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Books > Science & Mathematics > Science: general issues
J.B.S. Haldane (1892-1964) is widely appreciated as one of the greatest and most influential British scientists of the 20th century, making significant contributions to genetics, physiology, biochemistry, biometry, cosmology, and other sciences. More remarkable, then, is the fact that Haldane had no formal qualification in science. He made frequent appearances in the media, making pronouncements on a variety of poignant topics including mining disasters, meteorites, politics, and the economy, and was a popular scientific essay writer. Haldane also was famed for conducting painful experiments on himself, including several instances in which he permanently himself. A staunch Marxist and convert to Hinduism, Haldane lived a diverse, lively and interesting life that is still revered by today's science community. A biography of Haldane has not been attempted since 1968, and that book provided an incomplete account of the man's scientific achievement. "The Life and Works of J.B.S. Haldane" serves to fix this glaring omission, providing a complete biographical sketch written by Krishna Dronamraju, one of the last living men to have worked personally with Haldane. A new genre of biographies of 20th-century scientists has come into being, and thus far works have been written about men like Einstein, Oppenheimer, Bernal, Galton, and many more; the inclusion of Haldane within this genre is an absolute necessity. Dronamraju evaluates Haldane's social and political background, as well as his scientific creativity and accomplishments. Haldane embodies a generation of intellectuals who believed and promoted knowledge for its own sake, and that spirit of scientific curiosity and passion is captured in this biography.
Information literacy-the ability to find, evaluate, and use information resources-is an important skill for future chemists. Students and scientists need to distinguish between information provided by Wikipedia, ChemSpider, research journals, and The New York Times, depending on the intended use of the information sought. Instructors and librarians may often teach these skills through stand-alone database demonstrations, video tutorials, and lectures. However, it is possible to teach these skills in a more contextual and integrated manner by designing chemistry assignments that incorporate information literacy as a learning outcome. This book will prove useful for librarians and chemistry instructors who are designing courses in which students develop information literacy in the context of a chemistry course at two-year colleges, public and private universities, and high schools. The chapters in this book review the current state of information literacy in chemistry and provide concrete examples of assignments and interventions aimed at teaching information literacy skills in chemistry curricula. A wide range of options are offered for integrating information literacy into college-level chemistry courses, including general chemistry, organic chemistry, science courses for students not majoring in science, and chemistry capstone research courses.
Metaphysicians should pay attention to quantum mechanics. Why? Not because it provides definitive answers to many metaphysical questions-the theory itself is remarkably silent on the nature of the physical world, and the various interpretations of the theory on offer present conflicting ontological pictures. Rather, quantum mechanics is essential to the metaphysician because it reshapes standard metaphysical debates and opens up unforeseen new metaphysical possibilities. Even if quantum mechanics provides few clear answers, there are good reasons to think that any adequate understanding of the quantum world will result in a radical reshaping of our classical world-view in some way or other. Whatever the world is like at the atomic scale, it is almost certainly not the swarm of particles pushed around by forces that is often presupposed. This book guides readers through the theory of quantum mechanics and its implications for metaphysics in a clear and accessible way. The theory and its various interpretations are presented with a minimum of technicality. The consequences of these interpretations for metaphysical debates concerning realism, indeterminacy, causation, determinism, holism, and individuality (among other topics) are explored in detail, stressing the novel form that the debates take given the empirical facts in the quantum domain. While quantum mechanics may not deliver unconditional pronouncements on these issues, the range of possibilities consistent with our knowledge of the empirical world is relatively small-and each possibility is metaphysically revisionary in some way. This book will appeal to researchers, students, and anybody else interested in how science informs our world-view.
Now more than ever we are facing pressing world challenges of energy (identifying alternate energy), food (ensuring the food supply), water (providing clean water), and human health (enabling individualized medicine); and to solve these challenges will require chemistry and the related chemical sciences. Integrating sustainability into everything we do from instituting responsible operations, to selecting partners for change and innovating sustainable solutions. Industry needs academe to prepare their graduates to ascend the ladder with skill and agility. This can only be done by integrating sustainability expeditiously into chemistry curricula.
