New Books In Science

The Blakiston’s fish owl is the world’s largest living species of owl, with larger females of the species weighing as much as ten pounds. It lives in the Russian Far East and Northern Japan. It is also endangered: global populations are estimated to be around 1500 owls in total. The story of one conservationist’s efforts to save these owls is told in Owls of the Eastern Ice: A Quest to Find and Save the World's Largest Owl (Farrar, Straus and Giroux: 2020), the first book by Jonathan Slaght. The book traces Jonathan’s many trips to the territory of Primorye in the Russian Far East, as part of his research into where the fish owls live and hunt. In the dead of the Russian winter, Jonathan and his Russian compatriots survey the forests, listen for fish owl duets, investigate nests and capture owls in an attempt to learn more about these creatures. Jonathan Slaght is the Russia and Northeast Asia coordinator for the Wildlife Conservation Society, where he manages research projects on endangered species and coord

In this episode I talked to Russell T. Warne about his book In the Know: Debunking 35 Myths about Human Intelligence (Cambridge UP, 2020). Warne  takes on the “nature versus nurture” debate regarding the source of intelligence. It also looks at a host of other angles related to IQ: from the failures of the No Child Left Behind act to what are the disadvantages to society are of an emerging intellectual meritocracy. Along the way it explores differences in scores based on ethnic/racial origins, plus how well EQ holds up as a separate form of intelligence. Russell T. Warne is an associate professor of psychology at Utah Valley University. He earned his PhD in education psychology from Texas A&M University in 2011. Dr. Warne has published two books and nearly 60 scholarly articles. He teaches classes on statistics, psychology, research methods, psychological testing, and intelligence. Dan Hill, PhD, is the author of eight books and leads Sensory Logic, Inc. (https://www.sensorylogic.com). To check out his relate

What is life? For generations, scientists have struggled to make sense of this fundamental question, for life really does look like magic: even a humble bacterium accomplishes things so dazzling that no human engineer can match it. Huge advances in molecular biology over the past few decades have served only to deepen the mystery. In this penetrating and wide-ranging book, world-renowned physicist and science communicator Paul Davies searches for answers in a field so new and fast-moving that it lacks a name; it is a domain where biology, computing, logic, chemistry, quantum physics, and nanotechnology intersect. At the heart of these diverse fields, Davies explains, is the concept of information: a quantity which has the power to unify biology with physics, transform technology and medicine, and force us to fundamentally reconsider what it means to be alive—even illuminating the age-old question of whether we are alone in the universe.  From life’s murky origins to the microscopic engines that run the cells

In The Mutant Project: Inside the Global Race to Genetically Modify Humans (St. Martin's Press, 2020), anthropologist Eben Kirksey visits the frontiers of genetics, medicine, and technology to ask: Whose values are guiding gene editing experiments? And what does this new era of scientific inquiry mean for the future of the human species? At a conference in Hong Kong in November 2018, Dr. He Jiankui announced that he had created the first genetically modified babies—twin girls named Lulu and Nana—sending shockwaves around the world. A year later, a Chinese court sentenced Dr. He to three years in prison for “illegal medical practice.” As scientists elsewhere start to catch up with China’s vast genetic research program, gene editing is fueling an innovation economy that threatens to widen racial and economic inequality. Fundamental questions about science, health, and social justice are at stake: Who gets access to gene editing technologies? As countries loosen regulations around the globe, from the U.S. to Ind

Butterflies have long captivated the imagination of humans, from naturalists to children to poets. Indeed it would be hard to imagine a world without butterflies. And yet their populations are declining at an alarming rate, to the extent that even the seemingly ubiquitous Monarch could conceivably go the way of the Passenger Pigeon. Many other, more obscure, butterfly species are already perilously close to extinction. For the last 20 years, Nick Haddad has worked to identify and save some of the rarest butterflies on earth, a quest that has taken him to both surprisingly ordinary and extraordinarily inhospitable areas, including a swampy, active artillery range on a military installation in North Carolina. It has also led him to some surprising conclusions about the best ways to protect these increasingly endangered butterflies. In The Last Butterflies: A Scientist’s Quest to Save a Rare and Vanishing Creature (Princeton UP, 2019), Haddad profiles five such species – the ones he has determined to be the rare

