New Books at the Rohrbach Library: Sciences and Mathematics

Understanding Game Scoring explores the unique collaboration between gameplay and composition that defines musical scoring for video games. Using an array of case studies reaching back into the canon of classic video games, this book illuminates the musical flexibility, user interactivity and sound programming that make game scoring so different from traditional modes of composition. Mack Enns explores the collaboration between game scorers and players to produce the final score for a game, through case studies of the Nintendo Entertainment System sound hardware configuration, and game scores, including the canonic scores for Super Mario Bros. (1985) and The Legend of Zelda (1986). This book is recommended reading for students and researchers interested in the composition and production of video game scores, as well as those interested in ludo-musicology.

How can you transform a spreadsheet of numbers into a clear, compelling story that your audience will want to pass on? This book is a step-by-step guide (honed through the authors′ Guardian masterclasses, workshops and seminars) to bringing data to life through visualisations, from static charts and maps to interactive infographics and motion graphics.Introducing a four-step framework to creating engaging and innovative visualisations, it helps you to:·       Find the human stories in your datasets·       Design a visual story that will resonate with your audience·       Make a clear, persuasive visual that represents your data truthfully·       Refine your work to ensure your visual expresses your story in the best possible way.This book also includes a portfolio of best-practice examples and annotated templates to help you choose the right visual for the right audience, and repurpose your work for different contexts.

Up-to-date strategies for thwarting the latest, most insidious network attacks This fully updated, industry-standard security resource shows, step by step, how to fortify computer networks by learning and applying effective ethical hacking techniques. Based on curricula developed by the authors at major security conferences and colleges, the book features actionable planning and analysis methods as well as practical steps for identifying and combating both targeted and opportunistic attacks. Gray Hat Hacking: The Ethical Hacker's Handbook, Sixth Edition clearly explains the enemy's devious weapons, skills, and tactics and offers field-tested remedies, case studies, and testing labs. You will get complete coverage of Internet of Things, mobile, and Cloud security along with penetration testing, malware analysis, and reverse engineering techniques. State-of-the-art malware, ransomware, and system exploits are thoroughly explained. *Fully revised content includes 7 new chapters covering the latest threats *Includes proof-of-concept code stored on the GitHub repository *Authors train attendees at major security conferences, including RSA, Black Hat, Defcon, and Besides

How we can create artificial intelligence with broad, robust common sense rather than narrow, specialized expertise. It's sometime in the not-so-distant future, and you send your fully autonomous self-driving car to the store to pick up your grocery order. The car is endowed with as much capability as an artificial intelligence agent can have, programmed to drive better than you do. But when the car encounters a traffic light stuck on red, it just sits there-indefinitely. Its obstacle-avoidance, lane-following, and route-calculation capacities are all irrelevant; it fails to act because it lacks the common sense of a human driver, who would quickly figure out what's happening and find a workaround. In Machines like Us, Ron Brachman and Hector Levesque-both leading experts in AI-consider what it would take to create machines with common sense rather than just the specialized expertise of today's AI systems. Using the stuck traffic light and other relatable examples, Brachman and Levesque offer an accessible account of how common sense might be built into a machine. They analyze common sense in humans, explain how AI over the years has focused mainly on expertise, and suggest ways to endow an AI system with both common sense and effective reasoning. Finally, they consider the critical issue of how we can trust an autonomous machine to make decisions, identifying two fundamental requirements for trustworthy autonomous AI systems- having reasons for doing what they do, and being able to accept advice. Both in the end are dependent on having common sense.

Early system administration required in-depth knowledge of a variety of services on individual systems. Now, the job is increasingly complex and different from one company to the next with an ever-growing list of technologies and third-party services to integrate. How does any one individual stay relevant in systems and services? This practical guide helps anyone in operations--sysadmins, automation engineers, IT professionals, and site reliability engineers--understand the essential concepts of the role today. Collaboration, automation, and the evolution of systems change the fundamentals of operations work. No matter where you are in your journey, this book provides you the information to craft your path to advancing essential system administration skills. Author Jennifer Davis provides examples of modern practices and tools with recommended materials to advance your skills. Topics include: Development and testing: Version control, fundamentals of virtualization and containers, testing, and architecture review Deploying and configuring services: Infrastructure management, networks, security, storage, serverless, and release management Scaling administration: Monitoring and observability, capacity planning, log management and analysis, and security and compliance

"Artificial Intelligence will either be the best or worst thing to happen to humanity. We do not yet know which." - Stephen Hawking As AI becomes more pervasive in every aspect of human life, there is an urgent need to understand it and harness it in a way that benefits mankind. But where do we begin? The 13 chapters in the book break down this complex subject by examining AI's impact on key sectors of our societies. Chapters delve into specific industries, probing the myriad opportunities and potential risks brought about by AI: * Healthcare * Law * Manufacturing * Cybersecurity * Mobility * Financial Services * Education * Satellite Systems * Government * AI Ethics Authored by Dr Anton Ravindran, together with guest chapters contributed by leading experts in their fields, this invaluable book provides a clear, comprehensive and authoritative look at how AI - managed wisely - can change the world for the better. The book includes a foreword by Prof. Stephen Martin BA, MA, MTCP, Dip Ed, PhD, GAICD, Chairman, Bank of China (Australia) Ltd and Former Speaker, Parliament of Australia.

