For rock engineering projects, the cutting and fragmenting of rocks has attracted much attention. Exploring the fracture characteristics of rocks is helpful in achieving efficient and sustainable excavation for mining and tunneling engineering. The frac-ture toughness of rocks is a crucial mechanical indicator that weighs the initiation and extension…
“There was no such thing as the Scientific Revolution, and this is a book about it” (Shapin 1996, 1). So began Stephen Shapin’s The Scientific Revolution, a work, con-cise and smart, that embodied an approach to the history of science termed “the social construction of science.” Shapin argued that if we are going to talk about a “scientific revolution,” then we need to see it not …
In 1960, the United States put its first Earth-observing environmental satellite into orbit around the planet. Over the decades, these satellites have provided invaluable information, and the vantage point of space has provided new perspectives on Earth. This book celebrates Earth’s aesthetic beauty in the patterns, shapes, colors, and textures of the land, oceans, ice, and atmosphere. The bo…
For centuries, scientists have been fascinated by the role of the Sun in the Earth’s climate system. Recent discoveries, outlined in this book, have gradually unveiled a complex picture, in which our variable Sun affects the climate variability via a number of subtle pathways, the implications of which are only now becoming clear. This handbook provides the scientifically curious, from underg…
Besides being a matter of academic interest, the study of earthquake-inducedhydrologic changes also has important implications for water resources, hydro-carbon exploration and engineered systems. For example, groundwater level changesfollowing earthquakes can affect water supplies (Chen and Wang2009). The aban-donment of Crete during the Late Minoan period has been attributed by some to adeple…