Technology & Engineering

What History’s Greatest Science and Technology Breakthroughs Teach Us About Future Technology

"Dagogo has the uncanny ability to take fascinating topics and somehow make them even more interesting.” –Adam Sinicki, author and founder of The Bioneer

#1 Best Seller in Cold Fusion Programming, General Technology & Reference, and Business & Management Technology History

Embark on an exhilarating journey through the hidden history of technology and innovation and get a glimpse of our future.

Discover the hidden history of technology and its profound impact on our present and future. This captivating book uncovers the stories behind pivotal moments in technology, offering insights into the future of globalized technology and the limitless potential of human ingenuity. Embark on an eye-opening exploration of history's greatest technological breakthroughs, including the captivating stories behind the steam engine revolution, Nikola Tesla's electrifying world, and the birth of the internet and artificial intelligence. A great gift for men and for those looking for dad gift ideas.

Gain new understanding of the limitless possibilities that lie ahead. Delve into the remarkable accounts of visionary men and women who defied norms and reshaped our world. From the audacious thinkers who propelled us into the age of superintelligence to the pioneers who revolutionized medicine and engineering, ColdFusion Presents: New Thinking showcases the power of innovation.

Inside you’ll:

• Uncover the captivating stories behind history's greatest technological breakthroughs
• Gain insights into the driving forces and motivations of the brilliant minds who shaped our world through innovation
• Explore hidden technology history and its profound impact on our present and future

If you enjoyed books like The Innovators, Sapiens, or The Code Book, you'll love ColdFusion Presents: New Thinking.

Enlightenment botany was replete with sexual symbolism—to the extent that many botanical textbooks were widely considered pornographic. Carl Linnaeus's controversial new system for classifying plants based on their sexual characteristics, as well as his use of language resonating with erotic allusions, provoked intense public debate over the morality of botanical study. And the renowned Tahitian exploits of Joseph Banks—whose trousers were reportedly stolen while he was inside the tent of Queen Oberea of Tahiti—reinforced scandalous associations with the field. Yet Linnaeus and Banks became powerful political and scientific figures who were able to promote botanical exploration alongside the exploitation of territories, peoples, and natural resources. Sex, Botany, and Empire explores the entwined destinies of these two men and how their influence served both science and imperialism.

Patricia Fara reveals how Enlightenment botany, under the veil of rationality, manifested a drive to conquer, subdue, and deflower—all in the name of British empire. Linnaeus trained his traveling disciples in a double mission—to bring back specimens for the benefit of the Swedish economy and to spread the gospel of Linnaean taxonomy. Based in London at the hub of an international exchange and correspondence network, Banks ensured that Linnaeus's ideas became established throughout the world. As the president of the Royal Society for more than forty years, Banks revolutionized British science, and his innovations placed science at the heart of trade and politics. He made it a policy to collect and control resources not only for the sake of knowledge but also for the advancement of the empire. Although Linnaeus is often celebrated as modern botany's true founder, Banks has had a greater long-term impact. It was Banks who ensured that science and imperialism flourished together, and it was he who first forged the interdependent relationship between scientific inquiry and the state that endures to this day.

It’s a contraption that makes the lists of “Greatest Inventions Ever”; at the same time, it’s accused of causing global disaster. It has changed everything from architecture to people’s food habits to their voting patterns, to even the way big business washes its windows. It has saved countless lives . . . while causing countless deaths. Most of us are glad it’s there. But we don’t know how, or when, it got there.

It’s air conditioning.

For thousands of years, humankind attempted to do something about the slow torture of hot weather. Everything was tried: water power, slave power, electric power, ice made from steam engines and cold air made from deadly chemicals, “zephyrifers,” refrigerated beds, ventilation amateurs and professional air-sniffers. It wasn’t until 1902 when an engineer barely out of college developed the “Apparatus for Treating Air”—a machine that could actually cool the indoors—and everyone assumed it would instantly change the world.

That wasn’t the case. There was a time when people “ignored” hot weather while reading each day’s list of heat-related deaths, women wore furs in the summertime, heatstroke victims were treated with bloodletting . . . and the notion of a machine to cool the air was considered preposterous, even sinful.

