America’s war on drugs examined in 19th century

Today’s war on drugs is not the first battle America has fought against addiction. In her new book, The Opium Debate and Chinese Exclusion Laws, UMR historian Diana Ahmad examines the opium-smoking epidemic of the mid-19th century and finds that Chinese immigrants weren’t the problem, as is commonly believed.

Published in March by the University of Nevada Press, the book explains that while China faced its own epidemic of opium addiction in the 19th century, only a very small minority of Chinese immigrants in America were actually involved in the opium business.

Kohser co-authors engineering textbook

Ronald Kohser, professor of metallurgical engineering, is co-author of the recently published 10th edition of Materials and Processes in Manufacturing. This marks the 50th anniversary of the textbook, originally written by a University of California-Berkeley professor in 1957.

Kohser became a contributing author during the writing of the fifth edition and has been a full co-author since the publication of the sixth edition. UMR students use the text for core courses in mechanical and metallurgical engineering.

Neural networking explained in new book

Jagannathan Sarangapani, professor of electrical and computer engineering since 2001, is the author of Neural Network Control of Nonlinear Discrete-Time Systems, recently published by Taylor and Francis (or CRC Press).

Loosely based on the inner workings of the human brain, a neural network is used in computational science to study and analyze complex phenomena. Sarangapani’s book presents modern control techniques, which he bases on the parallelism and adaptive capabilities of biological nervous systems.
Sarangapani has invented several neural network-based techniques to diagnose engine problems.