Healthy Bee Sick Bee by Phil Lester

$30.00 NZD

Category: Science

Phil Lester's first book, The Vulgar Wasp, was about one of the world's most hated insects. His second is about just the opposite – the honey bee, arguably one of our best-loved six-legged creatures. People have revered honey bees for centuries. Today we celebrate them with toys, postage stamps and camp aigns to raise awareness; we dress up in large bee suits to protest the use of pesticides; we've even sent bees into space and watched as they adjusted to microgravity. Bees are one of the world's most efficient pollinators. Their work is vital to the success of many food crops, and hence to the world's economy. So we need to take seriously any threats to their health – including parasites, pathogens, predators and pesticides – and, guided by evidence at every turn, find a way to minimise harm and keep bees thriving. As Healthy Bee, Sick Bee shows, this is no small task. In this book, entomologist Phil Lester explores the wonderfully complex and sometimes brutally efficient life history of honey bees, and the problems they face in New Zealand and around the globe. What causes a beehive to collapse? Are pesticides as big a problem as they appear? What can we do to improve the health of our honey bees? With intelligence, insight and entomologist jokes, Healthy Bee, Sick Bee tells the story of this much-loved little insect and offers new ways of thinking about how to ensure they will stick around in the future. ...Show more

The Seaweed Collector's Handbook - From Purple Laver to Peacock's Tail by Miek Zwamborn; Michele Hutchison (Translator)

$27.99 NZD

Category: Science

A beautifully illustrated little book that will open your eyes at the seaside.

Metazoa : the Evolution of Animals, Minds, Consciousness and Sleep by Peter Godfrey-Smith

$37.99 NZD

Category: Science

From the human being to the octopus, the shark to the humble sea squirt, all animals are physical beings made up entirely of cells. And yet they can think, to varying degrees. How did this come to be? How did a mind first grow from the matter that is the body? And at what stage did that clump of cells b ecome a 'self'? In Metazoa, Peter Godfrey-Smith, author of the bestselling Other Minds looks beyond the octopus to the complexity of the whole animal kingdom, exploring the origins of consciousness and grappling with the greatest mystery of evolution. Metazoa (the biological term encompassing all animals), covers, with various degrees of detail, the main stages in animal evolution: the long period of life before animals, the enigmatic period known as the Ediacaran, in which the first animal fossils were laid down, then the Cambrian, the period that rapidly gave rise to most of the familiar animal forms. Then, in a few distinct evolutionary lines, the appearance of bodies with a set of unusual capacities: bodies with eyes and other senses that can track objects in space, bodies that can freely move and bodies with tools for the manipulation of objects. And the bringing together of these capacities would have pivotal consequences for the evolution of the brain and hence the evolution of consciousness. There is much to marvel at in the natural world. But take a moment to wonder at the fact that we can marvel at all. ...Show more

A Series of Fortunate Events - Chance and the Making of the Planet, Life, and You by Sean B. Carroll

$29.99 NZD

Category: Science

Fascinating and exhilarating--Sean B. Carroll at his very best.--Bill Bryson, author of The Body: A Guide for OccupantsFrom acclaimed writer and biologist Sean B. Carroll, a rollicking, awe-inspiring story of the surprising power of chance in our lives and the world Why is the world the way it is? How d id we get here? Does everything happen for a reason or are some things left to chance? Philosophers and theologians have pondered these questions for millennia, but startling scientific discoveries over the past half century are revealing that we live in a world driven by chance. A Series of Fortunate Events tells the story of the awesome power of chance and how it is the surprising source of all the beauty and diversity in the living world. Like every other species, we humans are here by accident. But it is shocking just how many things--any of which might never have occurred--had to happen in certain ways for any of us to exist. From an extremely improbable asteroid impact, to the wild gyrations of the Ice Age, to invisible accidents in our parents' gonads, we are all here through an astonishing series of fortunate events. And chance continues to reign every day over the razor-thin line between our life and death. This is a relatively small book about a really big idea. It is also a spirited tale. Drawing inspiration from Monty Python, Kurt Vonnegut, and other great thinkers, and crafted by one of today's most accomplished science storytellers, A Series of Fortunate Events is an irresistibly entertaining and thought-provoking account of one of the most important but least appreciated facts of life. ...Show more

Human Body Posters by GALLAGHER, BELINDA

$12.99 NZD

$30.00 (56% off)

