The new "sine" of mathematical geekdom! Do you dream about long division in your sleep? Does the thought of solving abstruse equations bring a smile to your face? Do you love celebrating pi every March? Then, Math Geek was made for you! With this guide, you'll learn even more about the power of numbers as you explore their brilliant nature in ways you've never imagined. From manhole covers to bubbles to subway maps, each page gives you a glimpse of the world through renowned mathematicians' eyes and reveals how their theorems and equations can be applied to nearly everything you encounter. Covering dozens of your favorite math topics, you'll find fascinating answers to questions like: How are the waiting times for buses determined? Why is Romanesco Broccoli so mesmerizing? How do you divide a cake evenly? Should you run or walk to avoid rain showers? Filled with compelling mathematical explanations, Math Geek sheds light on the incredible world of numbers hidden deep within your day-to-day life.

This book presents the history of the development of fibre optic technology, explaining the scientific challenges that needed to be overcome, the range of applications and future potential for this fundamental communications technology. The author has followed and reported the development closely for the past 20 years, and is better placed than anyone to write the definitive history of the field.

"A fascinating look inside the complexities and enjoyment of skiing. For every skier, from the beginner to the Olympic Gold Medalist, this book provides a treasure of information." -PAUL MAJOR, ATHLETIC DIRECTOR, U.S. SKI TEAM
"I was delighted to learn from this interesting book more about the physics of a sport I have enjoyed for more than seventy years." -NORMAN RAMSEY, NOBEL LAUREATE IN PHYSICS, HARVARD UNIVERSITY

With over fifty patents to his name and innumerable awards and accolades, James Lovelock was a distinguished and original thinker, widely recognized by the international scientific community. In this inspiring book, republished in the year of his 100th birthday, Lovelock tells his life story, from his first steps as a scientist to his work with organisations as diverse as NASA, Shell and the Marine Biological Association. Homage to Gaia describes the years of travel and work that led to his crucial scientific breakthroughs in environmental awareness, uncovering how CFCs impact on the ozone layer and creating the concept of Gaia, the theory that the Earth is a self-regulating system. Written in a sharp and energetic style, James Lovelock's book will entertain and inspire anyone interested in science or the creative spirit beyond his legacy.

Racing Green is the story of how advances in motorsport science are changing the world, helping it become smarter and more environmentally friendly. Motor racing is already one of the most scientifically demanding sports: it involves a combination of peak physical and mental skill, world-class mechanical nous and perennial technological innovation. These innovations, first developed for racing, have been incorporated into everyday car designs to improve their safety - from ABS brakes to crash helmets - and ecological impact, via electric engines and more efficient fuels and tyres. Author Kit Chapman is a lifelong motorsports fan who has previously worked with Virgin Racing's Formula E team on the chemistry and material science of their cars. With help from his wide range of contacts in the industry, Kit criss-crosses the globe from Ohio to Monaco, Spain to Bahrain. He steps behind the scenes of current engineering breakthroughs, picking up extraordinary tales along the way, such as that of maverick designer Warren Mosler who designed a car so fast it was banned from racing. Part travelogue, part historical retrospective, Racing Green combines visits to the experts with lively retellings of real-life incidents that became milestones in modern car development. Kit looks at the breadth of racing, both its glories and its tragedies, revealing the industry as a driving force for progress, and where it's on track to take us next.

Since humans began writing, they have been communicating in code. This obsession with secrecy has had dramatic effects on the outcome of wars, monarchies and individual lives.

With clear mathematical, linguistic and technological demonstrations of many of the codes, as well as illustrations of some of the remarkable personalities behind them – many courageous, some villainous – The Code Book traces the fascinating development of codes and code-breaking from military espionage in Ancient Greece to modern computer ciphers, to reveal how the remarkable science of cryptography has often changed the course of history.

Amongst many extraordinary examples, Simon Singh relates in detail the story of Mary, Queen of Scots, trapped by her own code and put to death by Elizabeth I; the strange history of the Beale Ciphers, describing the hidden location of a fortune in gold, buried somewhere in Virginia in the nineteenth century and still not found; and the monumental efforts in code-making and code-breaking that influenced the outcomes of the First and Second World Wars.

