EBookClubs

Read Books & Download eBooks Full Online

EBookClubs

Read Books & Download eBooks Full Online

Book The Synthetic University

    Book Details:
  • Author : James L. Shulman
  • Publisher : Princeton University Press
  • Release : 2023-10-03
  • ISBN : 069123762X
  • Pages : 272 pages

Download or read book The Synthetic University written by James L. Shulman and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2023-10-03 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A bold, collaborative vision for combatting the ever-rising cost of college US colleges and universities have long been the envy of the world. Institutional autonomy has fostered creativity among faculty, students, and staff. But this autonomy means that colleges tend to create their own solutions for every need. As a result, higher education suffers from costly redundancies that drive tuitions ever upward, putting higher education, essential to the fabric of the country, at risk. Instead of wishful thinking about collaboration or miraculous subsidies, The Synthetic University describes intermediary organizations that can provide innovative, cost-effective solutions. Offering answers to challenges jointly faced by thousands of institutions, James Shulman lays out a compelling new vision of how to reduce spending while enabling schools to maintain their particular contributions. He explains why colleges are so resistant to change and presents illuminating case studies of mission-driven and market-supported entrepreneurial organizations—such as the student tracking infrastructure of the National Student Clearinghouse or the ambitious effort of classics professors to create a shared transinstitutional department. Mixing theory with lessons drawn from his own experience, he demonstrates how to finance and implement the organizations that can synthesize much-needed solutions. A road map for sustained institutional change, The Synthetic University shows how to overcome colleges’ do-it-yourself impulses, avoid the threat of disruption, and preserve the institutions that we need to conduct basic research, foster innovation, and prepare diverse students to lead meaningful and productive lives.

Book Synthetic

    Book Details:
  • Author : Sophia Roosth
  • Publisher : University of Chicago Press
  • Release : 2017-03
  • ISBN : 022644046X
  • Pages : 258 pages

Download or read book Synthetic written by Sophia Roosth and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2017-03 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the final years of the twentieth century, emigres from mechanical and electrical engineering and computer science resolved that if the aim of biology was to understand life, then making life would yield better theories than experimentation. Sophia Roosth, a cultural anthropologist, takes us into the world of these self-named synthetic biologists who, she shows, advocate not experiment but manufacture, not reduction but construction, not analysis but synthesis. Roosth reveals how synthetic biologists make new living things in order to understand better how life works. What we see through her careful questioning is that the biological features, theories, and limits they fasten upon are determined circularly by their own experimental tactics. This is a story of broad interest, because the active, interested making of the synthetic biologists is endemic to the sciences of our time."

Book The Synthetic Age

    Book Details:
  • Author : Christopher J. Preston
  • Publisher : MIT Press
  • Release : 2019-02-19
  • ISBN : 0262537095
  • Pages : 223 pages

Download or read book The Synthetic Age written by Christopher J. Preston and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2019-02-19 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Imagining a future in which humans fundamentally reshape the natural world using nanotechnology, synthetic biology, de-extinction, and climate engineering. We have all heard that there are no longer any places left on Earth untouched by humans. The significance of this goes beyond statistics documenting melting glaciers and shrinking species counts. It signals a new geological epoch. In The Synthetic Age, Christopher Preston argues that what is most startling about this coming epoch is not only how much impact humans have had but, more important, how much deliberate shaping they will start to do. Emerging technologies promise to give us the power to take over some of Nature's most basic operations. It is not just that we are exiting the Holocene and entering the Anthropocene; it is that we are leaving behind the time in which planetary change is just the unintended consequence of unbridled industrialism. A world designed by engineers and technicians means the birth of the planet's first Synthetic Age. Preston describes a range of technologies that will reconfigure Earth's very metabolism: nanotechnologies that can restructure natural forms of matter; “molecular manufacturing” that offers unlimited repurposing; synthetic biology's potential to build, not just read, a genome; “biological mini-machines” that can outdesign evolution; the relocation and resurrection of species; and climate engineering attempts to manage solar radiation by synthesizing a volcanic haze, cool surface temperatures by increasing the brightness of clouds, and remove carbon from the atmosphere with artificial trees that capture carbon from the breeze. What does it mean when humans shift from being caretakers of the Earth to being shapers of it? And in whom should we trust to decide the contours of our synthetic future? These questions are too important to be left to the engineers.

Book The Synthetic Proposition

Download or read book The Synthetic Proposition written by Nizan Shaked and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work traces two intersecting trajectories in American art. It shows how rights-based 1960s politics and the identity politics of the 1970s influenced the development of Conceptual art (with a capital 'C') into the diverse set of practices generally characterised as conceptualist (with a lower-case 'c').

