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The World of Kew
By Carolyn Fry. 2006
Without plants, there would be no life on earth. Kew Gardens is famous for its breathtaking displays of flowers and…
tree,s but this World Heritage Site is also a globally important scientific and historical organization. Scientists and gardeners use the plants and knowledge that have been collected at Kew since the eighteenth century to advance understanding of the earth's environment and of how plant lfe can be used for human benefit. Published to accompany the ten-part BBC2 series A New Year at Kew, this fascinating book takes us behind the scenes to show the extraordinary range of work carried out at Kew Gardens and Wakehurst Place - home to the Millenium Seed Bank - and by Kew staff overseas. From using forensic botant to micropagating plants facing extinction, from investigating herbal cures from Alzheimer's disease to replanting the volcano-ravaged island of Montserrat, the book shows us aspects of Kew's work that are largely hidden from view abut the benefits of which are far reachingl In the process it provides an absorbing and accessible introduction to such topical subjects as biodiversity, practical conservation and economic botany. Lavishly illustrated and filled with engrossing stories and engaging characters, this book brings to life the world of Kew and the global importance of its work.The Traveler's Guide to Space: For One-Way Settlers and Round-Trip Tourists
By Neil Comins. 2017
If you have ever wondered about space travel, now you have the opportunity to understand it more fully than ever…
before. Traveling into space and even emigrating to nearby worlds may soon become part of the human experience. Scientists, engineers, and investors are working hard to make space tourism and colonization a reality. As astronauts can attest, extraterrestrial travel is incomparably thrilling. To make the most of the experience requires serious physical and mental adaptations in virtually every aspect of life, from eating to intimacy. Everyone who goes into space sees Earth and life on it from a profoundly different perspective than they had before liftoff.Astronomer and former NASA/ASEE scientist Neil F. Comins has written the go-to book for anyone interested in space exploration. He describes the wonders that travelers will encounter—weightlessness, unparalleled views of Earth and the cosmos, and the opportunity to walk on another world—as well as the dangers: radiation, projectiles, unbreathable atmospheres, and potential equipment failures. He also provides insights into specific trips to destinations including suborbital flights, space stations, the Moon, asteroids, comets, and Mars—the top candidate for colonization. Although many challenges are technical, Comins outlines them in clear language for all readers. He synthesizes key issues and cutting-edge research in astronomy, physics, biology, psychology, and sociology to create a complete manual for the ultimate voyage.Healthcare Insights: The Voice of the Consumer, the Provider, and the Work Design Strategist (Workplace Insights)
By Sara Pazell, Jo Boylan. 2024
Uniquely, this book gives consumers a voice and regales tales of their experiences. These stories are complemented by the tales…
told by healthcare practitioners about their real-world constraints and evolving insights that have shifted their work focus. In the third section, work design strategists help the reader reimagine a better way to design the delivery of healthcare services and environments using human factors approaches. This interesting title: Covers real-world cases of people subject to an imperfect healthcare system Helps people understand the practical challenges affecting healthcare service delivery Champions new strategies to help people construct health, and to consider systems that will support these approaches Represents a broad array of healthcare settings Healthcare Insights is well-suited to senior undergraduate, graduate students, practitioners, educators, and researchers in diverse fields, including healthcare administration and management, healthcare governance, human factors and ergonomics, service design, systems engineering, medicine, occupational health and return to work, allied health, work health and safety, workforce strategy, and architecture and design.Chapters 8 and 14 of this book are freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.crcpress.com under a Creative Commons [Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND)] 4.0 license.Nucleic Acid-Based Nanomaterials: Stabilities and Applications
By Yunfeng Lin, Shaojingya Gao. 2024
Nucleic Acid-Based Nanomaterials Learn about the cutting-edge nanotechnologies that play an important role in clinical and medical therapies Nucleic acids,…
the biomolecules that carry most of nature’s critical genetic information, are an omnipresent component of life on earth. Nanomaterials incorporating or otherwise built around nucleic acids and their key properties have a number of clinical and medical applications, including drug delivery and more. Biomaterials scientists and other professionals in these fields can benefit enormously from increased knowledge of these invaluable materials. Nucleic Acid-Based Nanomaterials supplies a thorough, rigorous overview of these materials and their possible applications. Beginning with an introduction to the history of nanomaterials and their nucleic acid-based subcategories, the book offers a detailed and state-of-the-art survey of the current research into these molecules, efforts to increase their biostability, and their incorporation into a range of industries. The result is an essential contribution to materials science in a variety of life-saving contexts. Nucleic Acid-Based Nanomaterials readers will also find: Application-oriented structure that grounds general concepts in their specific instantiationsDetailed discussion of applications including drug delivery, tissue engineering, antimicrobial therapy, and moreA rigorous yet accessible approach suitable for both academia and industry Nucleic Acid-Based Nanomaterials is ideal for chemists of all types, particularly biochemists and medical chemists, and those in industry.Heart (The human Body: A Closer Look Ser.)