This book describes the profound changes that occurred in the teaching of chemistry in western countries in the years immediately following the Soviet Union's launch of Sputnik, the first artificial Earth satellite, in 1957. With substantial government and private funding, chemistry educators introduced new curricula, developed programs to enhance the knowledge and skills of chemistry teachers, conceived of new models for managing chemistry education, and experimented with a plethora of materials for visualization of concepts and delivery of content. They also began to seriously study and apply findings from the behavioral sciences to the teaching and learning of chemistry. Now, many chemistry educators are contributing original research in the cognitive sciences that relates to chemistry education. While Sputnik seemed to signal the dawn of far-reaching effects that would take place in political, diplomatic, and strategic, as well as in educational spheres, the seeds of these changes were sown decades before, mainly through the insight and actions of one individual, Neil Gordon, who, virtually singlehandedly, launched the ACS Division of Chemical Education and the Journal of Chemical Education. These two institutions provided the impetus for the United States to eventually become the undisputed leader in chemistry education worldwide.
Work with individual atoms and molecules aims to demonstrate
that miniaturized electronic, optical, magnetic, and mechanical
devices can operate ultimately even at the level of a single atom
or molecule. As such, atomic and molecular manipulation has played
an emblematic role in the development of the field of nanoscience.
New methods based on the use of the scanning tunnelling microscope
(STM) have been developed to characterize and manipulate all the
degrees of freedom of individual atoms and molecules with an
unprecedented precision. In the meantime, new concepts have emerged
to design molecules and substrates having specific optical,
mechanical and electronic functions, thus opening the way to the
fabrication of real nano-machines. Manipulation of individual atoms
and molecules has also opened up completely new areas of research
and knowledge, raising fundamental questions of "Optics at the
atomic scale," "Mechanics at the atomic scale," Electronics at the
atomic scale," "Quantum physics at the atomic scale," and
"Chemistry at the atomic scale." This book aims to illustrate the
main aspects of this ongoing scientific adventure and to anticipate
the major challenges for the future in "Atomic and molecular
manipulation" from fundamental knowledge to the fabrication of
atomic-scale devices.
There are eight columns in the Periodic Table. The eighth column is
comprised of the rare gases, so-called because they are the rarest
elements on earth. They are also called the inert or noble gases
because, like nobility, they do no work. They are colorless,
odorless, invisible gases which do not react with anything, and
were thought to be unimportant until the early 1960s. Starting in
that era, David Fisher has spent roughly fifty years doing research
on these gases, publishing nearly a hundred papers in the
scientific journals, applying them to problems in geophysics and
cosmochemistry, and learning how other scientists have utilized
them to change our ideas about the universe, the sun, and our own
planet.
Compelling evidence exists to support the hypothesis that both
formal and informal mentoring practices that provide access to
information and resources are effective in promoting career
advancement, especially for women. Such associations provide
opportunities to improve the status, effectiveness, and visibility
of a faculty member via introductions to new colleagues, knowledge
of information about the organizational system, and awareness of
innovative projects and new challenges.
This book examines the history and fundamentals of the physical organic chemistry discipline. With the recent flowering of the organic synthesis field, physical organic chemistry has seemed to be shrinking or perhaps is just being absorbed into the toolkit of the synthetic chemist. The only Nobel Prize that can be reasonably attributed to a physical organic chemist is the 1994 award to George Olah, although Jeffrey I. Seeman has recently made a strong case that R. B. Woodward was actually a physical organic chemist in disguise (I). 2014 saw the awarding of the 50th James Flack Norris Award in Physical Organic Chemistry. James Flack Norris was an early physical organic chemist, before the discipline received its name. This book provides insight into the fundamentals of the field, and each chapter is devoted to a major discovery or to noted physical organic chemists, including Paul Schleyer, William Doering, and Glen A. Russell.
