The next president of the United States faces innumerable complex problems, from a possible prolonged recession to climate change. An immediate difficulty for the president will be the global conflict between the West and Islamic jihadists and state sponsors of terrorism. The creation of the Department of Homeland Security and the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission notwithstanding, the administration needs to be armed and ready to tackle much more in the areas of intelligence and counterterrorism. The president can and must assume a hands-on, informed leadership role if the United States wants to make progress in the war on terror.
Gary Berntsen has written this book as a guide for an incoming president and White House staff so that they may master current human intelligence and counterterrorism operations. After reading its highly specific recommendations and policy prescriptions, the president and his or her staff will be able to draft a First Directive for the leadership of the intelligence and national security communities outlining how the administration wants those communities to proceed and to defend the nation's interests.
Human Intelligence, Counterterrorism, and National Leadership will be of interest to legislators, policymakers, and anyone concerned about intelligence and terrorism policy. With a foreword by Seth G. Jones, a political scientist at the RAND Corporation and Adjunct Professor in the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University. He is the author of In the Graveyard of Empires: America's War in Afghanistan and The Rise of European Security Cooperation.
About this product: Emotional Intelligence was an international phenomenon, appearing on the New York Times bestseller list for over a year and selling more than five million copies worldwide. Now, once again, Daniel Goleman has written a groundbreaking synthesis of the latest findings in biology and brain science, revealing that we are “wired to connect” and the surprisingly deep impact of our relationships on every aspect of our lives.
Far more than we are consciously aware, our daily encounters with parents, spouses, bosses, and even strangers shape our brains and affect cells throughout our bodies—down to the level of our genes—for good or ill. In Social Intelligence, Daniel Goleman explores an emerging new science with startling implications for our interpersonal world. Its most fundamental discovery: we are designed for sociability, constantly engaged in a “neural ballet” that connects us brain to brain with those around us.
Our reactions to others, and theirs to us, have a far-reaching biological impact, sending out cascades of hormones that regulate everything from our hearts to our immune systems, making good relationships act like vitamins—and bad relationships like poisons. We can “catch” other people’s emotions the way we catch a cold, and the consequences of isolation or relentless social stress can be life-shortening. Goleman explains the surprising accuracy of first impressions, the basis of charisma and emotional power, the complexity of sexual attraction, and how we detect lies. He describes the “dark side” of social intelligence, from narcissism to Machiavellianism and psychopathy. He also reveals our astonishing capacity for “mindsight,” as well as the tragedy of those, like autistic children, whose mindsight is impaired.
Is there a way to raise our children to be happy? What is the basis of a nourishing marriage? How can business leaders and teachers inspire the best in those they lead and teach? How can groups divided by prejudice and hatred come to live together in peace?
The answers to these questions may not be as elusive as we once thought. And Goleman delivers his most heartening news with powerful conviction: we humans have a built-in bias toward empathy, cooperation, and altruism–provided we develop the social intelligence to nurture these capacities in ourselves and others.
About this product: This collection of interdisciplinary analyses addresses the issue of the language of the brain. The contributors include computer scientists, neuroscientists, psychologists, linguists, and historians. The resulting collection reflects the state of knowledge more than a generation after John von Neumann entitled his tantalizing and provocative lectures The Computer and the Brain. John von Neumann was one of the first to address the highly controversial issue of appropriate models to use in discussing cognitive science. The issue he raised most pointedly, and one that is still hotly debated, is the language of the brain. In his Silliman lectures he questioned the validity of using the computer as an interpretive model for human thought, asserting that the language of the brain is not mathematical. Later in the same lecture series, however, he attributes a statistical pattern to the brain. This paradoxical stance of von Neumann's is representative of the rapidly shifting nature of cognitive science, and of the study of the nature of language.
About this product: When we play the ancient and noble game of chess, we grapple with ideas about honesty, deceitfulness, bravery, fear, aggression, beauty, and creativity, which echo (or allow us to depart from) the attitudes we take in our daily lives. Chess is an activity in which we deploy almost all our available cognitive resources; therefore, it makes an ideal laboratory for investigation into the workings of the mind. Indeed, research into artificial intelligence (AI) has used chess as a model for intelligent behavior since the 1950s. In Chess Metaphors, Diego Rasskin-Gutman explores fundamental questions about memory, thought, emotion, consciousness, and other cognitive processes through the game of chess, using the moves of thirty-two pieces over sixty-four squares to map the structural and functional organization of the brain.
Rasskin-Gutman focuses on the cognitive task of problem solving, exploring it from the perspectives of both biology and AI. He examines concept after concept, move after move, delving into the varied mental mechanisms and the cognitive processes underlying the actions of playing chess. Bringing the game of chess into a larger framework, he analyzes its collateral influences that spread along the frontiers of games, art, and science. Finally, he investigates AI's effort to program a computer that could beat a flesh-and-blood grandmaster (and win a world chess championship) and how the results fall short when compared to the truly creative nature of the human mind.
