Chemical and Engineering News

A trusted source in the chemical and engineering industries, C&EN (Chemical and Engineering News), now provides on-line access to all indexed articles.  The American Chemical Society publication offers news and analysis on topics related to chemistry and engineering.  Information is timely, well-researched, and peer-reviewed.  Considering the fact that these  industries affect nearly every aspect of our modern society this access will be relevant to many disciplines.  According to their web-site, the newly released on-line archives “includes more than 500,000 pages of content—a complete history from 1923 through 2010.” Abstracts are available free, but full access requires membership, a one-time fee, or a per article fee of $10.  Of course, the ASCPL holdings include C&EN from 1947 to the present, so you can always request the article that you need from our Science and Technology Division (330) 643-9991.

Home Heating With Wood

Wood Pellet Heating Systems offers well-grounded advice for anyone embarking on the planning, sizing, design or installation of a wide variety of wood fuel systems. The book is well illustrated, jargon-free and clearly written, offering a valuable contribution to unlocking the potential of wood fuel in a wide range of applications. With alternative fuels on the rise, wood burning technology is making a comeback from the log burning stoves and fireplaces of yesterday. Start saving money and burn some wood today!

Survival!

Surviving: How Animals Adapt to Their Environments by Alessandro Minelli and Maria Pia Mannucci features more than 90 beautiful photographs of animals with an accompanying note about the survival mechanism portrayed.  This magnificent coffee table book is arranged under the broad categories of hunger, love, attacks, extremes, and change with a general introduction for each chapter.  It is hard to select just one picture to mention here, but the reader might find the metamorphosis photos of the butterfly or the mosquito fascinating, or wonder at the beauty of the sea urchin and the chameleon.  Take some time to enjoy this marvelous book.

Free-Range Kids

How to Raise Safe, Self-Reliant Children (Without Going Nuts with Worry)

Are you afraid to let your child walk to school or to a friend’s house alone, or let them play in the park unsupervised? Lenore Skenazy has written a consciousness, and eyebrow raising book on the importance of allowing kids to do those things and more, complete with a few bumps, scrapes, and setbacks along the way.

Writing with a keen eye and delightful wit she exposes the drawbacks of wrapping children in a cocoon of safety and security, protecting them from all hazards, real or imagined. Skenazy looks objectively at issues such as abduction, toxins in the environment, school shootings, and much more. She separates legitimate concerns from exaggerated hype using factual and statistical evidence to analyze the odds of real danger versus the benefits to a child’s development.

Lenore Skenazy makes a compelling — and entertaining –case that kids who are allowed to be independent, who experience and discover the world for themselves are much more resilient, self-reliant, self-confident, and happy than their sheltered peers.

This is an eye-opening and worthwhile read for all parents 

Ask a Patent Attorney program tomorrow night!

Akron patent attorney Dominic Frisina will be Main Library tomorrow night, September 15, at 6:30 pm, to answer your questions about getting a patent or other forms of protection for your creative endeavors.  Don’t miss this free program! 

Need more information?  Contact Science & Technology at 330-643-9075 or stdiv@akronlibrary.org

What is “Biomimetics?”

Bulletproof feathers certainly sound like a strange idea, but actually scientists are studying how one can create a bulletproof fabric that remains comfortable and flexible until the wearer is in danger, then harden to offer protection.  Join editor Robert Allen in Bulletproof feathers : how science uses nature’s secrets to design cutting-edge technology as he explores the world of biomimetics – technology that mimics nature.  One example of this science already in evidence is the cooling system of a giant termite mound and its resemblance to the way ventilation works in a modern skyscraper.  Allen gathers a variety of scientists in this field to bring their expertise to bear on what sounds to us like science fiction, but may soon be reality.  Selections include information on human-like robots, sonar, and cooperative behavior.

Spacesuits

Spacesuits is a photo archive of the collection of spacesuits housed by the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum . This unique book is a treasure trove for the space enthusiast.  Featuring detailed photographs of the variety of suits used by past and present astronauts, it even shows you how they are stored in the museum when not on display. It gives details such as what the suits are made of and how they are put together.  Truly, a fascinating  book for anyone interested in what to wear in space!

To see an online display of the Smithsonian Air And Space Museum’s collection of spacesuits, including boots, pressure suits, and John Glenn’s socks, click here.

WI-FI HOTSPOTS

Are you interested in setting up a small wireless network to attract more customers to your business location and generate more revenue?  Wi-Fi Hotspots: Setting Up Public Wireless Internet Access by computer consultant, Eric Geier, discusses all aspects of the process.  Writing for the layperson, Geier includes information on the equipment involved, the procedures for getting the network up and running, Wi-Fi security concerns, common problems encountered, and methods for publicizing the Wi-Fi service.

