Extreme Nature

Offers facts about lightning, the planets, volcanoes, tornadoes, and sharks.

Significant, and usually unwelcome, surprises, such as floods, financial crisis, epileptic seizures, or material rupture, are the topics of Extreme Events in Nature and Society. The book, authored by foremost experts in these fields, reveals unifying and distinguishing features of extreme events, including problems of understanding and modelling their origin, spatial and temporal extension, and potential impact. The chapters converge towards the difficult problem of anticipation: forecasting the event and proposing measures to moderate or prevent it. Extreme Events in Nature and Society will interest not only specialists, but also the general reader eager to learn how the multifaceted field of extreme events can be viewed as a coherent whole.

Colossal and teensy, swift and sluggish, these mammals tend to extremes. Thirty captioned images portray remarkable creatures, from extinct cousins of the rhinoceros to modern kangaroos, bats, and elephants.

A beautiful and fascinating portrait of the world’s most extreme wildlife, from the sexiest beast to the smelliest plant.

The material culture of persecution : collecting for the Holocaust exhibition at the Imperial War Museum / Suzanne BardgettLyricism and offence in Egyptian archaeology collections / Stephen QuirkeContested human remains / Jack LohmanExtreme or commonplace : the collecting of unprovenanced antiquities / Kathy Walker TubbUnfit for society? : the case of the Galton Collection at UCL / Natasha McEnroeKnowing the new / Susan PearceThe global scope of extreme collecting : Japanese woodblock prints on the Internet / Richard WilkAwkward objects : collecting, deploying and debating relics / Jan GeisbuschGreat expectations and modest transactions : art, commodity and collecting / Henrietta LidchiExtremes of collecting at the Imperial War Museum, 1917-2009 : struggles with the large and the ephemeral / Paul CornishPlasticswhy not? : a perspective from the Museum of Design in Plastics / Susan LambertTime capsules as extreme collecting / Brian DurransCanning cans, or, What you can do with tins : an interview with Robert Opie / J.C.H. King.

In response to the rise of various forms of the extreme in economies, organizations and societies (such as disruptive innovation, climate emergency, financial crisis, high-risk sport, etc.), an ambitious 21st century program sets the agenda of management sciences around the unknown, disruption, uncertainty and risk. Management of Extreme Situations presents the research results from the conference organized at the Cerisy-la-Salle International Cultural Center, France, in 2016. It testifies to the existence of an international community that brings together, around management sciences, various disciplines studying the management concept of extreme situations. Through the analysis of varied contexts (polar and mountain expeditions, fire rescue services, exploration projects in the military field, creative industries, etc.), this book offers an initial grammar of the extreme. It presents a heuristic for the management of these situations – particularly in terms of sensemaking, ambidexterity and knowledge expansion.

Extremophiles are organisms that are able to live in extreme conditions due to their unique physiological and genetic adaptations. Extremophiles are harnessed for their extremozymes that have wide applications in biotechnology, pharmaceutics, and industry. Recent developments in genomics and proteomics have helped unravel the mechanism of survival, physiological adaptation, and genomics structure of extremophiles. Physiology, Genomics, and Biotechnological Applications of Extremophiles covers innovative developments in understanding the physiology and biochemistry of extremophiles using the -omics perspective, focuses on the advancement in mechanisms of the extremophiles that makes them able to survive under extreme conditions, and discusses the applications of extremophiles in astrobiology. Covering topics such as genomics and the history and identification of extremophiles, it is ideal for students, professors, researchers, academicians, microbiologists, agricultural scientists, and biotechnologists.

Books in the Extreme Nature series reveal examples of some of the most bizarre, amazing, and extreme events in the natural world. This book looks at fearsome forces of nature and considers what happens when earthquakes strike, volcanoes erupt, and geysers gush!