Publisher: IRENA
The report lays out a pathway to a renewable-based energy system and shows that the transition promises substantial gains in GDP, employment, and human welfare in each region of the African continent.
An around-the-world journey to discover where in the wild we can find the elements of life and the surprising ways they're essential to our survival We all know that we depend on elements for survival—from the oxygen in the air we breathe to the carbon in the molecular structures of all living things. But we don't often stop to appreciate how, say, phosphorous holds our DNA together or how potassium powers our optic nerves so that we can see. In The Elements We Live By, physicist and award-winning author Anja Røyne takes us on an astonishing journey through chemistry and physics, introducing the building blocks from which we humans—and the world—are made. Not only does Røyne explain why our bodies need iron, phosphorus, silicon, potassium, and many more elements in just the right amounts in order to function, she also leads us around the world to where these precious elements are found (some of them in ever-shrinking quantities). You'll understand how precariously balanced our lives—and ways of life—really are, and you'll see these unsung heroes of the periodic table in an entirely new light.Show book
Focusing attention can help an animal find food or flee a predator. It also may have led to consciousness. Tracing evolution over millions of years, Michael S. A. Graziano uses examples from the natural world to show how neurons first allowed animals to develop simple forms of attention: taking in messages from the environment, prioritizing them, and responding as necessary. Then some animals evolved covert attention - a roving mental focus that can take in information apart from where the senses are pointed, like hearing sirens at a distance or recalling a memory. Graziano proposes that in order to monitor and control this specialized attention, the brain evolved a simplified model of it - a cartoonish self-description depicting an internal essence with a capacity for knowledge and experience. In other words, consciousness. In this eye-opening work, Graziano accessibly explores how this sense of an inner being led to empathy and formed us into social beings. The theory may point the way to engineers for building consciousness artificially. Graziano discusses what a future with artificial consciousness might be like, including both advantages and risks, and what AI might mean for our evolutionary future.Show book
Mexico’s government said Sunday that 318 people died from last week's major earthquake, including 180 people in Mexico City, where dozens of buildings collapsed. Outside the city, residents of rural towns and villages are assessing massive damage to their homes and businesses. NewsHour Correspondent William Brangham spoke with residents of several communities about what comes next.Show book
From dainty avocets prancing along the seashore to panic-stricken waxwings frenziedly gobbling berries, from barking barnacle geese to soaring skylarks, Derwent May writes about birds in a very special way. As he goes in search of birdlife in a variety of places - the English lanes and rolling corn fields that he loves, the lonely Essex marshes, the remote bird-haunted islands of Grassholm and Fair Isle - May reveals just what it feels like to be a birdwatcher. With him, the reader will experience the excitement of fresh discoveries, the peace and contentment that birds can bring and the comedy to be found both in the behaviour of birds and the human response to them. May is an alert observer of avian habits and manners, describing them vividly and poetically, but underlying everything he writes is scientific knowledge and a wealth of experience. Employing all of these skills and drawing on his popular weekly 'Feather Reports' column from The Times, May creates a fascinating chronicle of a year in the life of our birds, from robins to rarities, with Peter Brown's illustrations adding the perfect finishing touch.Show book
This story of a Scottish lighthouse keeper’s years-long quest to build a road and revive a town is “an incredible testament to one man’s determination” (The Sunday Herald).Shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature’s Ondaatje Prize Calum MacLeod had lived on the northern point of the Scottish island of Raasay since his birth in 1911. He tended the Rona lighthouse at the very tip of his little archipelago—until semi-automation in 1967 reduced his responsibilities. With his newly idle hours, he embarked upon a project: to build a road out of the settlement of Arnish—a road that he hoped would lead new generations of people to this quiet, beautiful place. And so, at the age of fifty-six, Calum MacLeod, the last man left in northern Raasay, set about single-handedly constructing the “impossible” road, using hand tools. It would become a romantic, quixotic venture, a kind of sculpture; an obsessive work of art so perfect in every gradient, culvert, and supporting wall that its creation occupied almost twenty years of his life. In Calum’s Road, Roger Hutchinson recounts the extraordinary story of this remarkable man’s devotion to his visionary project. “MacLeod defied powers [outside] his control in the only way he could . . . paints a compelling picture of the man.” —Sunday Times “Wonderful.” —The Telegraph “A gem of a book.” —Alexander McCall SmithShow book
In 2014 after fighting through yards of bureaucratic red tape, leaving her family, and putting her own health at risk in order to help suffering strangers, Kwan Kew Lai finally arrived in Africa to volunteer as an infectious disease specialist in the heart of the largest Ebola outbreak in history. What she found was not only blistering heat, inhospitable working conditions, and deadly, unrelenting illness, but hope, resilience, and incredible courage.Lest We Forget chronicles the harrowing and inspiring time spent serving on the front lines of the ongoing Ebola outbreak—the complicated Personal Protective Equipment, the chlorine-scented air, the tropical heat, and the heartbreaking difficulties of treating patients she could not touch. Dr. Lai interweaves original diary entries to create a gripping narrative about life, death, and human relationships that will leave no listener unmoved.Lest We Forget exposes the raw brutality of Ebola, as well as the chaotic nature of the undersupplied and understaffed health infrastructure in the developing world. At once a memoir of triumphs and failures and a memorial, this book will ensure that the victims of Ebola and the fighters who sought to heal them will not be forgotten.Show book