Category: Science

First Light - Switching on Stars at the Dawn of Time by Emma Chapman

$32.99 NZD

Category: Science

Astronomers have successfully observed a great deal of the Universe's history, from recording the afterglow of the Big Bang to imaging thousands of galaxies, and even to visualising an actual black hole. There's a lot for astronomers to be smug about. But when it comes to understanding how the Universe began and grew up we are literally in the dark ages. In effect, we are missing the first one billion years from the timeline of the Universe. This brief but far-reaching period in the Universe's history, known to astrophysicists as the 'Epoch of Reionisation', represents the start of the cosmos as we experience it today. The time when the very first stars burst into life, when darkness gave way to light. After hundreds of millions of years of dark, uneventful expansion, one by the one these stars suddenly came into being. This was the point at which the chaos of the Big Bang first began to yield to the order of galaxies, black holes and stars, kick-starting the pathway to planets, to comets, to moons, and to life itself. Incorporating the very latest research into this branch of astrophysics, this book sheds light on this time of darkness, telling the story of these first stars, hundreds of times the size of the Sun and a million times brighter, lonely giants that lived fast and died young in powerful explosions that seeded the Universe with the heavy elements that we are made of. Emma Chapman tells us how these stars formed, why they were so unusual, and what they can teach us about the Universe today. She also offers a first-hand look at the immense telescopes about to come on line to peer into the past, searching for the echoes and footprints of these stars, to take this period in the Universe's history from the realm of theoretical physics towards the wonder of observational astronomy. ...Show more

Blockchain Chicken Farm - And Other Stories of Tech in China's Countryside by Xiaowei Wang

$29.99 NZD

Category: Science | Series: FSG Originals X Logic Ser.

In Blockchain Chicken Farm, the technologist and writer Xiaowei Wang explores the political and social entanglements of technology in rural China. Their discoveries force them to challenge the standard idea that rural culture and people are backward, conservative, and intolerant. Instead, they find that rural China has not only adapted to rapid globalization but has actually innovated the technology we all use today. From pork farmers using AI to produce the perfect pig, to disruptive luxury counterfeits and the political intersections of e-commerce villages, Wang unravels the ties between globalization, technology, agriculture, and commerce in unprecedented fashion. Accompanied by humorous "Sinofuturist" recipes that frame meals as they transform under new technology, Blockchain Chicken Farm is an original and probing look into innovation, connectivity, and collaboration in the digitized rural world. FSG Originals × Logic dissects the way technology functions in everyday lives. The titans of Silicon Valley, for all their utopian imaginings, never really had our best interests at heart: recent threats to democracy, truth, privacy, and safety, as a result of tech's reckless pursuit of progress, have shown as much. We present an alternate story, one that delights in capturing technology in all its contradictions and innovation, across borders and socioeconomic divisions, from history through the future, beyond platitudes and PR hype, and past doom and gloom. Our collaboration features four brief but provocative forays into the tech industry's many worlds, and aspires to incite fresh conversations about technology focused on nuanced and accessible explorations of the emerging tools that reorganize and redefine life today. ...Show more

Kew - Rare Plants - Forty of the World's Rarest and Most Endangered Plants by Ed Ikin

$79.99 NZD

Category: Science

Rare Plants explores what makes the world's rarest plants so exceptional, and by what means they have become so scarce, telling the story of 40 rare and endangered species through exquisite botanical artworks sourced from the archives of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Accompanied by illuminating and au thoritative text, the book is presented alongside 40 frameable art prints and encased in a collector's box. Some of the most beautiful, useful and fascinating plants in the world are also the most uncommon, and have drawn the fascination of plant hunters, botanists, scientists and gardeners for centuries. This rarity, combined with pressures from humankind's impact on the planet, has brought many of these species to the point of crisis. In a race against time to conserve the world's plant biodiversity, organizations such as Kew are deploying incredible science to save our rare and threatened plants. Cutting-edge genomics reveals new species, distribution modelling directs us to outlying plant populations, while drone and satellite data highlight the speed at which species are declining. This vital information informs which habitats should be protected and prioritizes plant conservation programmes. Rare Plants finds hope among the challenges, and exhibits the role of botanic gardens in conservation across the globe. ...Show more

The Irrational Ape: Why Flawed Logic Puts Us All at Risk and How Critical Thinking Can Save the World by David Robert Grimes

$26.99 NZD

Category: Science

THE IRISH TIMES TOP FIVE BESTSELLER 'An unstoppable page-turner. If our leaders were forced to read this book, the world would be a safer place' Richard Dawkins 'A beautifully reasoned book about our own unreasonableness' Robin Ince Why did revolutionary China consider the sparrow an 'animal of capital ism' - and what happened when they tried to wipe them out? With a cast of murderous popes, snake-oil salesmen and superstitious pigeons, find out why flawed logic puts us all at risk, and how critical thinking can save the world. It may seem a big claim, but knowing how to think clearly and critically has literally helped save the world. In September 1983, at the height of the Cold War, the Soviet Union's early warning system showed five US missiles heading towards the country. Stanislaw Petrov knew his duty: he was to inform Moscow that nuclear war had begun, so that they could launch an immediate and devastating response. Instead, he made a call to say the system was faulty. He'd assessed the situation and reasoned that an error was more likely than such a limited attack.  We may not have to save the planet from nuclear annihilation, of course, but our ability to think critically has never been more important. In a world where fake news, mistrust of experts, prejudice and ignorance all too often hold sway, we can all too easily be misled over issues such as vaccinations, climate change or conspiracy theories. We live in an era where access to all the knowledge in the world is at our fingertips, yet that also means misinformation and falsehoods can spread further and faster than ever before.  In The Irrational Ape, David Robert Grimes shows how we can be lured into making critical mistakes or drawing false conclusions, and how to avoid such errors. Given the power of modern science and the way that movements can unite to protest a cause via social media, we are in dangerous times. But fortunately, we can learn from our mistakes, and by critical thinking and scientific method we can discover how to apply these techniques to everything from deciding what insurance to buy to averting global disaster. This book, packed with fascinating case studies and examples, helps ensure we are ready for the modern world.  ...Show more

