Engineering Technology

A born naturalist and a fearless traveler, Vladimir Dinets wrote travel guides, conducted field research, and lived a couple of lives before he was accepted into the PhD program in zoology at the University of Miami. He thought crocodiles were a dead-end research topic - survivors from the age of the dinosaurs but not much else - until he witnessed groups of up to seventy alligators performing mating choruses that included infrasound vibrations - a form of communication extremely rare in nature.

Dame Sue Black is an internationally renowned forensic anthropologist and human anatomist. She has lived her life eye to eye with the Grim Reaper, and she writes vividly about it in this book, which is part primer on the basics of identifying human remains, part frank memoir of a woman whose first paying job as a schoolgirl was to apprentice in a butcher shop, and part no-nonsense but deeply humane introduction to the reality of death in our lives. It is a treat for CSI junkies, murder mystery and thriller fans, and anyone seeking a clear-eyed guide to a subject that touches us all.

Social Engineering: The Science of Human Hacking reveals the craftier side of the hacker's repertoire - why hack into something when you could just ask for access? Undetectable by firewalls and antivirus software, social engineering relies on human fault to gain access to sensitive spaces; in this book, renowned expert Christopher Hadnagy explains the most commonly used techniques that fool even the most robust security personnel and reveals how these techniques have been used in the past.

A true scientific pause-resister that traces a remarkable scientific breakthrough (the isolation of endorphins in the brain) as dedicated scientists race - not only with their fellow scientists - but against time and the profit hungry giant pharmaceutical companies. This audiobook chronicles the fascinating discovery of endorphins, the body's natural painkiller.

In the gripping Never Panic Early, Fred Haise, Lunar Module Pilot for Apollo 13, offers a detailed firsthand account of when disaster struck three days into his mission to the moon. An oxygen tank exploded, a crewmate uttered the now iconic words, “Houston, we’ve had a problem here,” and the world anxiously watched as one of history’s most incredible rescue missions unfolded. Haise brings listeners into the heart of his experience on the challenging mission—considered NASA’s finest hour—and reflects on his life and career as an Apollo astronaut.

When it comes to climate change, the media, politicians, and other prominent voices have declared that "the science is settled." In reality, the long game of telephone from research to reports to the popular media is corrupted by misunderstanding and misinformation. Core questions - about the way the climate is responding to our influence, and what the impacts will be - remain largely unanswered. The climate is changing, but the why and how aren't as clear as you've probably been led to believe.

Unlock the power of AI with the beginner’s handbook to AI prompt engineering: master ChatGPT, boost productivity, and turn your skills into profits! In today’s fast-paced digital age, mastering artificial intelligence (AI) isn’t a luxury—it’s a necessity. Whether you’re curious about AI, looking to maximize productivity, or eager to tap into income-generating opportunities, this book is your ultimate guide to mastering prompt engineering and transforming your life with tools like ChatGPT.

Large language models (LLMs) and diffusion models such as ChatGPT and Stable Diffusion have unprecedented potential. Because they have been trained on all the public text and images on the internet, they can make useful contributions to a wide variety of tasks. And with the barrier to entry greatly reduced today, practically any developer can harness LLMs and diffusion models to tackle problems previously unsuitable for automation. With this book, you'll gain a solid foundation in generative AI, including how to apply these models in practice.

In this book, author Will Larson shows you ways to obtain your first executive job and quickly ramp up to meet the challenges you may not have encountered in non-executive roles: measuring engineering for both engineers and the CEO, company-scoped headcount planning, communicating successfully across a growing organization, and figuring out what people actually mean when they keep asking for a "technology strategy."

In a world of self-driving cars and big data, smart algorithms and Siri, we know that artificial intelligence is getting smarter every day. Though all these nifty devices and programs might make our lives easier, they're also well on their way to making "good" jobs obsolete. A computer winning Jeopardy might seem like a trivial, if impressive, feat, but the same technology is making paralegals redundant as it undertakes electronic discovery, and is soon to do the same for radiologists.

In this absorbing and frequently contentious book, Roger Penrose puts forward his view that there are some facets of human thinking that can never be emulated by a machine. The book's central concern is what philosophers call the "mind-body problem". Penrose examines what physics and mathematics can tell us about how the mind works, what they can't, and what we need to know to understand the physical processes of consciousness.

Millions of professionals are typing prompts into AI tools and getting back garbage. Generic responses. Hallucinated facts. Outputs so bland they're useless.

In her memoir All That Remains, internationally renowned forensic anthropologist and human anatomist Dame Sue Black recounted her life lived eye to eye with the Grim Reaper. During the course of it, she offered a primer on the basics of identifying human remains, plenty of insights into the fascinating processes of death, and a sober, compassionate understanding of its inescapable presence in our existence. Now in this book, Black builds on that memoir, taking us on a guided tour of the human skeleton and explaining how each person's life history is revealed in their bones.

Nothing is harder to do these days than nothing. But in a world where our value is determined by our 24/7 data productivity...doing nothing may be our most important form of resistance. So argues artist and critic Jenny Odell in this field guide to doing nothing (at least as capitalism defines it). Our attention is the most precious - and overdrawn - resource we have. Once we can start paying a new kind of attention, we can undertake bolder forms of political action, reimagine humankind's role in the environment, and find more meaningful understandings of happiness and progress.

Regarded as one of the brightest young scientists of his generation, Lewis Dartnell proposes that the key to preserving civilization in an apocalyptic scenario is to provide a quickstart guide, adapted to cataclysmic circumstances. The Knowledge describes many of the modern technologies we employ, but first it explains the fundamentals upon which they are built. The Knowledge is a brilliantly original guide to the fundamentals of science and how it built our modern world as well as a thought experiment about the very idea of scientific knowledge itself.

Technical knowledge alone isn't enough - increase your software development income by leveling up your soft skills Early in his software developer career, John Sonmez discovered that technical knowledge alone isn't enough to break through to the next income level - developers need "soft skills" like the ability to learn new technologies just in time, communicate clearly with management and consulting clients, negotiate a fair hourly rate, and unite teammates and coworkers in working toward a common goal.

At most technology companies, you'll reach Senior software engineer, the career level for software engineers, in five to eight years. At the career level, your company's career ladder won't require that you work towards the next promotion; being promoted further is an exception rather than expected. This is also when many engineers are first given an opportunity to move into engineering management.

On a cold January morning in 1986, NASA launched the Space Shuttle Challenger, despite warnings against doing so by many individuals including Allan McDonald. The fiery destruction of Challenger on live television moments after launch remains an indelible image in the nation's collective memory. In Truth, Lies, and O-Rings, McDonald, a skilled engineer and executive, relives the tragedy from where he stood at Launch Control Center.

Salary surveys worldwide regularly place software architect in the top ten best jobs, yet no real guide exists to help developers become architects. Until now. This updated edition provides a comprehensive overview of software architecture's many aspects, with five new chapters covering the latest insights from the field. Aspiring and existing architects alike will examine architectural characteristics, architectural patterns, component determination, diagramming architecture, governance, data, generative AI, team topologies, and many other topics.

"Climate change is a hoax - and so is coronavirus." "Vaccines are bad for you." These days, many of our fellow citizens reject scientific expertise and prefer ideology to facts. They are not merely uninformed - they are misinformed. They cite cherry-picked evidence, rely on fake experts, and believe conspiracy theories. How can we get them to change their minds and accept the facts when they don't believe in facts? In this book, Lee McIntyre shows that anyone can fight back against science deniers, and argues that it's important to do so. Science denial can kill.