Kid Gloves


Book Description

A New York Times bestseller If you work hard enough, if you want it enough, if you’re smart and talented and “good enough,” you can do anything. Except get pregnant. Her whole life, Lucy Knisley wanted to be a mother. But when it was finally the perfect time, conceiving turned out to be harder than anything she’d ever attempted. Fertility problems were followed by miscarriages, and her eventual successful pregnancy plagued by health issues, up to a dramatic, near-death experience during labor and delivery. This moving, hilarious, and surprisingly informative memoir, Kid Gloves, not only follows Lucy’s personal transition into motherhood but also illustrates the history and science of reproductive health from all angles, including curious facts and inspiring (and notorious) figures in medicine and midwifery. Whether you’ve got kids, want them, or want nothing to do with them, there’s something in this graphic memoir to open your mind and heart.




Fractals


Book Description

What are fractals? Why are they such fun? How do you make one? Why is a dripping tap not as random as it seems? What is chaos? Is the Mandelbrot Set really the most complex object in mathematics? In this beautifully illustrated book, fractal-hunter Oliver Linton takes us on a fascinating journey into the mathematics of fractals and chaos, diving into many kinds of self- similar structures to reveal some of the most recently discovered and intriguing patterns in science and nature. "e;Fascinating"e; FINANCIAL TIMES. "e;Beautiful"e; LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS. "e;Rich and Artful"e; THE LANCET. "e;Genuinely mind-expanding"e; FORTEAN TIMES. "e;Excellent"e; NEW SCIENTIST. "e;Stunning"e; NEW YORK TIMES. Small books, big ideas.




Out of Chaos


Book Description

The stories in Out of Chaos forms a profound testament to lost and found lives that are translated into compelling reading. The collection illuminates brief or elongated moments, fragments of memory and experience, what the great Holocaust writer Ida Fink called “a scrap of time.” In all, the anthology expresses survivors’ memories and reactions to a wide range of experiences as they survived in so many European settings, from Holland, Belgium, Italy, Germany, Greece, Yugoslavia, Poland, and France. The writers recall being on the run between different countries, escaping over mountains, hiding and even sometimes forgetting their Jewish identities in convents and rescuers’ homes and hovels, basements and attics. Some were left on their own; others found themselves embroiled in rescuer family conflicts. Some writers chose to write story clusters, each one capturing a moment or incident and often disconnected by memory or temporal and spatial divides.




Orphans of Chaos


Book Description

John C. Wright burst onto the SF scene with the Golden Age trilogy. His next project was the ambitious fantasy sequence, The Last Guardians of Everness. Wright's new fantasy is a tale about five orphans raised in a strict British boarding school who begin to discover that they may not be human beings. The students at the school do not age, while the world around them does. The children begin to make sinister discoveries about themselves. Amelia is apparently a fourth-dimensional being; Victor is a synthetic man who can control the molecular arrangement of matter around him; Vanity can find secret passageways through solid walls where none had previously been; Colin is a psychic; Quentin is a warlock. Each power comes from a different paradigm or view of the inexplicable universe: and they should not be able to co-exist under the same laws of nature. Why is it that they can? The orphans have been kidnapped from their true parents, robbed of their powers, and raised in ignorance by super-beings no more human than they are: pagan gods or fairy-queens, Cyclopes, sea-monsters, witches, or things even stranger than this. The children must experiment with, and learn to control, their strange abilities in order to escape their captors. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.




Chaos: From Simple Models To Complex Systems


Book Description

Chaos: from simple models to complex systems aims to guide science and engineering students through chaos and nonlinear dynamics from classical examples to the most recent fields of research. The first part, intended for undergraduate and graduate students, is a gentle and self-contained introduction to the concepts and main tools for the characterization of deterministic chaotic systems, with emphasis to statistical approaches. The second part can be used as a reference by researchers as it focuses on more advanced topics including the characterization of chaos with tools of information theory and applications encompassing fluid and celestial mechanics, chemistry and biology.The book is novel in devoting attention to a few topics often overlooked in introductory textbooks and which are usually found only in advanced surveys such as: information and algorithmic complexity theory applied to chaos and generalization of Lyapunov exponents to account for spatiotemporal and non-infinitesimal perturbations.The selection of topics, numerous illustrations, exercises and proposals for computer experiments make the book ideal for both introductory and advanced courses.