As ancient creatures that once shared the Earth with dinosaurs, turtles have played a crucial role in maintaining healthy terrestrial and marine ecosystems for more than one hundred million years. While it may not set records for speed on land, the turtle is exceptional at distance swimming and deep diving, and some are gifted with astounding longevity. In human thought, the animal's ties to creativity, wisdom, and warfare stretch back to the world's earliest written records. In Turtle, Louise M. Pryke celebrates the slow and unassuming manner of this doughty creature, which provides a living model of endurance and efficiency. In the increasingly fast-paced world of the twenty-first century, it has never been more important to consider the natural and cultural history of this remarkable animal. Bede Haines is a solicitor, specialising in litigation and a partner at Holding Redlich, an Australian commercial law firm. He lives in Sydney, Australia. Known to read books, ride bikes and eat cereal (often). bede.ha

Can we correctly predict the flip of a fair coin more than half the time -- or the decay of a single radioactive atom? Our intuition, based on a lifetime of experience, tells us that we cannot, as these are classic examples of what are known to be 50-50 guesses. But mathematics is filled with counterintuitive results -- and this book discusses some surprising and entertaining examples. It is possible to devise experiments in which a flipped coin lands heads completely at random half the time, but we can also correctly predict when it will land heads more than half the time.  James D. Stein's The Fate of Schrodinger's Cat: Using Math and Computers to Explore the Counterintuitive (World Scientific, 2020) shows how high-school algebra and basic probability theory, with the invaluable assistance of computer simulations, can be used to investigate both the intuitive and the counterintuitive. This book explores fascinating and controversial questions involving prediction, decision-making, and statistical analysis i

Listen to this interview of Elisa De Ranieri, Editor-in-Chief of Nature Communications. We talk about knowing the research you have done, but communicating the message you want said. Interviewer: "When a submission lands on your desk, or better said, you call it up on your screen, what are you pleased to see, what makes your work easier?" Elisa De Ranieri: "Yeah, well, I guess what makes the job easier for an editor is to receive a paper that is well-written and well-constructed and where the authors are so experienced that they know how to pitch their story. It's nice because it, obviously, spares the editor the trouble of having to unpick what's being said. You know, there are papers where––I'm not saying that they're badly written––but they are so dense because it's not a story, it's a dump of facts, so that you have to start unpicking the facts until you've made your own version of the story that the authors are trying to tell, and only then can you assess that story based on your criteria." Daniel Shea,

An estimated 80 million people live with a neurodegenerative disease, with this number expected to double by 2050. Despite decades of research and billions in funding, there are no medications that can slow, much less stop, the progress of these diseases. The time to rethink degenerative brain disorders has come. With no biological boundaries between neurodegenerative diseases, illnesses such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's result from a large spectrum of biological abnormalities, hampering effective treatment. In Brain Fables: The Hidden History of Neurodegenerative Diseases and a Blueprint to Conquer Them (Cambridge UP, 2020), acclaimed neurologist Dr Alberto Espay and Parkinson's advocate Benjamin Stecher present compelling evidence that these diseases should be targeted according to genetic and molecular signatures rather than clinical diagnoses. There is no Parkinson's or Alzheimer's, simply people with Parkinson's or Alzheimer's. An incredibly important story never before told, Brain Fables is a wakeup c

As a scientist and practicing Catholic, Dr. Sauer brings a unique perspective to several of the important issues related to finding a space for dialogue between the at times opposing fields of science and religion. Drawing on insights from Darwin, Teilhard de Chardin, Thomas Kuhn, and many others, Dr. Sauer presents a powerful and important framework for reconciling the historically changing divide between science and religion. His take is that we need to encourage a stance of intellectual humility on all sides of the discussion as a means for finding common ground--or at least identifying points where we can have fruitful exchanges of ideas about how scientific and religious perspectives can coexist without ongoing conflict.  Points of Contact: Science, Religion, and the Search for Truth (Orbis Books, 2020) will be valuable to people who inhabit both sides of this divide and has the potential to generate more openness about what can be radically different ways of seeing the world.   Learn more about your ad

