Prometheans in the Lab

Prometheans in the Lab PDF Author: Sharon Bertsch McGrayne
Publisher: Sharon Bertsch McGrayne
ISBN: 9780071407953
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
Table of contents includes: Soap and Nicholas Leblanc, Color and William Henry Perkin, Sugar and Norbert Rillieux, Clean water and Edward Frankland, Fertilizer, poison gas, and Fritz Haber, Leaded gasoline, safe refrigeration and Thomas Midgley, Jr., Nylon and Wallace Hume Carothers, DDT and Paul Hermann Muller, Lead-free gasoline and Clair C. Patterson.

Prometheans in the Lab

Prometheans in the Lab PDF Author: Sharon Bertsch McGrayne
Publisher: Sharon Bertsch McGrayne
ISBN: 9780071407953
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 260

Get Book Here

Book Description
Table of contents includes: Soap and Nicholas Leblanc, Color and William Henry Perkin, Sugar and Norbert Rillieux, Clean water and Edward Frankland, Fertilizer, poison gas, and Fritz Haber, Leaded gasoline, safe refrigeration and Thomas Midgley, Jr., Nylon and Wallace Hume Carothers, DDT and Paul Hermann Muller, Lead-free gasoline and Clair C. Patterson.

Prometheans in the Lab

Prometheans in the Lab PDF Author: Sharon Bertsch McGrayne
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Chemistry
Languages : en
Pages : 243

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Book Description


A Short History of Nearly Everything

A Short History of Nearly Everything PDF Author: Bill Bryson
Publisher: Anchor Canada
ISBN: 0385674503
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 562

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Book Description
One of the world’s most beloved and bestselling writers takes his ultimate journey -- into the most intriguing and intractable questions that science seeks to answer. In A Walk in the Woods, Bill Bryson trekked the Appalachian Trail -- well, most of it. In In A Sunburned Country, he confronted some of the most lethal wildlife Australia has to offer. Now, in his biggest book, he confronts his greatest challenge: to understand -- and, if possible, answer -- the oldest, biggest questions we have posed about the universe and ourselves. Taking as territory everything from the Big Bang to the rise of civilization, Bryson seeks to understand how we got from there being nothing at all to there being us. To that end, he has attached himself to a host of the world’s most advanced (and often obsessed) archaeologists, anthropologists, and mathematicians, travelling to their offices, laboratories, and field camps. He has read (or tried to read) their books, pestered them with questions, apprenticed himself to their powerful minds. A Short History of Nearly Everything is the record of this quest, and it is a sometimes profound, sometimes funny, and always supremely clear and entertaining adventure in the realms of human knowledge, as only Bill Bryson can render it. Science has never been more involving or entertaining.

The Fabric of Civilization

The Fabric of Civilization PDF Author: Virginia Postrel
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 1541617614
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
From Paleolithic flax to 3D knitting, explore the global history of textiles and the world they weave together in this enthralling and educational guide. The story of humanity is the story of textiles -- as old as civilization itself. Since the first thread was spun, the need for textiles has driven technology, business, politics, and culture. In The Fabric of Civilization, Virginia Postrel synthesizes groundbreaking research from archaeology, economics, and science to reveal a surprising history. From Minoans exporting wool colored with precious purple dye to Egypt, to Romans arrayed in costly Chinese silk, the cloth trade paved the crossroads of the ancient world. Textiles funded the Renaissance and the Mughal Empire; they gave us banks and bookkeeping, Michelangelo's David and the Taj Mahal. The cloth business spread the alphabet and arithmetic, propelled chemical research, and taught people to think in binary code. Assiduously researched and deftly narrated, The Fabric of Civilization tells the story of the world's most influential commodity.

The Alchemy of Disease

The Alchemy of Disease PDF Author: John Whysner
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231549504
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 229

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Book Description
Since the dawn of the industrial age, we have unleashed a bewildering number of potentially harmful chemicals. But out of this vast array, how do we identify the actual threats? What does it take to prove that a certain chemical causes cancer? How do we translate academic knowledge of the toxic effects of particular substances into understanding real-world health consequences? The science that answers these questions is toxicology. In The Alchemy of Disease, John Whysner offers an accessible and compelling history of toxicology and its key findings. He details the experiments and discoveries that revealed the causal connections between chemical exposures and diseases. Balancing clear accounts of groundbreaking science with human drama and public-policy relevance, Whysner describes key moments in the development of toxicology and their thorny social and political implications. The book features discussions of toxicological problems past and present, including DDT, cigarettes and other carcinogens, lead poisoning, fossil fuels, chemical warfare, pharmaceuticals—including opioids—and the efficacy of animal testing. Offering valuable insight into the science and politics of crucial public-health concerns, The Alchemy of Disease shows that toxicology’s task—pinpointing the chemical cause of an illness—is as compelling as any detective story.