Collaborations between scientists often transcend borders and cultural differences. The fundamental nature of science allows scientists to communicate using knowledge of their field but the institutions that support them are often hindered by financial and cultural barriers. As a result, science suffers. This book evolved from an August 2009 symposium at the 238th annual meeting of the American Chemical Society in Washington, DC. Its focus is on chemistry students and professors interested in developing a global approach to teaching chemistry, by participating in an international exchange program or incorporating culturally inclusive techniques into their classroom. The book has three broad themes; education research with a globalized perspective, experiences of teaching and learning in different countries, and organizations that support a global view of chemical education and chemistry.
Aimed at academics, academic managers and administrators,
professionals in scientometrics, information scientists and science
policy makers at all levels. This book reviews the principles,
methods and indicators of scientometric evaluation of information
processes in science and assessment of the publication activity of
individuals, teams, institutes and countries. It provides
scientists, science officers, librarians and students with basic
and advanced knowledge on evaluative scientometrics. Especially
great stress is laid on the methods applicable in practice and on
the clarification of quantitative aspects of impact of scientific
publications measured by citation indicators.
An exciting challenge to how the internet and ICT have been
understood in academia and popular culture and shows how important
cultural assumptions are in how we understand technology. The
Internet, Power and Society argues that the way in which we view
technology such as the internet owes much to older, historic views
of the media and to issues in contemporary society. Such
perspectives are deeply rooted in a Western view of technology and
the book concludes by offering a radically new perspective as to
how the internet can change a society that is truly global in its
application.
Written by an immunologist, this book traces the concept of
immunity from ancient times up to the present day, examining how
changing concepts and technologies have affected the course of the
science. It shows how the personalities of scientists and even
political and social factors influenced both theory and practice in
the field. With fascinating stories of scientific disputes and
shifting scientific trends, each chapter examines an important
facet of this discipline that has been so central to the
development of modern biomedicine. With its biographical dictionary
of important scientists and its lists of significant discoveries
and books, this volume will provide the most complete historical
reference in the field.
This is the first book to bring together both the basic theory and proven process engineering practice of AFM. It is presented in a way that is accessible and valuable to practising engineers as well as to those who are improving their AFM skills and knowledge, and to researchers who are developing new products and solutions using AFM. The book takes a rigorous and practical approach that ensures it
is directly applicable to process engineering problems.
Fundamentals and techniques are concisely described, while specific
benefits for process engineering are clearly defined and
illustrated. Key content includes: particle-particle, and
particle-bubble interactions; characterization of membrane
surfaces; the development of fouling resistant membranes; nanoscale
pharmaceutical analysis; nanoengineering for cellular sensing;
polymers on surfaces; micro and nanoscale rheometry.
This book brings together the latest perspectives and ideas on teaching modern physical chemistry. It includes perspectives from experienced and well-known physical chemists, a thorough review of the education literature pertaining to physical chemistry, a thorough review of advances in undergraduate laboratory experiments from the past decade, in-depth descriptions of using computers to aid student learning, and innovative ideas for teaching the fundamentals of physical chemistry. This book will provide valuable insight and information to all teachers of physical chemistry.
