Showing titles in History

In this thought-provoking exploration of climate change, the authors delve into the complex interactions that shape our planet’s climate. As listeners, you embark on a journey to understand the intricate dynamics at play. Let’s dive into the facts, dispel myths, and encourage critical thinking.

Embark on a captivating voyage through the skies with "In The Sky With Stars: A History of Air Balloons." This meticulously crafted exploration unveils the extraordinary story of humanity's quest to conquer the skies, from the pioneering days of the Montgolfier brothers to the modern frontiers of space exploration.

Does life exist on Mars? The question has captivated humans for centuries, but today it has taken on new urgency. NASA plans to send astronauts to Mars orbit by the 2030s. SpaceX wants to go by 2024, while Mars One wants to land a permanent settlement there in 2032. As we gear up for missions like these, we have a responsibility to think deeply about what kinds of life may already inhabit the planet - and whether we have the right to invite ourselves in.

Von der Sonnenuhr zum Fischer-Dübel: Die Welt der Technik in 100 Objekten. Von einem Cembalo aus dem Venedig des 16. Jahrhunderts über den Benz-Patent-Motorwagen Nr. 1 und die Aufnahme Röntgens von der Hand seiner Frau bis zu einer Recyclingtasche und dem mRNA-Impfstoff gegen COVID-19 von BioNTech – jedes dieser 100 Objekte erzählt seine Geschichte auf mehreren Ebenen.

Tant de découvertes ces dernières années ont achevé de nous perdre dans le labyrinthe des premiers hommes et la diversité de nos ancêtres. Pour suivre cette longue évolution, d'abord simienne et partagée, puis tout à fait humaine et unique, Pascal Picq raconte dans un récit complètement inédit nos origines communes avec les singes. Cela se passe au cœur de l'ère tertiaire, durant le long Miocène (de -23 à -5,5 millions d'années), l'âge d'or des hominoïdes. Et cela, plusieurs millions d'années avant l'émergence de notre lignée africaine !

Für Ian McEwan ist die Geschichte der Wissenschaft eine faszinierende Saga voller intellektuellem Mut, harter Arbeit, tausendfachem Scheitern und kurzen Momenten der Inspiration. Sie ist auch eine Einladung, sich zu wundern und zu freuen. Anhand von Figuren wie Darwin, Einstein oder Turing erforscht Ian McEwan in diesen brillanten Essays das Verhältnis von Wissenschaft und Literatur, Ratio und Glauben und ihren Bezug zu unserer menschlichen Natur.

When Columbus first returned to Spain from the Caribbean, he dazzled King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella with exotic parrots, tropical flowers, and bits of gold. Inspired by the promise of riches, countless seafarers poured out of the Iberian Peninsula and wider Europe in search of spices, treasure, and land. Many returned with strange tales of the New World. Curiosity began to percolate through Europe as the New World’s people, animals, and plants ruptured prior assumptions about the biblical description of creation.

When Galileo looked to the sky with his perspicillum, or spyglass, roughly 400 years ago, he could not have fathomed the amount of change his astonishing findings a seemingly flat moon magically transformed into a dynamic, crater-filled orb and a large, black sky suddenly held millions of galaxies would have on civilizations.

In Wonder Women, author Sam Maggs tells the stories of the brilliant, brainy, and totally rad women in history who broke barriers as scientists, engineers, mathematicians, adventurers, and inventors. Also features interviews with real-life women in STEM careers, an extensive bibliography, and a guide to women-centric science and technology organizations - all to show the many ways the geeky girls of today can help to build the future.

At the height of World War I, history’s most lethal influenza virus erupted in an army camp in Kansas, moved east with American troops, then exploded, killing as many as 100 million people worldwide. It killed more people in twenty-four months than AIDS killed in twenty-four years, more in a year than the Black Death killed in a century. But this was not the Middle Ages, and 1918 marked the first collision of science and epidemic disease.

We all know the history of science that we learned from grade school textbooks: how Galileo used his telescope to show that the earth was not the center of the universe; how Newton divined gravity from the falling apple; how Einstein unlocked the mysteries of time and space with a simple equation. This history is made up of long periods of ignorance and confusion, punctuated once an age by a brilliant thinker who puts it all together. These few tower over the ordinary masses, and in the traditional account, it is to them that we owe science in its entirety. This belief is wrong.

Alzheimer’s disease, a haunting and harrowing ailment, is one of the world’s most common causes of death. Alzheimer’s lingers for years, with patients’ outward appearance unaffected while their cognitive functions fade away. Patients lose the ability to work and live independently, to remember and recognize. There is still no proven way to treat Alzheimer’s because its causes remain unknown. Mind Thief is a comprehensive and engaging history of Alzheimer’s that demystifies efforts to understand the disease.

Una selezione di passi salienti fra le più conosciute opere filosofiche del XVII e XVIII secolo in Italia. Autori universalmente celebrati come pensatori...

De historische Verlichting wordt vandaag zowel verguisd als opgehemeld. Sommigen ontwaren in onze politieke zeden een Verlichtingsfundamentalisme, anderen menen dat de idealen van de Verlichting bedreigd worden. In deze serie hoorcolleges worden de verschillende aspecten van de Verlichting belicht en in verband gebracht met hedendaagse problemen en debatten. De zeven deskundigen benaderen het onderwerp vanuit diverse disciplines: historisch, economisch, religieus, sociaal en juridisch.

Mankind's obsession with felines is an enigma in and of itself. Unlike dogs, famously known as man's most excitable, trustworthy, and loyal friend, cats are oftentimes indifferent, guarded, and yet finicky little furry creatures that only yearn for attention and affection when one is neck-deep in work or otherwise preoccupied. And still, people adore them all the same.

In The Invisible Siege, Werb unpacks the dynamic history and microscopic complexity of an organism that has wreaked cycles of havoc upon the world for millennia. Elegantly tracing decades of scientific investigation, Werb’s book reveals how Baric’s team of scientists hatched an audacious plan not merely to battle COVID-19 but to end pandemics forever.

Trained as a musician, amateur scientist William Herschel found international fame after discovering the planet Uranus in 1781. Though he is still best known for this finding, his partnership with his sister Caroline yielded groundbreaking work, including techniques that remain in use today. The duo pioneered comprehensive surveys of the night sky, carefully categorizing every visible object in the void. Caroline wrote an influential catalogue of nebulae, and William discovered infrared radiation.

An illuminating guide to the scientific and technological achievements of the Middle Ages through the life of a crusading astronomer-monk.

John C. Kendrew (1917-1997) was a pioneer in structural biology and a catalyst for the emergence of molecular biology in the second half of the 20th century. He was the first person to determine the three-dimensional structure of a protein at atomic resolution and, for this, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1962. Kendrew ultimately became an international organizer, administrator, and advocate for science, and his expansive legacy lives on today.

The explorers featured in this volume include: Michele Dougherty, the mathematician who persuaded the Cassini mission to Saturn to make a diversion; Richard Fortey on his love of trilobites; Monica Grady, Meteorite Lady; neurosurgeon Henry Marsh on slicing through our thoughts; the Director of the British Antarctic Survey, Jane Francis; Jocelyn Bell Burnell describing how she missed out on a Nobel Prize; Brian Cox on quantum mechanics; and Nobel Prize winner John Sulston on why he thought it would be a good idea to sequence the human genome.