The story of air conditioning is actually two stories: the struggle to perfect a cooling device, and the effort to convince people that they actually needed such a thing. With a cast of characters ranging from Leonardo da Vinci and Richard Nixon to Felix the Cat, Cool showcases the myriad reactions to air conditioning— some of them dramatic, many others comical and wonderfully inconsistent—as it was developed and presented to the world. Here is a unique perspective on air conditioning’s fascinating history: how we rely so completely on it today, and how it might change radically tomorrow.

As the inventor of the separate-condenser steam engine—that Promethean symbol of technological innovation and industrial progress—James Watt has become synonymous with the spirit of invention, while his last name has long been immortalized as the very measurement of power. But contrary to popular belief, Watt did not single-handedly bring about the steam revolution. His "perfect engine" was as much a product of late-nineteenth-century Britain as it was of the inventor's imagination.

As one of the greatest technological developments in human history, the steam engine was a major progenitor of the Industrial Revolution, but it was also symptomatic of its many problems. Armed with a patent on the separate-condenser principle and many influential political connections, Watt and his business partner Matthew Boulton fought to maintain a twenty-five-year monopoly on steam power that stifled innovation and ruthlessly crushed competition. After tinkering with boiling kettles and struggling with leaky cylinders for years without success, Watt would eventually amass a fortune and hold sway over an industry. But, as Ben Marsden shows, he owed his astonishing rise as much to espionage and political maneuvering as to his own creativity and determination.

This is a tale of science and technology in tandem, of factory show-spaces and international espionage, of bankruptcy and brain drains, lobbying and legislation, and patents and pirates. It reveals how James Watt—warts and all—became an icon fit for an age of industry and invention.

An Entertainment for Angels, rather than for Men, one observer called electricity, and it proved to be the most significant scientific discovery of the Enlightenment. Lecturers attracted huge audiences who marveled at sparkling fountains, flaming drinks, pirouetting dancers, and electrified boys. Flamboyant experimenters made chains of soldiers leap into the air, while wealthy women titillated their admirers with a sensational electric kiss. Optimists predicted that this strange power of nature would cure illnesses, improve crop production, even bring the dead back to life. An Entertainment for Angels tells the story of how electricity charged the eighteenth-century imagination. With contemporary illustrations and engaging prose, Patricia Fara vividly portrays the struggles to understand the unusual and exciting effects that electrical experiments were producing.

One of the heroes of the story is Benjamin Franklin, renowned on both sides of the Atlantic as an expert on electricity, who introduced lightning rods to protect tall buildings, pioneered techniques to treat paralyzed patients, and developed one of the most successful explanations of this mysterious phenomenon. Others include Luigi Galvani, whose electrical research on frogs and animals makes for grisly reading but led to the discovery of direct current electricity; and Alessandro Volta, who—with Napoleon's enthusiastic support—became one of Europe's leading scientific practitioners and invented the world's first battery.

Humanitarian workers around the world struggle under dangerous conditions. Yet many do not have the technological tools readily available elsewhere to help them realize their mission to provide essential services and save lives.

This book, the fruit of a historic conference, is a practical guide to current technologies that can help relief and humanitarian aid workers succeed. Designed to facilitate needed technology transfer to the humanitarian sector, the essays focus on areas where technology is underused and predict where new technological advances may be applied to relief efforts.

The essays cover essential areas: communications technology and infrastructure support and security. They describe how such technologies as personal identification and tagging systems, software radios, wireless networks, and computer-aided language translation can promote safety and manage large groups of people. Other essays outline new technological solutions to such challenges as mine removal, water purification, and energy generation.

The contributors are: Kevin M. Cahill, Frank Fernandez, C. Kumar Patel, Paul J. Kolodzy, Joseph Mitola III, Victor Zue, Jaime G. Carbonell, Stephen Squires, Joseph V. Braddock, Arthur L. Lerner-Lam, Ralph James, William L. Warren, and Regina E. Dugan.

The monograph should be seen as an attempt to present changes affecting the category of family farm owners in Poland over the last 70 years, since the end of World War II. These changes brought significant social transformations, including the dismantling of the landowner class (who had large agricultural farms in their possession), moving the state border westward and changing the multiethnic Polish society into one close to ethnic homogeneity.