Mathematics as a subject is distinctive in its symbolic abstraction and its potential for logical and computational rigor. But mathematicians tend to impute other qualities to our subject that set it apart, such as impartiality, universality, and elegance. Far from incidental, these ideas prime mathematicians and the public to see in mathematics the answers—for example, an impartial arbiter, or a meritocratic equalizer—to many urgent societal questions. Anna Weltman's new book, Supermath: The Power of Numbers for Good and Evil (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2020), surveys a number of ways this conception of mathematics has informed scientific undertakings and public policies, not to mention our everyday behaviors, and makes a powerful case for reevaluating its assumptions. The book's five chapters contain stories of mathematical exploits from ancient to ongoing and across the spectrum from pure to applied. Many may be familiar, for example active research and journalism into the use and misuse of predictive

“What are chromosomes? And what does it mean to treat them as visual objects?” asks Soraya de Chadarevian in her new book, Heredity Under the Microscope: Chromosomes and the Study of the Human Genome (University of Chicago Press, 2020). Considering this question as she follows the history of microscope-based practices in chromosomal research across a variety of contexts—from the medical clinic to the study of human variation—de Chadarevian offers readers a new history of postwar human genetics. This approach enables her to argue that cytogenetics was far from just “old fashioned biology that was eventually superseded by molecular approaches” and to show the continuities and interdependencies between different methods for studying our DNA. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Social and Conceptual Issues in Astrobiology (Oxford University Press, 2020) focuses on the emerging scientific discipline of astrobiology, exploring many of the humanistic issues this multidisciplinary field is generating. Despite there being myriad scientific questions that astrobiologists have only begun to address, this is not a purely scientific enterprise. More research on the broader social and conceptual aspects of astrobiology is needed and this volume does an outstanding job of setting the course for important themes to be explored in the future. The authors of the chapters in the book ask questions such as: What are our ethical obligations towards different sorts of alien life? Should we attempt to communicate with life beyond our planet? What is "life" in the most general sense? Kelly C. Smith and Carlos Mariscal's important book addresses these questions by looking at different perspectives from philosophers, historians, theologians, social scientists, and legal scholars. It sets a benchmark for

Science may be known for banishing the demons of superstition from the modern world. Yet just as the demon-haunted world was being exorcized by the enlightening power of reason, a new kind of demon mischievously materialized in the scientific imagination itself. Scientists began to employ hypothetical beings to perform certain roles in thought experiments—experiments that can only be done in the imagination—and these impish assistants helped scientists achieve major breakthroughs that pushed forward the frontiers of science and technology. Spanning four centuries of discovery—from René Descartes, whose demon could hijack sensorial reality, to James Clerk Maxwell, whose molecular-sized demon deftly broke the second law of thermodynamics, to Darwin, Einstein, Feynman, and beyond—Jimena Canales tells a shadow history of science and the demons that bedevil it.  In Bedeviled: A Shadow History of Demons in Science (Princeton UP, 2020), she reveals how the greatest scientific thinkers used demons to explore problems

There is a long history of brain research that seems to legitimize widely held beliefs about the men versus women. According to my guest, much of that research is founded on biases and misguided experiments, which raises the questions: Are there any meaningful neurological differences between men and women? And if so, what are they? To find out, you’ll want to listen to my interview with Dr. Gina Rippon, author of the book, Gender and our Brains: How New Neuroscience Explodes the Myths of the Male and Female Minds (2020, Vintage Books). We talk about the difference between good and bad science in this area and how the field of psychology has contributed to misinformed but long-lasting ideas about gender differences. This episode will interest those longing for clarity about male versus female brains and shed light on the role of science in shaping social perceptions about the sexes. Gina Rippon, Ph.D. is an honorary professor of cognitive neuroimaging at Aston Brain Centre at Aston University in Birmingham, E

