Download or read book A Century of Nature written by Laura Garwin and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2010-03-15 with total page 382 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many of the scientific breakthroughs of the twentieth century were first reported in the journal Nature. A Century of Nature brings together in one volume Nature's greatest hits—reproductions of seminal contributions that changed science and the world, accompanied by essays written by leading scientists (including four Nobel laureates) that provide historical context for each article, explain its insights in graceful, accessible prose, and celebrate the serendipity of discovery and the rewards of searching for needles in haystacks.
Download or read book Disease and Discovery written by Elizabeth Fee and published by Johns Hopkins University Press+ORM. This book was released on 2016-06-12 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of a world-renowned institution and “a broad investigation of early twentieth-century public health ideology in America” (Journal of the American Medical Association). At the end of the nineteenth century, public health was the province of part-time political appointees and volunteer groups of every variety. Public health officers were usually physicians, but they could also be sanitary engineers, lawyers, or chemists—there was little agreement about the skills and knowledge necessary for practice. In Disease and Discovery, Elizabeth Fee examines the conflicting ideas about public health’s proper subject and scope and its search for a coherent professional unity and identity. She draws on the debates and decisions surrounding the establishment of what was initially known as the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health, the first independent institution for public health research and education, to crystallize the fundamental questions of the field. Many of the issues of public health education in the early twentieth century are still debated today. What is the proper relationship of public health to medicine? What is the relative importance of biomedical, environmental, and sociopolitical approaches to public health? Should schools of public health emphasize research skills over practical training? Should they provide advanced training and credentials for the few or simpler educational courses for the many? Fee explores the many dimensions of these issues in the context of the founding of the Johns Hopkins school. She details the efforts to define the school’s structure and purpose, select faculty and students, and organize the curriculum, and she follows the school’s growth and adaptation to the changing social environment through the beginning of World War II. As Fee demonstrates, not simply in its formation but throughout its history, the School of Hygiene served as a crucible for the forces shaping the public health profession as a whole.
Download or read book Voyages of Discovery written by Tony Rice and published by . This book was released on 2018-05 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Superb artworks and photographs spanning three centuries document advances and watersheds in the field of natural science. The stories behind these images--of explorers, naturalists, artists and photographers--entwine into a fascinating study of human achievement and natural wonder. Among the many stories of adventure and great scientific endeavour are: Sir Hans Sloane's journey to Jamaica in 1687; James Cook's perilous Pacific crossings; and Darwin's historic voyage aboard HMS Beagle. Hand-picked from the vast Library of the Natural History Museum, London, the illustrations and artworks contained here form a rare collection, most of which have been presented for the first time in this stunning book.
Download or read book The Great Ages of Discovery written by Stephen J. Pyne and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2021-02-23 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For more than 600 years, Western civilization has relied on exploration to learn about a wider world and universe. The Great Ages of Discovery details the different eras of Western exploration in terms of its locations, its intellectual contexts, the characteristic moral conflicts that underwrote encounters, and the grand gestures that distill an age into its essence. Historian and MacArthur Fellow Stephen J. Pyne identifies three great ages of discovery in his fascinating new book. The first age of discovery ranged from the early 15th to the early 18th century, sketched out the contours of the globe, aligned with the Renaissance, and had for its grandest expression the circumnavigation of the world ocean. The second age launched in the latter half of the 18th century, spanning into the early 20th century, carrying the Enlightenment along with it, pairing especially with settler societies, and had as its prize achievement the crossing of a continent. The third age began after World War II, and, pivoting from Antarctica, pushed into the deep oceans and interplanetary space. Its grand gesture is Voyager’s passage across the solar system. Each age had in common a galvanic rivalry: Spain and Portugal in the first age, Britain and France—followed by others—in the second, and the USSR and USA in the third. With a deep and passionate knowledge of the history of Western exploration, Pyne takes us on a journey across hundreds of years of geographic trekking. The Great Ages of Discovery is an interpretive companion to what became Western civilization’s quest narrative, with the triumphs and tragedies that grand journey brought, the legacies of which are still very much with us.
