From Sputnik To Minerva

Rather than focusing primarily on traditional professional military educ., this analysis examines how educ. has been used as a tool of American power. Four major moments of transformation in the international system are surveyed to illustrate a link between ¿strategic educational capacity,¿ defined as the application of attained knowledge and skills, and national power. An important educational capacity is emerging in the new Minerva program in the DoD and other transformational educational concepts with security applications. Educ. is gaining an increasing interest among American decisionmakers as a strategic component of American power and an essential asset for successful military operations in the new global security environment.

"Physicists have grappled with quantum theory for over a century. They have learned to wring precise answers from the theory's governing equations, and no experiment to date has found compelling evidence to contradict it. Even so, the conceptual apparatus remains stubbornly, famously bizarre. Physicists have tackled these conceptual uncertainties while navigating still larger ones: the rise of fascism, cataclysmic world wars and a new nuclear age, an unsteady Cold War stand-off and its unexpected end. Quantum Legacies introduces readers to physics' still-unfolding quest by treating iconic moments of discovery and debate among well-known figures like Albert Einstein, Erwin Schrèodinger, and Stephen Hawking, and many others whose contributions have indelibly shaped our understanding of nature"--

This book sheds new light on an amazing history, only partially known in the west: Russian cosmonautics and its spectacular record. From Laika, the cosmonaut dog, to Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space, to Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space, to the first spacewalk, the Soviets set many goals that they subsequently achieved. But there are shadows behind these headline moments, moments involving human loss, some of which are known, others only rumored. Questions remain, such as: · What was the “flying coffin”? · What secrets are still hidden inside the Russian archives, despite two rounds of declassification? · Why didn’t Marina Popovich (“Madame Mig”) become a cosmonaut? · What problems made it necessary to film Valentina Tereshkova's return? · What (scientific) hypotheses exist concerning Gagarin's mysterious disappearance? The author addresses all of these issues, with help from the documents now available. This book will benefit a broad readership, from interested laypersons to graduate and undergraduate students to those who merely enjoy good history-based stories.

In 2009, Globalisation, Societies and Education published a special issue on globalisation, education, and violent conflict, in tribute to Jackie Kirk, a passionate researcher, educator, and advocate, who was killed while working with the International Rescue Committee in Afghanistan. This book is an opportunity to capture the promising new developments that have occurred within the maturing sub-field of education and conflict in the intervening years. It explores two critical dimensions of education amid conflict and in post-conflict settings: the increasingly protracted, non-linear and disjointed nature of conflict and the complex interplay between global and local forces in conflict-affected contexts. Taken as a whole, this book represents a ‘narrative of becoming’ of the maturing sub-field of education and conflict. It traces and intertwines local and global histories of education amidst conflict, and puts them into conversation with the present. This volume was originally published as a special issue of Globalisation, Societies and Education.

This book offers a critical review of higher education and post-conflict recovery. It provides the first systematic study with a global scope that investigates the role of higher education systems in conflict-affected contexts. The first part of the book analyses the long-standing neglect of higher education in post-conflict recovery, the impact that conflict can have on the sector, and efforts to rebuild and reform higher education systems affected by violent conflict. The second part of the book considers the positive and negative contributions that higher education can make to a range of areas of recovery including humanitarian action, forced displacement, post-conflict reconstruction, statebuilding, and peacebuilding. With its reasoned defence of the importance of higher education for post-conflict recovery, the book will appeal to researchers, university students, and humanitarian and development policy-makers and practitioners.