Addressing a field that has been dominated by astronomers, physicists, engineers, and computer scientists, the contributors to this collection raise questions that may have been overlooked by physical scientists about the ease of establishing meaningful communication with an extraterrestrial intelligence. These scholars are grappling with some of the enormous challenges that will face humanity …
It is a basic premise of the Wind and Beyond series that nothing about the historical development of aircraft has ever been linear. On the way to aeronautical “progress”—however one chooses to define the term—there has always been, and always will be, countless twists and turns. And in the end, the entire story could have turned out differently—and still may. It is hoped that not only…
The first two volumes in the Wind and Beyond series and the succeeding four now in preparation all cover the impact of aerodynamic development on the evolution of the airplane in America. As the six-volume series will ultimately demonstrate, just as the airplane is a defining technology of the twentieth century, aerodynamics has been the defining element of the airplane.The forthcoming volumes …
The airplane ranks as one of history’s most ingenious and phenomenal inventions. It has surely been one of the most world-changing. How ideas about aerodynamics first came together and how the science and technology evolved to forge the airplane into the revolutionary machine that it became is the epic story told in this multivolume work, The Wind and Beyond: A Documentary Journey into the Hi…
The International Space Station offers a valuable platform and environment for cell biology investigations, novel discoveries and innovation in a microgravity environment. Areas of opportunity include tissue culture studies, tissue engineering research using 3-D tissue models, biopharmaceutical production, host microbe interactions, host-toxicology interactions, and host-drug sensitivity and re…
For decades, researchers have used the fruit fly Drosophila to probe the combined effects of microgravity and other conditions of spaceflight with exposure to ionizing radiation. Drosophila melanogaster provides a well-characterized model organism that is both genetically complex and relatively modest in its habitat and life support requirements. Microgravity exposure, a unique biological chall…
Dazzling photographs and images from space of our planet’s nightlights have captivated public attention for decades. In such images, patterns are immediately seen based on the presence or absence of light: a distinct coastline, bodies of water recognizable by their dark silhouettes, and the faint tendrils of roads and highways emanating from the brilliant blobs of light that are our modern, w…
NASA’s first successful mission to another planet, Mariner 2 to Venus in 1962, marked the beginning of what NASA Chief Scientist Jim Green describes in this volume as “a spectacular era” of solar system exploration. In its first 50 years of planetary exploration, NASA sent spacecraft to fly by, orbit, land on, or rove on every planet in our solar system, as well as Earth’s Moon and seve…
Wildlife Management is “Game management is the art of making land produce sustained annual crops of wild game for recreational use.” Leopold 1933 " the management of wildlife populations in the context of the ecosystem.” Sinclair et al. 2006 “the application of ecological knowledge to populations of vertebrate animals and their plant and animal associates in a manner that strikes a bala…
Marine mammals live in and obtain their food from the sea. But, just like other mammals, marine mammals are warm-blooded; they have lungs and they breathe air. The give birth to living young that are dependent on milk from developed to catch their own food. The structure of a marine mammal is generally the same as that of land mammals; the internal organs and main elements of the skeleton are …