Download or read book Age of Discovery written by Ian Goldin and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2016-05-19 with total page 553 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'A landmark new book.' - The Guardian Age of Discovery looks at the world on the brink of a new Renaissance and asks the question, how do we avoid chaos and disruption, and share more widely the benefits of progress? Now is humanity's best moment. And our most fragile. Global health, wealth and education are booming. Scientific discovery is flourishing. But the same forces that make big gains possible for some of us deliver big losses to others-and tangle us together in ways that make everyone vulnerable. We've been here before. The first Renaissance, the time of Columbus, Copernicus, Gutenberg and others, redrew all maps of the world, liberated information and shifted Western civilization from the medieval to the early modern era. Such change came at a price: social division, political extremism, economic shocks, pandemics and other unintended consequences of human endeavour. Now is our second Renaissance. In the face of terrorism, Brexit, refugee crises and the global impact of a Trump presidency, we can flourish-if we heed the urgent lessons of history. Age of Discovery, revised and updated for this paperback edition, shows us how.
Download or read book Drug Discovery written by Hany El-Shemy and published by BoD – Books on Demand. This book was released on 2013-01-23 with total page 528 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Natural products are a constant source of potentially active compounds for the treatment of various disorders. The Middle East and tropical regions are believed to have the richest supplies of natural products in the world. Plant derived secondary metabolites have been used by humans to treat acute infections, health disorders and chronic illness for tens of thousands of years. Only during the last 100 years have natural products been largely replaced by synthetic drugs. Estimates of 200 000 natural products in plant species have been revised upward as mass spectrometry techniques have developed. For developing countries the identification and use of endogenous medicinal plants as cures against cancers has become attractive. Books on drug discovery will play vital role in the new era of disease treatment using natural products.
Download or read book Engines of Discovery written by Andrew Sessler and published by World Scientific. This book was released on 2014 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first edition of Engines of Discovery celebrated in words, images and anecdotes the accelerators and their constructors that culminated in the discovery of the Higgs boson. But even before the Higgs was discovered, before the champagne corks popped and while the television producers brushed up their quantum mechanics, a new wave of enthusiasm for accelerators to be applied for more practical purposes was gaining momentum. Almost all fields of human endeavour will be enhanced by this trend: energy conservation, medical diagnostics and treatment, national security, as well as industrial processing. Accelerators have been used most spectacularly to reveal the structure of the complex molecules that determine our metabolism and life. For every accelerator chasing the Higgs, there are now ten thousand serving other purposes. It is high time to move from abstract mathematics and philosophy to the practical needs of humankind. It is the aim of this revised and expanded edition to describe this revolution in a manner which will attract the young, not only to apply their curiosity to the building blocks of matter but to help them contribute to the improvement of the quality of life itself on this planet. As always, the authors have tried to avoid lengthy mathematical description. In describing a field which reaches out to almost all of today's cutting edge technology, some detailed explanation cannot be avoided but this has been confined to sidebars. References guide experts to move on to the journal Reviews of Accelerator Science and Technology and other publications for more information. But first we would urge every young physicist, teacher, journalist and politician to read this book. Contents: Electrostatic Accelerators; Cyclotrons; Linear Accelerators; Betatrons; Synchrotrons; Colliders; Neutrino Super Beams, Neutrino Factories and Muon Colliders; Detectors; High-Energy and Nuclear Physics; Synchrotron Radiation Sources; Isotope Production and Cancer Therapy Accelerators; Spallation Neutron Sources; Accelerators in Industry and Elsewhere; National Security; Energy and the Environment; A Final Word OCo Mainly to the Young. Readership: Scientists, research physicists, engineers and administrators at accelerator laboratories; general readers; undergraduates and graduates in physics, electrical engineering and the history of science."
Download or read book Twentieth Century Discovery written by Isaac Asimov and published by . This book was released on 1976 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Voyages of Discovery written by Tony Rice and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a visual record of some of the most significant and beautiful discoveries in the history of natural science explorations. The photographs and artwork span three centuries and document advances and watersheds in the field of natural science. The stories behind these images - of explorers, naturalists, artists and photographers - entwine in a study of human achievement and natural wonder.