The main goal of this reflection is to recount ways in which family farms coped with various unfavorable forces and factors in order to remain in operation. One could say that the entire study can be viewed as a manifestation of the well-known phrase that served as the title of the James C. Scott book (1990): Domination and the Arts of Resistance. The monograph presented here refers to these analyses stemming from another edition of sociological research, completed within the framework of the MAESTRO project financed by the National Science Center of Poland.

The main goal of the project was to depict the functioning of agricultural family farms as the traditional sector of agriculture in Poland in the contemporary context of globalization processes. The farms were examined in terms of the principles of sustainable development as well as flexibility and resilience in reaction to various crises.

The monograph is divided into four essential parts. The first part is devoted to the theoretical issues and methodological groundwork for the entire publication. The second part of the book aims to capture the changes that took place from 1994 to 2017, which was an adequate period to encompass the changes and metamorphoses that mostly happened as a result of two things: the regime transformation which began in 1990, and Poland’s accession to the European Union on May 1, 2004. The third part deals with the crucial issues of regional variations, mostly in regard to life strategies and strategies of operating agricultural farms. Finally, there is a fourth part which places the focus on select themes, such as rural lifestyles, food safety and security, farmers’ utilization of new computer and IT resources, and the potential for socio-political mobilization.

From October 6 through 14, 1829, in a small village just outside Liverpool, England, ten thousand spectators gathered to witness one of the most remarkable events of the Industrial Age: a battle among locomotives that became known as the Rainhill Trials. Five machines were entered in the competition: the horse-powered Cycloped attained a top speed of only five miles per hour, while Perseverence—which looked like a giant iron bottle standing upright atop four wagon wheels—creaked along at a walking pace. But the three-way race between Robert Stephenson's Rocket, Timothy Harworth's Sans Pareil, and the crowd favorite, John Braithwaite and John Ericson's Novelty, astonished the gathered crowds. The unfamiliar clank of machinery, huge billows of steam, and unprecedented speeds of thirty miles per hour thrilled the crowds during the trials'carnival-like atmosphere. The Rocket won the competition, though it had been claimed that the machine was not the superior locomotive. Rail, Steam, and Speed explains why and offers an absorbing account of the trials, people, and science that gave birth to steam locomotion.

The purpose of the trials had been to find a locomotive that could maintain a speed of ten miles per hour for a round trip totaling thirty-five miles, the distance separating Liverpool and Manchester, which were soon to be linked by the world's first passenger railway. But what was achieved during those nine days became a benchmark of the Industrial Revolution. Bringing the excitement of this great drama to life, Christopher McGowan introduces us to such pioneers as George Stephenson, who started as a colliery boy and finished as the father of the railways; John Ericsson, a Swedish Army officer who invented a new kind of locomotive in England but spent most of his life in the United States, where he built the Monitor for the Union Navy; and Richard Trevithick, whose eleven-year adventure in South America included winning and losing several fortunes, deserting Bolivar's army, and escaping the jaws of a crocodile. He encountered George Stephenson's son Robert in a Colombian hotel in one of the most bizarre meetings of the age.

But the real stars are the locomotives themselves. McGowan shows how locomotives work and how they were developed—from the gargantuan beam engines condensing low-pressure steam inside enormous cylinders to the small, high-pressure-driven engines of the maverick miner Trevithick. He adapted the engines to power road carriages, but atrocious roads led him to build an engine that could run on rails. And so was born the world's first steam locomotive and modern transportation.

Living sustainably is not just about preserving the wilderness or keeping nature pristine. The transition to a green economy depends on cities. For the first time in human history, the majority of the people on the planet live in urban areas. If we are to avert climate catastrophe, we will need our cities to coexist with nature without destroying it. Many places are already investing in the infrastructure of the future—including renewable energy, energy efficiency, mass and personal transit, and advanced sewage and waste management—but the modern city still has a long way to go.

