Is invention really "99 percent perspiration and one percent inspiration" as Thomas Edison assured us? Inventive Minds assembles a group of authors well equipped to address this question: contemporary inventors of important new technologies, historians of science and industry, and cognitive psychologists interested in the process of creativity. In telling their stories, the inventors describe the origins of such remarkable devices as ultrasound, the electron microscope, and artificial diamonds. The historians help us look into the minds of innovators like Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, Michael Faraday, and the Wright brothers, drawing on original notebooks and other sources to show how they made their key discoveries. Finally, cognitive psychologists explore the mental processes that figure in creative thinking. Contributing to the authors' insight is their special focus on the "front end" of invention - where ideas come from and how they are transformed into physical prototypes. They answer three questions: How does invention happen? How does invention contrast with other commonly creative pursuits such as scientific inquiry, musical composition, or painting? And how might invention best happen - that is, what kinds of settings, conditions, and strategies appear to foster inventive activity? The book yields a wealth of information that will make absorbing reading for cognitive and social psychologists, social historians, and many working scientists and general readers who are interested in the psychology of personality and the roots of ingenuity.

"Chemically modified surfaces" is a monographic series designed to serve as a medium for the publication of new scientific results concerning surface modification by means of chemical reaction. The variety of substrates which may be involved, and an equally extensive variety of modification reactions and methodologies makes this a broad topic crossing many traditional disciplinary lines. This second volume contains the papers presented at the Chemically Modified Surfaces symposium in Colorado where experts from around the world presented papers on such topics as biomaterials, catalysis, surface characterization, and surface modification in electronics.

This is a graduate level textbook in nanoscale heat transfer and energy conversion that can also be used as a reference for researchers in the developing field of nanoengineering. It provides a comprehensive overview of microscale heat transfer, focusing on thermal energy storage and transport. Chen broadens the readership by incorporating results from related disciplines, from the point of view of thermal energy storage and transport, and presents related topics on the transport of electrons, phonons, photons, and molecules. This book is part of the MIT-Pappalardo Series in Mechanical Engineering.

Research is never free of pressures and constraints and to understand its results properly these have to be assessed and analyzed. In agriculture, research into biotechnology and GMOs, as well as pesticides and herbicides, is big business - agribusiness. This book looks at the crucial roles of funding and the political context on the research agenda and its results in agricultural development. It provides a critical evaluation of the participatory methods now widely used and explores the ways in which research into biotechnology have reflected the interests of the various parties involved.

From the acclaimed author of "The Pencil" and "To Engineer Is Human," "The Essential Engineer" is an eye-opening exploration of the ways in which science and engineering must work together to address our world's most pressing issues, from dealing with climate change and the prevention of natural disasters to the development of efficient automobiles and the search for renewable energy sources. While the scientist may identify problems, it falls to the engineer to solve them. It is the inherent practicality of engineering, which takes into account structural, economic, environmental, and other factors that science often does not consider, that makes engineering vital to answering our most urgent concerns.
Henry Petroski takes us inside the research, development, and debates surrounding the most critical challenges of our time, exploring the feasibility of biofuels, the progress of battery-operated cars, and the question of nuclear power. He gives us an in-depth investigation of the various options for renewable energy--among them solar, wind, tidal, and ethanol--explaining the benefits and risks of each. Will windmills soon populate our landscape the way they did in previous centuries? Will synthetic trees, said to be more efficient at absorbing harmful carbon dioxide than real trees, soon dot our prairies? Will we construct a "sunshade" in outer space to protect ourselves from dangerous rays? In many cases, the technology already exists. What's needed is not so much invention as engineering.
Just as the great achievements of centuries past--the steamship, the airplane, the moon landing--once seemed beyond reach, the solutions to the twenty-first century's problems await only a similar coordination of science and engineering. Eloquently reasoned and written, "The Essential Engineer" identifies and illuminates these problems--and, above all, sets out a course for putting ideas into action.

What does it mean to be an expert? Traditionally, expertise has been associated with authoritative knowledge, honed by practice and certified by powerful institutions. Scientists, of course, are often presumed to be the ultimate experts, but it is exactly in this area that the importance of defining what it means to be an expert is paramount. In "Rethinking Expertise," Harry Collins and Robert Evans offer a radical new perspective on the role of expertise in the practice of science and the public evaluation of technology.
After setting out the problem of expertise in the context of modern society, Collins and Evans present a Periodic Table of Expertises based on the idea of tacit knowledge--in other words, knowledge that we have but cannot explain. They then look at how some expertises are used to judge others, how we judge between experts even when we are not experts ourselves, and how credentials are used to judge experts. A central new concept in the book and, the authors argue, in society, is interactional expertise--a proficiency in the language of a specialism if not in its practices. Here, they describe experiments in which those with interactional expertise succeed in pretending to be full-blown experts in imitation games.
Throughout, Collins and Evans ask an important question: how can the public make use of science and technology before there is consensus in the scientific community? It is a quandary that has wide implications for public policy and for those who seek to understand science and benefit from it. The authors offer a balanced assessment of the main issues and propose a new understanding of how to extend public participation in technical decision makingwithout abandoning the idea of expertise as real, useful, and necessary.
Provocative and profound, "Rethinking Expertise "will be of keen interest to scientists and scholars in science studies but will also have implications for decision makers and experts across many fields--in technology, education, sociology, psychology, philosophy, computer engineering, and business.

Dieses Buch bereitet Fuhrungskrafte auf neue Aufgaben im Zuge des digitalen Wandels vor. Denn wahrend sich Technologien und Markte radikal verandern, wird Beidhandigkeit (auch Ambidextrie) fur global agierende Industrieunternehmen zur neuen Schlusselkompetenz. Vermehrt wird das gleichzeitige Orchestrieren in sich widerspruchlicher Innovationsansatze gefordert. Wie aus einer Zerreissprobe mithilfe von einfachen Kommunikationsinstrumenten ein eleganter Spagat und eine gute Balance werden kann, zeigen zahlreiche Praxisbeispiele, Interviews und konkrete Umsetzungstipps fur den Fuhrungsalltag. Das Buch liefert leicht umzusetzende Handlungsoptionen fur Fuhrungskrafte, um die Zeit des Wandels bewusst und aktiv zu gestalten, die Menschen in Unternehmen zu begeistern, ihr kreatives Potenzial freizusetzen und als Organisation den Sprung in die Zukunft zu schaffen.

This study reports the efforts of a workshop to build partnerships between universities, industry, and governments. In 2000, the National Science Foundation (NSF) created the Partnerships for Innovation (PFI) program. The PFI is part of a larger NSF effort to build a new foundation for innovation based upon partnerships between university, industry, and local and regional governments that also will be responsive to emerging economic and social challenges facing the nation. In June 2001, a workshop held in Arlington, Virginia, brought together PFI grantees and representatives from university and industry to consider the roles of the PFI and the NSF in the larger national innovation enterprise. This report synthesizes workshop discussions regarding innovation and sustainable partnerships. The workshop revealed strong support for a formal evaluation of the PFI program and endorsed both an expanded NSF role in promoting innovation and partnerships through the PFI and other programs and continued efforts by NSF to further diversify and better exploit synergies between its innovation-supporting programs. (PB) The National Science Foundation created the Partnerships for Innovation program in 2000. This report synthesizes workshop discussions regarding innovation and sustainable partnerships between universities, industry, and government, and participants' strong endorsement of an expanded NSF role promoting these activities.