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Author: Paul Davies
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0241309603
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 297
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Book Description
'A gripping new drama in science ... if you want to understand how the concept of life is changing, read this' Professor Andrew Briggs, University of Oxford When Darwin set out to explain the origin of species, he made no attempt to answer the deeper question: what is life? For generations, scientists have struggled to make sense of this fundamental question. Life really does look like magic: even a humble bacterium accomplishes things so dazzling that no human engineer can match it. And yet, huge advances in molecular biology over the past few decades have served only to deepen the mystery. So can life be explained by known physics and chemistry, or do we need something fundamentally new? In this penetrating and wide-ranging new analysis, world-renowned physicist and science communicator Paul Davies searches for answers in a field so new and fast-moving that it lacks a name, a domain where computing, chemistry, quantum physics and nanotechnology intersect. At the heart of these diverse fields, Davies explains, is the concept of information: a quantity with the power to unify biology with physics, transform technology and medicine, and even to illuminate the age-old question of whether we are alone in the universe. From life's murky origins to the microscopic engines that run the cells of our bodies, The Demon in the Machine is a breath-taking journey across the landscape of physics, biology, logic and computing. Weaving together cancer and consciousness, two-headed worms and bird navigation, Davies reveals how biological organisms garner and process information to conjure order out of chaos, opening a window on the secret of life itself.
Author: Paul Davies
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0241309603
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 297
Get Book Here
Book Description
'A gripping new drama in science ... if you want to understand how the concept of life is changing, read this' Professor Andrew Briggs, University of Oxford When Darwin set out to explain the origin of species, he made no attempt to answer the deeper question: what is life? For generations, scientists have struggled to make sense of this fundamental question. Life really does look like magic: even a humble bacterium accomplishes things so dazzling that no human engineer can match it. And yet, huge advances in molecular biology over the past few decades have served only to deepen the mystery. So can life be explained by known physics and chemistry, or do we need something fundamentally new? In this penetrating and wide-ranging new analysis, world-renowned physicist and science communicator Paul Davies searches for answers in a field so new and fast-moving that it lacks a name, a domain where computing, chemistry, quantum physics and nanotechnology intersect. At the heart of these diverse fields, Davies explains, is the concept of information: a quantity with the power to unify biology with physics, transform technology and medicine, and even to illuminate the age-old question of whether we are alone in the universe. From life's murky origins to the microscopic engines that run the cells of our bodies, The Demon in the Machine is a breath-taking journey across the landscape of physics, biology, logic and computing. Weaving together cancer and consciousness, two-headed worms and bird navigation, Davies reveals how biological organisms garner and process information to conjure order out of chaos, opening a window on the secret of life itself.
Author: Jack Vance
Publisher: Hachette UK
ISBN: 0575109661
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 149
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Book Description
Kirth Gersen, having brought arch-villain Malagate the Woe to justice, sets his sights on Kokor Hekkus, another of the Demon Princes. The name Kokor Hekkus, which means "killing machine" in the language of the planet Thamber, does not refer to Hekkus's own predilection for homicide, but to his fondness for horrific and murderous devices, including the giant robotic executioner that first gained him his nickname. As a boy, Kirth Gersen survived a raid on his home planet masterminded by five interstellar crime lords known as the Demon Princes. This five-novel sequence recounts his carefully-planned and implacable revenge. In this, the second volume, his target is Kokor Hekkus, better known as the Killing Machine. All Jack Vance titles in the SFGateway use the author's preferred texts, as restored for the Vance Integral Edition (VIE), an extensive project masterminded by an international online community of Vance's admirers. In general, we also use the VIE titles, and have adopted the arrangement of short story collections to eliminate overlaps.
Author: Steven Hall
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 1443428620
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 350
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Book Description
This autumn, life is catching up with Thomas Quinn. Five years ago, his sometime friend Andrew Black wrote a mystery novel that sold a million copies and then disappeared. Now could it be that Quinn is being stalked by the hero of Black’s book? His wife, Imogen, usually has the answers, but she’s working on the other side of the world and talking to her on webcam just isn’t the same. Quinn finds himself in a world that might well be coming apart at the seams. If he can find Black, he might start finding answers. Maxwell’s Demon forges an entirely new blend of mystery—somewhere between detective fiction, ghost story and philosophical quest. Providing the same white-knuckle thrills as Hall’s first novel, The Raw Shark Texts, this new book is also a freewheeling investigation into the magic power locked inside the alphabet, love through the looking glass, the bond between parents and children and, at its heart, the quest for meaning in a world that, with each passing season, seems to become more chaotic and untidy.