In The Sustainable City, Steven Cohen provides a broad and engaging overview of the urban systems of the twenty-first century, surveying policies and projects already under way in cities around the world and pointing to more ways progress can be made. Cohen discusses the sustainable city from an organizational-management and public-policy perspective that emphasizes the local level, looking at case studies of existing legislation, programs, and public-private partnerships that strive to align modern urban life and sustainability. From waste management in Beijing to energy infrastructure in Africa to public space in Washington, D.C., there are concrete examples of what we can do right now. Cohen synthesizes the disparate strands of sustainable city planning in an approachable and applicable guide that highlights how these issues touch our lives on a daily basis, whether the transportation we take, where our energy comes from, or what becomes of our food waste. Providing recommendations and insights with immediacy and relevance, this book has invaluable lessons for anyone seeking to link public policy to promoting a sustainable lifestyle.

Launched in 1942, the Manhattan Project was a well-funded, secret effort by the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada to develop an atomic bomb before the Nazis. The results—the bombs named "Little Boy" and "Fat Man"—were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August of 1945.

A vast state within a state, the Manhattan Project employed 130,000 people and cost the United States and its allies 2 billion dollars, but its contribution to science as a prestigious investment was invaluable. After the bombs were dropped, states began allocating unprecedented funds for scientific research, leading to the establishment of many of twentieth century's major research institutions. Yet the union of science, industry, and the military did not start with the development of the atomic bomb; World War II only deepened the relationship. This absorbing history revisits the interactions among science, the national interest, and public and private funding that was initiated in World War I and flourished in WWII. It then follows the Manhattan Project from inception to dissolution, describing the primary influences that helped execute the world's first successful plan for nuclear research and tracing the lineages of modern national nuclear agencies back to their source.

Industrial agriculture is responsible for widespread environmental degradation and undermines the pursuit of human well-being. With a projected global population of 10 billion by 2050, it is urgent for humanity to achieve a more sustainable approach to farming and food systems.

This concise text offers an overview of the key issues in sustainable food production for all readers interested in the ecology and environmental impacts of agriculture. It details the ecological foundations of farming and food systems, showing how knowledge from the natural and social sciences can be used to create sustainable alternatives to the industrial production methods used today. Beginning with a discussion of the role of agriculture in human development, the primer examines how twentieth-century farming methods are environmentally and socially unsustainable, contributing to global change and perpetuating inequalities. The authors explain the principles of environmental sustainability and explore how these principles can be put into practice in agrifood systems. They emphasize the importance of human well-being and insist on the centrality of social and environmental equity and justice.

Sustainable Food Production is a compelling guide to how we can improve our ability to feed each other today and preserve the ability of our planet to do so tomorrow. Appropriate for a range of courses in the natural and social sciences, it provides a comprehensive yet accessible framework for achieving agricultural sustainability in the Anthropocene.

Small farmers are often viewed as engaging in wasteful practices that wreak ecological havoc. Exploring Agrodiversity sets the record straight: Small farmers are in fact ingenious and inventive and engage in a diverse range of land-management strategies, many of them resourcefully geared toward conserving resources, especially soil. They have shown considerable resilience in the face of major onslaughts against their way of life by outsiders and government.

Using case studies from Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Pacific, this book provides in-depth analysis of agricultural diversity and explores its history. The book also considers the effect of the "gene revolution" on small farmers and reviews the effects of the "green revolution" in Asian countries. In conclusion, it questions whether the diverse agricultural practices employed by small farmers can survive modern pressures and the global ambitions of the biotechnology industry.

We are living in algorithmic times.

From machine learning and artificial intelligence to blockchain or simpler newsfeed filtering, automated systems can transform the social world in ways that are just starting to be imagined.

Redefining these emergent technologies as the new systems of knowing, pioneering scholar David Beer examines the acute tensions they create and how they are changing what is known and what is knowable. Drawing on cases ranging from the art market and the smart home, through to financial tech, AI patents and neural networks, he develops key concepts for understanding the framing, envisioning and implementation of algorithms.

This book will be of interest to anyone who is concerned with the rise of algorithmic thinking and the way it permeates society.

