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Time and Space (PHI)
By Maria do Rosário Monteiro, Mário S. Ming Kong. 2024
The texts presented in Proportion Harmonies and Identities (PHI) Time and Space were compiled to establish a multidisciplinary platform for…
presenting, interacting, and disseminating research. It also aims to foster awareness and discussion on Time and Space, focusing on different visions relevant to Architecture, Arts and Humanities, Design and Social Sciences, and its importance and benefits for the sense of identity, both individual and communal. The idea of Time and Space has been a powerful motor for development since the Western Early Modern Age. Its theoretical and practical foundations have become the working tools of scientists, philosophers, and artists, who seek strategies and policies to accelerate the development process in different contexts.The Civilized Engineer
By Samuel C. Florman. 1987
Civil engineer Samuel C. Florman's The Civilized Engineer is aimed at both those observing and commenting externally on engineering, and…
the practicing engineer—to reveal something of the art behind great engineering achievements, and to stimulate debate upon the author's hypothesis that "in its moment of ascendance, engineering is faced with the trivialization of its purpose and the debasement of its practice."Dolphin Diaries: My Twenty-Five Years With Spotted Dolphins in the Bahamas
By Denise L. Herzing. 2011
Dr. Denise Herzing began her research with a pod of spotted dolphins in the 1980s. Now, almost three decades later,…
she has forged strong ties with many of these individuals, has witnessed and recorded them feeding, playing, fighting, mating, giving birth and communicating. Dolphin Diaries is an account of Herzing's research and her surprising findings on wild dolphin behavior, interaction, and communication. Readers will be drawn into the highs and lows—the births and deaths, the discovery of unique and personalized behaviors, the threats dolphins face from environmental changes, and the many funny and wonderful encounters Denise painstakingly documented over many years. This is the perfect book for anyone who loves these incredibly versatile and intelligent creatures and wants to find out more than the dolphin show at the zoo can offer. Herzing is a true pioneer in her field and deserves a place in the pantheon of naturalists and scientists next to Dian Fossey and Jane Goodall.Population Wars: A New Perspective on Competition and Coexistence
By Greg Graffin. 2016
From the very beginning, life on Earth has been defined by war. Today, those first wars continue to be fought…
around and literally inside us, influencing our individual behavior and that of civilization as a whole. War between populations - whether between different species or between rival groups of humans - is seen as an inevitable part of the evolutionary process. The popular concept of "the survival of the fittest" explains and often excuses these actions.In Population Wars, Greg Graffin points to where the mainstream view of evolutionary theory has led us astray. That misunderstanding has allowed us to justify wars on every level, whether against bacterial colonies or human societies, even when other, less violent solutions may be available. Through tales of mass extinctions, developing immune systems, human warfare, the American industrial heartland, and our degrading modern environment, Graffin demonstrates how an over-simplified idea of war, with its victorious winners and vanquished losers, prevents us from responding to the real problems we face. Along the way, Graffin reveals a paradox: when we challenge conventional definitions of war, we are left with a new problem, how to define ourselves. Populations Wars is a paradigm-shifting book about why humans behave the way they do and the ancient history that explains that behavior. In reading it, you'll see why we need to rethink the reasons for war, not only the human military kind but also Darwin's "war of nature," and find hope for a less violent future for mankind.An overdue indictment of government, industry, and faith groups that twist science for their own gain.During the next thirty years,…
the American public will suffer from a rampage against reason by special interests in government, commerce, and the faith industry, and the rampage has already begun. In Junk Science, Dan Agin offers a response—a stinging condemnation of the egregious and constant warping of science for ideological gain.In this provocative, wide-ranging, and hard-hitting book, Agin argues from the center that we will pay a heavy price for the follies of people who consciously twist the public's understanding of the real world.In an entertaining but frank tone, Agin separates fact from conveniently "scientific" fiction and exposes the data faking, reality ignoring, fear mongering, and outright lying that contribute to intentionally manufactured public ignorance. Many factions twist scientific data to maintain riches and power, and Agin outs them all in sections like these:--"Buyer Beware" (genetically modified foods, aging, and tobacco companies)--"Medical Follies" (chiropractics, health care, talk therapy)--"Poison and Bombs in the Greenhouse" (pollution, warfare, global warming)--"Religion, Embryos, and Cloning"--"Genes, Behavior, and Race"We already pay a heavy price for many groups' conscious manipulation of the public's understanding of science, and Junk Science arms us with understanding, cutting through the fabric of lies and setting the record straight.Head Cases: Stories of Brain Injury and Its Aftermath
