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What Kind of Ancestor Do You Want to Be?
by John Hausdoerffer Brooke Parry Hecht Melissa K. Nelson Katherine Kassouf CummingsAs we face an ever-more-fragmented world, What Kind of Ancestor Do You Want to Be? demands a return to the force of lineage—to spiritual, social, and ecological connections across time. It sparks a myriad of ageless-yet-urgent questions: How will I be remembered? What traditions do I want to continue? What cycles do I want to break? What new systems do I want to initiate for those yet-to-be-born? How do we endure? Published in association with the Center for Humans and Nature and interweaving essays, interviews, and poetry, this book brings together a thoughtful community of Indigenous and other voices—including Linda Hogan, Wendell Berry, Winona LaDuke, Vandana Shiva, Robin Kimmerer, and Wes Jackson—to explore what we want to give to our descendants. It is an offering to teachers who have come before and to those who will follow, a tool for healing our relationships with ourselves, with each other, and with our most powerful ancestors—the lands and waters that give and sustain all life.
What Light Through Yonder Window Breaks?: More Experiments in Atmospheric Physics
by Craig F. Bohren"Informative and engagingly idiosyncratic . . . brings the subject down to earth with offbeat, everyday examples and easy-to-follow experiments. . . . Both professionals and laymen can learn from this book."--The New York Times Book Review"A brilliant collection of intriguing examples of the physics of everyday phenomena, with the examples presented as puzzles."--Discover"A delightful book."--Bulletin of the American Meteorological SocietyThis is the sequel to Craig Bohren's popular Clouds in a Glass of Beer (also available from Dover), the book that made the fascinating world of atmospheric physics accessible to readers without a scientific background. Like its predecessor, this volume abounds in lively writing, fun-filled and easy-to-perform experiments, and numerous photographs and illustrations that offer illuminating and memorable ways to learn about an intriguing branch of science.
What Linnaeus Saw: A Scientist And His Quest To Name And Catalog Every Living Thing
by Karen Magnuson BeilThe globetrotting naturalists of the eighteenth century were the geeks of their day: innovators and explorers who lived at the intersection of science and commerce. Foremost among them was Carl Linnaeus, a radical thinker who revolutionized biology. In What Linnaeus Saw, Karen Magnuson Beil chronicles Linnaeus’s life and career in readable, relatable prose. As a boy, Linnaeus hated school and had little interest in taking up the religious profession his family had chosen. Though he struggled through Latin and theology classes, Linnaeus was an avid student of the natural world and explored the school’s gardens and woods, transfixed by the properties of different plants. At twenty-five, on a solo expedition to the Scandinavian Mountains, Linnaeus documented and described dozens of new species. As a medical student in Holland, he moved among leading scientific thinkers and had access to the best collections of plants and animals in Europe. What Linnaeus found was a world with no consistent system for describing and naming living things—a situation he methodically set about changing. The Linnaean system for classifying plants and animals, developed and refined over the course of his life, is the foundation of modern scientific taxonomy, and inspired and guided generations of scientists. What Linnaeus Saw is rich with biographical anecdotes—from his attempt to identify a mysterious animal given him by the king to successfully growing a rare and exotic banana plant in Amsterdam to debunking stories of dragons and phoenixes. Thoroughly researched and generously illustrated, it offers a vivid and insightful glimpse into the life of one of modern science’s founding thinkers.
What Lives in a Shell (Let's Read And Find Out)
by Kathleen Weidner ZoehfeldDescribes such animals as snails, turtles, and crabs, which live in shells and use coverings as protection
What Magnets Can Do
by Allan FowlerDesigned to provide children with "hands-on" experience in magnetism and magnets.
