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Nature and Science June 2019
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| Infinite Powers: How Calculus Reveals the Secrets of the Universe by Steven StrogatzWhat it is: an applied mathematician's surprisingly accessible guide to calculus, which outlines its basic concepts while recounting its history.
Food for thought: "If anything deserves to be called the secret of the universe, calculus is it."
You might also like: Mathematician Amir Alexander's similarly engaging Infinitesimal, which also explores a world-changing concept. |
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Eat like a fish : my adventures as a fisherman turned restorative ocean farmer
by Bren Smith
Part memoir, part manifesto, in Eat Like a Fish Bren Smith—a former commercial fisherman turned restorative ocean farmer—shares a bold new vision for the future of food: seaweed.
Through tales that span from his childhood in Newfoundland to his early years on the high seas aboard commercial fishing trawlers, to pioneering new forms of ocean farming, Smith introduces the world of sea-based agriculture, and advocates getting ocean vegetables onto American plates. Written with the humor and swagger of a fisherman telling a late-night tale, this is a monumental work of deeply personal food policy that will profoundly change the way we think about what we eat.
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The Mayo Clinic : Faith, Hope, Science
by David Blistein
On September 30, 1889, W.W. Mayo and his sons Will and Charlie performed the very first operation at a brand-new Catholic hospital in Rochester, Minnesota. It was called Saint Marys. The hospital arose out of the devastation of a tornado that had struck the town six years earlier. After the storm, Mother Alfred Moes of the Sisters of Saint Francis told the Mayos that she had a vision of building a hospital that would “become world renowned for its medical arts.”
Based on the film by acclaimed documentary filmmaker Ken Burns, The Mayo Clinic: Faith, Hope, Science chronicles the history of this unique organization, from its roots as an unlikely partnership between a country doctor and a Franciscan order of nuns to its position today as a worldwide model for patient care, research, and education.
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The perfect predator : a scientist's race to save her husband from a deadly superbug
by Steffanie Strathdee
Epidemiologist Steffanie Strathdee and her husband, psychologist Tom Patterson, were vacationing in Egypt when Tom came down with a stomach bug. What at first seemed like a case of food poisoning quickly turned critical, and by the time Tom had been transferred via emergency medevac to the world-class medical center at UC San Diego, where both he and Steffanie worked, blood work revealed why modern medicine was failing: Tom was fighting one of the most dangerous, antibiotic- resistant bacteria in the world.
Frantic, Steffanie combed through research old and new and came across phage therapy: the idea that the right virus, aka "the perfect predator," can kill even the most lethal bacteria. Phage treatment had fallen out of favor almost 100 years ago, after antibiotic use went mainstream. Now, with time running out, Steffanie appealed to phage researchers all over the world for help. She found allies at the FDA, researchers from Texas A&M, and a clandestine Navy biomedical center-and together they resurrected a forgotten cure.
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The secret wisdom of nature : trees, animals, and the extraordinary balance of all living things--stories from science and observation
by Peter Wohlleben
In The Secret Wisdom of Nature, master storyteller and international sensation Peter Wohlleben takes readers on a thought-provoking exploration of the vast natural systems that make life on Earth possible. In this tour of an almost unfathomable world, Wohlleben describes the fascinating interplay between animals and plants and answers such questions as: How do they influence each other? Do lifeforms communicate across species boundaries? And what happens when this finely tuned system gets out of sync? By introducing us to the latest scientific discoveries and recounting his own insights from decades of observing nature, one of the world’s most famous foresters shows us how to recapture our sense of awe so we can see the world around us with completely new eyes.
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