Welcome to the National Academies' Intellectual Property website. From Internet content protection to human gene patenting, Intellectual Property (IP) in many forms have emerged from legal obscurity to public debate. This website serves as a guide to the Academies' extensive work on Intellectual Property and a forum to discuss ongoing work
For the Millennium Challenge, ASCE canvassed its members in late 1999 to determine the 10 civil engineering achievements that had the greatest positive impact on life in the 20th century. Rather than individual projects, they chose to recognize broad categories of achievements.
ASCE's members ranked the 10 greatest civil engineering achievements as:
Airport Design And Development
Dams
The Interstate Highway System
Long-Span Bridges
Rail Transportation
Sanitary Landfills/Solid Waste Disposal
Skyscrapers
Wastewater Treatment
Water Supply and Distribution
Water Transportation
The American Society of Civil Engineers polled its membership to rank the ten civil engineering achievements that had the “greatest positive impact on life in the 20th century.” Those achievements are featured in the Monuments of the Millennium exhibit, and include Airport Design And Development, Dams, The Interstate Highway System, Long-Span Bridges, Rail Transportation, Sanitary Landfills/Solid Waste Disposal, Skyscrapers, Wastewater Treatment, Water Supply and Distribution, and Water Transportation. There is an introduction for each section, accompanied by a highlighted national or international project with images and links for more information. The site is small, but has a good overview the types of projects ASCHO members believe to be the most significant public works of the past century.
Bridging rivers, gorges, narrows, straits, and valleys always has played an important role in the history of human settlement. Since ancient times, bridges have been the most visible testimony of the noble craft of engineers. A bridge can be defined in many ways, but Andrea Palladio, the great 16th century Italian architect and engineer, hit on the essence of bridge building when he said "...bridges should befit the spirit of the community by exhibiting commodiousness, firmness, and delight." In more practical terms, he went on to explain that the way to avoid having the bridge carried away by the violence of water was to make the bridge without fixing any posts in the water. Since the beginning of time, the goal of bridge builders has been to create as wide a span as possible which is commodious, firm, and occasionally delightful. Spanning greater distances is a distinct measure of engineering prowess.
DeLony provides an extensive overview of the history of bridges, from ancient Indian vine bridges, to Roman stone structures, to the North American viaducts and suspension bridges of today. In doing so, the text-laden website focuses on "World Heritage bridges," those recognized by the World Heritage Committee for their unique and lasting contribution to architecture, technology, and society. Nearly all of the 18 topical sections, each arranged in rough chronological order and covering a different type of structure, contain at least one photo, many of them taken by DeLony himself. A list of possible World Heritage bridges and a sizeable bibliography are at the foot of the essay.
The VL is the oldest catalog of the web, started by Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of html and the web itself. Unlike commercial catalogs, it is run by a loose confederation of volunteers, who compile pages of key links for particular areas in which they are expert; even though it isn't the biggest index of the web, the VL pages are widely recognised as being amongst the highest-quality guides to particular sections of the web.
The Columbia STS-107 mission lifted off on January 16, 2003, for a 17-day science mission featuring numerous microgravity experiments. Upon reentering the atmosphere on February 1, 2003, the Columbia orbiter suffered a catastrophic failure due to a breach that occurred during launch when falling foam from the External Tank struck the Reinforced Carbon Carbon panels on the underside of the left wing. The orbiter and its seven crewmembers (Rick D. Husband, William C. McCool, David Brown, Laurel Blair Salton Clark, Michael P. Anderson, Ilan Ramon, and Kalpana Chawla) were lost approximately 15 minutes before Columbia was scheduled to touch down at Kennedy Space Center. This site presents information about the STS-107 flight, as well as information related to the accident and subsequent investigation by the formal Columbia Accident Investigation Board.
This website from the NASA History Office has a wealth of information about the shuttle Columbia mission itself, the loss of the shuttle in February 2003, and the ensuing investigation. There are formal biographies of crew members, extremely detailed timelines, and a twenty-page document with accompanying acronym list entitled "STS-107 Accident Investigation Ground Track, Events Summary, and Sighting Data." A number of images and links to documents from NASA, Congress, and the White House are available, as is full information about the Columbia Accident Investigation Board, from its charter and members, to the six-volume report. Professionally-compiled bibliogaphies on Space Shuttles, the Columbia accident, and organizational culture are also included. Finally, reflections from the public gathered on the web are collected and displayed, adding individual responses to the loss of the shuttle to this very informative site.
