Posts tagged ‘science’
New Government Report: U.S. Tsunami Preparedness
Tsunami Teacher Information and Resource Toolkit
by Anu K. Mittal
Paperback, 39 pages, 20010, $20.00
ISBN: 1437932967
This is a print on demand edition of a hard to find publication. In June 2006, there were a number of concerns about the level of U.S. tsunami preparedness. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) leads U.S. efforts through three key programs: the Tsunami Program, which focuses on detection and warning activities; the National Tsunami Hazard Mitigation Program, which is a partnership with federal and state agencies focusing on hazard assessment and mitigation; and TsunamiReady, which is a partnership with at-risk communities focusing on educ. and emergency planning.
This report addresses: (1) the extent to which NOAA developed effective strategic plans for its tsunami programs; and (2) the status of NOAA’s efforts to strengthen and expand the programs and move tsunami research to application.
Purchase this print-on-demand publication for $20.00:
New Government Report: Catalog of Tsunamis in the Pacific
Catalog of Tsunamis in the Pacific
by S.L. Soloviev
Paperback, 208 pages, 1992, $50.00
ISBN: 9780788139314
English translation of a Russian publication (although the majority of data used for the compilation of the catalog was originally written in English) by the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. All available information on 85 tsunamis observed in the Pacific Ocean during the period 1969-1982 has been collected & systematically arranged in this book. Includes maps of sources, copies of tide gauge records & wave intensities, & a list of the main parameters of the earthquakes & the intensities of the tsunamis. Extensive bibliography.
Purchase this print-on-demand publication for $50.00:
New Government Report: New Drug Approval
New Drug Approval: FDA’s Consideration of Evidence from Certain Clinical Trials
by Marcia Crosse
Paperback, 38 pages, 2010, $30.00
ISBN: 9781437938586
“Before approving a new drug, the FDA assesses a drug’s effectiveness. To do so, it examines information contained in a new drug application (NDA), including data from clinical trials in humans. Several types of trials may be used to gather this evidence. Non-inferiority trials aim to demonstrate that the difference between the effectiveness of a new drug and an active control is small enough to show that the new drug is also effective. FDA has issued guidance on these trials. This report: (1) identifies NDAs for new molecular entities — potentially innovative new drugs not FDA-approved in any form — that included evidence from non-inferiority trials; (2) examines the characteristics of these trials; and (3) describes FDA’s guidance on these trials.”
Purchase this print-on-demand publication for $30.00:
New Government Report: Developments in Oil Shale
Developments in Oil Shale
by Anthony Andrews
Paperback, 30 pages, 2008, $20.00
ISBN: 1437939724
Rising oil prices and concerns over declining petroleum production worldwide revived U.S. interest in oil shale after a two-decade hiatus. In addition to technological challenges left unsolved from previous development efforts, environmental issues remained and new issues have emerged.
Challenges to development also include competition with conventional petroleum production in the mid-continent region, and increasing petroleum imports from Canada. Contents of this report: Background; Oil Shale Resource Potential; Challenges to Development; Commercial Leasing Program; R&D Program; Programmatic Environ. Impact Statement; Mineral Leasing Act Amendments; Commercial Lease Sale and Royalty Rates.
Dear Doctor Franklin: E-mails to a Founding Father about Science, Medicine and Technology
Dear Doctor Franklin:
E-mails to a Founding Father about
Science, Medicine and Technology
by Stuart A. Green (Friends of Franklin)
(Paperback, 320 pages, 2008, ISBN: 1422394700, $24.95)
In this unique book on the history of science, Green writes emails to Benjamin Franklin, who died in 1790 but whom Green imagines coming back to life, about developments over the past two centuries.
Author Stuart A. Green writes: “I have written these emails assuming that you carried out the wish you described in 1773: ‘I should prefer to any ordinary death, being immersed in a cask of Madeira wine . . . to be later recalled to life by the solar warmth of my dear country.’”
These emails inform Franklin of progress in science, medicine and technology from his time until now. Includes more than 70 portraits of Franklin’s friends and relatives, and of those researchers who have led medical and scientific advances during the past two centuries. Illustrations.
A History of the International Chemical Industry (2nd edition) by Fred Aftalion (Chemical Heritage Foundation)
A History of the International Chemical Industry
(2nd edition)
by Fred Aftalion, Chemical Heritage Foundation
(Paperback, 436 pages, 2001, $24.95, ISBN: 0941901297)
Unlike conventional histories written about the field of chemistry, this study presents an international perspective, integrating the story of chemical science with that of the chemical industry and emphasizing the developments of the 20th century.
This new edition includes events from 1990 to 2000–when major companies began selling off their divisions, seeking to specialize in a particular business. While many companies gained short-term profitability, long-term loss was a risk as specialization threatened their competitive edge and shareholder value.
Conversely, companies that remained broad and diversified–“contrarians”–stood to gain advantages and profit in the long term. As Aftalion describes the recent history of the international chemical industry, he explores the successes of the true contrarians, using BASF, Dow, and Bayer as examples, and the downfall of firms less able to cope with the vagaries of the new economy.
Diatoms of the United States: Exclusive of Alaska and Hawaii: Monographs of The Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, No. 13, Vol. I
Diatoms of the United States:
Exclusive of Alaska and Hawaii
Monographs of The Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, No. 13, Vol. I
by Ruth Patrick and Charles W. Reimer, foreword by Radclyffe Roberts
(Paperback, 688 pages, 1966, $75.00, ISBN: 1422317803)
This systematic treatment of the diatoms of the U.S. is written for the use of all those concerned with the multitude of kinds and the fascinating diversity of this very large and important group of algae of our fresh waters.