Alfred S. Posamentier's The Joy of Geometry (Prometheus, 2020) is a book for someone who has taken geometry but wants to go further. This book, as one might expect, is heavy on diagrams and it is sometimes hard to discuss some of the ideas without reference to a diagram. Also, to be fair, this is not a book intended to be read casually. To fully appreciate this book, it is necessary to sit down, preferably in a comfortable chair with a beverage of one’s choosing, and prepare to give the diagrams a close look. The effort will be well rewarded. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

At once an examination of geology, a biography of monuments, and a meditation on the connection between personal loss and massive loss, Hugh Raffles’ The Book of Unconformities: Speculations on Lost Time (Pantheon Books, 2020) is a truly beguiling book. Moving through Manhattan marble, Norwegian “blubberstone”, extra-terrestrial meteorites, and several other geological forms, Raffles uses the geological concept of “unconformity” to examine those historical moments where time seems to have disappeared. By sitting patiently with the impossibility of resolving the tensions between deep time and human time, The Book of Unconformities skips across epochs without losing sight of the lives people build around minerals. In this episode, I stumble my way through this dense, dumbfounding work, asking Professor Raffles about the different valences of deep time, how to talk about recurring loss, and what stones do to the anthropological imagination. Hugh Raffles is Professor of Anthropology at The New School for Social R

A compelling argument that the time has come to use what we know about the fascinating and diverse inner lives of other animals on their behalf Every day we are learning new and surprising facts about just how intelligent and emotional animals are—did you know rats like to play and laugh, and also display empathy, and the ears and noses of cows tell us how they’re feeling? At times, we humans translate that knowledge into compassion for other animals; think of the public outcry against the fates of Cecil the lion or the captive gorilla Harambe. But on the whole, our growing understanding of what animals feel is not resulting in more respectful treatment of them. Renowned animal-behavior expert Marc Bekoff and leading bioethicist Jessica Pierce explore the real-world experiences of five categories of animals, beginning with those who suffer the greatest deprivations of freedoms and choice—chickens, pigs, and cows in industrial food systems—as well as animals used in testing and research, including mice, rats,

The founder and president of PETA, Ingrid Newkirk, and bestselling author Gene Stone explore the wonders of animal life and offer tools for living more kindly toward them. In the last few decades, a wealth of new information has emerged about who animals are—intelligent, aware, and empathetic. Studies show that animals are astounding beings with intelligence, emotions, intricate communications networks, and myriad abilities. In Animalkind: Remarkable Discoveries about Animals and Revolutionary New Ways to Show Them Compassion (Simon and Schuster, 2020), Ingrid Newkirk and Gene Stone present these findings in a concise and awe-inspiring way, detailing a range of surprising discoveries: that geese fall in love and stay with a partner for life, that fish “sing” underwater, and that elephants use their trunks to send subsonic signals, alerting other herds to danger miles away. Newkirk and Stone pair their tour of the astounding lives of animals with a guide to the exciting new tools that allow humans to avoid usi

For decades if not centuries, science has backed up society’s simple dictum that men and women are hardwired differently, that the world is divided by two different kinds of brains—male and female. However, new research in neuroimaging suggests that this is little more than “neurotrash.” In Gender and Our Brains: How New Neuroscience Explodes the Myths of the Male and Female Minds (Vintage, 2020), acclaimed professor of neuroimaging, Gina Rippon, finally challenges this damaging myth by showing how the science community has engendered bias and stereotype by rewarding studies that show difference rather than sameness. Drawing on cutting edge research in neuroscience and psychology, Rippon presents the latest evidence which finally proves that brains are like mosaics comprised of both male and female components, and that they remain plastic, adapting throughout the course of a person’s life. Discernable gender identities, she asserts, are shaped by society where scientific misconceptions continue to be wielded