Prometheans

Prometheans PDF Author: Ben Bova
Publisher: Tor Books
ISBN: 142993249X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 343

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Book Description
Down with Pessimists! In a rich mix of fiction and science, fact and speculation, Ben Bova presents the Promethean pioneers whose technologic genius fuels our dreams --- and our future. Discover the exciting adventures of Sam Gunn --- first man to rig a still on the moon; and Chet Kinsman, first to try zero-gee seduction. The man who tamed hurricans and the man whose vision of orbital immortality lost him all he loved on Earth. The day politics, media and bio-engineering met, and the day an assassin took aim on the stars . . . Plus the equally thrilling stories of the real pioneers of space industry and defence; Carl Sagan's quest to find intelligent life in the universe; how wealth and riches fall from the sky; and the potential pleasure of romance in orbit. The next time the headlines belong to anti-science pessimists, remember --- tomorrow belongs to Prometheans, the dreamers who steal fire and tame stars. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Persistent Pollution – Past, Present and Future

Persistent Pollution – Past, Present and Future PDF Author: Markus Quante
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 3642174191
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 417

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Book Description
This book evolved from the 5th School of Environmental Research entitled „Persistent Pollution – Past, Present and Future", which has set a focus on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs), heavy metals and aerosols. - reconstruction of past changes based on the scientific analysis of natural archives such as ice cores and peat deposits, - evaluation of the present environmental state by the integration of measurements and modelling and the establishment of cause-effect-patterns, - assessment of possible environmental future scenarios including emission and climate change perspectives.

Unleaded

Unleaded PDF Author: Carrie Nielsen
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 1978821026
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 125

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Book Description
When leaded gasoline was first developed in the 1920s, medical experts were quick to warn of the public health catastrophes it would cause. Yet government regulators did not heed their advice, and for more than half a century, nearly all cars used leaded gasoline, which contributed to a nationwide epidemic of lead poisoning. By the 1970s, 99.8% of American children had significantly elevated levels of lead in their blood. Unleaded tells the story of how crusading scientists and activists convinced the U.S. government to ban lead additives in gasoline. It also reveals how, for nearly fifty years, scientific experts paid by the oil and mining industries abused their authority to convince the public that leaded gasoline was perfectly harmless. Combining environmental history, sociology, and neuroscience, Carrie Nielsen explores how lead exposure affects the developing brains of children and is linked to social problems including academic failure, teen pregnancies, and violent crime. She also shows how, even after the nationwide outrage over Flint’s polluted water, many poor and minority communities and communities of color across the United States still have dangerously high lead levels. Unleaded vividly depicts the importance of sound science and strong environmental regulations to protect our nation’s most vulnerable populations.

Mercury and Prometheans

Mercury and Prometheans PDF Author: Ben Bova
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 076538549X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 689

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Book Description
"Two complete books, one price"--Front cover.

Civilization and the Culture of Science

Civilization and the Culture of Science PDF Author: Stephen Gaukroger
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192588923
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 534

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Book Description
How did science come to have such a central place in Western culture? How did cognitive values—and subsequently moral, political, and social ones—come to be modelled around scientific values? In Civilization and the Culture of Science, Stephen Gaukroger explores how these values were shaped and how they began, in turn, to shape those of society. The core nineteenth- and twentieth-century development is that in which science comes to take centre stage in determining ideas of civilization, displacing Christianity in this role. Christianity had provided a unifying thread in the study of the world, however, and science had to match this, which it did through the project of the unity of the sciences. The standing of science came to rest or fall on this question, which the book sets out to show in detail is essentially ideological, not something that arose from developments within the sciences, which remained pluralistic and modular. A crucial ingredient in this process was a fundamental rethinking of the relations between science and ethics, economics, philosophy, and engineering. In his engaging description of this transition to a scientific modernity, Gaukroger examines five of the issues which underpinned this shift in detail: changes in the understanding of civilization; the push to unify the sciences; the rise of the idea of the limits of scientific understanding; the concepts of 'applied' and 'popular' science; and the way in which the public was shaped in a scientific image.