7th Extinction

ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW'S 10 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR A major book about the future of the world, blending intellectual and natural history and field reporting into a powerful account of the mass extinction unfolding before our eyes Over the last half a billion years, there have been five mass extinctions, when the diversity of life on earth suddenly and dramatically contracted. Scientists around the world are currently monitoring the sixth extinction, predicted to be the most devastating extinction event since the asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs. This time around, the cataclysm is us. In The Sixth Extinction, two-time winner of the National Magazine Award and New Yorker writer Elizabeth Kolbert draws on the work of scores of researchers in half a dozen disciplines, accompanying many of them into the field: geologists who study deep ocean cores, botanists who follow the tree line as it climbs up the Andes, marine biologists who dive off the Great Barrier Reef. She introduces us to a dozen species, some already gone, others facing extinction, including the Panamian golden frog, staghorn coral, the great auk, and the Sumatran rhino. Through these stories, Kolbert provides a moving account of the disappearances occurring all around us and traces the evolution of extinction as concept, from its first articulation by Georges Cuvier in revolutionary Paris up through the present day. The sixth extinction is likely to be mankind's most lasting legacy; as Kolbert observes, it compels us to rethink the fundamental question of what it means to be human.

Dr. Victor Kraus labored tirelessly as a wildlife ecologist, passionately striving to use science and reformed policies to curtail the human activities driving global warming and fueling the sixth mass extinction. When Victor realized that nothing would stop the number of species being lost to human greed and overconsumption, he resorted to using the only weapon left in his arsenal: the first mass human extinction. A highly lethal engineered virus was developed and disseminated around the world to reduce the human population to one billion people. As the viral apocalypse detonated across the globe, the virus destroyed billions of lives and delivered fear and chaos to every corner of the earth. With the pandemic running rampant, a Montana virologist working on a vaccine, recruited an unlikely group of friends to help him hunt down an increasingly brazen Victor, stop the virus, and save what is left of humankind.

This book focuses on extending the research of countless scientists in many areas and fields of physical and social sciences and Philosophy including but not limited to Cosmology, Astronomy, quantum mechanics, biology, physics, psychology and sociology. This extension centers around a moral solution to reality based on the facts supported by extensive research by scientists from essentially every field that this Universe is meaningless and purposeless, and that Homo sapiens can no longer just sit on this information but need to respond in some reasonable manner. Much of the research in stating the facts and concepts of what our Universe in reality represents is described in numerous well documented books by a brilliant scientist, Dr. Victor J. Stenger, whose life was spent educating the world to the realities of the Universe and how to best interpret those realities in a meaningful way to guide the human race out of ignorance into the light of understanding. This book also honors all those living and dead as well all those unfortunately to be born against their "wills" now and in the future. This in the same vein includes organisms that would by sundry definitions be classified as living entities and/or will exist in some forms as non-humans in the future, i.e., microbes, vertebrates, non-vertebrates, etc. who/which had no voice in being born or coming into existence.

The book gathers articles that were exposed during the seventh edition of the Workshop “Data Analysis in Astronomy”. It illustrates a current trend to search for common expressions or models transcending usual disciplines, possibly associated with some lack in the Mathematics required to model complex systems. In that, data analysis would be at the epicentre and a key facilitator of some current integrative phase of Science.It is all devoted to the question of “representation in Science”, whence its name, IMAGe IN AcTION, and main thrustsSuch a classification makes concepts as “complexity” or “dynamics” appear like transverse notions: a measure among others or a dimensional feature among others.Part A broadly discusses a dialogue between experiments and information, be information extracted-from or brought-to experiments. The concept is fundamental in statistics and tailors to the emergence of collective behaviours. Communication then asks for uncertainty considerations — noise, indeterminacy or approximation — and its wider impact on the couple perception-action. Clustering being all about uncertainty handling, data set representation appears not to be the only solution: Introducing hierarchies with adapted metrics, a priori pre-improving the data resolution are other methods in need of evaluation. The technology together with increasing semantics enables to involve synthetic data as simulation results for the multiplication of sources.Part B plays with another couple important for complex systems: state vs. transition. State-first descriptions would characterize physics, while transition-first would fit biology. That could stem from life producing dynamical systems in essence. Uncertainty joining causality here, geometry can bring answers: stable patterns in the state space involve constraints from some dynamics consistency. Stable patterns of activity characterize biological systems too. In the living world, the complexity — i.e. a global measure on both states and transitions — increases with consciousness: this might be a principle of evolution. Beside geometry or measures, operators and topology have supporters for reporting on dynamical systems. Eventually targeting universality, the category theory of topological thermodynamics is proposed as a foundation of dynamical system understanding.Part C details examples of actual data-system relations in regards to explicit applications and experiments. It shows how pure computer display and animation techniques link models and representations to “reality” in some “concrete” virtual, manner. Such techniques are inspired from artificial life, with no connection to physical, biological or physiological phenomena! The Virtual Observatory is the second illustration of the evidence that simulation helps Science not only in giving access to more flexible parameter variability, but also due to the associated data and method storing-capabilities. It fosters interoperability, statistics on bulky corpuses, efficient data mining possibly through the web etc. in short a reuse of resources in general, including novel ideas and competencies. Other examples deal more classically with inverse modelling and reconstruction, involving Bayesian techniques or chaos but also fractal and symmetry.

It is the result of years of extensive and painstaking research. Within its pages are shocking, yet convincing revelations that force readers to reconsider what has been established as truths about mankind's past and purpose on planet Earth. It harmonizes the Biblical account of Creation and the Theory of Evolution. It applies historical events to the events described in the Biblical book of Revelation. It proves that the earth gods of antiquity are the biblical fallen angels, or demons, today's "extraterrestrials." It is non-proselytizing and reader friendly, and all theories are supported by scientific data, historical facts, and holy texts. It answers the age-old questions of: "Who are we?" "Why are we here?" and, "Where are we going?"

This book is the proceedings of the 7th China High-resolution Earth Observation Conference (CHREOC). The series conference of China High Resolution Earth Observation has become an influential academic event in the earth detection area, attracting more and more top experts and industry users of related fields. The CHREOCs focus on the popular topics including military-civilian integration, the One Belt and One Road project, the transformation of scientific research achievements. They also discuss the new ideas, new technologies, new methods, and new developments. The CHREOCs have effectively promoted high-level institutional mechanisms, technological innovation, and industrial upgrading in the high-resolution earth observation area, and extend the influences of the state-sponsored major projects.