Science & Nature - Books

Advancement in Oxygenated Fuels for Sustainable Development

Science & Nature

Advances in Oxygenated Fuels for Sustainable Development: Feedstocks and Precursors for Catalysts Synthesis provides a roadmap to the sustainable implementation of oxygenated fuels in internal combustion engines through sustainable production, smart distribution and effective utilization. Focusing on the sustainability of feedstocks, the book assesses availability, emissions impact and reduction potential, and biodiversity and land utilization impact. Existing technologies and supply chains are reviewed, and recommendations are provided on how to sustainably implement or update these technologies, including for rural communities. Furthermore, effective supply and distribution network designs are provided alongside methods for monitoring and assessing their sustainability, accounting for social, economic, environmental and ecological factors. This book guides readers through every aspect of the production and commercialization of sustainable oxygenated fuels for internal combustion engines and their implementation across the global transport industry. - Provides multilevel perspectives on how to facilitate the sustainable production of oxygenated fuel and develop new indices for measuring the effectiveness and sustainability of implementation - Recommends a framework and criteria for assessing the suitability, sustainability, and environmental benefits of oxygenated biofuels - Describes the fuel properties of all oxygenated fuels and their performance in unmodified and enhanced CI and SI engines

Automates, automatisme, automation

Science & Nature

Cet ouvrage est une réédition numérique d’un livre paru au XXe siècle, désormais indisponible dans son format d’origine.

Newer Approaches To Biotechnology

Science & Nature

The book titled ‘Newer Approaches to Biotechnology’ is expected to solve many emerging problems arising at local and global levels. In 21st century, growth, development and economy of a nation are certainly contingent on exploration of knowledge era in biotechnology. The book incorporates sixteen seminal papers on issue based research and their practical applications covering latest information and progress on different area of biotechnological research. This book will be very useful for the scholars, biotechnologists, agricultural scientists, medical doctors, researchers, teachers and students in the field of biotechnology.

Science at the Cross Roads (Routledge Revivals)

Science & Nature

The papers given by the Soviet Delegation to the Second International Congress of the History of Science and Technology in London in 1931, headed by N. I. Bukharin, exerted a profound influence on Western historiography of science. Perhaps the most influential contribution was that of Hessen, who made a long and classical statement of Marxist historiography, taking Isaac Newton as his example. The collection, which appeared in Britain at the height of the Depression, fostered an acute social awareness and a heated debate among many working scientists. Accredited by some as "the starting point of a new evaluation of the history of science", the book reflects the huge social and economic divide between Socialism and Capitalism present at the time of publication, and its influence on intellectual culture and scientific advancement.

Cougar

Science & Nature

The cougar is one of the most beautiful, enigmatic, and majestic animals in the Americas. Eliciting reverence for its grace and independent nature, it also triggers fear when it comes into contact with people, pets, and livestock or competes for hunters’ game. Mystery, myth, and misunderstanding surround this remarkable creature. The cougar’s range once extended from northern Canada to the tip of South America, and from the Pacific to the Atlantic, making it the most widespread animal in the western hemisphere. But overhunting and loss of habitat vastly reduced cougar numbers by the early twentieth century across much of its historical range, and today the cougar faces numerous threats as burgeoning human development encroaches on its remaining habitat. When Maurice Hornocker began the first long-term study of cougars in the Idaho wilderness in 1964, little was known about this large cat. Its secretive nature and rarity in the landscape made it difficult to study. But his groundbreaking research yielded major insights and was the prelude to further research on this controversial species. The capstone to Hornocker’s long career studying big cats, Cougar is a powerful and practical resource for scientists, conservationists, and anyone with an interest in large carnivores. He and conservationist Sharon Negri bring together the diverse perspectives of twenty-two distinguished scientists to provide the fullest account of the cougar’s ecology, behavior, and genetics, its role as a top predator, and its conservation needs. This compilation of recent findings, stunning photographs, and firsthand accounts of field research unravels the mysteries of this magnificent animal and emphasizes its importance in healthy ecosystem processes and in our lives.