What Makes a Magnet? (Let's-Read-and-Find-Out Science 2 #Stage 2)
by Dr. Franklyn M. BranleyRead and find out about magnets in this colorfully illustrated nonfiction picture book.Why does a magnet pick up a paper clip but not a leaf or a penny? How can the whole world be a magnet?Follow the step-by-step instructions about how to make your own magnet, and then find out for yourself what makes a magnet!This is a clear and appealing science book for early elementary age kids, both at home and in the classroom. It's a Level 2 Let's-Read-and-Find-Out, which means the book explores more challenging concepts for children in the primary grades. The 100+ titles in this leading nonfiction series are:hands-on and visualacclaimed and trustedgreat for classroomsTop 10 reasons to love LRFOs:Entertain and educate at the same timeHave appealing, child-centered topicsDevelopmentally appropriate for emerging readersFocused; answering questions instead of using survey approachEmploy engaging picture book quality illustrationsUse simple charts and graphics to improve visual literacy skillsFeature hands-on activities to engage young scientistsMeet national science education standardsWritten/illustrated by award-winning authors/illustrators & vetted by an expert in the fieldOver 130 titles in print, meeting a wide range of kids' scientific interestsBooks in this series support the Common Core Learning Standards, Next Generation Science Standards, and the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) standards. Let's-Read-and-Find-Out is the winner of the American Association for the Advancement of Science/Subaru Science Books & Films Prize for Outstanding Science Series.
What Makes a Magnet?
by Franklyn M. BranleyDescribes how magnets work and includes instructions for making a magnet and a compass. A book in the Let's-Read-and-Find-Out Science book series.
What Makes a Magnet Updated Edition (Let's Read And Find Out Science)
by Dr Franklyn M. BranleyDescribes how a magnet works and how it is useful in our every day life.
What Makes a Monster?: Discovering the World's Scariest Creatures (The World of Weird Animals)
by Jess KeatingMonsters are real—and they're everywhere in nature! Animal Planet meets Godzilla in this nonfiction picture book that puts the "Ack!" into backyard science. Some people think monsters are the stuff of nightmares—the stuff of scary movies and Halloween. But monsters can also be found right in your backyard. Animals like aye-ayes, goblin sharks and vampire bats may look scary, but they pose no threat to humans. Others, such as the prairie dog, seem innocent—cute, even—yet their behavior could give you goose bumps. What makes a monster? Read this book to find out, if you dare. . . . Jess Keating and David DeGrand, the author illustrator team behind Pink Is for Blobfish will have readers shrieking with laughter at this latest installment to the World of Weird Animals series.
What Makes a Plant a Plant?
by Gary RushworthFind out about what makes a plant an plant and how plants are different from other living things.
What Makes a Shadow?
by Clyde Robert BullaWhen you run, your shadow runs. But you can never catch it! What makes a shadow? Where does it come from? When the sun is shining, everything has its own shadow -- trees, houses, cars, even clouds and planes way up in the sky. You have a shadow, too. As the sun sets, all shadows become part of a much larger one -- the night! With simple words, Clyde Robert Bulla explains how shadows are produced. Young readers will discover what makes the shadows they see and will be introduced to the fun of making shadows of their own.
What Makes Day and Night
by Franklyn M. Branley"What Makes Day and Night" goes through the cycle of the earth and its revolutions around the sun.
What Makes Different Sounds (I Wonder Why Ser.)
by Lawrence LoweryOn their walk home from school, twins Jane and Jim explore why sounds can be startling (like sirens), soothing (like music), or mysterious (like eerie creaking in an empty house). By coming along, young readers of What Makes Different Sounds? can learn as the twins do. They’ll be introduced to the roles vibration, pitch, and volume play in how rustles, rumbles, and rat-a-tat-tats are made and transferred to their own ears. What Makes Different Sounds? is part of the I Wonder Why book series, written to ignite the curiosity of children in grades K–6 while encouraging them to become avid readers. These books explore the marvels of sound, animals, plants, and other phenomena related to science and nature. Included in each edition is a Parent/Teacher Handbook with coordinating activities. The I Wonder Why series is written by an award-winning science educator and published by NSTA Kids, a division of NSTA Press.