Download or read book The Discovery of Global Warming written by Spencer R. Weart and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 2001 a panel representing virtually all the world's governments and climate scientists announced that they had reached a consensus: the world was warming at a rate without precedent during at least the last ten millennia, and that warming was caused by the buildup of greenhouse gases from human activity. The consensus itself was at least a century in the making. The story of how scientists reached their conclusion--by way of unexpected twists and turns and in the face of formidable intellectual, financial, and political obstacles--is told for the first time in The Discovery of Global Warming. Spencer R. Weart lucidly explains the emerging science, introduces us to the major players, and shows us how the Earth's irreducibly complicated climate system was mirrored by the global scientific community that studied it. Unlike familiar tales of Science Triumphant, this book portrays scientists working on bits and pieces of a topic so complex that they could never achieve full certainty--yet so important to human survival that provisional answers were essential. Weart unsparingly depicts the conflicts and mistakes, and how they sometimes led to fruitful results. His book reminds us that scientists do not work in isolation, but interact in crucial ways with the political system and with the general public. The book not only reveals the history of global warming, but also analyzes the nature of modern scientific work as it confronts the most difficult questions about the Earth's future. Table of Contents: Preface 1. How Could Climate Change? 2. Discovering a Possibility 3. A Delicate System 4. A Visible Threat 5. Public Warnings 6. The Erratic Beast 7. Breaking into Politics 8. The Discovery Confirmed Reflections Milestones Notes Further Reading Index Reviews of this book: A soberly written synthesis of science and politics. --Gilbert Taylor, Booklist Reviews of this book: Charting the evolution and confirmation of the theory [of global warming], Spencer R. Weart, director of the Center for the History of Physics of the American Institute of Physics, dissects the interwoven threads of research and reveals the political and societal subtexts that colored scientists' views and the public reception their work received. --Andrew C. Revkin, New York Times Book Review Reviews of this book: It took a century for scientists to agree that gases produced by human activity were causing the world to warm up. Now, in an engaging book that reads like a detective story, physicist Weart reports the history of global warming theory, including the internal conflicts plaguing the research community and the role government has had in promoting climate studies. --Publishers Weekly Reviews of this book: It is almost two centuries since the French mathematician Jean Baptiste Fourier discovered that the Earth was far warmer than it had any right to be, given its distance from the Sun...Spencer Weart's book about how Fourier's initially inconsequential discovery finally triggered urgent debate about the future habitability of the Earth is lucid, painstaking and commendably brief, packing everything into 200 pages. --Fred Pearce, The Independent Reviews of this book: [The Discovery of Global Warming] is a well-written, well-researched and well-balanced account of the issues involved...This is not a sermon for the faithful, or verses from Revelation for the evangelicals, but a serious summary for those who like reasoned argument. Read it--and be converted. --John Emsley, Times Literary Supplement Reviews of this book: This is a terrific book...Perhaps the finest compliment I could give this book is to report that I intend to use it instead of my own book...for my climate class. The Discovery of Global Warming is more up-to-date, better balanced historically, beautifully written and, not least important, short and to the point. I think the [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] needs to enlist a few good historians like Weart for its next assessment. --Stephen H. Schneider, Nature Reviews of this book: This short, well-written book by a science historian at the American Institute of Physics adds a serious voice to the overheated debate about global warming and would serve as a great starting point for anyone who wants to better understand the issue. --Maureen Christie, American Scientist Reviews of this book: I was very pleasantly surprised to find that Spencer Weart's account provides much valuable and interesting material about how the discipline developed--not just from the perspective of climate science but also within the context of the field's relation to other scientific disciplines, the media, political trends, and even 20th-century history (particularly the Cold War). In addition, Weart has done a valuable service by recording for posterity background information on some of the key discoveries and historical figures who contributed to our present understanding of the global warming problem. --Thomas J. Crowley, Science Reviews of this book: Weart has done us all a service by bringing the discovery of global warming into a short, compendious and persuasive book for a general readership. He is especially strong on the early days and the scientific background. --Crispin Tickell, Times Higher Education Supplement A Capricious Beast Ever since the days when he had trudged around fossil lake basins in Nevada for his doctoral thesis, Wally Broecker had been interested in sudden climate shifts. The reported sudden jumps of CO2 in Greenland ice cores stimulated him to put this interest into conjunction with his oceanographic interests. The result was a surprising and important calculation. The key was what Broecker later described as a "great conveyor belt'"of seawater carrying heat northward. . . . The energy carried to the neighborhood of Iceland was "staggering," Broecker realized, nearly a third as much as the Sun sheds upon the entire North Atlantic. If something were to shut down the conveyor, climate would change across much of the Northern Hemisphere' There was reason to believe a shutdown could happen swiftly. In many regions the consequences for climate would be spectacular. Broecker was foremost in taking this disagreeable news to the public. In 1987 he wrote that we had been treating the greenhouse effect as a 'cocktail hour curiosity,' but now 'we must view it as a threat to human beings and wildlife.' The climate system was a capricious beast, he said, and we were poking it with a sharp stick. I found the book enjoyable, thoughtful, and an excellent introduction to the history of what may be one of the most important subjects of the next one hundred years. --Clark Miller, University of Wisconsin The Discovery of Global Warming raises important scientific issues and topics and includes essential detail. Readers should be able to follow the discussion and emerge at the end with a good understanding of how scientists have developed a consensus on global warming, what it is, and what issues now face human society. --Thomas R. Dunlap, Texas A&M University
Download or read book Amazing Rare Things written by David Attenborough and published by Kales Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Filmmaker Attenborough provides an introductory survey of the artistic representation of plants and animals through human history, beginning with Leonardo da Vinci's drawings and continuing on through the mid-1700s.