What will you do when your AI misbehaves? The promise of artificial intelligence is automated decision-making at scale, but that means AI also automates risk at scale. Are you prepared for that risk? Already, many companies have suffered real damage when their algorithms led to discriminatory, privacy-invading, and even deadly outcomes. Self-driving cars have hit pedestrians; HR algorithms have precluded women from job searches; mortgage systems have denied loans to qualified minorities. And often the companies who deployed the AI couldn't explain why the black box made the decision it did. In this environment, AI ethics isn't merely an academic curiosity, it's a business necessity. In Ethical Machines, Reid Blackman gives you all you need to understand AI ethics as a risk management challenge. He'll help you build, procure, and deploy AI in a way that's not only ethical but also safe in terms of your organization's reputation, regulatory compliance, and legal standing--and do it at scale. And don't worry--the book's purpose is to get work done, not to ponder deep and existential questions about ethics and technology. Blackman's clear and accessible writing helps make a complex and often misunderstood concept like ethics easy to grasp. Most importantly, Blackman makes ethics actionable by tackling the big three ethical risks with AI--bias, explainability, and privacy--and tells you what to do (and what not to do) to mitigate them. With practical approaches to everything from writing a strong statement of AI ethics principles to creating teams that effectively evaluate ethical risks, Ethical Machines is the one guide you need to ensure your AI advances your company's objectives instead of undermining them.

Disruption resulting from the proliferation of AI is coming. The authors of the bestselling Prediction Machines can help you prepare. Artificial intelligence (AI) has impacted many industries around the world--banking and finance, pharmaceuticals, automotive, medical technology, manufacturing, and retail. But it has only just begun its odyssey toward cheaper, better, and faster predictions that drive strategic business decisions. When prediction is taken to the max, industries transform, and with such transformation comes disruption. What is at the root of this? In their bestselling first book, Prediction Machines, eminent economists Ajay Agrawal, Joshua Gans, and Avi Goldfarb explained the simple yet game-changing economics of AI. Now, in Power and Prediction, they go deeper, examining the most basic unit of analysis: the decision. The authors explain that the two key decision-making ingredients are prediction and judgment, and we perform both together in our minds, often without realizing it. The rise of AI is shifting prediction from humans to machines, relieving people from this cognitive load while increasing the speed and accuracy of decisions. This sets the stage for a flourishing of new decisions and has profound implications for system-level innovation. Redesigning systems of interdependent decisions takes time--many industries are in the quiet before the storm--but when these new systems emerge, they can be disruptive on a global scale. Decision-making confers power. In industry, power confers profits; in society, power confers control. This process will have winners and losers, and the authors show how businesses can leverage opportunities, as well as protect their positions. Filled with illuminating insights, rich examples, and practical advice, Power and Prediction is the must-read guide for any business leader or policymaker on how to make the coming AI disruptions work for you rather than against you.

This book covers all the necessary topics that a professional game AI programmer needs to know, from math and steering behaviours to terrain analysis, pathfinding and decision-making. Written to be easily accessible, each topic is accompanied by an example game that allows the reader to add their own code to see the effects their changes have. Each chapter is split into two parts. The first part covers the necessary theory in a friendly, conversational manner, using visual examples and fictional game scenarios to give additional context. The second part is a coding tutorial in C# for the topic at hand. Each chapter has its own example game available to download, written in C# in the Unity Game Engine. This book will be suitable for students and aspiring games programmers looking to gain a grounding in game AI techniques.

In this short book, prominent scientist and computation pioneer Stephen Wolfram provides a readable and engaging explanation that draws on his decades-long unique experience at the frontiers of science and technology. Find out how the success of ChatGPT brings together the latest neural net technology with foundational questions about language and human thought posed by Aristotle more than two thousand years ago.

A NEW YORK TIMES TOP 10 BOOK OF THE YEAR * "A stunning exposé of why Black people in our society 'live sicker and die quicker'--an eye-opening game changer."--Oprah Daily From an award-winning writer at the New York Times Magazine and a contributor to the 1619 Project comes a landmark book that tells the full story of racial health disparities in America, revealing the toll racism takes on individuals and the health of our nation. In 2018, Linda Villarosa's New York Times Magazine article on maternal and infant mortality among black mothers and babies in America caused an awakening. Hundreds of studies had previously established a link between racial discrimination and the health of Black Americans, with little progress toward solutions. But Villarosa's article exposing that a Black woman with a college education is as likely to die or nearly die in childbirth as a white woman with an eighth grade education made racial disparities in health care impossible to ignore. Now, in Under the Skin, Linda Villarosa lays bare the forces in the American health-care system and in American society that cause Black people to "live sicker and die quicker" compared to their white counterparts. Today's medical texts and instruments still carry fallacious slavery-era assumptions that Black bodies are fundamentally different from white bodies. Study after study of medical settings show worse treatment and outcomes for Black patients. Black people live in dirtier, more polluted communities due to environmental racism and neglect from all levels of government. And, most powerfully, Villarosa describes the new understanding that coping with the daily scourge of racism ages Black people prematurely. Anchored by unforgettable human stories and offering incontrovertible proof, Under the Skin is dramatic, tragic, and necessary reading.

