Move to the main content
:::

New Arrival

國立嘉義大學

Can Asians think of peace? [electronic resource] : essays on managing conflict in the Asian century / edited by Kishore Mahbubani, Varigonda Kesava Chandra, Kristen Tang.

2025.12.31

This open access book explores the shifting dynamics of global power, highlighting Asia's resurgence. For centuries before the Western colonial era, China and India dominated the world economy. Now, Asia is reclaiming its historical prominence. China presents a formidable challenge to American power, while India is on track to become the world's third-largest economy by 2030. The 21st century is poised to be the Asian century, but will this rise be peaceful, or will it lead to catastrophic conflicts?  Kishore Mahbubani, head and founder of the Asian Peace Programme (APP) at the National University of Singapore, offers a collection of 61 essays on peace in Asia, co-edited by Dr. Varigonda Kesava Chandra, and Kristen Tang. Written by scholars and practitioners from both Asia and the West between July 2020 and December 2024, these essays analyze potential flashpoints in Asia and propose pragmatic, implementable ideas for conflict management and peacebuilding. Topics include managing the US-China relationship, stabilizing India-Pakistan and China-India border conflicts, strengthening relations among Southeast Asian countries, and addressing global threats such as nuclear war and climate change. Mr. Mahbubani also provides a sharp introduction, contextualizing the conflict management and peacebuilding processes of the Asian 21st century.

國立嘉義大學

Negotiating global health policies [electronic resource] : tensions and dilemmas / by Germán Velásquez.

2025.12.29

This book presents reflections and research that highlight tensions in the ongoing negotiations on pandemic preparedness treaties and revisions to the International Health Regulations, underscoring the geopolitical divide between developed and developing countries. It advocates regional health initiatives as a response to the multilateral impasse and reflects on the erosion of foundational public health concepts such as "essential medicines".  New pandemics are inevitable. How can we best prepare for them and, above all, how can we avoid the mistakes and injustices made during the COVID-19 pandemic? Negotiations are underway to formulate a binding international treaty on prevention and preparedness to ensure fairer responses to future pandemics. This book is intended as a critical contribution to the current debates. How can equitable access to medicines and diagnostics be guaranteed when they are produced in a small number of countries? How can we explain the fact that current funding for cooperation in the field of health is in the hands of a small group of Northern countries and foundations from the North? How can the role of the World Health Organization be strengthened? WHO now plays only a minor role in coordinating public health policies. How is it that the concept of “essential medicines”, a major advance in public health policy, is being replaced by that of “medical countermeasures”, a term more in line with the private sectors? Preparing for future pandemics forces us to ask ourselves: how can we safeguard the general interest, the defense of human rights and public health? Negotiating Global Health Policies: Tensions and Dilemmas is essential reading for negotiators from the 194 member countries of the World Health Organization (WHO), the World Trade Organization (WTO), and the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) who participate in international negotiations on health and development. Academics and students of medicine, health sciences, law, sociology and political science, as well as intergovernmental organizations and non-governmental organizations who work on access to medicines and global health issues, also would find the book of interest.

國立嘉義大學

Thomas kuhn [electronic resource] : from physics to philosophy of science / by Juan V. Mayoral.

2025.12.19

This new biography of Thomas S. Kuhn pays attention to the continuous development of his ideas. Mayoral provides a comprehensive overview of Kuhn's life and work. The book explores how Kuhn’s theory develops from its beginnings at Harvard University in the early 1950s through the early 1990s at the MIT and also describes Kuhn's parallel lifetime. Between those decades (1950s and 1990s), Kuhn went through different academic institutions, obtained a high status as a public intellectual, and shifted from the history of science to the philosophy of science (and back) as his main research target. All of this left a trace in his philosophical view of science, enriching and changing it since his early training as a theoretical physicist. In this book, Kuhn is considered as an intellectual in evolution, and his contributions are assessed against the backdrop of the different contexts that he traversed. Therefore, there shall not be a static figure of this intellectual, as there shall not be a static figure of the surrounding intellectual contexts, either. At the same time, however, this book is planned so that each chapter provides the reader with a picture of a significant period in Kuhn’s development and the main ideas that can be observed in it. The book is useful for upper undergraduates in philosophy, especially in philosophy of science, in general history and history of science, in the social sciences and other fields of humanities, and for scientifically trained individuals interested in this author. Kuhn scholars shall find this book useful for their studies on Kuhn insofar as new unpublished documents are employed, new facts about Kuhn’s life are provided, and a full interpretation of Kuhn’s evolving system of philosophy of science is built and discussed.

國立嘉義大學

Designing for human intelligence in an artificial intelligence world [electronic resource] : understanding human cognition to design for humans / by Jerome L. Rekart, Rebecca Baker.

2025.12.10

How we think and react has a direct impact on experience design, but often designers don't understand the "whys" behind their best practices, leaving them at risk for misusing or underutilizing those designs. Similarly, psychologists/neuroscientists don't understand the design decisions that their science is informing and how they might be leveraged further. This book explores how neuroscience and cognitive psychology inform experience design, within the modern context of research and technological advances.    With a conversational and playful tone, this book begins by grounding you in research and AI. That foundation then allows you to expand your repertoire through chapters on design-relevant cognitive phenomena such as memory, learning, and perception. By delving into how our brains handle these processes and how our designs can effectively (or ineffectively) leverage them, the book follows a journey that weaves academic learning with practical, real-world applications and examples.   With the widespread availability of generative AI tools, understanding the intersection of human cognition and design and how that knowledge can be used to build a bridge between the brain and the software has become even more critical. By understanding the brain and human behavior more completely, designers will be able to effectively use AI as an accelerator for tactical projects and provide the context that is unique to the human ability to understand the "why.”