Life's Devices
Life's Devices

Author: Steven Vogel

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2020-03-31

Total Pages: 380

ISBN-13: 0691209499

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This entertaining and informative book describes how living things bump up against non-biological reality. "My immodest aim," says the author, "is to change how you view your immediate surroundings." He asks us to wonder about the design of plants and animals around us: why a fish swims more rapidly than a duck can paddle, why healthy trees more commonly uproot than break, how a shark manages with such a flimsy skeleton, or how a mouse can easily survive a fall onto any surface from any height. The book will not only fascinate the general reader but will also serve as an introductory survey of biomechanics. On one hand, organisms cannot alter the earth's gravity, the properties of water, the compressibility of air, or the behavior of diffusing molecules. On the other, such physical factors form both constraints with which the evolutionary process must contend and opportunities upon which it might capitalize. Life's Devices includes examples from every major group of animals and plants, with references to recent work, with illustrative problems, and with suggestions of experiments that need only common household materials.

Life's Devices
Life's Devices

Author: Steven Vogel

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 1988-12-21

Total Pages: 384

ISBN-13: 9780691024189

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Describes how living things bump up against nonbiological reality.

Darwin's Devices
Darwin's Devices

Author: John Long

Publisher: Basic Books

Published: 2012-04-03

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 0465029280

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What happens when we let robots play the game of life?br Darwin's Devices, Long tells the story of these evolving biorobots -- how they came to be, and what they can teach us about the biology of living and extinct species. Evolving biorobots can replicate creatures that disappeared from the earth long ago, showing us in real time what happens in the face of unexpected environmental challenges. Biomechanically correct models of backbones functioning as part of an autonomous robot, for example, can help us understand why the first vertebrates evolved them.But the most impressive feature of these robots, as Long shows, is their ability to illustrate the power of evolution to solve difficult technological challenges autonomously -- without human input regarding what a workable solution might be. Even a simple robot can create complex behavior, often learning or evolving greater intelligence than humans could possibly program. This remarkable idea could forever alter the face of engineering, design, and even warfare. An amazing tour through the workings of a fertile mind, Darwin's Devices will make you rethink everything you thought you knew about evolution, robot intelligence, and life itself.

My Tech-Wise Life
My Tech-Wise Life

Author: Amy Crouch

Publisher: Baker Books

Published: 2020-11-17

Total Pages: 187

ISBN-13: 1493426834

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It's time to take our power back We can barely imagine our lives without technology. Tech gives us tools to connect with our friends, listen to our music, document our lives, share our opinions, and keep up with what's going on in the world. Yet it also tempts us to procrastinate, avoid honest conversations, compare ourselves with others, and filter our reality. Sometimes, it feels like our devices have a lot more control over us than we have over them. But it doesn't have to be that way. In fact, we deserve so much more than what technology offers us. And when we're wise about how we use our devices, we can get more--more joy, more connection, more out of life. Tech shouldn't get in the way of a life worth living. Let's get tech-wise.

Left to Our Own Devices
Left to Our Own Devices

Author: Margaret E. Morris

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2018-12-25

Total Pages: 187

ISBN-13: 0262039133

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Unexpected ways that individuals adapt technology to reclaim what matters to them, from working through conflict with smart lights to celebrating gender transition with selfies. We have been warned about the psychological perils of technology: distraction, difficulty empathizing, and loss of the ability (or desire) to carry on a conversation. But our devices and data are woven into our lives. We can't simply reject them. Instead, Margaret Morris argues, we need to adapt technology creatively to our needs and values. In Left to Our Own Devices, Morris offers examples of individuals applying technologies in unexpected ways—uses that go beyond those intended by developers and designers. Morris examines these kinds of personalized life hacks, chronicling the ways that people have adapted technology to strengthen social connection, enhance well-being, and affirm identity. Morris, a clinical psychologist and app creator, shows how people really use technology, drawing on interviews she has conducted as well as computer science and psychology research. She describes how a couple used smart lights to work through conflict; how a woman persuaded herself to eat healthier foods when her photographs of salads garnered “likes” on social media; how a trans woman celebrated her transition with selfies; and how, through augmented reality, a woman changed the way she saw her cancer and herself. These and the many other “off-label” adaptations described by Morris cast technology not just as a temptation that we struggle to resist but as a potential ally as we try to take care of ourselves and others. The stories Morris tells invite us to be more intentional and creative when left to our own devices.