Named a Best Book of the Year by The New Yorker and The Boston Globe An authoritative, illuminating, and deeply humane history of addiction--a phenomenon that remains baffling and deeply misunderstood despite having touched countless lives--by an addiction psychiatrist striving to understand his own family and himself "Carl Erik Fisher's The Urge is the best-written and most incisive book I've read on the history of addiction. In the midst of an overdose crisis that grows worse by the hour and has vexed America for centuries, Fisher has given us the best prescription of all: understanding. He seamlessly blends a gripping historical narrative with memoir that doesn't self-aggrandize; the result is a full-throated argument against blaming people with substance use disorder. The Urge is a propulsive tour de force that is as healing as it is enjoyable to read." --Beth Macy, author of Dopesick Even after a decades-long opioid overdose crisis, intense controversy still rages over the fundamental nature of addiction and the best way to treat it. With uncommon empathy and erudition, Carl Erik Fisher draws on his own experience as a clinician, researcher, and alcoholic in recovery as he traces the history of a phenomenon that, centuries on, we hardly appear closer to understanding--let alone addressing effectively.   As a psychiatrist-in-training fresh from medical school, Fisher was soon face-to-face with his own addiction crisis, one that nearly cost him everything. Desperate to make sense of the condition that had plagued his family for generations, he turned to the history of addiction, learning that the current quagmire is only the latest iteration of a centuries-old story: humans have struggled to define, treat, and control addictive behavior for most of recorded history, including well before the advent of modern science and medicine.   A rich, sweeping account that probes not only medicine and science but also literature, religion, philosophy, and public policy, The Urge illuminates the extent to which the story of addiction has persistently reflected broader questions of what it means to be human and care for one another. Fisher introduces us to the people who have endeavored to address this complex condition through the ages: physicians and politicians, activists and artists, researchers and writers, and of course the legions of people who have struggled with their own addictions. He also examines the treatments and strategies that have produced hope and relief for many people with addiction, himself included. Only by reckoning with our history of addiction, he argues--our successes and our failures--can we light the way forward for those whose lives remain threatened by its hold.   The Urge is at once an eye-opening history of ideas, a riveting personal story of addiction and recovery, and a clinician's urgent call for a more expansive, nuanced, and compassionate view of one of society's most intractable challenges.

Throughout the world, schizophrenia is a diagnosis now in decline, representing a radical shift in our historical and medical understanding of madness and mental distress. But what does this medical term, first coined by a Swiss psychiatrist in 1908, mean? And why is it increasingly unpopular among patients and the medical establishment? Historian and clinician Orna Ophir unearths the stories of patients and doctors as they struggle to make sense of this debilitating condition. At different times, patients have been depicted as possessed by demons, or simply "inspired," as hearing voices, suffering from a "split-mind," or merely having difficulty in "integrating" experiences. Now, a century after its birth, schizophrenia is increasingly viewed not as a radical, abnormal disease defined by an ever-changing cluster of symptoms, but the extreme end of a spectrum on which we are all located. The story Ophir tells is a hopeful one: As patients and doctors sought to overcome stigma and improve therapeutic outcomes, they have shown ever-greater sensitivity to diversity and difference. Schizophrenia: An Unfinished History gestures toward a future in which clinicians and patients will collaborate in the search for better outcomes.

Exposure to stressful life experiences can disrupt key regulatory systems in the body and contribute to a variety of negative health outcomes. This authoritative text takes a biopsychosocial approach to understanding the role of stress in alcohol use disorder, posttraumatic stress disorder, depression, cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, cancer, and other chronic diseases. It presents cutting-edge knowledge about how stressors are conceptualized and measured; connections to disease processes; systemic racism as a significant, ongoing stressor for people of color; and factors that promote resilience. For each of the disorders discussed, proven and promising stress-targeted clinical interventions are reviewed. Student-friendly features include an end-of-book glossary and an extensive bibliography to facilitate in-depth study of selected topics of interest.  

Our national leaders have drifted into treating the pandemic as though it were an unavoidable natural catastrophe, repeating a depressing cycle of panic followed by neglect. So a remarkable group of practitioners and scholars from many backgrounds came together determined to discover and learn lessons from this latest world war. Lessons from the Covid War is plain-spoken and clear sighted. It cuts through the enormous jumble of information to make some sense of it all and answer: What just happened to us, and why? And crucially, how, next time, could we do better? Because there will be a next time. The Covid war showed Americans that their wondrous scientific knowledge had run far ahead of their organized ability to apply it in practice. Improvising to fight this war, many Americans displayed ingenuity and dedication. But they struggled with systems that made success difficult and failure easy. This book shows how Americans can come together, learn hard truths, build on what worked, and prepare for global emergencies to come. A joint effort from: Danielle Allen John M. Barry John Bridgeland Michael Callahan Nicholas A. Christakis Doug Criscitello Charity Dean Victor Dzau Gary Edson Ezekiel Emanuel Ruth Faden Baruch Fischhoff Margaret "Peggy" Hamburg Melissa Harvey Richard Hatchett David Heymann Kendall Hoyt Andrew Kilianski James Lawler Alexander J. Lazar James Le Duc Marc Lipsitch Anup Malani Monique K. Mansoura Mark McClellan Carter Mecher Michael Osterholm David A. Relman Robert Rodriguez Carl Schramm Emily Silverman Kristin Urquiza Rajeev Venkayya Philip Zelikow

How empathy can jeopardize a therapist's well-being. Therapist burnout is a pressing issue, and self-care is possible only when therapists actively help themselves. The authors examine the literature from neurobiology, social psychology, and folk psychology in order to explain how therapists suffer from an excess of empathy for their clients, and then they present strategies for dealing with burnout and stress.

As disease spread, the national government was slow to react. Soon, citizens donned protective masks and the authorities ordered quarantines. The streets emptied. Doubters questioned the science and disobeyed. The year: 1793. The place: young America from Baltimore to Boston but especially in Philadelphia, the nation's largest city and seat of the federal government. For 3 long months yellow fever, carried by mosquitoes let loose from a ship from Africa, ravaged the eastern seaboard The federal government abandoned the city and scattered, leaving a dangerous leadership gap. By the end of the pandemic, ten percent of Philadelphians had died. America's First Plague offers the definitive telling of this long-forgotten crisis, capturing the wave of fear that swept across the fledgling republic, and the numerous unintended but far-reaching consequences it would have on the development of the United States and the Atlantic slave trade. It is an intriguing tale of fear and human nature, a tragic lesson of how prejudice toward blacks was so easily stoked, an examination of the primitive state of medicine and vulnerability to disease in the eighteenth century, and a story of the struggle to govern in the face of crisis. With eerie similarities to the Covid pandemic, historian Robert P. Watson tells the story of a young nation teetering on the brink of chaos.