New Bird Books!

Peterson Field Guide to Birds of Eastern and Central North America

Peterson Field Guide to Birds of Western North America

For both serious and beginning birders, these are long standards in the field of bird watching.  The Peterson Identification System, range maps, excellent color illustrations and brief notes combine to help one identify what one is seeing.  These books make a trip in the wild or just watching one’s backyard birdfeeder a delight.

Birds of Eastern North America: A Photographic Guide – Paul Sterry

Birds of Western North America: A Photographic Guide – Paul Sterry

If one needs a photographic field guide to birds, these new books from Princeton University Press will be most useful.  With clear, well-cropped pictures and ample notes to accompany each entry, the birder will find much to improve his or her identification skills.  Also shown are range maps for each bird. 

National Geographic Illustrated Birds of North America: Folio Edition

– Jon Dunn

Based on the field guide issued by National Geographic, this coffee table sized book will be a source of reading pleasure for the birder on your gift list.  The book magnifies beautifully what one sees in the original guide.  Great pictures, commentary and maps.

Sheila Buff has rewritten her Birding for Beginners – and it is well worth a look.  This well organized book answers the questions of where to find birds to watch and how to watch them.  Buff has created a work full of excellent suggestions and tips.  There is a good section of identification tips and an explanation of those terms that may be new to a birder in such a way that one can interpret the comments in a field guide and identify a bird.  Her information on how different species of birds float, fly or flock is a useful tool for all of us birders.  There is also a section on bird song and birding equipment.   This new writing has many additional color photographs to illustrate the different types of birds.  It is worth checking into.

Bald Coot and Screaming Loon: Adventures in the Curious, Mysterious and Remarkable World of Birds – Niall Edworthy

Are you looking for fast facts about our feathered friends?  Then this book is for you.  Learn why the toucan has such an enormous beak.  Find out how many real birds vs. mechanical birds Alfred Hitchcock used in his film The Birds.  Learn why chickens and pheasants are poor flyers.  Find out how birds know when it is time to migrate.  What is “dusting?”  Do birds sunbathe?  Get these facts and many more when you browse through this new entry in our large collection of bird books.   

 

For the birds : easy-to-make recipes for your feathered friends

This book, from the editors of the popular magazine Birds and Blooms, has an abundance of recipes you can easily make to feed the birds in your backyard.  Also included are handy tips for choosing the right recipe and attracting birds.  If you enjoy setting up and observing feeding stations, this book is definitely for you.

Small Mountain Owls by Scott Rashid features lovely drawings and photographs of the small owls of our mountains; the Northern Pygmy Owl, the Flammulated Owl, the Northern Saw-whet Owl and the Boreal Owl.  The author includes his studies on courtship, nesting, hunting and nest monitoring of each species.  This book is worth a good look.

The Bird: A Natural History of Who Birds Are, Where They Came From, and How They Live by Colin Tudge is a captivating exploration of birds covering such topics as flight, evolution, and relationships in Tudge’s clear prose.  In the chapter “Families and Friends”  he writes about the bohemian lifestyle of many birds, their partners, and who raises the chicks.  Did you know that some birds build nests of thorns and adorn those thorns with owl pellets and mammal feces?  This and other fascinating facts make for a wonderful book on our feathered friends.   For additional books by Colin Tudge see our collection.

National Geographic Bird Coloration – Geoffrey E. Hill

Wondering why birds are the color they are?  Enjoy this new book from National Geographic – non-academic in nature, filled with color photography and fascinating information.  This book is not just a good read, but will also help to hone your bird identification skills.

In George C. West and Carol A. Butler’s new book Do Hummingbird’s Hum?  you can learn everything you ever wanted to know about this tiny bird.  The book is organized under broad headings with a question and answer format that is fun to read.  The book includes a section outlining the best ways to attract hummers to your yard and how to protect the feeders from unwanted visitors.

Hawk Mountain : the world’s first raptor sanctuary by John M. Wright is a lovely new book detailing a wonderful bird watching destination – Hawk Mountain in Pennsylvania.  Each year Hawk Mountain is visited by thousands of migrating raptors of many varieties as well as more than 75,000 avid raptor watchers.  The book is a photographic delight.

Visualizing the Very Small

Felice Frankel and George Whitesides use brilliant images and short descriptions in “No Small Matter:  Science on the Nanoscale” to present both the natural and manmade world at the tiniest level.  The authors have included gorgeous photographs of ribosomes, quantum dots, microreactors, viruses, tiny computer memory devices called millipedes, etc.  Using short passages, they discuss both the benefits and the risks of nanotechnology.  They speculate how nanodevices might be very important in future technological advances especially in biomedicine and computation.  A highly readable book of coffee-table caliber!