New Books at the Rohrbach Library: Sciences and Mathematics

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.

"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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

A vibrant cultural history investigating pandemics and vaccines, by bestselling author and historian Simon Schama Cities and countries engulfed by panic and death, desperate for vaccines but fearful of what inoculation may bring. This is what the world has just gone through with Covid-19. But as Simon Schama shows in his epic history of vulnerable humanity caught between the terror of contagion and the ingenuity of science, it has happened before. Characteristically, Schama's message is delivered through gripping, page-turning stories set in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: smallpox strikes London; cholera hits Paris; plague comes to India. Threading through the scenes of terror, suffering and hope - in hospitals and prisons, palaces, and slums - are an unforgettable cast of characters: a philosopher-playwright burning up with smallpox in a country chateau; a vaccinating doctor paying house calls in Halifax; a woman doctor in south India driving her inoculator-carriage through the stricken streets as dead monkeys drop from the trees. But we are also in the labs when great, life-saving breakthroughs happen, in Paris, Hong Kong, and Mumbai. At the heart of it all is an unsung hero: Waldemar Haffkine, a gun-toting Jewish student in Odesa turned microbiologist at the Pasteur Institute, hailed in England as "the saviour of mankind" for vaccinating millions against cholera and bubonic plague in British India while being cold-shouldered by the medical establishment of the Raj. Creator of the world's first mass production line of vaccines in Mumbai, he is tragically brought down in an act of shocking injustice. Foreign Bodies crosses borders between east and west, Asia and Europe, the worlds of rich and poor, politics and science. Its thrilling story carries with it the credo of its author on the interconnectedness of humanity and nature; of the powerful and the people. Ultimately, Schama says, as we face the challenges of our times together, "there are no foreigners, only familiars." 

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.

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.

An up-to-date reference book on phylogenetic methods and applications for evolutionary biologists The increasingly widespread availability of genomic data is transforming how biologists estimate evolutionary relationships among organisms and broadening the range of questions that researchers can test in a phylogenetic framework. Species Tree Inference brings together many of today's leading scholars in the field to provide an incisive guide to the latest practices for analyzing multilocus sequence data. This wide-ranging and authoritative book gives detailed explanations of emerging new approaches and assesses their strengths and challenges, offering an invaluable context for gauging which procedure to apply given the types of genomic data and processes that contribute to differences in the patterns of inheritance across loci. It demonstrates how to apply these approaches using empirical studies that span a range of taxa, timeframes of diversification, and processes that cause the evolutionary history of genes across genomes to differ. By fully embracing this genomic heterogeneity, Species Tree Inference illustrates how to address questions beyond the goal of estimating phylogenetic relationships of organisms, enabling students and researchers to pursue their own research in statistically sophisticated ways while charting new directions of scientific discovery.

"Another love letter from Wohlleben to the green world? makes the case for how we should allow forests throughout the world to regrow and in the process help heal not only the climate but us, as well."--Lydia Millet, Oprah Daily An illuminating manifesto on ancient forests: how they adapt to climate change by passing their wisdom through generations, and why our future lies in protecting them. In his beloved book The Hidden Life of Trees, Peter Wohlleben revealed astonishing discoveries about the social networks of trees and how they communicate. Now, in The Power of Trees, he turns to their future, with a searing critique of forestry management, tree planting, and the exploitation of old growth forests. As human-caused climate change devastates the planet, forests play a critical role in keeping it habitable. While politicians and business leaders would have us believe that cutting down forests can be offset by mass tree planting, Wohlleben offers a warning: many tree planting campaigns lead to ecological disaster. Not only are these trees more susceptible to disease, flooding, fires, and landslides, we need to understand that forests are more than simply a collection of trees. Instead, they are ecosystems that consist of thousands of species, from animals to fungi and bacteria. The way to save trees, and ourselves? Step aside and let forests--which are naturally better equipped to face environmental challenges--heal themselves. With the warmth and wonder familiar to readers from his previous books, Wohlleben also shares emerging scientific research about how forests shape climates both locally and across continents; that trees adapt to changing environmental conditions through passing knowledge down to their offspring; and how old growth may in fact have the most survival strategies for climate change. At the heart of The Power of Trees lies Wohlleben's passionate plea: that our survival is dependent on trusting ancient forests, and allowing them to thrive. Published in Partnership with the David Suzuki Institute.

