Flying Buttresses, Entropy, and O-rings

Author: James L. Adams
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674306899
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 274

Book Description
From Teflon to Velcro, from bandwidths to base pairs, the artifacts of engineering and technology reflect the broad scope--and frustrating limitations--of our imagination. Best-selling author James Adams takes readers on an enlightening tour of this exciting world, demystifying such endeavors as design, research, and manufacturing.

Linear Inverse Problems: The Maximum Entropy Connection (With Cd-rom)

Author: Henryk Gzyl
Publisher: World Scientific
ISBN: 9814462160
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 351

Book Description
The book describes a useful tool for solving linear inverse problems subject to convex constraints. The method of maximum entropy in the mean automatically takes care of the constraints. It consists of a technique for transforming a large dimensional inverse problem into a small dimensional non-linear variational problem.A variety of mathematical aspects of the maximum entropy method are explored as well.

Aramis, or The Love of Technology

Author: Bruno Latour
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674265319
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 270

Book Description
Bruno Latour has written a unique and wonderful tale of a technological dream gone wrong. The story of the birth and death of Aramis—the guided-transportation system intended for Paris—is told in this thought-provoking and fictional account by several different parties: an engineer and his professor; company executives and elected officials; a sociologist; and finally Aramis itself, who delivers a passionate plea on behalf of technological innovations that risk being abandoned by their makers. As the young engineer and professor follow Aramis’s trail—conducting interviews, analyzing documents, assessing the evidence—perspectives keep shifting: the truth is revealed as multilayered, unascertainable, comprising an array of possibilities worthy of Rashomon. This charming and profound book, part novel and part sociological study, is Latour at his thought-provoking best.

Hunting and Gathering on the Information Savanna

Author: Brian Clark O'Connor
Publisher: Scarecrow Press
ISBN: 9780810847606
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 188

Book Description
Serves as the focal concept in a search for a truly functional document access system, enabling us to stand back from the present, to look into the shadows of our current designs, marvel at the breadth of human search capabilities, recognize frailties in both humans and systems, and ask new questions as we grapple with navigating our information environment. O'Connor and Copeland offer three different arenas of nontrivial information seeking for our consideration: "Submarine Chasing" explores the thoughts of a highly decorated Cold War submarine hunter. "Bounty Hunting" involves a long and convoluted search for a reported bond skipper. "Engineering Design" presents a content analysis of the few works on epistemological foundations of engineering design activity. These stories, told at great length and in considerable detail, are framed within a foundational model that links the simple act of document seeking to the broader issue of making one's way through life in the physical world. In each case, the authors ramble, mull, and stumble upon ideas without the least prior constraint, developing some threads quite fully and leaving others to tease us, but never ever throwing us to the lions.

Engineering

Author: Natasha McCarthy
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1780741529
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 184

Book Description
Discover the human side to the discipline that is profoundly more than nuts and bolts Focusing on the impact of engineering on society and the world, McCarthy details the development of the discipline, explains what makes an engineering mind, and shows how every aspect of our lives has been engineered: from gadgets to our national infrastructure. Long considered tinkerers, problem solvers, and visionaries, engineers hold the keys to our real and virtual future.

Cats' Paws and Catapults: Mechanical Worlds of Nature and People

Author: Steven Vogel
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393352951
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 388

Book Description
"Full of ideas and well-explained principles that will bring new understanding of everyday things to both scientists and non-scientists alike."—R. McNeill Alexander, Nature Nature and humans build their devices with the same earthly materials and use them in the same air and water, pulled by the same gravity. Why, then, do their designs diverge so sharply? Humans, for instance, love right angles, while nature's angles are rarely right and usually rounded. Our technology goes around on wheels—and on rotating pulleys, gears, shafts, and cams—yet in nature only the tiny propellers of bacteria spin as true wheels. Our hinges turn because hard parts slide around each other, whereas nature's hinges (a rabbit's ear, for example) more often swing by bending flexible materials. In this marvelously surprising, witty book, Steven Vogel compares these two mechanical worlds, introduces the reader to his field of biomechanics, and explains how the nexus of physical law, size, and convenience of construction determine the designs of both people and nature. "This elegant comparison of human and biological technology will forever change the way you look at each."—Michael LaBarbera, American Scientist

Earth Science for Civil and Environmental Engineers

Author: Richard E. Jackson
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521847257
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 479

Book Description
Introduces the fundamental principles of applied Earth science needed for engineering practice, with case studies, exercises, and online solutions.

Design Paradigms

Author: Warren K. Wake
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 9780471299769
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 316

Book Description
Designmuster sind die Bausteine für Design und können in natürlicher oder vom Menschen geschaffener Umgebung beobachtet werden. Diese Musterbeispiele stellen eine visuelle Datenbank verschiedener Lösungsmöglichkeiten für Designer aus verschiedenen Disziplinen dar. Die Beziehungen zwischen Form, Gestalt und Farbe und die Art und Weise, wie wir diese Beziehungen verstehen und wahrnehmen ist das Thema dieses Buches. Designer müssen in der Lage sein, diese Grundmuster zu verstehen, wenn sie eine effektive und kreative Designlösung finden wollen. Dieses Buch definiert diese allgemeinen "Regeln" der Wahrnehmung und unterstützt so den Designprozeß, indem es die Voraussetzungen für Kreativität, Visualisierung und Problemlösungen schafft. Dabei werden nicht nur Techniken zur Entwicklung von Kreativität im Designprozeß behandelt, sondern ebenso die Entwicklung des Designprozesses selbst, vom ersten Schritt bis zum fertigen Produkt, durch Analogieschlüsse zwischen Produkt und dem Musterbeispiel das dazu die Anregungen lieferte.

Doing Engineering

Author: Joyce Tang
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
ISBN: 0742577309
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 264

Book Description
The first to systematically compare Caucasians, African Americans, and Asian Americans in engineering, this study of the career attainment and mobility of engineers in the United States tells how these three groups fare in the American engineering labor market and what they can look forward to in the future. The numbers of black and Asian engineers recently have grown at a much faster rate than the number of Caucasian engineers. With a projected steady increase in engineering jobs and demographic shifts, this trend should continue. Yet, recent writings on the engineering profession have said little about career mobility beyond graduation. This book identifies and explores key issues determining whether minorities in the US will attain occupational equality with their Caucasian counterparts. Highlighting implications for theory, policy making, and the future of the profession, Doing Engineering offers important insights into labor, race and ethnicity that will be of interest to anyone studying stratification in a wide range of professional occupations.

Managing Corporate Information Systems Evolution and Maintenance

Author: Khaled M. Khan
Publisher: IGI Global
ISBN: 1591403685
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 376

Book Description
This book addresses the recent developments in systems maintenance research and practices ranging from technicality of systems evolution to managerial aspects of the topic, including issues such as evolving legacy systems to e-business, applying patterns for reengineering legacy systems to web, architectural recovery of legacy systems, evolving legacy systems into software components.