Now, with the Information Age bringing the possibility of a truly unbreakable code ever nearer, and cryptography one of the major debates of our times, Singh investigates the challenge that technology has brought to personal privacy today.

Dramatic, compelling and remarkably far-reaching, The Code Book will forever alter your view of history, what drives it and how private your last e-mail really was.

A tenth anniversary edition of the iconic book about the wonderful world of maths Sunday Times bestseller | Shortlisted for the BBC Samuel Johnson Prize The world of maths can seem mind-boggling, irrelevant and, let's face it, boring. This groundbreaking book reclaims maths from the geeks. Mathematical ideas underpin just about everything in our lives: from the surprising geometry of the 50p piece to how probability can help you win in any casino. In search of weird and wonderful mathematical phenomena, Alex Bellos travels across the globe and meets the world's fastest mental calculators in Germany and a startlingly numerate chimpanzee in Japan. Packed with fascinating, eye-opening anecdotes, Alex's Adventures in Numberland is an exhilarating cocktail of history, reportage and mathematical proofs that will leave you awestruck. This anniversary edition is fully revised and updated.

'TIMELY' David Mitchell 'MOVING ... REMARKABLE' SUNDAY TIMES 'ONE OF THOSE RARE BOOKS I HADN'T REASLISED I'D BEEN WAITING FOR UNTIL I READ IT.' Owen Sheers 'OPEN-MINDED, THOUGHTFUL AND WISE... A LIBERATING BOOK' Colm Toibin In an age of polished TED talks and overconfident political oratory, success seems to depend upon charismatic public speaking. But what if hyper-fluency is not only unachievable but undesirable? Jonty Claypole spent fifteen years of his life in and out of extreme speech therapy. From sessions with child psychologists to lengthy stuttering boot camps and exposure therapies, he tried everything until finally being told the words he'd always feared: 'We can't cure your stutter.' Those words started him on a journey towards not only making peace with his stammer but learning to use it to his advantage. Here, Jonty argues that our obsession with fluency could be hindering, rather than helping, our creativity, authenticity and persuasiveness. Exploring other speech conditions, such as aphasia and Tourette's, and telling the stories of the 'creatively disfluent' - from Lewis Carroll to Kendrick Lamar - Jonty explains why it's time for us to stop making sense, get tongue tied and embrace the life-changing power of inarticulacy.

Why do most diets fail? Why does one person eat a certain meal and gain weight, while another eating the same meal loses pounds? Why, despite all the advice about what to eat, are we all still getting fatter?

The answers are much more surprising - and fascinating - than we've been led to believe. The key to health and weight loss lies not in the latest fad diet, nor even in the simple mantra of 'eat less, exercise more', but in the microbes already inside us.

Drawing on the latest science and his own pioneering research, Professor Tim Spector demystifies the common misconceptions about fat, calories, vitamins and nutrients. Only by understanding what makes our own personal microbes tick can we overcome the confusion of modern nutrition, and achieve a healthy gut and a healthy body.

Reef Life is the story of how Callum Roberts, Britain's pre-eminent marine conservation scientist, fell in love with coral reefs and embarked on a thirty-year career. He began as a young university student who had never been abroad, spending a summer helping to map the unknown reefs of Saudi Arabia. And from that moment, when Callum first cleared his mask, he's never looked back, moving on to survey Sharm El Sheikh, and from there diving and researching all over the world, including Australia's imperilled Great Barrier Reef and the more resilient reefs of the Caribbean. His stories are astonishing, lyrical and laced with a wonderful wry humour - and they allow us privileged access to, and understanding of, the science of our oceans and reefs. Reading this book will also commit readers to support Callum's goal to get marine reserve status for ten percent of the world's ocean.

