A History of the Future
In this wide-ranging survey, Peter J. Bowler explores the phenomenon of futurology: predictions about the future development and impact of science and technology on society and culture in the twentieth century. Utilising science fiction, popular science literature and the novels of the literary elite, Bowler highlights contested responses to the potential for revolutionary social change brought about by real and imagined scientific innovations. Charting the effect of social and military developments on attitudes towards innovation in Europe and America, Bowler shows how conflict between the enthusiasm of technocrats and the pessimism of their critics was presented to the public in books, magazines and exhibitions, and on the radio and television. A series of case studies reveals the impact of technologies such as radio, aviation, space exploration and genetics, exploring rivalries between innovators and the often unexpected outcome of their efforts to produce mechanisms and machines that could change the world.
How to Write and Present Technical Information
Thoroughly updated to discuss the use of tools such as Skype and social media, this concise volume shows how effective communication--via written text and spoken presentations--can positively impact project management in professional environments. Professional communications are the "information product" of all organizations and businesses. Based on that premise, this book offers communications strategies that will benefit any organization that disseminates technical information in-house and/or to customers. The popular work provides easy-to-understand and apply guidelines for designing and writing effective technical documents, as well as other related communications. What makes this new edition especially valuable is that it maintains the quality of information that distinguished the previous editions, but is now updated to encompass current technology and trends, including today's prevalent communication tools such as social media. The book begins by looking at skills common to all technical writing and offering general advice on designing and writing reports. Next is a discussion of specific types of reports along with common problems and issues writers face. Finally, the work overviews other forms of communications such as professional presentations. The updated material also considers the growing importance of interviews and focus groups as information-gathering tools, the influence of visual rhetoric, and the use of technologies such as Skype and webinars.
Utopia Is Creepy
With razor wit, Nicholas Carr cuts through Silicon Valley's unsettlingly cheery vision of the technological future to ask a hard question: Have we been seduced by a lie? Gathering a decade's worth of posts from his blog, Rough Type, as well as his seminal essays, Utopia Is Creepy is "Carr's best hits for those who missed the last decade of his stream of thoughtful commentary about our love affair with technology and its effect on our relationships" (Richard Cytowic, New York Journal of Books).Carr draws on artists ranging from Walt Whitman to the Clash, while weaving in the latest findings from science and sociology. Carr's favorite targets are those zealots who believe so fervently in computers and data that they abandon common sense. Cheap digital tools do not make us all the next Fellini or Dylan. Social networks, diverting as they may be, are not vehicles for self-enlightenment. And "likes" and retweets are not going to elevate political discourse. Utopia Is Creepy compels us to question the technological momentum that has trapped us in its flow. "Resistance is never futile," argues Carr, and this book delivers the proof.
How Not to Network a Nation
How, despite thirty years of effort, Soviet attempts to build a national computer network were undone by socialists who seemed to behave like capitalists.Between 1959 and 1989, Soviet scientists and officials made numerous attempts to network their nation--to construct a nationwide computer network. None of these attempts succeeded, and the enterprise had been abandoned by the time the Soviet Union fell apart. Meanwhile, ARPANET, the American precursor to the Internet, went online in 1969. Why did the Soviet network, with top-level scientists and patriotic incentives, fail while the American network succeeded? In How Not to Network a Nation, Benjamin Peters reverses the usual cold war dualities and argues that the American ARPANET took shape thanks to well-managed state subsidies and collaborative research environments and the Soviet network projects stumbled because of unregulated competition among self-interested institutions, bureaucrats, and others. The capitalists behaved like socialists while the socialists behaved like capitalists. After examining the midcentury rise of cybernetics, the science of self-governing systems, and the emergence in the Soviet Union of economic cybernetics, Peters complicates this uneasy role reversal while chronicling the various Soviet attempts to build a "unified information network." Drawing on previously unknown archival and historical materials, he focuses on the final, and most ambitious of these projects, the All-State Automated System of Management (OGAS), and its principal promoter, Viktor M. Glushkov. Peters describes the rise and fall of OGAS--its theoretical and practical reach, its vision of a national economy managed by network, the bureaucratic obstacles it encountered, and the institutional stalemate that killed it. Finally, he considers the implications of the Soviet experience for today's networked world.
The Low Power to the People
An examination of how activists combine political advocacy and technical practice in their promotion of the emancipatory potential of local low-power FM radio.The United States ushered in a new era of small-scale broadcasting in 2000 when it began issuing low-power FM (LPFM) licenses for noncommercial radio stations around the country. Over the next decade, several hundred of these newly created low-wattage stations took to the airwaves. In Low Power to the People, Christina Dunbar-Hester describes the practices of an activist organization focused on LPFM during this era. Despite its origins as a pirate broadcasting collective, the group eventually shifted toward building and expanding regulatory access to new, licensed stations. These radio activists consciously cast radio as an alternative to digital utopianism, promoting an understanding of electronic media that emphasizes the local community rather than a global audience of Internet users.Dunbar-Hester focuses on how these radio activists impute emancipatory politics to the "old" medium of radio technology by promoting the idea that "microradio" broadcasting holds the potential to empower ordinary people at the local community level. The group's methods combine political advocacy with a rare commitment to hands-on technical work with radio hardware, although the activists' hands-on, inclusive ethos was hampered by persistent issues of race, class, and gender.Dunbar-Hester's study of activism around an "old" medium offers broader lessons about how political beliefs are expressed through engagement with specific technologies. It also offers insight into contemporary issues in media policy that is particularly timely as the FCC issues a new round of LPFM licenses.
