![]() Extreme weather can be a matter of life and death, but even when it is pleasant-72 degrees and sunny-weather is still central to the lives of all Americans. Every year, the Gulf Coast is battered by hurricanes, the Great Plains are ravaged by tornados, the Midwest is pummeled by blizzards, and the temperature in the Southwest reaches a sweltering 120 degrees. Library of Congress QC981.2.W55 2009 | Dewey Decimal 551.5Īmerica has some of the most varied and dynamic weather in the world. The AMS Weather Book: The Ultimate Guide to America's Weather With forays into evolutionary biology, this analysis of mental function answers some of our most common questions about how we've come to be who we are. Moreover, Linden tells us how the constraints of evolved brain design have ultimately led to almost every transcendent human foible: our long childhoods, our extensive memory capacity, our search for love and long-term relationships, our need to create compelling narrative, and, ultimately, the universal cultural impulse to create both religious and scientific explanations. A guide to the strange and often illogical world of neural function, The Accidental Mind shows how the brain is not an optimized, general-purpose problem-solving machine, but rather a weird agglomeration of ad-hoc solutions that have been piled on through millions of years of evolutionary history. In a work at once deeply learned and wonderfully accessible, the neuroscientist David Linden counters the widespread assumption that the brain is a paragon of design-and in its place gives us a compelling explanation of how the brain's serendipitous evolution has resulted in nothing short of our humanity. You've probably seen it before: a human brain dramatically lit from the side, the camera circling it like a helicopter shot of Stonehenge, and a modulated baritone voice exalting the brain's elegant design in reverent tones. The Accidental Mind: How Brain Evolution Has Given Us Love, Memory, Dreams, and God Interwoven with these varied accounts of evolution and its impact are vignettes from Darwin’s life that illustrate the continuity of thought that links Darwin’s work to today’s cutting-edge research.īeautifully illustrated, 99% Ape is a perfect companion to the upcoming celebration of Darwin’s bicentennial and a bracing reminder of the important role evolution still has to play in our understanding of our origins-and our possible futures. Edited by Jonathan Silvertown, the volume brings together experts in a variety of fields pertinent to evolution, from paleobiology to planetary science, comparative anatomy to zoology, and even-for a discussion of legal battles surrounding the teaching of evolution-law. But in the century and a half since the publication of On the Origin of Species, our increasingly sophisticated understanding of genetics has borne out Darwin’s theory: humans share 99% of their genes with chimps (and many even with grapes!).ĩ9% Ape offers an accessible, straightforward introduction to evolution, beginning with Darwin’s discoveries and continuing through the latest genetic discoveries. In his lifetime, Charles Darwin was roundly mocked for suggesting that humans were descended from apes, and even in our own day, the teaching of evolution remains controversial. ![]() Ford's new book, a sequel to the earlier one, makes the quantum world even more accessible. Ken Ford's other books include The Quantum World: Quantum Physics for Everyone (Harvard 2004), which Esquire magazine recommended as the best way to gain an understanding of quantum physics. He assumes a serious reader wanting to gain real understanding of the essentials of quantum physics. Yet Ford does not give us simplistic explanations. This book touches all those topics and more, showing us that disparate natural phenomena, as well as a host of manmade inventions, can be understood in terms of a few key ideas. Some books focus on a single subject such as the standard model of particles, or string theory, or fusion energy. Organized for cover-to-cover reading, 101 Quantum Questions also is great for browsing. ![]() Ford’s lively answers are enriched by Paul Hewitt's drawings, numerous photos of physicists, and anecdotes, many from Ford’s own experience. Nuclear researcher and master teacher, Ford covers everything from quarks, quantum jumps, and what causes stars to shine, to practical applications ranging from lasers and superconductors to light-emitting diodes. These fundamental concepts provide the structure for 101 Quantum Questions, an authoritative yet engaging book for the general reader in which every question and answer brings out one or more basic features of the mysterious world of the quantum-the physics of the very small. Ken Ford’s mission is to help us understand the “great ideas” of quantum physics-ideas such as wave-particle duality, the uncertainty principle, superposition, and conservation.
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