Short Description:
History and Science of Cultivated Plants narrates how humans transitioned from foragers to farmers and have arrived at present-day industrial agriculture-based civilization. It entails myths, historical accounts, and scientific concepts to describe how human efforts have shaped and produced easier to grow, larger, tastier, and more nutritious fruits, vegetables, and grains from wild plants. Using examples of various economically and socially important crops central to human civilization, the book describes the origin of crop plants, the evolution of agricultural practices, fundamental concepts of natural selection vs. domestication, experimental and methodical plant breeding, and plant biotechnology. Data dashboard

Word Count: 48729

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Short Description:
The CK-12 foundation defines a flexbook as a “free and open source textbook platform where one can build and edit collaborative textbooks.” The FNDH 400 (formerly the HN 400 flexbook, department changed its name from Human Nutrition to Food, Nutrition, Dietetics and Health) Flexbook fits this definition. Readers, in addition to having access online, can also download the OER as a digital or printable PDF and EPUB. Data dashboard

Word Count: 76413

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Short Description:
Intermediate Microeconomics is a comprehensive microeconomic theory text that uses real world policy questions to motivate and illustrate the material in each chapter. Intermediate Microeconomics is an approachable yet rigorous textbook that covers the entire scope of traditional microeconomic theory and includes two mathematical approaches, allowing instructors to teach the material with or without calculus. With real-world policy topics as an entrée into each subject, Intermediate Microeconomics will help students engage with the material and facilitate learning not only the concepts, but their importance and application as well. Data dashboard

Word Count: 126608

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Short Description:
This book describes how Earth's climate is changing, how it has been changing in the recent geological past and how it may change in the future. It covers the physical sciences that build the foundations of our current understanding of global climate change such as radiation, Earth's energy balance, the greenhouse effect and the carbon cycle. Both natural and human causes for climate change are discussed. Impacts of climate change on natural and human systems are summarized. Ethical and economical aspects of human-caused climate change and solutions are presented. Data dashboard

Word Count: 52328

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Short Description:
Welcome to this free eBook, “Intro to Permaculture”. The permaculture perspective has more resonance now than at any other time since the term ‘permaculture’ was coined in 1978. The Paris Climate Agreement of 2016 has the world admitting it needs to turn civilization onto a different road. Permaculture design has been scouting out that path for nearly 40 years, and now it’s time that the world sees some of what we have learned about living in cooperation with nature.This free introduction to permaculture is meant for the novice and the professional alike, with no prior experience necessary. For the person new to permaculture design and land stewardship, this book will provide a foundation from which to build upon with subsequent training, and introduce a new perspective that can be applied in many careers and facets of life. Data dashboard

Long Description:
Permaculture Design is a method of land planning that can be applied at scales from the home garden to city block to village to farm. It is an ethically based whole-systems design approach that uses concepts, principles, and methods derived from ecosystems, indigenous technologies, and other time-tested practices to create sustainable human settlements and institutions. Although rooted in horticulture and agriculture, Permaculture design is interdisciplinary, touching on a wide range of subjects including regional planning, ecology, animal husbandry, appropriate technology, architecture, social justice, and international development.

This open text book is derived from the content of the Massive Open Online Course “Intro to Permaculture”. The original course also included interactive mapping and design tools that accompanied this content. The course and book provide a general overview of the Permaculture design system. The book can be downloaded as a print version. However, there are many accompanying videos and content pages that are linked to throughout the text, so it is best viewed online where the links can be accessed.

Word Count: 15583

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These are lecture notes for cs427 at Oregon State University, an introductory course in cryptography at the advanced undergraduate level. By reading and studying these notes, you should expect to learn how to:

*State and interpret the standard formal definitions for the most common cryptographic security properties (privacy and authentication).
*Formally prove security properties of sound cryptographic constructions, and break the security of unsound ones.
*Choose the appropriate cryptographic primitive for a task (block ciphers, hash functions, MACs, public-key encryption, etc.) while avoiding common pitfalls.
*Along the way, you will also learn how the most common cryptographic constructions work.

