Download or read book The Optimist s Telescope written by Bina Venkataraman and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2020-08-25 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Named a Best Book of 2019 by NPR “How might we mitigate losses caused by shortsightedness? Bina Venkataraman, a former climate adviser to the Obama administration, brings a storyteller’s eye to this question. . . . She is also deeply informed about the relevant science.” —The New York Times Book Review A trailblazing exploration of how we can plan better for the future: our own, our families’, and our society’s. Instant gratification is the norm today—in our lives, our culture, our economy, and our politics. Many of us have forgotten (if we ever learned) how to make smart decisions for the long run. Whether it comes to our finances, our health, our communities, or our planet, it’s easy to avoid thinking ahead. The consequences of this immediacy are stark: Deadly outbreaks spread because leaders failed to act on early warning signs. Companies that fail to invest stagnate and fall behind. Hurricanes and wildfires turn deadly for communities that could have taken more precaution. Today more than ever, all of us need to know how we can make better long-term decisions in our lives, businesses, and society. Bina Venkataraman sees the way forward. A journalist and former adviser in the Obama White House, she helped communities and businesses prepare for climate change, and she learned firsthand why people don’t think ahead—and what can be done to change that. In The Optimist’s Telescope, she draws from stories she has reported around the world and new research in biology, psychology, and economics to explain how we can make decisions that benefit us over time. With examples from ancient Pompeii to modern-day Fukushima, she dispels the myth that human nature is impossibly reckless and highlights the surprising practices each of us can adopt in our own lives—and the ones we must fight for as a society. The result is a book brimming with the ideas and insights all of us need in order to forge a better future.
Download or read book Thinking Ahead in Science written by Willard J. Jacobson and published by . This book was released on 1965 with total page 52 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Cities and Climate Change written by Harriet Bulkeley and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-05-07 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Climate change is one of the most significant global challenges facing the world today. It is also a critical issue for the world’s cities. Now home to over half the world’s population, urban areas are significant sources of greenhouse gas emissions and are vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Responding to climate change is a profound challenge. A variety of actors are involved in urban climate governance, with municipal governments, international organisations, and funding bodies pointing to cities as key arenas for response. This book provides the first critical introduction to these challenges, giving an overview of the science and policy of climate change at the global level and the emergence of climate change as an urban policy issue. It considers the challenges of governing climate change in the city in the context of the changing nature of urban politics, economics, society and infrastructures. It looks at how responses for mitigation and adaptation have emerged within the city, and the implications of climate change for social and environmental justice. Drawing on examples from cities in the north and south, and richly illustrated with detailed case-studies, this book will enable students to understand the potential and limits of addressing climate change at the urban level and to explore the consequences for our future cities. It will be essential reading for undergraduate students across the disciplines of geography, politics, sociology, urban studies, planning and science and technology studies.
Download or read book Inevitable Surprises written by Peter Schwartz and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2004-05-24 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The world we live in today is more volatile than ever. The security of free nations is threatened by rogue states, the global economy is in flux, and the rapid advance of technology forces constant reevaluation of our society. With so many powerful forces at work and seemingly unpredictable events occurring, to many the future seems dark, and its possibilities frightening. Peter Schwartz disagrees. A world-renowned visionary in the field of scenario planning, Schwartz’s startling—and accurate— predictions have been employed by government agencies and major corporations for more than twenty-five years. He argues that the future is foreseeable, and that by examining the dynamics at work today we can predict the “inevitable surprises” of tomorrow. Timely and thought-provoking, Inevitable Surprises is a book that no one with an interest in business—or the future of our society—can afford to miss.
Download or read book Thinking Ahead written by Unesco and published by . This book was released on 1977 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: UNESCO pub. Monograph on the medium term role and activities of UNESCO for 1977 to 1982 - discusses possible spheres of interest, such as the universal affirmation of human rights, peace research, economic and social development, science policy, educational policy, literacy and social participation, the environment, population problems, communication, information services, etc.
