Frontiers of Science

Frontiers of Science
Author: Cameron B. Strang
Publisher: UNC Press Books
Total Pages: 376
Release: 2018-06-13
Genre: History
ISBN: 1469640481

Cameron Strang takes American scientific thought and discoveries away from the learned societies, museums, and teaching halls of the Northeast and puts the production of knowledge about the natural world in the context of competing empires and an expanding republic in the Gulf South. People often dismissed by starched northeasterners as nonintellectuals--Indian sages, African slaves, Spanish officials, Irishmen on the make, clearers of land and drivers of men--were also scientific observers, gatherers, organizers, and reporters. Skulls and stems, birds and bugs, rocks and maps, tall tales and fertile hypotheses came from them. They collected, described, and sent the objects that scientists gazed on and interpreted in polite Philadelphia. They made knowledge. Frontiers of Science offers a new framework for approaching American intellectual history, one that transcends political and cultural boundaries and reveals persistence across the colonial and national eras. The pursuit of knowledge in the United States did not cohere around democratic politics or the influence of liberty. It was, as in other empires, divided by multiple loyalties and identities, organized through contested hierarchies of ethnicity and place, and reliant on violence. By discovering the lost intellectual history of one region, Strang shows us how to recover a continent for science.

Computer Science

Computer Science
Author: Kyle Kirkland
Publisher: Infobase Publishing
Total Pages: 225
Release: 2010
Genre: Computer science
ISBN: 0816074410

Investigates the research and discoveries of computer scientists whose efforts have expanded knowledge of the rapidly changing field of computer science.

Physical Sciences

Physical Sciences
Author: Kyle Kirkland
Publisher: Infobase Publishing
Total Pages: 209
Release: 2010
Genre: Science
ISBN: 1438131216

Investigates the research and discoveries of scientists who explored the frontiers of physics and uncovered phenomena that often contradicted prevailing wisdom.

Science, the Endless Frontier

Science, the Endless Frontier
Author: Vannevar Bush
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 186
Release: 2021-02-02
Genre: Science
ISBN: 069120165X

The classic case for why government must support science—with a new essay by physicist and former congressman Rush Holt on what democracy needs from science today Science, the Endless Frontier is recognized as the landmark argument for the essential role of science in society and government’s responsibility to support scientific endeavors. First issued when Vannevar Bush was the director of the US Office of Scientific Research and Development during the Second World War, this classic remains vital in making the case that scientific progress is necessary to a nation’s health, security, and prosperity. Bush’s vision set the course for US science policy for more than half a century, building the world’s most productive scientific enterprise. Today, amid a changing funding landscape and challenges to science’s very credibility, Science, the Endless Frontier resonates as a powerful reminder that scientific progress and public well-being alike depend on the successful symbiosis between science and government. This timely new edition presents this iconic text alongside a new companion essay from scientist and former congressman Rush Holt, who offers a brief introduction and consideration of what society needs most from science now. Reflecting on the report’s legacy and relevance along with its limitations, Holt contends that the public’s ability to cope with today’s issues—such as public health, the changing climate and environment, and challenging technologies in modern society—requires a more capacious understanding of what science can contribute. Holt considers how scientists should think of their obligation to society and what the public should demand from science, and he calls for a renewed understanding of science’s value for democracy and society at large. A touchstone for concerned citizens, scientists, and policymakers, Science, the Endless Frontier endures as a passionate articulation of the power and potential of science.

Science at the Frontier

Science at the Frontier
Author: National Academy of Sciences
Publisher: National Academies Press
Total Pages: 286
Release: 1992-02-01
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0309045924

Science at the Frontier takes you on a journey through the minds of some of the nation's leading young scientists as they explore the most exciting areas of discovery today. Based on the second Frontiers of Science symposium sponsored by the National Academy of Sciences, this book describes recent accomplishments and new directions in ten basic fields, represented by outstanding scientists convening to discuss their research. It captures the excitement and personal quality of these exchanges, sometimes pointing to surprising connections spanning the boundaries of traditional disciplines, while providing a context for the reader that explains the basic scientific framework for the fields under discussion. The volume explores: New modifications to scientific theory as geologists probe deep inside the earth and astrophysicists reach to the limits of the observable universe for answers to some of nature's most fundamental and vexing questions. The influence of research in smog formation on the public debate about how to effectively control air pollution. The increasing use of computer modeling in science, from describing the evolution of cellular automata to revealing the workings of the human brain via neural networks. The rise of dynamical systems (the study of chaotic behavior in nature) to a full-fledged science. The search to understand the regulation of gene activity and the many biological problems-such as the onset of cancer-to which it applies. Recent progress in the quest to transform what we know about photosynthesis into functional, efficient systems to tap the sun's energy. Current developments in magnetic resonance imaging and its promise for new breakthroughs in medical diagnosis. Throughout this work the reader is witness to scientific discovery and debate centered on such common concerns as the dramatic and transforming effect of computers on scientists' thinking and research; the development of more cross-disciplinary perspectives; and the very nature of the scientific enterprise itself-what it is to be part of it, and its significance for society. Science at the Frontier is must reading for informed lay readers, scientists interested in fields other than their own, and science students considering a future specialization.