What Makes Olga Run?
by Bruce GriersonPart science book, part journey into the untapped potential of the human spirit, this is the remarkable story of a 94-year-old track and field champion (not retired). Olga Kotelko is most certainly a genetic outlier, one of those rare, blessed people whose bodies resist the degradations of age. More remarkably, she's not alone; there are men and women all over the world competing at ages at which most of us will be lucky even to be alive. But her secret, and theirs, isn't just the luck of the gene pool. It's in the stories of how they exploit their genetic good fortune where the lessons for the rest of us may be found. Author Bruce Grierson, whose much-read 2010 New York Times Magazine piece first brought attention to Olga's remarkable story, accompanies the nonagenarian Canadian to track meets to see her in action, and to research facilities around North America where he and medical researchers hope to learn the secrets of her thriving tissues and age-resistant DNA. And perhaps most importantly, she welcomes him and us into her world, where we learn that your life might benefit most of all from how you live it.From the Hardcover edition.
What Makes Us Smart: The Computational Logic of Human Cognition
by Samuel GershmanHow a computational framework can account for the successes and failures of human cognitionAt the heart of human intelligence rests a fundamental puzzle: How are we incredibly smart and stupid at the same time? No existing machine can match the power and flexibility of human perception, language, and reasoning. Yet, we routinely commit errors that reveal the failures of our thought processes. What Makes Us Smart makes sense of this paradox by arguing that our cognitive errors are not haphazard. Rather, they are the inevitable consequences of a brain optimized for efficient inference and decision making within the constraints of time, energy, and memory—in other words, data and resource limitations. Framing human intelligence in terms of these constraints, Samuel Gershman shows how a deeper computational logic underpins the “stupid” errors of human cognition.Embarking on a journey across psychology, neuroscience, computer science, linguistics, and economics, Gershman presents unifying principles that govern human intelligence. First, inductive bias: any system that makes inferences based on limited data must constrain its hypotheses in some way before observing data. Second, approximation bias: any system that makes inferences and decisions with limited resources must make approximations. Applying these principles to a range of computational errors made by humans, Gershman demonstrates that intelligent systems designed to meet these constraints yield characteristically human errors.Examining how humans make intelligent and maladaptive decisions, What Makes Us Smart delves into the successes and failures of cognition.
What Makes Us Social? (Jean Nicod Lectures)
by Chris Frith Uta FrithA deep dive into the social mind-brain, examining the processes we share with other social animals and illuminating those that are uniquely human.What Makes Us Social? is a scholarly but accessible exploration of the underlying processes that make humans the most social species on the planet. Chris and Uta Frith, pioneers in the field of cognitive neuroscience, review the many forms of social behavior that we humans share with other animals and examine the special form that only humans possess, including its dark side. These uniquely human abilities allow us to reflect on our behavior and share these reflections with other people, which in turn enables us to reason why we do things and to exert some control over our automatic behaviors. As a result, we can learn cooperatively with others and create and value cultural artifacts that survive through the generations. Going beyond how we come to know ourselves and understand the mind of others, Frith and Frith investigate how we adapt mutually to make social interactions work. This book stands out in its application of a computational framework—one that lies at the intersection of psychology and artificial intelligence—to key concepts of social cognition, such as empathy, trust, group identity, and reputation management. Ultimately, What Makes Us Social? is a profound examination of the ways we communicate, cooperate, share, and compete with other humans and how these capabilities define us as a species.
What Makes Your Brain Happy and Why You Should Do the Opposite: Updated and Revised
by David DisalvoThis book reveals a remarkable paradox: what your brain wants is frequently not what your brain needs. In fact, much of what makes our brains "happy" leads to errors, biases, and distortions, which cloud our judgment and muddle our decision making. Science writer David DiSalvo presents evidence from evolutionary and social psychology, cognitive science, neurology, and even marketing and economics. And he interviews many of the top thinkers in psychology and neuroscience today. From this research-based platform, DiSalvo draws out insights that we can use to identify our brains' foibles and turn our awareness into edifying action. Ultimately, he argues, the research does not serve up ready-made answers, but provides us with actionable clues for overcoming the plight of our advanced brains and, consequently, living more fulfilled lives. Newly revised to include the latest research on the workings of the brain, What Makes Your Brain Happy is an essential tool for understanding yourself.
