Living Machines

Author : Susan Hockfield
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
Page : 256 pages
File Size : 54,6 Mb
Release : 2019-05-07
Category : Science
ISBN : 9780393634754

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The Age of Living Machines: How Biology Will Build the Next Technology Revolution by Susan Hockfield Pdf

From the former president of MIT, the story of the next technology revolution, and how it will change our lives. A century ago, discoveries in physics came together with engineering to produce an array of astonishing new technologies: radios, telephones, televisions, aircraft, radar, nuclear power, computers, the Internet, and a host of still-evolving digital tools. These technologies so radically reshaped our world that we can no longer conceive of life without them. Today, the world’s population is projected to rise to well over 9.5 billion by 2050, and we are currently faced with the consequences of producing the energy that fuels, heats, and cools us. With temperatures and sea levels rising, and large portions of the globe plagued with drought, famine, and drug-resistant diseases, we need new technologies to tackle these problems. But we are on the cusp of a new convergence, argues world-renowned neuroscientist Susan Hockfield, with discoveries in biology coming together with engineering to produce another array of almost inconceivable technologies—next-generation products that have the potential to be every bit as paradigm shifting as the twentieth century’s digital wonders. The Age of Living Machines describes some of the most exciting new developments and the scientists and engineers who helped create them. Virus-built batteries. Protein-based water filters. Cancer-detecting nanoparticles. Mind-reading bionic limbs. Computer-engineered crops. Together they highlight the promise of the technology revolution of the twenty-first century to overcome some of the greatest humanitarian, medical, and environmental challenges of our time.

Author : Minsoo Kang
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Page : 387 pages
File Size : 42,8 Mb
Release : 2011-02-28
Category : Science
ISBN : 9780674264908

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Sublime Dreams of Living Machines by Minsoo Kang Pdf

From the dawn of European civilization to the twentieth century, the automaton—better known today as the robot—has captured the Western imagination and provided a vital lens into the nature of humanity. Historian Minsoo Kang argues that to properly understand the human-as-machine and the human-as-fundamentally-different-from-machine, we must trace the origins of these ideas and examine how they were transformed by intellectual, cultural, and artistic appearances of the automaton throughout the history of the West. Kang tracks the first appearance of the automaton in ancient myths through the medieval and Renaissance periods, marks the proliferation of the automaton as a central intellectual concept in the Scientific Revolution and the subsequent backlash during the Enlightenment, and details appearances in Romantic literature and the introduction of the living machine in the Industrial Age. He concludes with a reflection on the destructive confrontation between humanity and machinery in the modern era and the reverberations of the humanity-machinery theme today. Sublime Dreams of Living Machines is an ambitious historical exploration and, at heart, an attempt to fully elucidate the rich and varied ways we have utilized our most uncanny creations to explore essential questions about ourselves.

Author : Tony J. Prescott,Nathan Lepora,Paul F. M. J Verschure
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 632 pages
File Size : 44,9 Mb
Release : 2018-04-13
Category : Medical
ISBN : 9780191662560

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Living machines by Tony J. Prescott,Nathan Lepora,Paul F. M. J Verschure Pdf

Contemporary research in the field of robotics attempts to harness the versatility and sustainability of living organisms. By exploiting those natural principles, scientists hope to render a renewable, adaptable, and robust class of technology that can facilitate self-repairing, social, and moral—even conscious—machines. This is the realm of robotics that scientists call "the living machine". Living Machines can be divided into two entities-biomimetic systems, those that harness the principles discovered in nature and embody them in new artifacts, and biohybrid systems, which couple biological entities with synthetic ones. Living Machines: A handbook of research in biomimetic and biohybrid systems surveys this flourishing area of research. It captures the current state of play and points to the opportunities ahead, addressing such fields as self-organization and co-operativity, biologically-inspired active materials, self-assembly and self-repair, learning, memory, control architectures and self-regulation, locomotion in air, on land or in water, perception, cognition, control, and communication. In all of these areas, the potential of biomimetics is shown through the construction of a wide range of different biomimetic devices and animal-like robots. Biohybrid systems is a relatively new field, with exciting and largely unknown potential, but one that is likely to shape the future of humanity. Chapters outline current research in areas including brain-machine interfaces-where neurons are connected to microscopic sensors and actuators-and various forms of intelligent prostheses from sensory devices like artificial retinas, to life-like artificial limbs, brain implants, and virtual reality-based rehabilitation approaches. The handbook concludes by exploring the impact living machine technology will have on both society and the individual, by forcing human beings to question how we see and understand ourselves. With contributions from leading researchers drawing on ideas from science, engineering, and the humanities, this handbook will appeal to both undergraduate and postgraduate students of biomimetic and biohybrid technologies. Researchers in the areas of computational modeling and engineering, including artificial intelligence, machine learning, artificial life, biorobotics, neurorobotics, and human-machine interfaces, will find Living Machines an invaluable resource.