By Shannon Caster. 2010
This compelling book will have readers “heartily” agreeing that Science and Anatomy are pretty cool subjects. This edition includes three-dimensional…
diagrams and detailed full-color photographs. A fact-filled, yet fun, text explains what the heart does, what can go wrong, and how to keep the heart healthy and strong.Vintage Hairstyles: Simple Steps for Retro Hair with a Modern Twist
By Emma Sundh, Sarah Wing. 2015
From the finger waves of the romantic 1910s to the beehive of the rebellious 1960s, retro hair has made a…
comeback. Vintage Hairstyles presents all the tools, techniques, and step-by-step instructions needed to achieve eye-catching looks for every occasion. Trendsetters, hairstylists, and fashionistas will love creating elegant updos for special events or playful curls for everyday excursions. Featuring a history of beauty trends by the decades, a list of must-have hair products, and projects for making chic hair accessories, Vintage Hairstyles showcases classic beauty with a fresh twist.Structural Dynamics in Engineering Design
By Nuno M. M. Maia, Dario Di Maio, Alex Carrella, Francesco Marulo, Chaoping Zang, Jonathan E. Cooper, Keith Worden, Tiago A. N. Silva. 2024
World-class authors describe and illustrate how structural dynamics is applied to the engineering design process Structural Dynamics in Engineering Design…
covers the fundamentals of structural dynamics and its application to the engineering design process, providing all of the necessary information to implement an optimal design process. Each of its seven chapters is written by an expert in the field and provides the reader with the structural dynamic theoretical background and its more practical aspects for the implementation of an advanced design capability. The first three chapters are dedicated to the underlying theory of the three main processes: the fundamentals of vibration theory, the basis of experimental dynamics and the main numerical analysis tools (including reference to the finite element method). Having laid the foundation of the design philosophy, the following three chapters present the reader with the three disciplines of identification, nonlinear analysis and validation/updating. The final chapter presents some applications of the approach to real and complex engineering cases. Key features: Takes a multi-disciplinary approach and contains critical information on theory, testing and numerical analysis for structural dynamics. Includes a chapter on industrial applications (including aircraft design and ground vibration testing), which illustrates the design process and explains how structural dynamics is applied at different stages. The book is a must-have for researchers and practitioners in mechanical and aerospace engineering (in particular test engineers, CAE analysts and structural dynamicists), as well as graduate students in mechanical and aerospace engineering departments.Do Dead People Watch You Shower?: And Other Questions You've Been All but Dying to Ask a Medium
By Concetta Bertoldi. 2008
Medium Concetta Bertoldi answers all your questions about life after life. . . from the irreverent: (If the dead are…
always with us, do they have a XXX view of my bedroom?). . . to the poignant: (Will my deceased father be with me when I walk down the aisle on my wedding day?) . . . to the heartfelt: (When loved ones leave this life too early or under tragic circumstances, are they eternally heartbroken or can they find peace in heaven?)Concetta Bertoldi has been communicating with the "Other Side" since childhood. In Do Dead People Watch You Shower?, the first-ever book of its kind, she exposes the naked truth about the fate and happiness of our late loved ones with no-holds-barred honesty and delightfully wry humor, answering questions that range from the practical to the outrageous. In addition she shares with us her own intimate secrets, revealing with refreshing candor how her miraculous gift has affected her life, her marriage, her friendships, and her career, as well as the myriad ways she has used it to help others.Fire on the Horizon: The Untold Story of the Gulf Oil Disaster
By John Konrad, Tom Shroder. 2011
"A phenomenal feat of journalism. . . . I tore through it like a novel but with the queasy knowledge…
that the whole damn thing is true." —Sebastian Junger, author of The Perfect Storm and WarBlending exclusive first-person interviews and penetrating investigative reporting, oil rig captain John Konrad and veteran Washington Post writer Tom Shroder give the definitive, white-knuckled account of the Deepwater Horizon explosion—as well as a riveting insider’s view of the byzantine culture of offshore drilling that made the disaster inevitable. As the world continues to cope with the oil spill’s grim aftermath—with environmental and economic consequences all the more dire in a region still rebuilding from Hurricane Katrina—Konrad and Schroder’s real-time account of the disaster shows us just where things went wrong, and points the way to a safer future for us all.The Quiet Zone: Unraveling the Mystery of a Town Suspended in Silence