Wine and Spirits Book of the Year 2017

In little more than a century, the drive towards industrial and intensive farming has altered every aspect of the cheesemaking process, from the bodies of the animals that provide the milk to the science behind the microbial strains that ferment it. Reinventing the Wheel explores what has been lost as expressive, artisanal cheeses that convey a sense of place have given way to the juggernaut of homogeneous factory production.

While Bronwen and Francis Percival lament the decline of farmhouse cheese and reject the consequences of industrialisation, this book's message is one of optimism. Scientists have only recently begun to reveal the significance of the healthy microbial communities that contribute to the flavour and safety of cheese, while local producers are returning to the cheese-making methods of their parents and grandparents.

This smart, engaging book sheds light on the surprising truths and science behind the dairy industry. Discover how, one experiment at a time, these dynamic communities of researchers and cheesemakers are reinventing the wheel.

Life is an enduring mystery. Yet, science tells us that living beings are merely sophisticated structures of lifeless molecules. If this view is correct, where do the seemingly purposeful motions of cells and organisms originate? In Life's Ratchet , physicist Peter M. Hoffmann locates the answer to this age-old question at the nanoscale.Below the calm, ordered exterior of a living organism lies microscopic chaos, or what Hoffmann calls the molecular storm,specialized molecules immersed in a whirlwind of colliding water molecules. Our cells are filled with molecular machines, which, like tiny ratchets, transform random motion into ordered activity, and create the purpose" that is the hallmark of life. Tiny electrical motors turn electrical voltage into motion, nanoscale factories custom-build other molecular machines, and mechanical machines twist, untwist, separate and package strands of DNA. The cell is like a city,an unfathomable, complex collection of molecular workers working together to create something greater than themselves.Life, Hoffman argues, emerges from the random motions of atoms filtered through these sophisticated structures of our evolved machinery. We are agglomerations of interacting nanoscale machines more amazing than anything in science fiction. Rather than relying on some mysterious life force" to drive them,as people believed for centuries,life's ratchets harness instead the second law of thermodynamics and the disorder of the molecular storm.Grounded in Hoffmann's own cutting-edge research, Life's Ratchet reveals the incredible findings of modern nanotechnology to tell the story of how the noisy world of atoms gives rise to life itself.

Earthquakes rank among the most terrifying natural disasters faced by mankind. Out of a clear blue sky-or worse, a jet black one-comes shaking strong enough to hurl furniture across the room, human bodies out of bed, and entire houses off of their foundations. When the dust settles, the immediate aftermath of an earthquake in an urbanized society can be profound. Phone and water supplies can be disrupted for days, fires erupt, and even a small number of overpass collapses can snarl traffic for months. However, when one examines the collective responses of developed societies to major earthquake disasters in recent historic times, a somewhat surprising theme emerges: not only determination, but resilience; not only resilience, but acceptance; not only acceptance, but astonishingly, humor. Elastic rebound is one of the most basic tenets of modern earthquake science, the term that scientists use to describe the build-up and release of energy along faults. It is also the best metaphor for societal responses to major earthquakes in recent historic times. After The Earth Quakes focuses on this theme, using a number of pivotal and intriguing historic earthquakes as illustration. The book concludes with a consideration of projected future losses on an increasingly urbanized planet, including the near-certainty that a future earthquake will someday claim over a million lives. This grim prediction impels us to take steps to mitigate earthquake risk, the innately human capacity for rebound notwithstanding.

Oliver Sacks died in August 2015 at his home in Greenwich Village, surrounded by his close friends and family. He was 82. He spent his final days doing what he loved: playing the piano, swimming, enjoying smoked salmon - and writing . . . As Dr Sacks looked back over his long, adventurous life his final thoughts were of gratitude. In a series of remarkable, beautifully written and uplifting meditations, in Gratitude Dr Sacks reflects on and gives thanks for a life well lived, and expresses his thoughts on growing old, facing terminal cancer and reaching the end. I cannot pretend I am without fear. But my predominant feeling is one of gratitude. I have loved and been loved; I have been given much and I have given something in return; I have read and travelled and thought and written. I have had an intercourse with the world, the special intercourse of writers and readers. Above all, I have been a sentient being, a thinking animal, on this beautiful planet, and that in itself has been an enormous privilege and adventure.

