Ara The Star Engineer

This is a STEM book and more! An inspiring, inclusive, whimsical way to learn about computers and technology from real-life trailblazers. Read the book, download hands-on activities, follow learning resources. Visit the website www.arastarengineer.com for more. Ara is a young girl who loves BIG numbers. She wants to count all the stars in the sky… but how? This is an upbeat adventure of Ara and her sidekick droid, DeeDee (“Beep!”). They use smarts and grit to solve a BIG problem and discover an amazing algorithm! A quest that takes them through a whirlwind of intriguing locations at Innovation Plex -- Data Centre, Ideas Lab, Coding Pods, and X-Space. Along the way, they encounter real-life women tech trailblazers of diverse backgrounds, including a Tenacious Troubleshooter, an Intrepid Innovator, a Code Commander, and a Prolific Problem Solver. They tinker-and-tailor, build-and-fail, launch-and-iterate, and in the end discover an amazing algorithm of success -- coding, courage, creativity, and collaboration (“Beeeeep!”). Ara is making a splash with industry CEOs and best-selling kids authors. “‘If she can see it, she can be it.’ With this story, girls can see leaders and be inspired to become one. A book for all ages and genders!” - Geena Davis, Founder and Chair, Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media

Seeking help in programming her droid DeeDee to count all the stars in the sky, Ara visits Innovation Plex and four tech trailblazers--real-life engineers at Google who are today's equivalents of Ada Lovelace and Katherine Johnson. Ara discovers that the superpower of science and friendship can solve any problem. Full color.x 10.

A STEM book for young innovators everywhere, for you are never too small to dream big! This much-anticipated companion to Ara The Star Engineer spotlights the innovation journey, introducing readers to what it takes to start a start-up, and turn ideas into reality. Ara is a young girl who loves to dream BIG. Many of her amazing ideas come to her in her dreams. So Ara builds a Dream Decoder to capture them. But other kids have big dreams too. What about them? With help from her entrepreneur-mentors and her droid DeeDee (who dreams of--beep! beep!--BIG ice creams), Ara embarks on a quest to make her Dream Decoder FTW - For The World! First stop: a Hackathon to find a diverse team of fellow thinkers and tinkerers. Then--fingers crossed--they'll earn a spot at an Accelerator where, with tweaks and testing, they can make the Dream Decoder work for all kids. A story about inclusive innovation, and making your dreams come true!

One of the first books on Autodesk's new Mudbox 3D modeling and sculpting tool! Autodesk's Mudbox was used to create photorealistic creatures for The Dark Knight, The Mist, and others films. Now you can join the crowd interested in learning this exciting new digital modeling and sculpting tool with this complete guide. Get up to speed on all of Mudbox’s features and functions, learn how sculpt and paint, and master the art of using effective workflows to make it all go easier. Introduces Autodesk's Mudbox, an exciting 3D modeling and sculpting tool that enables you to create photorealistic creatures for film or games; it is interoperable with Autodesk's 3ds Max and Maya products Explains what digital sculpting is—and what it isn’t—and how to fit it into the pipeline when creating assets for film, television, games, and advertising Shows you how sculpt and paint a model in Mudbox; breaks down the complexities and gets you started right away with interesting projects Helps you set up workflows to cut the time you spend on the technology, freeing you to focus on the creative aspects Includes case studies and examples from industry leaders as well as a DVD with movies, sample project files, MELscripts, and more Develop skills as a digital content creator or visual effects or CG artist with a good understanding of Mudbox and this valuable guide.

Discover how to develop full-scale J2EE?TM applications quickly and efficiently using the best Open Source tools Written by leading authorities in the field, this book shows you how to leverage a suite of best-of-breed Open Source development tools to take the pain out of J2EE and build a complete Web-based application. You'll combine these tools to actually reduce the points of failure in your application, while increasing overall system stability and robustness. Along with the tools introduced here, you'll develop the PetSoar application, which follows the PetStore application used by Sun Microsystems to demonstrate features of J2EE. With PetSoar, the authors focus on developing a maintainable and flexible application, rather than showcasing the end result, so that you can apply the material in your own projects. In addition, the authors provide methods for utilizing Open Source software components for each stage of the development process. The Open Source products covered include: * Hibernate to aid with simple,flexible, and speedy transparent object persistence * OpenSymphony WebWork to allow for pluggable view technologies and extensible configuration * JUnit and Mock Objects to assist with rapid and robust unit testing * XDoclet to assist with generating code and configuration files automatically * Jakarta Lucene to add Google-style smart search capabilities to data stores * OpenSymphony SiteMesh to aid in the creation of large sites with a common look and feel * OpenSymphony OSCache to easily cache slow dynamic sections of Web sites resulting in faster-loading pages

(Yamaha Products). Sound reinforcement is the use of audio amplification systems. This book is the first and only book of its kind to cover all aspects of designing and using such systems for public address and musical performance. The book features information on both the audio theory involved and the practical applications of that theory, explaining everything from microphones to loudspeakers. This revised edition features almost 40 new pages and is even easier to follow with the addition of an index and a simplified page and chapter numbering system. New topics covered include: MIDI, Synchronization, and an Appendix on Logarithms. 416 Pages.

Help your future genius become the smartest baby in the room! Written by an expert, Optical Physics for Babies is a colorfully simple introduction to the principles of linear optics. Babies (and grownups!) will learn the difference between reflection and refraction and why both are necessary to create wonderful things like rainbows. With a tongue-in-cheek approach that adults will love, this installment of the Baby University board book series is the perfect way to introduce basic concepts to even the youngest scientists. After all, it's never too early to become a physicist! Baby University: It only takes a small spark to ignite a child's mind.