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A Singular Remedy: Cinchona Across the Atlantic World, 1751–1820 (Science in History)
by Stefanie GängerStefanie Gänger explores how medical knowledge was shared across societies tied to the Atlantic World between 1751 and 1820. Centred on Peruvian bark or cinchona, Gänger shows how that remedy and knowledge about its consumption – formulae for bittersweet, 'aromatic' wines, narratives about its discovery or beliefs in its ability to prevent fevers – were understood by men and women in varied contexts. These included Peruvian academies and Scottish households, Louisiana plantations and Moroccan court pharmacies alike. This study in plant trade, therapeutic exchange, and epistemic brokerage shows how knowledge weaves itself into the fabric of everyday medical practice in different places.
A Six Sigma Approach to Sustainability: Continual Improvement for Social Responsibility (Systems Innovation Book Ser. #41)
by Holly A. DuckworthIn an age when most business plans extend only to the next quarterly reporting period, the authors of this book propose an audaciously longer view of future planning. Reaching beyond the modern five or ten-year strategic plan, the authors take a cue from Kongo Gumi, a Japanese construction company launched in 578 AD that managed to thrive as a fami
A Sixth Sense: The Life and Science of Henri-Georges Doll: Oilfield Pioneer and Inventor
by Michael Oristaglio Alexander DorozynskiThe true story of the French engineer and inventor who developed a mine detector for the US Army during WWII—and then went on to transform the oil industry. In March 1940, with Europe at war, French army lieutenant Henri-Georges Doll came to the U.S. embassy in Paris to give a deposition. Doll was an artillery commander, a graduate of France&’s grandes écoles of science, engineering, and service. He had been mobilized to the front at the start of the war, then quickly recalled to Paris to work on a secret device for detecting the deadly land mines being planted by the German army on a vast new scale. But Doll&’s deposition that day had nothing to do with the war. He had come to testify in a patent lawsuit pending in Houston, Texas. The case was Schlumberger Well Surveying Corporation v. Halliburton Oil Well Cementing Company: it marked one of the first great industrial battles for control of the technology of oil and gas exploration. When the German army marched into Paris three months later, Doll escaped to America, where he developed his new mine detector for the U.S. army, then settled in a small Connecticut town to become one of the most prolific inventors of the twentieth century. His sixth sense for applied science would help create the modern technology of seeing underground using electrical signals and sound waves—technology that would enable the explosive growth of oil production, and of Schlumberger, after the war. This biography tells his remarkable story.
A Slimy Story (Science Solves It!)
by Michelle KnudsenSlimy! Yucky! Wriggly! Dan is grossed out by earthworms until one of them hitches a ride in his pocket—and creates a sensation in school!
A Small World: Smart Houses and the Dream of the Perfect Day
by Davin HeckmanConceived in the 1960s, Walt Disney's original plans for his Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow (EPCOT) outlined a utopian laboratory for domestic technology, where families would live, work, and play in an integrated environment. Like many of his contemporaries, Disney imagined homes that would attend to their inhabitants' every need, and he regarded the home as a site of unending technological progress. This fixation on "space-age" technology, with its promise of domestic bliss, marked an important mid-twentieth-century shift in understandings of the American home. In A Small World, Davin Heckman considers how domestic technologies that free people to enjoy leisure time in the home have come to be understood as necessary parts of everyday life. Heckman's narrative stretches from the early-twentieth-century introduction into the home of electric appliances and industrial time-management techniques, through the postwar advent of television and the space-age "house of tomorrow," to the contemporary automated, networked "smart home. " He considers all these developments in relation to lifestyle and consumer narratives. Building on the tension between agency and control within the walls of homes designed to anticipate and fulfill desires, Heckman engages debates about lifestyle, posthumanism, and rights under the destabilizing influences of consumer technologies, and he considers the utopian and dystopian potential of new media forms. Heckman argues that the achievement of an environment completely attuned to its inhabitants' specific wants and needs--what he calls the "Perfect Day"--institutionalizes everyday life as the ultimate consumer practice.