By Michael Paul Mason. 2008
Head Cases takes us into the dark side of the brain in an astonishing sequence of stories, at once true…
and strange, from the world of brain damage. Michael Paul Mason is one of an elite group of experts who coordinate care in the complicated aftermath of tragic injuries that can last a lifetime. On the road with Mason, we encounter survivors of brain injuries as they struggle to map and make sense of the new worlds they inhabit.Underlying each of these survivors' stories is an exploration of the brain and its mysteries. When injured, the brain must figure out how to heal itself, reorganizing its physiology in order to do the job. Mason gives us a series of vivid glimpses into brain science, the last frontier of medicine, and we come away in awe of the miracles of the brain's workings and astonished at the fragility of the brain and the sense of self, life, and order that resides there. Head Cases "[achieves] through sympathy and curiosity insight like that which pulses through genuine literature" (The New York Sun); it is at once illuminating and deeply affecting.Telling Our Way to the Sea: A Voyage of Discovery in the Sea of Cortez
By Aaron Hirsh. 2013
A luminous and revelatory journey into the science of life and the depths of the human experienceBy turns epic and…
intimate, Telling Our Way to the Sea is both a staggering revelation of unraveling ecosystems and a profound meditation on our changing relationships with nature—and with one another.When the biologists Aaron Hirsh and Veronica Volny, along with their friend Graham Burnett, a historian of science, lead twelve college students to a remote fishing village on the Sea of Cortez, they come upon a bay of dazzling beauty and richness. But as the group pursues various threads of investigation—ecological and evolutionary studies of the sea, the desert, and their various species of animals and plants; the stories of local villagers; the journals of conquistadors and explorers—they recognize that the bay, spectacular and pristine though it seems, is but a ghost of what it once was. Life in the Sea of Cortez, they realize, has been reshaped by complex human ideas and decisions—the laws and economics of fishing, property, and water; the dreams of developers and the fantasies of tourists seeking the wild; even efforts to retrieve species from the brink of extinction—all of which have caused dramatic upheavals in the ecosystem. It is a painful realization, but the students discover a way forward. After weathering a hurricane and encountering a rare whale in its wake, they come to see that the bay's best chance of recovery may in fact reside in our own human stories, which can weave a compelling memory of the place. Glimpsing the intricate and ever-shifting web of human connections with the Sea of Cortez, the students comprehend anew their own place in the natural world—suspended between past and future, teetering between abundance and loss. The redemption in their difficult realization is that as they find their places in a profoundly altered environment, they also recognize their roles in the path ahead, and ultimately come to see one another, and themselves, in a new light.In Telling Our Way to the Sea, Hirsh's voice resounds with compassionate humanity, capturing the complex beauty of both the marine world he explores and the people he explores it with. Vibrantly alive with sensitivity and nuance, Telling Our Way to the Sea transcends its genre to become literature.Bustle's "17 Best Nonfiction Books Coming Out In September 2018""With This is the Way the World Ends Jeff Nesbit has…
delivered an enlightening - and alarming - explanation of the climate challenge as it exists today. Climate change is no far-off threat. It's impacting communities all over the world at this very moment, and we ignore the scientific reality at our own peril. The good news? As Nesbit underscores, disaster is not preordained. The global community can meet this moment — and we must." —Senator John KerryA unique view of climate change glimpsed through the world's resources that are disappearing.The world itself won’t end, of course. Only ours will: our livelihoods, our homes, our cultures. And we’re squarely at the tipping point.Longer droughts in the Middle East. Growing desertification in China and Africa. The monsoon season shrinking in India. Amped-up heat waves in Australia. More intense hurricanes reaching America. Water wars in the Horn of Africa. Rebellions, refugees and starving children across the globe. These are not disconnected events. These are the pieces of a larger puzzle