Catalog

The e-book MARIANNA KISTLER BEACH MUSEUM OF ART: PEOPLE AND SPACES was created by the Board of the Friends of the Beach Museum of Art and published by New Prairie Press of Kansas State University in 2021. The purpose of the book is to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the art museum’s opening on the K-State campus in October 1996. It includes articles about the people who are honored by named spaces in the museum. Their contributions allowed the museum to become a reality, including an addition to the building that opened in 2007. When Jon Wefald became president of K-State in 1986, the university was the only institution in the Big 8 Conference without an art museum. First Lady Ruth Ann Wefald took the lead in obtaining the supporters and funds to establish a home for the institution’s impressive art collection. The most notable contribution came from Ross and Marianna Kistler Beach whose generous financial support made the building possible. In 1991 they provided the lead gift for an art museum that would be named in honor of Marianna to commemorate the couple’s 50th wedding anniversary. After the book’s introduction by Linda Duke, the museum’s executive director, Ruth Ann summarizes the difficult journey to establish an art museum. It is followed by an account of Marianna’s many accomplishments. The remainder of the publication contains 23 articles — written by board members of the Friends of the Beach Museum of Art — devoted to the people for whom spaces in the building are named. Photographs are included of those who are honored and spaces in the building including galleries, educational wing, theater, offices, and work and storage locations. The diverse group of people and their contributions have made the museum what it has become during its 25 years — a vibrant place for the collecting, studying, caring for, and presenting the visual art of Kansas and the region. Editors of the e-book are Anthony R. Crawford, Marla Day, Martha Scott, and Marlene VerBrugge, board members of the Friends of the Beach Museum of Art.

Disruptive Technologies With Applications in Airline, Marine, Defense Industries is the authors fifth textbook in a series covering the world of Unmanned Vehicle Systems & Operations On Air, Sea, Land;  Counter Unmanned Aircraft Systems Technologies and Operations;  Unmanned Aircraft Systems in the Cyber Domain: Protecting USA’s Advanced Air Assets, 2nd edition; and Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) in the Cyber Domain Protecting USA’s Advanced Air Assets, 1st edition; have seen considerable global recognition in the field. (Nichols R. K., et al., 2020) (Nichols R. , et al., 2020) (Nichols R. , et al., 2019) (Nichols R. K., 2018)

The authors have expanded their purview beyond UAS / CUAS / UUV systems which they have written extensively about in our previous four textbooks. Our new title shows our concern for the emergence of Disruptive Technologies and how they apply to the Airline, Marine and Defense industries.

There is a difference between emerging technology trends and disruptive ones. Emerging technologies are technologies whose development, practical applications, or both are still largely unrealized, such that they are figuratively emerging into prominence from a background of nonexistence or obscurity. Some sources say that emerging technologies are taking over the world by a storm and if misused, it could turn out to be our worst enemy.

Disruptive technology is one that displaces an established technology and shakes up the industry or a ground-breaking product that creates a completely new industry. (Rouse, 2021)

That is what our book is about. The authors think they have found technology trends that will replace the status quo or disrupt the conventional technology paradigms.

The authors have written some explosive chapters in their Book 5. Dr. Hans Mumm has written about the Advances in Automation & Human Machine Interface. Wayne Lonstein, JD has given the reader a solid look at Social Media as a Battleground in Information Warfare (IW). CEO Bart Shields has delivered a viable, less risky, more robust  cyber-security alterative / replacement for the popular Blockchain Algorithm and a clean solution for Ransomware. Professor Randall K. Nichols has written about the Advanced Sensor Technologies that are used by UUVs for munitions characterization, assessment, and classification.  He reports on their counter hostile use of UUVs against U.S. capital assets in the South China Seas.  In a second chapter, Professor Nichols has challenged the status quo and debunked the climate change fraud with verifiable facts. In his third chapter, he explodes our minds with Nightmare Technologies that if they come to fruition may do more harm than good.

Dr. Mark Jackson has written authoritatively about Propulsion and Fuels: Disruptive Technologies for Submersible Craft Including UUVs. CEO Randall Mai has penned a chapter to Challenge the Ammunition Industry by Grassroots use of Recycled Metals.  Captain John Paul Hood writes about the changing landscape of UAS regulations and drone privacy laws. 2021 will prove to be most challenging for owners and manufacturers of UAS. CEO & Dr. Suzanne Sincavage and Professor Candice Carter have teamed up to scare the pants off of us – especially during the COVID-19 pandemic – by detailing  Bioterrorism Risks, Biodefense, Threat Agents and the need for advanced sensors to detect these attacks.  Their chapter is truly a wake-up call.

Social imagery, the visuals shared by users via various platforms and applications, may be analyzed to elicit something of massmind (and individual) thinking. This work involves the exploration of seven topics from various subject areas (global public health, environmentalism, human rights, political expression, and human predation) through social imagery and data from social media. The coding techniques involve manual coding, the integration of multiple social data streams, computational text analysis, data visualizations, and other combinations of approaches.

The Second Edition of Economics of Food and Agricultural Markets is written for applied intermediate microeconomics courses. The book showcases the power of economic principles to explain and predict issues and current events in the food, agricultural, agribusiness, international trade, labor markets, and natural resource sectors. The field of agricultural economics is relevant, important and interesting. The study of market structures, also called industrial organization, provides powerful, timely, and useful tools for any individual or group making personal choices, business decisions, or public policies in food and agricultural industries.

Readers will benefit from a large number of real-world examples and applications of the economic concepts under discussion. The book introduces economic principles in a succinct and reader-friendly format, providing students and instructors with a clear, up-to-date, and straightforward approach to learning how a market-based economy functions, and how to use simple economic principles for improved decision making. The principles are applied to timely, interesting, and important real-world issues through words, graphs, and simple algebra and calculus. This book is intended for students who study agricultural economics, microeconomics, rural development and/or environmental policy.