The world has long misunderstood trauma. Now, leading experts in the field have a radical new understanding of post-traumatic stress . . . and a surprising new treatment to reverse it could have profound implications for medicine, mental health, and society at large. Despite its prevalence, post-traumatic stress, PTSD, is often seen as an unbeatable lifelong mental disorder. Leading trauma doctors and neuroscientists now understand that the result of trauma is not a disorder, but rather a physical injury to the body-invisible but tangible, and most importantly, treatable. Meet Dr. Eugene Lipov. His research and partnerships have led to an amazing discovery that all trauma has at its root a single piece of human hardware- the stellate ganglion. The symptoms of post-traumatic stress are the same for all of us, whether from childhood poverty or abandonment, the ravages of war, or the brutality of sexual assault. Dr. Lipov's pioneering procedure appears to treat injury to the stellate ganglion, relieving even the worst symptoms of PTSD-irritability, hypervigilance, insomnia, and more-in a 15-minute treatment. Weaving hard science with moving human stories, The Invisible Machine reveals how this treatment was developed. It also tells the incredible story of the unlikely team, including the doctor, an artist, Special Forces leadership, and a sheriff, who are working together to change our understanding of post-traumatic stress and why it matters to society. Written in collaboration with Holly Lorincz and featuring stories of warriors, prisoners, abuse survivors, and the average citizen, The Invisible Machine reveals a stark new understanding of human pain. The implications for a better, pain-free world are astounding-and that world could be nearer than we think.

Most people who die by suicide see a clinician prior to taking their lives. Therefore, one of the most difficult determinations clinicians must be able to make is whether any given patient is at risk for suicide in the immediate future. The Suicidal Crisis, Clinical Guide to the Assessment ofImminent Suicide Risk, is the first book written specifically to help clinicians evaluate the risk of such imminent suicidal behavior.The Suicidal Crisis is an essential work for every mental health professional and for anyone who would like to have a framework for understanding suicide. Written by master clinician Dr. Igor Galynker, the book presents methods for a systematic and comprehensive assessment of short-term suicide riskand for conducting risk assessment interviews in different settings.Dr. Galynker describes suicide as an attempt of a vulnerable individual to escape an unbearable life situation, which is perceived as both intolerable and inescapable. What sets the Suicidal Crisis apart from the other books of its kind is its sharp focus on those at the highest risk. It presents awealth of clinical material within the easy-to-understand and intuitive framework of the Narrative-Crisis model of suicidal behavior. The book contains sixty individual case studies of actual suicidal individuals and their interviews, detailed instructions on how to conduct such interviews, and riskassessment test cases with answer keys. A unique feature of the book, not found in any other book on suicide, is a discussion of how clinicians' emotional responses to acutely suicidal individuals may help identify those at highest risk.In this timely and extensively updated edition Galynker provides a method for understanding the suicidal process, and of identifying those at the highest risk for taking their lives. Any clinician who works with suicidal individuals and anybody who knows someone who has considered suicide will findthe book an essential and illuminating read.

Climate Change and Human History provides a concise introduction to the relationship between human beings and climate change throughout history. Starting hundreds of thousands of years ago and going up to the present day, this book illustrates how natural climate variability affected early human societies and how human activity is now leading to drastic changes to our climate. Taking a chronological approach the authors explain how climate change created opportunities and challenges for human societies in each major time period, covering themes such as phases of climate and history, climate shocks, the rise and fall of civilizations, industrialization, accelerating climate change and our future outlook. This 2nd edition includes a new chapter on the explosion of social movements, protest groups and key individuals since 2017 and the implications this has had on the history of climate change, an improved introduction to the Anthropocene and extra content on the basic dynamics of the climate system alongside updated historiography. With more case studies, images and individuals throughout the text, the second edition also includes a glossary of terms and further reading to aid students in understanding this interdisciplinary subject. An ideal companion for all students of environmental history, Climate Change and Human History clearly demonstrates the critical role of climate in shaping human history and of the experience of humans in both adapting to and shaping climate change.

This book gives an accessible overview of the 70-year history of nuclear fusion research and the vain attempts to construct an energy-generating nuclear fusion reactor.  It shows that even in the most optimistic scenario nuclear fusion, despite the claims of its proponents and the billions being spent on research, will not be able to make a sizable contribution to the energy mix in this century. The important consequence is that nuclear fusion will not be a factor in combating climate change, since the race for carbon-free energy will have been won or lost long before the first nuclear fusion power station comes on line.  

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER "Most appealing... technical accuracy and lightness of tone... Impeccable."--Wall Street Journal "A porthole into another world."--Scientific American "Brings science dissemination to a new level."--Science The most trusted explainer of the most mind-boggling concepts pulls back the veil of mystery that has too long cloaked the most valuable building blocks of modern science. Sean Carroll, with his genius for making complex notions entertaining, presents in his uniquely lucid voice the fundamental ideas informing the modern physics of reality.   Physics offers deep insights into the workings of the universe but those insights come in the form of equations that often look like gobbledygook. Sean Carroll shows that they are really like meaningful poems that can help us fly over sierras to discover a miraculous multidimensional landscape alive with radiant giants, warped space-time, and bewilderingly powerful forces. High school calculus is itself a centuries-old marvel as worthy of our gaze as the Mona Lisa. And it may come as a surprise the extent to which all our most cutting-edge ideas about black holes are built on the math calculus enables.    No one else could so smoothly guide readers toward grasping the very equation Einstein used to describe his theory of general relativity. In the tradition of the legendary Richard Feynman lectures presented sixty years ago, this book is an inspiring, dazzling introduction to a way of seeing that will resonate across cultural and generational boundaries for many years to come.

