Modern science, the Internet, big data, and AI are each saying the same thing to us: the world is -- and always has been -- far more complex and unpredictable than we've allowed ourselves to see. As a result we're undergoing a sea change in our understanding of how things happen, and in our deepest strategies for predicting, preparing for, and managing our lives and our businesses. For example, machine learning allows us to make better predictions (think the weather, stock performance, online clicks) but we know less about why those predictions are right--and we need to get used to that. And in fact, over the past twenty years we've been unintentionally developing strategies that avoid anticipating what will happen so we don't have to depend on unreliable revenue forecasts, assumptions about customer needs, and hypotheses about how a product will be used. By embracing these strategies, we're flourishing by creating yet more possibilities and yet more unpredictability. In wide-ranging stories and characteristically all-encompassing syntheses, technology researcher, internet expert, and philosopher David Weinberger reveals the trends that hide in so many aspects of our lives--and shows us how they matter.--

Updates the 1995 text on the same topic. The 12 contributions cover high-order methods, multiresolution expansion, explicit time-domain solutions of Maxwell's equations via generalized grids, analysis of periodic structures, modeling of antennas, high- speed electronic circuits with active and nonlinear components, physics-based modeling of millimeter-wave devices, and microcavity resonators. The book is intended as a single-source reference on the state of FDTD art for university graduate students and faculty and professional engineers and scientists involved in electromagnetic technology. Appends a list of acronym expansions. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

Representing the collective effort of over 30 leading scientists in Russia and the United States, this is the first book written solely on the subject of nuclear batteries. It presents a rich historical discussion and original research on the conversion of nuclear materials into electrical power, which can then be harvested to make long-lasting, more energy efficient batteries. With this technology, power-matched supplies would last decades - even centuries - using safe, direct, long-life, stable, integrated electric power from the highest energy density source available. Polymers, Phosphors, and Voltaics for Radioisotope Microbatteries presents the state-of-the-art in interdisciplinary research in radiochemistry, tritium storage, semiconductor fabrication and characterization, nuclear battery fabrication and testing, integration into MEMS and other electronic devices, and much more. A key feature of this book is its discussion of construction materials for miniaturized radioisotope power supplies, since progress in nuclear battery technology depends on characterization of functionally radiation-stable components. Though substantial progress has been made to solve problems of using integrated radioisotope batteries for micro- and nanoelectronics, each author has provided an authoritative assessment and has indicated where development is needed. Research in this area has the potential to revolutionize the microelectronics industry by enabling MEMS and nanotechnology. Significant technological progress depends today on coordinated interdisciplinary research. Polymers, Phosphors, and Voltaics for Radioisotope Microbatteries contains diverse discussions of the problems of using radioactive material for microelectronic power needs and guides readers to future research in the area of long-life, high energy-density batteries.