Download or read book Thinking Ahead written by Paul A. Wagner and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2018-02-09 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book addresses a very important aspect of teacher training, as well as the training of educational administrators, school counselors and other educational allied professionals, an aspect that is too often overlooked. That aspect is role modeling a deliberative mind. A deliberative mind is one filled with wonderment and eagerness to learn. We introduce educational professionals to systematic pondering and large-scale wonderment.
Download or read book Physics of the Future written by Michio Kaku and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2011-03-15 with total page 456 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The renowned theoretical physicist and national bestselling author of The God Equation details the developments in computer technology, artificial intelligence, medicine, space travel, and more, that are poised to happen over the next century. “Mind-bending…. [An] alternately fascinating and frightening book.” —San Francisco Chronicle Space elevators. Internet-enabled contact lenses. Cars that fly by floating on magnetic fields. This is the stuff of science fiction—it’s also daily life in the year 2100. Renowned theoretical physicist Michio Kaku considers how these inventions will affect the world economy, addressing the key questions: Who will have jobs? Which nations will prosper? Kaku interviews three hundred of the world’s top scientists—working in their labs on astonishing prototypes. He also takes into account the rigorous scientific principles that regulate how quickly, how safely, and how far technologies can advance. In Physics of the Future, Kaku forecasts a century of earthshaking advances in technology that could make even the last centuries’ leaps and bounds seem insignificant.
Download or read book Catalog of Copyright Entries Third Series written by Library of Congress. Copyright Office and published by . This book was released on 1965 with total page 1400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The record of each copyright registration listed in the Catalog includes a description of the work copyrighted and data relating to the copyright claim (the name of the copyright claimant as given in the application for registration, the copyright date, the copyright registration number, etc.).
Download or read book Contemporary Futurist Thought written by Thomas Lombardo and published by AuthorHouse. This book was released on 2006-06-23 with total page 476 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contemporary Futurist Thought describes recent thinking about the future, dealing with both the hopes and the fears expressed in modern times concerning what potentially lies ahead. There are many such hopes and fears perhaps an overpowering number, competing with each other and swirling about in the collective mind of humanity. Psychologist and futurist Tom Lombardo describes this mental universe of inspiring dreams and threatening premonitions regarding the future. The book begins with an in-depth examination of the highly influential literary genre of science fiction, which Dr. Lombardo identifies as the mythology of the future. He next describes the modern academic discipline of future studies which attempts to apply scientific methods and principles to an understanding of the future. Social and technological trends in the twentieth century are then reviewed, setting the stage for an analysis of the great contemporary transformation occurring in our present world. Given the powerful and pervasive changes taking place across the globe and throughout all aspects of human life, the questions arise: Where are we potentially heading and, perhaps more importantly, where should we be heading? The final chapter provides an extensive review of different answers to these questions. Describing theories and approaches that highlight science, technology, culture, human psychology, and religion, among other areas of focus, as well as integrative views which attempt to provide big pictures of all aspects of human life, the book provides a rich and broad overview of contemporary ideas and visions about the future. In the conclusion, Dr. Lombardo assesses and synthesizes these myriad perspectives, proposing a set of key ideas central to understanding the future. This book completes the study of future consciousness begun in its companion volume, The Evolution of Future Consciousness. These two volumes, rich in historical detail and concise observations on the interrelatedness of a wide range of interdisciplinary topics, are a significant contribution to the field of future studies and a valuable resource for educators, consultants, and anyone wishing to explore the significance of thinking about the future.