What Makes Your Brain Happy and Why You Should Do the Opposite
by David DisalvoWhy do we routinely choose options that don't meet our short-term needs and undermine our long-term goals? Why do we willingly expose ourselves to temptations that undercut our hard-fought progress to overcome addictions? Why are we prone to assigning meaning to statistically common coincidences? Why do we insist we're right even when evidence contradicts us? This book reveals a remarkable paradox: what your brain wants is frequently not what your brain needs. In fact, much of what makes our brains "happy" leads to errors, biases, and distortions, which make getting out of our own way extremely difficult. The author's search includes forays into evolutionary and social psychology, cognitive science, neurology, and even marketing and economics--as well as interviews with many of the top thinkers in psychology and neuroscience today. From this research-based platform, DiSalvo draws out insights that we can use to identify our brains' foibles and turn our awareness into edifying action. Ultimately, he argues, the research does not serve up ready-made answers, but provides us with actionable clues for overcoming the plight of our advanced brains and, consequently, living more fulfilled lives.
What The Moon Is Like
by Franklyn M. Branley True KelleyImagine that you're walking on the moon. What is it like? For thousands of years people looked up at the moon and wondered about it. Now we know what the moon is like. There is no air on the moon and nothing grows, but there are towering mountains and deep craters--and much more! Colder than the desert, the hotter than the desert, the moon is an amazing place to explore.
What My Sister Taught Me About Magnets
by Jacqueline Barber John Erickson Stacey SchuettNIMAC-sourced textbook
What Nostalgia Was: War, Empire, and the Time of a Deadly Emotion (Chicago Studies in Practices of Meaning)
by Thomas DodmanNostalgia today is seen as essentially benign, a wistful longing for the past. This wasn't always the case, however: from the late seventeenth century through the end of the nineteenth, nostalgia denoted a form of homesickness so extreme that it could sometimes be deadly. What Nostalgia Was unearths that history. Thomas Dodman begins his story in Basel, where a nineteen-year-old medical student invented the new diagnosis, modeled on prevailing notions of melancholy. From there, Dodman traces its spread through the European republic of letters and into Napoleon's armies, as French soldiers far from home were diagnosed and treated for the disease. Nostalgia then gradually transformed from a medical term to a more expansive cultural concept, one that encompassed Romantic notions of the aesthetic pleasure of suffering. But the decisive shift toward its contemporary meaning occurred in the colonies, where Frenchmen worried about racial and cultural mixing came to view moderate homesickness as salutary. An afterword reflects on how the history of nostalgia can help us understand the transformations of the modern world, rounding out a surprising, fascinating tour through the history of a durable idea.
What on Earth?: 100 of Our Planet's Most Amazing New Species
by Quentin Wheeler Sara PennakA chameleon so tiny it can fit on your thumbnail? A spider named after David Bowie? A fungus that turns ants into zombies? What on Earth? What on Earth? is a compendium of the 100 coolest, weirdest, and most intriguing new species of this century as determined by the International Institute for Species Exploration. From animals to plants, fossils to bacteria, What on Earth? is an accessible, informative, and offbeat look at the creatures that also call our planet home, including:• A dangerous cobra that can spit its venom almost ten feet • A miniscule orchid that is less than a half-inch wide • A rainforest mushroom named after the cartoon character Spongebob Squarepants • A beautiful seahorse that changes colors to protect itself from predators • A stick insect that is as long as a man&’s arm Featuring visually striking images alongside surprising facts about each new species, What on Earth? is a testament to the incredible and ever-evolving diversity of our planet.
What Poo Can Do: How Animals Are Fighting the Climate Crisis (Orca Footprints #29)
by Yolanda RidgeWe all know animals are affected by the climate crisis. But did you know the climate crisis is also affected by animals? From whales to dung beetles, What Poo Can Do explores how animals big and small are helping the planet every time they do a number two. Come on a journey to different parts of the world to see how animals are fertilizing plants, storing carbon, preventing fires, reducing methane and even creating color-coded maps—all through their feces! Readers will discover how animal defecation makes a difference when it comes to the climate crisis. It's time to embrace the power of poo! The epub edition of this title is fully accessible.
What Pushes? What Pulls?
by Margie Burton Cathy French Tammy JonesThis book is about the difference between pushing and pulling, and how force moves things from one place to another.