Author: JF Dubeau
Publisher: Inkshares
ISBN: 1941758606
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 252
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Book Description
JF Dubeau’s debut novel, The Life Engineered begins in the year 3594, where humanity is little more than a memory—a legend of the distant past destined to reappear. Capeks, a race of artificial creatures originally created by humans, have inherited the galaxy and formed a utopian civilization built on the shared goal of tirelessly working to prepare for their makers’ return. One moment a cop dying in the line of duty in Boston, the next “reborn” as a Capek, Dagir must find her place in this intricate society. That vaguely remembered “death” was but the last of hundreds of simulated lives, distilling her current personality. A robot built for rescue and repair, she finds her abilities tested immediately after her awakening when the large, sentient facility that created her is destroyed, marking the only instance of murder the peaceful Capeks have ever known. For the first time in their history, conflicting philosophies clash, setting off a violent civil war that could lay waste to the stars themselves. Dagir sets off on a quest to find the killers, and finds much more than she sought. As the layers of the Capeks’ past peel away to reveal their early origins, centuries-old truths come to light. And the resulting revelations may tear humanity’s children apart—and destroy all remnants of humankind.
Author: J-F. Dubeau
Publisher: Inkshares
ISBN: 1942645368
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 432
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Book Description
-Barnes & Noble Best Horror Books of 2017 Pick -Runner-up for the American Library Association's Horror Book of 2017 "One of the most enthralling novels I've read in the last ten years. Dubeau is a force to be reckoned with." —Jerry Smith, Fangoria Magazine and Blumhouse.com "This is the page-turner you've been looking for." —Barnes & Noble The village of Saint-Ferdinand has all the trappings of a quiet life: farmhouses stretching from one main street, a small police precinct, a few diners and cafés, and a grocery store. Though if an out-of-towner stopped in, they would notice one unusual thing—a cemetery far too large and much too full for such a small town, lined with the victims of the Saint-Ferdinand Killer, who has eluded police for nearly two decades. It’s not until after Inspector Stephen Crowley finally catches the killer that the town discovers even darker forces are at play. When a dark spirit reveals itself to Venus McKenzie, one of Saint-Ferdinand's teenage residents, she learns that this creature's power has a long history with her town—and that the serial murders merely scratch the surface of a past burdened by evil secrets.
Author: Shannon Hunt
Publisher: Kids Can Press Ltd
ISBN: 1771389435
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 53
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Book Description
Nine engineering problems and their ingenious solutions. How do you land a rover on Mars, resolve a perpetual traffic jam or save a herd of caribou from potential extinction? Ask an engineer! Here are nine real-life problems for which engineers designed inventive (and even crazy!) solutions. Each was solved using a different field of engineering „ from aerospace and mechanical to the new field of geomatics „ along with some awesome math, science and technology skills! A helpful seven-step engineering design process is also featured: define the problem, identify the requirements, develop solutions, design a prototype, test it, improve it and share the idea. What child doesnÍt love a radical idea? These feats are sure to inspire the natural engineer in all!
Author: Mark Denny
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674060857
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 400
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Book Description
The alarm calls of birds make them difficult for predators to locate, while the howl of wolves and the croak of bullfrogs are designed to carry across long distances. From an engineer's perspective, how do such specialized adaptations among living things really work? And how does physics constrain evolution, channeling it in particular directions? Writing with wit and a richly informed sense of wonder, Denny and McFadzean offer an expert look at animals as works of engineering, each exquisitely adapted to a specific manner of survival, whether that means spinning webs or flying across continents or hunting in the dark-or writing books. This particular book, containing more than a hundred illustrations, conveys clearly, for engineers and nonengineers alike, the physical principles underlying animal structure and behavior. Pigeons, for instance-when understood as marvels of engineering-are flying remote sensors: they have wideband acoustical receivers, hi-res optics, magnetic sensing, and celestial navigation. Albatrosses expend little energy while traveling across vast southern oceans, by exploiting a technique known to glider pilots as dynamic soaring. Among insects, one species of fly can locate the source of a sound precisely, even though the fly itself is much smaller than the wavelength of the sound it hears. And that big-brained, upright Great Ape? Evolution has equipped us to figure out an important fact about the natural world: that there is more to life than engineering, but no life at all without it.
Author: Alexa S. Chilcutt
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1119474965
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 190
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Book Description
Engineered to Speak: Helping You Create and Deliver Engaging Technical Presentations Technical expertise alone is not enough to ensure professional success. Twenty-first century engineers and technical professionals must master making the complex simple and the simple interesting. This book helps engineers do what they love most: take a complicated system and create a stronger solution. You will learn tips and strategies that help you answer one essential question, “How can I get better at sharing my ideas with a variety of audiences?” In Engineered to Speak, Alexa Chilcutt and Adam Brooks combine their expertise in messaging and public speaking with research that illustrates how effective communication contributes to career advancement. Each chapter contains inspiring stories from practicing engineers around the world as well as useful examples, exercises and repeatable processes for creating compelling messages. This book helps technical talent become better speakers, better communicators, and ultimately better leaders. This helpful guide demystifies the art of oral communication by breaking it down into ten easy-to-follow-processes that can improve the ability of professionals at any level. By the end of Engineered to Speak, you’ll understand how to gain buy-in, identify and expand your Sphere of Influence, amplify your message, deliver compelling presentations, and learn from those who’ve embrace these skills and enjoyed professional success.
