Modern Engineering

Great software can change the world. So, why not start with an idea of what your end user wants and needs? The success of any software is underpinned by the users’ need for it. Will it serve its purpose efficiently? Will it make the end user’s life easier? Will it give them their money’s worth? In User Experience by UX designer Steven Branson, you’ll find out everything you need to know. Expanding your UX approach, honing your coding abilities, and acing your computer programming interviews are within reach!

This clearly written and engrossing book presents a global narrative of the origins of the modern world from 1400 to the present. Unlike most studies, which assume that the "rise of the West" is the story of the coming of the modern world, this history, drawing upon new scholarship on Asia, Africa, and the New World, constructs a story in which those parts of the world play major roles.

This 50th anniversary edition of Men, Machines, and Modern Times, though ultimately concerned with a positive alternative to an Orwellian 1984, offers an entertaining series of historical accounts taken from the 19th century to highlight a main theme: the nature of technological change, the fission brought about in society by such change, and society's reaction to that change.

In a clear and engaging way, this book shows how the principle of emptiness, the philosophic heart of Tibetan Buddhism, connects intimately to quantum nonlocality and other foundational features of quantum mechanics. Detailed connections between emptiness, modern relativity, and the nature of time are also explored. For Tibetan Buddhists, the profound interconnectedness implied by emptiness demands the practice of universal compassion.

"I know of no gamekeepers who are not countrymen to their fingertips. They observe, they consider, they cherish, and they do more than most to look after out woodlands and hedgerows, our moorlands and fens. Theirs is not an easy job—out in all weathers and misunderstood by many townies who are further removed from the countryside and its workings than they have ever been, thanks to increasing technology which keeps them housebound."

In this fascinating book, David Barash highlights an intriguing patch of common ground between scientific and religious thought, illuminating the many parallels between biology and Buddhism, allowing listeners to see both in a new way. Indeed, he shows that there are numerous places where the Buddhist and biological perspectives coincide. For instance, the cornerstone ecological concept - the interconnectedness and interdependence of all things - is remarkably similar to the fundamental insight of Buddhism.

The story of the "Lentil Underground" begins on a 280-acre homestead rooted in America's Great Plains: the Oien family farm. Forty years ago, corporate agribusiness told small farmers like the Oiens to "get big or get out." But 27-year-old David Oien decided to take a stand, becoming the first in his conservative Montana county to plant a radically different crop: organic lentils. Unlike the chemically dependent grains American farmers had been told to grow, lentils make their own fertilizer and tolerate variable climates, so their farmers aren't beholden to industrial methods.

It's no secret that technology is moving faster than ever, but current business/IT strategies are not working. To survive the next wave of transformation, the relationship between businesses and technology must evolve. In The Value Flywheel Effect, David Anderson enables leaders to create an adaptive organization built upon embracing strategic thinking, team focus, and reduced time to value to drive business results.

Warnings is the story of the future of national security, threatening technologies, the US economy, and possibly the fate of civilization. In Greek mythology Cassandra foresaw calamities, but was cursed by the gods to be ignored. Modern-day Cassandras clearly predicted the disasters of Katrina, Fukushima, the Great Recession, the rise of ISIS, and many more. Like the mythological Cassandra, they were ignored. There are others right now warning of impending disasters, but how do we know which warnings are likely to be right?

Humans from the earliest civilizations were spellbound by the night sky - craning their necks each night, they used the stars to orient themselves in the large, strange world around them. Stargazing is a pursuit that continues to fascinate us: from Copernicus to Carl Sagan, astronomers throughout history have spent their lives trying to answer the biggest questions in the universe. Now, award-winning astronomer Emily Levesque shares the stories of modern-day stargazers.

An Immense World meets Sex at Dawn in this fascinating exploration of sexual behavior throughout the animal kingdom, as evolutionary biologist Nathan H. Lents argues persuasively that many of our supposedly modern ideas about gender and human sexuality are, in fact, deeply rooted in our animal ancestors.

Manning's best-selling Java 8 book has been revised for Java 9 and 10! In Modern Java in Action, you'll build on your existing Java language skills with the newest features and techniques. Modern Java in Action connects new features of the Java language with their practical applications. It will help you expand your existing knowledge of core Java as you master modern additions like the Streams API and the Java Module System, explore new approaches to concurrency, and learn how functional concepts can help you write code that’s easier to read and maintain.

How does the physics we know today - a highly professionalized enterprise, inextricably linked to government and industry - link back to its origins as a liberal art in Ancient Greece? What is the path that leads from the old philosophy of nature and its concern with humankind's place in the universe to modern massive international projects that hunt down fundamental particles and industrial laboratories that manufacture marvels? This audiobook introduces us to Islamic astronomers and mathematicians calculating the size of the Earth while their caliphs conquered much of it and more.

Today, we take for granted that a telescope allows us to see galaxies millions of light years away. But before its invention, people used nothing more than their naked eye to fathom what took place in the visible sky. So how did four men in the 1500s - of different nationality, age, religion, and class - collaborate to discover that the Earth revolved around the Sun? With this radical discovery that went against the Church, they created our contemporary world. Heaven on Earth is an intimate examination of this scientific family.

From the New York Times best-selling author of How We Got to Now and Extra Life, a look at the world-changing innovations we made while keeping ourselves entertained. This history of popular entertainment takes a long-zoom approach, contending that the pursuit of novelty and wonder is a powerful driver of world-shaping technological change. Steven Johnson argues that, throughout history, the cutting edge of innovation lies wherever people are working the hardest to keep themselves and others amused.

Sometimes our understanding of our universe is given a huge boost by one insightful thinker. Such a boost came in the first half of the 20th century, when an obscure Belgian priest put his mind to deciphering the nature of the cosmos. The Day Without Yesterday covers the modern history of an evolving universe, and how Georges Lemaître convinced a generation of thinkers to embrace the notion of cosmic expansion and the theory that this expansion could be traced backward to the cosmic origins, a starting point for space and time that Lemaître called "the day without yesterday".

A significant number of Americans, especially evangelical Christians, believe Earth and humankind were created in their present form sometime in the last 10,000 years or so - the rationale being that this is (presumably) the story told in the book of Genesis. Within that group, any threatening scientific evidence that suggests otherwise is rejected or, when possible, retrofitted into a creationist worldview.

The Pleistocene spans a period from around 2.5 million years ago (mya) to just over 12,000 years ago, and it was an epoch of enormous change on Earth, mainly characterized by climate changes involving fluctuations between periods of extreme heat and long periods of glaciation. This period is commonly known as the Ice Age, despite the fact there were actually a number of separate periods of cold. The Pleistocene Era: The History of the Ice Age and the Dawn of Modern Humans looks at the development of the era, what life on Earth was like, and the origins of archaic humans.

You eat organic and non-GMO food. You only drink purified water. You take care of yourself and your family's health. But could there be a silent, invisible danger causing potential harm to you and your loved ones? There could. And it's called electromagnetic frequency (EMF) radiation and its one of fastest growing health issues facing our society. EMF radiation produced by modern technology such as cell phones, tablets, laptops, Wi-Fi, and smart meters is an emerging health threat.

Supermarket produce sections bulging with a year-round supply of perfectly round, bright red-orange tomatoes have become all but a national birthright. But in Tomatoland, which is based on his James Beard Award-winning article, The Price of Tomatoes, investigative food journalist Barry Estabrook reveals the huge human and environmental cost of the $5 billion fresh tomato industry. Fields are sprayed with more than one hundred different herbicides and pesticides. Tomatoes are picked hard and green and artificially gassed until their skins acquire a marketable hue.