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER! NATIONAL BESTSELLER Most Anticipated Book by The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times * A Next Big Idea Book Club Selection * The New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice Jeff Goodell's "masterful, bracing" (David Wallace-Wells) investigation exposes "through stellar reporting, artful storytelling and fascinating scientific explanations" (Naomi Klein) an explosive new understanding of heat and the impact that rising temperatures will have on our lives and on our planet. "Entertaining and thoroughly researched," (Al Gore), it will completely change the way you see the world, and despite its urgent themes, is injected with "eternal optimism" (Michael Mann) on how to combat one of the most important issues of our time.    "When heat comes, it's invisible. It doesn't bend tree branches or blow hair across your face to let you know it's arrived.... The sun feels like the barrel of a gun pointed at you."    The world is waking up to a new reality: wildfires are now seasonal in California, the Northeast is getting less and less snow each winter, and the ice sheets in the Arctic and Antarctica are melting fast.  Heat is the first order threat that drives all other impacts of the climate crisis.  And as the temperature rises, it is revealing fault lines in our governments, our politics, our economy, and our values. The basic science is not complicated: Stop burning fossil fuels tomorrow, and the global temperature will stop rising tomorrow. Stop burning fossil fuels in 50 years, and the temperature will keep rising for 50 years, making parts of our planet virtually uninhabitable.  It's up to us.  The hotter it gets, the deeper and wider our fault lines will open.     The Heat Will Kill You First is about the extreme ways in which our planet is already changing. It is about why spring is coming a few weeks earlier and fall is coming a few weeks later and the impact that will have on everything from our food supply to disease outbreaks. It is about what will happen to our lives and our communities when typical summer days in Chicago or Boston go from 90° F to 110°F. A heatwave, Goodell explains, is a predatory event-- one that culls out the most vulnerable people.  But that is changing. As heatwaves become more intense and more common, they will become more democratic.     As an award-winning journalist who has been at the forefront of environmental journalism for decades, Goodell's new book may be his most provocative yet, explaining how extreme heat will dramatically change the world as we know it.  Masterfully reported, mixing the latest scientific insight with on-the-ground storytelling, Jeff Goodell tackles the big questions and uncovers how extreme heat is a force beyond anything we have reckoned with before.  

In 1956, the New York Times prophesied that once global warming really kicked in, we could see parrots in the Antarctic. In 2010, when science deniers had control of the climate story, Senator James Inhofe and his family built an igloo on the Washington Mall and plunked a sign on top: AL GORE'S NEW HOME: HONK IF YOU LOVE CLIMATE CHANGE. In The Parrot and the Igloo, best-selling author David Lipsky tells the astonishing story of how we moved from one extreme (the correct one) to the other. With narrative sweep and a superb eye for character, Lipsky unfolds the dramatic narrative of the long, strange march of climate science. The story begins with a tale of three inventors--Thomas Edison, George Westinghouse, and Nikola Tesla--who made our technological world, not knowing what they had set into motion. Then there are the scientists who sounded the alarm once they identified carbon dioxide as the culprit of our warming planet. And we meet the hucksters, zealots, and crackpots who lied about that science and misled the public in ever more outrageous ways. Lipsky masterfully traces the evolution of climate denial, exposing how it grew out of early efforts to build a network of untruth about products like aspirin and cigarettes. Featuring an indelible cast of heroes and villains, mavericks and swindlers, The Parrot and the Igloo delivers a real-life tragicomedy--one that captures the extraordinary dance of science, money, and the American character.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * From bestselling author Susan Casey, an awe-inspiring portrait of the mysterious world beneath the waves, and the men and women who seek to uncover its secrets "An irresistible mix of splendid scholarship, heart-stopping adventure writing, and vivid, visceral prose." --Sy Montgomery, New York Times best-selling author of The Soul of an Octopus For all of human history, the deep ocean has been a source of wonder and terror, an unknown realm that evoked a singular, compelling question: What's down there? Unable to answer this for centuries, people believed the deep was a sinister realm of fiendish creatures and deadly peril. But now, cutting-edge technologies allow scientists and explorers to dive miles beneath the surface, and we are beginning to understand this strange and exotic underworld:  A place of soaring mountains, smoldering volcanoes, and valleys 7,000 feet deeper than Everest is high, where tectonic plates collide and separate, and extraordinary life forms operate under different rules. Far from a dark void, the deep is a vibrant realm that's home to pink gelatinous predators and shimmering creatures a hundred feet long and ancient animals with glass skeletons and sharks that live for half a millennium--among countless other marvels. Susan Casey is our premiere chronicler of the aquatic world. For The Underworld she traversed the globe, joining scientists and explorers on dives to the deepest places on the planet, interviewing the marine geologists, marine biologists, and oceanographers who are searching for knowledge in this vast unseen realm. She takes us on a fascinating journey through the history of deep-sea exploration, from the myths and legends of the ancient world to storied shipwrecks we can now reach on the bottom, to the first intrepid bathysphere pilots, to the scientists who are just beginning to understand the mind-blowing complexity and ecological importance of the quadrillions of creatures who live in realms long thought to be devoid of life. Throughout this journey, she learned how vital the deep is to the future of the planet, and how urgent it is that we understand it in a time of increasing threats from climate change, industrial fishing, pollution, and the mining companies that are also exploring its depths. The Underworld is Susan Casey's most beautiful and thrilling book yet, a gorgeous evocation of the natural world and a powerful call to arms.