Download or read book Women of Discovery written by Milbry Polk and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based on 10 years of research, this text provides a visual history which presents the names and stories of over 80 women explorers. It reveals the obstacles they overcame in their inspiring quest for new knowledge.
Download or read book Asia in the Making of Europe Volume I written by Donald F. Lach and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2010-01-15 with total page 511 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Praised for its scope and depth, Asia in the Making of Europe is the first comprehensive study of Asian influences on Western culture. For volumes I and II, the author has sifted through virtually every European reference to Asia published in the sixteenth-century; he surveys a vast array of writings describing Asian life and society, the images of Asia that emerge from those writings, and, in turn, the reflections of those images in European literature and art. This monumental achievement reveals profound and pervasive influences of Asian societies on developing Western culture; in doing so, it provides a perspective necessary for a balanced view of world history. Volume I: The Century of Discovery brings together "everything that a European could know of India, Southeast Asia, China, and Japan, from printed books, missionary reports, traders' accounts and maps" (The New York Review of Books). Volume II: A Century of Wonder examines the influence of that vast new body of information about Asia on the arts, institutions, literatures, and ideas of sixteenth-century Europe.
Download or read book Where Discovery Sparks Imagination written by John Jenkins and published by Amer Museum of Radio & Electricity. This book was released on 2009 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines the early history of radio and electricity with over 600 images of actual apparatus. --
Download or read book The Discovery of Freedom written by Rose Wilder Lane and published by Laissez Faire Books. This book was released on 1943 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Age of Discovery written by Captivating History and published by Captivating History. This book was released on 2020-05 with total page 122 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Age of Discovery began in the early part of the 15th century and carried on through most of the 17th century. It is sometimes also referred to as the Age of Exploration. This was a time when the people of Europe began to travel, discover, and explore more of the world than ever before, mapping and naming the places they found.
Download or read book The Road to Discovery written by Jan Anthony Witkowski and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Road to Discovery: A Short History of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory was published in 2015 to mark the 125th anniversary of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. At Cold Spring Harbor, in a bucolic setting on the north shore of New York's Long Island, two interdependent research centers in biology were founded as Charles Darwin's insights into heredity and evolution shook the world of science. Fifty years later, those centers would emerge as a single institution that would cradle another revolution, the new science of molecular biology, and advance to world renown in research and professional education. It is a remarkable story, with a path of progress that was neither simple nor assured. The Road to Discovery traces half a century of changes in name, leadership, governance, and financial fortune. And scientific missteps, most notoriously in eugenics, were triumphed by innovative work in genetics, human metabolism, and cancer. From the 1940s through the 1960s, the Laboratory was home to fundamental discoveries about the nature of genetic material and a cauldron of critical assessment of ideas about genes by sharp-tongued summer visitors. James D. Watson, a junior member of that group, would go on to deduce the structure of DNA with Francis Crick in 1953 and help create the new field of molecular genetics before returning to Cold Spring Harbor as Director 15 years later. As the book shows, his "Bold Plan" would inspire, cajole, and goad into existence an era of expansion, new research directions, and initiatives in conferences, courses, publishing, and education that redefined the scope of the Laboratory. Under Bruce Stillman's leadership, that scope has grown still more, making the Laboratory unique among research institutions worldwide--envied, imitated, but not reproduced. The book's author is the science historian Jan Witkowski. His knowledge of the subject is wide and his affection for it deep. He brings to his task insights that only a decades-long career as a staff member can provide. For over a century, the Laboratory has been influenced by exceptional personalities, outstanding achievements, and dramatic events. The Road to Discovery captures that history in a lively narrative illuminated by vignettes on the importance of individual scientists and their discoveries. Abundantly documented with material from the Laboratory's archives, it is an accessible book that will appeal to anyone interested in the development of biomedical science and biotechnology through the 20th century to the present day.