A Brief History of Brains bridges the gap between AI and neuroscience by telling the evolutionary story of how the brain came to be. The entirety of the human brain’s 4-billion-year story can be summarised as the culmination of five evolutionary breakthroughs, starting from the very first brains, all the way to the modern human brains. Each breakthrough emerged from new sets of brain modifications, and equipped animals with a new suite of intellectual faculties. These five breakthroughs are the organising map to this book, and they make up our itinerary for our adventure back in time. Each breakthrough also has fascinating corollaries to breakthroughs in AI. Indeed, there will be plenty of such surprises along the way. For instance: the innovation that enabled AI to beat humans in the game of Go – temporal difference reinforcement learning – was an innovation discovered by our fish ancestors over 500 million years ago. The solutions to many of the current mysteries in AI – such as ‘common sense’ – can be found in the tiny brain of a mouse. Where do emotions come from? Research suggests that they may have arisen simply as a solution to navigation in ancient worm brains. Unravelling this evolutionary story will reveal the hidden features of human intelligence and with them, just how your mind came to be.

There are some mathematical problems whose significance goes beyond the ordinary - like Fermat's Last Theorem or Goldbach's Conjecture - they are the enigmas which define mathematics. The Great Mathematical Problems explains why these problems exist, why they matter, what drives mathematicians to incredible lengths to solve them and where they stand in the context of mathematics and science as a whole. It contains solved problems - like the Poincare Conjecture, cracked by the eccentric genius Grigori Perelman, who refused academic honours and a million-dollar prize for his work, and ones which, like the Riemann Hypothesis, remain baffling after centuries. Stewart is the guide to this mysterious and exciting world, showing how modern mathematicians constantly rise to the challenges set by their predecessors, as the great mathematical problems of the past succumb to the new techniques and ideas of the present.

Over the coming decades, Artificial Intelligence will profoundly impact the way we live, work, wage war, play, seek a mate, educate our young, and care for our elderly. It is likely to greatly increase our aggregate wealth, but it will also upend our labor markets, reshuffle our social order, and strain our private and public institutions. Eventually it may alter how we see our place in the universe, as machines pursue goals independent of their creators and outperform us in domains previously believed to be the sole dominion of humans. Whether we regard them as conscious or unwitting, revere them as a new form of life or dismiss them as mere clever appliances, is beside the point. They are likely to play an increasingly critical and intimate role in many aspects of our lives. The emergence of systems capable of independent reasoning and action raises serious questions about just whose interests they are permitted to serve, and what limits our society should place on their creation and use. Deep ethical questions that have bedeviled philosophers for ages will suddenly arrive on the steps of our courthouses. Can a machine be held accountable for its actions? Should intelligent systems enjoy independent rights and responsibilities, or are they simple property? Who should be held responsible when a self-driving car kills a pedestrian? Can your personal robot hold your place in line, or be compelled to testify against you? If it turns out to be possible to upload your mind into a machine, is that still you? The answers may surprise you.

The story of a man’s obsession with whales, which takes him on a personal, historical and biographical journey – from his childhood to his fascination with Moby-Dick and his excursions whale-watching. All his life, Philip Hoare has been obsessed by whales, from the gigantic skeletons in London’s Natural History Museum to adult encounters with the wild animals themselves. Whales have a mythical quality – they seem to elide with dark fantasies of sea-serpents and antediluvian monsters that swim in our collective unconscious. In ‘Leviathan’, Philip Hoare seeks to locate and identify this obsession. What impelled Melville to write ‘Moby-Dick’? After his book in 1851, no one saw whales in quite the same way again. This book is an investigation into what we know little about – dark, shadowy creatures who swim below the depths, only to surface in a spray of spume. More than the story of the whale, it is also the story of our own obsessions.