Book A Simpler Life

    Book Details:
  • Author : Talia Dan-Cohen
  • Publisher : Cornell University Press
  • Release : 2021-03-15
  • ISBN : 1501753452
  • Pages : 171 pages

Download or read book A Simpler Life written by Talia Dan-Cohen and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2021-03-15 with total page 171 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Simpler Life approaches the developing field of synthetic biology by focusing on the experimental and institutional lives of practitioners in two labs at Princeton University. It highlights the distance between hyped technoscience and the more plodding and entrenched aspects of academic research. Talia Dan-Cohen follows practitioners as they wrestle with experiments, attempt to publish research findings, and navigate the ins and outs of academic careers. Dan-Cohen foregrounds the practices and rationalities of these pursuits that give both researchers' lives and synthetic life their distinctive contemporary forms. Rather than draw attention to avowed methodology, A Simpler Life investigates some of the more subtle and tectonic practices that bring knowledge, doubt, and technological intervention into new configurations. In so doing, the book sheds light on the more general conditions of contemporary academic technoscience.

Book The American Synthetic Organic Chemicals Industry

Download or read book The American Synthetic Organic Chemicals Industry written by Kathryn Steen and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2014 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: American Synthetic Organic Chemicals Industry: War and Politics, 1910-1930

Book Synthetic Aesthetics

    Book Details:
  • Author : Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg
  • Publisher : MIT Press
  • Release : 2014-02-28
  • ISBN : 026201999X
  • Pages : 372 pages

Download or read book Synthetic Aesthetics written by Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2014-02-28 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As synthetic biology transforms living matter into a medium for making, what is the role of design and its associated values?

Book Synthetic Socialism

    Book Details:
  • Author : Eli Rubin
  • Publisher : UNC Press Books
  • Release : 2012-09-01
  • ISBN : 1469606771
  • Pages : 305 pages

Download or read book Synthetic Socialism written by Eli Rubin and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2012-09-01 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Eli Rubin takes an innovative approach to consumer culture to explore questions of political consensus and consent and the impact of ideology on everyday life in the former East Germany. Synthetic Socialism explores the history of East Germany through the production and use of a deceptively simple material: plastic. Rubin investigates the connections between the communist government, its Bauhaus-influenced designers, its retooled postwar chemical industry, and its general consumer population. He argues that East Germany was neither a totalitarian state nor a niche society but rather a society shaped by the confluence of unique economic and political circumstances interacting with the concerns of ordinary citizens. To East Germans, Rubin says, plastic was a high-technology material, a symbol of socialism's scientific and economic superiority over capitalism. Most of all, the state and its designers argued, plastic goods were of a particularly special quality, not to be thrown away like products of the wasteful West. Rubin demonstrates that this argument was accepted by the mainstream of East German society, for whom the modern, socialist dimension of a plastics-based everyday life had a deep resonance.

Book Synthetic Worlds

    Book Details:
  • Author : Edward Castronova
  • Publisher : University of Chicago Press
  • Release : 2008-09-15
  • ISBN : 0226096319
  • Pages : 346 pages

Download or read book Synthetic Worlds written by Edward Castronova and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2008-09-15 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From EverQuest to World of Warcraft, online games have evolved from the exclusive domain of computer geeks into an extraordinarily lucrative staple of the entertainment industry. People of all ages and from all walks of life now spend thousands of hours—and dollars—partaking in this popular new brand of escapism. But the line between fantasy and reality is starting to blur. Players have created virtual societies with governments and economies of their own whose currencies now trade against the dollar on eBay at rates higher than the yen. And the players who inhabit these synthetic worlds are starting to spend more time online than at their day jobs. In Synthetic Worlds, Edward Castronova offers the first comprehensive look at the online game industry, exploring its implications for business and culture alike. He starts with the players, giving us a revealing look into the everyday lives of the gamers—outlining what they do in their synthetic worlds and why. He then describes the economies inside these worlds to show how they might dramatically affect real world financial systems, from potential disruptions of markets to new business horizons. Ultimately, he explores the long-term social consequences of online games: If players can inhabit worlds that are more alluring and gratifying than reality, then how can the real world ever compete? Will a day ever come when we spend more time in these synthetic worlds than in our own? Or even more startling, will a day ever come when such questions no longer sound alarmist but instead seem obsolete? With more than ten million active players worldwide—and with Microsoft and Sony pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into video game development—online games have become too big to ignore. Synthetic Worlds spearheads our efforts to come to terms with this virtual reality and its concrete effects. “Illuminating. . . . Castronova’s analysis of the economics of fun is intriguing. Virtual-world economies are designed to make the resulting game interesting and enjoyable for their inhabitants. Many games follow a rags-to-riches storyline, for example. But how can all the players end up in the top 10%? Simple: the upwardly mobile human players need only be a subset of the world's population. An underclass of computer-controlled 'bot' citizens, meanwhile, stays poor forever. Mr. Castronova explains all this with clarity, wit, and a merciful lack of academic jargon.”—The Economist “Synthetic Worlds is a surprisingly profound book about the social, political, and economic issues arising from the emergence of vast multiplayer games on the Internet. What Castronova has realized is that these games, where players contribute considerable labor in exchange for things they value, are not merely like real economies, they are real economies, displaying inflation, fraud, Chinese sweatshops, and some surprising in-game innovations.”—Tim Harford, Chronicle of Higher Education