By Stephen Kurczy. 2021
In this riveting account of an area of Appalachia known as the Quiet Zone where cell phones and WiFi are…
banned, journalist Stephen Kurczy explores the pervasive role of technology in our lives and the innate human need for quiet.“Captures the complex beauty of a disconnected way of life.” —The NationWith a new afterword to the paperback editionDeep in the Appalachian Mountains lies the last truly quiet town in America. Green Bank, West Virginia, is a place at once futuristic and old-fashioned: It’s home to the Green Bank Observatory, where astronomers search the depths of the universe using the latest technology, while schoolchildren go without WiFi or iPads. With a ban on all devices emanating radio frequencies that might interfere with the observatory’s telescopes, Quiet Zone residents live a life free from constant digital connectivity. But a community that on the surface seems idyllic is a place of contradictions, where the provincial meets the seemingly supernatural and quiet can serve as a cover for something darker.Stephen Kurczy embedded in Green Bank, making the residents of this small Appalachian village his neighbors. He shopped at the town’s general store, attended church services, went target shooting with a seven-year-old, square-danced with the locals, sampled the local moonshine. In The Quiet Zone, he introduces us to an unforgettable cast of characters. There is a tech buster patrolling the area for illegal radio waves; “electrosensitives” who claim that WiFi is deadly; a sheriff’s department with a string of unsolved murder cases dating back decades; a camp of neo-Nazis plotting their resurgence from a nearby mountain hollow. Amongst them all are the ordinary citizens seeking a simpler way of living. Kurczy asks: Is a less connected life desirable? Is it even possible?The Quiet Zone is a remarkable work of investigative journalism—at once a stirring ode to place, a tautly wound tale of mystery, and a clarion call to reexamine the role technology plays in our lives.Biography of Resistance: The Epic Battle Between People and Pathogens
By Muhammad H. Zaman. 2020
Award-winning Boston University educator and researcher Muhammad H. Zaman provides a chilling look at the rise of antibiotic-resistant superbugs, explaining…
how we got here and what we must do to address this growing global health crisis.In September 2016, a woman in Nevada became the first known case in the U.S. of a person who died of an infection resistant to every antibiotic available. Her death is the worst nightmare of infectious disease doctors and public health professionals. While bacteria live within us and are essential for our health, some strains can kill us. As bacteria continue to mutate, becoming increasingly resistant to known antibiotics, we are likely to face a public health crisis of unimaginable proportions. “It will be like the great plague of the middle ages, the influenza pandemic of 1918, the AIDS crisis of the 1990s, and the Ebola epidemic of 2014 all combined into a single threat,” Muhammad H. Zaman warns.The Biography of Resistance is Zaman’s riveting and timely look at why and how microbes are becoming superbugs. It is a story of science and evolution that looks to history, culture, attitudes and our own individual choices and collective human behavior. Following the trail of resistant bacteria from previously uncontacted tribes in the Amazon to the isolated islands in the Arctic, from the urban slums of Karachi to the wilderness of the Australian outback, Zaman examines the myriad factors contributing to this unfolding health crisis—including war, greed, natural disasters, and germophobia—to the culprits driving it: pharmaceutical companies, farmers, industrialists, doctors, governments, and ordinary people, all whose choices are pushing us closer to catastrophe.Joining the ranks of acclaimed works like Microbe Hunters, The Emperor of All Maladies, and Spillover, A Biography of Resistance is a riveting and chilling tale from a natural storyteller on the front lines, and a clarion call to address the biggest public health threat of our time.A Healthy You: Boost Your Energy, Live Cleaner, and Look and Feel Younger Every Day
By Carol Alt, Jocelyn Steiber. 2015
Carol Alt, supermodel, actress, raw food expert, entrepreneur, and host of the hit Fox News health and wellness show A…
