|
Nature and Science October 2020
|
|
|
|
|
Once Upon a Time I Lived on Mars : Space, Exploration, and Life on Earth
by Kate Greene
An essay collection inspired by the author’s four-month stay inside NASA’s simulated Martian habitat explores such subjects as humanity’s drive to explore, a sibling’s disability, the lag time of interplanetary correspondence and the challenges of long-distance marriage. Illustrations.
|
|
|
Statistics 101 : from data analysis and predictive modeling to measuring distribution and determining probability, your essential guide to statistics
by David Borman
From understanding the percentage probability that it will rain later today, to evaluating your risk of a health problem, or the fluctuations in the stock market, statistics impact our lives in a variety of ways, and are vital to a variety of careers and fields of practice. Unfortunately, most statistics text books just make us want to take a snooze, but with Statistics 101, you'll learn the basics of statistics in a way that is both easy-to-understand and apply. From learning the theory of probability and different kinds of distribution concepts, to identifying data patterns and graphing and presenting precise findings, this essential guide can help turn statistical math from scary and complicated, to easy and fun.
|
|
| The Last Stargazers: The Enduring Story of Astronomy's Vanishing Explorers by Emily LevesqueWhat it's about: an astronomer recounts her career in science while contemplating the past, present, and future of her field.
Don't miss: visits to Hawaii's Mauna Kea Observatories, Chile's Paranal Observatory, and the airborne Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA).
Did you know? Professional astronomers spend relatively little time looking through giant telescopes (and a lot of time on laptops). |
|
| The End of Everything (Astrophysically Speaking) by Katie MackWhat it is: theoretical cosmologist Katie Mack's engaging survey of five potential ways in which the universe could end: the Big Crunch, Heat Death, the Big Rip, Vacuum Decay, and the Bounce.
Reviewers say: a "rollicking tour through the nooks and crannies of physics" (New Scientist).
Further reading: Bob Berman's Earth-Shattering (for those interested in cosmic cataclysms); Brian Greene's Until the End of Time (for a more philosophical take on cosmology). |
|
|
The Rules of Contagion : Why Things Spread - And Why They Stop
by Adam Kucharski
A deadly virus suddenly explodes into the population. A political movement gathers pace, and then quickly vanishes. An idea takes off like wildfire, changing our world forever. We live in a world that's more interconnected than ever before. Our lives are shaped by outbreaks - of disease, of misinformation, even of violence - that appear, spread and fade away with bewildering speed. To understand them, we need to learn the hidden laws that govern them. From 'superspreaders' who might spark a pandemic or bring down a financial system to the social dynamics that make loneliness catch on, The Rules of Contagion offers compelling insights into human behaviour and explains how we can get better at predicting what happens next. Along the way, Adam Kucharski explores how innovations spread through friendship networks, what links computer viruses with folk stories - and why the most useful predictions aren't necessarily the ones that come true.
|
|
|
Saving Seeds : A Home Gardener's Guide to Preserving Plant Biodiversity
by Dan Jason
Much of our food comes from seeds. But where do our seeds come from? And where are they going? For much of human history, farmers saved their own seed stocks to ensure a good harvest from year to year. In the mid-twentieth century, governments became involved in seed saving, creating massive seed libraries cataloguing thousands of varieties. This biodiversity has come under attack in recent decades, as corporations have replaced heirloom varieties with genetic engineering and costly trademarks. In such an agricultural climate, saving seeds becomes both a practical act of preservation and powerful act of protest. Saving Seeds is a clear and winsome introduction to the essentials of seed saving, from seed selection criteria to harvest and storage tips. It also addresses the role of seed-saving communities: local swaps, seed companies, friends and neighbors and even how the Internet can support this time-honored practice. In an era of community gardens, farmers markets and renewed interest in heirloom species, Saving Seeds is a timely call to ensure a more secure future for our seeds and ourselves.
