Energy weaves the tapestry of our lives, and it does so in more ways than we usually recognize. While it is clear that it powers our homes, airplanes, and factories, its overwhelming influence often goes without notice in other areas, from the heartbreak of poverty to the motivation for war. While maintaining its availability has the potential to create jobs and contribute to competitive economies, nonrenewable energy sources are scarring our landscapes, polluting our air, and fouling our water. Understanding how we use energy and what we are willing to do to maintain our access to it can help us prepare for the complex and daunting challenges that linger as we look for alternatives. In The Thread of Energy, Martin J. Pasqualetti homes in on this vital driver of human actions and decisions. He exposes the impact of energy according to multiple scales of measurement and assessment, from everyday applications to global entanglements. The book traces our increasing dependence on Earth's nonrenewable energy resources by comparing lifestyle changes throughout history. Pasqualetti showcases the many ways energy infiltrates communication methods in all its forms (e.g., print, visuals, digital, etc.). The final chapters detail various approaches used by democratic societies looking to lessen their energy usage, including the critical importance of environmentally conscious policymakers. The Thread of Energy treats energy as a social issue with a technical component, rather than the other way around.

"The Thread of Energy simplifies the world's complexity by discussing energy as the single most influential driver of human actions and decisions. It exposes fundamental influences of energy on our lives, our security, and our relationships with others in an ever-shrinking and complicated world. It examines the typical influence energy has on all human activities, ways of life, ambitions, and costs while illustrating the central role of energy in explaining how the world works and how it will influence the future we are creating. It reduces the myriad interlocking and inscrutable influences on human security and happiness and prepares us - in lay terms - for the coming energy transition. The Thread of Energy weaves a tapestry of all human activities. Energy is the premier driver of human actions, decisions, barriers, and opportunities. Acknowledging and acting upon this accumulated awareness is the first step in illuminating the path to the solutions we must achieve to survive. When we do so, we will have accepted that Energy is a social issue with a technical component rather than the other way around"--

This book introduces the state-of-the-art in research in parallel and distributed embedded systems, which have been enabled by developments in silicon technology, micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS), wireless communications, computer networking, and digital electronics. These systems have diverse applications in domains including military and defense, medical, automotive, and unmanned autonomous vehicles. The emphasis of the book is on the modeling and optimization of emerging parallel and distributed embedded systems in relation to the three key design metrics of performance, power and dependability. Key features: Includes an embedded wireless sensor networks case study to help illustrate the modeling and optimization of distributed embedded systems. Provides an analysis of multi-core/many-core based embedded systems to explain the modeling and optimization of parallel embedded systems. Features an application metrics estimation model; Markov modeling for fault tolerance and analysis; and queueing theoretic modeling for performance evaluation. Discusses optimization approaches for distributed wireless sensor networks; high-performance and energy-efficient techniques at the architecture, middleware and software levels for parallel multicore-based embedded systems; and dynamic optimization methodologies. Highlights research challenges and future research directions. The book is primarily aimed at researchers in embedded systems; however, it will also serve as an invaluable reference to senior undergraduate and graduate students with an interest in embedded systems research.

A “meticulously researched” (The New York Times Book Review) examination of energy transitions over time and an exploration of the current challenges presented by global warming, a surging world population, and renewable energy—from Pulitzer Prize- and National Book Award-winning author Richard Rhodes. People have lived and died, businesses have prospered and failed, and nations have risen to world power and declined, all over energy challenges. Through an unforgettable cast of characters, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Richard Rhodes explains how wood gave way to coal and coal made room for oil, as we now turn to natural gas, nuclear power, and renewable energy. “Entertaining and informative…a powerful look at the importance of science” (NPR.org), Rhodes looks back on five centuries of progress, through such influential figures as Queen Elizabeth I, King James I, Benjamin Franklin, Herman Melville, John D. Rockefeller, and Henry Ford. In his “magisterial history…a tour de force of popular science” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review), Rhodes shows how breakthroughs in energy production occurred; from animal and waterpower to the steam engine, from internal-combustion to the electric motor. He looks at the current energy landscape, with a focus on how wind energy is competing for dominance with cast supplies of coal and natural gas. He also addresses the specter of global warming, and a population hurtling towards ten billion by 2100. Human beings have confronted the problem of how to draw energy from raw material since the beginning of time. Each invention, each discovery, each adaptation brought further challenges, and through such transformations, we arrived at where we are today. “A beautifully written, often inspiring saga of ingenuity and progress…Energy brings facts, context, and clarity to a key, often contentious subject” (Booklist, starred review).

Scientific Visualization of Physical Phenomena reflects the special emphasis of the Computer Graphics Society's Ninth International Conference, held at the MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA in June, 1991. This volume contains the proceedings of the conference, which, since its foundation in 1983, continues to attract high quality research articles in all aspects of Computer Graphics and its applications. Visualization in science and engineering is rapidly developing into a vital area because of its potential for significantly contributing to the understanding of physical processes and the design automation of man-made systems. With the increasing emphasis in handling complicated physical and artificial processes and systems and with continuing advances in specialized graphics hardware and processing software and algorithms, visualization is expected to play an increasingly dominant role in the foreseeable future.