Author: Robert Pool
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198026722
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 369
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Book Description
We have long recognized technology as a driving force behind much historical and cultural change. The invention of the printing press initiated the Reformation. The development of the compass ushered in the Age of Exploration and the discovery of the New World. The cotton gin created the conditions that led to the Civil War. Now, in Beyond Engineering, science writer Robert Pool turns the question around to examine how society shapes technology. Drawing on such disparate fields as history, economics, risk analysis, management science, sociology, and psychology, Pool illuminates the complex, often fascinating interplay between machines and society, in a book that will revolutionize how we think about technology. We tend to think that reason guides technological development, that engineering expertise alone determines the final form an invention takes. But if you look closely enough at the history of any invention, says Pool, you will find that factors unrelated to engineering seem to have an almost equal impact. In his wide-ranging volume, he traces developments in nuclear energy, automobiles, light bulbs, commercial electricity, and personal computers, to reveal that the ultimate shape of a technology often has as much to do with outside and unforeseen forces. For instance, Pool explores the reasons why steam-powered cars lost out to internal combustion engines. He shows that the Stanley Steamer was in many ways superior to the Model T--it set a land speed record in 1906 of more than 127 miles per hour, it had no transmission (and no transmission headaches), and it was simpler (one Stanley engine had only twenty-two moving parts) and quieter than a gas engine--but the steamers were killed off by factors that had little or nothing to do with their engineering merits, including the Stanley twins' lack of business acumen and an outbreak of hoof-and-mouth disease. Pool illuminates other aspects of technology as well. He traces how seemingly minor decisions made early along the path of development can have profound consequences further down the road, and perhaps most important, he argues that with the increasing complexity of our technological advances--from nuclear reactors to genetic engineering--the number of things that can go wrong multiplies, making it increasingly difficult to engineer risk out of the equation. Citing such catastrophes as Bhopal, Three Mile Island, the Exxon Valdez, the Challenger, and Chernobyl, he argues that is it time to rethink our approach to technology. The days are gone when machines were solely a product of larger-than-life inventors and hard-working engineers. Increasingly, technology will be a joint effort, with its design shaped not only by engineers and executives but also psychologists, political scientists, management theorists, risk specialists, regulators and courts, and the general public. Whether discussing bovine growth hormone, molten-salt reactors, or baboon-to-human transplants, Beyond Engineering is an engaging look at modern technology and an illuminating account of how technology and the modern world shape each other.
Author: Samuel C. Florman
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 1466842369
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 271
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Book Description
Humans have always sought to change their environment--building houses, monuments, temples, and roads. In the process, they have remade the fabric of the world into newly functional objects that are also works of art to be admired. In this second edition of his popular Existential Pleasures of Engineering, Samuel Florman explores how engineers think and feel about their profession. A deeply insightful and refreshingly unique text, this book corrects the myth that engineering is cold and passionless. Indeed, Florman celebrates engineering not only crucial and fundamental but also vital and alive; he views it as a response to some of our deepest impulses, an endeavor rich in spiritual and sensual rewards. Opposing the "anti-technology" stance, Florman gives readers a practical, creative, and even amusing philosophy of engineering that boasts of pride in his craft.
Author: Luis A. Campos
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022678357X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 317
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Book Description
“Engineering” has firmly taken root in the entangled bank of biology even as proposals to remake the living world have sent tendrils in every direction, and at every scale. Nature Remade explores these complex prospects from a resolutely historical approach, tracing cases across the decades of the long twentieth century. These essays span the many levels at which life has been engineered: molecule, cell, organism, population, ecosystem, and planet. From the cloning of agricultural crops and the artificial feeding of silkworms to biomimicry, genetic engineering, and terraforming, Nature Remade affirms the centrality of engineering in its various forms for understanding and imagining modern life. Organized around three themes—control and reproduction, knowing as making, and envisioning—the chapters in Nature Remade chart different means, scales, and consequences of intervening and reimagining nature.
Author: Robert H. Carlson
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674053621
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 290
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Book Description
“Essential reading for anyone who wishes to understand the current state of biotechnology and the opportunities and dangers it may create.” —American Scientist Technology is a process and a body of knowledge as much as a collection of artifacts. Biology is no different—and we are just beginning to comprehend the challenges inherent in the next stage of biology as a human technology. It is this critical moment, with its wide-ranging implications, that Robert Carlson considers in Biology Is Technology. He offers a uniquely informed perspective on the endeavors that contribute to current progress in this area—the science of biological systems and the technology used to manipulate them. In a number of case studies, Carlson demonstrates that the development of new mathematical, computational, and laboratory tools will facilitate the engineering of biological artifacts—up to and including organisms and ecosystems. Exploring how this will happen, with reference to past technological advances, he explains how objects are constructed virtually, tested using sophisticated mathematical models, and finally constructed in the real world. Such rapid increases in the power, availability, and application of biotechnology raise obvious questions about who gets to use it, and to what end. Carlson’s thoughtful analysis offers rare insight into our choices about how to develop biological technologies and how these choices will determine the pace and effectiveness of innovation as a public good.
Author: Titus Winters
Publisher: O'Reilly Media
ISBN: 1492082767
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 602
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Book Description
Today, software engineers need to know not only how to program effectively but also how to develop proper engineering practices to make their codebase sustainable and healthy. This book emphasizes this difference between programming and software engineering. How can software engineers manage a living codebase that evolves and responds to changing requirements and demands over the length of its life? Based on their experience at Google, software engineers Titus Winters and Hyrum Wright, along with technical writer Tom Manshreck, present a candid and insightful look at how some of the world’s leading practitioners construct and maintain software. This book covers Google’s unique engineering culture, processes, and tools and how these aspects contribute to the effectiveness of an engineering organization. You’ll explore three fundamental principles that software organizations should keep in mind when designing, architecting, writing, and maintaining code: How time affects the sustainability of software and how to make your code resilient over time How scale affects the viability of software practices within an engineering organization What trade-offs a typical engineer needs to make when evaluating design and development decisions