An award-winning science journalist details the quest to isolate and understand dark matter--and shows how that search has helped us to understand the universe we inhabit. When you train a telescope on outer space, you can see luminous galaxies, nebulae, stars, and planets. But if you add all that together, it constitutes only 15 percent of the matter in the universe. Despite decades of research, the nature of the remaining 85 percent is unknown. We call it dark matter. In The Elephant in the Universe, Govert Schilling explores the fascinating history of the search for dark matter. Evidence for its existence comes from a wealth of astronomical observations. Theories and computer simulations of the evolution of the universe are also suggestive: they can be reconciled with astronomical measurements only if dark matter is a dominant component of nature. Physicists have devised huge, sensitive instruments to search for dark matter, which may be unlike anything else in the cosmos--some unknown elementary particle. Yet so far dark matter has escaped every experiment. Indeed, dark matter is so elusive that some scientists are beginning to suspect there might be something wrong with our theories about gravity or with the current paradigms of cosmology. Schilling interviews both believers and heretics and paints a colorful picture of the history and current status of dark matter research, with astronomers and physicists alike trying to make sense of theory and observation. Taking a holistic view of dark matter as a problem, an opportunity, and an example of science in action, The Elephant in the Universe is a vivid tale of scientists puzzling their way toward the true nature of the universe.

We inhabit a planet in peril. Our once temperate world is locked on course to become a hothouse entirely of our own making.

Coral reefs are a microcosm of our planet: extraordinarily diverse, deeply interconnected, and full of wonders. When they're thriving, these fairy gardens hidden beneath the ocean's surface burst with colour and life. But corals across the planet are in the middle of an unprecedented die-off, beset by warming oceans, pollution, human damage, and a devastating pandemic. Life on the Rocks is an inspiring, lucid, meditative ode to the reefs and the undaunted scientists working to save them against almost impossible odds.

The story of our Universe, from its beginning in the first milliseconds of the Big Bang right up to our present moment and beyond, told in a gripping narrative. We have entered a new age of exploration and discovery, enabling us to probe ever more distant reaches of space and greatly advance our knowledge of the Universe. Today, telescopes peer not only into outer space, but also into the deep past. Paul Murdin takes us on an original and breathtaking journey across the lifetime of the Universe, from the first milliseconds of the Big Bang right up to our present moment and even beyond. Murdin draws on the latest discoveries in astronomy to describe the most important characters and events in the life of our Universe: the most powerful explosions, the most curious planets, and the most spectacular celestial bodies. He charts our developing understanding of the cosmos, showing how thinkers have deduced profound truths from even the simplest observations - everyone can see that it is dark at night, but only recently have we understood this as proof that the Universe has not been the same forever. Since then, the Universe has grown up from childhood: astronomers have tracked it as it passed through maturity and as it now moves into middle age. Murdin shows how our own lives were seeded from the Big Bang, galaxies, stars and planets. He considers some of the key questions: how did structures like galaxies and ourselves emerge from the dense maelstrom of the Universe's birth? How did the 'dark matter' that we can't even see speed up the development of galaxies, and how does 'dark energy' work to speed up the expansion of the Universe? Why hasn't the Universe collapsed in on itself - and will it one day? And finally, he offers a glimpse into the future old age of our Universe, and what it means for us all.

Five stunningly large forests remain on Earth: the Taiga, extending from the Pacific Ocean across all of Russia and far-northern Europe; the North American boreal, ranging from Alaska's Bering seacoast to Canada's Atlantic shore; the Amazon, covering almost the entirety of South America's bulge; the Congo, occupying parts of six nations in Africa's wet equatorial middle; and the island forest of New Guinea, twice the size of California. These megaforests are vital to preserving global biodiversity, thousands of cultures, and a stable climate, as economist John W. Reid and celebrated biologist Thomas E. Lovejoy argue convincingly in Ever Green. Megaforests serve an essential role in decarbonizing the atmosphere-the boreal alone holds 1.8 trillion metric tons of carbon in its deep soils and peat layers, 190 years' worth of global emissions at 2019 levels-and saving them is the most immediate and affordable large-scale solution to our planet's most formidable ongoing crisis. Reid and Lovejoy offer practical solutions to address the biggest challenges these forests face, from vastly expanding protected areas, to supporting Indigenous forest stewards, to planning smarter road networks. In gorgeous prose that evokes the majesty of these ancient forests along with the people and animals who inhabit them, Reid and Lovejoy take us on an exhilarating global journey.

The revolution in science that is transforming our understanding of dinosaurs In just the past twenty years, we have learned more about dinosaurs than we did in the previous two centuries. This book describes the extraordinary advances in palaeontology that are beginning to solve many of the mysteries surrounding these marvelous prehistoric creatures, from their ways of communicating to their mating habits, the color of their skin, their migration patterns and extinction. How did dinosaurs rear their young? What did they eat? What did T. rex actually do with those tiny arms? David Hone draws on his own discoveries at the forefront of dinosaur science to illuminate these and other questions. Each chapter in this lively and informative book covers a key topic in dinosaur science, such as origins, diversity, evolution, habitats, anatomy, behaviour, ecology and dinosaur descendants--the birds. For each topic, Hone discusses the history of what palaeontologists thought in the past, the new insights we are gleaning from recent fossil finds and the latest technologies and the gaps in our knowledge that still remain. He shares his own predictions about the research areas that may produce the next big ideas in dinosaur science and addresses the unknowns we may never solve. How Fast Did T. rex Run? reveals everything we now know about dinosaurs--and everything we don't--and charts thrilling new directions for tomorrow's generation of dinosaur scientists.

