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Wetlands are prominent landscapes throughout North America. The general characteristics of wetlands are controversial, thus there has not been a systematic assessment of different types of wetlands in different parts of North America, or a compendium of the threats to their conservation. <i>Wetland Habitats of North America</i> adopts a geographic and habitat approach, in which experts familiar with wetlands from across North America provide analyses and syntheses of their particular region of study. Addressing a broad audience of students, scientists, engineers, environmental managers, and policy makers, this book reviews recent, scientifically rigorous literature directly relevant to understanding, managing, protecting, and restoring wetland ecosystems of North America.

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This major reference is an overview of the current state of theoretical ecology through a series of topical entries centered on both ecological and statistical themes. Coverage ranges across scales—from the physiological, to populations, landscapes, and ecosystems. Entries provide an introduction to broad fields such as Applied Ecology, Behavioral Ecology, Computational Ecology, Ecosystem Ecology, Epidemiology and Epidemic Modeling, Population Ecology, Spatial Ecology and Statistics in Ecology. Others provide greater specificity and depth, including discussions on the Allee effect, ordinary differential equations, and ecosystem services. Descriptions of modern statistical and modeling approaches and how they contributed to advances in theoretical ecology are also included. Succinct, uncompromising, and authoritative—a «must have» for those interested in the use of theory in the ecological sciences.

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Although South Asian cookery and gastronomy has transformed contemporary urban foodscape all over the world, social scientists have paid scant attention to this phenomenon. <i>Curried Cultures</i>–a wide-ranging collection of essays–explores the relationship between globalization and South Asia through food, covering the cuisine of the colonial period to the contemporary era, investigating its material and symbolic meanings. <i>Curried Cultures</i> challenges disciplinary boundaries in considering South Asian gastronomy by assuming a proximity to dishes and diets that is often missing when food is a lens to investigate other topics. The book’s established scholarly contributors examine food to comment on a range of cultural activities as they argue that the practice of cooking and eating matter as an important way of knowing the world and acting on it.

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The Saga of the Volsungs is an Icelandic epic of special interest to admirers of Richard Wagner, who drew heavily upon this Norse source in writing his Ring Cycle and a primary source for writers of fantasy such as J. R. R. Tolkien and romantics such as William Morris.A trove of traditional lore, it tells of love, jealousy, vengeance, war, and the mythic deeds of the dragonslayer, Sigurd the Volsung.Byock's comprehensive introduction explores the history, legends, and myths contained in the saga and traces the development of a narrative that reaches back to the period of the great folk migrations in Europe when the Roman Empire collapsed.

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Reaching from interior Alaska across Canada to Labrador and Newfoundland, North America’s boreal forest is the largest wilderness area left on the planet. It is critical habitat for billions of birds; more than 300 species regularly breed there. After the breeding season, many boreal birds migrate to seasonal habitats across the United States, Mexico, the Caribbean, and Central and South America. This volume brings together new research on boreal bird biology and conservation. It highlights the importance of the region to the global avifauna and to the connectivity between the boreal forest and ecoregions throughout the Americas. The contributions showcase a unique set of perspectives on the migration, wintering ecology, and conservation of bird communities that are tied to the boreal forest in ways that may not have been previously considered.

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Grouse—an ecologically important group of birds that include capercaillie, prairie chickens, and ptarmigan—are distributed throughout the forests, grasslands, and tundra of Europe, Asia, and North America. Today, many grouse populations are in decline, and the conservation and management of these charismatic birds is becoming a global concern. This volume summarizes current knowledge of grouse biology in 25 chapters contributed by 80 researchers from field studies around the world. Organized in four sections—Spatial Ecology, Habitat Relationships, Population Biology, and Conservation and Management—the chapters offer important insights into spatial requirements, movements, and demography of grouse. Much of the research employs emerging tools in ecology that span biogeochemistry, molecular genetics, endocrinology, radio-telemetry, and remote sensing. The chapters explore topics including the impacts of climate change, energy development, and harvest, and give new evidence for life-history changes in response to human activities.

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The politics and science of health and disease remain contested terrain among scientists, health practitioners, policy makers, industry, communities, and the public. Stakeholders in disputes about illnesses or conditions disagree over their fundamental causes as well as how they should be treated and prevented. This thought-provoking book crosses disciplinary boundaries by engaging with both public health policy and social science, asserting that science, activism, and policy are not separate issues and showing how the contribution of environmental factors in disease is often overlooked.

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What is it like to become an adult in twenty-first-century America? This book takes us to four very different places—New York City, San Diego, rural Iowa, and Saint Paul, Minnesota—to explore the dramatic shifts in coming-of-age experiences across the country. Drawing from in-depth interviews with people in their twenties and early thirties, it probes experiences and decisions surrounding education, work, marriage, parenthood, and housing. The first study to systematically explore this phenomenon from a qualitative perspective, <i>Coming of Age</i> in America offers a clear view of how traditional patterns and expectations are changing, of the range of forces that are shaping these changes, and of how young people themselves view their lives.

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This collection of essays explores the link between comedy and animation in studio-era cartoons, from filmdom’s earliest days through the twentieth century. Written by a who’s who of animation authorities, <i>Funny Pictures</i> offers a stimulating range of views on why animation became associated with comedy so early and so indelibly, and illustrates how animation and humor came together at a pivotal stage in the development of the motion picture industry. To examine some of the central assumptions about comedy and cartoons and to explore the key factors that promoted their fusion, the book analyzes many of the key filmic texts from the studio years that exemplify animated comedy. <i>Funny Pictures</i> also looks ahead to show how this vital American entertainment tradition still thrives today in works ranging from <i>The Simpsons</i> to the output of Pixar.

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Bringing nuance, complexity, and clarity to a subject often seen in black and white, <i>Writing Immigration</i> presents a unique interplay of leading scholars and journalists working on the contentious topic of immigration. In a series of powerful essays, the contributors reflect on how they struggle to write about one of the defining issues of our time—one that is at once local and global, familiar and uncanny, concrete and abstract. Highlighting and framing central questions surrounding immigration, their essays explore topics including illegal immigration, state and federal mechanisms for immigration regulation, enduring myths and fallacies regarding immigration, immigration and the economy, immigration and education, the adaptations of the second generation, and more. Together, these writings give a clear sense of the ways in which scholars and journalists enter, shape, and sometimes transform this essential yet unfinished national conversation.

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