SCI000000 Archives - Duckworth Books

The Singularity Is Near

In his now-classic and hugely influential exploration of the evolving union of human and machine, world-renowned inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil foresees the dawning of a new civilisation where humans will transcend our biological limitations and amplify our creativity by combining our aptitudes with the vastly greater capacity, speed and knowledge-sharing abilities of Artificial Intelligence. This melding of human and machine is what he terms ‘the singularity’.

On the eve of publication of his latest book, The Singularity is Nearer, this new edition of the first instalment of his groundbreaking vision offers a fascinating and thought-provoking perspective on decades of innovation – and what still lies ahead.

How to Create a Mind

From the world’s preeminent AI futurist: a fascinating account of how mapping the human mind leads to ever more intelligent machines

Ray Kurzweil, described by Bill Gates as ‘the best person I know at predicting the future of artificial intelligence’, offers a provocative exploration of the most important project in human-machine civilisation: reverse-engineering the brain to understand precisely how it works and using that knowledge to create even more intelligent machines.

Kurzweil sets out how the brain functions, how the mind emerges from the brain, and the implications of vastly increased and evolving intelligence in addressing the world’s problems. He thoughtfully examines emotional and moral intelligence and the origins of consciousness and envisions the radical – arguably inevitable – future of our merging with the intelligent technology we are creating, aka ‘the singularity’.

The Possibility of Life

One of the most potent questions we ask about the cosmos is: are we alone? From astrobiology to exoplanets in the ‘Goldilocks Zone’, Jaime Green traces our understanding of what and where life in the universe could be, drawing on the long tradition of scientists, writers and artists who have stimulated research by extrapolating worlds.

Bringing together expert interviews, cutting-edge astronomy, philosophical inquiry and pop culture touchstones ranging from A Wrinkle in Time to Star Trek, The Possibility of Life delves into our evolving conception of the cosmos to wonder what we might find… out there.

Through Two Doors at Once

The clearest, most accessible explanation yet of the amazing world of quantum mechanics.

How can matter behave both like a particle and a wave? Does a particle exist before we look at it or does the very act of looking bring it into reality? Is there a place where the quantum world ends and our perceivable world begins?

Many of science’s greatest minds – including Thomas Young, Albert Einstein and Richard Feynman – have grappled with the questions embodied in the simple yet elusive ‘double-slit’ experiment in order to understand the fabric of our universe. With his extraordinary gift for making the complicated comprehensible, Anil Ananthaswamy travels around the world and through history, down to the smallest scales of physical reality we have yet fathomed, to reveal the answers.

How the Chicken Crossed the World

Queen Victoria was obsessed with them. Socrates’ last words were about them. Charles Darwin and Louis Pasteur made their scientific breakthroughs using them. Hailed as a messenger of the gods, powerful sex symbol, gambling aid, all-purpose medicine and handy research tool, the humble chicken has been also cast as the epitome of evil, and the star of the world’s most famous joke.

Beginning with the discovery that the chicken’s unlikely ancestor is the T. Rex, How the Chicken Crossed the World tracks the chicken from its original domestication in the jungles of Southeast Asia some 10,000 years ago to today’s Western societies where it became the most engineered of animals, to the uncertain future of what is now humanity’s single most important source of protein. In a masterful combination of historical sleuthing and journalistic exploration on four continents, Lawler reframes the way we feel and think about all domesticated animals and even nature itself.

Youniverse

Your guide to science, from the Big Bang to AI

Whether you wish to discover the basics of science or catch up on its latest developments, this short accessible guide is for you.

YOUNIVERSE describes in simple terms the world you are inseparably a part of: what it is, how it works and your place in it – insofar as these things are known. The text has been vetted by 13 distinguished scientists.

Journey now through time and space, a world of the unimaginably big and the inconceivably small – though the marvels of science.

The Edge of Physics

A scientific and globetrotting exploration of the physics experiments changing the ways we understand our universe.

Why is the universe expanding? What is the nature of dark matter? Do other universes exist? In this timely and original book, science writer Anil Ananthaswamy embarks on a global journey to some of the world’s most inhospitable and dramatic research sites to witness first-hand the audacious physics experiments conducted to answer profound questions about the nature of the universe.

From the Atacama Desert in the Chilean Andes to the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope on Mount Paranal to deep inside an abandoned iron mine in Minnesota and to the East Antarctic Ice Sheet, Ananthaswamy weaves together stories about the people and places at the heart of this cosmological research.

While explaining the immense questions that scientists are trying to answer, Ananthaswamy provides an accessible and unique portrait of the universe and our quest to understand it. An atmospheric, engaging and illuminating read, The Edge of Physics depicts science as a human process and brings cosmology with all its rarefied concepts down to earth.

Ingredients

Cheese puffs. Coffee. Sunscreen. Vapes. Hand sanitiser. George Zaidan reveals the weird science behind everyday items that may or may not kill you, depending on whom you ask.

If you want easy answers, this book is not for you. But if you’re curious which health studies to trust, what dense scientific jargon really means, and how to make better choices when it comes to food and health – dive right in!

Zaidan makes chemistry more fun than potions class as he reveals exactly what science can (and can’t) tell us about the packaged ingredients we buy in the supermarket. He demystifies the ingredients of life and death – and explains how we know whether something is good or bad for you – in exquisite, hilarious detail at breakneck speed.

The Secret Life of Bones

Bone is a marvel, an adaptable and resilient building material developed over 500 million years of evolutionary history. It has manifested itself in wings, sails, horns, armour, and an even greater array of appendages since the time of its origin. In dinosaur fossils, skeletons are biological time capsules that tell us of lives we’ll never see in the flesh. Inherited from a common fishy ancestor, it is the stuff that binds all of us vertebrates together into one great family. Swim, slither, stomp, fly, dig, run – all are expressions of what bones make possible. But that’s hardly all.

In The Secret Life of Bones, Brian Switek frames the history of our species through the importance of bone from instruments and jewellery, to objects of worship and conquest from the origins of religion through the genesis of science and up through this very day. While bone itself can reveal our individual stories, the truth very much depends on who’s telling it. Our skeletons are as embedded in our culture as they are in our bodies. Switek, an enthusiastic osteological raconteur, cuts through biology, history, and culture to understand the meaning of what’s inside us and what our bones tell us about who we are, where we came from and the legacies we leave behind.

Every Breath You Take

A fascinating journey through the atmosphere that will leave you breathless.

With seven million early deaths a year linked to air pollution, air quality is headline news around the world. But how do we measure air pollution and what on earth is an odour panel? Why are property prices higher upwind of cities? Should we buy, hold on to, or avoid a diesel car? And will our grandchildren inherit an atmosphere worth breathing?

From the atmosphere on distant planets to the stuff that gets into your lungs, from holes in the ozone layer to lazy and disappearing gases, air quality specialist and full-time breather Dr Mark Broomfield combines scientific evidence with personal stories and advice on what you can do to improve air quality, giving you the low-down on what’s up high.

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