Browse by Subject: Science and Technology

This book is a behind-the-scenes look at the bizarre crime of astronaut Lisa Nowak, who drove 900 miles to intercept and confront her romantic rival in an airport parking lot—allegedly using diapers on the trip so she wouldn’t have to stop. This is a riveting journey inside the high-pressure world of one of America’s most elite agencies and the life of one beleaguered astronaut.

In the upcoming decades, an unprecedented demographic shift will take place; the eighty-five and over population is projected to climb far higher than any other age group. To keep the current elderly population healthy and help prevent future generations from experiencing poor health outcomes, researchers are studying crucial connections between skeletal muscles and whole-body health.

Examining the ways in which NASA’s goal of space exploration both conflicted and aligned with the cause of racial equality, this volume provides new insights into the complex relationship between the space program and the civil rights movement in the Jim Crow South and abroad.

While medical schools usually emphasize the teaching of advanced scientific fundamentals through a carefully planned, formal curriculum, few focus on the equally crucial “hidden curriculum” of professional attitudes, skills, and behaviors. This concise and practical guide helps teachers effectively prepare students for seldom-taught issues that arise daily in the practice of clinical medicine.

Through a wealth of unpublished and recently discovered images, this book presents new and rarely seen views of the people, places, and events involved in planning, accomplishing, and commemorating the first Moon landing.

In 2010, artist and biologist Brandon Ballengée saw firsthand the largest environmental disaster in United States history—the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Within this book are his visual responses to the tragedy; locked in jars, suspended in alcohol, posed in petri dishes, Ballengée’s forms tell stories of species altered and obliterated. 

In this one-of-a-kind memoir, Jack Clemons—a former lead engineer in support of NASA—takes readers behind the scenes and into the inner workings of the Apollo and Space Shuttle programs during their most exciting years. Discover the people, the events, and the risks involved in one of the most important parts of space missions: bringing the astronauts back home to Earth.

Science writer Willy Ley inspired Americans of all ages to imagine a future of interplanetary travel long before space shuttles existed. This is the first biography of an important public figure who predicted and boosted the rise of the Space Age, yet has been overlooked in the history of science.

In Microbes to Ecosystems, follow the scientists, researchers, and staff of the University of Florida’s Biodiversity Institute as they marshal unprecedented amounts of biological data to help us conserve species, adapt to climate change, and solve pressing environmental problems.

Beginning with the invention of balloons that lifted early explorers into the stratosphere, Ted Spitzmiller describes how humans first came to employ lifting gasses such as hydrogen and helium. He traces the influence of science fiction writers on the development of rocket science, looks at the role of rocket societies in the early twentieth century, and discusses the use of rockets in World War II warfare.