Oxford Dictionary of
Biochemistry and Molecular Biology

Thinking It Through: An Introduction to Contemporary Philosophy (Hardcover)
Here is a thorough, vividly written introduction to contemporary philosophy and some of the most crucial questions of human existence: the nature of mind and knowledge, the status of moral claims, the existence of God, the role of science, and the mysteries of language, among them. In Thinking It Through, esteemed philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah shows us what it means to "do" philosophy in our time and why it should matter to anyone who wishes to live a more thoughtful life. Opposing the common misconceptions that being a philosopher means espousing a set of philosophical beliefs, or being a follower of a particular thinker, Appiah argues that "the result of philosophical exploration is not the end of inquiry in a settled opinion, but a mind resting more comfortably among many possibilities, or else the reframing of the question, and a new inquiry." Thinking It Through is organized around eight central topics--mind, knowledge, language, science, morality, politics, law, and metaphysics. It traces how philosophers in the past have considered each subject (how Hobbes, Wittgenstein, and Frege, for example, approached the problem of language) and then explores some of the major questions that still engage philosophers today. More important, Appiah shows us not only what philosophers have thought but how they think, giving us examples we might use in our own attempts to navigate the complex issues that confront any reflective person in the 21st century. Filled with concrete examples of how philosophers work and written in the liveliest prose, Thinking It Through guides readers through the process of philosophical reflection and enlarges our understanding of the central questions of human life.

The Dynamics of Language, Volume 35: An Introduction
For the whole of the last half-century, most theoretical syntacticians have assumed that knowledge of language is different from the tasks of speaking and understanding. There have been some dissenters, but, by and large, this view still holds sway.

This book takes a different view: it continues the task set in hand by Kempson et al (2001) of arguing that the common-sense intuition is correct that knowledge of language consists in being able to use it in speaking and understanding. The Dynamics of Language argues that interpretation is built up across as sequence of words relative to some context and that this is all that is needed to explain the structural properties of language. The dynamics of how interpretation is built up is the syntax of a language system. The authors' first task is to convey to a general linguistic audience with a minimum of formal apparatus, the substance of that formal system. Secondly, as linguists, they set themselves the task of applying the formal system to as broad an array of linguistic puzzles as possible, the languages analysed ranging from English to Japanese and Swahili.

*Argues that knowledge in language consists of being able to use it in speaking and understanding
*Analyses a variety of languages, from English to Japanese and Swahili
*Appeals to a wide audience in the disciplines of language, linguistics, anthropology, education, psychology, cognitive science, law, media studies, and medicine

Knowledge Representation and the Semantics of Natural Language (Cognitive Technologies)
The book presents an interdisciplinary approach to knowledge representation and the treatment of semantic phenomena of natural language, which is positioned between artificial intelligence, computational linguistics, and cognitive psychology. The proposed method is based on Multilayered Extended Semantic Networks (MultiNets), which can be used for theoretical investigations into the semantics of natural language, for cognitive modeling, for describing lexical entries in a computational lexicon, and for natural language processing (NLP). Part I deals with fundamental problems of semantic knowledge representation and semantic interpretation of natural language phenomena. Part II provides a systematic description of the representational means of MultiNet, one of the most comprehensive and thoroughly specified collections of relations and functions used in real NLP applications. MultiNet is embedded into a system of software tools comprising a workbench for the knowledge engineer, a semantic interpreter translating natural language expressions into formal meaning structures, and a workbench for the computer lexicographer. The book has been used for courses in artificial intelligence at several universities and is one of the cornerstones for teaching computational linguistics in a virtual electronic laboratory.

Origins_How the Planets, Stars, Galaxies and the Universe began
In the last decade, there has been a revolution in observational astronomy, which has meant that we are very close to answering three of the four big origin questions, of how the planets, stars, galaxies, and the universe itself were formed. As recently as 1995 we knew of only one planetary system: our own. Now we know of over a hundred, and this knowledge has helped to reveal how planetary systems form.
Within the last four years, astronomers have discovered that the universe is geometrically flat and that its expansion is accelerating, fuelled by a mysterious dark energy. This revolution in our observational knowledge of the universe, including the first precise measurements of its age and matter and energy content, has been vital groundwork for new ideas about its origin, including the possibility that the universe originated in a larger meta-universe .
Origin Questions describes, at an understandable and basically non-mathematical level, the origin questions and the recent steps that have been taken towards answering them.