Science and Cooking: Physics Meets Food, From Homemade to Haute Cuisine

Science & Nature

Based on the popular Harvard University and edX course, Science and Cooking explores the scientific basis of why recipes work.The spectacular culinary creations of modern cuisine are the stuff of countless articles and social media feeds. But to a scientist they are also perfect pedagogical explorations into the basic scientific principles of cooking. In Science and Cooking, Harvard professors Michael Brenner, Pia Sörensen, and David Weitz bring the classroom to your kitchen to teach the physics and chemistry underlying every recipe.Why do we knead bread? What determines the temperature at which we cook a steak, or the amount of time our chocolate chip cookies spend in the oven? Science and Cooking answers these questions and more through hands-on experiments and recipes from renowned chefs such as Christina Tosi, Joanne Chang, and Wylie Dufresne, all beautifully illustrated in full color. With engaging introductions from revolutionary chefs and collaborators Ferran Adria and José Andrés, Science and Cooking will change the way you approach both subjects—in your kitchen and beyond.

Les applications linéaires

Science & Nature

Cet ouvrage est une réédition numérique d’un livre paru au XXe siècle, désormais indisponible dans son format d’origine.

Errores geniales que cambiaron el mundo

Science & Nature

Todos nos equivocamos. Nadie es perfecto.Y eso incluye también a cinco de los más grandes genios de la historia de la ciencia; Charles Darwin, William Thompson, Linus Pauling, Fred Hoyle y Albert Eisntein. Sin embargo, sus meteduras de pata fueron fundamentales en su investigación científica y condujeron hacia algunos de los más importantes hallazgos científicos de la historia de la humanidad. Es más, según Mario Livio, la ciencia se basa en el error. Se avanza conforme se desmontan falsas ideas.Cuando era joven, Albert Einstein trató con insistencia de concebir una forma de describir la evolución del universo basado en la teoría general de la relatividad. No obstante, fue víctima de una noción errónea de simplicidad estética. Fred Hoyle era un eminente astrofísico que ridiculizó una teoría emergente sobre el origen del universo a la que peyorativamente catalogó de "Big Bang". Ambos, junto a Darwin y su teoría de la selección natural, Kelvin y su cálculo erróneo de la edad dela Tierra y Pauling y su modelo fallido de la estructura del ADN, fueron todos ellos hombres geniales y fascinantes. Sus meteduras de pata fueron esenciales en el progreso científico y ayudaron a profundizar en el conocimiento de la evolución dela Tierra, la vida y el universo.

City Evacuations: An Interdisciplinary Approach

Science & Nature

Evacuating a city is a complex problem that involves issues of governance, preparedness education, warning, information sharing, population dynamics, resilience and recovery. As natural and anthropogenic threats to cities grow, it is an increasingly pressing problem for policy makers and practitioners.The book is the result of a unique interdisciplinary collaboration between researchers in the physical and social sciences to consider how an interdisciplinary approach can help plan for large scale evacuations. It draws on perspectives from physics, mathematics, organisation theory, economics, sociology and education. Importantly it goes beyond disciplinary boundaries and considers how interdisciplinary methods are necessary to approach a complex problem involving human actors and increasingly complex communications and transportation infrastructures.Using real world case studies and modelling the book considers new approaches to evacuation dynamics. It addresses questions of complexity, not only in terms of theory, but examining the latest challenges for cities and emergency responders. Factors such as social media, information quality and visualisation techniques are examined to consider the ‘new’ dynamics of warning and informing, evacuation and recovery.

Another Science is Possible

Science & Nature

Like fast food, fast science is quickly prepared, not particularly good, and it clogs up the system. Efforts to tackle our most pressing issues have been stymied by conflict within the scientific community and mixed messages symptomatic of a rushed approach. What is more, scientific research is being shaped by the bubbles and crashes associated with economic speculation and the market. A focus on conformism, competitiveness, opportunism and flexibility has made it extremely difficult to present cases of failure to the public, for fear that it will lose confidence in science altogether. In this bold new book, distinguished philosopher Isabelle Stengers shows that research is deeply intertwined with broader social interests, which means that science cannot race ahead in isolation but must learn instead to slow down. Stengers offers a path to an alternative science, arguing that researchers should stop seeing themselves as the 'thinking, rational brain of humanity' and refuse to allow their expertise to be used to shut down the concerns of the public, or to spread the belief that scientific progress is inevitable and will resolve all of society's problems. Rather, science must engage openly and honestly with an intelligent public and be clear about the kind of knowledge it is capable of producing. This timely and accessible book will be of great interest to students, scholars and policymakers in a wide range of fields, as well anyone concerned with the role of science and its future.

