Author Ruth DeFries, Columbia University Professor of sustainable development, suggests that the time has come for us to develop a new approach to the natural world. In particular, we are admonished to adopt a much more empathetic relationship toward nature.
In his book, asteroid researcher Simone Marchi puts these collisions in the foreground, emphasising the chaotic nature of the seemingly steady Solar System as well as the productive benefits of apparently catastrophic impacts.
With his book, Morgan Phillips aims to open our eyes to the adaptations that are already happening all around us, including those that dare not mention climate change, the bad and selfish adaptation moves that may protect the mover at the expense of everybody else, and finally the great adaptations that are fixing a problem in a sustainable and socially just manner.
The theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss explains the underlying physics involved in terms that can be readily understood by a lay audience. This book is greatly facilitated by the numerous diagrams, photographs and charts deployed throughout the text.
Accidents happen, cynics might say, but safety experts insist that accidents don’t happen by themselves. More likely, they are caused by somebody who could have acted differently and thus averted the accident. Even if they are the result of an unlikely coincidence of several inconspicuous contributing factors, there are likely to be several switches that could have been flicked the other way and stopped disaster from happening. Read the book review of the Ethics of Chemistry by Michael Gross.
The myth of the vampire is centuries old. This creature was variously described as a blood-sucking fairy, snake-like with the head and torso of a woman or more often as a shape-changing humanoid creature. Most important and terrifying was its predilection for human blood and the fact that it was un-dead. Read John Mann's book review of Vampirology.
Wiley’s new Handbook of Pyrrolidone and Caprolactam Based Materials –available as a six-volume print set and online edition – details the broad human benefits of the materials, many of which are from the chemist’s viewpoint.
Here the author, orthopaedic surgeon Roy Meals, offers a very readable overview of the various roles played by bones both currently and in the past.
This book, aimed at the non-specialist, aims to explain ‘the real science behind the cosmetics we use’, and in the scene-setting introductory chapter it explains the meaning of organic and inorganic in a scientific sense.
In our quest for sustainability, we’ve forgotten phosphorus. This is what worries two specialists in the complementary fields of soil and water. Writing in an engaging style, transatlantic authors Jim Elser and Phil Haygarth remind us that this ‘Cinderella’ element, essential to life in so many ways – ‘phosphates hold our genes up’, they write – comes from finite resources, which are being squandered.