Here you can find a PostScript (460 Kbytes), gzipped PostScript (146 Kbytes) and pdf (358 Kbytes) version of Shannon's paper. PDF files can be viewed by Adobe's acrobat reader. Tarred and gzipped contents of the directory (63 Kbytes) that contain the LaTeX code for the paper is also available.
This is a dictionary of algorithms, algorithmic techniques, data structures, archetypical problems, and related definitions. Algorithms include common functions, such as Ackermann's function. Problems include traveling salesman and Byzantine generals. Some entries have links to implementations and more information. Index pages list entries by area and by type. The two-level index has a total download 1/20 as big as this page.
The National Institue of Standards and Technology hosts this dictionary of algorithms, algorithmic techniques, data structures, archetypical problems, and related definitions. Entries are listed by area or type, and there is a search function as well. Each term has provides a definition and related terms, and many have information about implementation from NIST and other sites. This is a very useful resource for anyone working with, or studying, algorithms or data structures.
Founded in 1852, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) represents more than 123,000 members of the civil engineering profession worldwide, and is America's oldest national engineering society. ASCE's vision is to position engineers as global leaders building a better quality of life.
Our heritage enables us to benefit from the experience of those who have preceded us. This is the value of history in any field of endeavor. Our heritage also enables us to enjoy the receive inspiration from the accomplishments of the past, great and small, and gives us a stronger tie with the people who created them.
History and Heritage of Civil Engineering on the website of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) showcases the work of American civil engineering in the past two centuries. The site is attractive and a good resource for an introduction to this field that encompasses many different types of work. There are eleven Landmark Projects in the broad categories of transportation by air, land, and sea, water supply and control, power generation, and structures such as buildings, bridges, and dams. An overview of each type of project is accompanied by an interactive timeline from 3000 BC to 2000 AD that includes major world events. Examples of major projects within each category include images and links to more information. Brief biographies of more than 40 notable engineers are included, again with images and links. A searchable image library has high quality pictures available for download, although there is no way to browse the holdings of this small collection. Finally, in the Resources section there are links to libraries and information available online, as well as a bibliography of print resources.
Making the Modern World brings you powerful stories about science and invention from the eighteenth century to today. It explains the development and the global spread of modern industrial society and its effects on all our lives. The site expands upon the permanent landmark gallery at the Science Museum, using the Web and dynamic multimedia techniques to go far beyond what a static exhibition can do.
Making the Modern World is a vast online exhibit from the Science Museum of London that covers science and society in the modern era, from traditional research and inventions and engineering, to social sciences and everyday life. There are many ways to explore the hundreds of images, audio files, and texts of the exhibit that begins with “Enlightenments and Measurement” in 1750 and concludes with the “Age of Ambivalence” in 2000. The largest section of the site is the Stories and Timelines, which is in narrative and chronological form. There are guided tours along the themes of “Technology as Passport,” “Women Making the Modern World,” and “Conflict in the Modern World.” The Daily Life Section has six categories that include personal, leisure, work, health, and control, and the stories of nine contemporary people's interactions with technology, some inventors, others learning how to handle a screwdriver and "DIY- Do It Yourself." The Icons of Invention includes more than 100 objects from science, technology, and medicine, while the Learning Modules cover biology, English, chemistry, geography, history, mathematics, and psychology. Throughout the site are subsections called "rich media scenes" with moving images and sound that provide interaction with catalogued images and quizzes within a particular story. Finally, there are basic and advanced search options to navigate quickly to a particular item or term.
Science & Society Picture Library represents the collections of the National Museum of Science & Industry, Science Museum, National Museum of Photography, Film & Television, National Railway Museum.
The Science and Society Picture Library of the British National Museum of Science and Industry combines collections of the Science Museum, National Museum of Photography, Film & Television, and the National Railway Museum all on one website. It allows for searching or browsing of over 35,000 images, each of which can be sent as e-cards, or saved into a "wishlist" for second viewing or ordering reproductions. The images are of decent size to be viewed online, display a caption, and are completely categorized by keywords and fully seachable. This is an amazing resource for anyone interested in images of science and society up to the present day.