Healthy You, offers her unique blend of alternative and practical diet, fitness, beauty, and aging advice to help you live healthier everyday.In her first fully illustrated lifestyle book, bestselling author, supermodel, and TV host Carol Alt shows readers how to approach all aspects of life with energy and vitality—from diet and fitness, to beauty and fashion. Drawing on her years of experience as a raw food advocate and ambassador for a mindful, health-focused lifestyle, Carol guides readers of all ages with simple, effective advice on how to live a more balanced, healthy, beautiful life. She demystifies and takes readers step-by-step through the recipes, regimens, healthy habits, diets, and products—from raw eating to do-it-yourself, chemical-free beauty products—that really work.Carol curates the very best advice from her favorite doctors, fitness gurus, dietitians, and the hundreds of experts she’s interviewed on her television show. Never afraid to try the trends that may seem unusual, difficult, or fringe, Carol is devoted to making alternative ideas accessible to everyone. In A Healthy You, she brings readers the best of what she’s found. Filled with practical advice, expert guidance on living a cleaner, greener lifestyle, engaging stories from Carol’s own life, and 150 photos throughout, A Healthy You will inspire everyone to take charge of their health every day, in new and exciting ways.Ben Thompson—author of Badass, creator of the epic website badassoftheweek.com, and the Internet’s foremost expert on badassitude—is back to enthrall…
lovers of skull-smashing, bone-crushing bad behavior with his latest compendium, Badass: The Birth of a Legend. Like its macho predecessor, Badass: The Birth of a Legend celebrates fearless berserkers of every stripe, male and female, but this time pulls them from the hoary pages of mythology, fantasy fiction, and the silver screen—from Zeus to Beowulf to Dirty Harry Callahan, the most merciless gods, monsters, heroes, villains, and mythical creatures ever envisioned. Forget your whiny Twilight vampires and werewolves, these badasses kick butt!Fly-Fishing the 41st: From Connecticut to Mongolia and Home Again—A Fisherman's Oddesy
By James Prosek. 2003
“James Prosek has eloquently demonstrated that angling is a kind of universal language. . . . he has taken us…
on an unforgettable journey.” — Thomas McGuane, author of The Cadence of Grass and The Longest Silence: A Life in FishingThe New York Times has called James Prosek "the Audubon of the fishing world," and in Fly-Fishing the 41st, he uses his talent for descriptive writing to illuminate an astonishing adventure. Beginning in his hometown of Easton, Connecticut, Prosek circumnavigates the globe along the 41st parallel, traveling through Spain, Greece, Turkey, Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, China, and Japan. Along the way he shares some of the best fishing in the world with a host of wonderfully eccentric and memorable characters.A Beginner's Guide to Constructing the Universe: The Mathematical Archetypes of Nature, Art, and Science
By Michael S. Schneider. 1994
Discover how mathematical sequences abound in our natural world in this definitive exploration of the geography of the cosmosYou need…
not be a philosopher or a botanist, and certainly not a mathematician, to enjoy the bounty of the world around us. But is there some sort of order, a pattern, to the things that we see in the sky, on the ground, at the beach? In A Beginner's Guide to Constructing the Universe, Michael Schneider, an education writer and computer consultant, combines science, philosophy, art, and common sense to reaffirm what the ancients observed: that a consistent language of geometric design underpins every level of the universe, from atoms to galaxies, cucumbers to cathedrals. Schneider also discusses numerical and geometric symbolism through the ages, and concepts such as periodic renewal and resonance. This book is an education in the world and everything we can't see within it.Contains numerous b&w photos and illustrations.Alright, Alright, Alright: The Oral History of Richard Linklater's Dazed and Confused
By Melissa Maerz. 2020
The definitive oral history of the cult classic Dazed and Confused, featuring behind-the-scenes stories from the cast, crew, and Oscar-nominated director…
Richard Linklater.Dazed and Confused not only heralded the arrival of filmmaker Richard Linklater, it introduced a cast of unknowns who would become the next generation of movie stars. Embraced as a cultural touchstone, the 1993 film would also make Matthew McConaughey’s famous phrase—alright, alright, alright—ubiquitous. But it started with a simple idea: Linklater thought people might like to watch a movie about high school kids just hanging out and listening to music on the last day of school in 1976. To some, that might not even sound like a movie. But to a few studio executives, it sounded enough like the next American Graffiti to justify the risk. Dazed and Confused underperformed at the box office and seemed destined to disappear. Then something weird happened: Linklater turned out to be right. This wasn’t the kind of movie everybody liked, but it was the kind of movie certain people loved, with an intensity that felt personal. No matter what their high school experience was like, they thought Dazed and Confused was about them.Alright, Alright, Alright is the story of how this iconic film came together and why it worked. Combining behind-the-scenes photos and insights from nearly the entire cast, including Matthew McConaughey, Parker Posey, Ben Affleck, Joey Lauren Adams, and many others, and with full access to Linklater’s Dazed archives, it offers an inside look at how a budding filmmaker and a cast of newcomers made a period piece that would feel timeless for decades to come.Periodic Tales: A Cultural History of the Elements, from Arsenic to Zinc
