Showing results by narrator "George Newbern" in Science & Engineering

From the New York Times best-selling author of Rocket Men and the award-winning biographer of Thomas Paine comes the first complete history of the Atomic Age, a brilliant, magisterial account of the men and women who uncovered the secrets of the nucleus, brought its power to America, and ignited the 20th century.

Emotions are inseparable from how we humans think, choose, and act. In Emotional Design, cognitive scientist Don Norman shows how the principles of human psychology apply to the invention and design of new technologies and products. In The Design of Everyday Things, Norman made the definitive case for human-centered design, showing that good design demanded that the user's must take precedence over a designer's aesthetic if anything, from light switches to airplanes, was going to work as the user needed.

The entirety of the human brain’s 4-billion-year story can be summarised as the culmination of five evolutionary breakthroughs, starting from the very first brains, all the way to the modern human brains. Each breakthrough emerged from new sets of brain modifications, and equipped animals with a new suite of intellectual faculties. These five breakthroughs are the organising map to this book, and they make up our itinerary for our adventure back in time. Each breakthrough also has fascinating corollaries to breakthroughs in AI.

As humans, we all need to belong. While modern social life can make even the best of us feel gawky, for roughly one in five of us, navigating its challenges is consistently overwhelming - an ongoing maze without an exit. Often unable to grasp social cues or master the skills and grace necessary for smooth interaction, we feel out of sync with those around us. Though individuals may recognize their awkward disposition, they rarely understand why they are like this.

Over the years, color has dazzled, enhanced, and clarified the world we see. The experimental palettes of painting, the advent of the color photograph, Technicolor pictures, color printing, and so on have created a vivid and vibrant continuum. These ways of representing reality in “living color” echo our evolutionary reliance on and indeed privileging of color as a complex and vital form of consumption, classification, and creation. It’s everywhere we look, yet do we really know much of anything about it?

In What Can I Do? Fonda’s deeply personal journey as an activist is weaved alongside interviews with leading climate scientists and discussions of issues such as water, migration and human rights to emphasise what is at stake. Throughout, Fonda provides concrete solutions and actions that everybody can take in order to combat the climate crisis in their community. As Annie Leonard, executive director of Greenpeace US and Fonda's partner in developing FDF, has declared, 'Change is inevitable; by design, or by disaster'.

On June 5, 1981, the scientific community received a wake-up call from the CDC in the form of a terrible new illness that the world would soon know as AIDS. Three decades later, remarkable progress has been made, but much more remains to be understood and to be done. In this audiobook, we explore where the disease came from, how it works, how it spreads, the search for a vaccine, and cultural and sociological factors.

We stand on the brink of a technological revolution. In the near future, most of us will not own automobiles but will travel instead in driverless electric vehicles summoned at the touch of an app. We will be liberated from driving, so that the time we spend in cars can be put to more productive use. We will prevent more than 90 percent of car crashes, provide freedom of mobility to the elderly and disabled and decrease our dependence on fossil fuels. Autonomy tells the story of the maverick engineers and computer experts who triggered the revolution.

The world's largest land mammal could help us end cancer. The fastest bird is showing us how to solve a century-old engineering mystery. The oldest tree is giving us insights into climate change. The loudest whale is offering clues about the impact of solar storms. For a long time, scientists ignored superlative life forms as outliers. Increasingly, though, researchers are coming to see great value in studying plants and animals that exist on the outermost edges of the bell curve.

While cells are commonly considered the building block of living things, it is actually the communication between cells that brings us to life, controlling our bodies and brains, determining whether we are healthy or sick, and directly influencing how we think, feel, and behave. In The Secret Language of Cells, doctor and neuroscientist Jon Lieff lets us listen in on these conversations, and reveals their significance for everything from mental health to cancer.

This fresh and exciting approach to science, skepticism, and critical thinking will enlighten and inspire listeners of all ages. With a mix of wit and wisdom, it challenges everyone to think like a scientist, embrace the skeptical life, and improve their critical thinking skills. Think shows you how to better navigate through the maze of biases and traps that are standard features of every human brain.

Vitamin C begins with scurvy, which afflicted Europe for four hundred years and killed millions. The reasons that a disease whose cure was known from the outset persisted over that time are at once baffling and familiar, and these trials eventually lead to invention of the science of epidemiology. Author Stephen M. Sagar MD then chronicles the discovery of vitamins at the beginning of the twentieth century, a story that encapsulates the rise of a scientific approach to nutrition but with surprising twists and turns.

In this book, Hod Lipson and Melba Kurman offer listeners insight into the risks and benefits of driverless cars, and a lucid and engaging explanation of the enabling technology. Recent advances in software and robotics are toppling long-standing technological barriers that for decades have confined self-driving cars to the realm of fantasy. A new kind of artificial intelligence software called deep learning gives cars rapid and accurate visual perception. Human drivers can relax and take their eyes off the road.

Recently recovered from his epic bicycle journey that took him from the Delaware shore to the Oregon coast, distinguished climate scientist David Goodrich sets out on his bike again to traverse the Western Interior Seaway - an ancient ocean that once spread across half of North America. When the waters cleared a geologic age ago, what was left behind was vast flat prairie, otherworldly rock formations, and oil shale deposits.

In Cyber Hacking: Wars in Virtual Space, we peer behind the cyber curtain. First, we look at the hackers - who they are, how they work, their motivations, and methods. The opening article examines hardware - specifically microprocessors and why they are vulnerable to tampering. Then we turn to the internal attacks, the worms and viruses whose resulting damage ranges from merely inconvenient and attention-getting to expensive and dangerous. Next, we take a broad look at issues of privacy and the technology used to gather and track personal information.

The gray wolf has made an astonishing comeback in Washington. Nearly eradicated by the 1990s, conservationists and environmentalists have cheered its robust return to the state over the last two decades. But Washington ranchers are not so joyous. When wolves prey on livestock, ranchers view their livelihood as under attack. In The Return of Wolves, journalist Eli Francovich investigates how we might mend this divide while keeping wolf populations thriving.

For the many millions of headache sufferers and fans of Mary Roach, Siddartha Mukerjee, and Ed Yong, a deeply reported, sometimes harrowing, and frequently humorous journey into the author’s own excruciating headaches, and the science behind these surprisingly mysterious disorders that may, finally, offer relief.

Florida's Space Coast tells the compelling story of America's half century in space exploration from the successful launch of the first two-stage rocket in 1950 through the space shuttle missions of 2000. Told from the unique viewpoint of the people who built the Spaceport, this book shows how the space program transformed the east central Florida coast from a traditional citrus production and tourist area to one of the most influential high-tech centers in the nation.