This volume represents the first part of a two part systematic treatment of the freshwater diatom flora of continental U.S. exclusive of Alaska.
Besides those taxa found in fresh water, a few taxa found in estuaries of rivers and belonging to genera that commonly occur in fresh water are included. No strictly fossil species are included; however, many of the species embraced are found in recent fossil material.
Although this book is concerned with the U.S., it should be helpful to the students of diatom floras in Mexico, Canada, and other areas. Illustrations.
Renaissance Vision from Spectacles to Telescopes (American Philosophical Society Memoir 259, ISBN: 0871692597)
Renaissance Vision from Spectacles to Telescopes
(American Philosophical Society Memoir 259, ISBN: 0871692597)
by Vincent Ilardi (Hardcover no dustjacket, 305 pages, 2007, $85.00)
This book deals with the history of eyeglasses from their invention in Italy ca. 1286 to the appearance of the telescope three centuries later.
“By the end of the 16th century eyeglasses were as common in western and central Europe as desktop computers are in western developed countries today.” Eyeglasses served an important technological function at both the intellectual and practical level, not only easing the textual studies of scholars but also easing the work of craftsmen/small businessmen.
Read the 
of this book before you purchase it.
An important subthesis of this book is that Florence, rather than Venice, seems to have dominated the commercial market for eyeglasses during the 15th century, when two crucial developments occurred: the ability to grind convex lenses for various levels of presbyopia and the ability to grind concave lenses for the correction of myopia. As a result, eyeglasses could be made almost to prescription by the early 17th century. Illustrations.
“Ilardi has produced the definitive history of spectacles – aided in part by economic historians and others who over the decades sent him relevant records discovered in Florentine, English, and other European archives,” writes Pamela O. Long in a review for the Medieval Academy of North America’s Speculum: A Journal of Medieval Studies (April 2009). [PDF]
“At a time when many historians of technology and of material culture conceive their work contextually or in terms of cultural meaning, this study is resolutely focused on the empirical evidence for spectacles as it has been found for various times and places.
“Ilardi has done more than expand our knowledge of a particular area of history. Over the decades during which he carried out his investigation and with the warmly appreciated help of scholars in other archives, most importantly the Florentine, he has created a substantial history of eyeglasses that had not existed before.”
Magnetic Fever: Global Imperialism and Empiricism in the Nineteenth Century (American Philosophical Society Transaction 99-4, ISBN: 9781606189948)
Magnetic Fever: Global Imperialism and Empiricism in the Nineteenth Century
(American Philosophical Society Transaction 99-4, ISBN: 9781606189948)
by Christopher Carter (Paperback, 168 pages, 2009, $35.00)
Explores the links between science and empire in the 19th century, focusing on the mutual interactions of British imperialism and geophysical empiricism.
The 19th century was a time when science was becoming global, in part due to European colonial and imperial expansion. Colonies became not just propagation points for European science, but also collection points for geophysical investigations that could be carried out on a worldwide scale.
Just as European politics influenced the expansion of scientific projects, these “colonial observatories” influenced the type of science that could be done. Comparing the development of British and American geomagnetic research during this period shows the dependency between the two influences. Both the scientific theories and the geopolitical realities played a role in creating the tool for studying global science still in use today.
“Carter (history of science, Duke U.) argues that the British Empire provided a broad setting where universal sciences such as geomagnetism and meteorology could be practiced and legitimized, both helping to overcome the inherited problems of the inductive method, and setting up a system by which scientists could study interconnected phenomena on a global scale,” writes Book News in a review.
“Central to his story are the efforts and successes of John Herschel (1792-1871) in convincing the government to support far-flung scientific endeavors. He covers a fitting enterprise of a maritime people, the knowledge of many attainable by one, worthy of a great national undertaking, Britains contributing their mite, an ample harvest of precious facts, and knowledge and philanthropy among the nations of the earth.”
Choosing Selection: The Revival of Natural Selection in Anglo-American Evolutionary Biology, 1930-1970 (American Philosophical Society Transaction 99-3, ISBN: 9781606189931)
Choosing Selection: The Revival of Natural Selection in Anglo-American Evolutionary Biology, 1930-1970
(American Philosophical Society Transaction 99-3, ISBN: 9781606189931)
by Stephen G. Brush (Paperback, 183 pages, 2009, $35.00)
This book describes the establishment of the hypothesis that Charles Darwin’s “natural selection,” reformulated by Sir Ronald Aylmer Fisher, J.B.S. Haldane, and S. Wright in the light of Mendelian genetics, is the primary or exclusive mechanism for biological evolution.
During the 1930s, alternatives such as Lamarchism, macromutations, and orthogenesis were rejected in favor of natural selection acting on small mutations, but there were disagreements about the role of random genetic drift in evolution.
By the 1950s, research by Theodosius “T.G.” Dobzhansky, E.B. Ford, and others persuaded leading evolutionists that natural selection was so powerful that drift was generally unimportant. This conclusion was accepted by most; however, a significant minority of biology textbooks and popular articles mentioned drift in the late 1960s.
“Brush (emeritus history of science, U. of Maryland-University Park) explains how and why British and American biologists, who had shared the skepticism of their continental colleagues about Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, accepted a revised version of it mostly during the 1940s,” writes Book News in a review.
“The modern theory was a synthesis of such disciplines as genetics, zoology, botany, and paleontology, he says, that acknowledged natural selection as a necessary, and perhaps the most crucial, but probably not sufficient cause of evolutionary adaptation.
“Among his perspectives are mathematical and philosophical biologist Haldane weighs, in, Huxley proclaims a new synthesis, chromosome inversions in Drosophila, the changing views of Dobzhansky and Wright, and whether evolutionary theory is scientific.”
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