New Publication! Based on years of experience and prior publications, the NEW two-volume book, STEM RESEARCH for STUDENTS, is a vital resource for K-12 teachers, higher education faculty, and their students. In Volume Two, students build upon a strong foundation to create original STEM projects: Brainstorm ideas for projects; Analyze and address the safety risks involved in a project; Use the library and Web to expand understanding and develop a valid idea; Conduct a group mini-project which involves readily-available materials in the classroom, on a field site, or at a community location. Use algebra to represent patterns and develop mathematical models; Use statistics to detect the significance of relationships; and Communicate project findings through formal papers, visual presentations, and interactions with peers or judges. STEM Research for Students, Volume 2 is: Student friendly! Each chapter is carefully sequenced and contains a variety of formative assessment tools. Key definitions are included in an appendix. Essential foundational knowledge from Volume 1 is clearly referenced. STEM encompassing! Students have multiple opportunities to make connections by applying information from the various chapters to original projects. Teacher enhanced! Each chapter contains learning objectives and assessment tools checklists or rubrics. Answers to the practice sets are available on a secure Kendall Hunt web site. Standards aligned! All chapters are aligned with the Next Generation Science Standards, Common Core Standards for Mathematics and Literacy in Science and Technical Subjects, and the International Standards for Technology in Education Standards for Students. Available in print and e-Book formats, STEM Research for Students, Volume 2, may be used: As a supplemental text in middle school, high school, and introductory college courses; As core text for research classes and STEM clubs where students are ready to engage in group or individual projects: For pre-service and in-service teachers of science, mathematics, career and technical courses, and gifted students; As a resource for all teachers involved with experiments, engineering designs, mathematical investigations, and competitive STEM projects. The companion volume, STEM Research for Students, Volume 1, is a resource for students to acquire or strengthen the foundational knowledge necessary to engage in an original project.
New Publication! Based on years of experience and prior publications, the NEW two-volume book, STEM RESEARCH for STUDENTS, is a vital resource for K-12 teachers, higher education faculty, and their students. In Volume One, students acquire the fundamentals and apply them to their investigations: Conduct experiments and refine the design and procedures; Construct data tables and graphs, use descriptive statistics, and make sense of an experiment; Meet a human need by designing, building, and testing a model; Communicate findings through reports and interactions with peers; Apply mathematical concepts to data including ratio and proportional relationships, geometry and measurement, algebra, and statistics. STEM Research for Students, Volume 1, is: Student friendly! Chapters contain investigations with readily available materials, explanations of major concepts, practice sets, and formative assessment tools. Use as a sequence or as individual units of study for specific content. STEM encompassing! For each core experiment, students have multiple options for making connections to various scientific disciplines, engineering, and mathematics. Teacher enhanced! Each chapter contains learning objectives and assessment tools checklists or rubrics. Answers to the practice sets are available on a secure Kendall Hunt web site. Standards aligned! All chapters are aligned with the Next Generation Science Standards, Common Core Standards for Mathematics and Literacy in Science and Technical Subjects, and the International Standards for Technology in Education Standards for Students. Available in print and e-Book formats, STEM Research for Students, Volume 1, may be used: As a supplemental text in upper elementary, middle, and senior high classrooms; As a core text for introductory research courses and STEM research clubs; For pre-service and in-service teachers of science, mathematics, career and technical courses, and gifted students; As a resource for all teachers involved with experiments, engineering designs, mathematical investigations, and competitive STEM projects. The companion volume, STEM Research for Students, Volume 2 enables students to build upon this strong foundation and create effective science experiments, engineering designs, and mathematical investigations.
The detection and measurement of the dynamic interactions of
proteins within the living cell are critical to our understanding
of cell physiology and pathophysiology. With FRET microscopy and
spectroscopy techniques, basic and clinical scientists can make
such measurements at very high spatial and temporal resolution. But
sources of background information about these tools are very
limited, so this book fills an important gap. It covers both the
basic concepts and theory behind the various FRET microscopy and
spectroscopy techniques, and the practical aspects of using the
techniques and analyzing the results. The critical tricks for
obtaining a good FRET image and precisely quantitating the signals
from living specimens at the nanomolecular level are explained.
Valuable information about the preparation of biological samples
used for FRET image analysis is also provided.
This book provides a rigorous, physics-focused introduction to set theory that is geared towards natural science majors. The science major is presented with a robust introduction to set theory, which concentrates on the specific knowledge and skills that will be needed in calculus topics and natural science topics in general.