"Reams of appealing facts make one itch to get outside and right up close to trees' rough surfaces and shady cover."--The Atlantic New York Times-bestselling author Tristan Gooley opens our eyes to the secret language of trees--and the natural wonders they reveal all around us Trees are keen to tell us so much. They'll tell us about the land, the water, the people, the animals, the weather, and time. And they will tell us about their lives, the good bits and bad. Trees tell a story, but only to those who know how to read it. In How to Read a Tree, Gooley uncovers the clues hiding in plain sight: in a tree's branches and leaves; its bark, buds, and flowers; even its stump. Leaves with a pale, central streak mean that water is nearby. Young, low-growing branches show that a tree is struggling. And reddish or purple bark signals new growth. Like snowflakes, no two trees are exactly the same. Every difference reveals the epic story this tree has lived--if we stop to look closely.

This invaluable textbook presents a self-contained introduction to the field of bioinformatics. Providing a comprehensive breadth of coverage while remaining accessibly concise, the text promotes a deep understanding of the field, supported by basic mathematical concepts, an emphasis on biological knowledge, and a holistic approach that highlights the connections unifying bioinformatics with other areas of science. The thoroughly revised and enhanced fourth edition features new chapters focusing on regulation and control networks, the origins of life, evolution, statistics and causation, viruses, the microbiome, single cell analysis, drug discovery and forensic applications. This edition additionally includes new and updated material on the ontology of bioinformatics, data mining, ecosystems, and phenomics. Also covered are new developments in sequencing technologies, gene editing methods, and modelling of the brain, as well as state-of-the-art medical applications. Of special topicality is a new chapter on bioinformatics aspects of the coronavirus pandemic. Topics and features: Explains the fundamentals of set theory, combinatorics, probability, likelihood, causality, clustering, pattern recognition, randomness, complexity, systems, and networks Discusses topics on ontogeny, phylogeny, genome structure, and regulation, as well as aspects of molecular biology Critically examines the most significant practical applications, offering detailed descriptions of both the experimental process and the analysis of the data Provides a varied selection of problems throughout the book, to stimulate further thinking Encourages further reading through the inclusion of an extensive bibliography This classic textbook builds upon the successful formula of previous editions with coverage of the latest advances in this exciting and fast-moving field. With its interdisciplinary scope, this unique guide will prove to be an essential study companion to a broad audience of undergraduate and beginning graduate students, spanning computer scientists focusing on bioinformatics, students of the physical sciences seeking a helpful primer on biology, and biologists desiring to better understand the theory underlying important applications of information science in biology. Dr. Jeremy Ramsden is Hon. Prof. of Nanotechnology in the Department of Biomedical Research at the University of Buckingham, UK.