A Smarter National Surveillance System for Occupational Safety and Health in the 21st Century
by Engineering Medicine National Academies of SciencesThe workplace is where 156 million working adults in the United States spend many waking hours, and it has a profound influence on health and well-being. Although some occupations and work-related activities are more hazardous than others and face higher rates of injuries, illness, disease, and fatalities, workers in all occupations face some form of work-related safety and health concerns. Understanding those risks to prevent injury, illness, or even fatal incidents is an important function of society. Occupational safety and health (OSH) surveillance provides the data and analyses needed to understand the relationships between work and injuries and illnesses in order to improve worker safety and health and prevent work-related injuries and illnesses. Information about the circumstances in which workers are injured or made ill on the job and how these patterns change over time is essential to develop effective prevention programs and target future research. The nation needs a robust OSH surveillance system to provide this critical information for informing policy development, guiding educational and regulatory activities, developing safer technologies, and enabling research and prevention strategies that serves and protects all workers. A Smarter National Surveillance System for Occupational Safety and Health in the 21st Century provides a comprehensive assessment of the state of OSH surveillance. This report is intended to be useful to federal and state agencies that have an interest in occupational safety and health, but may also be of interest broadly to employers, labor unions and other worker advocacy organizations, the workers’ compensation insurance industry, as well as state epidemiologists, academic researchers, and the broader public health community. The recommendations address the strengths and weaknesses of the envisioned system relative to the status quo and both short- and long-term actions and strategies needed to bring about a progressive evolution of the current system.
A Social History of American Technology
by Ruth Schwartz Cowan(back of book) For over 250 years American technology has been regarded as a unique hallmark of American culture and an important factor in American prosperity. Despite this, American history has rarely been told from the perspective of the history of technology. A Social History of American Technology fills this gap by surveying the history of American technology from the tools used by the earliest native inhabitants to the technological systems- cars and computers, aircraft and antibiotics- we are familiar with today. Cowan makes use of the most recent scholarship to explain how the unique characteristics of American cultures and American geography have affected the technologies that have been invented, manufactured, and used throughout the years. She also focuses on the key individuals and ideas that have shaped important technological developments. The text explains how various technologies have affected the ways in which Americans work, govern, cook, transport, communicate, maintain their health, and reproduce. Cowan demonstrates that technological change has always been closely related to social development, and explores the multiple, complex relationships that have existed between such diverse social agents as households and businesses, the scientific community and the defense establishment, artists and inventors. Divided into three sections- colonial America. industrialization, the 20th century- A Social History of American Technology is ideal for courses in American social and economic history, as a correlated text for the American history survey, as well as for courses that focus on the history of technology. It offers students the unique opportunity to learn not only how profoundly technological change has affected the American way of life, but how profoundly the American way of life has affected technology.
A Socio-cultural Perspective on Patient Safety
by Justin WaringThis edited volume of original chapters brings together researchers from around the world who are exploring the facets of health care organization and delivery that are sometimes marginal to mainstream patient safety theories and methodologies but offer important insights into the socio-cultural and organizational context of patient safety. By examining these critical insights or perspectives and drawing upon theories and methodologies often neglected by mainstream safety researchers, this collection shows we can learn more about not only the barriers and drivers to implementing patient safety programmes, but also about the more fundamental issues that shape notions of safety, alternate strategies for enhancing safety, and the wider implications of the safety agenda on the future of health care delivery. In so doing, A Socio-cultural Perspective on Patient Safety challenges the taken-for-granted assumptions around fundamental philosophical and political issues upon which mainstream orthodoxy relies. The book draws upon a range of theoretical and empirical approaches from across the social sciences to investigate and question the patient safety movement. Each chapter takes as its focus and question a particular aspect of the patient safety reforms, from its policy context and theoretical foundations to its practical application and manifestation in clinical practice, whilst also considering the wider implications for the organization and delivery of health care services. Accordingly, the chapters each draw upon a distinct theoretical or methodological approach to critically explore specific dimensions of the patient safety agenda. Taken as a whole, the collection advances a strong, coherent argument that is much needed to counter some of the uncritical assumptions that need to be described and analyzed if patient safety is indeed to be achieved.