Featuring 200 spectacular and unusual images, The Solar System is an exhilarating exploration of the mysteries of our local planetary space.   With images selected by acknowledged expert Robert Harvey, The Solar System begins by examining the Sun, the center of the solar system, and proceeds outwards to the planets that are furthest from the Sun--Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune. The book also includes chapters on asteroids, comets, and smaller planets. Readers will gain expert insight into Venus, the hottest planet, with surface temperatures of up to 752°F; Mars, known as the "Red Planet" because of the large quantities of iron oxide (rust) in its soil; Ceres, the solar system's largest asteroid and also a dwarf planet, with a diameter of just under 621 miles; and giant Saturn, whose core is surrounded by a layer of metallic hydrogen and is encircled in a gaseous outer atmosphere.

A vibrant, family-friendly guide to the unexpected nature found in and around Philadelphia. Philadelphia may seem like a concrete jungle, but in reality, it's full of amazing wildlife. You just need to know where to find it!  Equal parts natural history, field guide, and trip planner, Wild Philly has something for everyone. This handy yet extensive guide looks at the factors that shape local nature and profiles over 100 local species, from beautiful flowers and towering trees to majestic birds and surprising city-dwellers like coyotes and red foxes. Also included are descriptions of day trips that help you explore natural wonders on hiking trails, in public parks, and in your own backyard. 

A marine biologist vividly brings alive the extraordinary ecosystem of the deep ocean--a realm about which we know less than we do about the Moon--and shows how protecting rather than exploiting it will benefit mankind. "The oceans have always shaped human lives," writes marine biologist Helen Scales in her vibrant new book The Brilliant Abyss, but the surface and the very edges have so far mattered the most. "However, one way or another, the future ocean is the deep ocean." A golden era of deep-sea discovery is underway. Revolutionary studies in the deep are rewriting the very notion of life on Earth and the rules of what is possible. In the process, the abyss is being revealed as perhaps the most amazing part of our planet, with a topography even more varied and extreme than its Earthbound counterpart. Teeming with unsuspected life, an extraordinary interconnected ecosystem deep below the waves has a huge effect on our daily lives, influencing climate and weather systems, with the potential for much more--good or bad depending on how it is exploited. Currently the fantastic creatures that live in the deep--many of them incandescent in a world without light--and its formations capture and trap vast quantities of carbon that would otherwise poison our atmosphere; and novel bacteria as yet undiscovered hold the promise of potent new medicines. Yet the deep also holds huge mineral riches lusted after by many nations and corporations; mining them could ultimately devastate the planet, compounded by the deepening impacts of ubiquitous pollutants and rampant overfishing. Eloquently and passionately, Helen Scales brings to life the majesty and mystery of an alien realm that nonetheless sustains us, while urgently making clear the price we could pay if it is further disrupted. The Brilliant Abyss is at once a revelation and a clarion call to preserve this vast unseen world.

The captivating, little-known true story of a group of scientists and the methods and technology they developed to uncover the secrets of avian migration. For the past century, scientists and naturalists have been steadily unravelling the secrets of bird migration. How and why birds navigate the skies, traveling from continent to continent--flying thousands of miles across the earth each fall and spring--has continually fascinated the human imagination, but only recently have we been able to fully understand these amazing journeys. Although we know much more than ever before, even the most enthusiastic birdwatcher may not know how we got here, the ways that the full breadth of scientific disciplines have come together to reveal these annual avian travels. Flight Paths is the never-before-told story of how a group of migration-obsessed scientists in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries engaged nearly every branch of science to understand bird migration--from where and when they take off to their flight paths and behaviors, their destinations and the challenges they encounter getting there. Uniting curious minds from across generations, continents, and disciplines, bird enthusiast and science writer Rebecca Heisman traces the development of each technique used for tracking migratory birds, from the first attempts to mark individual birds to the cutting-edge technology that lets ornithologists trace where a bird has been, based on unique DNA markers. Along the way, she touches on the biggest technological breakthroughs of modern science and reveals the almost-forgotten stories of the scientists who harnessed these inventions in service of furthering our understanding of nature (and their personal obsession with birds). The compelling and fascinating story of how scientists solved the great mystery of bird migration, Flight Paths is an unprecedented look into exciting, behind-the-scenes moments of groundbreaking discovery. Heisman demonstrates that the real power of science happens when people work together, focusing their minds and knowledge on a common goal. While the world looks to tackle massive challenges involving conservation and climate, the story of migration research offers a beacon of hope that we can find solutions to difficult and complex problems.

A major new biography of the brilliant naturalist, traveler, humanitarian, and codiscoverer of natural selection Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913) was perhaps the most famed naturalist of the Victorian age. His expeditions to remote Amazonia and southeast Asia were the stuff of legend. A collector of thousands of species new to science, he shared in the discovery of natural selection and founded the discipline of evolutionary biogeography. Radical by Nature tells the story of Wallace's epic life and achievements, from his stellar rise from humble origins to his complicated friendship with Charles Darwin and other leading scientific lights of Britain to his devotion to social causes and movements that threatened to alienate him from scientific society. James Costa draws on letters, notebooks, and journals to provide a multifaceted account of a revolutionary life in science as well as Wallace's family life. He shows how the self-taught Wallace doggedly pursued bold, even radical ideas that caused a seismic shift in the natural sciences, and how he also courted controversy with nonscientific pursuits such as spiritualism and socialism. Costa describes Wallace's courageous social advocacy of women's rights, labor reform, and other important issues. He also sheds light on Wallace's complex relationship with Darwin, describing how Wallace graciously applauded his friend and rival, becoming one of his most ardent defenders. Weaving a revelatory narrative with the latest scholarship, Radical by Nature paints a mesmerizing portrait of a multifaceted thinker driven by a singular passion for science, a commitment to social justice, and a lifelong sense of wonder.

