Karl Deisseroth is pioneering bold new treatments for depression and other psychiatric diseases. By sending pulses of light into the brain, Deisseroth can control neural activity with remarkable precision. In this short talk, Deisseroth gives an thoughtful and awe-inspiring overview of his Stanford University lab's groundbreaking research in "optogenetics".
Course Description
Learn about the frontiers of human health from seven of Stanford's most innovative faculty members. Inspired by a format used at the TED Conference (http://www.ted.com), each speaker delivers a highly engaging talk in just 10-20 minutes about his or her research. Learn about Stanford's newest and most exciting discoveries in neuroscience, bioengineering, brain imaging, psychology, and more.
Sound Targets: American Soldiers and Music in the Iraq War (BOOK): by Jonathan Pieslak
Though a part of American soldiers' lives since the Revolutionary War, by World War II music could be broadcast to the front. Today it accompanies soldiers from the recruiting office to the battlefield. For this book, Jonathan Pieslak interviewed returning veterans to learn about the place of music in the Iraq War and in contemporary American military culture in general. Pieslak describes how American soldiers hear, share, use, and produce music both on and off duty. He studies the role of music from recruitment campaigns and basic training to its use "in country" before and during missions. Pieslak explores themes of power, chaos, violence, and survival in the metal and hip-hop music so popular among the troops, and offers insight into the daily lives of American soldiers in the Middle East.
"Sound Targets reveals just how pervasively popular music has shaped contemporary U.S. military culture.... This thoughtful and provocative study will certainly attract a wide audience concerned with music's roles in the time of war." – W. Anthony Sheppard, author of Revealing Masks: Exotic Influences and Ritualized Performance in Modernist Music Theater
To Everything there is a Season: Pete Seeger and the Power of Song (BOOK): by Allan M. Winkler
Folk music has long played a vital role in supporting reform movements in the United States. Radical activists, seeking to counter a variety of abuses in mid-to-late 20th century America, often used music to express their hopes, aims, and goals. In "To Everything There Is a Season": Pete Seeger and the Power of Song, Allan Winkler describes how folk singer Pete Seeger applied his musical talents to improve conditions for less fortunate people everywhere. This book uses Seeger's long life and wonderful songs to reflect on the important role folk music played in various protest movements and to answer such fundamental questions as: What was the source of Seeger's appeal? How did he capture the attention and affection of people around the world? And why is song such a powerful medium?
"Winkler's book is obviously a labor of love.... The book is carefully written by a scholar who identifies with Seeger and his causes.... Winkler's fine book should introduce readers to Seeger and encourage further exploration of Dunaway's scholarship. But of greater significance is the encouragement that Winkler gives his readers to listen and sing along with Seeger's music. Bonus benefits with the Winkler book include a preface by folksinger Tom Paxton and a compact disc of ten Seeger tunes."—History News Network
"Allan Winkler...has written the best brief biography of Seeger in print."--PopMatters
"Winkler pays welcome attention to how Toshi Seeger made possible her husband's life as protester and artist -- a fact that can escape Pete.... Winkler's includes a CD of 10 songs, the indispensable way, after all, of apprehending why Seeger's music sounds the chords of our national life."—The Plain Dealer
You can find all of these books on the 4th floor in the Technology and Photography section located in the T's. The range of sub-topics is amazing!
Characteristics Finite Element Methods in Computational Fluid Dynamics (BOOK): by Joe Iannelli
This book details a systematic characteristics-based finite element procedure to investigate incompressible, free-surface and compressible flows. Several sections derive the Fluid Dynamics equations from thermo-mechanics principles and develop this multi-dimensional and infinite-directional upstream procedure by combining a finite element discretization with an implicit non-linearly stable Runge-Kutta time integration for the numerical solution of the Euler and Navier Stokes equations. Based on the mathematics and physics of multi-dimensional characteristics, convection as well as acoustics, and inducing by design a controllable multi-dimensional upwind bias that can be locally optimized, the procedure crisply captures contact discontinuities, normal as well as oblique shocks, and generates essentially non-oscillatory solutions for incompressible, subsonic, transonic, supersonic, and hypersonic inviscid and viscous flows with chemical reactions and work, heat and mass transfer.
Enterprise Governance and Enterprise Engineering (BOOK): by Jan A.P. Hoogervorst
Achieving enterprise success necessitates addressing enterprises in ways that match the complexity and dynamics of the modern enterprise environment. However, since the majority of enterprise strategic initiatives appear to fail – among which those regarding information technology – the currently often practiced approaches to strategy development and implementation seem more an obstacle than an enabler for strategic enterprise success.
IRA, the Bombs and the Bullets: A History of Deadly Ingenuity (BOOK): by A.R. Oppenheimer
I was some-what unacquainted with the history of the IRA so I was overwhelmed with the detail and research that went into this comprehensive work. I began to get a real feel for their struggle and the the absolute ingenuity as I worked my way into the book and was able to absorb the intricacies of the campaigns. This isn't a book to take lightly. I takes you into the details and history of the nuts and bolts of the bombings and the challenges. It also gave me a better insight into the whys and what-fors of the "troubles". If you are looking for a thorough explanation of the bombings and the strife, this is a good book to get you grounded in the subject. – David M. Quintana
Katrina: Personal Objects, Photography (BOOK): by Jarret Schecter
Because of government failure, millions viewed political
ineptitude, social inequity and an unpaved America where the streets were lined with anything but gold.
The images in this book show the abandoned and hardest-hit district of the Lower Ninth Ward over two years later, and still counting today.
Vacant and dilapidated, the city is a shadow of its former self. However, in these seemingly lifeless shadows, and through the broken windows of empty houses, one can eerily see the ghostly reflections of life and death in the form of PERSONAL OBJECTS.
These intensely personal items have been abandoned and left, and in most cases, will never be reclaimed.
This small format book touches on the ephemeral, and
surprisingly often beautiful, remnants of belongings that once made up the memories and precious moments of peoples’ lives.
In 1990 Jarret Schecter purchased a Pentax camera. Since then he has traveled the world. Committed to socio-political issues, Schecter believes that photography can bring awareness to social injustices the world faces today. Schecter, born in 1963, lives in New York City
Water in the 21st-Century West: A High Country News Reader (BOOK): by Char Miller
Water in the 21st-Century West captures the range and nature of the arguments that have defined water politics in the region over the past decade. The collection probes the issues and explores creative attempts to find solutions, bringing a focus and clarity to the most contentious environmental issue the West faces. Water in the 21st-Century West will be an essential primer in assessing and mapping the West’s water future.
Why Photography Matters as Art as Never Before (BOOK): by Michael Fried
From the late 1970s onward, serious art photography began to be made at large scale and for the wall. Michael Fried argues that this immediately compelled photographers to grapple with issues centering on the relationship between the photograph and the viewer standing before it that until then had been the province only of painting. Fried further demonstrates that certain philosophically deep problems—associated with notions of theatricality, literalness, and objecthood, and touching on the role of original intention in artistic production, first discussed in his controversial essay “Art and Objecthood” (1967)—have come to the fore once again in recent photography. This means that the photographic “ghetto” no longer exists; instead photography is at the cutting edge of contemporary art as never before.