A Solar Buyer's Guide for the Home and Office
by stephen Rebekah HrenSolar power, once a fringe effort limited to DIY enthusiasts, is now fast becoming mainstream. Many home and business owners are curious about solar electric and solar thermal systems, and wonder how to go about getting a clean energy generation system of their own. The vast majority will hire a professional installer to do the job. But what should they be asking of these installers? What system makes the most sense for their home or office: solar electric, solar hot water, solar heating, or some combination of these? A Solar Buyer's Guide for the Home and Officeexplains the options so that property owners can make the right choices both for their energy needs and their financial security. Understanding how solar power systems work will enable readers to be informed customers when dealing with professional installers-the book also provides advice on how to select a qualified installer and understand the expanding variety of tax credits and other incentives that are popping up around the country. The market for solar systems has been growing at an exponential rate and strong tax credits ensure continued growth even in a sluggish economy. Many of those who would like to catch this undeniable wave of the future are held back by widespread confusion. A Solar Buyer's Guide for the Home and Officeclears the air, allowing property owners to move forward with confidence to make their homes and offices more comfortable, environmentally sound, and secure against wild swings in energy prices.
A Solar Car Primer: A Guide to the Design and Construction of Solar-Powered Racing Vehicles
by Eric Forsta ThacherThis exciting primer on Solar Racing literally starts from the ground up, describing how the interactions of a vehicle with its environment circumscribe its ultimate success, from aerodynamics to resistance and propulsion. By demonstrating how to mathematically model these underlying physical phenomena, the author helps solar racing competitors carefully select key characteristics of the vehicle, such as weight and shape, to produce optimal speed. Energy conversion and demand are given particular attention, followed by chapters devoted to examining solar racers' design, manufacture and testing using a structured problem-solving process to keep projects on track and on schedule. A chapter devoted to energy management strategies provides invaluable tips on maximizing average speed during a race. Complex issues such as ventilation system analysis and performance simulation are covered in dedicated appendices. The financial aspect of project design is not neglected, as both fund-raising and cost estimation are given in-depth consideration.
A Solar Manifesto
by Hermann ScheerIn the decade since the 'Earth Summit' in Rio de Janiero, the response of the world's governments and authorities to the threats to the global environment has been to enforce the reduction of energy consumption and harmful emissions - solutions primarily based around conventional energy resources and conventional thinking. The question is, though, whether this strategy is radical enough to address the key challenges how facing the environment, and whether it can be effective in avoiding catastrophe on a global scale. For Herman Scheer, the answer is a definite no. In this fully updated edition of A Solar Manifesto, he once more attacks the lack of political will to find answers outside a conventional frame of reference. Climate change, pollution, deforestation, destruction of the ozone layer, poverty and the population explosion are all problems created or exacerbated by the use of conventional energy. Seven years after the first edition of this book, answers are now more urgently required that ever, as current policies serve merely to alleviate the escalating symptoms rather than attempting a cure for what could become a terminal affliction. Herman Scheer shows that this crisis may yet be reversed – but it can only be made to happen through a fundamental change in political and economic strategies, paving the way towards a global solar energy economy sustained by new social principles. A Solar Manifesto champions the replacement of fossil and nuclear fuels with solar energy, as a real solution to the threat to the environment and associated social consequences. Scheer constructs a radical yet innovative political and economic model and argues the case with passion and conviction for the global solar economy as the route to a sustainable environment. Thought-provoking and profoundly challenging, this book will be an inspiration to anyone concerned with energy and the global environment.
A Solar-Powered Planet (Into Reading, Level V #59)
by Bill Wood Jill McDougallNIMAC-sourced textbook.
A Sound Approach to Noise and Health (Springer-AAS Acoustics Series)
by Irene Van Kamp Fred WoudenbergThis open access book highlights the negative and positive health effects of chronic exposure to environmental sound. It describes the state of the art in the field from a public health point of view and puts it in a broad societal perspective looking at sound from physical, social, psychological, economic and governance angles. Rather than a mere collection of papers around the theme as usually provided in special issues, this book offers a comprehensive look at the meaning of sound in society and its impacts and provides directions to further advance the field.
