We were thrilled to read Jennifer Schuessler’s terrific story on the popular phenomenon of bar lecturing (and not in an intoxicated way, but a learned way!) Check out her story here. It looks like alcohol and science is a powerful (and successful) formula.
The Press is pleased to have had the pleasure of working with the Secret Science Club as they’ve hosted talks for a handful of our science authors. In particular, I was delighted to see friend-of-the-Press Dorian Devins at the SSC getting a mention!
With nearly 85,000 members, the IEEE Computer Society is the world’s leading organization of computing professionals. The largest of the 39 societies of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, the Computer Society is dedicated to advancing the theory and application of computer and information-processing technology, and is known globally for its computing standards activities.
When Computers Were Human is a detailed and fascinating look at a world I had not even known existed. After reading these accounts of ingenuity, determination, and true creative breakthrough, readers will look at today’s computer-based society in an entirely different way.
From the Bloomberg View: Reducing carbon-dioxide emissions is primarily a political problem, rather than a technological one. This fact was well illustrated by the fate of the 2009 climate bill that barely passed the U.S. House of Representatives and never came up for a vote in the Senate.
The House bill was already quite weak, containing many exceptions for agriculture and other industries, subsidies for nuclear power and increasingly long deadlines for action. In the Senate, both Republicans and Democrats from coal-dependent states sealed its fate. Getting past these senators is the key to achieving a major reduction in our emissions.
Technological challenges to reducing emissions exist, too. Most pressing is the need to develop the know-how to capture carbon dioxide on a large scale and store it underground. Such technology could reduce by 90 percent the emissions from coal- fired power stations. Some 500 of these facilities in the U.S. produce 36 percent of our CO2 emissions….(continued at Bloomberg View)
This week’s book giveaway is The Silicon Jungle by Shumeet Baluja. A timely thriller, The Silicon Jungle raises serious ethical questions about today’s technological innovations and how our most confidential activities and minute details can be routinely pieced together into rich profiles that reveal our habits, goals, and secret desires–all ready to be exploited in ways beyond our wildest imaginations. Set in today’s cutting-edge data mining industry, The Silicon Jungle is a cautionary tale of data mining’s promise and peril, and how others can use our online activities for political and personal gain just as easily as for marketing and humanitarian purposes.
“[F]righteningly convincing. . . . The read is quick, the questions will linger, and the ideas are so intriguing. . . . Baluja simplifies the abstract world of tech-speak for the rest of us while aiming to do for the Internet what Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle did for the meat industry: make readers reconsider its safety. For fans of intelligent thrillers.”–Stephen Morrow, Library Journal
“A cerebral, cautionary tale. Credible and scary.”–Vint Cerf, Google Vice President and Chief Internet Evangelist and one of the “Fathers of the Internet”
To be in our weekly book giveaway draws, LIKE US on Facebook. Each Friday we randomly pick the winner who is then notified that she/he has won the book of the week. Thanks to everyone who follows us on Facebook.
The speaker in this video clip, Michael Nielsen, is publishing a book with Princeton University Press in November 2011. The book titled Reinventing Discovery: The New Era of Networked Science makes sense of the exciting ways scientists and people collaborate online to solve problems.
In this TEDx Waterloo talk, Nielsen describes the polymath project which is coincidentally the brainchild of another PUP author — Timothy Gowers.
Enjoy the video and I’ll post more info about Michael’s book when it is available.
You will notice we have slightly changed the way we are producing Princeton Global Science. The first two issues were published all at once on the 1st and 15th of the month, but for the past two weeks, we have posted articles as they were ready. So today, I am posting more or less a table of contents to highlight these contributions.
Paul Nahin contributes a video log about his publishing relationship with with Princeton University Press and his writing process — it turns out he writes a page a day, no matter what. Paul has written eight books for PUP and he describes the behind-the-scenes wrangling that goes into writing his books and the cover designs for three of them.
We also have a dialogue with Paul Thagard, author of The Brain and the Meaning of Life, in which he describes how a book that was originally conceived as an assessment of current research in neuroscience shifted to tackle one of the largest philosophical questions — what is the meaning of life?
Our natural history guides are a large part of our publishing program and with two new guides publishing in October, it makes sense that our Princeton Field Guide series is highlighted this issue. Science Group Publisher Robert Kirk describes the history of this popular series and we have features on the most recent additions The Princeton Field Guide to Dinosaurs by Gregory S. Paul and Parrots of the World by Joseph M. Forshaw with illustrations by Frank Knight.
FACT: After President Kennedy challenged the nation to “put a man on the Moon and return him safely to Earth,” it was obvious that more than seven astronauts would be needed. The second group of nine astronauts, referred to as the “new nine,” was selected in September 1962 and included Neil Armstrong and Jim Lovell.