Exploring the revolutionary science behind the power of thought, this book will forever change how you think about your own thinking. This new updated and expanded 10th anniversary edition of The Biology of Belief contains stunning new scientific discoveries about the biochemical effects of the brain's functioning that show all the cells of your body are affected by your thoughts. Bruce H. Lipton PhD, a renowned cell biologist, describes the precise molecular pathways through which this occurs. Using simple language, illustrations, humour and everyday examples, he demonstrates how the new science of epigenetics is revolutionizing our understanding of the link between mind and matter, and the profound effects it has on our personal lives and the collective life of our species. It has been 10 years since the publication of The Biology of Belief, Bruce Lipton's seminal book on the relationship between mind and body that changed the way we think about our lives, our health and our planet. During that time, research in this field has grown exponentially - Lipton's ground-breaking experiments have now been endorsed by more than a decade of rigorous scientific study. In this greatly expanded edition, Lipton explores his own experiments and those of other leading-edge scientists that have unravelled in ever greater detail how truly connected the mind, body and spirit are. It is now widely recognized that genes and DNA do not control our biology. Instead, they are controlled by signals from outside the cell, including energetic messages emanating from our thoughts. This profoundly hopeful synthesis of the latest and best research in cell biology and quantum physics puts the power to create a healthy, joyous life back in our own hands. When we transform our conscious and subconscious thoughts, we transform our lives, and in the process help humanity evolve to a new level of understanding and peace.

How did the atom bomb help save the elephant? Have we found the secret to eternal youth? Could a parasite be manipulating you right now? This dazzling collection of stories reveals the key recent breakthroughs in science, across all fields. Inside you will meet the killers lurking in Earth's ice, the super-coral that could save our seas and the neuroscientists hunting ghosts. You will travel beyond our galaxy to worlds where the sun sets twice, and beyond our time to a future where the Internet is unhackable and chickenosaurs roam the land. Divided into sections covering physics, space, humanity, the brain, plants and animals, and linking stories from different fields, Cutting-Edge Science offers a boundless journey of discovery for anyone with a passion for the world around them. Prepare to be shocked and amazed on every page.

'Fascinating . . . timely' Daily Mail 'Refreshingly clear and engaging' Tim Harford 'Delightful . . . full of unique insights' Prof Sir David Spiegelhalter There's no getting away from statistics. We encounter them every day. We are all users of statistics whether we like it or not. Do missed appointments really cost the NHS GBP1bn per year? What's the difference between the mean gender pay gap and the median gender pay gap? How can we work out if a claim that we use 42 billion single-use plastic straws per year in the UK is accurate? What did the Vote Leave campaign's GBP350m bus really mean? How can we tell if the headline 'Public pensions cost you GBP4,000 a year' is correct? Does snow really cost the UK economy GBP1bn per day? But how do we distinguish statistical fact from fiction? What can we do to decide whether a number, claim or news story is accurate? Without an understanding of data, we cannot truly understand what is going on in the world around us. Written by Anthony Reuben, the BBC's first head of statistics, Statistical is an accessible and empowering guide to challenging the numbers all around us.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE ROYAL SOCIETY SCIENCE BOOK PRIZE 2018 Bestselling author Simon Winchester writes a magnificent history of the pioneering engineers who developed precision machinery to allow us to see as far as the moon and as close as the Higgs boson. Precision is the key to everything. It is an integral, unchallenged and essential component of our modern social, mercantile, scientific, mechanical and intellectual landscapes. The items we value in our daily lives – a camera, phone, computer, bicycle, car, a dishwasher perhaps – all sport components that fit together with precision and operate with near perfection. We also assume that the more precise a device the better it is. And yet whilst we live lives peppered and larded with precision, we are not, when we come to think about it, entirely sure what precision is, or what it means. How and when did it begin to build the modern world? Simon Winchester seeks to answer these questions through stories of precision’s pioneers. Exactly takes us back to the origins of the Industrial Age, to Britain where he introduces the scientific minds that helped usher in modern production: John ‘Iron-Mad’ Wilkinson, Henry Maudslay, Joseph Bramah, Jesse Ramsden, and Joseph Whitworth. Thomas Jefferson exported their discoveries to the United States as manufacturing developed in the early twentieth century, with Britain’s Henry Royce developing the Rolls Royce and Henry Ford mass producing cars, Hattori’s Seiko and Leica lenses, to today’s cutting-edge developments from Europe, Asia and North America. As he introduces the minds and methods that have changed the modern world, Winchester explores fundamental questions. Why is precision important? What are the different tools we use to measure it? Who has invented and perfected it? Has the pursuit of the ultra-precise in so many facets of human life blinded us to other things of equal value, such as an appreciation for the age-old traditions of craftsmanship, art, and high culture? Are we missing something that reflects the world as it is, rather than the world as we think we would wish it to be? And can the precise and the natural co-exist in society?

