A Question Of Balance

How economic analysis can help us design economic policies to address the looming challenges of global warming As scientific and observational evidence on global warming piles up every day, questions of economic policy in this central environmental topic have taken center stage. But as author and prominent Yale economist William Nordhaus observes, the issues involved in understanding global warming and slowing its harmful effects are complex and cross disciplinary boundaries. For example, ecologists see global warming as a threat to ecosystems, utilities as a debit to their balance sheets, and farmers as a hazard to their livelihoods. In this important work, William Nordhaus integrates the entire spectrum of economic and scientific research to weigh the costs of reducing emissions against the benefits of reducing the long-run damages from global warming. The book offers one of the most extensive analyses of the economic and environmental dynamics of greenhouse-gas emissions and climate change and provides the tools to evaluate alternative approaches to slowing global warming. The author emphasizes the need to establish effective mechanisms, such as carbon taxes, to harness markets and harmonize the efforts of different countries. This book not only will shape discussion of one the world's most pressing problems but will provide the rationales and methods for achieving widespread agreement on our next best move in alleviating global warming.

Challenging standard interpretations of American dominance and French weakness in postwar Western Europe, Michael Creswell argues that France played a key role in shaping the cold war order. In the decade after the war, the U.S. government's primary objective was to rearm the Federal Republic of Germany within the framework of a European defense force--the European Defense Community. American and French officials differed, however, over the composition of the EDC and the rules governing its organization and use. Although U.S. pressure played a part, more decisive factors--in both internal French politics and international French concerns--ultimately led France to sanction the plan to rearm West Germany. Creswell sketches the successful French challenge to the United States, tracing the genuine, sometimes heated, debate between the two nations that ultimately resulted in security arrangements preferred by the French but acceptable to the Americans. Impressively researched and vigorously argued, A Question of Balance advances significantly our understanding of power politics and the rise of the cold war system in Western Europe.

Your Health aims to help you better understand yourself in an amusing and easy-to-understand way. Learn what the major organs do, how the magnetic energy of the earth affects us, the importance of identifying and eliminating the causes of a disease or imbalance rather than simply eliminating the symptoms and many more insights to improve and maintain your health and wellbeing.

Twenty-five artists and authors describe the nurturing relationship between motherhood and their work

New legal approaches, such as the European Union's 1996 Directive on the Legal Protection of Databases, and other legal initiatives now being considered in the United States at the federal and state level, are threatening to compromise public access to scientific and technical data available through computerized databases. Lawmakers are struggling to strike an appropriate balance between the rights of database rights holders, who are concerned about possible commercial misappropriation of their products, and public-interest users of the data such as researchers, educators, and libraries. A Question of Balance examines this balancing act. The committee concludes that because database rights holders already enjoy significant legal, technical, and market-based protections, the need for statutory protection has not been sufficiently substantiated. Nevertheless, although the committee opposes the creation of any strong new protective measures, it recognizes that some additional limits against wholesale misappropriation of databases may be necessary. In particular, a new, properly scoped and focused U.S. statute might provide a reasonable alternative to the European Union's highly protectionistic database directive. Such legislation could then serve as a legal model for an international treaty in this area. The book recommends a number of guiding principles for such possible legislation, as well as related policy actions for the administration.

Oxidants, like other aspects of life, involves tradeoffs. Oxidants, whether intentionally produced or by-products of normal metabolism can either mediate a variety of critical biological processes but when present inappropriately cause extensive damage to biological molecules (DNA, proteins, and lipids). These effects can lead to either damage that is a major contributor to aging and degenerative diseases (or to other diseases such as cancer, cardiovascular disease, immune-system decline, brain dysfunction, and cataracts) or normal physiological function- tissue repair, defense against pathogens and cellular proliferation. On the other hand the body is equipped with a complex antioxidant/oxidant handling system which includes both enzymatic and nonenzymatic (i.e. small molecules such as flavonoids, ascorbate, tocopherol, and carotenoids) produced endogenously or derived from the diet. This book focuses on how the same molecules can have favorable or noxious effects depending on location, level and timing. Each chapter focuses on one particular molecule or oxidant/antioxidant system and provides a state of the art review of the current understanding regarding both positive and negative actions of the system under review.

One of this century's most influential musical intellects takes center stage in Taylor Greer's meticulously wrought study of Charles Seeger (1886-1979). Seeger left an indelible mark in the fields of musicology, music criticism, ethnomusicology, and avant-garde musical composition, but until now there has been no extended appreciation and critique of Seeger's work as a whole, nor has an accessible guide to his texts been available. Exploring the entire corpus of Charles Seeger's writing, A Question of Balance highlights the work of those persons who most influenced him, especially Henri Bergson, Bertrand Russell, and Ralph Perry. Invited to inaugurate the music department at the University of California's Berkeley campus in 1912, Seeger became keenly aware of his deficiencies in general education and put himself on a rigorous regimen of intellectual development that included studying history, anthropology, political theory, and philosophy. For the remainder of his life his ideas about music heavily influenced the development of ethnomusicology and systematic musicology. Charles Seeger is perhaps best known as the father of the folk singers Pete, Mike, and Peggy Seeger and as the husband of the innovative American composer Ruth Crawford. This book makes clear that Seeger was an extremely important thinker and educator in his own right. Seeger's intellectual curiosity was as eclectic as it was enthusiastic, and Greer skillfully weaves together the connections Seeger made between music, the humanities, and the sciences. The result is a luminous tapestry depicting Seeger's ideal schemes of musicology. At the same time it reflects the turbulence and vitality in American musical life during the early decades of the century.