Space–the final frontier. It’s as little as fifty miles away, and yet it is considered one of the most dangerous and remote of places. Popular television shows such as Star Trek and movies such as Apollo 13 and October Sky have fired the imaginations of would-be explorers. Alan Tribble has worked on the design and development of dozens of spacecraft, including the Space Shuttle and the International Space Station. A Tribble’s Guide to Space is a how-to book that is firmly grounded in the realities of current state-of-the-art space engineering while tapping into the power of imagination that drives us to explore.
Alan Tribble offers a delightful guide to the nuts and bolts of space exploration, from how to get there to how to phone home and how to survive the harsh environment of space. Using examples from famous space missions, both factual and fictional, Tribble tackles fascinating real-world problems encountered in space exploration.
Next week we will launch Princeton Global Science on this blog. Hope you will join us on September 1st for original content from from our science editors and authors. More to come!
What are the three basic principles we can use to determine if someone is guilty of scientific misconduct? According to David Goodstein, interviewed about his new book On Fact and Fraud over at Inside Higher Ed, they are:
Thou shalt not commit fabrication (making up results); thou shalt not commit falsification (changing or omitting data or results); and thou shalt not commit plagiarism (appropriation of ideas without giving credit).
Click over to read the complete interview including advice to universities and professors on how to minimize the likelihood that their graduates will eventually commit scientific misconduct.
Our resident rocket scientist Ed Belbruno and his colleague from Princeton University, Richard Gott, are searching for the origins of the moon, using a theory they’ve proposed called the “Theia hypothesis.” The “Theia hypothesis” starts with the popular Great Impact theory of the Moon’s origin. Many astronomers hold that in the formative years of the solar system, a Mars-sized protoplanet crashed into Earth. Debris from the collision, a mixture of material from both bodies, spun out into Earth orbit and coalesced into the Moon. This scenario explains many aspects of lunar geology including the size of the Moon’s core and the density and isotopic composition of moon rocks.
As NASA’s STEREO probes approach the Lagrange point, it is thought that remnants of the Mars-size protoplanet remain here. Read all about this potentially-explosive discovery here on NASA’s webpage.
Featuring commentary and interviews from Princeton University Press authors, the PUP Blog is a highly respected, timely and indispensable source for learning, understanding and reflection.
I’ve just read ‘Tales of Fiscal Adjustment’ by Alesina and Ardagna, which appears to be the founding text for the idea of expansionary austerity. The level of scholarship, at least as it applies to Australia (which is their first illustration) is exceptionally poor, to the extent that it requires a rescuscitation of the ancient Internet […]
Via Mark Thoma, and drawing upon James Bullard at the St. Louis Fed, MacroMania writes: I think that Bullard makes a persuasive case that the amount of household wealth evaporated along with the crash in house prices should likely be viewed as a “permanent” (highly persistent) negative wealth shock. Standard theory (and common sense) suggests […]
Bryan Caplan has a very good post on the human capital and signalling models of education. The key point is this, under the human capital model someone who forgets knowledge is no better than someone who failed to learn the same knowledge. Under the signaling model, however, failing and forgetting are very different. Bryan illustrates: […]
Here are some 2nd-year Cooper's Hawks (birds in their first adult plumage) with retained juvenile flight feathers (the pale brownish ones). Note the lack of any grayish color and the more distinct banding of the juvenile feathers. […]
From Ricardo Hausmann: Greece will have to bring its current account deficit down to zero at some point. This can happen in two ways: either Greece exports more or spends less. Adjusting the current account by spending less would require an additional fall in GDP of 25 per cent, given that in Greece only one […]
If you're reading this blog, you probably didn't fail a lot of classes in school. But I bet that you've totally forgotten a lot of those classes. I got A's in junior high and high school Spanish, but barely speak a word of it.Now ask yourself this:How would your career have been different if you had failed all the classes you've to […]
I heard a rumor that a famous economist was asking about my book in progress, The Case Against Education. So I sent him the following email:I heard you were asking about me at the GMU dinner earlier this week. I am indeed working on a book defending the empirical importance of the signaling model of education. I'm happy to discuss my project at lengt […]
A little while ago I came across this delightful essay, On Being the Right Size, by , courtesy of the always-interesting Farnam Street blog. An essay that seems to be about biology (and for more on this see 2010′s Royal … Continue reading → […]
1. There is no great stagnation: the horizontal shower. 2. What if Star Trek had social networks? 3. The culture that is Iceland. 4. New economics blog from Phillips Exeter Academy. 5. TGS for musical instruments? 6. Profile of Scott Stern’s work on the economics of science. 7. Kristof has quite a reasonable review of […]
Our resident rocket scientist Ed Belbruno and his colleague from Princeton University, Richard Gott, are searching for the origins of the moon, using a theory they’ve proposed called the “Theia hypothesis.” The “Theia hypothesis” 
