Inyo County Free Library - New Acquisitions
January 2015 - February 2015
These are books and media new to the library and cataloged by the Inyo County Free Library.
Additional information about each title can be found in the catalog (click on the title). For older acquisition lists choose from Select another list. To request any of these titles please contact your local library branch.
| Non-Fiction | Computer science, information & general worksPhilosophy & psychologyReligionSocial sciencesLanguage Science TechnologyArts & recreationLiteratureHistory & geography |
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The signal and the noise: why most predictions fail-- but some don't By Silver, Nate Publishing Date: c2012 Classification: 500 Call Number: 519.542 SIL Silver built an innovative system for predicting baseball performance, predicted the 2008 election within a hair's breadth, and became a national sensation as a blogger. Drawing on his own groundbreaking work, Silver examines the world of prediction. |
By Zitzewitz, Paul W. Publishing Date: c2011 Classification: 500 Call Number: 530 ZIT Answers more than eight hundred questions about physics, ranging from everyday life applications to the latest explorations in the field. |
How to teach relativity to your dog By Orzel, Chad Publishing Date: c2012 Classification: 500 Call Number: 530.11 ORZ Explains the principles of relativity, profiling leading minds such as Albert Einstein, Brian Greene, and Stephen Hawking to simplify their theories on time dilation, extra dimensions, and relative motion. |
The amazing story of quantum mechanics: a math-free exploration of the science that made our world By Kakalios, James Publishing Date: c2010 Classification: 500 Call Number: 530.12 KAK Most of us are unaware of how much we depend on quantum mechanics on a day-to-day basis. Using illustrations and examples from science fiction pulp magazines and comic books, this book explains the fundamental principles of quantum mechanics that underlie the world we live in.--From publisher description. |
By Pretor-Pinney, Gavin Publishing Date: 2010 Classification: 500 Call Number: 530.124 PRE Offers information on how all sorts of waves work and how and why they form, including ocean waves, light waves, sound waves, and brain waves. |
By Carroll, Sean M. Publishing Date: c2012 Classification: 500 Call Number: 539.721 CAR Scientists have just announced an historic discovery on a par with the splitting of the atom: the Higgs boson, the key to understanding why mass exists, has been found. Carroll takes readers behind the scenes of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN to meet the scientists and explain this landmark event. We only discovered the electron just over a hundred years ago and considering where that took us-- from nuclear energy to quantum computing-- the inventions that will result from the Higgs discovery will be world-changing. |
The age of radiance: the epic rise and dramatic fall of the atomic era By Nelson, Craig Publishing Date: 2014 Classification: 500 Call Number: 539.75 NEL "A riveting narrative of the Atomic Age--from x-rays and Marie Curie to the Nevada Test Site and the 2011 meltdown in Japan--written by the prizewinning and bestselling author of Rocket Men. Radiation is a complex and paradoxical concept: staggering amounts of energy flow from seemingly inert rock and that energy is both useful and dangerous. While nuclear energy affects our everyday lives--from nuclear medicine and food irradiation to microwave technology--its invisible rays trigger biological damage, birth defects, and cellular mayhem. Written with a biographer's passion, Craig Nelson unlocks one of the great mysteries of the universe in a work that is both tragic and triumphant. From the end of the nineteenth century through the use of the atomic bomb in World War II to the twenty-first century's confrontation with the dangers of nuclear power, Nelson illuminates a pageant of fascinating historical figures: Enrico Fermi, Marie and Pierre Curie, Albert Einstein, FDR, Robert Oppenheimer, and Ronald Reagan, among others. He reveals many little-known details, including how Jewish refugees fleeing Hitler transformed America from a country that created light bulbs and telephones into one that split atoms; how the most grotesque weapon ever invented could realize Alfred Nobel's lifelong dream of global peace; how emergency workers and low-level utility employees fought to contain a run-amok nuclear reactor, while wondering if they would live or die. Brilliantly fascinating and remarkably accessible, The Age of Radiance traces mankind's complicated and difficult relationship with the dangerous power it discovered and made part of civilization"-- |
By Pretor-Pinney, Gavin Publishing Date: 2006 Classification: 500 Call Number: 551.576 PRE Complemented by striking photographs and line drawings, a witty and eclectic study of clouds captures the character of these natural phenomena while discussing the science behind the different types of clouds, what they mean in terms of climate and weather, their history, and artistic and cultural fascination with their ephemeral beauty. 75,000 first printing. - (Baker & Taylor) |
