James Adams begins with a history of technology and the engineering profession. The author next takes the reader on a guided tour of the engineer's... world, beginning with design and invention - the part of engineering that generates new ideas. The next stop is in the field of mathematics, the discipline that allows engineers to build sophisticated products yet makes it a mystical enterprise to the lay public. Science and research, we learn, are the source of many creative directions in technology, but the interrelations between "basic" and "applied" professions are reciprocal and subtle. Experiment and testing introduce the trial-and-error aspect of engineering, which reduces, but can never eliminate, risk and failure. The author also covers manufacturing and assembly, practical processes that impose constraints on the idealistic inventions of the designer's mind; business and money, the latter being required to finance engineering and the former being the means for generating the money; and the controversial but inevitable role of technology regulation. "Flying Buttresses, Entropy and O-rings" aims to demystify a profession that is quite often taken for granted and to inspire an appreciation of the world of engineering.

Ten years ago, Tim Lefens was introduced to a group of severely challenged students living at the Matheny School in New Jersey. None of them could walk,... only one of them could talk, and all lacked the use of their hands. As a painter facing the gradual loss of his own eyesight, Lefens had come to fully appreciate the power of art, and he was determined to enable the students to paint despite their physical limitations.Flying Colors is an immensely inspiring story about leaping over obstacles. It is a story of friendship, courage, and the dream that brought a group of forgotten people into the heart of life."Art transforms the lives of a group of profoundly disabled individuals. . . . A vivid reminder that one teacher truly can make a difference." --Kirkus Reviews"An intensely moving memoir . . . unsparing and inspiring." --Publishers Weekly

After losing yet another tae kwon do tournament, Jinho gives in to his anger and breaks his opponent's fingers. While this gets him barred from... competing at his dojang, it also gets him scouted by Austin, a trainer for an underground mixed martial arts club. At first the prospect of fighting without boundaries appeals to Jinho, but the more involved he gets, the more disturbing he finds it and the harder it is to find a way out. Unlike legal MMA, which has rules and regulations, underground MMA is a free-for-all: there are no weight classes and no referees to stop the fight should it go too far. When Jinho is set up to fight a boy known as The Ripper, he realizes that he doesn't belong in this world, but the only thing that can save him is the ancient code of tae kwon do.

This early collection of eight short stories and a novella is vintage Wendt. Stories convey the unease of traditional island community caught up in... the rapid changes of the modern world. Wendt writes with enviable directness and with deep feeling: comedy and tragedy are often hard to distinguish as his characters struggle to come to terms with their changing world.

Written between 1937 and 1954 and now available in paperback for the first time, these thirteen stories are a potent distillation of the genius of Ralph... Ellison. Six of them remained unpublished during Ellison's lifetime and were discovered among the author's effects in a folder labeled "Early Stories." But they all bear the hallmarks--the thematic reach, musically layered voices, and sheer ebullience--that Ellison would bring to his classic Invisible Man.The tales in Flying Home range in setting from the Jim Crow South to a Harlem bingo parlor, from the hobo jungles of the Great Depression to Wales during the Second World War. By turns lyrical, scathing, touching, and transcendently wise, Flying Home and Other Stories is a historic volume, an extravagant last bequest from a giant of our literature.

These shocking, brilliant, and ultimately beautiful stories chronicle the lives of ordinary people in extraordinary situations. Each tale is laced with... enough wit, humor, and imagination to keep the reader constantly amazed. From the young son persuaded to donate his heart to his dying mother, to the girl who befriends a man in a dog suit in post-apocolyptic suburbia, to the man and woman conducting a love affair across a park bench, these characters delight and dazzle.

The contributors share time-tested advice on approaches, methods, systems, and perspectives that have resulted in thriving solo and small firm law... practices in the real world. This book contains proven solutions for problems and issues that, sooner or later, every practitioner will have to face.

A groundbreaking book portraying the new American lifestyle of single midlife women.Unmarried at 40—could there be anything worse? Our culture... dictates that women who have failed to catch or hold the golden ring of marriage are destined to be deprived and depressed, perhaps even dangerous. Add the burden of age and you have a woman headed for disaster. Not necessarily so, say the authors of Flying Solo, who talked with never-married, divorced, and widowed women in midlife across the country. These women's stories offer blueprints for living, as well as inspiration, for other women "flying solo." Most of these women did not intend to be single at midlife. Yet they have given up the dream of "happily ever after" to create lives on their own that are rich and rewarding. The authors share these women's stories as well as their practical advice on managing the mechanics of being single, transforming loneliness, redefining the place of work, developing friendship and support networks, living with and without intimacy and sex with men, and choosing to have and raise children. In the process they define not just a new American lifestyle but a new American Dream.