Winner of the Modern Language Association's Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for Comparative Literary Studies

Who speaks? The author as producer, the contingency of the text, intertextuality, the “device”—core ideas of modern literary theory—were all pioneered in the shadow of oral literature. Authorless, loosely dated, and variable, oral texts have always posed a challenge to critical interpretation. When it began to be thought that culturally significant texts—starting with Homer and the Bible—had emerged from an oral tradition, assumptions on how to read these texts were greatly perturbed. Through readings that range from ancient Greece, Rome, and China to the Cold War imaginary, The Ethnography of Rhythm situates the study of oral traditions in the contentious space of nineteenth- and twentieth-century thinking about language, mind, and culture. It also demonstrates the role of technologies in framing this category of poetic creation. By making possible a new understanding of Maussian “techniques of the body” as belonging to the domain of Derridean “arche-writing,” Haun Saussy shows how oral tradition is a means of inscription in its own right, rather than an antecedent made obsolete by the written word or other media and data-storage devices.

This book will consist of the development, processing, and manufacturing of high-performance metallic biomaterials in healthcare and biomedical applications in context with surface modification and coating of implants. Bioresorbable metallic composites along with high-performance metallic materials and their processing, and characterizations will be the central theme of the book. Effectively, the variety of fifteen chapters presented in the book will be quite interesting and up-to-date with the scope of future research work. This has the potential to be valuable to researchers in material engineering disciplines, biomedical engineering, and also to clinical professions. The background information and the latest literature review provided in each chapter will be an in-depth analysis of the topic covered in the chapter.

The work describes synthesis, characterization, synthetic mechanisms, and applications of functionalized nanomaterials. Starting with surface functionalization of two-dimensional, carbon- or polymer-based materials it discusses nanomaterials for environmental applications such as adsorption and degradation of pollutants or wastewater treatment and energy storage such as batteries and supercapacitors.

Ein Fachingenieur erzählt die volkswirtschaftlich bedeutsame Entwicklungsgeschichte der stromerzeugenden Kraftwerks-Gasturbine, ausgehend von Erfindungen und systematischen Entwicklungen einer der ehemals führenden Weltfirmen auf diesem Gebiet über einen Zeitraum von inzwischen mehr als 100 Jahren. Gerade in wirtschaftlich unruhigen Zeiten ist eine Rückbesinnung auf belastbar reale Werte als Folge kreativer Erfindungen und dauerhaft nachhaltigem Management eine gute Inspirationsquelle.

Obwohl die Erstausgabe des Buches noch als Technikgeschichte der ersten BBC/ ABB/Alstom Kraftwerks-Gasturbinen angelegt war, hat die komponentenbezogene Betrachtungsweise unter Berücksichtigung genereller Entwicklungstrends die universelle Brauchbarkeit dieser Arbeit bestätigt – entsprechend wurde der Buchtitel auch für diese deutsche Erstausgabe breiter als nur auf diese Firmengruppe bezogen gefasst. In diesem Sinne sticht die historisch-thematische ingenieurtechnische Behandlung auf Gasturbinen-Komponentenebene hervor. So zeigt das Buch insbesondere die durch BBC maßgeblich beeinflusste Axialverdichter-Entwicklung ausgehend von Prandtls Tragflügeltheorie, den jahrzehntelangen Fortschritt im Bereich emissionsarmer Brennkammern und das auch fertigungstechnologisch hoch anspruchsvolle Umfeld luftgekühlter Axialturbinen, ebenfalls schon in den 1930er Jahren ein Geniestreich des BBC-Ingenieurteams in Baden, CH.

Die bloße zeitliche Länge gewisser ingenieurtechnischer Entwicklungen über mehrere Dekaden gestattet interessante Beobachtungen über die geschäftsmäßige Umsetzung sowie den Einfluss rechtzeitiger Technologievorbereitungen und - bereitstellungen. Im Rückblick ergeben sich aufschlussreiche Erkenntnisse über die Auswirkung langfristig angelegter Geschäftsentscheidungen. Im Jahr 2017 wurde das Buch mit dem angesehenen Engineer-Historian Award der ASME (American Society of Mechanical Engineers) ausgezeichnet.

Achieving Net Zero is a wicked problem that is not just a question of applying technological innovation to existing transport patterns and behaviours. It involves all three aspects of the environmental, social and economic sustainability triangle and any attempt to significantly reduce transport’s CO₂ emissions will involve major technological and behavioural changes – indeed, a fundamental rethink of existing expectations. Any approach needs also to be politically achievable, promoting opportunities for improving quality of life while not evading the issues at hand.