that environmental expert Jeff Nesbit puts together Unless we start addressing the causes of climate change and stop simply navigating its effects, we will be facing a series of unstoppable catastrophes by the time our preschoolers graduate from college. Our world is in trouble – right now. This Is the Way the World Ends tells the real stories of the substantial impacts to Earth’s systems unfolding across each continent. The bad news? Within two decades or so, our carbon budget will reach a point of no return. But there’s good news. Like every significant challenge we’ve faced—from creating civilization in the shadow of the last ice age to the Industrial Revolution—we can get out of this box canyon by understanding the realities and changing the worn-out climate conversation to one that’s relevant to every person. Nesbit provides a clear blueprint for real-time, workable solutions we can tackle together.Why Michael Couldn't Hit: And Other Tales of the Neurology of Sports
By Harold L. Klawans. 1996
The author who told us why Toscanini fumbled and why Newton raved takes us on a tour of the great…
brains of great athletes in --baseball players and basketball players, track stars and golfers--to show how both accomplishment and tragedy may be the result of some unusual neurons.In Why Michael Couldn't Hit, Dr. Harold L. Klawans joins his two lifelong passions for neurological discovery and sports. And his arguments about the way the two are linked will give every sports fan a new outlook on what happens on the track, the baseball diamond, or in the arena. A deft and fascinating exploration, the book reveals that the twists and turns of athletes' brains have at least as much to do with their stardom as the strength and coordination of their muscles. It's an entirely original perspective on a topic that has always captured the American imagination: the breathtaking sight of athletic grace, force, and skill.The Doomsday Machine: The High Price of Nuclear Energy, the World's Most Dangerous Fuel
By Martin Cohen, Andrew McKillop. 2012
Today, there are over one hundred nuclear reactors operating in our backyards, from Indian Point in New York to Diablo…
Canyon in California. Proponents claim that nuclear power is the only viable alternative to fossil fuels, and due to rising energy consumption and the looming threat of global warming, they are pushing for an even greater investment. Here, energy economist Andrew McKillop and social scientist Martin Cohen argue that the nuclear power dream being sold to us is pure fantasy. Debunking the multilayered myth that nuclear energy is cheap, clean, and safe, they demonstrate how landscapes are ravaged in search of the elusive yellowcake to fuel the reactors, and how energy companies and politicians rarely discuss the true costs of nuclear power plants - from the subsidies that build the infrastructure to the unspoken guarantee that the public will pick up the cleanup cost in the event of a meltdown, which can easily top $100 billion dollars.Newton's Clock: Chaos in the Solar System
By Ivars Peterson. 1993
With his critically acclaimed best-sellers The Mathematical Toursist and Islands of Truth, Ivars Peterson took readers to the frontiers of…
modern mathematics. His new book provides an up-to-date look at one of science's greatest detective stories: the search for order in the workings of the solar system.In the late 1600s, Sir Isaac Newton provided what astronomers had long sought: a seemingly reliable way of calculating planetary orbits and positions. Newton's laws of motion and his coherent, mathematical view of the universe dominated scientific discourse for centuries. At the same time, observers recorded subtle, unexpected movements of the planets and other bodies, suggesting that the solar system is not as placid and predictable as its venerable clockwork image suggests.Today, scientists can go beyond the hand calculations, mathematical tables, and massive observational logs that limited the explorations of Newton, Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Tycho Brahe, and others. Using supercomputers to simulate the dynamics of the solar system, modern astronomers are learning more about the motions they observe and uncovering some astonishing examples of chaotic behavior in the heavens. Nonetheless, the long-term stability of the solar system remains a perplexing, unsolved issue, with each step toward its resolution exposing additional uncertainties and deeper mysteries.To show how our view of the solar system has changed from clocklike precision to chaos and complexity, Newton's Clock describes the development of celestial mechanics through the ages--from the star charts of ancient navigators to the seminal discoveries of the 17th centure; from the crucial work of Poincaré to the startling, sometimes controversial findings and theories made possible by modern mathematics and computer simulations. The result makes for entertaining and provocative reading, equal parts science, history, and intellectual adventure.Fearsome Fauna: A Field Guide to the Creatures That Live in You
By Roger M. Knutson. 1999