Accelerated Life Testing of One-shot Devices
Accelerated Life Testing of One-shot Devices

Author: Narayanaswamy Balakrishnan

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2021-03-23

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 1119664004

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Provides authoritative guidance on statistical analysis techniques and inferential methods for one-shot device life-testing Estimating the reliability of one-shot devices—electro-expolsive devices, fire extinguishers, automobile airbags, and other units that perform their function only once—poses unique analytical challenges to conventional approaches. Due to how one-shot devices are censored, their precise failure times cannot be obtained from testing. The condition of a one-shot device can only be recorded at a specific inspection time, resulting in a lack of lifetime data collected in life-tests. Accelerated Life Testing of One-shot Devices: Data Collection and Analysis addresses the fundamental issues of statistical modeling based on data collected from accelerated life-tests of one-shot devices. The authors provide inferential methods and procedures for planning accelerated life-tests, and describe advanced statistical techniques to help reliability practitioners overcome estimation problems in the real world. Topics covered include likelihood inference, competing-risks models, one-shot devices with dependent components, model selection, and more. Enabling readers to apply the techniques to their own lifetime data and arrive at the most accurate inference possible, this practical resource: Provides expert guidance on comprehensive data analysis of one-shot devices under accelerated life-tests Discusses how to design experiments for data collection from efficient accelerated life-tests while conforming to budget constraints Helps readers develops optimal designs for constant-stress and step-stress accelerated life-tests, mainstream life-tests commonly used in reliability practice Includes R code in each chapter for readers to use in their own analyses of one-shot device testing data Features numerous case studies and practical examples throughout Highlights important issues, problems, and future research directions in reliability theory and practice Accelerated Life Testing of One-shot Devices: Data Collection and Analysis is essential reading for graduate students, researchers, and engineers working on accelerated life testing data analysis.

Update on Life Cycle Strategy for New Implants and Medical Devices
Update on Life Cycle Strategy for New Implants and Medical Devices

Author: Marvi Sri Harwoko

Publisher: Smithers Rapra

Published: 2012-10-31

Total Pages: 124

ISBN-13: 1847354416

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With the emergence of new therapies for diseases which affect vital organs either partially or as a whole, the complexity of the parameter interaction and the variety of new discoveries opens many possibilities to implement these proposals into clinical use. Unfortunately, this diversity can also handicap an efficient design process.Therefore, a practical tool has to be developed, which in the early development stages, systematically supports the product and process optimization by preparing and providing information and knowledge.This book details such a methodology for systematizing the product design process, which uses a knowledge-based design process, a customer-oriented engineering process, and a business supporting life cycle model.This book describes how this methodology can be used as a product design guidance tool for supporting the development of a new implant. The methodology resolves the development complexity by using a series of logical steps and provides researchers with the means to assess these steps as soon as possible for anticipating and removing subsequent useless steps.

The Inner History of Devices
The Inner History of Devices

Author: Sherry Turkle

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2011-09-30

Total Pages: 219

ISBN-13: 0262291568

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Memoir, clinical writings, and ethnography inform new perspectives on the experience of technology; personal stories illuminate how technology enters the inner life. For more than two decades, in such landmark studies as The Second Self and Life on the Screen, Sherry Turkle has challenged our collective imagination with her insights about how technology enters our private worlds. In The Inner History of Devices, she describes her process, an approach that reveals how what we make is woven into our ways of seeing ourselves. She brings together three traditions of listening—that of the memoirist, the clinician, and the ethnographer. Each informs the others to compose an inner history of devices. We read about objects ranging from cell phones and video poker to prosthetic eyes, from Web sites and television to dialysis machines. In an introductory essay, Turkle makes the case for an “intimate ethnography” that challenges conventional wisdom. One personal computer owner tells Turkle: “This computer means everything to me. It's where I put my hope.” Turkle explains that she began that conversation thinking she would learn how people put computers to work. By its end, her question has changed: “What was there about personal computers that offered such deep connection? What did a computer have that offered hope?” The Inner History of Devices teaches us to listen for the answer. In the memoirs, ethnographies, and clinical cases collected in this volume, we read about an American student who comes to terms with her conflicting identities as she contemplates a cell phone she used in Japan (“Tokyo sat trapped inside it”); a troubled patient who uses email both to criticize her therapist and to be reassured by her; a compulsive gambler who does not want to win steadily at video poker because a pattern of losing and winning keeps her more connected to the body of the machine. In these writings, we hear untold stories. We learn that received wisdom never goes far enough.

Deviced!
Deviced!

Author: Doreen Dodgen-Magee

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Published: 2018

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781538115848

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Americans engage with screens for more than ten hours a day, changing our brains, our relationships, and our personal lives. Here, Dodgen-Magee illuminates the effects of device overuse, and offers wisdom gleaned from personal stories, research, and anecdotes from youth, paren...