Reactions: An Illustrated Exploration of Elements, Molecules, and Change in the Universe by Theodore Gray

$34.99 NZD

Category: Science

The third book in Theodore Gray's bestselling Elements Trilogy, Reactions continues the journey through the world of chemistry that began with his two previous bestselling books The Elements and Molecules. With The Elements, Gray gave us a never-before-seen, mesmerizing photographic view of the 118 ele ments in the periodic table. In Molecules, he showed us how the elements combine to form the content that makes up our universe. With Reactions, Gray once again puts his photography and storytelling to work to demonstrate how molecules interact in ways that are essential to our very existence. The book begins with a brief recap of elements and molecules and then goes on to explain important concepts that characterize a chemical reaction, including Energy, Entropy, and Time. It is then organized by type of reaction including chapters such as "Fantastic Reactions and Where to Find Them," "On the Origin of Light and Color," "The Boring Chapter," in which we learn about reactions such as paint drying, grass growing, and water boiling, and "The Need for Speed," including topics such as weather, ignition, and fire. ...Show more

How To: Absurd Scientific Advice for Common Real-World Problems (XKCD) by Randall Munroe

$24.99 NZD

Category: Science

Randall Munroe is . . .'Nerd royalty' Ben Goldacre 'Totally brilliant' Tim Harford 'Laugh-out-loud funny' Bill Gates 'Wonderful' Neil Gaiman AN INSTANT #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER For any task you might want to do, there's a right way, a wrong way, and a way so monumentally bad that no one would ever t ry it. How To is a guide to the third kind of approach. It's full of highly impractical advice for everything from landing a plane to digging a hole. Bestselling author and cartoonist Randall Munroe explains how to predict the weather by analyzing the pixels of your Facebook photos. He teaches you how to tell if you're a baby boomer or a millennial by measuring the radioactivity of your teeth. He offers tips for taking a selfie with a telescope, crossing a river by boiling it, and getting to your appointments on time by destroying the moon. And if you want to get rid of this book once you're done with it, he walks you through your options for proper disposal, including dissolving it in the ocean, converting it to a vapour, using tectonic plates to subduct it into the Earth's mantle, or launching it into the sun. By exploring the most complicated ways to do simple tasks, Munroe doesn't just make things difficult for himself and his readers. As he did so brilliantly in What If?, he invites us to explore the most absurd reaches of the possible. Full of clever infographics and amusing illustrations, How To is a delightfully mind-bending way to better understand the science and technology underlying the things we do every day. ...Show more

One Giant Leap: The Impossible Mission That Flew Us to the Moon by Fishman, Charles

$35.00 NZD

Category: Science

The remarkable story of the trailblazers and the ordinary Americans on the front lines of the epic mission to reach the moon.   President John F. Kennedy astonished the world on May 25, 1961, when he announced to Congress that the United States should land a man on the Moon by 1970. No group was more surprised than the scientists and engineers at NASA, who suddenly had less than a decade to invent space travel.   When Kennedy announced that goal, no one knew how to navigate to the Moon. No one knew how to build a rocket big enough to reach the Moon, or how to build a computer small enough (and powerful enough) to fly a spaceship there. No one knew what the surface of the Moon was like, or what astronauts could eat as they flew there. On the day of Kennedy's historic speech, America had a total of fifteen minutes of spaceflight experience--with just five of those minutes outside the atmosphere. Russian dogs had more time in space than U.S. astronauts. Over the next decade, more than 400,000 scientists, engineers, and factory workers would send 24 astronauts to the Moon. Each hour of space flight would require one million hours of work back on Earth to get America to the Moon on July 20, 1969.   More than fifty years later, One Giant Leap is the sweeping, definitive behind-the-scenes account of the furious race to complete one of mankind's greatest achievements. It's a story filled with surprises--from the item the astronauts almost forgot to take with them (the American flag), to the extraordinary impact Apollo would have back on Earth, and on the way we live today.   Charles Fishman introduces readers to the men and women who had to solve 10,000 problems before astronauts could reach the Moon. From the research labs of MIT, where the eccentric and legendary pioneer Charles Draper created the tools to fly the Apollo spaceships, to the factories where dozens of women sewed spacesuits, parachutes, and even computer hardware by hand, Fishman captures the exceptional feats of these ordinary Americans. One Giant Leap is the captivating story of men and women charged with changing the world as we knew it--their leaders, their triumphs, their near disasters, all of which led to arguably the greatest success story, and the greatest adventure story, of the twentieth century. ...Show more