Energy The Countdown

Energy: The Countdown considers the possibility that a catastrophic energy crisis might become inevitable and could explode even before any comprehensive emergency plans are concerted. The goal is to raise with both public opinion and decision-makers the consciousness that there exists a real threat to human society in the form of a looming energy crisis. This book is comprised of 11 chapters and begins by emphasizing energy as the oxygen of economic life, an essential requirement for the development of modern society, and how a shortage or limitation of energy resources can seriously endanger the world's economic development. The constraints that will limit the supply of certain types of energy are highlighted, along with the importance of long-term planning. The next section deals with the politics of energy, paying particular attention to the oil crisis and its impact on international relations since October 1973, along with the nuclear power crisis and the proliferation of nuclear weapons. The relationship between geopolitics and energy policy and the nature of the energy problem are also discussed, together with energy sources such as coal, natural gas, and nuclear energy. The final chapter assesses the economic effects of a massive increase in oil prices. This monograph will be of interest to energy policymakers and government officials.

A powerful investigation into the chances for humanity's future from the author of the bestseller The World Without Us. In his bestselling book The World Without Us, Alan Weisman considered how the Earth could heal and even refill empty niches if relieved of humanity's constant pressures. Behind that groundbreaking thought experiment was his hope that we would be inspired to find a way to add humans back to this vision of a restored, healthy planet-only in harmony, not mortal combat, with the rest of nature. But with a million more of us every 4 1/2 days on a planet that's not getting any bigger, and with our exhaust overheating the atmosphere and altering the chemistry of the oceans, prospects for a sustainable human future seem ever more in doubt. For this long awaited follow-up book, Weisman traveled to more than 20 countries to ask what experts agreed were probably the most important questions on Earth -- and also the hardest: How many humans can the planet hold without capsizing? How robust must the Earth's ecosystem be to assure our continued existence? Can we know which other species are essential to our survival? And, how might we actually arrive at a stable, optimum population, and design an economy to allow genuine prosperity without endless growth? Weisman visits an extraordinary range of the world's cultures, religions, nationalities, tribes, and political systems to learn what in their beliefs, histories, liturgies, or current circumstances might suggest that sometimes it's in their own best interest to limit their growth. The result is a landmark work of reporting: devastating, urgent, and, ultimately, deeply hopeful. By vividly detailing the burgeoning effects of our cumulative presence, Countdown reveals what may be the fastest, most acceptable, practical, and affordable way of returning our planet and our presence on it to balance. Weisman again shows that he is one of the most provocative journalists at work today, with a book whose message is so compelling that it will change how we see our lives and our destiny.

Expecting moms can count down the 280 days of their pregnancy with this delightful companion—complete with wise and witty advice and anecdotes from doctors, midwives, and other moms The average pregnancy lasts 280 days—and the suspense can be excruciating! The Pregnancy Countdown Book counts down the biggest milestones every step of the way, with one page of helpful information for each day of your pregnancy. Here are tips from doctors and mothers, amusing anecdotes and quotes, and all of the uncensored details that other books won’t tell you. 231 Days to Go: Your baby is now the size of a small blueberry. 209 Days to Go: Your baby's heartbeat is now audible. 124 Days to Go: Doctors recommend that you stop sleeping on your back. 91 Days to Go: The window for air travel is closing fast, so take that final vacation. 45 Days to Go: Better get started on that nursery. The perfect gift for expecting moms of all ages, The Pregnancy Countdown Book is a delightfully irreverent look at the craziest nine months of your life.

The two-volume set LNCS 12043 and 12044 constitutes revised selected papers from the 13th International Conference on Parallel Processing and Applied Mathematics, PPAM 2019, held in Bialystok, Poland, in September 2019. The 91 regular papers presented in these volumes were selected from 161 submissions. For regular tracks of the conference, 41 papers were selected from 89 submissions. The papers were organized in topical sections named as follows: Part I: numerical algorithms and parallel scientific computing; emerging HPC architectures; performance analysis and scheduling in HPC systems; environments and frameworks for parallel/distributed/cloud computing; applications of parallel computing; parallel non-numerical algorithms; soft computing with applications; special session on GPU computing; special session on parallel matrix factorizations. Part II: workshop on language-based parallel programming models (WLPP 2019); workshop on models algorithms and methodologies for hybrid parallelism in new HPC systems; workshop on power and energy aspects of computations (PEAC 2019); special session on tools for energy efficient computing; workshop on scheduling for parallel computing (SPC 2019); workshop on applied high performance numerical algorithms for PDEs; minisymposium on HPC applications in physical sciences; minisymposium on high performance computing interval methods; workshop on complex collective systems. Chapters "Parallel adaptive cross approximation for the multi-trace formulation of scattering problems" and "A High-Order Discontinuous Galerkin Solver with Dynamic Adaptive Mesh Refinement to Simulate Cloud Formation Processes" of LNCS 12043 are available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

An award-winning scientist, in this urgent, thought-provoking and meticulously researched book, shows how chemicals in the modern environment are changing--and endangering--human sexuality and fertility on the grandest scale.

A top cybersecurity journalist tells the story behind the virus that sabotaged Iran’s nuclear efforts and shows how its existence has ushered in a new age of warfare—one in which a digital attack can have the same destructive capability as a megaton bomb. “Immensely enjoyable . . . Zetter turns a complicated and technical cyber story into an engrossing whodunit.”—The Washington Post The virus now known as Stuxnet was unlike any other piece of malware built before: Rather than simply hijacking targeted computers or stealing information from them, it proved that a piece of code could escape the digital realm and wreak actual, physical destruction—in this case, on an Iranian nuclear facility. In these pages, journalist Kim Zetter tells the whole story behind the world’s first cyberweapon, covering its genesis in the corridors of the White House and its effects in Iran—and telling the spectacular, unlikely tale of the security geeks who managed to unravel a top secret sabotage campaign years in the making. But Countdown to Zero Day also ranges beyond Stuxnet itself, exploring the history of cyberwarfare and its future, showing us what might happen should our infrastructure be targeted by a Stuxnet-style attack, and ultimately, providing a portrait of a world at the edge of a new kind of war.