Download or read book Knowing What Students Know written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2001-10-27 with total page 383 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Education is a hot topic. From the stage of presidential debates to tonight's dinner table, it is an issue that most Americans are deeply concerned about. While there are many strategies for improving the educational process, we need a way to find out what works and what doesn't work as well. Educational assessment seeks to determine just how well students are learning and is an integral part of our quest for improved education. The nation is pinning greater expectations on educational assessment than ever before. We look to these assessment tools when documenting whether students and institutions are truly meeting education goals. But we must stop and ask a crucial question: What kind of assessment is most effective? At a time when traditional testing is subject to increasing criticism, research suggests that new, exciting approaches to assessment may be on the horizon. Advances in the sciences of how people learn and how to measure such learning offer the hope of developing new kinds of assessments-assessments that help students succeed in school by making as clear as possible the nature of their accomplishments and the progress of their learning. Knowing What Students Know essentially explains how expanding knowledge in the scientific fields of human learning and educational measurement can form the foundations of an improved approach to assessment. These advances suggest ways that the targets of assessment-what students know and how well they know it-as well as the methods used to make inferences about student learning can be made more valid and instructionally useful. Principles for designing and using these new kinds of assessments are presented, and examples are used to illustrate the principles. Implications for policy, practice, and research are also explored. With the promise of a productive research-based approach to assessment of student learning, Knowing What Students Know will be important to education administrators, assessment designers, teachers and teacher educators, and education advocates.
Download or read book The Order of Time written by Carlo Rovelli and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2019-12-10 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of TIME’s Ten Best Nonfiction Books of the Decade "Meet the new Stephen Hawking . . . The Order of Time is a dazzling book." --The Sunday Times From the bestselling author of Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, Reality Is Not What It Seems, Helgoland, and Anaximander comes a concise, elegant exploration of time. Why do we remember the past and not the future? What does it mean for time to "flow"? Do we exist in time or does time exist in us? In lyric, accessible prose, Carlo Rovelli invites us to consider questions about the nature of time that continue to puzzle physicists and philosophers alike. For most readers this is unfamiliar terrain. We all experience time, but the more scientists learn about it, the more mysterious it remains. We think of it as uniform and universal, moving steadily from past to future, measured by clocks. Rovelli tears down these assumptions one by one, revealing a strange universe where at the most fundamental level time disappears. He explains how the theory of quantum gravity attempts to understand and give meaning to the resulting extreme landscape of this timeless world. Weaving together ideas from philosophy, science and literature, he suggests that our perception of the flow of time depends on our perspective, better understood starting from the structure of our brain and emotions than from the physical universe. Already a bestseller in Italy, and written with the poetic vitality that made Seven Brief Lessons on Physics so appealing, The Order of Time offers a profoundly intelligent, culturally rich, novel appreciation of the mysteries of time.
Download or read book Get Ahead In physics written by Tom Whipple and published by . This book was released on 2020-02 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Thinking Ahead Essays on Big Data Digital Revolution and Participatory Market Society written by Dirk Helbing and published by Springer. This book was released on 2015-04-10 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The rapidly progressing digital revolution is now touching the foundations of the governance of societal structures. Humans are on the verge of evolving from consumers to prosumers, and old, entrenched theories – in particular sociological and economic ones – are falling prey to these rapid developments. The original assumptions on which they are based are being questioned. Each year we produce as much data as in the entire human history - can we possibly create a global crystal ball to predict our future and to optimally govern our world? Do we need wide-scale surveillance to understand and manage the increasingly complex systems we are constructing, or would bottom-up approaches such as self-regulating systems be a better solution to creating a more innovative, more successful, more resilient, and ultimately happier society? Working at the interface of complexity theory, quantitative sociology and Big Data-driven risk and knowledge management, the author advocates the establishment of new participatory systems in our digital society to enhance coordination, reduce conflict and, above all, reduce the “tragedies of the commons,” resulting from the methods now used in political, economic and management decision-making. The author Physicist Dirk Helbing is Professor of Computational Social Science at the Department of Humanities, Social and Political Sciences and an affiliate of the Computer Science Department at ETH Zurich, as well as co-founder of ETH’s Risk Center. He is internationally known for the scientific coordination of the FuturICT Initiative which focuses on using smart data to understand techno-socio-economic systems. “Prof. Helbing has produced an insightful and important set of essays on the ways in which big data and complexity science are changing