Optofluidics 2015
Optofluidics combines and integrates optics and fluidics to produce versatile systems that are achievable only with difficulty through either field alone. With the spatial and temporal control of the microfluids, the optical properties can be varied, providing highly flexible, tunable, and reconfigurable optical systems. Since the emergence of optofluidics, numerous systems with varied configurations have been developed and applied to imaging, light routing, bio-sensors, energy, and other fields. This Special Issue aims to collect high quality research papers, short communications, and review articles that focus on optofluidics, micro/nano technology, and related multidisciplinary emerging fields. The special issue will also publish selected papers from the 5th Optofluidics 2015 conference (http: //www.optofluidics2015.org/), 26-28 July 2015, Taipei, Taiwan. The aim of optofluidics 2015 conference is to provide a forum to promote scientific exchange and to foster closer networks and collaborative ties between leading international optics and micro/nanofluidics researchers across various disciplines. The scope of Optofluidics 2015 is deliberately broad and interdisciplinary, encompassing the latest advances and the most innovative developments in micro/nanoscale science and technology. Topics range from fundamental research to its applications in chemistry, physics, biology, materials and medicine.
The Rise of Early Modern Science
Now in its third edition, The Rise of Early Modern Science argues that to understand why modern science arose in the West it is essential to study not only the technical aspects of scientific thought but also the religious, legal and institutional arrangements that either opened the doors for enquiry, or restricted scientific investigations. Toby E. Huff explores how the newly invented universities of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and the European legal revolution, created a neutral space that gave birth to the scientific revolution. Including expanded comparative analysis of the European, Islamic and Chinese legal systems, Huff now responds to the debates of the last decade to explain why the Western world was set apart from other civilisations.
The Driver in the Driverless Car
A computer beats the reigning human champion of Go, a game harder than chess. Another is composing classical music. Labs are creating life-forms from synthetic DNA. A doctor designs an artificial trachea, uses a 3D printer to produce it, and implants it and saves a child's life. Astonishing technological advances like these are arriving in increasing numbers. Scholar and entrepreneur Vivek Wadhwa uses this book to alert us to dozens of them and raise important questions about what they may mean for us. Breakthroughs such as personalized genomics, self-driving vehicles, drones, and artificial intelligence could make our lives healthier, safer, and easier. But the same technologies raise the specter of a frightening, alienating future: eugenics, a jobless economy, complete loss of privacy, and ever-worsening economic inequality. As Wadhwa puts it, our choices will determine if our future is Star Trek or Mad Max. Wadhwa offers us three questions to ask about every emerging technology: Does it have the potential to benefit everyone equally? What are its risks and rewards? And does it promote autonomy or dependence? Looking at a broad array of advances in this light, he emphasizes that the future is up to us to create--that even if our hands are not on the wheel, we will decide the driverless car's destination.
Mechanical Sound
Tracing efforts to control unwanted sound--the noise of industry, city traffic, gramophones and radios, and aircraft--from the late nineteenth to the late twentieth century.Since the late nineteenth century, the sounds of technology have been the subject of complaints, regulation, and legislation. By the early 1900s, antinoise leagues in Western Europe and North America had formed to fight noise from factories, steam trains, automobiles, and gramophones, with campaigns featuring conferences, exhibitions, and "silence weeks." And, as Karin Bijsterveld points out in Mechanical Sound, public discussion of noise has never died down and continues today. In this book, Bijsterveld examines the persistence of noise on the public agenda, looking at four episodes of noise and the public response to it in Europe and the United States between 1875 and 1975: industrial noise, traffic noise, noise from neighborhood radios and gramophones, and aircraft noise. She also looks at a twentieth-century counterpoint to complaints about noise: the celebration of mechanical sound in avant-garde music composed between the two world wars. Bijsterveld argues that the rise of noise from new technology combined with overlapping noise regulations created what she calls a "paradox of control." Experts and politicians promised to control some noise, but left other noise problems up to citizens. Aircraft noise, for example, measured in formulas understandable only by specialists, was subject to public regulation; the sounds of noisy neighborhoods were the responsibility of residents themselves. In addition, Bijsterveld notes, the spatial character of anti-noise interventions that impose zones and draw maps, despite the ability of sound to cross borders and boundaries, has helped keep noise a public problem. We have tried to create islands of silence, she writes, yet we have left a sea of sounds to be fiercely discussed.
Plugged In
Cybersecurity is the most pressing issue of our increasingly interconnected and networked lives. Recent estimates predict that worldwide the number of connected devices-everything from computers and mobile phones to traffic cameras and pacemakers-will reach 50 billion by 2050. That number is staggering and so are the vulnerabilities. Networked devices like smart thermostats and TVs need to be easily accessible, but they also need to be secure. The more access points a device like a self-driving car has, the more susceptible points adversaries-cyberterrorists or hackers-can attack. Yet device manufacturers mostly favor usability, and security is all too often sacrificed. At the University of Florida some of the brightest minds in cybersecurity-related fields have teamed together to form the Florida Institute for Cybersecurity Research. From industry, academe, and government, members of FICS Research collaborate and bring together expertise in all aspects of cybersecurity and assurance, including hardware, network, mobile, big data, the Internet of Things (IoT), applied cryptography, social sciences, law, and more. In Plugged In, we meet the men and women at the Florida Institute for Cybersecurity Research who have devoted their careers to studying and staying one step ahead of the bad guys.
