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With a reputation as the hot-air balloon capital of the world and the home to the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta (R), the skies of the southwestern desert city of Albuquerque frequently showcase the magic and adventure of ballooning. This legacy links back to the 1880s and a man by the name of Park Van Tassel. Through his pioneering flight, Van Tassel not only opened the skies to future generations across New Mexico, but he also opened minds to the possibility of manned flight throughout the American West. A charismatic, P. T. Barnum-like showman, Van Tassel rose from obscurity to introduce the new science of ballooning and parachuting throughout the West. Van Tassel toured extensively--from California to Utah, Colorado, and Louisiana and later embarking on an international journey that took him to Hawaii, Australia, Southeast Asia, India, Africa, and beyond. Sky Rider weaves together the many threads of Van Tassel's extraordinary life journey, situating him at last in his rightful place among the prominent aerial exhibitionists of his time.
Bioinformatics has never been as popular as it is today. The
genomics revolution is generating so much data in such rapid
succession that it has become difficult for biologists to decipher.
In particular, there are many problems in biology that are too
large to solve with standard methods. Researchers in evolutionary
computation (EC) have turned their attention to these problems.
They understand the power of EC to rapidly search very large and
complex spaces and return reasonable solutions. While these
researchers are increasingly interested in problems from the
biological sciences, EC and its problem-solving capabilities are
generally not yet understood or applied in the biology
community.
The Wright brothers have long received the lion's share of credit for inventing the airplane. But a California scientist succeeded in flying gliders twenty years before the Wright's powered flights at Kitty Hawk in 1903. Quest for Flight reveals the amazing accomplishments of John J. Montgomery, a prolific inventor who piloted the glider he designed in 1883 in the first controlled flights of a heavier-than-air craft in the Western Hemisphere.Re-examining the history of American aviation, Craig S. Harwood and Gary B. Fogel present the story of human efforts to take to the skies. They show that history's nearly exclusive focus on two brothers resulted from a lengthy public campaign the Wrights waged to profit from their aeroplane patent and create a monopoly in aviation. Countering the aspersions cast on Montgomery and his work, Harwood and Fogel build a solidly documented case for Montgomery's pioneering role in aeronautical innovation. As a scientist researching the laws of flight, Montgomery invented basic methods of aircraft control and stability, refined his theories in aerodynamics over decades of research, and brought widespread attention to aviation by staging public demonstrations of his gliders. After his first flights near San Diego in the 1880s, his pursuit continued through a series of glider designs. These experiments culminated in 1905 with controlled flights in Northern California using tandem-wing Montgomery gliders launched from balloons. These flights reached the highest altitudes yet attained, demonstrated the effectiveness of Montgomery's designs, and helped change society's attitude toward what was considered ""the impossible art"" of aerial navigation. Inventors and aviators working west of the Mississippi at the turn of the twentieth century have not received the recognition they deserve. Harwood and Fogel place Montgomery's story and his exploits in the broader context of western aviation and science, shedding new light on the reasons that California was the epicenter of the American aviation industry from the very beginning.
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