Book Synthetic Biology

    Book Details:
  • Author : Huimin Zhao
  • Publisher : Academic Press
  • Release : 2013-03-21
  • ISBN : 0123978203
  • Pages : 352 pages

Download or read book Synthetic Biology written by Huimin Zhao and published by Academic Press. This book was released on 2013-03-21 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Synthetic Biology provides a framework to examine key enabling components in the emerging area of synthetic biology. Chapters contributed by leaders in the field address tools and methodologies developed for engineering biological systems at many levels, including molecular, pathway, network, whole cell, and multi-cell levels. The book highlights exciting practical applications of synthetic biology such as microbial production of biofuels and drugs, artificial cells, synthetic viruses, and artificial photosynthesis. The roles of computers and computational design are discussed, as well as future prospects in the field, including cell-free synthetic biology and engineering synthetic ecosystems.Synthetic biology is the design and construction of new biological entities, such as enzymes, genetic circuits, and cells, or the redesign of existing biological systems. It builds on the advances in molecular, cell, and systems biology and seeks to transform biology in the same way that synthesis transformed chemistry and integrated circuit design transformed computing. The element that distinguishes synthetic biology from traditional molecular and cellular biology is the focus on the design and construction of core components that can be modeled, understood, and tuned to meet specific performance criteria and the assembly of these smaller parts and devices into larger integrated systems that solve specific biotechnology problems. - Includes contributions from leaders in the field presents examples of ambitious synthetic biology efforts including creation of artificial cells from scratch, cell-free synthesis of chemicals, fuels, and proteins, engineering of artificial photosynthesis for biofuels production, and creation of unnatural living organisms - Describes the latest state-of-the-art tools developed for low-cost synthesis of ever-increasing sizes of DNA and efficient modification of proteins, pathways, and genomes - Highlights key technologies for analyzing biological systems at the genomic, proteomic, and metabolomic levels which are especially valuable in pathway, whole cell, and multi-cell applications - Details mathematical modeling tools and computational tools which can dramatically increase the speed of the design process as well as reduce the cost of development

Book Designing Human Practices

    Book Details:
  • Author : Paul Rabinow
  • Publisher : University of Chicago Press
  • Release : 2012-05-21
  • ISBN : 0226703150
  • Pages : 213 pages

Download or read book Designing Human Practices written by Paul Rabinow and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2012-05-21 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 2006 anthropologists Paul Rabinow and Gaymon Bennett set out to rethink the role that human sciences play in biological research, creating the Human Practices division of the Synthetic Biology Engineering Research Center—a facility established to create design standards for the engineering of new enzymes, genetic circuits, cells, and other biological entities—to formulate a new approach to the ethical, security, and philosophical considerations of controversial biological work. They sought not simply to act as watchdogs but to integrate the biosciences with their own discipline in a more fundamentally interdependent way, inventing a new, dynamic, and experimental anthropology that they could bring to bear on the center’s biological research. Designing Human Practices is a detailed account of this anthropological experiment and, ultimately, its rejection. It provides new insights into the possibilities and limitations of collaboration, and diagnoses the micro-politics which effectively constrained the potential for mutual scientific flourishing. Synthesizing multiple disciplines, including biology, genetics, anthropology, and philosophy, alongside a thorough examination of funding entities such as the National Science Foundation, Designing Human Practices pushes the social study of science into new and provocative territory, utilizing a real-world experience as a springboard for timely reflections on how the human and life sciences can and should transform each other.

