Showing results for "engineering technology" in Science & Engineering

No running water, no car, no electricity or any of the things it powers: the internet, phone, washing machine, radio, or light bulb. Just a wooden cabin, on a smallholding, by the edge of a stand of spruce. The Way Home is a modern-day Walden - an honest and lyrical account of a remarkable life lived in nature without modern technology. Mark Boyle, author of The Moneyless Man, explores the hard-won joys of building a home with his bare hands, learning to make fire, collecting water from the stream, foraging, and fishing.

A true scientific pause-resister that traces a remarkable scientific breakthrough (the isolation of endorphins in the brain) as dedicated scientists race - not only with their fellow scientists - but against time and the profit hungry giant pharmaceutical companies. This audiobook chronicles the fascinating discovery of endorphins, the body's natural painkiller.

Although we usually think of technology as something unique to modern times, our ancestors began to create the first technologies millions of years ago in the form of prehistoric tools and weapons. Over time, eight key technologies gradually freed us from the limitations of our animal origins.

In the 1970s, amid severe cutbacks in physics funding, a small group of underemployed physicists in Berkeley decided to throw off the constraints of academia and explore the wilder side of science. Dubbing themselves the “Fundamental Fysiks Group,” they pursued a freewheeling, speculative approach to physics. Some dabbled with LSD while conducting experiments. They studied quantum theory alongside Eastern mysticism and psychic mind reading, discussing the latest developments while lounging in hot tubs.

Artificial Intelligence in Practice is a fascinating look into how companies use AI and machine learning to solve problems. Presenting 50 case studies of actual situations, this book demonstrates practical applications to issues faced by businesses around the globe. The rapidly evolving field of artificial intelligence has expanded beyond research labs and computer science departments and made its way into the mainstream business environment. Artificial intelligence and machine learning are cited as the most important modern business trends to drive success.

Behind the familiar surfaces of the telephone, radio, and television lies a sophisticated and intriguing body of knowledge known as information theory. This is the theory that has permitted the rapid development of all sorts of communication, from color television to the clear transmission of photographs from the vicinity of Jupiter. Even more revolutionary progress is expected in the future.

The world is never finished catching up with Vaclav Smil. In his latest and perhaps most digestible book, Invention and Innovation, the prolific author—a favorite of Bill Gates—pens an insightful and fact-filled jaunt through the history of human invention. Impatient with the hype that so often accompanies innovation, Smil offers in this book a clear-eyed corrective to the overpromises that accompany everything from new cures for diseases to AI.

John Forbes Nash, Jr., a prodigy and legend by the age of 30, dazzled the mathematical world by solving a series of deep problems deemed "impossible" by other mathematicians. But at the height of his fame, Nash suffered a catastrophic mental breakdown and began a harrowing descent into insanity, resigning his post at MIT, slipping into a series of bizarre delusions, and eventually becoming a dreamy, ghostlike figure at Princeton, scrawling numerological messages on blackboards.

One of the greatest physicists of the twentieth century, Richard Feynman possessed an unquenchable thirst for adventure and an unparalleled ability to tell the stories of his life. "What Do You Care What Other People Think?" is Feynman's last literary legacy, prepared with his friend and fellow drummer, Ralph Leighton.

Gene Kranz was present at the creation of America's manned space program and was a key player in it for three decades. As a flight director in NASA's Mission Control, Kranz witnessed firsthand the making of history. He participated in the space program from the early days of the Mercury program to the last Apollo mission, and beyond. He endured the disastrous first years when rockets blew up and the United States seemed to fall further behind the Soviet Union in the space race.

Children's author and science communicator Lucy Hawking, daughter of Professor Stephen Hawking, invites listeners to the launch of a new space age. Fuelled by commercial finance and looking for new horizons, this is a revolutionary change from the old era in which superpowers competed for supremacy in space. Lucy is accompanied by Peter Diamandis, founder of the XPRIZE, which kickstarted the privatised space, and Kellie Gerardi, a spaceflight industry professional and trainee astronaut, as well as visionaries at the forefront of this new age of space travel.

As Carl Sagan did for astronomy and Brian Green did for cosmology, Walter Lewin takes listeners on a marvelous journey in For the Love of Physics, opening our eyes as never before to the amazing beauty and power with which physics can reveal the hidden workings of the world all around us. "I introduce people to their own world," writes Lewin, "the world they live in and are familiar with but don't approach like a physicist - yet."

No data is completely safe. Cyberattacks on companies and individuals are on the rise and growing not only in number but also in ferocity. And while you may think your company has taken all the precautionary steps to prevent an attack, no individual, company, or country is safe. Cybersecurity can no longer be left exclusively to IT specialists. Improving and increasing data security practices and identifying suspicious activity is everyone's responsibility, from the boardroom to the break room.

How did a simple design error cause one of the great disasters of the 1980s - the collapse of the walkways at the Kansas City Hyatt Regency Hotel? What made the graceful and innovative Tacoma Narrows Bridge twist apart in a mild wind in 1940? How did an oversized waterlily inspire the magnificent Crystal Palace, the crowning achievement of Victorian architecture and engineering? These are some of the failures and successes that Henry Petroski, author of the acclaimed The Pencil, examines in this engaging, wonderfully literate book.

Need networking know-how, but don't know where to turn? Run-don't walk-to the no-nonsense networking guidance offered in this friendly guide! Whether you're a networking administrator or an everyday computer user looking to set up a network in your home or office, Networking for Dummies, seamlessly gets you connected with the basics and gives you the knowledge to work out whatever kinks may come your way-in no time.

In our age of accelerating progress in so many fields, it’s easy to lose sight of the underlying innovation that makes the data analytics revolution possible. These 24 lectures introduce you to the key concepts, methods, and accomplishments of this versatile approach to problem solving. You need no expertise in mathematics to follow this exciting story. Tim Chartier, professor of mathematics and computer science, explains the basic computational techniques used in data analytics, but his focus is on how these ideas are applied and the amazing results they achieve.

Technology has gradually transitioned from wired to wireless over the years with tons of benefits. From the internet of things to wireless communication, we are all witnesses of the huge benefits of wireless technologies. This audiobook covers various subjects and highlights both the benefits and challenges of wireless technologies.

The grid is an accident of history and of culture, in no way intrinsic to how we produce, deliver and consume electrical power. Yet this is the system the United States ended up with, a jerry-built structure now so rickety and near collapse that a strong wind or a hot day can bring it to a grinding halt. The grid is now under threat from a new source: renewable and variable energy, which puts stress on its logics as much as its components.

Artificial intelligence powers Google's search engine, enables Facebook to target advertising, and allows Alexa and Siri to do their jobs. AI is also behind self-driving cars, predictive policing, and autonomous weapons that can kill without human intervention. These and other AI applications raise complex ethical issues that are the subject of ongoing debate. This volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series offers an accessible synthesis of these issues.

Want to know how AT&T's Bell Labs developed semiconductor technology - and how its leading scientists almost came to blows in the process? Want to understand how radio and television work - and why RCA drove their inventors to financial ruin and early graves? Conquering the Electron offers these stories and more, presenting each revolutionary technological advance right alongside blow-by-blow personal battles that all too often took place.