A Sound Engineers Guide to Audio Test and Measurement
by Glen BallouThis book offers a quick guide and complete reference to the fundamentals of test and measurement for all aspects of sound engineering.Including electrical and acoustic testing, measurement systems, levels, methods, protecting the ear, units of measurement and standards, this guide comes with and multiple tables to ensure quick easy access to information and illustrate points this is a must have reference for all audio engineers.
A Sourcebook for Environmental Education: A Practical Review Based on the Belgrade Charter
by W. Leal Filho Z. Murphy K. O'LoanThis is a comprehensive reference work, textbook, and sourcebook on the environmental education policies implemented in industrialized and developing nations since initiation of the benchmark UNEP-UNESCO International Environmental Education Programme at the Belgrade Workshop in 1975. The contributing authors cover both historical and international perspectives with particular reference to the 1992 debates in Rio. The book presents new information on areas for future action in teacher training, university-level environmental education for developing countries, and environmental education projects and networks for students and adults.
A Spitfire Girl: One of the World's Greatest Female ATA Ferry Pilots Tells Her Story
by Mary Ellis Melody ForemanWe visualize dashing and daring young men as the epitome of the pilots of the Second World War, yet amongst that elite corps was one person who flew no less than 400 Spitfires and seventy-six different types of aircraft and that person was Mary Wilkins. Her story is one of the most remarkable and endearing of the war, as this young woman, serving as a ferry pilot with the Air Transport Auxiliary, transported aircraft for the RAF, including fast fighter planes and huge four-engine bombers. On one occasion Mary delivered a Wellington bomber to an airfield, and as she climbed out of the aircraft the RAF ground crew ran over to her and demanded to know where the pilot was! Mary said simply: "I am the pilot!" Unconvinced the men searched the aircraft before they realized a young woman had indeed flown the bomber all by herself. After the war she accepted a secondment to the RAF, being chosen as one of the first pilots, and one of only three women, to take the controls of the new Meteor fast jet. By 1950 the farmer's daughter from Oxfordshire with a natural instinct to fly became Europe's first female air commandant. In this authorized biography the woman who says she kept in the background during her ATA years and left all the glamour of publicity to her colleagues, finally reveals all about her action-packed career which spans almost a century of aviation, and her love for the skies which, even in her nineties, never falters.
A Splintered History of Wood: Belt-Sander Races, Blind Woodworkers & Baseball Bats
by Spike CarlsenIn a world without wood, we might not be here at all. Without wood, we wouldn't have had the fire, heat, and shelter that allowed us to expand into the colder regions of the planet. If civilization somehow did develop, our daily lives still would be vastly different: there would be no violins, baseball bats, chopsticks, or wine corks. The book you are now holding wouldn't exist. At the same time, many of us are removed from the world where wood is shaped and celebrated every day. That world is inhabited by a unique assortment of eccentric craftsmen and passionate enthusiasts who have created some of the world's most beloved musical instruments, feared weapons, dazzling architecture, sacred relics, and bizarre forms of transportation. In A Splintered History of Wood, Spike Carlsen has uncovered the most outlandish characters and examples, from world-champion chainsaw carvers to blind woodworkers, the Miraculous Staircase to the Lindbergh kidnapping case, and many more, in a passionate and personal exploration of nature's greatest gift.