Author: Hans Christian Von Baeyer
Publisher: Random House (NY)
ISBN:
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 248
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Book Description
You arrive at your office and unpack your breakfast from the local deli. The piping-hot coffee and chilly orange juice you purchased just minutes ago are now both disappointingly lukewarm. Why can't the coffee "steal" heat from the juice to stay hot? Why does even the most state-of-the-art car operate at a mere 30 percent efficiency--and why can't Detroit ever better the odds, no matter what space age materials we invent? Why can't some genius make a perpetual motion machine? The answers lie in the field of thermodynamics, the study of heat, which turns out to be the key to an astonishing number of scientific puzzles. If you want to know what's happening in the physical world, you've got to follow the heat. In Maxwell's Demon: Why Warmth Disperses and Time Passes, physics professor Hans Christian von Baeyer tells the story of heat through the lives of the scientists who discovered it, most notably James Clerk Maxwell, whose demonic invention has bedeviled generations of physics students with its light-fingered attempts to flout the laws of thermodynamics. An intelligent, submicroscopic gremlin who could sort atoms as they flew at him, Maxwell's Demon would effectively make an impossible task--forcing heat to flow backward--possible. Explaining why the Demon can't have his day has been an intellectual gauntlet taken up by a century and a half of the world's most brilliant scientists, whose discoveries Professor von Baeyer vividly etches. The centuries-old discipline of thermodynamics informs today's most cutting-edge research in chaos, complexity, and the grand unified theory of everything--physics' Holy Grail. Even more amazing, the study of heat turns out to explainsomething seemingly unrelated--time, and why it can run in only one direction. With his trademark elegant prose, eye for lively detail, and gift for lucid explanation, Professor von Baeyer turns the contemplation of a cooling teacup into a beguiling portrait of the birth of a science with relevance to almost every aspect of our lives. Readers will find themselves rooting for Maxwell's ever-mischievous Demon even as they come to appreciate that he is doomed to failure.
Author: Dan Brown
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 074349346X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 496
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Book Description
The murder of a world-famous physicist raises fears that the Illuminati are operating again after centuries of silence, and religion professor Robert Langdon is called in to assist with the case.
Author: Malcolm Mcgrath
Publisher: Prometheus Books
ISBN: 1615927239
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 323
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Book Description
...probably the first thorough review of modern demonology...superb. Recommended... - Library Journal...a terrifically contextualized debunking that is sure to generate debate among the faithful. - Publishers Weekly...a fascinating book on the psychology of modern Western culture. - Science & Spirit MagazineThis fascinating discussion of modern demonology focuses on our ability to differentiate the physical world, with its mechanical laws, from the inherently less predictable psychological realm of thoughts and beliefs. McGrath points out that this ability was a hard-won historical development, and today must be learned in childhood through education. Because of this historical background and our rich fantasy life in childhood, each of us unconsciously suspects, or fears, that supernatural forces may break through the borders of our everyday commonsense order at any time. Indeed, at times of personal stress or societal crisis, the modern boundaries between fantasy and reality begin to slip, and then a magical world of demons and other phantasms can come flooding back into our disenchanted reality.Through this innovative thesis McGrath goes a long way toward explaining both our fascination with fantasy entertainment, such as horror stories and films, and bizarre crazes such as witch-hunts, Satanism scares, and even claims of alien abduction. Despite our demystified culture the lure of childhood's magic kingdom with its monstrous shadow realm remains strong.Malcolm McGrath (Toronto, Ontario, Canada) is a doctoral candidate in political philosophy at Oxford University.
Author: R. Saravanan
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 131651076X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 399
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Book Description
An introduction to the complex world of climate models that explains why we should trust their predictions despite the uncertainties.
Author: Harvey S. Leff
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400861527
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 362
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Book Description
About 120 years ago, James Clerk Maxwell introduced his now legendary hypothetical "demon" as a challenge to the integrity of the second law of thermodynamics. Fascination with the demon persisted throughout the development of statistical and quantum physics, information theory, and computer science--and linkages have been established between Maxwell's demon and each of these disciplines. The demon's seductive quality makes it appealing to physical scientists, engineers, computer scientists, biologists, psychologists, and historians and philosophers of science. Until now its important source material has been scattered throughout diverse journals. This book brings under one cover twenty-five reprints, including seminal works by Maxwell and William Thomson; historical reviews by Martin Klein, Edward Daub, and Peter Heimann; information theoretic contributions by Leo Szilard, Leon Brillouin, Dennis Gabor, and Jerome Rothstein; and innovations by Rolf Landauer and Charles Bennett illustrating linkages with the limits of computation. An introductory chapter summarizes the demon's life, from Maxwell's illustration of the second law's statistical nature to the most recent "exorcism" of the demon based on a need periodically to erase its memory. An annotated chronological bibliography is included. Originally published in 1990. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Author:
Publisher: World of Darkness
ISBN: 9781588464767
Category : Fantasy games
Languages : en
Pages : 222
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Book Description
The world is not what you think. Beneath skyscrapers' leering gargoyles, factories belching smoke and streets packed with the human throng lurk things we are not meant to see. Creatures dwell in the shadows and hidden places. They watch you, stalk you and prey upon your body and soul. The life you lead is a lie. Your darkest fears aren't make-believe. They're real. And now that you have glimpsed this world of darkness, there's no place to hide. The Storytelling System Rulebook is a stand-alone game for the World of Darkness, and is meant for use with Vampire: The Requiem, Werewolf: The Forsaken and Mage: The Awakening.
Author: Philip Mirowski
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107717485
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 652
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Book Description
This was the first cross-over book into the history of science written by an historian of economics. It shows how 'history of technology' can be integrated with the history of economic ideas. The analysis combines Cold War history with the history of postwar economics in America and later elsewhere, revealing that the Pax Americana had much to do with abstruse and formal doctrines such as linear programming and game theory. It links the literature on 'cyborg' to economics, an element missing in literature to date. The treatment further calls into question the idea that economics has been immune to postmodern currents, arguing that neoclassical economics has participated in the deconstruction of the integral 'self'. Finally, it argues for an alliance of computational and institutional themes, and challenges the widespread impression that there is nothing else besides American neoclassical economic theory left standing after the demise of Marxism.