Book Agrarian Studies

    Book Details:
  • Author : James C. Scott
  • Publisher : Yale University Press
  • Release : 2001-01-01
  • ISBN : 0300085028
  • Pages : 320 pages

Download or read book Agrarian Studies written by James C. Scott and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2001-01-01 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents an account of an intellectual breakthrough in the study of rural society and agriculture. Its ten chapters, selected for their originality and synthesis from the colloquia of the Program in Agrarian Studies at Yale University, encompass various disciplines, diverse historical periods, and several regions of the world. The contributors' fresh analyses will broaden the perspectives of readers with interests as wide-ranging as rural sociology, environmentalism, political science, history, anthropology, economics, and art history. The ten studies recast and expand what is known about rural society and agrarian issues, examining such topics as poverty, subsistence, cultivation, ecology, justice, art, custom, law, ritual life, cooperation, and state action. Each contribution provides a point of departure for new study, encouraging deeper thinking across disciplinary boundaries and frontiers.

Book Regenesis

    Book Details:
  • Author : George M Church
  • Publisher : Basic Books
  • Release : 2014-04-08
  • ISBN : 0465038654
  • Pages : 305 pages

Download or read book Regenesis written by George M Church and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2014-04-08 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Harvard biologist and master inventor explores how new biotechnologies will enable us to bring species back from the dead, unlock vast supplies of renewable energy, and extend human life. In Regenesis, George Church and science writer Ed Regis explore the possibilities of the emerging field of synthetic biology. Synthetic biology, in which living organisms are selectively altered by modifying substantial portions of their genomes, allows for the creation of entirely new species of organisms. These technologies-far from the out-of-control nightmare depicted in science fiction-have the power to improve human and animal health, increase our intelligence, enhance our memory, and even extend our life span. A breathtaking look at the potential of this world-changing technology, Regenesis is nothing less than a guide to the future of life.

Book Synthetic Polymer Chemistry

Download or read book Synthetic Polymer Chemistry written by Zheng Zhao and published by Royal Society of Chemistry. This book was released on 2019-09-09 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Polymeric materials form the basis of daily life. Despite the great contribution of traditional methodologies such as anionic and radical polymerizations in preparing various functional polymers, the increasing demand for polymers with new structures and functions has inspired the development of new synthetic techniques. Many new polymerizations including click polymerization, controlled/living radical polymerization, multicomponent polymerization have been well developed. Focusing on breakthroughs and recent progress, Synthetic Polymer Chemistry provides efficient tools for the synthesis of linear and topological polymers. Chapters cover topics including fabrication of supramolecular polymers, organocatalytic synthesis and olefin co(polymerization). This title will be a valuable reference for those working in polymer chemistry, as well as students and researchers interested in opto-electronic, biological and materials sciences.

Book Strange Natures

    Book Details:
  • Author : Kent H. Redford
  • Publisher : Yale University Press
  • Release : 2021-06-22
  • ISBN : 0300230974
  • Pages : 296 pages

Download or read book Strange Natures written by Kent H. Redford and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2021-06-22 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A groundbreaking examination of the implications of synthetic biology for biodiversity conservation Nature almost everywhere survives on human terms. The distinction between what is natural and what is human-made, which has informed conservation for centuries, has become blurred. When scientists can reshape genes more or less at will, what does it mean to conserve nature? The tools of synthetic biology are changing the way we answer that question. Gene editing technology is already transforming the agriculture and biotechnology industries. What happens if synthetic biology is also used in conservation to control invasive species, fight wildlife disease, or even bring extinct species back from the dead? Conservation scientist Kent Redford and geographer Bill Adams turn to synthetic biology, ecological restoration, political ecology, and de-extinction studies and propose a thoroughly innovative vision for protecting nature.

Book Introduction to Synthetic Polymers

Download or read book Introduction to Synthetic Polymers written by Ian McIntyre Campbell and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1994 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This clear and concise textbook introduces the huge field of polymer science to students taking degree courses in chemistry, materials science and related subjects covering polymers. By focusing on the few major polymers, for example polystyrene and PVC, which are in common use and which thestudents will recognize, the book illustrates simply the basic principles of polymer science. It looks at the factors which give rise to the special properties of polymers, and emphasizes how polymer molecules can be synthesised with different sizes and architectures to tailor the properties of theresulting material. The later chapters then introduce a wide range of polymers, some with special applications now and others with exciting potential for the future. There are exercises at the end of each chapter.

Book What is Life

    Book Details:
  • Author : Edward Regis
  • Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
  • Release : 2009
  • ISBN : 0195383419
  • Pages : 210 pages

Download or read book What is Life written by Edward Regis and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2009 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides an introduction to the work of the scientists who were attempting literally to create life from scratch, starting with molecular components that they hope to assemble into the world's first synthetic living cell. The book also examines how scientists have unlocked the "three secrets of life," describes the key role played by ATP ("the ultimate driving force of all life"), and outlines the many attempts to explain how life first arose on earth, a puzzle that has given birth to a wide range of theories.