A lot of people are into Making their own technology these days, from 3D printers to home-made robots, Digital Video Records (DVRs), Media Centers, and more. But if you’re a computer programmer you might not know the ins and outs of the hardware side of these projects.

Caleb Tennis explains it all. From a quick look at basic physics (including fun with magnets) to electronic circuits, power supplies, and networking, you’ll see how it all works—and how to make it work for you.

This series is a little different from our usual books. The Things You Should Know series highlights interesting topics in technology and science that you should know about. Maybe you took these courses in school, and promptly forgot about them. Or maybe you’ve always been curious but never had the opportunity to learn more.

Now you can. With these titles, you can quickly become familiar with (or remind yourself of) an interesting topic area. We hope it gives you something to talk about at the next cocktail party, or brown-bag lunch at work, or user’s group meeting. It might even further inspire you to delve into the topic more deeply.

In either case, we sincerely hope you enjoy the show.

In the context of global efforts to control the production, distribution, and use of narcotic drugs, China's treatment of the problem provides an important means of understanding the social, political, and economic limits of national and international policies to regulate drug practices. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, China was known for its national addiction to opium, but its drug-eradication campaigns from the 1950s to the 1970s achieved unprecedented success that ultimately transformed China into a 'drug-free' society. Since the economic reforms and open-door policy of the late twentieth century, however, China is now facing a re-emergence of the production, use, and trafficking of narcotic drugs. Employing case studies and a comparative historical approach, and drawing on a variety of data sources including historical records, official crime data only recently made available, and news reports, this book is the first English-language publication to provide such a comprehensive documentation and analysis of the nature of China's legal regulation of controlled substances. The authors also offer theoretical approaches for studying drug regulation, aspects of drug consumption cultures, the socio-political treatment of drugs during various historical periods, and ongoing efforts to legislate drug trade, criminalize drug use, and manage the drug addict population within national and international contexts.

Recent scandals in the biosciences have highlighted the perils of communicating science. Many observers have therefore begun to ask questions about the pressures on scientists and the media to hype-up claims of scientific breakthroughs. Journalists, science writers and scientists themselves have to report complex and rapidly-developing scientific issues to society, yet work within conceptual and temporal constraints that shape their communication. To date, there has been little reflection on the ethical implications of science writing and science communication in an era of rapid changes in science, society and technologies of communication. "Communicating Biological Sciences" discusses the 'ethics' of science communication in light of recent developments in biotechnology and biomedicine. It focuses on the role of metaphors in the creation of visions and the framing of scientific advances, as well as their impact on patterns of public acceptance and rejection, trust and scepticism. Uniquely, it provides chapters not only by academic experts (in science communication, metaphor analysis, the public understanding of science, the sociology of science and the sociology of expectations), but also by practicing science writers. "Communicating Biological Sciences" presents a novel and rigorous investigation of science writing and science communication that will appeal not only to science writers and scientists, but also to scholars of sociology, science and technology studies, media and journalism.

"Critical Social Theory and the End of Work" examines the development and sociological significance of the idea that work is being eliminated through the use of advanced production technology. Granter's engagement with the work of key American and European figures such as Marx, Marcuse, Gorz, Habermas and Negri, focuses his arguments for the abolition of labour as a response to the current socio-historical changes affecting our work ethic and consumer ideology. By combining history of ideas with social theory, this book considers how the 'end of work' thesis has developed and has been critically implemented in the analysis of modern society. His work will appeal to scholars of sociology, history of ideas, social and cultural theory as well as those working in the fields of critical management and sociology of work.

How and to what extent did women writers shape and inform the aesthetics of Romanticism? Were undervalued genres such as the romance, gothic fiction, the tale, and the sentimental and philosophical novel part of a revolution leading to newer, more democratic models of taste? Fiona Price takes up these important questions in her wide-ranging study of women's prose writing during an extended Romantic period. While she offers a re-evaluation of major women writers such as Mary Wollstonecraft, Maria Edgeworth, Ann Radcliffe and Charlotte Smith, Price also places emphasis on less well-known figures, including Joanna Baillie, Anna Letitia Barbauld, Elizabeth Hamilton and Priscilla Wakefield. The revolution in taste occasioned by their writing, she argues, was not only aesthetic but, following in the wake of British debates on the French Revolution, politically charged. Her book departs from previous studies of aesthetics that emphasize the differences between male and female writers or focus on higher status literary forms such as the treatise. In demonstrating that women writers' discussion of taste can be understood as an intervention at the most fundamental level of political involvement, Price advances our understanding of Romantic aesthetics.

"Su-un and His World of Symbols" explores the image which Choe Che-u (Su-un), the founder of Donghak (Eastern Learning) Korea's first indigenous religion, had of himself as a religious leader and human being. Su-un gave his life so that he could share his symbols, his scriptures and the foundational principals of his religion with all people, regardless of their status, gender, age or education. His egalitarian creed challenged the major religious traditions in Korea, and Korean society as a whole, to reflect on the innate dignity of each individual, and to reform their social, ethical and religious practices to accord with the reality of the Divine presence in the 'sacred refuge' that lies within. Exploring the two symbols which Su-un created and used to disseminate his religion, and the two books of Scripture which he composed, this book breaks new ground by presenting the only major work in English which attempts to ascertain the image Su-un had of himself as the prototype of a new kind of religious leader in Korea, and by extension, East Asia.