our understanding of ourselves and our society, and potentially allowing us to manage our societies much better than we are currently able to do. Of special note are the essays that touch on the promises of big data along with the dangers...this is material that we should all become familiar with!” Alex Pentland, MIT, author of Social Physics: How Good Ideas Spread - The Lessons From a New Science "Dirk Helbing has established his reputation as one of the leading scientific thinkers on the dramatic impacts of the digital revolution on our society and economy. Thinking Ahead is a most stimulating and provocative set of essays which deserves a wide audience.” Paul Ormerod, economist, and author of Butterfly Economics and Why Most Things Fail. "It is becoming increasingly clear that many of our institutions and social structures are in a bad way and urgently need fixing. Financial crises, international conflicts, civil wars and terrorism, inaction on climate change, problems of poverty, widening economic inequality, health epidemics, pollution and threats to digital privacy and identity are just some of the major challenges that we confront in the twenty-first century. These issues demand new and bold thinking, and that is what Dirk Helbing offers in this collection of essays. If even a fraction of these ideas pay off, the consequences for global governance could be significant. So this is a must-read book for anyone concerned about the future." Philip Ball, science writer and author of Critical Mass “This collection of papers, brought together by Dirk Helbing, is both timely and topical. It raises concerns about Big Data, which are truly frightening and disconcerting, that we do need to be aware of; while at the same time offering some hope that the technology, which has created the previously unthought-of dangers to our privacy, safety and democracy can be the means to address these dangers by enabling social, economic and political participation and coordination, not possible in the past. It makes for compelling reading and I hope for timely action.”Eve Mitleton-Kelly, LSE, author of Corporate Governance and Complexity Theory and editor of Co-evolution of Intelligent Socio-technical Systems
Download or read book An Introduction to the Solar System written by David A. Rothery and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-01-11 with total page 441 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ongoing advances in Solar System exploration continue to reveal its splendour and diversity in remarkable detail. This undergraduate-level textbook presents fascinating descriptions and colour images of the bodies in the Solar System, the processes that occur upon and within them, and their origins and evolution. It highlights important concepts and techniques in boxed summaries, while questions and exercises are embedded at appropriate points throughout the text, with full solutions provided. Written and edited by a team of practising planetary scientists, this third edition has been updated to reflect our current knowledge. It is ideal for introductory courses on the subject, and is suitable for self-study. The text is supported by online resources, hosted at www.cambridge.org/solarsystem3, which include selected figures from the book, self-assessment questions and sample tutor assignments, with outlines of suggested answers.
Download or read book Can Science Fix Climate Change written by Mike Hulme and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2014-06-04 with total page 102 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Climate change seems to be an insurmountable problem. Political solutions have so far had little impact. Some scientists are now advocating the so-called 'Plan B', a more direct way of reducing the rate of future warming by reflecting more sunlight back to space, creating a thermostat in the sky. In this book, Mike Hulme argues against this kind of hubristic techno-fix. Drawing upon a distinguished career studying the science, politics and ethics of climate change, he shows why using science to fix the global climate is undesirable, ungovernable and unattainable. Science and technology should instead serve the more pragmatic goals of increasing societal resilience to weather risks, improving regional air quality and driving forward an energy technology transition. Seeking to reset the planet’s thermostat is not the answer.
Download or read book Mindstorms written by Seymour A Papert and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2020-10-06 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this revolutionary book, a renowned computer scientist explains the importance of teaching children the basics of computing and how it can prepare them to succeed in the ever-evolving tech world. Computers have completely changed the way we teach children. We have Mindstorms to thank for that. In this book, pioneering computer scientist Seymour Papert uses the invention of LOGO, the first child-friendly programming language, to make the case for the value of teaching children with computers. Papert argues that children are more than capable of mastering computers, and that teaching computational processes like de-bugging in the classroom can change the way we learn everything else. He also shows that schools saturated with technology can actually improve socialization and interaction among students and between students and teachers. Technology changes every day, but the basic ways that computers can help us learn remain. For thousands of teachers and parents who have sought creative ways to help children learn with computers, Mindstorms is their bible.
Download or read book Ideals And Realities Selected Essays Of Abdus Salam 3rd Edition written by Azim Kidwai and published by World Scientific. This book was released on 1989-12-01 with total page 546 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The latest edition of “Ideals and Realities” includes some of the most recent talks given by Professor Abdus Salam. They replace a few essays which were published in the second edition. An attempt has also been made to update some of the figures rendered absolete with the passage of time.