The Great Unknown

The Great Unknown
Author: Marcus du Sautoy
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 466
Release: 2017-04-11
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0735221812

“An engaging voyage into some of the great mysteries and wonders of our world." --Alan Lightman, author of Einstein’s Dream and The Accidental Universe “No one is better at making the recondite accessible and exciting.” —Bill Bryson Brain Pickings and Kirkus Best Science Book of the Year Every week seems to throw up a new discovery, shaking the foundations of what we know. But are there questions we will never be able to answer—mysteries that lie beyond the predictive powers of science? In this captivating exploration of our most tantalizing unknowns, Marcus du Sautoy invites us to consider the problems in cosmology, quantum physics, mathematics, and neuroscience that continue to bedevil scientists and creative thinkers who are at the forefront of their fields. At once exhilarating, mind-bending, and compulsively readable, The Great Unknown challenges us to consider big questions—about the nature of consciousness, what came before the big bang, and what lies beyond our horizons—while taking us on a virtuoso tour of the great breakthroughs of the past and celebrating the men and women who dared to tackle the seemingly impossible and had the imagination to come up with new ways of seeing the world.

Frontiers II

Frontiers II
Author: Isaac Asimov
Publisher: Plume
Total Pages: 388
Release: 1994
Genre: Science
ISBN: 9780452272293

More of Isaac Asimov's weekly science columns for the Los Angeles Times and those his wife, Janet, wrote during his illness and after his death in April 1992. The Asimovs discuss how close we are to producing life in a lab, the latest revelations about dinosaur extinction, recent startling sightings of planets and stars, if we can establish colonies on Mars, if computer intelligence can ever surpass human intelligence, and the gravest dangers to our environment. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Discovery of Design

Discovery of Design
Author: Dr. Donald DeYoung
Publisher: New Leaf Publishing Group
Total Pages: 244
Release: 2009-10-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1614582238

A world created in perfection, now unveiled... From the frontiers of scientific discovery, researchers are now taking design elements from the natural world and creating extraordinary breakthroughs that benefit our health, our quality of life, our ability to communicate, and even help us work more efficiently. An exciting look at cutting-edge scientific advances, Discover of Design highlights incredible examples that include: How things like batteries, human organ repair, microlenses, automotive engineering, paint, and even credit card security all have links to natural designs Innovations like solar panels in space unfurled using technology gleaned from beech tree leaves, and optic research rooted in the photonic properties of opal gemstones Current and future research from the fields of stealth technology, communications, cosmetics, nanotechnology, surveillance, and more! Take a fantastic journey into the intersection of science and God's blueprints for life - discovering answers to some of the most intricate challenges we face. Experience this powerful apologetics message in a multi-purpose resource as a personal enrichment tool or as an educational supplement.

Cycles of Invention and Discovery

Cycles of Invention and Discovery
Author: Venkatesh Narayanamurti
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 177
Release: 2016-10-24
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0674974158

Cycles of Invention and Discovery offers an in-depth look at the real-world practice of science and engineering. It shows how the standard categories of “basic” and “applied” have become a hindrance to the organization of the U.S. science and technology enterprise. Tracing the history of these problematic categories, Venkatesh Narayanamurti and Toluwalogo Odumosu document how historical views of policy makers and scientists have led to the construction of science as a pure ideal on the one hand and of engineering as a practical (and inherently less prestigious) activity on the other. Even today, this erroneous but still widespread distinction forces these two endeavors into separate silos, misdirects billions of dollars, and thwarts progress in science and engineering research. The authors contrast this outmoded perspective with the lived experiences of researchers at major research laboratories. Using such Nobel Prize–winning examples as magnetic resonance imaging, the transistor, and the laser, they explore the daily micro-practices of research, showing how distinctions between the search for knowledge and creative problem solving break down when one pays attention to the ways in which pathbreaking research actually happens. By studying key contemporary research institutions, the authors highlight the importance of integrated research practices, contrasting these with models of research in the classic but still-influential report Science the Endless Frontier. Narayanamurti and Odumosu’s new model of the research ecosystem underscores that discovery and invention are often two sides of the same coin that moves innovation forward.

The Frontiers of Ancient Science

The Frontiers of Ancient Science
Author: Brooke Holmes
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 718
Release: 2015-03-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 3110389304

Our understanding of science, mathematics, and medicine today can be deeply enriched by studying the historical roots of these areas of inquiry in the ancient Near East and Mediterranean. The fields of ancient science and mathematics have in recent years witnessed remarkable growth. The present volume brings together contributions from more than thirty of the most important scholars working in these fields in the United States and Europe in honor of the eminent historian of ancient science and medicine Heinrich von Staden, Professor Emeritus of Classics and History of Science at the Institute of Advanced Study and William Lampson Professor Emeritus of Classics and Comparative Literature at Yale University. The papers range widely from Mesopotamia to Ancient Greece and Rome, from the first millennium B.C. to the early medieval period, and from mathematics to philosophy, mechanics to medicine, representing both a wide diversity of national traditions and the cutting edge of the international scholarly community.