A Survivor's Guide

Short Description:
The third edition, updated nearly three decades later, tells the earthquake story of the Pacific Northwest. (This includes the west coast of Canada, and perhaps from a Canadian perspective, it should be the Pacific Southwest.) The book presents the evidence for earthquakes, the location of major faults, the danger from tsunamis, the importance of ground conditions, and what we as individuals and as taxpayers and voters can do to make our homes and our communities safer from earthquakes. There are lessons from the Northwest experience to be learned elsewhere in the United States, Canada, and other parts of the world where the earthquake threat is greater than that perceived by the general public. Data dashboard

Long Description:
In this expanded new edition of Living with Earthquakes, Robert Yeats, a leading authority on earthquakes in California and the Pacific Northwest, describes the threat posed by the Cascadia Subduction Zone, a great earthquake fault which runs for hundreds of miles offshore from British Columbia to northern California. New research reveals subtle movements on the deepest part of this fault every 14-15 months — building up strain toward the next major earthquake.

Combining cutting-edge research with practical safety information, Living with Earthquakes: introduces new information about the danger from faults beneath major Northwest cities: the Seattle Fault, Tacoma Fault, and Portland Hills Fault explores such topics as earthquake forecasting, catastrophe insurance, tsunamis, soil liquefaction, and seismic waves in Northwest lakes caused by Alaskan earthquakes reviews earthquake preparedness and disaster response in the aftermath of the 2001 Nisqually earthquake, the worst natural disaster in Washington’s history suggests actions that citizens can take to protect their families and homes

An essential guide for anyone interested in understanding earthquake science or in preparing for the next earthquake, this book is also a call to action. Vivid descriptions of recent disasters — including the great tsunami that swept down the Northwest coast in 1964, the 1993 Oregon earthquakes, and the 2001 Nisqually earthquake — underscore the urgent need for better earthquake planning and awareness.

Word Count: 156810

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Short Description:
This open educational resource is designed for use by undergraduate and graduate ocean science, natural resource, fisheries and wildlife, and environmental policy students enrolled in a ten-week academic quarter. The purpose of this project is to provide students and non-law professionals with a freely accessible, clearly written guide to support engaging and effective learning. As such, the book serves as a gateway and an invitation to become a well informed, committed and involved ocean citizen as well as to explore the field beyond our course study. Data dashboard

Word Count: 41248

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Short Description:
In the face of so many unprecedented changes occurring in our lives, our ecosystems and our globe, society is more often expecting scientists to provide information that can help guide communities toward a more sustainable future. This book is our attempt to provide a framework that managers of natural resources can use to design monitoring programs that will benefit future generations by providing the information needed to make informed decisions. In addition we offer tools and approaches that engage individuals in our society in monitoring programs. We firmly believe that people and communities who are empowered in the design and implementation of monitoring programs are more likely to use the information that results from the program, and support it over time. Data dashboard

Word Count: 106934

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Short Description:
This book is intended for use in a large introductory class in new media in a program that covers the “full-stack” including critical/cultural studies, media management, diffusion of innovation, and synthetic media production. The first half of this basic sequence covered new media and democracy, finance, intellectual property law, basic games, and transmedia. The second half of the sequence covers many topics related to aesthetics, design, technology, and methodology. Data dashboard

Word Count: 53107

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Countering the Threat From States and Non-State Actors

Short Description:
The danger posed by nuclear weapons and fissile materials is ever present. The end of the Cold War and the significant reduction in the size of Russian and U.S. nuclear stockpiles did not change this fact of life. There are now nine states that possess nuclear weapons – the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, China, Israel, India, Pakistan, and North Korea – and the number of nuclear weapons in the world in 2019 is estimated to be almost 14,000. In addition, the production of highly-enriched uranium and plutonium continues in several places, while more than 440 civilian nuclear facilities around the world are in operation, posing their own particular risks. When one also considers that non-state actors constitute a significant global danger and the potential for nuclear terrorism, it is clear the need for nuclear security remains paramount. There is no other type of weapon that comes close to doing the level of damage that nuclear weapons can inflict. Data dashboard

Word Count: 3351

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Short Description:
The impetus for this volume was a multitude of conversations regarding pedagogy and teaching related to our judicial process courses. Based on these conversations, we identified four main threads or needs of our colleagues: First, many of us bring or want to bring more “political science” into our classes, though we also want to avoid the high costs of reinventing successful existing courses to do so. Second, our programs all require a political methodology course, and we want to reinforce those lessons in our substantive courses. We want to encourage our students’ understanding of how to read and understand research studies as well as how to craft their own research questions. Third, we want to keep our courses as current as possible. And fourth, we wanted to find a way to bring the cost of our courses down, as we see so many students struggle with the high costs of a college degree. This volume (as well as any future editions) addresses each of these concerns. Data Dashboard