An Inspiring Memoir, for Fans of Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey, and Frans De Waal. In her enchanting memoir, Dr. Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka, Uganda's first wildlife veterinarian, tells the remarkable story from her animal-loving childhood to her career protecting endangered mountain gorillas and other wild animals. She is also the defender of people as a groundbreaking promoter of human public health and an advocate for revolutionary integrated approaches to saving our planet. In an increasingly interconnected world, animal and human health alike depend on sustainable solutions and Dr. Gladys has developed an innovative approach to conservation among the endangered Mountain Gorillas of Bwindi Impenetrable Forest and their human neighbors. Walking with Gorillas takes the reader on an incredible personal journey with Dr. Gladys, from her early days as a student in Uganda, enduring the assassination of her father during a military coup, to her veterinarian education in England to establishing the first veterinary department for the Ugandan government to founding one of the first organizations in the world that enables people to coexist with wildlife through improving the health and wellbeing of both. Her award-winning approach reduced the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on critically endangered mountain gorillas. In the face of discrimination and a male dominated world, one woman's passion and determination to build a brighter future for the local wildlife and human community offers inspiration and insights into what is truly possible for our planet when we come together.  

In this exhilarating look at cities, past and future, Ben Wilson proposes that, in our world of rising seas and threatening weather, the natural world may prove the city's savior "Illuminating...Wilson leaves readers with hope about the future of efforts to preserve the ecosystems that surround us, as well as a new perspective that looks beyond the concrete and asphalt when walking along a city's streets."--Associated Press Since the beginning of civilization, humans have built cities to wall nature out, then glorified it in beloved but quite artificial parks. In Urban Jungle Ben Wilson--the author of Metropolis, a seven-thousand-year history of cities that the Wall Street Journal called "a towering achievement"--looks to the fraught relationship between nature and the city for clues to how the planet can survive in an age of climate crisis. Whether it was the market farmers of Paris, Germans in medieval forest cities, or the Aztecs in the floating city of Tenochtitlan, pre-modern humans had an essential bond with nature. But when the day came that water was piped in and food flown from distant fields, that relationship was lost. Today, urban areas are the fastest-growing habitat on Earth and in Urban Jungle Ben Wilson finds that we are at last acknowledging that human engineering is not enough to protect us from extremes of weather. He takes us to places where efforts to rewild the city are under way: to Los Angeles, where the city's concrete river will run blue again, to New York City, where a bleak landfill will be a vast grassland preserve. The pinnacle of this strategy will be Amsterdam: a city that is its own ecosystem, that makes no waste and produces its own energy. In many cities, Wilson finds, nature is already thriving. Koalas are settling in Brisbane, wild boar may raid your picnic in Berlin. Green canopies, wildflowers, wildlife: the things that will help cities survive, he notes, also make people happy. Urban Jungle offers the pleasures of history--how backyard gardens spread exotic species all over the world, how war produces biodiversity--alongside a fantastic vision of the lush green cities of our future. Climate change, Ben Wilson believes, is only the latest chapter in the dramatic human story of nature and the city.

Written in accessible language without mathematical formulas, this short book provides an overview of the wide and varied applications of artificial intelligence (AI) across the spectrum of physical sciences. Focusing in particular on AI's ability to extract patterns from data, known as machine learning (ML), the book includes a chapter on important machine learning algorithms and their respective applications in physics. It then explores the use of ML across a number of important sub-fields in more detail, ranging from particle, molecular and condensed matter physics, to astrophysics, cosmology and the theory of everything. The book covers such applications as the search for new particles and the detection of gravitational waves from the merging of black holes, and concludes by discussing what the future may hold.

The Plant Thieves reveals remarkable stories from the National Herbarium of New South Wales - its people, its archives and its most guarded specimens. Who gets to collect plants, name them, propagate them, extract their chemicals, sell them and use them? Whose knowledge is it? And what can the people that work with plants, just outside the law, teach us about plant care? In The Plant Thieves, Prudence Gibson explores the secrets of the National Herbarium of New South Wales and unearths remarkable stories of plant naming wars, rediscovered lost species, First Nations agriculture, illegal drug labs and psychoactive plant knowledge. Gibson reveals the tale of the anti-inflammatory plant that saved a herbarium manager when she was collecting in the highlands of Papua New Guinea, stories about the secret wollemi pine plantation (from one of its botanical guardians) and the truth about a beach daisy that has changed so much in 100 years that it needs to be completely reclassified. She also follows the story of the black bean Songline, a recent collaboration between Indigenous and non-Indigenous researchers, to find the route of this important agriculture plant. The Plant Thieves is both a lament for lost and disappearing species and a celebration of being human, of wanting to collect things and of learning more about plant life and ourselves.

This is the first complete English translation of Pavel Florensky's original and ambitious attempt to arrive at a geometric representation of imaginary numbers, in a context that had already captured the attention of other mathematicians, including Gauss, Argan, Cauchy and Bellavitis. Florensky did not limit his attempt solely to complex projective geometry, but extended it to encompass Ptolemaic-Dantean cosmology and Einstein's Principle of Relativity, as well as a new epistemological theory. The resulting treatise combines various disciplines and explores the relationship between an immanent realm of knowledge and a transcendent one.

