What if you could someday put the manufacturing power of an automobile plant on your desktop? It may sound far-fetched-but then, thirty years ago, the notion of "personal computers" in every home sounded like science fiction. According to Neil Gershenfeld, the renowned MIT scientist and inventor, the next big thing is personal fabrication -the ability to design and produce your own products, in your own home, with a machine that combines consumer electronics with industrial tools. Personal fabricators (PF's) are about to revolutionize the world just as personal computers did a generation ago. PF's will bring the programmability of the digital world to the rest of the world, by being able to make almost anything-including new personal fabricators. In FAB , Gershenfeld describes how personal fabrication is possible today, and how it is meeting local needs with locally developed solutions. He and his colleagues have created "fab labs" around the world, which, in his words, can be interpreted to mean "a lab for fabrication, or simply a fabulous laboratory." Using the machines in one of these labs, children in inner-city Boston have made saleable jewelry from scrap material. Villagers in India used their lab to develop devices for monitoring food safety and agricultural engine efficiency. Herders in the Lyngen Alps of northern Norway are developing wireless networks and animal tags so that their data can be as nomadic as their animals. And students at MIT have made everything from a defensive dress that protects its wearer's personal space to an alarm clock that must be wrestled into silence. These experiments are the vanguard of a new science and a new era-an era of "post-digital literacy" in which we will be as familiar with digital fabrication as we are with the of information processing. In this groundbreaking book, the scientist pioneering the revolution in personal fabrication reveals exactly what is being done, and how. The technology of FAB will allow people to create the objects they desire, and the kind of world they want to live in.

He is one of the most famous, most wealthy people on the planet, and yet he remains little-known and understood as a personality. At long last, Paul McCartney is the subject of a major, deeply researched, psychologically acute biography. It tells a story that will illuminate and surprise. The publication finds McCartney - who turns 70 in 2012 - revitalized as a performer (touring with a set of mostly Beatles songs) and a man buffeted by profound changes in recent years: the death of his first wife, Linda; the death of George Harrison; a second marriage, to Heather Mills, and its spectacular failure, the fall-out from which is still crashing around him.

From the acclaimed biographer who brought you the rock biography of Bruce Springsteen comes the life of musician Paul McCartney—from his groundbreaking years with the Beatles to Wings to his work as a solo artist and activist. More than a rock star, more than a celebrity, Paul McCartney is a cultural touchstone who helped transform popular music as one half of the legendary Lennon-McCartney songwriting duo. In this definitive biography, Peter Ames Carlin examines McCartney’s entire life, casting new light not just on the Beatles era but also on his years with Wings and his thirty-year relationship with his first wife, Linda McCartney. He takes us on a journey through a tumultuous couple of decades in which Paul struck out on his own as a solo artist, reached the top of the charts with a new band, and once again drew hundreds of thousands of screaming fans to his concerts. Carlin presents McCartney as a musical visionary but also as a layered and conflicted figure as haunted by his own legacy—and particularly his relationship with John Lennon—as he was inspired by it. Built on years of research and fresh, revealing interviews with friends, bandmates, and collaborators spanning McCartney’s entire life, Carlin’s lively biography captures the many faces of the living legend.

#1 BestSeller ...A Must-Have Guide to Living an Authentic Life Now!fine to FAB is the blueprint that awakens you to your authentic self. Lisa's innovative work uncovers the origins of self sabotage that have held you back in the past, providing step-by-step guidance with humor and candor to go from fine to FAB (Fabulous, Awesome, Beautiful). It will propel you forward to reclaim your peace and power, while rewriting the story of your life.***Time to go from feeling fine to being FAB! ***Start living an authentic life without blame, shame, or years of therapy. It is brilliant!***"Study this book as if your life depended on it because it already may. Lisa Lieberman-Wang is an expert at helping people follow her path from fine (F*@%*d Up, Insecure, Neurotic & Emotional...fine) to FAB... Please... get one for yourself and one for every woman, of every age, you care about." -Raymond Aaron, NY Times Bestselling Author of Chicken Soup for the Parent's Soul***Find the author on Facebook: lisaliebermanwangTwitter: @liebermanwang

Photographs from the Beatles in the early 1960's; also includes self portrait of Astrid Kirchherr (1960).

This book is concerned with wafer fabrication and the factories that manufacture microprocessors and other integrated circuits. With the invention of the transistor in 1947, the world as we knew it changed. The transistor led to the microprocessor, and the microprocessor, the guts of the modern computer, has created an epoch of virtually unlimited information processing. The electronics and computer revolution has brought about, for better or worse, a new way of life. This revolution could not have occurred without wafer fabrication, and its associated processing technologies. A microprocessor is fabricated via a lengthy, highly-complex sequence of chemical processes. The success of modern chip manufacturing is a miracle of technology and a tribute to the hundreds of engineers who have contributed to its development. This book will delineate the magnitude of the accomplishment, and present methods to analyze and predict the performance of the factories that make the chips. The set of topics covered juxtaposes several disciplines of engineering. A primary subject is the chemical engineering aspects of the electronics industry, an industry typically thought to be strictly an electrical engineer's playground. The book also delves into issues of manufacturing, operations performance, economics, and the dynamics of material movement, topics often considered the domain of industrial engineering and operations research. Hopefully, we have provided in this work a comprehensive treatment of both the technology and the factories of wafer fabrication. Novel features of these factories include long process flows and a dominance of processing over operational issues.

Over the last fifty-plus years, the increased complexity and speed of integrated circuits have radically changed our world. Today, semiconductor manufacturing is perhaps the most important segment of the global manufacturing sector. As the semiconductor industry has become more competitive, improving planning and control has become a key factor for business success. This book is devoted to production planning and control problems in semiconductor wafer fabrication facilities. It is the first book that takes a comprehensive look at the role of modeling, analysis, and related information systems for such manufacturing systems. The book provides an operations research- and computer science-based introduction into this important field of semiconductor manufacturing-related research.