The monkey's voyage: how improbable journeys shaped the history of life By De Queiroz, Alan Publishing Date: c2013 Classification: 500 Call Number: 570 DEQ "Throughout the world, closely related species are found on landmasses separated by wide stretches of ocean. What explains these far-flung distributions? Why are such species found where they are across the Earth? Since the discovery of plate tectonics, scientists have conjectured that plants and animals were scattered over the globe by riding pieces of ancient supercontinents as they broke up. In the past decade, however, that theory has foundered, as the genomic revolution has made reams of new data available. And the data has revealed an extraordinary, stranger-than-fiction story that has sparked a scientific upheaval. In The Monkey's Voyage, biologist Alan de Queiroz describes the radical new view of how fragmented distributions came into being: frogs and mammals rode on rafts and icebergs, tiny spiders drifted on storm winds, and plant seeds were carried in the plumage of sea-going birds to create the map of life we see today. In other words, these organisms were not simply constrained by continental fate; they were the makers of their own geographic destiny. And as de Queiroz shows, the effects of oceanic dispersal have been crucial in generating the diversity of life on Earth, from monkeys and guinea pigs in South America to beech trees and kiwi birds in New Zealand. By toppling the idea that the slow process of continental drift is the main force behind the odd distributions of organisms, this theory highlights the dynamic and unpredictable nature of the history of life."-- |
Dodging extinction: power, food, money and the future of life on Earth By Barnosky, Anthony D. Publishing Date: [2014] Classification: 500 Call Number: 576.84 BAR Paleobiologist Anthony D. Barnosky weaves together evidence from the deep past and the present to alert us to the looming Sixth Mass Extinction and to offer a practical, hopeful plan for avoiding it. Writing from the front lines of extinction research, Barnosky tells the overarching story of geologic and evolutionary history and how it informs the way humans inhabit, exploit, and impact Earth today. He presents compelling evidence that unless we rethink how we generate the power we use to run our global ecosystem, where we get our food, and how we make our money, we will trigger what would be. |
Cows save the planet and other improbable ways of restoring soil to heal the earth By Schwartz, Judith D. Publishing Date: c2013 Classification: 500 Call Number: 577.57 SCH In Cows Save the Planet, journalist Judith D. Schwartz looks at soil as a crucible for our many overlapping environmental, economic, and social crises. Drawing on the work of thinkers and doers, renegade scientists and institutional whistleblowers, Schwartz challenges much of the conventional thinking about global warming and other problems. For example, land can suffer from undergrazing as well as overgrazing, since certain landscapes, such as grasslands, require the disturbance from livestock to thrive. Regarding climate, when we focus on carbon dioxide, we neglect the central role of water in soil - "green water" - in temperature regulation. And much of the carbon dioxide that burdens the atmosphere is not the result of fuel emissions, but from agriculture; returning carbon to the soil not only reduces carbon dioxide levels but also enhances soil fertility. Cows Save the Planet is at once a primer on soil's pivotal role in our ecology and economy, a call to action, and an antidote to the despair that environmental news so often leaves us with. |
Animal behavior: an evolutionary approach By Alcock, John Publishing Date: c2005 Classification: 500 Call Number: 591.5 ALC Following the theory of natural selection and how scientific logic promotes effective thinking, this textbook examines the evolution of feeding behavior, communication, mating systems, parental care, and social behavior in both invertebrates and vertebrates. The eighth edition combines the two chapters on the genetic and environmental influences on development. Annotation ©2005 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com) - (Book News) |
By Palumbi, Stephen R. Publishing Date: c2014 Classification: 500 Call Number: 591.77 PAL The Extreme Life of the Sea exposes the eternal darkness of the deepest undersea trenches to show how marine life thrives against the odds, describing how flying fish strain to escape their predators, how predatory deep-sea fish use red searchlights only they can see to find and attack food, and how, at the end of her life, a mother octopus dedicates herself to raising her batch of young. This wide-ranging and highly accessible book also shows how ocean adaptations can inspire innovative commercial products--such as fan blades modeled on the flippers of humpback whales--and how future extremes created by human changes to the oceans might push some of these amazing species over the edge. |
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