“Engineering” has firmly taken root in the entangled bank of biology even as proposals to remake the living world have sent tendrils in every direction, and at every scale. Nature Remade explores these complex prospects from a resolutely historical approach, tracing cases across the decades of the long twentieth century. These essays span the many levels at which life has been engineered: molecule, cell, organism, population, ecosystem, and planet. From the cloning of agricultural crops and the artificial feeding of silkworms to biomimicry, genetic engineering, and terraforming, Nature Remade affirms the centrality of engineering in its various forms for understanding and imagining modern life. Organized around three themes—control and reproduction, knowing as making, and envisioning—the chapters in Nature Remade chart different means, scales, and consequences of intervening and reimagining nature.

Following on from the first two volumes, published in 2002, volumes 3 and 4 of Characterisation and Engineering Properties of Natural Soils review laboratory testing, in-situ testing, and methods of characterising natural soil variability, illustrated by actual site data. Less well-documented soil types are highlighted and the various papers take i

Engineered Biomimicry covers a broad range of research topics in the emerging discipline of biomimicry. Biologically inspired science and technology, using the principles of math and physics, has led to the development of products as ubiquitous as VelcroTM (modeled after the spiny hooks on plant seeds and fruits). Readers will learn to take ideas and concepts like this from nature, implement them in research, and understand and explain diverse phenomena and their related functions. From bioinspired computing and medical products to biomimetic applications like artificial muscles, MEMS, textiles and vision sensors, Engineered Biomimicry explores a wide range of technologies informed by living natural systems. Engineered Biomimicry helps physicists, engineers and material scientists seek solutions in nature to the most pressing technical problems of our times, while providing a solid understanding of the important role of biophysics. Some physical applications include adhesion superhydrophobicity and self-cleaning, structural coloration, photonic devices, biomaterials and composite materials, sensor systems, robotics and locomotion, and ultra-lightweight structures. - Explores biomimicry, a fast-growing, cross-disciplinary field in which researchers study biological activities in nature to make critical advancements in science and engineering - Introduces bioinspiration, biomimetics, and bioreplication, and provides biological background and practical applications for each - Cutting-edge topics include bio-inspired robotics, microflyers, surface modification and more

This book presents peer-reviewed papers from the 4th International Conference on Applications of Mathematics and Informatics in Natural Sciences and Engineering (AMINSE2019), held in Tbilisi, Georgia, in September 2019. Written by leading researchers from Austria, France, Germany, Georgia, Hungary, Romania, South Korea and the UK, the book discusses important aspects of mathematics, and informatics, and their applications in natural sciences and engineering. It particularly focuses on Lie algebras and applications, strategic graph rewriting, interactive modeling frameworks, rule-based frameworks, elastic composites, piezoelectrics, electromagnetic force models, limiting distribution, degenerate Ito-SDEs, induced operators, subgaussian random elements, transmission problems, pseudo-differential equations, and degenerate partial differential equations. Featuring theoretical, practical and numerical contributions, the book will appeal to scientists from various disciplines interested in applications of mathematics and informatics in natural sciences and engineering.

Analysis of Engineering Cycles, Third Edition, deals principally with an analysis of the overall performance, under design conditions, of work-producing power plants and work-absorbing refrigerating and gas-liquefaction plants, most of which are either cyclic or closely related thereto. The book is organized into two parts, dealing first with simple power and refrigerating plants and then moving on to more complex plants. The principal modifications in this Third Edition arise from the updating and expansion of material on nuclear plants and on combined and binary plants. In view of increased importance and topicality, new material has been added to chapters on gas-turbine plant for compressed air energy storage systems and on steam-turbine plant for the combined supply of power and process steam, including plant for district heating. The use of gas-turbine plant in association with district-heating schemes is also discussed, in which the treatment of high-temperature and fast-breeder gas-cooled nuclear reactors has been extended. The material on combined gas-turbine/steam-turbine plant has also been expanded and updated, together with that on combined steam plant with magnetohydrodynamic and thermionic topping, respectively. This book meets the immediate requirements of the mechanical engineering student in his undergraduate course, and of other engineering students taking courses in thermodynamics and fluid mechanics.