5 books found
MURA was responsible for a number of important contributions to the science of particle accelerators, including the invention of fixed field alternating gradient accelerators (FFAG). This title presents a history of the Midwestern Universities Research Association (MURA) during its lifetime from the early 1950s to the late 1960s.
by Thomas Lawrence Sterling, Paul C. Messina, Paul H. Smith
1995 · MIT Press
Chapters focus on four interrelated areas: applications and algorithms, device technology, architecture and systems, and software technology. Building a computer ten times more powerful than all the networked computing capability in the United States is the subject of this book by leading figures in the high performance computing community. It summarizes the near-term initiatives, including the technical and policy agendas for what could be a twenty-year effort to build a petaFLOP scale computer. (A FLOP -- Floating Point OPeration -- is a standard measure of computer performance and a PetaFLOP computer would perform a million billion of these operations per second.) Chapters focus on four interrelated areas: applications and algorithms, device technology, architecture and systems, and software technology. While a petaFLOPS machine is beyond anything within contemporary experience, early research into petaFLOPS system design and methodologies is essential to U.S. leadership in all facets of computing into the next century. The findings reported here explore new and fertile ground. Among them: construction of an effective petaFLOPS computing system will be feasible in two decades, although effectiveness and applicability will depend on dramatic cost reductions as well as innovative approaches to system software and programming methodologies; a mix of technologies such as semiconductors, optics, and possibly cryogenics will be required; and while no fundamental paradigm shift in system architecture is expected, active latency management will be essential, requiring a high degree of fine-grain parallelism and the mechanisms to exploit it. Scientific and Engineering Computation series.
by Lawrence R. Sullivan, Nancy Liu-Sullivan
2015 · Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
The Historical Dictionary of Science and Technology in Modern China provides the most up-to-date information on science and technology in China from the late nineteenth century to the present. Special attention is given to the historical factors, scientists, and historical figures behind each scientific development. In particular, this book pays attention to the scientists who were persecuted to death or tortured during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), and whose scientific research was therefore tragically cut short. The historical dictionary provides information on science and technology in China from the late nineteenth century to the present including: a chronology;introduction; extensive bibliography;over 700 cross-referenced dictionary entries on major scientific and technological fields and sub-fields; entries on western scholars and educators who also impacted scientific achievements in China. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about the science and technology in China.
The rise and fall of the concept of nuclear winter, played out in research activity, public relations, and Reagan-era politics. The nuclear winter phenomenon burst upon the public's consciousness in 1983. Added to the horror of a nuclear war's immediate effects was the fear that the smoke from fires ignited by the explosions would block the sun, creating an extended “winter” that might kill more people worldwide than the initial nuclear strikes. In A Nuclear Winter's Tale, Lawrence Badash maps the rise and fall of the science of nuclear winter, examining research activity, the popularization of the concept, and the Reagan-era politics that combined to influence policy and public opinion. Badash traces the several sciences (including studies of volcanic eruptions, ozone depletion, and dinosaur extinction) that merged to allow computer modeling of nuclear winter and its development as a scientific specialty. He places this in the political context of the Reagan years, discussing congressional interest, media attention, the administration's plans for a research program, and the Defense Department's claims that the arms buildup underway would prevent nuclear war, and thus nuclear winter. A Nuclear Winter's Tale tells an important story but also provides a useful illustration of the complex relationship between science and society. It examines the behavior of scientists in the public arena and in the scientific community, and raises questions about the problems faced by scientific Cassandras, the implications when scientists go public with worst-case scenarios, and the timing of government reaction to startling scientific findings.
by Lawrence W. Barnthouse, Jr. Munns, Mary T. Sorensen
2007 · CRC Press
Most ecological risk assessments consider the risk to individual organisms or organism-level attributes. From a management perspective, however, risks to population-level attributes and processes are often more relevant. Despite many published calls for population risk assessment and the abundance of available scientific research and technical tool