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Very short introductions volume 128
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English
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Dinosaurs are fascinating creatures and their popularity seems never ending, fueled by films such as Jurassic Park and documentaries such as Walking with Dinosaurs. Yet dinosaurs (or more precisely non-avian dinosaurs) last trod the Earth 65 million years ago. All we know of them today are their fossilized bones, the tracks and traces that they left behind and, in very rare instances, some of the soft tissues or even traces of their chemistry. In...
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Very short introductions volume 599
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English
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Description
What is matter? Matter is the stuff from which we and all the things in the world are made. Everything around us, from desks, to books, to our own bodies are made of atoms, which are small enough that a million of them can fit across the breadth of a human hair. Inside every atom is a tiny nucleus and orbiting the nucleus is a cloud of electrons. The nucleus is made out of protons and neutrons, and by zooming in further you would find that inside...
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Very short introductions volume 732
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English
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Description
"Pseudoscience: A Very Short Introduction explores the philosophical and historical attempts to address this problem of demarcation between science and pseudoscience. Many people would be able to agree on a list of things that fall under the umbrella of pseudoscience - astrology, phrenology, UFOlogy, creationism, and eugenics might come to mind - but a precise definition has proven impossible. This book explores a bewildering array of marginalized...
Author
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Very short introductions volume 399
Language
English
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Description
In this exploration of the concept of the gene, Jonathan Slack looks at the discovery, nature, and role of genes in both evolution and development. Explaining the nature of genetic variation in the human population, how hereditary factors were identified as molecules of DNA, and how certain specific mutations can lead to disease, Slack highlights how DNA variants are used to trace human ancestry and migration, and can also be used by forensic scientists...
Author
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Very short introductions volume 674
Language
English
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Description
All living things are composed of cells, which have fundamentally the same chemistry. Biochemistry is the study of reactions within these cells, and the molecules that are created, manipulated, and destroyed as a result of them. This book discusses the key concepts of biochemistry, as well as the recent discoveries and innovations in the field.-publisher's description.
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English
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"The study of geometry is at least 2500 years old, and it is within this field that the concept of mathematical proof--deductive reasoning from a set of axioms--first arose. To this day geometry remains a very active area of research in mathematics. This Very Short Introduction covers the areas of mathematics falling under geometry, starting with topics such as Euclidean and non-Euclidean geometries, and ranging to curved spaces, projective geometry...
Author
Series
Very short introductions volume 118
Language
English
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Description
In the last few years global awareness of climate change has grown very rapidly-through the school strikes led by Greta Thunberg, groups like Extinction Rebellion, the IPCC's recent high impact reports, TV documentaries, and declarations from governments around the world that we are in a climate emergency. This awareness is continuing to grow, as the science shows us that our planet and our species are facing a massive crisis, which we ourselves have...
Author
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Very short introductions volume 190
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English
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Description
If you move at high speed, time slows down, space squashes up, and you get heavier. Travel fast enough and you could weigh as much as a jumbo jet, be flattened thinner than a CD without feeling a thing-and live forever! As for the angles of a triangle, they do not always have to add up to 180 degrees. And then, of course, there are black holes. These are but a few of the extraordinary consequences of Einstein's theory of relativity. It is now over...
Author
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Very short introductions volume 90
Language
English
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Description
Around thirty years ago, two things happened that were to revolutionize the understanding of our home planet. First, geologists realized that the continents themselves were drifting across the surface of the globe and that oceans were being created and destroyed. Secondly, pictures of the entire planet were returned from space. Suddenly, the Earth began to be viewed as a single entity; a dynamic, interacting whole, controlled by complex processes...
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Very short introductions volume 133
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English
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Description
Why do we measure time in the way that we do? Why is a week seven days long? At what point did minutes and seconds come into being? Why are some calendars lunar and some solar?
The organization of time into hours, days, months, and years seems immutable and universal, but is actually far more artificial than most people realize. For example, the French Revolution resulted in a restructuring of the French calendar, and the Soviet Union experimented...