Author : Tony J. Prescott,Nathan Lepora,Paul F. M. J. Verschure
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 655 pages
File Size : 49,5 Mb
Release : 2018
Category : Medical
ISBN : 9780199674923

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Living Machines by Tony J. Prescott,Nathan Lepora,Paul F. M. J. Verschure Pdf

Contemporary research in the field of robotics attempts to harness the versatility and sustainability of living organisms with the hope of rendering a renewable, adaptable, and robust class of technology that can facilitate self-repairing, social, and moral-even conscious-machines. This landmark volume surveys this flourishing area of research.

Author : Minsoo Kang
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Page : 387 pages
File Size : 45,6 Mb
Release : 2011-02-14
Category : Science
ISBN : 9780674059412

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Sublime Dreams of Living Machines by Minsoo Kang Pdf

From the dawn of European civilization to the twentieth century, the automaton—better known today as the robot—has captured the Western imagination and provided a vital lens into the nature of humanity. Historian Minsoo Kang argues that to properly understand the human-as-machine and the human-as-fundamentally-different-from-machine, we must trace the origins of these ideas and examine how they were transformed by intellectual, cultural, and artistic appearances of the automaton throughout the history of the West. Kang tracks the first appearance of the automaton in ancient myths through the medieval and Renaissance periods, marks the proliferation of the automaton as a central intellectual concept in the Scientific Revolution and the subsequent backlash during the Enlightenment, and details appearances in Romantic literature and the introduction of the living machine in the Industrial Age. He concludes with a reflection on the destructive confrontation between humanity and machinery in the modern era and the reverberations of the humanity-machinery theme today. Sublime Dreams of Living Machines is an ambitious historical exploration and, at heart, an attempt to fully elucidate the rich and varied ways we have utilized our most uncanny creations to explore essential questions about ourselves.

Author : Jay H. Lehr,John Wiley & Sons Ltd
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
Page : 1283 pages
File Size : 43,8 Mb
Release : 2004-07-22
Category : Technology & Engineering
ISBN : 9780471655466

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Wiley's Remediation Technologies Handbook by Jay H. Lehr,John Wiley & Sons Ltd Pdf

Wiley's Remediation Technologies Handbook: Major Contaminant Chemicals and Chemical Groups, extracted from the Enviroglobe database, consists of 368 chemicals and chemical groups. This book lists in alphabetical order these chemical and chemical groups along with the numerous technologies, many of which are patented, or trademarked techniques, to remediate them. A short description of each of these technologies is provided along with appropriate references. Wiley's Remediation Technologies Handbook: Major Contaminant Chemicals and Chemical Groups: Covers the most important chemical and chemical groups that are found to pollute the environment, and the ways to remediate them. Gives succinct abstract describing the numerous technologies used to clean-up a wide range of pollutants. Provides the uses and limitations of each technique. Note: CD-ROM/DVD and other supplementary materials are not included as part of eBook file.

