certainty was not attainable? In The Science of Conjecture, James Franklin examines how judges, witch inquisitors, and juries evaluated evidence; how scientists weighed reasons for and against scientific theories; and how merchants counted shipwrecks to determine insurance rates. The Science of Conjecture provides a history of rational methods of dealing with uncertainty and explores the coming to consciousness of the human understanding of risk.

Author : William Shurtleff; Akiko Aoyagi
Publisher : Soyinfo Center
ISBN 13 : 1948436205
Total Pages : 1481 pages
Book Rating : 4.05/5 ( download)

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Download or read book History of Soybean Variety Development, Breeding and Genetic Engineering (1902-2020) written by William Shurtleff; Akiko Aoyagi and published by Soyinfo Center. This book was released on 2020-06-25 with total page 1481 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The world's most comprehensive, well documented and well illustrated book on this subject. With extensive subject and geographic index. 152 photographs and illustrations - mostly color, Free of charge in digital format on Google Books.

Author : Lemony Snicket
Publisher : Egmont Books (UK)
ISBN 13 : 9781405253871
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.78/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Penultimate Peril written by Lemony Snicket and published by Egmont Books (UK). This book was released on 2010 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Baudelaire orphans disguise themselves as employees of the Hotel Denoument and find themselves pursued by the evil Count Olaf and others.

Author : Edward Bouverie Pusey
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 320 pages
Book Rating : 4.04/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Church of England Leaves Her Children Free to Whom to Open Their Griefs written by Edward Bouverie Pusey and published by . This book was released on 1850 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : Michael Mandelbaum
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1476750017
Total Pages : 272 pages
Book Rating : 4.19/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Road to Global Prosperity written by Michael Mandelbaum and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2014-03-25 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Describes the forces driving the next stage of globalization, which the author predicts will be a period of expanding wealth, opportunity, and international cooperation.