The Darwinian Hypothesis

Science & Nature

The truth is that the number of distinguishable living creatures almost surpasses imagination. At least a hundred thousand such kinds of insects alone have been described and may be identified in collections, and the number of separable kinds of living things is under estimated at half a million.

TIME AND BEAUTY

Science & Nature

Time and beauty are two of our most visceral perceptions. Yet, their nature is seldom questioned. In this ground-breaking new work, Adrian Bejan — a true 'original' among physicists — explains, in a scholarly yet colorful style, the scientific basis for the perception of time and beauty.Organized into three main ideas, the book begins first with the perception of time. The author expounds on why we feel that time flies faster as we get older. Perceived time, also called 'mind time,' is different from clock time. In this context, time is another word for 'perceived change'. Next, readers will discover that beauty is appealing because beautifully-shaped images are scanned faster by two eyes. To observe our immediate surroundings and to understand them faster is highly advantageous to survival; hence, there is an underlying evolutionary advantage to our discernment for ideal ratios, shapes, and beauty at large. Finally, time and beauty are jointly understood to explain why the global pandemic had decelerated our mind time. This understanding arms us with techniques to slow down our mind time (which accelerates with age), and to create the conditions for living longer and more creatively.Scientists may have contemplated aspects of time and beauty separately. In contrast, the author submits an original and rewarding approach to understanding them together. In the process, key questions to our cognition are answered. Why does the mind 'try' to make sense of a new mental image? Why is there a natural tendency to organize a new input and mentally position it among past perceptions? Through physics, the book offers a general answer: to empower the individual with speed and clarity of thought, understanding, decision-making and movement. The same answer holds for the other disparate perceptions illustrated in this book, from time and beauty to ideas, message, shape, perspective, art, science, illusions, and dreams.

Conexões

Science & Nature

Conexões apresenta uma visão ampla sobre as origens das emoções humanas e examina o que as doenças mentais revelam sobre todos nós."Um livro revelador. Lembra os estudos de caso de Oliver Sacks e às vezes o olhar amplo de Yuval Harari, em Sapiens." — The GuardianPor que sentimos o que sentimos? O que nos suscita sentimentos intensos? Ou, mais diretamente, o que são esses sentimentos, no sentido físico, até o nível das células e suas conexões?Com base em pesquisas de ponta e estudos de caso dos próprios pacientes em sua rotina numa emergência psiquiátrica, Karl Deisseroth tenta preencher a lacuna de conhecimento que existe entre os antigos circuitos do nosso cérebro e os momentos de sofrimento em nosso dia a dia. As histórias dos pacientes do autor são ricas em humanidade e lançam uma luz sem precedentes sobre o eu — e as maneiras pelas quais ele pode desmoronar. Uma jovem com distúrbio alimentar revela como a mente pode se rebelar contra os impulsos mais primitivos do cérebro, como fome e sede; um idoso, sufocado pela demência, mostra como os humanos evoluíram para sentir alegria e a ausência dela; e uma mulher solitária, longe de sua terra natal, ensina a importância — e os desafios — dos profundos laços sociais.Conexões nos confronta com a necessidade essencial de nos questionarmos sobre nossa condição de seres humanos, sobre os sentimentos universais de perda e dor que surgem das relações, e sobre as profundas fraturas nas formas pelas quais podemos perceber a realidade. É uma obra reveladora, que transforma nossa compreensão não apenas do cérebro, mas de nós mesmos, como seres sociais, ilustrando de forma vívida, por meio da ciência e de histórias humanas, nossa busca por conexão e significado."Uma análise brilhante e comovente do cérebro humano e das emoções. Uma grande leitura." — Nature"Deisseroth realiza a difícil façanha de, ao mesmo tempo, comover e esclarecer. Um livro agradável de ler e repleto de ciência de ponta." — The Observer

To nie przystoi!