This 20^th volume in the Transport and Sustainability series focuses on Net Zero transport, providing a go-to source of information for policymakers, businesses, scholars and students alike. The contributors discuss the nature and scale of the issues associated with moving towards net zero transport, along with the opportunities for positive and transformational change. The chapters in Towards Transport Net Zero address the topic from a range of different perspectives including different transport modes, policy areas, social and demographic considerations and economic sectors.

The Transport and Sustainability series addresses the important nexus between transport and sustainability, containing volumes dealing with a wide range of issues relating to transport, its impact in economic, social and environmental spheres and its interaction with other policy sectors.

A handy resource on the fundamental facts about engineering for both engineers and non-engineers alike, whether you are exploring engineering for the first time, already have a strong background, or fall anywhere in between.

Engineering impacts every aspect of our lives. Bridges,buildings, buses, electrical grids, computers, televisions, refrigerators, vacuum cleaners, and virtually any everyday household item needs to be engineered to function properly. Fundamentally, engineering is about identifying a need and developing solutions that meet that need. Throughout history, engineering ideas and innovative feats have provided solutions to many challenges faced by civilizations. From the Great Wall of China to NASA's space program, The Handy Engineering Answer Book covers the history of the field, details the lives of key figures, introduces the tools engineers use to solve problems, and provides fun facts and answers to a thousand important and interesting questions, such as …

• What is the difference between science and engineering?
• What do engineers do?
• What are some famous engineering mistakes or failures?
• What is reverse engineering?
• What is a prototype?
• What types of jobs do electrical engineers do?
• How does a car battery work?
• What are the major job responsibilities of a HVAC engineer?
• What is a Powertrain?
• What is Bernoulli’s principle?
• What are the Laws of Thermodynamics?
• What’s the difference between 2-stroke and 4-stroke engines?
• What is stress and strain?
• What is the difference between torque and power?
• What is automation?
• What is quality assurance?
• What is meant by outsourcing?
• What are the responsibilities of a construction manager?
• What are the types of road construction that are both durable and cost-effective?
• Which materials are used to build a cruise ship?
• What are some design elements that help structures withstand earthquakes?
• How does a civil engineer design water slides for theme parks?
• Who was W. Edwards Deming?
• What is ergonomics?
• What is biomedical engineering?
• Who is Grace Hopper?
• What is debugging?
• What is the difference between a web developer and a website designer?
• Was Leonardo da Vinci an aerospace engineer?
• Where do chemical engineers work?
• How much energy does the world use?
• What are the major challenges addressed by environmental engineers?
• What is humanitarian engineering?
• What is acoustical engineering?
• What are the required skills for fire engineers?
• What are the advantages and disadvantages of nanotechnology?

With more than 140 photos and graphics, this fascinating tome is richly illustrated. Its helpful bibliography and extensive index add to its usefulness. Whether using science and math or building prototypes for testing or the development of various subdisciplines, The Handy Engineering Answer Book looks at how fundamental engineering is to modern life and society!

This book offers an overview of some recent advances in the Computational Bioacoustics methods and technology. In the focus of discussion is the pursuit of scalability, which would facilitate real-world applications of different scope and purpose, such as wildlife monitoring, biodiversity assessment, pest population control, and monitoring the spread of disease transmitting mosquitoes. The various tasks of Computational Bioacoustics are described and a wide range of audio parameterization and recognition tasks related to the automated recognition of species and sound events is discussed. Many of the Computational Bioacoustics methods were originally developed for the needs of speech, audio, or image processing, and afterwards were adapted to the requirements of automated acoustic recognition of species, or were elaborated further to address the challenges of real-world operation in 24/7 mode. The interested reader is encouraged to follow the numerous references and links to web resources for further information and insights. This book is addressed to Software Engineers, IT experts, Computer Science researchers, Bioacousticians, and other practitioners concerned with the creation of new tools and services, aimed at enhancing the technological support to Computational Bioacoustics applications.

This title from the De Gruyter Book Archive has been digitized in order to make it available for academic research. It was originally published under National Socialism and has to be viewed in this historical context. Learn more .