By Hugh Aldersey-Williams. 2011
In the spirit of A Short History of Nearly Everything comes Periodic Tales. Award-winning science writer Hugh Andersey-Williams offers readers…
a captivating look at the elements—and the amazing, little-known stories behind their discoveries. Periodic Tales is an energetic and wide-ranging book of innovations and innovators, of superstition and science and the myriad ways the chemical elements are woven into our culture, history, and language. It will delight readers of Genome, Einstein’s Dreams, Longitude, and The Age of Wonder.Tales from Both Sides of the Brain: A Life in Neuroscience
By Michael S. Gazzaniga. 2015
Michael S. Gazzaniga, one of the most important neuroscientists of the twentieth century, gives us an exciting behind-the-scenes look at…
his seminal work on that unlikely couple, the right and left brain. Foreword by Steven Pinker.In the mid-twentieth century, Michael S. Gazzaniga, “the father of cognitive neuroscience,” was part of a team of pioneering neuroscientists who developed the now foundational split-brain brain theory: the notion that the right and left hemispheres of the brain can act independently from one another and have different strengths.In Tales from Both Sides of the Brain, Gazzaniga tells the impassioned story of his life in science and his decades-long journey to understand how the separate spheres of our brains communicate and miscommunicate with their separate agendas. By turns humorous and moving, Tales from Both Sides of the Brain interweaves Gazzaniga’s scientific achievements with his reflections on the challenges and thrills of working as a scientist. In his engaging and accessible style, he paints a vivid portrait not only of his discovery of split-brain theory, but also of his comrades in arms—the many patients, friends, and family who have accompanied him on this wild ride of intellectual discovery.The Fragile Earth: Writing from The New Yorker on Climate Change
By Elizabeth Kolbert. 2020
A New York Times New & Noteworthy BookOne of the Daily Beast’s 5 Essential Books to Read Before the ElectionA…
collection of the New Yorker’s groundbreaking reporting from the front lines of climate change—including writing from Bill McKibben, Elizabeth Kolbert, Ian Frazier, Kathryn Schulz, and moreJust one year after climatologist James Hansen first came before a Senate committee and testified that the Earth was now warmer than it had ever been in recorded history, thanks to humankind’s heedless consumption of fossil fuels, New Yorker writer Bill McKibben published a deeply reported and considered piece on climate change and what it could mean for the planet. At the time, the piece was to some speculative to the point of alarmist; read now, McKibben’s work is heroically prescient. Since then, the New Yorker has devoted enormous attention to climate change, describing the causes of the crisis, the political and ecological conditions we now find ourselves in, and the scenarios and solutions we face. The Fragile Earth tells the story of climate change—its past, present, and future—taking readers from Greenland to the Great Plains, and into both laboratories and rain forests. It features some of the best writing on global warming from the last three decades, including Bill McKibben’s seminal essay “The End of Nature,” the first piece to popularize both the science and politics of climate change for a general audience, and the Pulitzer Prize–winning work of Elizabeth Kolbert, as well as Kathryn Schulz, Dexter Filkins, Jonathan Franzen, Ian Frazier, Eric Klinenberg, and others. The result, in its range, depth, and passion, promises to bring light, and sometimes heat, to the great emergency of our age.Good Without God: What a Billion Nonreligious People Do Believe
By Greg Epstein. 2009
A provocative and positive response to Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and other New Atheists, Good Without God makes…
a bold claim for what nonbelievers do share and believe. Author Greg Epstein, the Humanist chaplain at Harvard, offers a world view for nonbelievers that dispenses with the hostility and intolerance of religion prevalent in national bestsellers like God is Not Great and The God Delusion. Epstein’s Good Without God provides a constructive, challenging response to these manifestos by getting to the heart of Humanism and its positive belief in tolerance, community, morality, and good without having to rely on the guidance of a higher being.