This training guide diminishes the dangers and doubles the thrill--and safety--of flying single-engine aircraft at high altitudes in mountainous... regions. Logically organized by phases of flight--from preflight preparation to landings--the author combines statistics, techniques, and examples of actions (correct and incorrect) that real pilots have taken in actual flight scenarios. * Details training that offsets mountain flying mistakes * Describes the effects of altitude on pilots and aircraft * Outlines cold weather operations and precautions * Includes search and rescue operation procedures * Reviews take-off conditions from airport mountains

The rivalry between Germany and France in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is well known. It was directly or indirectly responsible for four... cataclysmic wars, and until recently, the idea that these two states could become close partners seemed implausible. Yet, following World War II and the birth of the European Union, they became the closest of allies. In fact, they collaborated for almost four decades on one of the most sophisticated weapons that Europe has produced: the Tiger Helicopter. How did this occur, and what does this unlikely outcome tell us about how interstate relations really work?Through the lens of the Tiger, Ulrich Krotz draws from two theoretical approaches--social constructivism and historical institutionalism--to reframe our understanding of how international relationships evolve. How does a relationship between states affect a state internally? And how do the internal dynamics of a state limit such relationships? While other scholars have touched on these issues, until now no one has provided a sustained, finely--grained, and historically--informed analysis that explains how international relations inform domestic realities and how, in turn, domestic politics and institutions structure interstate relationships. Two famous rivals reshaped their relationship through a complicated, decades-long process, and in doing so, the nuts and bolts of domestic politics-approvals for state funding, or laws regarding corporations and technology transfer, for instance-were instrumental in creating a new reality.Fully researched in French, German, and English, Krotz's account of how the Tiger project was conceived and funded, and how the combat helicopter was built and exported, presents a clear analysis of the dialectical relationship between 'high' interstate politics and 'low' domestic politics. In sum, it is a groundbreaking theoretical contribution to international relations scholarship.

The brain contains many distinct functional and anatomical regions. Despite these differences, brain tissues are sufficiently uniform in the fact... that they can engage in various types of processing. How can functionally different kinds of processes, such as verbal memory and reasoning, visual and auditory memory, and mental imagery, all be supported by the relatively uniform electrochemical activity of a brain’s neurons? How are they appropriately segregated and integrated as needed? In Aging, Representation, and Thought, Matthew J. Sharps provides an empirically based, functional answer to what is, from the standpoint of modern cognitive psychology, a critical theoretical issue. Sharps argues that the crucial factor is the degree to which information is subjected to processing that is more gestalt or feature-intensive in nature. Sharps shows that purely gestalt processing deals with information in large “chunks,” providing for relatively little incisive analysis. Purely feature-intensive processing, on the other hand, tends to ignore the overall nature and context of information in favor of comparatively minute analyses. It provides for relatively comprehensive analysis, but also for slow, cumbersome processing. Neither process, however, works in isolation, and Sharps demonstrates how information processing occurs on a continuum between the two extremes. Sharps’ theoretical perspective is amply borne out by the results of specific experiments in all of the cognitive realms he addresses. He provides relatively comprehensive explanations for a variety of phenomena including the diminution of specific cognitive processes with age, and errors in eyewitness memory, reasoning, and decision-making at all levels of human activity. Aging, Representation, and Thought will be of interest to psychologists, students of adult development and aging, and management specialists.

This collection chronicles the fiction and non fiction classics by the greatest writers the world has ever known. The inclusion of both popular as well... as overlooked pieces is pivotal to providing a broad and representative collection of classic works.

Newly updated to include coverage of modern cockpit automation, this book provides pilots with valuable tools and proven techniques for all flight... operations.

Having barely escaped the revolution they had a huge (if accidental) part in causing, sharp-eyed orphan Mosca Mye; her guard goose, Saracen; and their... sometimes-loyal companion, the con man Eponymous Clent, must start anew. All too quickly, they find themselves embroiled in fresh schemes and twisting politics as they are trapped in Toll, an odd town that changes its entire personality as day turns to night. Mosca and her friends attempt to fend off devious new foes, subvert old enemies, prevent the kidnapping of the mayor's daughter, steal the town's Luck, and somehow manage to escape with their lives—and hopefully a little money in their pockets. In the eagerly awaited sequel to Fly by Night, acclaimed storyteller Frances Hardinge returns to a vivid world rich with humor, danger, and discovery.