Self-tracking
What happens when people turn their everyday experience into data: an introduction to the essential ideas and key challenges of self-tracking.People keep track. In the eighteenth century, Benjamin Franklin kept charts of time spent and virtues lived up to. Today, people use technology to self-track: hours slept, steps taken, calories consumed, medications administered. Ninety million wearable sensors were shipped in 2014 to help us gather data about our lives. This book examines how people record, analyze, and reflect on this data, looking at the tools they use and the communities they become part of. Gina Neff and Dawn Nafus describe what happens when people turn their everyday experience--in particular, health and wellness-related experience--into data, and offer an introduction to the essential ideas and key challenges of using these technologies. They consider self-tracking as a social and cultural phenomenon, describing not only the use of data as a kind of mirror of the self but also how this enables people to connect to, and learn from, others.Neff and Nafus consider what's at stake: who wants our data and why; the practices of serious self-tracking enthusiasts; the design of commercial self-tracking technology; and how self-tracking can fill gaps in the healthcare system. Today, no one can lead an entirely untracked life. Neff and Nafus show us how to use data in a way that empowers and educates.
The Handy Technology Answer Book
Exploring technology and how it made-and continues to change-the modern world! Technology pervades our daily lives and modern society, and not just when it comes to computers and smart phones. Before there was the computer, there was the abacus. Before the smart phone, there was the telegraph and ball point pen. Electricity, penicillin, and the compass have all led to revolutionary changes in how we live. From the relationship between science and technology to the four major branches of engineering to nanotechnology, robots, and predictions for future technology, The Handy Technology Answer Book is an ideal introduction to technology in everyday life. The newsworthy, the practical, the latest and historical, are all detailed in this entertaining and informative book. It brings the vast changes and major innovations into focus through well-researched answers to more than 1,100 common questions on technology, such as ... What are the major time periods of technology? Who is considered to be the first engineer? Which individual was granted the most U.S. patents? Who is the only U.S. president to receive a patent? How do copyrights differ from patents and trademarks? What is the Turing Award? What are the tasks of an operating system? How did the term "glitch" originate? What was the first computer game? What is "phishing"? What is a Uniform Resource Locator, or URL? How many time zones are there in the world? What is the world population of robots? What is the most destructive non-lethal weapon? Why is mining an important technology? Why are the rare earth elements important? What is "green building"? Who built the Brooklyn Bridge? How are U.S. highways numbered? How popular are electric vehicles in the United States? Why is the right side of a ship called "starboard"? What is the largest aircraft? How long will fossil fuel reserves last? What are the different types of newer, energy-efficient light bulbs? What is the carbon cycle? What products are made from recycled plastic? Who was the first person to receive gene therapy? Can human beings be cloned? What is the future of wearable technology in health care? Providing the facts, stats, science and a little bit of history, The Handy Technology Answer Book answers important questions about the most important inventions, key breakthroughs, and the towering personalities behind them. It spotlights the tallest, smallest, fastest, longest, and the wide range of human firsts and current bests. This informative and fun book also includes a helpful bibliography and an extensive index, adding to its usefulness.
Techno-Cultural Evolution
Evolution has long shaped human behavior. Yet just recently have we learned that evolution based on natural selection is not the continuous process Darwin assumed. It is instead a two-part process of change and stability called punctuated equilibrium, with natural selection operating mainly on the frontiers of change. Taking account of biology's latest understanding of evolution, it becomes clear that culture evolves by a similar process. This is important because over the past 30,000 years most human evolution and the behavioral changes that go with it have occurred in our cultures-not in our genes. Knowing the process by which culture evolves clarifies the origin of many of our current problems, both within and between cultures. The author contends that new technology drives cultural evolution much as mutations change our DNA. The problem is that technology is now coming at us so fast that it is inducing "circuit overload" in cultures all over the world, leading to conflict. Techno-Cultural Evolution, which builds on the insights of such bestsellers as Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel and Collapse, explains how this process works-and what it means for all of us.
The Challenger Launch Decision
The classic, groundbreaking account of how the culture of NASA helped lead to the Challenger disaster When the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded on January 28, 1986, millions of Americans became bound together in a single, historic moment. Many still vividly remember exactly where they were and what they were doing when they heard about the tragedy. Diane Vaughan recreates the steps leading up to that fateful decision, contradicting conventional interpretations to prove that what occurred at NASA was not skullduggery or misconduct but a disastrous mistake. Why did NASA managers, who not only had all the information prior to the launch but also were warned against it, decide to proceed? In retelling how the decision unfolded through the eyes of the managers and the engineers, Vaughan uncovers an incremental descent into poor judgment, supported by a culture of high-risk technology. She reveals how and why NASA insiders, when repeatedly faced with evidence that something was wrong, normalized the deviance so that it became acceptable to them. In a new preface, Vaughan reveals the ramifications for this book and for her when a similar decision-making process brought down NASA's Space Shuttle Columbia in 2003.
