The Age of Synthesis
The Age of Synthesis

Author: Carl W. Hall

Publisher: Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI Studies)

Published: 1995

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This century is widely recognized as the Age of Analysis. A posteriori evidence is accumulating to demonstrate that the next century will be the Age of Synthesis. Synthesis will supplement analysis as a major thrust in our technological society. Synthesis requires a vision to project into the future, and demands a more holistic approach. Synthesis can help reduce the «two cultures» syndrome. Both natural and unnatural or human-made systems, involving the arts, sciences, the professions, and the applied fields, are discussed, as well as the philosophy of Plato, Aristotle, Kant, and many other recognized philosophers.

Age of Information
Age of Information

Author: Yin Sun

Publisher: Morgan & Claypool Publishers

Published: 2019-12-12

Total Pages: 226

ISBN-13: 1681736799

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Information usually has the highest value when it is fresh. For example, real-time knowledge about the location, orientation, and speed of motor vehicles is imperative in autonomous driving, and the access to timely information about stock prices and interest rate movements is essential for developing trading strategies on the stock market. The Age of Information (AoI) concept, together with its recent extensions, provides a means of quantifying the freshness of information and an opportunity to improve the performance of real-time systems and networks. Recent research advances on AoI suggest that many well-known design principles of traditional data networks (for, e.g., providing high throughput and low delay) need to be re-examined for enhancing information freshness in rapidly emerging real-time applications. This book provides a suite of analytical tools and insightful results on the generation of information-update packets at the source nodes and the design of network protocols forwarding the packets to their destinations. The book also points out interesting connections between AoI concept and information theory, signal processing, and control theory, which are worthy of future investigation.

The Chemical Age
The Chemical Age

Author: Frank A. von Hippel

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2020-09-04

Total Pages: 404

ISBN-13: 022669738X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This sweeping history reveals how the use of chemicals has saved lives, destroyed species, and radically changed our planet: “Remarkable . . . highly recommended.” —Choice In The Chemical Age, ecologist Frank A. von Hippel explores humanity’s long and uneasy coexistence with pests, and how the battles to exterminate them have shaped our modern world. He also tells the captivating story of the scientists who waged war on famine and disease with chemistry. Beginning with the potato blight tragedy of the 1840s, which led scientists on an urgent mission to prevent famine using pesticides, von Hippel traces the history of pesticide use to the 1960s, when Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring revealed that those same chemicals were insidiously damaging our health and driving species toward extinction. Telling the story in vivid detail, von Hippel showcases the thrills—and complex consequences—of scientific discovery. He describes the creation of chemicals used to kill pests—and people. And, finally, he shows how scientists turned those wartime chemicals on the landscape at a massive scale, prompting the vital environmental movement that continues today.

Naked Genes
Naked Genes

Author: Helga Nowotny

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2011-02-04

Total Pages: 155

ISBN-13: 0262294990

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The interaction between new forms of biological life and new forms of social life in modern democracies. The molecular life sciences are making visible what was once invisible. Yet the more we learn about our own biology, the less we are able to fit this knowledge into an integrated whole. Life is divided into new sub-units and reassembled into new forms: from genes to clones, from embryonic stages to the building-blocks of synthetic biology. Extracted from their scientific and social contexts, these new entities become not only visible but indeed “naked”: ready to assume an essential status of their own and take on multiple values and meanings as they pass from labs to courts, from patent offices to parliaments and back. In Naked Genes, leading science scholar Helga Nowotny and molecular biologist Giuseppe Testa examine the interaction between these dramatic advances in the life sciences and equally dramatic political reconfigurations of our societies. Considering topics ranging from assisted reproduction and personalized medicine to genetic sports doping, they reveal both surprising continuities and radical discontinuities between the latest advances in the life sciences and long-standing human traditions.

Materials Science and Engineering for the 1990s
Materials Science and Engineering for the 1990s

Author: National Research Council

Publisher: National Academies Press

Published: 1989-02-01

Total Pages: 322

ISBN-13: 0309039282

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Materials science and engineering (MSE) contributes to our everyday lives by making possible technologies ranging from the automobiles we drive to the lasers our physicians use. Materials Science and Engineering for the 1990s charts the impact of MSE on the private and public sectors and identifies the research that must be conducted to help America remain competitive in the world arena. The authors discuss what current and future resources would be needed to conduct this research, as well as the role that industry, the federal government, and universities should play in this endeavor.

Biodefense in the Age of Synthetic Biology
Biodefense in the Age of Synthetic Biology

Author: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine

Publisher: National Academies Press

Published: 2019-01-05

Total Pages: 189

ISBN-13: 0309465184

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Scientific advances over the past several decades have accelerated the ability to engineer existing organisms and to potentially create novel ones not found in nature. Synthetic biology, which collectively refers to concepts, approaches, and tools that enable the modification or creation of biological organisms, is being pursued overwhelmingly for beneficial purposes ranging from reducing the burden of disease to improving agricultural yields to remediating pollution. Although the contributions synthetic biology can make in these and other areas hold great promise, it is also possible to imagine malicious uses that could threaten U.S. citizens and military personnel. Making informed decisions about how to address such concerns requires a realistic assessment of the capabilities that could be misused. Biodefense in the Age of Synthetic Biology explores and envisions potential misuses of synthetic biology. This report develops a framework to guide an assessment of the security concerns related to advances in synthetic biology, assesses the levels of concern warranted for such advances, and identifies options that could help mitigate those concerns.

