Chapter 5 details how the High Court focused on soldiers when they attempted to discover the authors of the pasquins. It also examines how the first arrests that the court ordered triggered an attempt by the other leaders of the conspiracy to start the rebellion earlier than planned. In the final meetings, they were caught in the act of planning the rebellion by men whom they had invited to become part of the plot but who told everything to the authorities and then became spies for the regime. People of different ranks met and assessed each other for the first time at these gatherings and consequently made decisions about whether they would stay committed to the movement or not. The last days of the conspiracy were thus marked by a continuing commitment to rebellion but also by persecution, infiltration, and confusion about who was involved and what the web of relations were between the thirty plus men of African descent who were arrested and their relations with the few whites who were also interrogated.

Chapter 3 is centered around the appearance in 1798 of twelve handwritten bulletins, known as pasquins, that announced a coming revolution to the people of Bahia. The bulletins denounced Portuguese rule, racism, and unfair wages, among other demands. They were placed in the public squares and markets of the city, and it was this act of encouraging the public to rebel that made the bulletins and their writers seditious. While the writers did speak to all Bahians, they targeted places where soldiers were known to congregate more than others. This chapter thus explores not only the demands of the pasquins but also how the documents were disseminated to the public. While there is little information about how or why most pasquins were found where they were, one bulletin that was found on a market stall brings into sharp focus the daily interactions between soldiers and market women. Studying these relations reveals new ways of thinking about the presence and participation of women in resistance movements.

The rhetoric of Roman moralising has often seemed alien to modern readers. This book, in linking together studies of apparently diverse topics, might be seen as appropriating a trope of Roman moralistic discourse, presenting arguments concerning different subjects as parallel so that they may serve to reinforce one another. A better understanding of this and similar literary devices, as they operate in Roman moralising texts, can help us to make sense of some features of those texts which modern readers have found puzzling. We begin with an apparently bizarre example of this kind of rhetoric (included in the book of rhetorical exercises put together by the elder Seneca).

A major challenge facing South African sociolinguistics today is to find ways to engage with activists and be activists in reconstructing meaningful intervention in public debates about problems of language and multilingualism in a post-apartheid democratic context. To tackle this problem, in this chapter, I propose the idea that sociolinguists doing the work of activism, with language activists, in the public, are (1) invested in the artistic representation of linkages between language reinvention and new relationalities, and (2) highlighting, documenting and framing interventionist debates around language. To illustrate this idea, and the related points, I draw on my activist work with Afrikaaps ´language´ activists in the advancement of a public sociolinguistics that concern two broad strategies of intervention: one as a form of rear-guard intervention and the other as a vanguard one. I analyze how activists working with the Afrikaaps ´language´ movement concerns developing a new perspective on language based in actions of reinvention and the goal of establishing common relationality through multilingual communication. Following the analysis, I offer a number of conclusions on how public sociolinguists could continue to cultivate and sustain such activism embedded in the history of language formation, reinvention and future.

The chapter examines the role of causality in politics, demonstrating how democratic politics shifted from a top-down causality, from divinity to monarchy, to a bottom-up causality, from the public to its representatives. This shift is evident in the establishment of periodic elections and democratic institutions, which are designed to legitimize causality derived from human agency. Concurrently, horizontal causality emerged through entities like political parties, civil society, and social media. However, this democratic causality has been weakening over recent decades due to several factors: the diminished capacity of political institutions to represent political causality, the illusion of a direct link between politicians and the public, particularly through mass media and social networks, and the erosion of the concept of “the public” as a democratic entity. In recent years, the public has experienced political fragmentation and lacks unifying forces like ideologies, parties, and labor unions. Another contributing factor to the weakening of causality is the declining faith in science and expertise, which are now associated with elitism. This has led to a weakening of quasi-scientific causality in politics and a rise of the “charisma of ignorance.”

This chapter contains a broad overview of the technical and environmental issues to be addressed in the contruction of onshore wind energy projects. The former include ecological considerations, including birds and mammals; the requirements of typical pre-construction ornithological surveys are described with an example. Public safety and acceptance is discussed in the context of catastrophic damage to wind turbines, visual impact, shadow flicker, and noise nuisance. In the last case equations and simple rules for noise assessment are given in the context of typical planning guidelines. Sound power levels for a range of commercial wind turbines are compared, and empirical relationships given relating noise to rated output, and rotor size and tip speed. Risks to aviation are discussed, covering aircraft collision and interference to radar systems, including both primary and secondary surveillance radars. The concept of ‘stealthy’ wind turbine blades is discussed, and described in outline. Other siting criteria include avoidance of RF and microwave communications beams and television interference. Rules are given to avoid interference, while minimising required separation distances.

