The Life of Air

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Dwelling, Communicating, Manipulating

edited by Monika Bakke

Introduction: The Multispecies Use of Air

‘It’s alive!’ we could certainly exclaim if confronted with a microscopic view of air. As aerobiologists observe, ‘[h]undreds of thousands of individual microbial cells can exist in a cubic metre of air, representing perhaps hundreds of unique taxa’ (Womack et al., 2010: 3645). But what deserves special attention here is not only that air is full of life but also, apart from being a mean of transport and communication, air is a habitat in its own right. The zoe of air comes in abundance and we – breathing organisms – are all in this together for better and for worse, dead or alive. We have finally come to realize that air is messy, being neither an empty space nor a void, but a space where species meet. And like any other life form, as Donna Haraway emphasizes, we find ourselves ‘in a knot of species coshaping one another in layers of reciprocating complexity all the way down’ (2008: 42). (more...)

Dwelling in Air

Ann M. Womack, Brendan J. M. Bohannan, Jessica L. Green

Biodiversity and Biogeography of the Atmosphere

Anna A. Gorbushina, Renate Kort, Anette Schulte, David Lazarus, Bernhard Schnetger, Hans-Jürgen Brumsack, William J. Broughton, Jocelyne Favet

Life in Darwin's Dust: Intercontinental Transport and Survival of Microbes in the Nineteenth Century

Anders Hedenström

Extreme Endurance Migration: What Is the Limit to Non-Stop Flight?

Elizabeth Thomas

Tomas Saraceno Looks to the Sky and Sees Possibilities

Nerea Cavillo

In the Air

Steven Connor – Taking to the Air

Nonhuman Volatile Communication

Frederick R. Adler

Plant Signalling: The Opportunities and Dangers of Chemical Communication

Geraldine A. Wright, Florian P. Schiestl

The Evolution of Floral Scent: The Influence of Olfactory Learning by Insect Pollinators on the Honest Signalling of Floral Rewards

Michael R. Whitehead, Rod Peakall

Integrating Floral Scent, Pollination Ecology and Population Genetics

Corinna Thom, David C. Gilley, Judith Hooper, Harald E. Esch

The Scent of the Waggle Dance

Anthropology of Scents

Gordon M. Shepherd

The Human Sense of Smell: Are We Better Than We Think?

Charles J. Wysocki, George Preti

Facts, Fallacies, Fears, and Frustrations with Human Pheromones

Susana Camara Leret

Smellscapes: The Loss of Smell in a Visual Culture

Usman Haque

Scents of Space

Oswaldo Maciá, Jenny Marketou, Chrysanne Stathacos, Clara Ursitti

Odor Limits

Inspiration-Expiration

Bogusław Buszewski, Martyna Kęsy, Tomasz Ligor, Anton Amann

Human Exhaled Air Analytics: Biomarkers of Diseases

Sabrina Raaf

Breath I: Pleasure
Breath Cultures

Jarosław Kozakiewicz

Oxygen Towers

Tomas Saraceno

Poetic Cosmos of the Breath

Ruud Kaulingfreks , René Ten Bos

Learning to Fly: Inspiration and Togetherness

M. J. Parkes

Breath-holding and Its Breakpoint

Airborne Anxieties

Simon Luechinger

Valuing Air Quality Using the Life Satisfaction Approach Valuing Air Quality Using the Life Satisfaction Approach

G. Liccardi, A. Custovic, M. Cazzola, M. Russo, M. D'Amato, G. D'Amato

Avoidance of Allergens and Air Pollutants in Respiratory Allergy

Lisa Fong Poh Ng ; The Virus That Changed My World

How Flu Viruses Attack

What You Should Know About Biological Warfare

How to Survive- Biological or Chemical Attack

Critical Art Ensemble

Bodies of Fear in a World of Threat

Beatriz da Costa

Pigeonblog

A 'Frozen' PDF Version of this Living Book

Download a 'frozen' PDF version of this book as it appeared on 7th October 2011