SQL
Publisher's Note: Products purchased from Third Party sellers are not guaranteed by the publisher for quality, authenticity, or access to any online entitlements included with the product. Essential SQL Skills Made Easy Fully revised to cover the latest software versions, this easy-to-follow guide will get you started programming in SQL right away. Discover how to create database tables, access and modify data, work with triggers and transactions, build effective queries, and handle management and administrative functions. SQL: A Beginner's Guide, Fourth Edition offers clear instruction on each topic and is loaded with step-by-step examples. This practical book includes coverage of database security, SQL/XML, and new temporal data features. Designed for Easy Learning: - Key Skills & Concepts-Lists of specific skills covered in the chapter - Ask the Expert-Q&A sections filled with bonus information and helpful tips - Try This-Hands-on exercises that show how to apply your skills - Notes-Extra information related to the topic being covered - Tips-Helpful reminders or alternate ways of doing things - Cautions-Errors and pitfalls to avoid - Self-Tests-Chapter-ending quizzes to test your knowledge - Annotated Syntax-Example code with commentary that describes the programming techniques being illustrated
The Information Diet
This is a softcover version of the title released in 2011; there is no new material.The modern human animal spends upwards of 11 hours out of every 24 in a state of constant consumption. Not eating, but gorging on information ceaselessly spewed from the screens and speakers we hold dear. Just as we have grown morbidly obese on sugar, fat, and flour--so, too, have we become gluttons for texts, instant messages, emails, RSS feeds, downloads, videos, status updates, and tweets.We're all battling a storm of distractions, buffeted with notifications and tempted by tasty tidbits of information. And just as too much junk food can lead to obesity, too much junk information can lead to cluelessness. The Information Diet shows you how to thrive in this information glut--what to look for, what to avoid, and how to be selective. In the process, author Clay Johnson explains the role information has played throughout history, and why following his prescribed diet is essential for everyone who strives to be smart, productive, and sane.In The Information Diet, you will: Discover why eminent scholars are worried about our state of attention and general intelligenceExamine how today's media--Big Info--give us exactly what we want: content that confirms our beliefsLearn to take steps to develop data literacy, attention fitness, and a healthy sense of humorBecome engaged in the economics of information by learning how to reward good information providersJust like a normal, healthy food diet, The Information Diet is not about consuming less--it's about finding a healthy balance that works for you
The Knowledge
How would you go about rebuilding a technological society from scratch? If our technological society collapsed tomorrow what would be the one book you would want to press into the hands of the postapocalyptic survivors? What crucial knowledge would they need to survive in the immediate aftermath and to rebuild civilization as quickly as possible? Human knowledge is collective, distributed across the population. It has built on itself for centuries, becoming vast and increasingly specialized. Most of us are ignorant about the fundamental principles of the civilization that supports us, happily utilizing the latest--or even the most basic--technology without having the slightest idea of why it works or how it came to be. If you had to go back to absolute basics, like some sort of postcataclysmic Robinson Crusoe, would you know how to re-create an internal combustion engine, put together a microscope, get metals out of rock, or even how to produce food for yourself?Lewis Dartnell proposes that the key to preserving civilization in an apocalyptic scenario is to provide a quickstart guide, adapted to cataclysmic circumstances. The Knowledge describes many of the modern technologies we employ, but first it explains the fundamentals upon which they are built. Every piece of technology rests on an enormous support network of other technologies, all interlinked and mutually dependent. You can't hope to build a radio, for example, without understanding how to acquire the raw materials it requires, as well as generate the electricity needed to run it. But Dartnell doesn't just provide specific information for starting over; he also reveals the greatest invention of them all--the phenomenal knowledge-generating machine that is the scientific method itself. The Knowledge is a brilliantly original guide to the fundamentals of science and how it built our modern world.
Site Surveying and Levelling
This popular and useful text has been completely revised and up-dated so that it forms and indipensible handbook for any student of surveying.An additional chapter on modern developments is included and the text has also been extended to cover ordnance survey; calculation of areas; computation of true horizontal length; measurement of vertical angles; Code of Measuring Practice; curve ranging and calculations of volumes for earthworks.
Write It Up
Write It Up is for anyone writing an empirical article in APA Style(R), from beginners facing their first article to old dogs looking for new writing strategies. Your academic writing will be more influential if you approach it reflectively and strategically. Based on his experience as an author, journal editor, and peer reviewer, Paul J. Silvia offers sage and witty advice on problems like picking journals; cultivating the right tone and style for your article; managing collaborative projects and coauthors; crafting effective Introduction, Method, Results, and Discussion sections; and submitting and resubmitting papers to journals. Write It Up features: - readable and amusing, the book shows, step-by-step, how to plan and organize your academic writing; and - uses real-world examples to illustrate how to improve writing style and write better articles.
On Paper
A Best Book of the Year: Mother Jones - Bloomberg News - National Post - Kirkus In these pages, Nicholas Basbanes--the consummate bibliophile's bibliophile--shows how paper has been civilization's constant companion. It preserves our history and gives record to our very finest literary, cultural, and scientific accomplishments. Since its invention in China nearly two millennia ago, the technology of paper has spread throughout the inhabited world. With deep knowledge and care, Basbanes traces paper's trail from the earliest handmade sheets to the modern-day mills. Paper, yoked to politics, has played a crucial role in the unfolding of landmark events, from the American Revolution to Daniel Ellsberg's Pentagon Papers to the aftermath of 9/11. Without paper, modern hygienic practice would be unimaginable; as currency, people will do almost anything to possess it; and, as a tool of expression, it is inextricable from human culture. Lavishly researched, compellingly written, this masterful guide illuminates paper's endless possibilities.