For a book that attempts to explain how to understand visuals in life sciences, it seems prudent to first explain what we mean by “visual,” even if it may seem quite a common word.

In everyday conversation, “visual” is often used as an adjective and means “relating to seeing or sight,” as in “visual impression” or “visual effect.” In the context of this book, “visual” is used similarly as an adjective, but in addition, and more often, it is used as a noun. As a noun, it refers to the variety of images used in life science communication. For example, photographs are a type of visual commonly used in life science communication, and so are drawings.

Illustrations are a visual staple in life science communication. Despite being commonplace, they are in many ways a blackbox. They mask the creative – and scientific – decisions that go into making them. They present an end product that says, as it were, “this is how you look through life to its essence.” The use of precise lines and explicit shapes helps to convey this scientific authority. In contemporary illustrations, pseudo-details such as colors and dimensions further prove that “this is what life looks like.”

Micrographs, like the little (pun intended) cousin of photographs, are considered by some as an objective portrayal of nature. Why, they are photographs of the microscopic world invisible to the naked human eye. As such, what you see is what you get, and what you get is nature unveiled.

Particularly because the microscopic world is invisible to us in everyday life, we find it even more urgent to behold that world. We assume that if and when we see, we will automatically understand. If and when we observe microorganisms in their smallest components, we will be able to “get” them and conquer them.

Contemporary life sciences are big data sciences. The human genome, for example, contains about three billion DNA base pairs and an estimated 20,000 protein-coding genes. Public health data, as another example, are endlessly enormous and encompass electronic medical records, health monitoring data, environmental data, and more. When it comes to analyzing and presenting these big data, interactive online visuals – maps, graphs, three-dimensional models, even computer games – have inherent advantages. They are dynamic and easily updated. They support user interaction and allow users to create displays that make sense to them. Being “hands-on” also makes these visual displays more interesting. As computer visualization technologies continue to advance, we are guaranteed to see faster, more fluid, more ingenious interactive displays.

As we have seen throughout this book, standalone visuals like photographs and illustrations are promising ways to communicate science to the public – and they carry their fair share of misconceptions and complications. These promises – as well as challenges – are multiplied in infographics.

The word “infographic” comes from the phrase “information graphic.” Originally, the term referred to the production of graphics for print media such as newspapers and magazines. Today it refers to a unique multimodal genre that combines data visualizations (i.e., graphs such as lines, pies, bars, and pictographs), illustrations (such as icons and drawings), photographs, and small amounts of text. When designed for online use, infographics can also have interactive components. For example, putting the mouse cursor somewhere on the infographic may reveal a small pop-up window with additional information. Some infographics are also animated: bars in a bar chart may grow, colors may change, or characters may move. This is often achieved by using animated GIF files that display a sequence of static images in a repeating loop, which creates the illusion of motion.

Graphs – such as line graphs or bar graphs – convey numerical data. They are commonly used in life science communication as well as other communication contexts, such as when conveying stock market data, crime statistics, or real estate trends. The prevalence of these graphs doesn’t mean, as some may assume, that they are always easy to understand. Depending on design choices, some graphs will be able to shed light on important numerical data for public understanding of science, while others are likely to confuse or leave readers with a heightened conviction that science is an inaccessible enterprise.

Photographs are often considered an “easy” and accessible type of scientific visual. After all, they are commonplace in everyday life and not exclusive to scientific research. Everyone takes photographs and knows what photographs are. As long as one can physically see, one (so it is thought) can get what a photograph is about. Unfortunately, when it comes to life science photographs, much of this is misconception. This chapter explains why.

The goal of Chapter 5 is to examine emoji use across the healthcare landscape, as well as what implications related to emoji theories can be gleaned from such usage and how emoji use can be applied to training healthcare professionals more generally. Prominently discussed in the chapter are clinical studies that indicate emoji writing (between practitioners and patients) may actually enhance medical outcomes. Also highlighted is the empirically attested fact that emoji scales and models may be good gauges for assessing well-being. The overall conclusion that can be drawn from the studies is that emoji might affect patients positively. Emoji are not medical cures in themselves, needless to say; they are simple pictures that affect patients positively, much like humor. They may also counteract the so-called nocebo effect, defined as a detrimental effect on health produced by psychological or psychosomatic factors such as negative expectations of treatment or prognosis.

This chapter deals with public health and pandemic preparedness. It recognises the five stages of a new pandemic (detection, assessment, treatment, escalation and recovery). The chapter also deals with the issue of laboratory preparedness and the need to maintain a critical mass of laboratory and skilled staff expertise at all times in order to be able to respond rapidly and effectively to a new emerging pandemic.