Author
Series
Very short introductions volume 260
Language
English
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Description
Numbers are integral to our everyday lives and factor into almost everything we do. In this Very Short Introduction, Peter M. Higgins, a renowned popular-science writer, unravels the world of numbers, demonstrating its richness and providing an overview of all the number types that feature in modern science and mathematics. Indeed, Higgins paints a crystal-clear picture of the number world, showing how the modern number system matured over many centuries,...
Author
Series
Very short introductions volume 66
Language
English
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Description
The aim of this book is to explain, carefully but not technically, the differences between advanced, research-level mathematics, and the sort of mathematics we learn at school. The most fundamental differences are philosophical, and listeners of this book will emerge with a clearer understanding of paradoxical-sounding concepts such as infinity, curved space, and imaginary numbers. The first few chapters are about general aspects of mathematical thought....
Author
Series
Very short introductions volume 560
Language
English
Formats
Description
Geophysics is the physics of the Earth. Encompassing areas such as seismology, plate tectonics, gravitational anomalies, and the Earth's magnetic field (present and past, as captured in rocks), it brings these together to give clues to both the structure and the workings of our planet. This Very Short Introduction describes the internal and external processes that affect the Earth, as well as the methods, using earth-and satellite-based data, used...
Author
Series
Very short introductions volume 144
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English
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Description
"How does the brain work? Michael O'Shea provides an accessible introduction to the key questions and current state of brain research, and shows that, though we know a surprising amount, we are still far from having a complete understanding. The topics he discusses range from how we sense things and how memories are stored, to the evolution of brains and nervous systems from primitive organisms, as well as altered mental states, brain-computer hybrids,...
Author
Series
Very short introductions volume 568
Language
English
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Description
"Sexual selection, Darwin's other big idea, is the selection for particular traits and behaviours that results from (usually) female choice and male competition. It can produce flamboyant features, such as the peacock's tail, which would seem to be detrimental to survival. This work explores our understanding of how sexual selection works." --Publisher description.
Author
Series
Very short introductions volume 100
Language
English
Formats
Description
"Less than 450 years ago, all European scholars believed that the Earth was at the centre of a Universe that was at most a few million miles in extent, and that the planets, sun, and stars all rotated around this centre. Less than 250 years ago, they believed that the Universe was created essentially in its present state about 6000 years ago. Even less than 150 years ago, the view that living species were the result of special creation by God was...
Author
Series
Very short introductions volume 289
Language
English
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Description
"The periodic table of elements, first encountered by many of us at school, provides an arrangement of the chemical elements, ordered by their atomic number, electron configuration, and recurring chemical properties. In this Very Short Introduction, Eric Scerri presents a modern and fresh exploration of this fundamental topic in the physical sciences, considering the deeper implications of the arrangements of the table to atomic physics and quantum...
Author
Series
Very short introductions volume 558
Language
English
Formats
Description
"Humanity's impact on the planet has been profound. From fire, intensive hunting, and agriculture, it has accelerated into rapid climate change, widespread pollution, plastic accumulation, and the mass extinction of species--changes that have left a mark in the geological record of the rocks. Yet, the proposal for a new unit of geological time--the Anthropocene Epoch--has raised debate far beyond geological circles. The Anthropocene has emerged as...
Author
Series
Very short introductions volume 539
Language
English
Description
"Since long before computers were even thought of, data has been collected and organized by diverse cultures across the world. Once access to the Internet became a reality for large swathes of the world's population, the amount of data generated each day became huge, and continues to grow exponentially. It includes all our uploaded documents, video, and photos, all our social media traffic, our online shopping, even the GPS data from our cars. 'Big...
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English
Description
The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries witnessed such fervent investigations of the natural world that the period has been called the "Scientific Revolution." New ideas and discoveries not only redefined what human beings believed, knew, and could do, but also forced them to redefine themselves with respect to the strange new worlds revealed by ships and scalpels, telescopes and microscopes, experimentation and contemplation. Explanatory systems...
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