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * NATIONAL BESTSELLER * AMAZON EDITOR'S PICK and BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR * INDIE BESTSELLER * A SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE'S BEST SCIENCE BOOK OF THE YEAR * THE WASHINGTON POST'S BEST NONFICTION OF THE YEAR PICK * A NEW SCIENTIST BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR *THE PERFECT GIFT FOR NATURE LOVERS * INCLUDES GORGEOUS ARTWORK * "Montgomery's heart-tugging conversations with teammates and her commitment to helping an octogenarian named Fire Chief reveal turtles to be perfect conduits for meditations on aging, disability and chosen family." --Scientific American National Book Award finalist for The Soul of an Octopus and New York Times bestseller Sy Montgomery turns her journalistic curiosity to the wonder and wisdom of our long-lived cohabitants--turtles--and through their stories of hope and rescue, reveals to us astonishing new perspectives on time and healing. For fans of The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year and An Immense World. When acclaimed naturalist Sy Montgomery and wildlife artist Matt Patterson arrive at Turtle Rescue League, they are greeted by hundreds of turtles recovering from injury and illness. Endangered by cars and highways, pollution and poachers, these turtles--with wounds so severe that even veterinarians would have dismissed them as fatal--are given a second chance at life. The League's founders, Natasha and Alexxia, live by one motto: Never give up on a turtle. But why turtles? What is it about them that inspires such devotion? Ancient and unhurried, long-lived and majestic, their lineage stretches back to the time of the dinosaurs. Some live to two hundred years, or longer. Others spend months buried under cold winter water. Montgomery turns to these little understood yet endlessly surprising creatures to probe the eternal question: How can we make peace with our time? In pursuit of the answer, Sy and Matt immerse themselves in the delicate work of protecting turtle nests, incubating eggs, rescuing sea turtles, and releasing hatchlings to their homes in the wild. We follow the snapping turtle Fire Chief on his astonishing journey as he battles against injuries incurred by a truck. Hopeful and optimistic, Of Time and Turtles is an antidote to the instability of our frenzied world. Elegantly blending science, memoir, and philosophy, and drawing on cultures from across the globe, this compassionate portrait of injured turtles and their determined rescuers invites us all to slow down and slip into turtle time. Perfect gift for nature lovers. Includes a signature of photos plus stunning, photo-realistic full color paintings and black-and-white chapter opener art by wildlife artist Matt Patterson. Read more books by Sy Montgomery such as How to Be a Good Creature and The Soul of an Octopus. Don't miss The Book of Turtles for children.

The first book to chronicle how innovation in laboratory designs for botanical research energized the emergence of physiological plant ecology as a vibrant subdiscipline   Laboratory innovation since the mid-twentieth century has powered advances in the study of plant adaptation, evolution, and ecosystem function. The phytotron, an integrated complex of controlled-environment greenhouse and laboratory spaces, invented by Frits W. Went in the 1950s, set off a worldwide laboratory movement and transformed the plant sciences. Sharon Kingsland explores this revolution through a comparative study of work in the United States, France, Australia, Israel, the USSR, and Hungary.   These advances in botanical research energized physiological plant ecology. Case studies explore the development of phytotron spinoffs such as mobile laboratories, rhizotrons, and ecotrons. Scientific problems include the significance of plant emissions of volatile organic compounds, symbiosis between plants and soil fungi, and the discovery of new pathways for photosynthesis as an adaptation to hot, dry climates. The advancement of knowledge through synthesis is a running theme: linking disciplines, combining laboratory and field research, and moving across ecological scales from leaf to ecosystem. The book also charts the history of modern scientific responses to the emerging crisis of food insecurity in the era of global warming.

One of the world's most creative mathematicians offers a new way to look at math--focusing on questions, not answers  Where do we learn math: From rules in a textbook? From logic and deduction? Not really, according to mathematician Eugenia Cheng: we learn it from human curiosity--most importantly, from asking questions. This may come as a surprise to those who think that math is about finding the one right answer, or those who were told that the "dumb" question they asked just proved they were bad at math. But Cheng shows why people who ask questions like "Why does 1 + 1 = 2?" are at the very heart of the search for mathematical truth.   Is Math Real? is a much-needed repudiation of the rigid ways we're taught to do math, and a celebration of the true, curious spirit of the discipline. Written with intelligence and passion, Is Math Real? brings us math as we've never seen it before, revealing how profound insights can emerge from seemingly unlikely sources.   

A revisionist, completely accessible and radically inclusive history of Mathematics

-Offers a practical, student-friendly text for secondary math methods courses, grounded in up-to-date research, theory, and technology. -Each chapter features tried-and-tested pedagogical techniques, problem solving challenges, discussion points, activities, mathematical challenges, and student-life based applications, offering a hands-on and pragmatic approach that shows mathematics teachers how secondary math concepts can be taught in a positive and encouraging way, -Updated throughout with the most recent research and CCSSM standards, and a further focus on integrating technology into teaching, including virtual teaching and learning, additional coverage on equity and culturally relevant pedagogy, and much more.

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?