Word Count: 312882

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Short Description:
This book is predominantly about climate, and the macro influences of climate and climate change on design. As we get through the topics of climate analogues and climate change forecasting, we will end up moving down this list to see the climate’s influence on specific design choices. Data dashboard

Word Count: 42354

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A Textbook Edition of Shakespeare’s Play Created By Students, For Students

Short Description:
This edition of Romeo and Juliet was edited by students for students. We believe that reliably edited versions of the play should be available for free online. But we wanted ours to be easy to get in other ways as well. The editors—Oregon State University students who remember, far better than their professors, what it was like to read the play for the first time—carefully considered every pronoun, punctuation mark, and footnote. Our goal: to make a friendly, confidence-building edition that supported classroom activities at the high school and college level. Data dashboard

Word Count: 50242

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Prospects for Sustainability

Short Description:
This book is a collective effort to understand and apply current conceptualizations of sustainability to a study of state and local government. It is an attempt to focus our attention on a basic understanding of the time-tested institutions and guiding principles likely to take society and governance towards greater advancement. Our work is, however, tempered by a developing understanding of smart growth — growth in productive capacity, quality of life and social justice that does not necessitate large-scale destructive or extractive activity. The growth sought produces widespread mutual benefit, is prudent in design and thoughtful in execution. The growth in question here is mindful of the past, yet builds better lives and futures for our posterity. Data dashboard

Word Count: 139622

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Short Description:
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Word Count: 48545

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Short Description:
This open source textbook is derived from many sources, initially from the Principles of Management by Carpenter, Bauer, and Erdogan, but there is abundant new content as well. It is published under a Creative Commons license and as such there is no charge ever for this textbook. Data dashboard

Word Count: 50177

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Short Description:
The forest industry is increasingly global and every marketer of forest products should have a global perspective. As a natural resource-based industry, the forest industry has an especially high profile role in environmental protection and is increasingly involved in climate change mitigation and management. Global forests are not only important because they provide a source of industrial raw material, but also because of the various other human needs they satisfy. A forest products marketer should have a basic understanding of the role that global forests play in society. Data dashboard

Word Count: 91722

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Short Description:
This text is meant as a case study and companion text to many Systems Analysis & Design textbooks used in undergraduate Management Information Systems (MIS), Business Information Systems (BIS) and Computer Information Systems (CIS) programs. The US counts about 1,300 (undergraduate + graduate) such programs (Mandiwalla et al., 2016). These texts typically contain short descriptions of technologies which give students some sense of what these technologies are used for, but do not provide much context or reflection on why these technologies might or might not be applied and what such applications actually amount to in real life. As a consequence, students, having worked their way through these textbooks and associated courses will have had little exposure to the reasoning which must take place when making choices between these technologies and to what goes into combining them into working and successful system architectures. It is our hope that this Tale of Two Systems (pun very much intended) will help mitigate this problem a little. The first edition of this publication is available: A Tale of Two Systems (first edition). Data dashboard

Long Description:
This is the story of a web-based information system rebuild. The system in question is www.teachengineering.org, a digital library of K-12 engineering curriculum that was built from the ground up with established technology and which for 13 years enjoyed lasting support from its growing user community and its sponsors. These 13 years, however, cover the period during which smart phones and tablets became commonplace, during which the Internet of Things started replacing the Semantic Web, during which NoSQL databases made their way out of the research labs and into everyday development shops, during which we collectively started moving IT functions and services into ‘the cloud,’ and during which computing performance doubled a few times, yet again. During this same period, TeachEngineering’s user base grew from a few hundred to more than 3 million users annually, its collection size quadrupled, it went through several user interface renewals, and significant functionality was added while having an exemplary service record, and it enjoyed continued financial support from its sponsors.

Yet, although the system architecture could probably have survived a while longer, it started to become clear that with the newer technologies, better and newer services could be developed faster and at lower cost, that moving most of its functionality into the cloud would both boost performance and lower maintenance cost, and that the system’s resource and code footprint could be significantly reduced by rebuilding it on a different architecture, with different and more modern technology.

In this monograph we provide a side-by-side of this rebuild. We lay out the choices made in the old architecture —we refer to it as TE 1.0— and compare and contrast them with the choices made for TE 2.0. We explain why both the 1.0 and 2.0 choices were made and discuss the advantages and disadvantages associated with them.

Word Count: 42941

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