THE STORY of our world is a story that is still very imperfectly known. A couple of hundred years ago men possessed the history of little more than the last three thousand years. What happened before that time was a matter of legend and speculation. Over a large part of the civilized world it was believed and taught that the world had been created suddenly in 4004 B.C., though authorities diffe…
The history of early human advance is the history of harvesting prosperity from agricultural innovation. In India, the later Vedic texts (c. 3000–2500 BCE) make frequent references to agricultural technology and practices.Jia Sixie, drawing on over one thousand years of Chinese study in his Qimin Yaoshu, or Essential Techniques for the Common People (535 CE), asserts throughout his work the c…
f you choose not to read this and move straight on to In Homage to Darwin, we will not be offended. The story, however, of how two scientific dinosaurs came to cooperate in writing about their shared world view, gleaned from a combined total of more than 150 years of independent study of biology, needs, we feel, some explanation.Any two biologists can b…
This book has been created to help you make decisions about practical conservation management by providing an assessment, from the available scientific evidence, of what works and what does not work in conservation. It also tells you if no evidence has been found about whether or not a conservation intervention is effective. This is the 2020 edition of What Works in Conservation, which was firs…
This chapter introduces industrial electronics. It covers some of the key developments and includes definitions for a few of the major terms, It also discusses the skills and knowledge the industrial technician must have to work efficiently. Finally, it introduces safety, which is of paramount importance for those preparing to work in the industrial environment.
This book describes how to design, specify, and apply power semiconductor converters. The reader learns to analyze converter characteristics in order to understand how these converters interact with the electric utility grid and with the load in various applications
People used to download music for free; then Steve Jobs convinced them to pay for it. How? By charging 99 cents. Prada and other luxury stores stock a few obscenely expensive items - just to make the rest of their inventory seem like a bargain. Why do text messages cost money, while emails are free? Why do jars of peanut butter keep getting smaller in order to keep the price the 'same'? The ans…
One afternoon, at low water, Mr. Isbister, a young artist lodging at Boscastle, walked from that place to the picturesque cove of Pentargen, desiring to examine the caves there. Halfway down the precipitous path to the Pentargen beach he came suddenly upon a man sitting in an attitude of profound distress beneath a projecting mass of rock. The hands of this man hung limply over his knees…
With the growing population in the Southern States, the increase of mulattoes has been very great. Society does not frown upon the man who sits with his half-white child upon his knee whilst the mother stands, a slave, behind his chair. In nearly all the cities and towns of the Slave States, the real negro, or clear black, does not amount to more than one in four of the slave population. T…