Some 40 million miles of roadways encircle the earth, yet we tend to regard them only as infrastructure for human convenience. While roads are so ubiquitous they're practically invisible to us, wild animals experience them as entirely alien forces of death and disruption. In Crossings, environmental journalist Ben Goldfarb travels throughout the United States and around the world to investigate how roads have transformed our planet. A million animals are killed by cars each day in the U.S. alone, but as the new science of road ecology shows, the harms of highways extend far beyond roadkill. Creatures from antelope to salmon are losing their ability to migrate in search of food and mates; invasive plants hitch rides in tire treads; road salt contaminates lakes and rivers; and the very noise of traffic chases songbirds from vast swaths of habitat. Yet road ecologists are also seeking to blunt the destruction through innovative solutions. Goldfarb meets with conservationists building bridges for California's mountain lions and tunnels for English toads, engineers deconstructing the labyrinth of logging roads that web national forests, animal rehabbers caring for Tasmania's car-orphaned wallabies, and community organizers working to undo the havoc highways have wreaked upon American cities. Today, as our planet's road network continues to grow exponentially, the science of road ecology has become increasingly vital. Written with passion and curiosity, Crossings is a sweeping, spirited, and timely investigation into how humans have altered the natural world--and how we can create a better future for all living beings.

"A magisterial work of narrative history and original reportage . . . You can feel the tension building one cold, catastrophic fact at a time . . . A virtually unprecedented achievement." --Mike Spies, The New York Times Book Review One of The New York Times's 33 Nonfiction Books to Read This Fall | One of Esquire's best books of fall Named a most anticipated book of the fall by The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and Bloomberg American Gun: The True Story of the AR-15 presents the epic history of America's most controversial weapon. In the 1950s, an obsessive firearms designer named Eugene Stoner invented the AR-15 rifle in a California garage. High-minded and patriotic, Stoner sought to devise a lightweight, easy-to-use weapon that could replace the M1s touted by soldiers in World War II. What he did create was a lethal handheld icon of the American century. In American Gun, the veteran Wall Street Journal reporters Cameron McWhirter and Zusha Elinson track the AR-15 from inception to ubiquity. How did the same gun represent the essence of freedom to millions of Americans and the essence of evil to millions more? To answer this question, McWhirter and Elinson follow Stoner--the American Kalashnikov--as he struggled mightily to win support for his invention, which under the name M16 would become standard equipment in Vietnam. Shunned by gun owners at first, the rifle's popularity would take off thanks to a renegade band of small-time gun makers. And in the 2000s, it would become the weapon of choice for mass shooters, prompting widespread calls for proscription even as the gun industry embraced it as a financial savior. Writing with fairness and compassion, McWhirter and Elinson explore America's gun culture, revealing the deep appeal of the AR-15, the awful havoc it wreaks, and the politics of reducing its toll. The result is a moral history of contemporary America's love affair with technology, freedom, and weaponry. Includes 8 pages of black-and-white images.

NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR 2023 BY THE NEW YORKER, THE GUARDIAN, and KIRKUS REVIEWS An award-winning investigative journalist takes a deep dive into the global waste crisis, exposing the hidden world that enables our modern economy--and finds out the dirty truth behind a simple question: what really happens to what we throw away? In Wasteland, journalist Oliver Franklin-Wallis takes us on a shocking journey inside the waste industry--the secretive multi-billion dollar world that underpins the modern economy, quietly profiting from what we leave behind. In India, he meets the waste-pickers on the front line of the plastic crisis. In the UK, he journeys down sewers to confront our oldest--and newest--waste crisis, and comes face-to-face with nuclear waste. In Ghana, he follows the after-life of our technology and explores the global export network that results in goodwill donations clogging African landfills. From an incinerator to an Oklahoma ghost-town, Franklin-Wallis travels in search of the people and companies that really handle waste--and on the way, meets the innovators and campaigners pushing for a cleaner and less wasteful future.     With this mesmerizing, thought-provoking, and occasionally terrifying investigation, Oliver Franklin-Wallis tells a new story of humanity based on what we leave behind, and along the way, he shares a blueprint for building a healthier, more sustainable world--before we're all buried in trash.

Provides an introduction to renewable energy for scientists and engineers, addressing the science and technology of all types of renewable energy in detail, as well as nonrenewables. Includes new chapters covering population dynamics and statistics. Self-study problems have been added for each chapter. Incorporates more worked examples. Completely up-to-date, covering such areas as hydraulic fracturing, integration of renewable energy to power grid, and cost.

Provides detailed insight into the marine microplastics pollution, fate, health impacts, and removal technology Reviews ecological risks and environmental fate of microplastics pollution to the marine ecosystem Describes control and prevention methods of the microplastics pollution Covers global legislature for the mitigation of microplastics to the marine environment Discusses role of community participation for the reduction of microplastic emissions