A Stable and Transparent Framework for Adaptive Shared Control of Robots (Springer Tracts in Advanced Robotics #158)
by Ribin BalachandranRobotic research and developments in computing technologies including artificial intelligence have led to significant improvements in autonomous capabilities of robots. Yet, human supervision is advisable and, in many cases, necessary when robots interact with real-world, outside-lab environments. This is due to the fact that complete autonomy in robots has not yet been achieved. When robots encounter challenges beyond their capabilities, a viable solution is to include human operators in the loop, who can support robots through teleoperation, taking complete control or shared control. This monograph focuses on a special form of shared control, namely mixed-initiative, where the final command to the robot is a weighted sum of the commands from the operator and the autonomous controller. The weights (fixed or adaptive), called authority allocation (AA) factors, decide who has more control authority over the robot. Several research groups use different methods to adapt the AA factors online and the benefits of adaptive mixed-initiative shared control have been well established in terms of task completion success and operator usability. However, stability of the overall shared control framework, with communication time-delays between the operator and the robot, is a field that has not been examined extensively. This monograph presents methods to improve performance and stability in shared control so that the possibilities of its applications can be widened. Firstly, methods to improve the haptic feedback performance of teleoperation are developed. Secondly, methods to stabilize adaptive shared control systems, while still ensuring high teleoperation performance, are proposed. The methods are validated on multiple robotic systems and they were applied in several projects, both in space and terrestrial domains. With the aforementioned contributions, this monograph provides an overarching framework to improve synergy between humans and robots. The flexibility of the framework allows integration of existent teleoperation and shared control approaches, which further promotes synergy within the robotics community.
A Startup Field Guide in the Age of Robots and AI
by Oliver MitchellLaunching a startup is like climbing a mountain, just maybe more treacherous. I say this as I have spent years as a backpacker and entrepreneur. While hiking through the Alaskan Tundra, I feared brown bears and crevasses. Yet, nothing prepared me for the responsibility of payroll for over 200 families relying on my business plan to feed their children.Unlike traditional software, the mere smell of hardware sensors and robot gearing sends shivers through most investors, with red flags arising from the perceived capital inefficiencies and intense research and development. This is coupled with a high talent requirement before launching even a minimum viable product, as these inventions demand a cross-section of skills: mechanical, electrical, and software engineering. To set out on the trail of uncrewed success, machine inventors and founders require a detailed field guide to meet customer demand and financing objectives.My goal for this book is to help you at a pivotal point in your ideation process and, at the same time, introduce you to a cadre of potential mentors. Through interviews with some of the most respected luminaries in this field, I aim to help fortify your resolve to follow your passions and build a billion-dollar company. The chapters of this book have been organized like a field guide, as if you are setting out on a trip in the wild. Just like it’s essential to satiate yourself before scaling mountains, fast-tracking your innovation into the hands of early adopters is vital for achieving success on Main Street.
A Step Towards Society 5.0: Research, Innovations, and Developments in Cloud-Based Computing Technologies (Demystifying Technologies for Computational Excellence)
by Shahnawaz KhanThis book serves the need for developing an insight and understanding of the cutting-edge innovation in Cloud technology. It provides an understanding of cutting-edge innovations, paradigms, and security by using real-life applications, case studies, and examples. This book provides a holistic view of cloud technology theories, practices, and future applications with real-life examples. It comprehensively explains cloud technology, design principles, development trends, maintaining state-of-the-art cloud computing and software services. It describes how cloud technology can transform the operating contexts of business enterprises. It exemplifies the potential of cloud computing for next-generation computational excellence and the role it plays as a key driver for the 4th industrial revolution in Industrial Engineering and a key driver for manufacturing industries. Researchers, academicians, postgraduates, and industry specialists will find this book of interest.
A Strategic Approach to the UK Construction Industry
by Stephen GrunebergThe construction industry is a microcosm of the economy as a whole, and as such the economics of the sector contains many of the aspects of the economy in general, albeit with fascinating and unique features. What are the implications of economic theory for the future of UK construction? How does the industry ensure innovation, quality and efficiency? What priorities might best serve the construction industry, those working in it and their customers? In seeking answers to these and other questions, the UK government has commissioned a number of reports on the construction industry including the Latham and Egan reports and more recently Construction 2025. These have invariably proposed time and cost targets for the construction industry. In this new book, Stephen Gruneberg stands in stark contrast to those reports and presents the relevant theoretical aspects of construction economics to account for the behaviour of construction firms and suggest a strategy for future growth and sustainability. He discusses the theory and data relating to the output of firms in relation to the type of firm, the market and how these firms behave as a result. The purpose of this book is to advocate the measures needed to create the kind of industry that must be fostered to ensure the quality of its output, sustainability and the fair terms and conditions of employment for its workforce. Gruneberg’s new book is essential reading for anyone wishing to understand the economic forces that determine industry outcomes and who has a stake in the success of the UK construction sector.