Author : Michael Mangan,Mark Cutkosky,Anna Mura,Paul F.M.J. Verschure,Tony Prescott,Nathan Lepora
Publisher : Springer
Page : 663 pages
File Size : 52,6 Mb
Release : 2017-07-14
Category : Computers
ISBN : 9783319635378

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Biomimetic and Biohybrid Systems by Michael Mangan,Mark Cutkosky,Anna Mura,Paul F.M.J. Verschure,Tony Prescott,Nathan Lepora Pdf

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Biomimetic and Biohybrid Systems, Living Machines 2017, held in Stanford, CA, USA, in July 2017.The 42 full and 19 short papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 63 submissions. The theme of the conference encompasses biomimetic methods for manufacture, repair and recycling inspired by natural processes such as reproduction, digestion, morphogenesis and metamorphosis.

Author : Janis Birkeland
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 289 pages
File Size : 43,8 Mb
Release : 2012-05-04
Category : Architecture
ISBN : 9781136568404

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Design for Sustainability by Janis Birkeland Pdf

With radical and innovative design solutions, everyone could be living in buildings and settlements that are more like gardens than cargo containers, and that purify air and water, generate energy, treat sewage and produce food - at lower cost. Birkeland introduces systems design thinking that cuts across academic and professional boundaries and the divide between social and physical sciences to move towards a transdiciplinary approach to environmental and social problem-solving. This sourcebook is useful for teaching, as each topic within the field of environmental management and social change has pairs of short readings providing diverse perspectives to compare, contrast and debate. Design for Sustainability presents examples of integrated systems design based on ecological principles and concepts and drawn from the foremost designers in the fields of industrial design, materials, housing design, urban planning and transport, landscape and permaculture, and energy and resource management.

Author : Sune Holm,Maria Serban
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 313 pages
File Size : 44,9 Mb
Release : 2020-06-07
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781351212229

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Philosophical Perspectives on the Engineering Approach in Biology by Sune Holm,Maria Serban Pdf

Philosophical Perspectives on the Engineering Approach in Biology provides a philosophical examination of what has been called the most powerful metaphor in biology: The machine metaphor. The chapters collected in this volume discuss the idea that living systems can be understood through the lens of engineering methods and machine metaphors from both historical, theoretical, and practical perspectives. In their contributions the authors examine questions about scientific explanation and methodology, the interrelationship between science and engineering, and the impact that the use of engineering metaphors in science may have for bioethics and science communication, such as the worry that its wide application reinforces public misconceptions of the nature of new biotechnology and biological life. The book also contains an introduction that describes the rise of the machine analogy and the many ways in which it plays a central role in fundamental debates about e.g. design, adaptation, and reductionism in the philosophy of biology. The book will be useful as a core reading for professionals as well as graduate and undergraduate students in courses of philosophy of science and for life scientists taking courses in philosophy of science and bioethics.

Author : Peter M Hoffmann
Publisher : Basic Books
Page : 288 pages
File Size : 46,7 Mb
Release : 2012-10-30
Category : Science
ISBN : 9780465033362

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Life's Ratchet by Peter M Hoffmann Pdf

Life is an enduring mystery. Yet, science tells us that living beings are merely sophisticated structures of lifeless molecules. If this view is correct, where do the seemingly purposeful motions of cells and organisms originate? In Life's Ratchet, physicist Peter M. Hoffmann locates the answer to this age-old question at the nanoscale. Below the calm, ordered exterior of a living organism lies microscopic chaos, or what Hoffmann calls the molecular storm -- specialized molecules immersed in a whirlwind of colliding water molecules. Our cells are filled with molecular machines, which, like tiny ratchets, transform random motion into ordered activity, and create the "purpose" that is the hallmark of life. Tiny electrical motors turn electrical voltage into motion, nanoscale factories custom-build other molecular machines, and mechanical machines twist, untwist, separate and package strands of DNA. The cell is like a city -- an unfathomable, complex collection of molecular workers working together to create something greater than themselves. Life, Hoffman argues, emerges from the random motions of atoms filtered through these sophisticated structures of our evolved machinery. We are agglomerations of interacting nanoscale machines more amazing than anything in science fiction. Rather than relying on some mysterious "life force" to drive them -- as people believed for centuries -- life's ratchets harness instead the second law of thermodynamics and the disorder of the molecular storm. Grounded in Hoffmann's own cutting-edge research, Life's Ratchet reveals the incredible findings of modern nanotechnology to tell the story of how the noisy world of atoms gives rise to life itself.

