front cover of Zeolites and Metal-Organic Frameworks
Zeolites and Metal-Organic Frameworks
From Lab to Industry
Edited by Vincent Blay, Luis F. Bobadilla and Alejandro Cabrera García
Amsterdam University Press, 2018
Zeolites are natural or synthetic materials with porous chemical structures that are valuable due to their absorptive and catalytic qualities. Metal-Organic Frameworks (MOFs) are manmade organometallic polymers with similar porous structures. This introductory book, with contributions from top-class researchers from all around the world, examines these materials and explains the different synthetic routes available to prepare zeolites and MOFs. The book also highlights how the substances are similar yet different and how they are used by science and industry in situations ranging from fueling cars to producing drugs.
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front cover of Zootechnologies
Zootechnologies
A Media History of Swarm Research
Sebastian Vehlken
Amsterdam University Press, 2020
Swarming has become a fundamental cultural technique related to dynamic processes and an effective metaphor for the collaborative efforts of society. This book examines the media history of swarm research and its significance to current socio-technological processes. It shows that the hype about collective intelligence is based on a reciprocal computerization of biology and biologization of computer science: After decades of painstaking biological observations in the ocean, experiments in aquariums, and mathematical model-making, it was swarms-inspired computer simulation which provided biological researchers with enduring knowledge about animal collectives. At the same time, a turn to biological principles of self-organization made it possible to adapt to unclearly delineated sets of problems and clarify the operation of opaque systems - from logistics to architecture, or from crowd control to robot collectives. As zootechnologies, swarms offer performative, synthetic, and approximate solutions in cases where analytical approaches are doomed to fail.
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