Science & Nature

Z tej książki dowiesz się:•Kto powiesił szczura pod zarzutem zamachu stanu?•Dlaczego Richard Wagner rozmawiał ze swoim psem?•Jaką obsesję miał Nikola Tesla?•Jakie grzechy w wieku osiemnastu lat popełnił Isaac Newton? O postaciach, które odcisnęły piętno w historii świata, często myślimy jednowymiarowo. Widzimy w nich niemal wyłącznie pozytywne lub negatywne cechy. A gdyby okazało się, że wielki wynalazca nałogowo dłubał w nosie, mąż stanu bawił się ołowianymi żołnierzykami, zapominając o świecie, a największy zbrodniarz kochał zwierzęta? Czy przez te drobne nawyki nie stają się bardziej ludzcy? „To nie przystoi” to prawdziwa podróż po nieprzyzwoitych i wstydliwych manierach, podczas której od najdziwniejszej strony poznacie Kleopatrę, Napoleona, Benjamina Franklina, władców i królowe, pisarki i malarzy, a przede wszystkim – ludzi. KSIĄŻKI DOBRE NIE TYLKO W TEORII!

Hairy Root Cultures Based Applications

Science & Nature

The book discusses the various methods and protocols available in hairy root culture-based research. The utilization of Agrobacterium mediated genetic transformation and establishment of hairy root cultures has paved the way for large-scale secondary metabolite production in medicinal plants. Presenting recent research and offering insights from eminent research groups, the book covers a range of topics related to hairy root-based applications, including (i) establishment of hairy roots and native production of SM (ii) yield enhancement strategies for increased SM production, like elicitation (iii) hairy roots as a tool for value-added applications such as plant-microbe interaction, characterization of plant genes and root biology studies. As such it is an informative guide and experimental manual for researchers in diverse fields of plant biology.

Multiplicity of Time Scales in Complex Systems

Science & Nature

This highly interdisciplinary volume brings together a carefully curated set of case studies examining complex systems with multiple time scales (MTS) across a variety of fields: materials science, epidemiology, cell physiology, mathematics, climatology, energy transition planning, ecology, economics, sociology, history, and cultural studies. The book addresses the vast diversity of interacting processes underlying the behaviour of different complex systems, highlighting the multiplicity of characteristic time scales that are a common feature of many and showcases a rich variety of methodologies across disciplinary boundaries.Self-organizing, out-of-equilibrium, ever-evolving systems are ubiquitous in the natural and social world. Examples include the climate, ecosystems, living cells, epidemics, the human brain, and many socio-economic systems across history. Their dynamical behaviour poses great challenges in the pressing context of the climate crisis, since they may involve nonlinearities, feedback loops, and the emergence of spatial-temporal patterns, portrayed by resilience or instability, plasticity or rigidity; bifurcations, thresholds and tipping points; burst-in excitation or slow relaxation, and worlds of other asymptotic behaviour, hysteresis, and resistance to change.Chapters can be read individually by the reader with special interest in such behaviours of particular complex systems or in specific disciplinary perspectives. Read together, however, the case studies, opinion pieces, and meta-studies on MTS systems presented and analysed here combine to give the reader insights that are more than the sum of the book’s individual chapters, as surprising similarities become apparent in seemingly disparate and unconnected systems. MTS systems call into question naïve perceptions of time and complexity, moving beyond conventional ways of description, analysis, understanding, modelling, numerical prediction, and prescription of the world around us.This edited collection presents new ways of forecasting, introduces new means of control, and – perhaps as the most demanding task – it singles out a sustainable description of an MTS system under observation, offering a more nuanced interpretation of the floods of quantitative data and images made available by high- and low-frequency measurement tools in our unprecedented era of information flows.Chapter “Multiplicity of Time Scales in Blood Cell Formation and Leukemia” is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