|
|
|
Billion dollar burger : inside big tech's race for the future of food
by Chase Purdy
"The riveting story of the entrepreneurs and renegades fighting to bring lab-grown meat to the world. The trillion-dollar meat industry is one of our greatest environmental hazards; it pollutes more than all the world's fossil-fuel-powered cars. Global animal agriculture is responsible for deforestation, soil erosion, and more emissions than air travel, paper mills, and coal mining combined. It also, of course, depends on the slaughter of more than 60 billion animals per year, a number that is only increasing as the global appetite for meat swells. But a band of doctors, scientists, activists, and entrepreneurs have been racing to end animal agriculture as we know it, hoping to fulfill a dream of creating meat without ever having to kill an animal. In the laboratories of Silicon Valley companies, Dutch universities, and Israeli startups, visionaries are growing burgers and steaks from microscopic animal cells and inventing systems to do so at scale--allowing us to feed the world without slaughter and environmental devastation. Drawing from exclusive and unprecedented access to the main players, from polarizing activist-turned-tech CEO Josh Tetrick to lobbyists and regulators on both sides of the issue, Billion Dollar Burger follows the people fighting toupend our food system as they butt up against the entrenched interests fighting viciously to stop them. The stakes are monumentally high: cell-cultured meat is the best hope for sustainable food production, a key to fighting climate change, a gold mine for the companies that make it happen, and an existential threat for the farmers and meatpackers that make our meat today. Are we ready?"
|
|
Focus on: The Lighter Side of Science
|
|
| Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? Big Questions from Tiny Mortals about Death by Caitlin Doughty; illustrated by Dianne RuzThe premise: a mortician answers children's questions about death in an engaging and matter-of-fact style.
About the author: Funeral director Caitlin Doughty is the creator of the web series "Ask a Mortician" and the author of Smoke Gets in Your Eyes and From Here to Eternity.
So...will your cat eat your eyeballs? Not immediately. (Not when there are tastier tidbits like eyelids.) |
|
| Imagined Life: A Speculative Scientific Journey Among the Exoplanets in Search of.... by James Trefil and Michael SummersWhat it's about: a physicist and a planetary scientist draw on current scientific knowledge to speculate about exoplanets and their potential to support "life like us, like not like us, or life really not like us."
Includes: discussions of tidally locked planets, subsurface ocean worlds, super-Earths, and rogue planets (which do not orbit stars).
You might also like: Alan Boss' Universal Life, about the Kepler Space Telescope. |
|
|
The unidentified : mythical monsters, alien encounters, and our obsession with the unexplained
by Colin Dickey
"In a world where rational, scientific explanations are more available than ever, belief in the unprovable and irrational--in fringe--is on the rise: from Atlantis to aliens, from Flat Earth to the Loch Ness monster, the list goes on. It seems the more our maps of the known world get filled in, the more we crave mysterious locations full of strange creatures. Enter Colin Dickey, Cultural Historian and Tour Guide of the Weird. With the same curiosity and insight that made Ghostland a hit with readers and critics, Colin looks at what all fringe beliefs have in common, explaining that today's Illuminati is yesterday's Flat Earth: the attempt to find meaning in a world stripped of wonder. Dickey visits the wacky sites of America's wildest fringe beliefs--from the famed Mount Shasta where the ancient race (or extra-terrestrials, or possibly both, depending on who you ask) called Lemurians are said to roam, to the museum containing the last remaining "evidence" of the great Kentucky Meat Shower--investigating how these theories come about, why they take hold, and why as Americans we keep inventing and re-inventing them decade after decade. The Unidentified is Colin Dickey at his best: curious, wry, brilliant in his analysis, yet eminently readable"
|
|
Contact your librarian for more great books!
|
|
|
Iredell County Public Library 201 North Tradd Street Statesville, North Carolina 28677 704-878-3090www.iredell.lib.nc.us/ |
|
|
|