The Hand of Chaos


Book Description

Chaos is everywhere as the Lord of the Nexus orders his servant Haplo and the human child known as Bane to further their master's work on Arianus, the realm of air. But their one time companion Alfred has been cast into the deadly Labyrinth. And somehow the assassin Hugh the Hand has been resurrected to complete his dark mission. More important, the evil force that Haplo and Alfred discovered on Arianus has escaped. As Haplo's doubts about his master grow deeper, he must decide whether to obey the Lord of the Nexus or betray the powerful Patryn...and endeavor to bring peace to the universe.




Evolutionary Computation in Bioinformatics


Book Description

Bioinformatics has never been as popular as it is today. The genomics revolution is generating so much data in such rapid succession that it has become difficult for biologists to decipher. In particular, there are many problems in biology that are too large to solve with standard methods. Researchers in evolutionary computation (EC) have turned their attention to these problems. They understand the power of EC to rapidly search very large and complex spaces and return reasonable solutions. While these researchers are increasingly interested in problems from the biological sciences, EC and its problem-solving capabilities are generally not yet understood or applied in the biology community.This book offers a definitive resource to bridge the computer science and biology communities. Gary Fogel and David Corne, well-known representatives of these fields, introduce biology and bioinformatics to computer scientists, and evolutionary computation to biologists and computer scientists unfamiliar with these techniques. The fourteen chapters that follow are written by leading computer scientists and biologists who examine successful applications of evolutionary computation to various problems in the biological sciences.* Describes applications of EC to bioinformatics in a wide variety of areas including DNA sequencing, protein folding, gene and protein classification, drug targeting, drug design, data mining of biological databases, and biodata visualization.* Offers industrial and academic researchers in computer science, biology, and bioinformatics an important resource for applying evolutionary computation.* Includes a detailed appendix of biological data resources.




The Architect's Guide to Small Firm Management


Book Description

The definitive guide to management success for sole practitioners and leaders of small design firms Owning and operating a small architectural design firm can be challenging, with tight project deadlines, on-the-fly meetings, rush proposals, and fluctuating workloads as part of the firm’s day-to-day activities. To help small firm owners cope with the chaos and prepare for the unexpected, here is The Architect’s Guide to Small Firm Management, a no-nonsense guide to repurposing daily demands into workable, goal-directed solutions. Crucial topics such as self-aware leadership, people management, technology, financial health, scenario planning, sustainable practice, and future trends are examined using real-life case studies and business model paradigms. This definitive text explores the whole system experience of a small firm practice to deliver organizational strategies proven to keep a firm’s creative mission on a steady, productive path. The Architect’s Guide to Small Firm Management addresses how small firm owners can: Deal effectively with unexpected circumstances and shifting work requirements Meet the demands of the marketplace while creating a satisfying workplace Set and achieve goals in an environment of constant change This book is a must-have for those facing the often harsh reality of managing small design firms in a difficult and changing economy. Entrepreneurial architects and designers will discover how to define their own personal and professional meanings of success, as well as how to refocus their business approach to replace long, unrewarding hours with manageable, satisfying ones.




Europa


Book Description

Few worlds are as tantalizing and enigmatic as Europa, whose complex icy surface intimates the presence of an ocean below. Europa beckons for our understanding and future exploration, enticing us with the possibilities of a water-rich environment and the potential for life beyond Earth. This volume in the Space Science Series, with more than 80 contributing authors, reveals the discovery and current understanding of Europa’s icy shell, subsurface ocean, presumably active interior, and myriad inherent interactions within the Jupiter environment. Europa is the foundation upon which the coming decades of scientific advancement and exploration of this world will be built, making it indispensable for researchers, students, and all who hold a passion for exploration.




Complexity


Book Description

"Put together one of the world's best science writers with one of the universe's most fascinating subjects and you are bound to produce a wonderful book. . . . The subject of complexity is vital and controversial. This book is important and beautifully done."—Stephen Jay Gould "[Complexity] is that curious mix of complication and organization that we find throughout the natural and human worlds: the workings of a cell, the structure of the brain, the behavior of the stock market, the shifts of political power. . . . It is time science . . . thinks about meaning as well as counting information. . . . This is the core of the complexity manifesto. Read it, think about it . . . but don't ignore it."—Ian Stewart, Nature This second edition has been brought up to date with an essay entitled "On the Edge in the Business World" and an interview with John Holland, author of Emergence: From Chaos to Order.