From the award-winning science writer, a new history of the development of nuclear power and the extraordinary minds behind it

Henry Becquerel’s accidental discovery, in Paris in 1896, of a faint smudge on a photographic plate sparked a chain of discoveries which would unleash the atomic age.

Destroyer of Worlds is the story of how pursuit of this hidden source of nuclear power, which began innocently and collaboratively, was overwhelmed by the politics of the 1930s, and following devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki opened the way to a still more terrible possibility: a thermonuclear bomb, the so-called “backyard weapon”, that could destroy all life on earth – from anywhere.

The story spans decades and continents, moving from Becquerel to Ernest Rutherford, the Cambridge-based, New Zealand scientist who first split the atom, expands to include Enrico Fermi in Rome, Otto Hahn and Lise Meitner in Berlin and the Joliot-Curies in Paris, leading to the appearance of Robert Oppenheimer before climaxing with increasingly horrifying developments in the USA and USSR. The roles of three remarkable women – Lise Meitner, Ida Noddack and Irene Curie – are re-evaluated, and there are new insights into the work of Ettore Majorana, Fermi’s mercurial but brilliant assistant, who mysteriously disappeared in 1938, possibly after foreseeing the explosive power of nuclear energy. Above all, this is a story of how knowledge is often advanced by personal convictions and relationships, an indeed by chance, in a remarkable way.

‘My hope is that people can grow to appreciate this sector – its challenges and opportunities, but most importantly, the role agriculture can play in improving South Africa’s rural economy, creating jobs and bringing about much-needed transformation (or inclusive growth).’
Wandile Sihlobo is perfectly positioned to provide a well-rounded, accessible view of agriculture in South Africa. He spent his school holidays in the rural Eastern Cape, studied agricultural economics at university, has worked in private-sector agriculture, consulting with farmers across the country, and has been an adviser to government as part of South African policymaking bodies.

Finding Common Ground is a selection of key articles from Sihlobo’s regular Business Day column, framed with insightful commentary and context. The book covers the broad themes that have marked current discussions and outlines the challenges and opportunities faced by South Africa’s agricultural sector, including:

• The contentious and complex issue of land reform;
• The potential for new leadership to revive the sector;
• How agriculture can drive development and job creation;
• Cannabis as an exportable commodity;
• The urgent need for agricultural policy to address gender equity and youth involvement;
• Technological developments and megatrends that are underpinning agricultural development;
• The importance of trade in growing South Africa’s agriculture; and Key lessons that South Africa and other African countries can learn from one another.

Zygmunt Zawirski (1882-1948), an eminent and original Polish philosopher, belonged to the Lwow-Warsaw School (LWS) which left an indelible trace in logic, semiotics and philosophy of science. LWS was founded in 1895 by K. Twardowski, a disciple of Brentano, in the spirit of clarity, realism and analytic philosophy. LWS was more than 25 years older than the Vienna Circle (VC). This belies, inter alia, the not infrequently repeated statement that LWS was one of the many centres initiated by VC. The achievements of LWS in logic are well recognized, while those relating to philosophy of science are almost unknown. It is in order to fill this gap that some fragments of Zawirski's papers are presented, dealing mainly with causality, determinism, indeterminism and philosophical implications of relativity and quantum mechanics. His magnum opus "L'Evolution de la Notion du Temps" (Eugenio Rignano Prize, 1933) is devoted to time. Zawirski took into account all the issues which are at present widely discussed. The real value of these achievements can be understood better today than by his contemporaries. This text is suitable for all those interested in philosophy of science and philosophy, and history of ideas.

Silicon technology now allows us to build chips consisting of tens of millions of transistors. This technology not only promises new levels of system integration onto a single chip, but also presents significant challenges to the chip designer. As a result, many ASIC developers and silicon vendors are re-examining their design methodologies, searching for ways to make effective use of the huge numbers of gates now available. These designers see current design tools and methodologies as inadequate for developing million-gate ASICs from scratch. There is considerable pressure to keep design team size and design schedules constant even as design complexities grow. Tools are not providing the productivity gains required to keep pace with the increasing gate counts available from deep submicron technology. Design reuse - the use of pre-designed and pre-verified cores - is the most promising opportunity to bridge the gap between available gate-count and designer productivity. Reuse Methodology Manual for System-On-A-Chip Designs, Second Edition outlines an effective methodology for creating reusable designs for use in a System-on-a-Chip (Soe design methodology. Silicon and tool technologies move so quickly that no single methodology can provide a permanent solution to this highly dynamic problem. Instead, this manual is an attempt to capture and incrementally improve on current best practices in the industry, and to give a coherent, integrated view of the design process. Reuse Methodology Manual for System-On-A-Chip Designs, Second Edition will be updated on a regular basis as a result of changing technology and improved insight into the problems of design reuse and its role in producinghigh-quality SoC designs.

An engaging and far-reaching exploration of refrigeration, tracing its evolution from scientific mystery to globe-spanning infrastructure, and an essential investigation into how it has remade our entire relationship with food—for better and for worse

How often do we open the fridge or peer into the freezer with the expectation that we’ll find something fresh and ready to eat? It’s an everyday act—but just a century ago, eating food that had been refrigerated was cause for both fear and excitement. The introduction of artificial refrigeration overturned millennia of dietary history, launching a new chapter in human nutrition. We could now overcome not just rot, but seasonality and geography. Tomatoes in January? Avocados in Shanghai? All possible.

In Frostbite, New Yorker contributor and cohost of the award-winning podcast Gastropod Nicola Twilley takes readers on a tour of the cold chain from farm to fridge, visiting off-the-beaten-path landmarks such as Missouri’s subterranean cheese caves, the banana-ripening rooms of New York City, and the vast refrigerated tanks that store the nation’s orange juice reserves. Today, nearly three-quarters of everything on the average American plate is processed, shipped, stored, and sold under refrigeration. It’s impossible to make sense of our food system without understanding the all-but-invisible network of thermal control that underpins it. Twilley’s eye-opening book is the first to reveal the transformative impact refrigeration has had on our health and our guts; our farms, tables, kitchens, and cities; global economics and politics; and even our environment.

In the developed world, we’ve reaped the benefits of refrigeration for more than a century, but the costs are catching up with us. We’ve eroded our connection to our food and redefined what “fresh” means. More important, refrigeration is one of the leading contributors to climate change. As the developing world races to build a US-style cold chain, Twilley asks: Can we reduce our dependence on refrigeration? Should we? A deeply researched and reported, original, and entertaining dive into the most important invention in the history of food and drink, Frostbite makes the case for a recalibration of our relationship with the fridge—and how our future might depend on it.