Discerning Experts

Science & Nature

This groundbreaking study of environmental assessment “provides an essential examination of the factors that shape and dictate our climate policy” (Choice).Discerning Experts reexamines the assessments that many governments rely on to help guide environmental policy and action. Through their close look at reports involving acid rain, ozone depletion, and sea level rise, the authors explore how experts deliberate and decide on the scientific facts about problems like climate change. They also seek to understand how the scientists involved make the judgments they do, how the organization and management of assessment activities affects those judgments, and how expertise is identified and constructed.Discerning Experts uncovers factors that can generate systematic bias and error, and recommends how the process can be improved. As the first study of the internal workings of large environmental assessments, this book reveals their strengths and weaknesses, and explains what assessments can—and cannot—be expected to contribute to public policy and the common good.

Green Flexible Electronics for Sustainable Healthcare

Science & Nature

Flexible electronics, or flex circuits, involve the construction of electrical circuits using flexible plastic substrates, such as polyimide, PEEK, or transparent conductive polyester sheets. Flexible electronic assemblies are made using a variety of manufacturing techniques, including printing, laminating, and deposition, which enables the circuit board to bend or take on a desired shape. They allow the user to create extremely flexible, light-weight, and thin electronic components such as batteries, screens, and sensors. Green Flexible Electronics for Sustainable Healthcare discusses incorporating flexible and printed electronics in the field of sustainable healthcare. It details how to utilise natural materials in the design, fabrication and application of flexible electronic-based wearables and sensors. It also offers a detailed analysis of the effects and challenges of integrating flexible electronics within the healthcare ecosystem. Green Flexible Electronics for Sustainable Healthcare considers the implications of the advances in flexible electronics with regards data privacy, security and scalability. - Explores the role of advanced technologies, such as nanomaterials and artificial intelligence, in the creation of flexible and printed electronics - Analyses the design of flexible electronics-based wearables and sensors and their application for healthcare - Addresses the issues of data privacy, security and scalability when utilising flexible electronics within healthcare ecosystems

The Fourth Dimension: Toward a Geometry of Higher Reality

Science & Nature

This is the definitive popular exploration of what the fourth dimension means, both physically and spiritually. Mathematician and science-fiction novelist Rudy Rucker takes readers on a guided tour of a higher reality that explores what the fourth dimension is and what it has meant to generations of thinkers. The exciting and challenging journey is enhanced by more than 200 illustrations and a host of puzzles and problems (with answers)."This is an invigorating book, a short but spirited slalom for the mind." — Timothy Ferris, The New York Times Book Review "Highly readable. One is reminded of the breadth and depth of Hofstadter's Gödel, Escher, Bach." — Science"Anyone with even a minimal interest in mathematics and fantasy will find The Fourth Dimension informative and mind-dazzling... [Rucker] plunges into spaces above three with a zest and energy that is breathtaking." — Martin Gardner "Those who think the fourth dimension is nothing but time should be encouraged to read The Fourth Dimension, along with anyone else who feels like opening the hinges of his mind and letting in a bit of fresh air." — John Sladek, Washington Post Book World"A mine of mathematical insights and a thoroughly satisfying read." — Paul Davies, Nature Magazine

Cosmic Expansion

Science & Nature

"Cosmic Expansion" explores the accelerating expansion of the universe, a groundbreaking discovery in cosmology. It examines evidence supporting this phenomenon, dark energy's role, and the implications for the universe's fate. One intriguing aspect discussed is how the expansion challenges our current understanding of physics, particularly the standard model of particle physics. The book also highlights observations from the Hubble Space Telescope, WMAP, and the Planck satellite, showcasing how data from these sources support the accelerating expansion.The book progresses by first introducing fundamental cosmology concepts like the Big Bang theory and the cosmic microwave background. It then presents evidence for accelerated expansion through supernova observations and baryon acoustic oscillations. Finally, it delves into potential future scenarios like the Big Rip, Big Freeze, and Big Crunch."Cosmic Expansion" stands out by focusing specifically on the physics of cosmic expansion and dark energy, making it a valuable resource for students, researchers, and anyone interested in astrophysics.

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