Altri libri che potrebbero interessarti

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  Slippery Beast - A True Crime...

  Ellen Ruppel Shell

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  What is it about eels? Depending on who you ask, they are a pest, a fascination, a threat, a pot of gold. Eels emerged some 200 million years ago, weathered mass extinctions and continental shifts, and were once among the world's most abundant freshwater fish. But since the 1970s, their numbers have plummeted. Because eels—as unagi—are another thing: delicious. 
   
   
   
  In Slippery Beast, journalist Ellen Ruppel Shell travels in the world of "eel people," pursuing a fascination with this mysterious creature. Despite centuries of study by thinkers from Aristotle to Leeuwenhoek to Sigmund Freud, much about eels remains unknown. Eels cannot be bred reliably in captivity and infant eels are unbelievably valuable. A pound of the tiny, translucent, bug-eyed "elvers" caught in the fresh waters of Maine can command $3,000 or more on the black market. Illegal trade in eels is an international scandal measured in billions of dollars every year. In Maine, federal investigators have risked their lives to bust poaching rings. 
   
   
   
  Ruppel Shell follows the elusive eel from Maine to the Sargasso Sea, stalking riversides, fishing holes, laboratories, restaurants, courtrooms, and America's first commercial eel "family farm." This is an enthralling, globe-spanning look at an animal that you may never come to love, but which will never fail to astonish you.

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  The Dark Energy Puzzle - Piecing...

  Dirk Fallon

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  In the late 1990s, astronomers made a discovery that completely changed our understanding of the universe. While studying distant supernovae to measure how fast the universe was expanding, researchers expected to see signs that the expansion was slowing down due to gravity. Instead, they found the opposite—the expansion was speeding up. This unexpected observation pointed to something completely unknown, an unseen force that counteracts gravity and drives galaxies apart at an accelerating rate. That force was given the name "dark energy." 
  The term "dark" doesn't mean this energy is black or shadowy, but rather that it's unknown and mysterious. Scientists still don’t know what it really is, only that it seems to make up around 68 percent of the total energy in the universe. That’s a huge amount, especially considering that everything we can see—stars, planets, gas, dust—makes up less than 5 percent. The rest is made of dark matter, another unknown component, but dark energy is even more puzzling. It doesn’t clump like matter does, and it seems to be spread evenly through space. 
  Astronomers began piecing this together by observing Type Ia supernovae, which are exploding stars that always reach roughly the same brightness. Because of that consistency, they can be used like cosmic measuring sticks. When scientists looked at supernovae that were billions of light-years away, they saw that those objects were dimmer than expected. That meant they were farther away than predicted, and the only explanation was that the universe had expanded more than anyone thought. It wasn’t just expanding—it was accelerating.

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  Rare & Severe Infections - From...

  Lilly Richardsen

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  Uncommon infections represent the frontiers of medical challenge, where diagnostic complexity, rapid progression, and severe outcomes converge to create some of the most daunting scenarios in clinical medicine. This comprehensive exploration delves into three distinct yet equally consequential infections—Meningitis, Elephantiasis (Lymphatic Filariasis), and Legionella pneumophila infection—each exemplifying the remarkable diversity of microbial pathogenesis and the profound ways in which rare infections can transform human health and lives. 
  The narrative of rare and severe infections extends beyond their medical rarity; it encompasses the intricate biological mechanisms, unique transmission patterns, and complex clinical presentations that make these conditions simultaneously fascinating to researchers and devastating to patients. By examining the neurological inflammation of meningitis, the disfiguring lymphatic disruption of elephantiasis, and the respiratory assault of Legionella, this book illuminates how different pathogenic organisms exploit specific biological vulnerabilities to produce extraordinarily consequential diseases. Readers will journey through the epidemiological landscapes where these infections emerge—from the global burden of meningococcal disease to the tropical endemic regions of lymphatic filariasis and the modern built environments where Legionella thrives—while exploring the scientific advances in diagnosis, treatment, and prevention that offer hope against these formidable pathogens.

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  The Complete (Short) Guide to...

  Adam Rutherford, Hannah Fry

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  Despite our clever linguistic abilities, humans are spectacularly ill-equipped to comprehend what's happening in the universe. The Complete Guide to Absolutely Everything (Abridged) tells the story of how we came to suppress our monkey minds and perceive the true nature of reality. 
   
   
   
  Geneticist Adam Rutherford and mathematician Hannah Fry guide listeners through time and space, through our bodies and brains, showing how emotions shape our view of reality, how our minds tell us lies, and why a mostly bald and curious ape decided to begin poking at the fabric of the universe. 
   
   
   
  Rutherford and Fry shine as science sleuths, wrestling with some truly head-scratching questions: Where did time come from? Do we have free will? Does my dog love me? Hilarious sidebars present memorable scientific oddities: for example, hypnotized snails, human-sized ants, and the average time it takes most animals to evacuate their bladders. 
   
   
   
  Both rigorous and playful, The Complete Guide to Absolutely Everything (Abridged) is a celebration of the weirdness of the cosmos, the strangeness of humans, and the joys and follies of scientific discovery.

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  A Brief History of Timekeeping -...

  Chad Orzel

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  Predating written language and marching on through human history, the desire for ever-better timekeeping has spurred technological innovation and sparked theories that radically reshaped our understanding of the universe and our place in it. 
   
   
   
  Chad Orzel, a physicist and bestselling author, continues his tradition of demystifying thorny scientific concepts by using the clocks and calendars central to our everyday activities as a jumping-off point to explore the science underlying the ways we keep track of our time. Ancient solstice markers depend on the basic astrophysics of our solar system; mechanical clocks owe their development to Newtonian physics; and the ultra-precise atomic timekeeping that enables GPS hinges on the predictable oddities of quantum mechanics. 
   
    
   
  Along the way, Orzel visits the delicate negotiations involved in Gregorian calendar reform, the intricate and entirely unique system employed by the Maya, and how the problem of synchronizing clocks at different locations ultimately required us to abandon the idea of time as an absolute and universal quantity. Sharp and engaging, A Brief History of Timekeeping is a story not just about the science of sundials, sandglasses, and mechanical clocks, but also the politics of calendars and time zones, the philosophy of measurement, and the nature of space and time itself.

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  The Human Gene Editing Debate

  John H. Evans

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  In 2018 the first genetically modified babies were reportedly born in China, made possible by the invention of CRISPR technology in 2012. This controversial advancement overturned the pre-existing moral consensus, which had held for over fifty years before: while gene editing an adult person was morally acceptable, modifying babies, and thus subsequent generations, crossed a significant moral line. If this line is passed over, scientists will be left without an agreed-upon ethical limit. What do we do now? 
   
   
   
  John H. Evans here provides a meta-level guide to how these debates move forward and their significance to society. He explains how the bioethical debate has long been characterized as a slippery slope, with consensually ethical use at the top, nightmarish dystopia at the bottom, and specific agreed-upon limits in between, which draw the lines between the ethical and the unethical. Evans frames his analysis around these limits, or barriers. He examines the history of how barriers were placed, then fell, then replaced by new ones, and discusses how these insights inform where the debate may head. He evaluates other proposed barriers relevant to where we are now, projects that most of the barriers suggested by scientists and bioethicists will not hold, and cautiously identifies a few that could serve as the moral boundary for the next generation.

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