A fascinating exploration of the pentagon and its role in various cultures The pentagon and its close cousin, the pentagram, have inspired individuals for the last two and half millennia, from mathematicians and philosophers to artists and naturalists. Despite the pentagon's wide-ranging history, no single book has explored the important role of this shape in various cultures, until now. Richly illustrated, Pentagons and Pentagrams offers a sweeping view of the five-sided polygon, revealing its intriguing geometric properties and its essential influence on a variety of fields. Traversing time, Eli Maor narrates vivid stories, both celebrated and unknown, about the pentagon and pentagram. He discusses the early Pythagoreans, who ascribed to the pentagon mythical attributes, adopted it as their emblem, and figured out its construction with a straightedge and compass. Maor looks at how a San Diego housewife uncovered four previously unknown types of pentagonal tilings, and how in 1982 a scientist's discovery of fivefold symmetries in certain alloys caused an uproar in crystallography and led to a Nobel Prize. Maor also discusses the pentagon's impact on many buildings, from medieval fortresses to the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. Eugen Jost's superb illustrations provide sumptuous visual context, and the book's puzzles and mazes offer fun challenges for readers, with solutions given in an appendix.

Finalist for the 2022 NASW Science in Society Journalism Award Longlisted for the 2022 AAAS/Subaru SB&F Prize for Excellence in Science Books From an award-winning science journalist, a "deeply researched, entertaining, and impassioned exploration of sanitation" (Nature) and the future of the toilet--for fans of popular science bestsellers by Mary Roach. Most of us do not give much thought to the centerpiece of our bathrooms, but the toilet is an unexpected paradox. On the one hand, it is a modern miracle: a ubiquitous fixture in a vast sanitation system that has helped add decades to the human life span by reducing disease. On the other hand, the toilet is also a tragic failure: less than half of the world's population can access a toilet that safely manages body waste, including many right here in the United States. And it is inefficient, squandering clean water as well as the nutrients, energy, and information contained in the stuff we flush away. While we see radical technological change in almost every other aspect of our lives, we remain stuck in a sanitation status quo--in part because the topic of toilets is taboo. Fortunately, there's hope--and Pipe Dreams daringly profiles the growing army of sewage-savvy scientists, engineers, philanthropists, entrepreneurs, and activists worldwide who are overcoming their aversions and focusing their formidable skills on making toilets accessible and healthier for all. This potential revolution in sanitation has many benefits, including reducing inequalities, mitigating climate change and water scarcity, improving agriculture, and optimizing health. Author Chelsea Wald takes us on a wild world tour from a compost toilet project in Haiti, to a plant in the Netherlands that salvages used toilet paper from sewage, and shows us a toilet seat that can watch users' poop for signs of illness, among many other fascinating developments. "Toilet humor is one thing, but toilet fact, as digested by skilled science writer Wald, is quite another...[Pipe Dreams is] a highly informative, well-reasoned call to rethink the throne" (Kirkus Reviews).

The Space Shuttle tells the story of NASA's amazing Space Shuttle program and its 140 space flights (135 missions, plus five Approach and Landing Tests) in a uniquely designed and covetable way. The Space Shuttle program's first free flight test was taken on August 12, 1977. Its first official mission was launched on April 12, 1981. Its final mission and flight was taken on July 8, 2011. The program's six orbiter vehicles are Enterprise, Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis, and Endeavour. Each mission has its own fascinating story, and The Space Shuttle retells these stories, in chronological order, through incredible photos taken by NASA photojournalists, fine art photographers, and the astronauts themselves. Each image is accompanied by a short text that includes quick facts such as crew members, launch date, and landing date, as well as a short overview of highlights and purpose. For example, STS-78's mission was to study circadian rhythms in space; STS-41G's mission was to take photographs in-flight, seen in the IMAX movie The Dream Is Alive; and famously, the first untethered space walk, taken by astronaut Bruce McCandless on STS-41B using a self-propelled backpack unit (called a Man Maneuvering Unit [MMU]), allowed astronauts to capture satellites for retrieval and repair and for the planned construction of what became the International Space Station (ISS). Prior to this mission, astronauts were attached to the shuttle with safety lines. The photo of McCandless floating above Earth's surface is one of the most celebrated and famous space photographs ever. These are just a few of the 140 stories Miller tells in this beautiful volume.  

Almost 145,000 Americans fled their homes in and around Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, in late March 1979, hoping to save themselves from an invisible enemy: radiation. The reactor at the nearby Three Mile Island nuclear power plant had gone into partial meltdown, and scientists feared an explosion that could spread radiation throughout the eastern United States. Thankfully, the explosion never took place--but the accident left deep scars in the American psyche, all but ending the nation's love affair with nuclear power. In Atoms and Ashes, Serhii Plokhy recounts the dramatic history of Three Mile Island and five more accidents that that have dogged the nuclear industry in its military and civil incarnations: the disastrous fallout caused by the testing of the hydrogen bomb in the Bikini Atoll in 1954; the Kyshtym nuclear disaster in the USSR, which polluted a good part of the Urals; the Windscale fire, the worst nuclear accident in the UK's history; back to the USSR with Chernobyl, the result of a flawed reactor design leading to the exodus of 350,000 people; and, most recently, Fukushima in Japan, triggered by an earthquake and a tsunami, a disaster on a par with Chernobyl and whose clean-up will not take place in our lifetime. Through the stories of these six terrifying incidents, Plokhy explores the risks of nuclear power, both for military and peaceful purposes, while offering a vivid account of how individuals and governments make decisions under extraordinary circumstances. Today, there are 440 nuclear reactors operating throughout the world, with nuclear power providing 10 percent of global electricity. Yet as the world seeks to reduce carbon emissions to combat climate change, the question arises: Just how safe is nuclear energy?

For those interested in taking drones to the next level, we discuss how to build your own using a 3D printer as well as many challenging projects for your drone.