Breakthrough Improvement with QI Macros and Excel
Maximize speed, quality, productivity, and profits with QI Macros for Excel Breakthrough Improvement with QI Macros and Excel: Finding the Invisible Low-Hanging Fruit reveals proven techniques for identifying and analyzing data that will lead to immediate results. This practical guide focuses on using Excel, one of the most widely used software packages, to drive improvement--no need to rely on expensive training in a new methodology. Free video training and a 90-day trial version of QI Macros for Excel can be found at www.qimacros.com/breakthrough. Links to YouTube videos for each chapter of the book can be found at www.breakthrough-improvement-excel.com The combination of the book, software, and video training will provide you with the tools you need to eliminate the three silent killers of productivity: delay, defects, and deviation. You'll make and sustain breakthrough improvements that will catapult your business ahead of the competition. LEARN HOW TO: Design well-organized spreadsheets for breakthrough improvement Use Excel formulas to prepare data for charting or analysis Reduce data to a manageable size using Excel's built-in functions Master the Magnificent Seven Tools of Breakthrough Improvement--value-stream maps and spaghetti diagrams, PivotTables, control charts, Pareto charts, histograms, fishbone diagrams, and matrix diagrams Follow the money to identify and plug leaks in your cash flow Identify and eliminate defects, mistakes, and errors in your processes Transform your data into visually stunning shortcuts to decisions, actions, productivity, and profits Consolidate data into well-designed Excel charts to quickly communicate performance trends Maximize QI Macros for Excel power tools to analyze and graph data Find invisible low-hanging fruit using PivotTables Sustain breakthrough improvement with control charts, histograms, and dashboards Use statistical tools, including hypothesis testing, analysis of variance, and regression analysis
Wheels, Clocks, and Rockets
As technology transforms our lives at an ever quickening rate, Donald Cardwell reminds us that technological innovation is not created in a vacuum--rather, it is the product of the successful interaction between social change, scientific developments, and political vision. In this wide-ranging, "spirited" (Booklist) survey of the machines and tools that humans have developed throughout history, Cardwell not only explains the mechanical technicalities but also delves into the underlying trends that have culminated in eras of great change. In particular, he highlights the eighteenth century as a watershed in the modern history of technology, analyzing how scientific developments in physics and chemistry spurred the mechanical innovations of the Industrial Revolution. From the steam engine to electrical power to nuclear energy to today's world of electronics and computers, this book opens a discussion of how science and technology together change our lives. Originally published as The Norton History of Technology.
The Distraction Addiction
The question of our time: can we reclaim our lives in an age that feels busier and more distracting by the day? We've all found ourselves checking email at the dinner table, holding our breath while waiting for Outlook to load, or sitting hunched in front of a screen for an hour longer than we intended. Mobile devices and the web have invaded our lives, and this is a big idea book that addresses one of the biggest questions of our age: can we stay connected without diminishing our intelligence, attention spans, and ability to really live? Can we have it all? Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, a renowned Stanford technology guru, says yes. The Distraction Addiction is packed with fascinating studies, compelling research, and crucial takeaways. Whether it's breathing while Facebook refreshes, or finding creative ways to take a few hours away from the digital crush, this book is about the ways to tune in without tuning out.
The Chicago Guide to Writing About Multivariate Analysis
Many different people, from social scientists to government agencies to business professionals, depend on the results of multivariate models to inform their decisions. Researchers use these advanced statistical techniques to analyze relationships among multiple variables, such as how exercise and weight relate to the risk of heart disease, or how unemployment and interest rates affect economic growth. Yet, despite the widespread need to plainly and effectively explain the results of multivariate analyses to varied audiences, few are properly taught this critical skill. The Chicago Guide to Writing about Multivariate Analysis is the book researchers turn to when looking for guidance on how to clearly present statistical results and break through the jargon that often clouds writing about applications of statistical analysis. This new edition features even more topics and real-world examples, making it the must-have resource for anyone who needs to communicate complex research results. For this second edition, Jane E. Miller includes four new chapters that cover writing about interactions, writing about event history analysis, writing about multilevel models, and the "Goldilocks principle" for choosing the right size contrast for interpreting results for different variables. In addition, she has updated or added numerous examples, while retaining her clear voice and focus on writers thinking critically about their intended audience and objective. Online podcasts, templates, and an updated study guide will help readers apply skills from the book to their own projects and courses. This continues to be the only book that brings together all of the steps involved in communicating findings based on multivariate analysis-finding data, creating variables, estimating statistical models, calculating overall effects, organizing ideas, designing tables and charts, and writing prose-in a single volume. When aligned with Miller's twelve fundamental principles for quantitative writing, this approach will empower readers-whether students or experienced researchers-to communicate their findings clearly and effectively.
A Vast Machine
The science behind global warming, and its history: how scientists learned to understand the atmosphere, to measure it, to trace its past, and to model its future.Global warming skeptics often fall back on the argument that the scientific case for global warming is all model predictions, nothing but simulation; they warn us that we need to wait for real data, "sound science." In A Vast Machine Paul Edwards has news for these skeptics: without models, there are no data. Today, no collection of signals or observations--even from satellites, which can "see" the whole planet with a single instrument--becomes global in time and space without passing through a series of data models. Everything we know about the world's climate we know through models. Edwards offers an engaging and innovative history of how scientists learned to understand the atmosphere--to measure it, trace its past, and model its future.
Encyclopedia of Electronic Components
Want to know how to use an electronic component? This first book of a three-volume set includes key information on electronics parts for your projects--complete with photographs, schematics, and diagrams. You'll learn what each one does, how it works, why it's useful, and what variants exist. No matter how much you know about electronics, you'll find fascinating details you've never come across before. Convenient, concise, well-organized, and precise Perfect for teachers, hobbyists, engineers, and students of all ages, this reference puts reliable, fact-checked information right at your fingertips--whether you're refreshing your memory or exploring a component for the first time. Beginners will quickly grasp important concepts, and more experienced users will find the specific details their projects require. Unique: the first and only encyclopedia set on electronic components, distilled into three separate volumes Incredibly detailed: includes information distilled from hundreds of sources Easy to browse: parts are clearly organized by component type Authoritative: fact-checked by expert advisors to ensure that the information is both current and accurate Reliable: a more consistent source of information than online sources, product datasheets, and manufacturer's tutorials Instructive: each component description provides details about substitutions, common problems, and workarounds Comprehensive: Volume 1 covers power, electromagnetism, and discrete semi-conductors; Volume 2 includes integrated circuits, and light and sound sources; Volume 3 covers a range of sensing devices.