After centuries of neglect, the ethics of food are back with a vengeance. Justice for food workers and small farmers has joined the rising tide of concern over the impact of industrial agriculture on food animals and the broader environment, all while a global epidemic of obesity-related diseases threatens to overwhelm modern health systems. An emerging worldwide social movement has turned to local and organic foods, and struggles to exploit widespread concern over the next wave of genetic engineering or nanotechnologies applied to food. Paul B. Thompson's book applies the rigor of philosophy to key topics in the first comprehensive study explore interconnections hidden deep within this welter of issues. Bringing more than thirty years of experience working closely with farmers, agricultural researchers and food system activists to the topic, he explores the eclipse of food ethics during the rise of nutritional science, and examines the reasons for its sudden re-emergence in the era of diet-based disease. Thompson discusses social injustice in the food systems of developed economies and shows how we have missed the key insights for understanding food ethics in the developing world. His discussions of animal production and the environmental impact of agriculture breaks new ground where most philosophers would least expect it. By emphasizing the integration of these issues, Thompson not only brings a comprehensive philosophical approach to moral issues in the production, processing, distribution, and consumption of food - he introduces a fresh way to think about practical ethics that will have implications in other areas of applied philosophy.
This volume consists of written chapters taken from the
presentations at the symposium "100+ Years of Plastics: Leo
Baekeland and Beyond," held March 22, 2010, at the 239th ACS
National Meeting in San Francisco. The symposium celebrates the
100th anniversary of the formation of General Bakelite Corp., which
was preceded by Leo Baekland's synthesis of Bakelite in 1907 and
the unveiling of the Bakelite process in 1909. It is quite
reasonable to use the synthesis of Bakelite as the starting point
of the Age of Plastics. Indeed, Time magazine in its June 14, 1999,
issue on the 100 most influential people of the 20th century chose
Leo Baekeland and his Bakelite synthesis as the sole representative
of chemistry.
The authors of this book argue that there is a great divide between species that makes extrapolation of biochemical research from one group to another utterly invalid. In their previous book, "Sacred Cows and Golden Geese: The Human Cost of Experiments on Animals", the Greeks showed how an amorphous but insidious network of drug manufacturers, researchers dependent on government grants to earn their living, even cage-manufacurers - among others benefiting from "white-coat welfare" - have perpetuated animal research in spite of its total unpredictability when applied to humans. (Cancer in mice, for example, has long been cured. Chimps live long and relatively healthy lives with AIDS. There is no animal form of Alzheimer's disease.) In doing so, the Greeks aimed to blow the lid off the "specious science" we have been culturally conditioned to accept. Taking these revelations one step further, this book uses accessible language to provide the scientific underpinning for the Greeks' philosophy of "do no harm to any animal, human or not," by examining paediatrics, diseases of the brain, new surgical techniques, in vitro research, the Human Genome and Proteome Projects, an array of scien
Artificial intelligence (AI) is often discussed as something extraordinary, a dream-or a nightmare-that awakens metaphysical questions on human life. Yet far from a distant technology of the future, the true power of AI lies in its subtle revolution of ordinary life. From voice assistants like Siri to natural language processors, AI technologies use cultural biases and modern psychology to fit specific characteristics of how users perceive and navigate the external world, thereby projecting the illusion of intelligence. Integrating media studies, science and technology studies, and social psychology, Deceitful Media examines the rise of artificial intelligence throughout history and exposes the very human fallacies behind this technology. Focusing specifically on communicative AIs, Natale argues that what we call "AI" is not a form of intelligence but rather a reflection of the human user. Using the term "banal deception," he reveals that deception forms the basis of all human-computer interactions rooted in AI technologies, as technologies like voice assistants utilize the dynamics of projection and stereotyping as a means for aligning with our existing habits and social conventions. By exploiting the human instinct to connect, AI reveals our collective vulnerabilities to deception, showing that what machines are primarily changing is not other technology but ourselves as humans. Deceitful Media illustrates how AI has continued a tradition of technologies that mobilize our liability to deception and shows that only by better understanding our vulnerabilities to deception can we become more sophisticated consumers of interactive media. |
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