Hypochondriacs beware-- would you believe the nastiest creatures in the known universe live inside our bodies? Not content to just…
find a home and produce offspring in our internal space, parasites will drink our blood, eat our cells, and infest our muscles. There is very little that can be said in their favor, with perhaps one exception-- they are truly fascinating!Fearsome Fauna is a wickedly amusing and startlingly informative look into the secret world of these fascinating creatures. Perhaps the greatest biological success story of all time (there are more kinds of parasites than insects), parasites have found homes in the vast majority of people on earth and have learned to live in their environment without destroying it (usually). For readers who would like to meet these hardworking beasts-- or learn how to avoid them-- Fearsome Fauna tells you everything you always wanted to know about parasites but were too disgusted or terrified to ask.The Fever: How Malaria Has Ruled Humankind for 500,000 Years
By Sonia Shah. 2010
In recent years, malaria has emerged as a cause célèbre for voguish philanthropists. Bill Gates, Bono, and Laura Bush are…
only a few of the personalities who have lent their names—and opened their pocketbooks—in hopes of curing the disease. Still, in a time when every emergent disease inspires waves of panic, why aren't we doing more to eradicate one of our oldest foes? And how does a parasitic disease that we've known how to prevent for more than a century still infect 500 million people every year, killing nearly 1 million of them?In The Fever, the journalist Sonia Shah sets out to answer these questions, delivering a timely, inquisitive chronicle of the illness and its influence on human lives. Through the centuries, she finds, we've invested our hopes in a panoply of drugs and technologies, and invariably those hopes have been dashed. From the settling of the New World to the construction of the Panama Canal, through wars and the advances of the Industrial Revolution, Shah tracks malaria's jagged ascent and the tragedies in its wake, revealing a parasite every bit as persistent as the insects that carry it. With distinguished prose and original reporting from Panama, Malawi, Cameroon, India, and elsewhere, The Fever captures the curiously fascinating, devastating history of this long-standing thorn in the side of humanity.Multiplicity of Time Scales in Complex Systems: Challenges for Sciences and Communication II (Mathematics Online First Collections)
By Bernhelm Booß-Bavnbek, Jens Hesselbjerg Christensen, Katherine Richardson, Oriol Vallès Codina. 2024
Note to the interested reader to have a look at the companion to this volume Challenges for Sciences and Communication…
I | ISBN: 978-3-031-28048-1.This highly interdisciplinary volume brings together a carefully curated set of case studies examining complex systems with multiple time scales (MTS) across a variety of fields: materials science, epidemiology, cell physiology, mathematics, climatology, energy transition planning, ecology, economics, sociology, history, and cultural studies. The book addresses the vast diversity of interacting processes underlying the behaviour of different complex systems, highlighting the multiplicity of characteristic time scales that are a common feature of many and showcases a rich variety of methodologies across disciplinary boundaries. Self-organizing, out-of-equilibrium, ever-evolving systems are ubiquitous in the natural and social world. Examples include the climate, ecosystems, living cells, epidemics, the human brain, and many socio-economic systems across history. Their dynamical behaviour poses great challenges in the pressing context of the climate crisis, since they may involve nonlinearities, feedback loops, and the emergence of spatial-temporal patterns, portrayed by resilience or instability, plasticity or rigidity; bifurcations, thresholds and tipping points; burst-in excitation or slow relaxation, and worlds of other asymptotic behaviour, hysteresis, and resistance to change. Chapters can be read individually by the reader with special interest in such behaviours of particular complex systems or in specific disciplinary perspectives. Read together, however, the case studies, opinion pieces, and meta-studies on MTS systems presented and analysed here combine to give the reader insights that are more than the sum of the book’s individual chapters, as surprising similarities become apparent in seemingly disparate and unconnected systems. MTS systems call into question naïve perceptionsof time and complexity, moving beyond conventional ways of description, analysis, understanding, modelling, numerical prediction, and prescription of the world around us. This edited collection presents new ways of forecasting, introduces new means of control, and – perhaps as the most demanding task – it singles out a sustainable description of an MTS system under observation, offering a more nuanced interpretation of the floods of quantitative data and images made available by high- and low-frequency measurement tools in our unprecedented era of information flows.This book presents select proceedings of the conference on "High Voltage-Energy Storage Capacitors and Applications (HV-ESCA 2023)" that was jointly…