Everyday Engineering
Here's an ideal way to spark students' fascination with the marvels of engineering behind the seemingly simple. This book is a compilation of popular "Everyday Engineering" columns from NSTA's middle school journal, Science Scope. The collection is made up of 14 activities that explore engineering's role in five areas: the office, the kitchen, the bathroom, electricity, and outdoor recreation. Students can perform hands-on investigations of objects they use all the time, asking questions such as: - What makes a Bic click? - Why do squirt guns squirt? - What makes a better cereal box? Each activity includes a clear explanation of the science and history behind the object's development plus a materials list, student data sheets, and safety suggestions. The collection is useful to classroom teachers as well as scout leaders, engineers leading outreach activities, after-school and summer enrichment program staff, and parents. Everyday Engineering may soon have your students taking a number of things apart-and putting together a lifelong interest in engineering.
Kingpin
Former hacker Kevin Poulsen has, over the past decade, built a reputation as one of the top investigative reporters on the cybercrime beat. In Kingpin, he pours his unmatched access and expertise into book form for the first time, delivering a gripping cat-and-mouse narrative--and an unprecedented view into the twenty-first century's signature form of organized crime. The word spread through the hacking underground like some unstoppable new virus: Someone--some brilliant, audacious crook--had just staged a hostile takeover of an online criminal network that siphoned billions of dollars from the US economy. The FBI rushed to launch an ambitious undercover operation aimed at tracking down this new kingpin; other agencies around the world deployed dozens of moles and double agents. Together, the cybercops lured numerous unsuspecting hackers into their clutches. . . . Yet at every turn, their main quarry displayed an uncanny ability to sniff out their snitches and see through their plots. The culprit they sought was the most unlikely of criminals: a brilliant programmer with a hippie ethic and a supervillain's double identity. As prominent "white-hat" hacker Max "Vision" Butler, he was a celebrity throughout the programming world, even serving as a consultant to the FBI. But as the black-hat "Iceman," he found in the world of data theft an irresistible opportunity to test his outsized abilities. He infiltrated thousands of computers around the country, sucking down millions of credit card numbers at will. He effortlessly hacked his fellow hackers, stealing their ill-gotten gains from under their noses. Together with a smooth-talking con artist, he ran a massive real-world crime ring. And for years, he did it all with seeming impunity, even as countless rivals ran afoul of police. Yet as he watched the fraudsters around him squabble, their ranks riddled with infiltrators, their methods inefficient, he began to see in their dysfunction the ultimate challenge: He would stage his coup and fix what was broken, run things as they should be run--even if it meant painting a bull's-eye on his forehead. Through the story of this criminal's remarkable rise, and of law enforcement's quest to track him down, Kingpin lays bare the workings of a silent crime wave still affecting millions of Americans. In these pages, we are ushered into vast online-fraud supermarkets stocked with credit card numbers, counterfeit checks, hacked bank accounts, dead drops, and fake passports. We learn the workings of the numerous hacks--browser exploits, phishing attacks, Trojan horses, and much more--these fraudsters use to ply their trade, and trace the complex routes by which they turn stolen data into millions of dollars. And thanks to Poulsen's remarkable access to both cops and criminals, we step inside the quiet, desperate arms race that law enforcement continues to fight with these scammers today. Ultimately, Kingpin is a journey into an underworld of startling scope and power, one in which ordinary American teenagers work hand in hand with murderous Russian mobsters and where a simple Wi-Fi connection can unleash a torrent of gold worth millions.
Path to a Better World
Is it really possible to live in a world without deprivation or economic strife, but instead with peace, prosperity, and better opportunities? Path to a Better World proposes a practical plan that provides the means to make this dream a reality-and all before the end of the twenty-first century. James Albus, an engineer, neuroscientist, and international expert in robotics and intelligent systems, begins by sharing his vision of an ideal world and contrasts that with the current reality. After discussing the strengths and weaknesses of the cur-rent free market capitalist system, Albus suggests an improved version of capitalization that has the potential to broaden the ownership of capital and stimulate significant economic growth. Included is a review of our nation's technical progress to date and a proposal that encourages future technological advances that possess the capabilities to propel the country into an unprecedented era of success. Path to a Better World is a well-researched, informative guidebook that allows Americans to imagine a life under a new form of capitalism that has the potential to offer the people of this great nation domestic tranquility, economic justice, and the pursuit of happiness for not only ourselves, but also our posterity.
Path to a Better World
Is it really possible to live in a world without deprivation or economic strife, but instead with peace, prosperity, and better opportunities? Path to a Better World proposes a practical plan that provides the means to make this dream a reality-and all before the end of the twenty-first century. James Albus, an engineer, neuroscientist, and international expert in robotics and intelligent systems, begins by sharing his vision of an ideal world and contrasts that with the current reality. After discussing the strengths and weaknesses of the cur-rent free market capitalist system, Albus suggests an improved version of capitalization that has the potential to broaden the ownership of capital and stimulate significant economic growth. Included is a review of our nation's technical progress to date and a proposal that encourages future technological advances that possess the capabilities to propel the country into an unprecedented era of success. Path to a Better World is a well-researched, informative guidebook that allows Americans to imagine a life under a new form of capitalism that has the potential to offer the people of this great nation domestic tranquility, economic justice, and the pursuit of happiness for not only ourselves, but also our posterity.
