Computer Science: Starting out

The principal technology correspondent for the BBC recounts the history of the smartphone and discusses its impact on the way this powerful technology ushered in a revolution in the way people live and work, including its dark side. The inside story of how tech became personal and pernicious, from the BBC's technology correspondent. We live at a time when billions have access to unbelievably powerful technology.

Data is at the center of many challenges in system design today. Difficult issues need to be figured out, such as scalability, consistency, reliability, efficiency, and maintainability. In addition, we have an overwhelming variety of tools, including relational databases, NoSQL datastores, stream or batch processors, and message brokers. Software keeps changing, but the fundamental principles remain the same. With this book, software engineers and architects will learn how to apply those ideas in practice, and how to make full use of data in modern applications.

This book includes classic papers by thinkers ranging from Aristotle and Leibniz to Norbert Wiener and Gordon Moore that chart the evolution of computer science. Ideas That Created the Future collects forty-six classic papers in computer science that map the evolution of the field. It covers all aspects of computer science: theory and practice, architectures and algorithms, and logic and software systems, with an emphasis on the period of 1936-1980 but also including important earlier work. Offering papers by thinkers ranging from Aristotle and Leibniz to Alan Turing and Nobert Wiener, the book documents the discoveries and inventions that created today's digital world.

Science has never been more important, yet science education faces serious challenges. At present, science education research only sees half the picture, focusing on how students learn and their changing conceptions. Both teaching practice and what is taught, science knowledge itself, are missing. This book offers new, interdisciplinary ways of thinking about science teaching that foreground the forms taken by science knowledge and the language, imagery and gesture through which they are expressed.

The book starts at an elementary level of mathematical modeling, assuming that the reader has had high school mathematics and first-year calculus. Otto and Day then gradually build in depth and complexity, from classic models in ecology and evolution to more intricate class-structured and probabilistic models. The authors provide primers with instructive exercises to introduce readers to the more advanced subjects of linear algebra and probability theory. Through examples, they describe how models have been used to understand such topics as the spread of HIV, chaos, the age structure of a country, speciation, and extinction.

For epidemiologists, evolutionary biologists, and health-care professionals, real-time and predictive modeling of infectious disease is of growing importance. This book provides a timely and comprehensive introduction to the modeling of infectious diseases in humans and animals, focusing on recent developments as well as more traditional approaches.

Since the first edition of this innovative book, thousands of doctoral students have gained their doctorates by following the spot-on advice it gives. Across all faculties and disciplines, it remains the book of choice for both students and their supervisors, establishing it as a worldwide bestseller.

This practical book guides students through all they need to know to approach the research, write and defend their ideas and ultimately produce a unique and robust academic thesis. It also gives supervisors and examiners invaluable tips on their role in the process.

The Pleasure of Research delves into topics such as knowledge production, artistic thinking and medium-specificity. The publication begins with a series of curatorial projects by Henk Slager at international art festivals and biennales in such cities as Seoul, Shanghai, New York, Venice, Tbilisi, Istanbul and Taipei.

What is a university degree for? What can it offer to students? Is it only about getting a job? How can we measure the quality of an undergraduate degree?

Paul Ashwin shows how, around the world, economic arguments have come to dominate our thinking about the purpose and nature of university education. He argues that we have lost a sense of the educational purposes of an undergraduate degree and the ways in which going to university can transform students' lives.