organized by Beam Technology Development Group (BTDG) and Electronics & Instrumentation Group (E&IG), BARC at DAE Convention Centre, Anushakti Nagar from 22nd to 24th June 2023. The book includes papers on topics, such as energy storage technologies (capacitor & battery), HV insulation & dielectric material, electromagnetic accelerators (rail and coil gun), electron beam accelerators, generation of fast rising voltage pulses, topologies & control schemes in power modules, pulsed nuclear radiation generators, electromagnetic welding, EMI & EMC, HV transmission lines, insulation material, and plasma generators. Papers included in this book impart better understanding of phenomena and intricacies of high voltage-energy storage capacitors and its applications to practicing engineers and researchers and update the latest information on interdisciplinary trending techniques. The book can be a valuable reference for beginners, researchers, and professionals interested in energy storage, pulsed power, and allied fields.Novel Approaches Towards Wastewater Treatment: Effective Strategies and Techniques (Springer Water)
By Gao Dawen, Mohammad Nabi. 2024
This book provides an overview of new concept in sustainable technologies for wastewater treatment processes, such as annamox process, granular…
sludge process, membrane technology, wetlands, and sewage sludge management. With the advancement of water ecological protection and water control standard, it is the general trend to upgrade the wastewater treatment technologies. The simultaneous removal of pollutants is the key to improve the water quality and prevent its further consequences in the downstream. Therefore, it is important to explain/elaborate the new concept of technologies for wastewater treatment. Due to enormous research in the field of wastewater for pollutants removal (particularly COD and N), it is necessary to provide overview in the form of book. The content of this book is of great importance due to their suitability approach covering both environmental protection and market demands (discharge standard). The discovery of anammox process has providedlow-cost and eco-friendly means for treatment of ammonia-rich wastewater with high efficiency, and in this field we (our research group) are pioneer. Therefore, we are interested and confident to write this chapter in our book. The development of aerobic and anaerobic granular sludge process is a better replacement for activated sludge and promises sustainable wastewater treatment for at least the next century. The granular sludge process can simultaneously remove organic carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, and other pollutants from wastewater, which will be briefly discussed in this book. Wetlands as biological and microbiological approach for wastewater treatment, existing in natural or artificial wetlands and efficiently removing COD and BOD, will be explained in term of design and operation and configurations. Sewage sludge, a residue or by-product of wastewater treatment system, has considerably increased the production over the years. Sludge poses significant risk to both environmentand human health due to its content, pathogens, metal microplastic, and organic matters, if not treated properly. Therefore, its documentation in the form of book is necessary, covering pretreatment implementation, biological treatment, pathogen distribution, and directives around the world. The book primarily not only benefits students, but owing to the great importance of the new concept in wastewater treatment, it is also a valuable work for consulting engineers and other professionals who deal with wastewater treatment.Socioscientific Issues Focused Teacher Education: Place-Based Practices from Türkiye (Contemporary Trends and Issues in Science Education #60)
By Bahadir Namdar, Engin Karahan. 2024
This book explores place-based pedagogies in the context of socioscientific issues in Türkiye. From local and global contexts, it delves…
into research-based learning activities for science teacher educators, offering insights to educators worldwide.The book aims to empower teachers to provide students with learning experiences centered on local socioscientific issues essential for developing scientifically literate citizens. Each chapter showcases effective practices, focusing on local topics like gold mining, nuclear power plants, and river pollution. By incorporating socioscientific elements into science lessons, teachers are encouraged to foster students’ responsibility values, argumentation, critical thinking, and awareness. Emphasizing the crucial components of place-basedness and relevancy of SSI learning environments, students are guided towards more sophisticated ways of conceptualizing and resolving SSI. The intended audience includes science teacher educators, researchers, and educators devoted to engaging students in meaningful socioscientific learning experiences.Friction and Wear in Metals (Materials Horizons: From Nature to Nanomaterials)