Strategic Continuous Process Improvement
Proven methods for achieving continuous process improvement Resolve "quality chaos" by creating a link between quality problems and their optimal solutions. With a focus on building an integrated quality environment, Strategic Continuous Process Improvement: Which Quality Tools to Use and When to Use Them begins by discussing the different types of continuous process improvement (CPI) systems available. This practical guide explains how to implement a strategic performance model and select and integrate appropriate metrics to achieve desired results. Tested techniques for executing an improvement process are included along with real-world examples. The book concludes with a plan to help you sustain an ongoing culture of continuous quality improvement in your organization. Find out how to: Identify CPI opportunities Evaluate various CPI options using comparative benchmarks Understand the characteristics of each quality option Map CPI characteristics against quality problems Select the appropriate tool to fit a specific quality problem Recognize the role of governance and performance reviews Cascade and communicate CPI throughout your organization Move the needle toward successful process optimization
Visions of Technology
Technology was the blessing and the bane of the twentieth century. Human life span nearly doubled in the West, but in no century were more human beings killed by new technologies of war. Improvements in agriculture now feed increasing billions, but pesticides and chemicals threaten to poison the earth. Does technology improve us or diminish us? Enslave us or make us free? With this first-ever collection of the essential twentieth-century writings on technology, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Richard Rhodes explores the optimism, ambivalence, and wrongheaded judgments with which Americans have faced an ever-shifting world. Visions of Technology collects writings on events from the Great Exposition of 1900 and the invention of the telegraph to the advent of genetic counseling and the defeat of Garry Kasparov by IBM's chess-playing computer, Deep Blue. Its gems of opinion and history include Henry Ford on the horseless carriage, Robert Caro on the transformation of New York City, J. Robert Oppenheimer on science and war, Loretta Lynn on the Pill and much more. Together, they chronicle an unprecedented century of change.
Where Good Ideas Come from
A fascinating deep dive on innovation from the New York Times bestselling author of How We Got To Now and Unexpected Life The printing press, the pencil, the flush toilet, the battery--these are all great ideas. But where do they come from? What kind of environment breeds them? What sparks the flash of brilliance? How do we generate the breakthrough technologies that push forward our lives, our society, our culture? Steven Johnson's answers are revelatory as he identifies the seven key patterns behind genuine innovation, and traces them across time and disciplines. From Darwin and Freud to the halls of Google and Apple, Johnson investigates the innovation hubs throughout modern time and pulls out the approaches and commonalities that seem to appear at moments of originality.
What Technology Wants
From the author of the New York Times bestseller The Inevitable-- a sweeping vision of technology as a living force that can expand our individual potential In this provocative book, one of today's most respected thinkers turns the conversation about technology on its head by viewing technology as a natural system, an extension of biological evolution. By mapping the behavior of life, we paradoxically get a glimpse at where technology is headed-or "what it wants." Kevin Kelly offers a dozen trajectories in the coming decades for this near-living system. And as we align ourselves with technology's agenda, we can capture its colossal potential. This visionary and optimistic book explores how technology gives our lives greater meaning and is a must-read for anyone curious about the future.
Statistical Process Control Demystified
INCREASE your odds of learning STATISTICAL process control (SPC) Identify and reduce variation in business processes using SPC--the powerful analysis tool for process evaluation and improvement. Statistical Process Control Demystified shows you how to use SPC to enable data-driven decision making and gain a competitive advantage in the marketplace. Written in a step-by-step format, this practical guide explains how to analyze process data, collect data, and determine the suitability of a process in meeting requirements. Attribute and X-bar control charts are discussed, as are charts for individuals data. You'll also get details on process improvement and measurement systems analysis. Detailed examples, calculations, and statistical assumptions make it easy to understand the material, and end-of-chapter quizzes and a final exam help reinforce key concepts. It's a no-brainer! You'll learn about: Control chart interpretation Overcoming common errors in the use of SPC and general statistical analysis tools Sampling requirements Analysis using Excel Estimating process variation Designed experiments Measurement systems analysis, including R&R studies Continuous process improvement strategies Simple enough for a beginner, but challening enough for an advanced student, Statistical Process Control Demystified is your shortcut to this powerful analysis solution.
Brilliant
Brilliant, reminiscent of Lewis Hyde's The Gift in its reach and of Timothy Egan's The Worst Hard Time in its haunting evocation of human lives, offers a sweeping view of a surprisingly revealing aspect of human history--from the stone lamps of the Pleistocene to the LEDs embedded in fabrics of the future.Brox plumbs the class implications of light--who had it, who didn't--through the many centuries when crude lamps and tallow candles constricted waking hours. She convincingly portrays the hell-bent pursuit of whale oil as the first time the human desire for light thrust us toward an environmental tipping point. Only decades later, gas street lights opened up the evening hours to leisure, which changed the ways we live and sleep and the world's ecosystems.Edison's "tiny strip of paper that a breath would blow away" produced a light that seemed to its users all but divorced from human effort or cost. And yet, as Brox's informative and hair-raising portrait of our current grid system shows, the cost is ever with us.Brilliant is infused with human voices, startling insights, and--only a few years before it becomes illegal to sell most incandescent light bulbs in the United States--timely questions about how our future lives will be shaped by light.