The Science of Synthesis
The Science of Synthesis

Author: Debora Hammond

Publisher: University Press of Colorado

Published: 2011-05-18

Total Pages: 337

ISBN-13: 1457109875

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Debora Hammond's The Science of Synthesis explores the development of general systems theory and the individuals who gathered together around that idea to form the Society for General Systems Research. In examining the life and work of the SGSR's five founding members-Ludwig von Bertalanffy, Kenneth Boulding, Ralph Gerard, James Grier Miller, and Anatol Rapoport-Hammond traces the emergence of systems ideas across a broad range of disciplines in the mid-twentieth century. Both metaphor and framework, the systems concept as articulated by its earliest proponents highlights relationship and interconnectedness among the biological, ecological, social, psychological, and technological dimensions of our increasingly complex lives. Seeking to transcend the reductionism and mechanism of classical science-which they saw as limited by its focus on the discrete, component parts of reality-the general systems community hoped to complement this analytic approach with a more holistic orientation. As one of many systems traditions, the general systems group was specifically interested in fostering collaboration and integration among different disciplinary perspectives, with an emphasis on nurturing more participatory and truly democratic forms of social organization. The Science of Synthesis documents a unique episode in the history of modern thought, one that remains relevant today. This book will be of interest to historians of science, system thinkers, scholars and practitioners in the social sciences, management, organization development and related fields, as well as the general reader interested in the history of ideas that have shaped critical developments in the second half of the twentieth century.

The Synthesis Effect
The Synthesis Effect

Author: John McGrail

Publisher: Red Wheel/Weiser

Published: 2012-03-22

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 1601636121

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

For far too many of us, modern life is a struggle. We are stressed, depressed, anxious, addicted, obese, terrified, and angry. Are we doomed to live this way? Dr. John McGrail answers with an emphatic: “No. Anyone and everyone can create the life of their dreams.” In The Synthesis Effect he shows you how, sharing his unique process in an engaging, friendly narrative that includes stories of real people overcoming real issues and empowering their lives quickly and profoundly. The Synthesis Effect will show you: How you became you—your personality, values, feelings, habits, beliefs, and behaviors—how you create your own reality, and why it’s so difficult to change it. That you already have everything you need within you to change and transform your life, and how to use the models, tools, techniques, and exercises of Synthesis to do so. How to reach “practical enlightenment,” living your life virtually free of suffering...and how to pass it on to others. The Synthesis Effect provides simple, powerful, and clinically proven techniques for creating personal change and transformation while outlining a realistic roadmap to help us rediscover our power, save ourselves, and save our planet.

Subcontinental Synthesis
Subcontinental Synthesis

Author: Paul Purgas

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2023-11-07

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 191368959X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The history of India’s first electronic music studio founded in 1969 at the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad by David Tudor. Subcontinental Synthesis explores the history of India’s first electronic music studio, founded in 1969 at the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad with the support of the composer David Tudor. The essays and writings unravel the narrative and context surrounding the studio as well as the work of the Indian composers who created groundbreaking recordings during its four years of activity. The texts reflect on the role of electronic music within a post-independence India, considering its interconnections with experimental design, radical pedagogies, and the international avant-garde, as well as the encircling conditions of Western ideological soft power within the global expansion of Modernism. Contributors Geeta Dayal, Alannah Chance, Matt Williams, Shilpa Das, Jinraj Joshipura, You Nakai, Rahila Haque, and Paul Purgas

Environment, Development, and Evolution
Environment, Development, and Evolution

Author: Brian Keith Hall

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 336

ISBN-13: 9780262083195

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Leading researchers in evolutionary developmental biology seek linkages between, and a synthesis of, development, physiology, endocrinology, ecology, and evolution. Evolutionary developmental biology, also known as evo-devo or EDB, seeks to find links between development and evolution by opening the "black box" of development's role in evolution and in the evolution of developmental mechanisms. In particular, this volume emphasizes the roles of the environment and of hormonal signaling in evo-devo. It brings together a group of leading researchers to analyze the dynamic interaction of environmental factors with developmental and physiological processes and to examine how environmental signals are translated into phenotypic change, from the molecular and cellular level to organisms and groups of organisms. Taken together, these chapters demonstrate the crucial roles of those processes of genetic, developmental, physiological, and hormonal change that underpin evolutionary change in development, morphology, physiology, behavior, and life-history. Part I investigates links between environmental signals and developmental processes that could be preserved over evolutionary time. Several contributors evaluate the work of the late Ryuichi Matsuda, especially his emphasis on the role of the external environment in genetic change and variability ("pan-environmentalism"). Other contributors in part I analyze different aspects of environmental-genetic-evolutionary linkages, including the importance of alternate ontogenies in evolution and the paradox of stability over long periods of evolutionary time. Part II examines the plasticity that characterizes much of development, with contributors discussing such topics as gene regulatory networks and heterochronicity. Part III analyzes the role of hormones and metamorphosis in the evolution of such organisms with alternate life-history stages as lampreys, amphibians, and insects.