Die 2. Auflage der Audio-Enzyklopädie bietet einen aktuellen Überblick über alle Felder der Tonstudiotechnik. Behandelt werden neben elektrotechnischen und -akustischen Grundlagen vor allem moderne Verfahren der Digitaltechnik. Über 850 Abbildungen und Tabellen machen die Inhalte anschaulich. Damit ist die Audio-Enzyklopädie zugleich Nachschlagewerk für Profis, Handbuch für Praktiker und Lehrbuch für Ausbildung und Selbststudium.

The book presents a broad-scope analysis of piezoelectric electromechanical transducers and the related aspects of practical transducer design for underwater applications. It uses an energy method for analyzing transducer problems that provides the physical insight important for the understanding of electromechanical devices. Application of the method is first illustrated with transducer examples that can be modeled as systems with a single degree of freedom, (such as spheres, short cylinders, bars and flexural disks and plates made of piezoelectric ceramics). Thereupon, transducers are modeled as devices with multiple degrees of freedom. In all these cases, results of modeling are presented in the form of equivalent electromechanical circuits convenient for the calculation of the transducers’ operational characteristics. Special focus is made on the effects of coupled vibrations in mechanical systems on transducer performance. The book also provides extensive coverage of acoustic radiation including acoustic interaction between the transducers.

The book is inherently multidisciplinary. It provides essential background regarding the vibration of elastic passive and piezoelectric bodies, piezoelectricity, acoustic radiation, and transducer characterization. Scientists and engineers working in the field of electroacoustics and those involved in education in the field will find this material useful not only for underwater acoustics, but also for electromechanics, energy conversion and medical ultrasonics.

The book presents a broad-scope analysis of piezoelectric electromechanical transducers and the related aspects of practical transducer design for underwater applications. It uses an energy method for analyzing transducer problems that provides the physical insight important for the understanding of electromechanical devices. Application of the method is first illustrated with transducer examples that can be modeled as systems with a single degree of freedom, (such as spheres, short cylinders, bars and flexural disks and plates made of piezoelectric ceramics). Thereupon, transducers are modeled as devices with multiple degrees of freedom. In all these cases, results of modeling are presented in the form of equivalent electromechanical circuits convenient for the calculation of the transducers’ operational characteristics. Special focus is made on the effects of coupled vibrations in mechanical systems on transducer performance. The book also provides extensive coverage of acoustic radiation including acoustic interaction between the transducers.

The book is inherently multidisciplinary. It provides essential background regarding the vibration of elastic passive and piezoelectric bodies, piezoelectricity, acoustic radiation, and transducer characterization. Scientists and engineers working in the field of electroacoustics and those involved in education in the field will find this material useful not only for underwater acoustics, but also for electromechanics, energy conversion and medical ultrasonics.

Part II contains general information on vibration of mechanical systems, electromechanical conversion in the deformed piezoceramic bodies, and acoustic radiation that can be used independently for treatment transducers of different type. 

The book presents a broad-scope analysis of piezoelectric electromechanical transducers and the related aspects of practical transducer design for underwater applications. 

It uses an energy method for analyzing transducer problems that provides the physical insight important for the understanding of electromechanical devices. Application of the method is first illustrated with transducer examples that can be modeled as systems with a single degree of freedom, (such as spheres, short cylinders, bars and flexural disks and plates made of piezoelectric ceramics). Thereupon, transducers are modeled as devices with multiple degrees of freedom. In all these cases, results of modeling are presented in the form of equivalent electromechanical circuits convenient for the calculation of the transducers’ operational characteristics. Special focus is made on the effects of coupled vibrations in mechanical systems on transducer performance. 

The book also provides extensive coverage of acoustic radiation including acoustic interaction between the transducers. The book is inherently multidisciplinary. It provides essential background regarding the vibration of elastic passive and piezoelectric bodies, piezoelectricity, acoustic radiation, and transducer characterization. Scientists and engineers working in the field of electroacoustics and those involved in education in the field will find this material useful not only for underwater acoustics, but also for electromechanics, energy conversion and medical ultrasonics.

Part I contains an introduction to the energy method illustrated with examples of one degree of freedom transducers. It is self-sufficient and can be read independently.