About this product: After spending decades as a deep cover officer in the CIA, Ishmael Jones conveys a true feel for the facts of real clandestine work. He tells his story straight and with dry wit.
To create truly effective human-centric ambient intelligence systems both engineering and computing methods are needed. This is the first book to bridge data processing and intelligent reasoning methods for the creation of human-centered ambient intelligence systems. Interdisciplinary in nature, the book covers topics such as multi-modal interfaces, human-computer interaction, smart environments and pervasive computing, addressing principles, paradigms, methods and applications.
This book will be an ideal reference for university researchers, R&D engineers, computer engineers, and graduate students working in signal, speech and video processing, multi-modal interfaces, human-computer interaction and applications of ambient intelligence.
Hamid Aghajan is a Professor of Electrical Engineering (consulting) at Stanford University, USA. His research is on user-centric vision applications in smart homes, assisted living / well being, smart meetings, and avatar-based social interactions. He is Editor-in-Chief of "Journal of Ambient Intelligence and Smart Environments", has chaired ACM/IEEE ICDSC 2008, and organized workshops/sessions/tutorials at ECCV, ACM MM, FG, ECAI, ICASSP, CVPR.
Juan Carlos Augusto is a Lecturer at the University of Ulster, UK. He is conducting research on Smart Homes and Classrooms. He has given tutorials at IJCAI'07 and AAAI'08. He is Editor-in-Chief of the Book Series on "Ambient Intelligence and Smart Environments" and the "Journal of Ambient Intelligence and Smart Environments". He has co-Chaired ICOST'06, AITAmI'06/07/08, and is Workshops Chair for IE'09.
Ramón López-Cózar Delgado is a Professor at the Faculty of Computer Science and Telecommunications of the University of Granada, Spain. His research interests include speech recognition and understanding, dialogue management and Ambient Intelligence. He is a member of ISCA (International Speech Communication Association), SEPLN (Spanish Society on Natural Language Processing) and AIPO (Spanish Society on HCI).
Integrates engineering and computing methods that are essential for designing and implementing highly effective ambient intelligence systems
Contains contributions from the world's leading experts in academia and industry
Gives a complete overview of the principles, paradigms and applications of human-centric ambient intelligence systems
About this product: This manual provides doctrinal guidance, techniques, and procedures for the employment of human intelligence (HUMINT) collection and analytical assets in support of the commander's intelligence needs. It includes and supersedes the interrogation manual (FM 34-52) that Congress mandated the CIA use by passage of the Detainee Treatment Act. "In accordance with the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, the only interrogation approaches and techniques that are authorized for use against any detainee, regardless of status or characterization, are those authorized and listed in this Field Manual." It also provides guidance for HUMINT collectors and commanders and staffs of the Military Intelligence organizations.
About this product: From Robocop to the Terminator to Eve 8, no image better captures our deepest fears about technology than the cyborg, the person who is both flesh and metal, brain and electronics. But philosopher and cognitive scientist Andy Clark sees it differently. Cyborgs, he writes, are not something to be feared--we already are cyborgs. In Natural-Born Cyborgs, Clark argues that what makes humans so different from other species is our capacity to fully incorporate tools and supporting cultural practices into our existence. Technology as simple as writing on a sketchpad, as familiar as Google or a cellular phone, and as potentially revolutionary as mind-extending neural implants--all exploit our brains' astonishingly plastic nature. Our minds are primed to seek out and incorporate non-biological resources, so that we actually think and feel through our best technologies. Drawing on his expertise in cognitive science, Clark demonstrates that our sense of self and of physical presence can be expanded to a remarkable extent, placing the long-existing telephone and the emerging technology of telepresence on the same continuum. He explores ways in which we have adapted our lives to make use of technology (the measurement of time, for example, has wrought enormous changes in human existence), as well as ways in which increasingly fluid technologies can adapt to individual users during normal use. Bio-technological unions, Clark argues, are evolving with a speed never seen before in history. As we enter an age of wearable computers, sensory augmentation, wireless devices, intelligent environments, thought-controlled prosthetics, and rapid-fire information search and retrieval, the line between the user and her tools grows thinner day by day. "This double whammy of plastic brains and increasingly responsive and well-fitted tools creates an unprecedented opportunity for ever-closer kinds of human-machine merger," he writes, arguing that such a merger is entirely natural. A stunning new look at the human brain and the human self, Natural Born Cyborgs reveals how our technology is indeed inseparable from who we are and how we think.
BOOK