Scientific English
This entertaining and highly readable book gives anyone writing in the sciences a clear and easy-to-follow guide to the English language. English is often regarded as one of the most difficult languages to master. Yet while the English language has a vocabulary of upwards of 500,000 words, it only uses nine parts of speech, and all of these words fall into one (or more) of those nine categories. Scientific English: A Guide for Scientists and Other Professionals, Third Edition contains many simple revelations like this that make effective scientific writing in English easy, even for those whose fluency is in another language. The book is organized around a basic guide to English grammar that is specifically tailored to the needs of scientists, science writers, science educators, and science students. The authors explain the goals of scientific writing, the role of style, and the various kinds of writing in the sciences, then provide a basic guide to the fundamentals of English and address problem areas such as redundancies, abbreviations and acronyms, jargon, and foreign terms. Email, online publishing, blogs, and writing for the Web are covered as well. This book is designed to be an enlightening and entertaining read that can then be retained as a practical scientific writing reference guide.
The Next Great Thing
Global warming, Arctic oil drilling, and the vanishing ozone layer are all enormous environmental problems with no clear solutions - or so conventional wisdom goes. But in the tiny town of Appalachian, Ohio, a small group of engineers under the guidance of a visionary eccentric named William Beale is challenging that conventional wisdom in an audacious attempt to transform the way the world makes and uses energy. Their "ultimate machine" - a solar-powered Stirling engine - resembles nothing the world has ever seen, and it carries an enormous burden of hope for the future of the planet. Should they succeed, a patch of desert 170 miles square could generate all the energy needs of the United States virtually pollution-free. Mark Shelton's exciting narrative takes us inside the laboratories and engine shops of Sunpower, Inc., where Beale and his colleagues are harnessing space-age technology to an idea as old as the steam engine. A working prototype of the Stirling engine is already capable of running an individual house, but enormous obstacles remain: lack of funding, and the preference of the American public and private sectors for getting their energy the good old-fashioned way. Like Tracy Kidder's Soul of a New Machine, Shelton's insightful account has the inherent drama of a report from the frontier, a frontier that might well produce the next great technological advance for the human race.
Millikan's School
Written in honour of its centenary, this history of Caltech explores its contribution to science and technology by providing profiles of its most famous scientists, such as von Karman in aeronautics, Morgan in biology, Gutenberg in seismology, Noyes in physical chemistry and Epstein in physics.
Moon Shot
A revised edition of the New York Times bestselling classic: the epic story of the golden years of American space exploration, told by the men who rode the rocketsOn October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik I, and the space race was born. Desperate to beat the Russians into space, NASA put together a crew of the nation's most daring test pilots: the seven men who were to lead America to the moon. The first into space was Alan Shepard; the last was Deke Slayton, whose irregular heartbeat kept him grounded until 1975. They spent the 1960s at the forefront of NASA's effort to conquer space, and Moon Shot is their inside account of what many call the twentieth century's greatest feat--landing humans on another world. Collaborating with NBC's veteran space reporter Jay Barbree, Shepard and Slayton narrate in gripping detail the story of America's space exploration from the time of Shepard's first flight until he and eleven others had walked on the moon.
Intellectual Curiosity and the Scientific Revolution
Seventeenth-century Europe witnessed an extraordinary flowering of discoveries and innovations. This study, beginning with the Dutch-invented telescope of 1608, casts Galileo's discoveries into a global framework. Although the telescope was soon transmitted to China, Mughal India, and the Ottoman Empire, those civilizations did not respond as Europeans did to the new instrument. In Europe, there was an extraordinary burst of innovations in microscopy, human anatomy, optics, pneumatics, electrical studies, and the science of mechanics. Nearly all of those aided the emergence of Newton's revolutionary grand synthesis, which unified terrestrial and celestial physics under the law of universal gravitation. That achievement had immense implications for all aspects of modern science, technology, and economic development. The economic implications are set out in the concluding epilogue. All these unique developments suggest why the West experienced a singular scientific and economic ascendancy of at least four centuries.
The Artificial Ape
A breakthrough theory that tools and technology are the real drivers of human evolution Although humans are one of the great apes, along with chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans, we are remarkably different from them. Unlike our cousins who subsist on raw food, spend their days and nights outdoors, and wear a thick coat of hair, humans are entirely dependent on artificial things, such as clothing, shelter, and the use of tools, and would die in nature without them. Yet, despite our status as the weakest ape, we are the masters of this planet. Given these inherent deficits, how did humans come out on top? In this fascinating new account of our origins, leading archaeologist Timothy Taylor proposes a new way of thinking about human evolution through our relationship with objects. Drawing on the latest fossil evidence, Taylor argues that at each step of our species' development, humans made choices that caused us to assume greater control of our evolution. Our appropriation of objects allowed us to walk upright, lose our body hair, and grow significantly larger brains. As we push the frontiers of scientific technology, creating prosthetics, intelligent implants, and artificially modified genes, we continue a process that started in the prehistoric past, when we first began to extend our powers through objects. Weaving together lively discussions of major discoveries of human skeletons and artifacts with a reexamination of Darwin's theory of evolution, Taylor takes us on an exciting and challenging journey that begins to answer the fundamental question about our existence: what makes humans unique, and what does that mean for our future?
Inventing the Indigenous
In the wake of expanding commercial voyages, many people in early modern Europe became curious about the plants and minerals around them and began to compile catalogs of them. Drawing on cultural, social and environmental history, as well as the histories of science and medicine, this book argues that, amidst a growing reaction against exotic imports -- whether medieval spices like cinnamon or new American arrivals like chocolate and tobacco -- learned physicians began to urge their readers to discover their own "indigenous" natural worlds. In response, compilers of local inventories created numerous ways of itemizing nature, from local floras and regional mineralogies to efforts to write the natural histories of entire territories. Tracing the fate of such efforts, the book provides new insight into the historical trajectory of such key concepts as indigeneity and local knowledge.