By Riyadh A. Al-Samarai, Yarub Al-Douri. 2024
This book focuses on tribology in manufacturing processes from the viewpoint of sliding friction fundamentals, the use of lubricants to…
control friction processes such as machining, drawing, rolling, extrusion, abrasive processes, and processing at micro and nanoscales. To study tribological behavior, it is essential to know the methods of measuring and describing the surface shape and roughness. The friction and wear, their corresponding coefficients, and their main mechanisms are described, including stick-slip effects, adhesion, and plowing. Adhesive, abrasive, erosive, and erosion-corrosion wear mechanisms. Friction–wear relationships are elaborated, and wear maps are presented. Surface interactions depend on the contacting materials and surface shape. It is a function of the production process and nature of parent materials that are found to be rough, where roughness is characterized by asperities of varying amplitudes and spacing. Surface interactions are dependent both on thecontacting materials and the shape of the surface. The distribution of the asperities is directional when the finishing process is direction-dependent, such as turning, milling, etc., and homogeneous for a non-directional finishing process like lapping, electro-polishing.Climate Change, Shifting Cultivation and Livelihood Vulnerabilities in India: An Analytical Study
By Niranjan Roy, Avijit Debnath, Sunil Nautiyal. 2024
This book explores how climate change affects households that rely on shifting cultivation and how to assess their vulnerability. This…
study looks at micro and macro levels in Indian states with indigenous communities practicing shifting cultivation. The micro-level study has been conducted in 52 villages, with 1469 households covering 7067 population in seven states of India in the Northeastern region. The book covers different topics related to climate change, such as its patterns, impact on households and agriculture, forest management, and the role of indigenous knowledge in mitigation. This research is associated with different sectors like shifting agriculture, forestry sector, climate change and rural development etc. and integrated with large respondents and stakeholders through both direct and focus group discussions. Research scholars, climate activists, institutional and non-institutional organisations, people interested in environmental science, social science and policymakers will find this book very relevant.Renewable: The World-Changing Power of Alternative Energy
By Jeremy Shere. 2013
Where does the energy we use come from? It's absolutely vital to every single thing we do every day, but…
for most people, it is utterly invisible. Flick a switch and the lights go on. It might as well be magic. Science writer Jeremy Shere shows us in Renewable: The World-Changing Powerof Alternative Energy that energy is anything but magical. Producing it in fossil fuel form is a dirty, expensive—but also hugely profitable— enterprise, with enormous but largely hidden costs to the entire planet. The cold, hard fact is that at some point we will have wrung the planet dry of easily accessible sources of fossil fuel. And when that time comes, humankind will have no choice but to turn—or, more accurately, return—to other, cleaner, renewable energy sources. What will those sources be? How far have we come to realizing the technologies that will make these sources available?To find the answers, Shere began his journey with a tour of a traditional coal-fueled power plant in his home state of Indiana. He then continued on, traveling from coast to coast as he spoke to scientists, scholars and innovators. He immersed himself in the green energy world: visiting a solar farm at Denver's airport, attending the Wind Power Expo and a wind farm tour in Texas, investigating turbines deep in New York City's East River, and much more. Arranged in five parts—Green Gas, Sun, Wind, Earth, and Water—Renewable tells the stories of the most interesting and promising types of renewable energy: namely, biofuel, solar, wind, geothermal, and hydropower. But unlike many books about alternative energy, Renewable is not obsessed with megawatts and tips for building home solar panels. Instead, Shere digs into the rich, surprisingly long histories of these technologies, bringing to life the pioneering scientists, inventors, and visionaries who blazed the way for solar, wind, hydro, and other forms of renewable power, and unearthing the curious involvement of great thinkers like Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, and Nicola Tesla.We are at an important crossroads in the history of renewable technologies. The possibilities are endless and enticing, and it has become increasingly clear that renewable energy is the way of the future. In Renewable, Jeremy Shere's natural curiosity and serious research come together in an entertaining and informative guide to where renewable energy has been, where it is today, and where it's heading.