A Strategy for Active Remote Sensing Amid Increased Demand for Radio Spectrum
by Committee on a Survey of the Active Sensing Uses of the Radio SpectrumActive remote sensing is the principal tool used to study and to predict short- and long-term changes in the environment of Earth - the atmosphere, the oceans and the land surfaces - as well as the near space environment of Earth. All of these measurements are essential to understanding terrestrial weather, climate change, space weather hazards, and threats from asteroids. Active remote sensing measurements are of inestimable benefit to society, as we pursue the development of a technological civilization that is economically viable, and seek to maintain the quality of our life. A Strategy for Active Remote Sensing Amid Increased Demand for Spectrum describes the threats, both current and future, to the effective use of the electromagnetic spectrum required for active remote sensing. This report offers specific recommendations for protecting and making effective use of the spectrum required for active remote sensing.
A Strategy for Using Multicriteria Analysis in Decision-Making: A Guide for Simple and Complex Environmental Projects
by Nolberto MunierThis book develops a whole strategy for decision-making, with the full participation of the decision-maker and utilizing continuous feedback. It introduces the use of the very well-known and proven methodology, linear programming, but specially adapted for this purpose. For this, it incorporates a method to include subjective concepts, as well as the possibility of working with many different and even contradictory objectives. The book is liberally populated with diverse case studies to illustrate the concepts. This practical guide will be of interest to anyone undertaking analysis and decision-making, on both simple and complex projects, and who is looking for a strategy to organize, classify, and evaluate the large amount of information required to make an informed decision. The strategy includes methods to analyze the results and extract conclusions from them.
A Student Handbook for Writing in Biology
by Karin KniselyA Student Handbook for Writing in Biology, Fifth Edition, provides practical advice to students who are learning to write according to the conventions in biology. The first chapter introduces the scientific method and experimental design. Because the scientific method relies on the work of other scientists, Chapter 2 provides instructions for finding primary literature using article databases and scholarly search engines. Journal articles have a well-defined structure, but are typically hard to read because they are written for specialists. To help students read and comprehend the technical literature, Chapter 3 describes scientific paper tone and format, provides strategies for reading technical material, emphasizes the importance of paraphrasing when taking notes, and gives examples of how to present and cite information to avoid plagiarism. Using the standards of journal publication as a model, students are then given specific instructions for writing their own laboratory reports with accepted format and content, self-evaluating drafts, and using peer and instructor feedback to refine their writing. Besides writing about it, scientists communicate scientific knowledge through posters and oral presentations. How these presentation forms differ from papers in terms of purpose, content, and delivery is the subject of the last two chapters of the book. <p><p>Scientific communication requires more than excellent writing skills--it requires technical competence on the computer. Most first-year students have had little experience producing Greek letters and mathematical symbols, sub- and superscripted characters, graphs, tables, and equations. Yet these are characteristics of scientific papers that require a familiarity with the computer beyond basic keyboarding skills. Furthermore, most first-year students are used to doing calculations on a handheld calculator. When they learn how to use Excel's formulas to do repetitive calculations, their time spent on data analysis decreases markedly. For exactly these reasons, almost half of the book is devoted to Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint features that enable scientists to produce professional quality papers, graphs, posters, and oral presentations effectively and efficiently.
A Student's Guide to Data and Error Analysis
by Herman J. C. BerendsenAll students taking laboratory courses within the physical sciences and engineering will benefit from this 2011 book, whilst researchers will find it an invaluable reference. This concise, practical guide brings the reader up-to-speed on the proper handling and presentation of scientific data and its inaccuracies. It covers all the vital topics with practical guidelines, computer programs (in Python), and recipes for handling experimental errors and reporting experimental data. In addition to the essentials, it also provides further background material for advanced readers who want to understand how the methods work. Plenty of examples, exercises and solutions are provided to aid and test understanding, whilst useful data, tables and formulas are compiled in a handy section for easy reference.