Computational methods and understanding computational models are important in modern drug discovery. The books focus on computational approaches that can improve the development of in silico methodologies. They include lead hit methods, docking algorithms, computational chiral compounds, structure-based drug design, GROMACS and NAMD, structural genomics, toxicity prediction, enzyme inhibitors and peptidomimetic therapeutics.

Sustainable Tech Solutions for Enterprise Scalability

The modern economy runs on technology; it is the backbone of all major businesses. From firing packets of information between customers and websites to tracking customer demographics and purchase history–every bit of information that occurs online is captured through data. As businesses scale and transactions grow, the volume of data (and the number of servers required to store it) creates an increasingly complex environment that makes managing and monitoring the overall health of your organization’s technology stack a dizzying task for even the most well-informed IT professional.

Fortunately for today’s CDOs, CTOs, CIOs, and even CFOs, the founder and CEO of Fortified, a leading database managed service provider, Ben DeBow has written End of Abundance in Tech: How IT Leaders Can Find Efficiencies to Drive Business Value.

DeBow’s patent-pending approach allows IT executives to:

• Develop a technology environment that’s more efficient
• Increase server resource productivity
• Provide better financial transparency into the technology costs
• Optimize system scalability, performance, and stability
• Potentially save millions that were previously tied up in inefficient technology practices

To determine the health, efficiency, and capacity of their systems, leaders need solutions they can act on. Yet, many technology leaders lack real insights into the health of their technology environment at the organizational level. In a refreshing shakeup of the status quo, DeBow’s book equips IT executives with actionable solutions for managing and monitoring technology health so they can maximize the efficiency of the enterprise’s entire tech stack and deliver measurable value to the bottom line.

With the tech health blueprint in End of Abundance in Tech: How IT Leaders Can Find Efficiencies to Drive Business Value, IT leaders can begin to take action to make their systems healthier and more mature. What’s more, these actions can be mapped to key performance indicators (KPIs), or objectives and key results (OKRs), at the top level of the enterprise. An unprecedented, detailed understanding of your technology spend and its alignment with project pricing is possible.

Learn from DeBow’s experience improving systems for some of the largest insurance, hospitality, and software enterprises in the world, along with firsthand advice from CTOs, CIOs, and CFOs who are out there fighting for efficiency in their organizations every day.

Computational methods and understanding computational models are important in modern drug discovery. The book focuses on computational approaches that can improve the development of in silico methodologies. It includes lead hit methods, docking algorithms, computational chiral compounds, structure-based drug design, GROMACS and NAMD, structural genomics, toxicity prediction, enzyme inhibitors and peptidomimetic therapeutics

The book bridges the gap between pharmaceutics and molecular modelling at the micro, meso and macro scale. It covers Lipinski's rule of five, nanoparticulate drug delivery, computational prediction of drug solubility and ability to cross blood brain barrier, computer-based simulation of pharmacokinetic parameters, virtual screening of mucoadhesive polymers, QSPR modelling, designing of 2D nanomaterials and role of principal component analysis.

This book unites the two sides of additive manufacturing: 1) the technical aspect of 3D printing of very different materials and 2) the disruptive consequences for value chains between producers, intermediaries, and customers due to modern business models. This is because 3D printing breaks with many existing business models: companies take over functions from their previous suppliers (following the "do-it-yourself" trend), intermediaries lose their livelihood (so-called "disintermediation"), manufacturers move their production to decentralized locations (e.g., retailers, car dealerships, or hospitals, so-called "decentralized production"), and (end) customers become much more intensive "prosumers" than marketing (as creator of this term) could ever imagine.

The business models of many existing companies from very different industries are becoming toxic, i.e., threatening their very existence, as in logistics and warehousing, industry, services, retail, or customer service. Conversely, there are also many opportunities for modern, existence-securing business models, which the book discusses in more detail. In this way, this book not only shows to a broad range of readers the dangers of disruptive 3D printing technology, but also offers solution approaches and procedural models for identifying new economic livelihoods and competitive advantages. Thanks to the collaboration of the two authors, a profound knowledge of already existing references and management models can be drawn upon.

New ceramic materials are highly appreciated due to their manifold features including mechanical properties, environmental uses, energy applications and many more. This work presents the latest research development and covers a broad range of topics from stabilized zirconia ceramics with enhanced functional properties to ceramic components in medical/biological applications.