Author : United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Appropriations. Subcommittee on Agriculture, Rural Development, and Related Agencies
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 1444 pages
File Size : 47,6 Mb
Release : 1999
Category : Political Science
ISBN : MINN:31951D016267112

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Agriculture, Rural Development, and Related Agencies Appropriations for Fiscal Year 1999 by United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Appropriations. Subcommittee on Agriculture, Rural Development, and Related Agencies Pdf

Author : Takashi Gomi
Publisher : Springer
Page : 144 pages
File Size : 49,6 Mb
Release : 2003-06-30
Category : Computers
ISBN : 9783540455028

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Evolutionary Robotics. From Intelligent Robotics to Artificial Life by Takashi Gomi Pdf

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 8th International Symposium on Evolutionary Robotics, ER 2001, held in Tokyo, Japan, in October 2001. The seven revised full papers by the invited speakers Rodney A. Brooks, Dario Floreano, Robert J. Full, Inman Harvey, Owen Holland, Francesco Mondada, and Jordan B. Pollack were carefully selected and revised for presentation in the book. Among the topics addressed are imitation of life and machine consciousness, autonomous vision-based robots, evolved robots, living machines, artificial evolution, bioinspired artificial life locomotion, and mobile robotic systems engineering.

Author : Jason F. McLennan
Publisher : Ecotone Publishing
Page : 376 pages
File Size : 55,6 Mb
Release : 2004
Category : Architecture
ISBN : 0974903302

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The Philosophy of Sustainable Design by Jason F. McLennan Pdf

The author outlines the major ideas and issues that have emerged in the growing movement of green architecture and sustainable design over the last thirty years. The book asks individuals to understand how the philosophy of sustainable design can affect their own work.

Author : Lawrence K. Wang,Joo-Hwa Tay,Stephen Tiong Lee Tay,Yung-Tse Hung
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
Page : 884 pages
File Size : 42,5 Mb
Release : 2010-06-25
Category : Science
ISBN : 9781603270311

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Environmental Bioengineering by Lawrence K. Wang,Joo-Hwa Tay,Stephen Tiong Lee Tay,Yung-Tse Hung Pdf

The past 30 years have seen the emergence of a growing desire worldwide that positive actions be taken to restore and protect the environment from the degrading effects of all forms of pollution – air, water, soil, and noise. Since pollution is a direct or indirect consequence of waste production, the seemingly idealistic demand for “zero discharge” can be construed as an unrealistic demand for zero waste. However, as long as waste continues to exist, we can only attempt to abate the subsequent pollution by converting it to a less noxious form. Three major questions usually arise when a particular type of pollution has been identi ed: (1) How serious is the pollution? (2) Is the technology to abate it available? and (3) Do the costs of abatement justify the degree of abatement achieved? This book is one of the volumes of the Handbook of Environmental Engineering series. The principal intention of this series is to help readers formulate answers to the above three questions. The traditional approach of applying tried-and-true solutions to speci c pollution problems has been a major contributing factor to the success of environmental engineering, and has accounted in large measure for the establishment of a “methodology of pollution control. ” However, the realization of the ever-increasing complexity and interrelated nature of current environmental problems renders it imperative that intelligent planning of pollution abatement systems be undertaken.

Author : Greta Plaitano,Simone Venturini,Paolo Villa
Publisher : Udine/Gorizia Conference Proce
Page : 270 pages
File Size : 55,9 Mb
Release : 2020-09-19
Category : Art
ISBN : 8869772764

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Moving Pictures, Living Machines by Greta Plaitano,Simone Venturini,Paolo Villa Pdf

History of Cinema Without Names is an editorial project which gathers research papers presented at Gorizia Conference, Italy. It promotes a new research perspective on the notions of film authorship, style, and genre, with the aim of re-articulating their theoretical definition.