The Medicine Cabinet is a beautifully curated and expertly written compendium of over 100 astonishing objects related to the story of medicine. Each object is cared for by London's Science Museum, which houses one of the largest and most significant collections of medical artefacts in the world - including a Bronze Age trepanned skull, healing water from an Ancient Greek well, a seventeenth-century barber's pole, a pharmacist's ceramic leech jar, a gold memento mori ring, First World War blood transfusion apparatus and a prototype MRI scanner. Each object is a profound reminder of the fragility of human existence, but also of the extraordinary lengths gone to by scientists, medical professionals and ordinary people in the attempt to conquer mortality. Published in association with the Science Museum, The Medicine Cabinet is a rich visual exploration of life, death and everything in between.

Learn about the most important mathematical ideas, theorems, and movements in The Maths Book.

Part of the fascinating Big Ideas series, this book tackles tricky topics and themes in a simple and easy to follow format. Learn about Maths in this overview guide to the subject, great for novices looking to find out more and experts wishing to refresh their knowledge alike! The Maths Book brings a fresh and vibrant take on the topic through eye-catching graphics and diagrams to immerse yourself in.

This captivating book will broaden your understanding of Maths, with:

- More than 85 ideas and events key to the development of mathematics
- Packed with facts, charts, timelines and graphs to help explain core concepts
- A visual approach to big subjects with striking illustrations and graphics throughout
- Easy to follow text makes topics accessible for people at any level of understanding

The Maths Book is a captivating introduction to the world's most famous theorems, mathematicians and movements, aimed at adults with an interest in the subject and students wanting to gain more of an overview. Charting the development of maths around the world from Babylon to Bletchley Park, this book explains how maths help us understand everything from patterns in nature to artificial intelligence.

Your Maths Questions, Simply Explained

What is an imaginary number? Can two parallel lines ever meet? How can maths help us predict the future? This engaging overview explores answers to big questions like these and how they contribute to our understanding of maths. If you thought it was difficult to learn about topics like algebra and statistics, The Maths Book presents key information in an easy to follow layout. Learn about the history of maths, from ancient ideas such as magic squares and the abacus to modern cryptography, fractals, and the final proof of Fermat's Last Theorem.

The Big Ideas Series

With millions of copies sold worldwide, The Maths Book is part of the award-winning Big Ideas series from DK. The series uses striking graphics along with engaging writing, making big topics easy to understand.

This is the story of our quest to understand the most mysterious object in the universe: the human brain.

Today we tend to picture it as a computer. Earlier scientists thought about it in their own technological terms: as a telephone switchboard, or a clock, or all manner of fantastic mechanical or hydraulic devices. Could the right metaphor unlock the its deepest secrets once and for all?

Galloping through centuries of wild speculation and ingenious, sometimes macabre anatomical investigations, scientist and historian Matthew Cobb reveals how we came to our present state of knowledge. Our latest theories allow us to create artificial memories in the brain of a mouse, and to build AI programmes capable of extraordinary cognitive feats. A complete understanding seems within our grasp.

But to make that final breakthrough, we may need a radical new approach. At every step of our quest, Cobb shows that it was new ideas that brought illumination. Where, he asks, might the next one come from? What will it be?