Nature: the wilderness that environmentalists try to protect from industrial despoliation; the spectacular national parks where people seek refuge from their everyday urban lives; the endangered plants and animals that now need the shelter of science and law to survive; the rain forests, mountains, deserts, oceans, rivers, and lakes we would like to see as unspoiled, unchanging. These conceptions of nature, so familiar and powerful that we take them...

In Rainer Werner Fassbinder's "A Year of Thirteen Moons," the camera watches the prostitute Red Zora as she watches Fassbinder in a television interview. The actress is Ingrid Caven, the director's former wife and the woman with whom he claims to have his most important "elective affinity." At once provocative and revealing, the scene illustrates Fassbinder's interest in blurring the boundaries between art and life, between fiction and autobiography....

Covers all major areas of science, engineering, technology, as well as mathematics and the medical and health sciences, while providing a comprehensive overview of current scientific knowledge and technology. Entries typically describe scientific concepts, provide overviews of scientific areas and, in some cases, define terms.