検索キーワード： 科学・工学

What are the moments that make a life? In Francis Crick’s, the decisive moment came in 1951, when he first met James Watson. Their ensuing discovery of the structure of DNA made Crick world-famous. But neither that chance meeting nor that discovery made Crick who he was. As Matthew Cobb shows in Crick, it is another chance encounter, with a line from the writing of Beat poet Michael McClure, that reveals Crick’s character: “THIS IS THE POWERFUL KNOWLEDGE,” it shouted. Crick, having read it, would keep it with him for the rest of his life.

Myriam Gurba has lived in California her entire life, with its plants and soils, forests and ecology, immersing herself in the language of the landscape as refracted through the languages and memories of her ancestors. In Poppy State, California plants serve as structural anchors in a wildly inventive work of narrative nonfiction that is part botanical criticism, part personal storytelling, part study of place. Gurba traverses themes of language, power, ancestry, and California's ecology, in masterfully constructed sentences that seem to defy gravity.

After we first launched Americans into space but before we touched down on the moon’s surface, there was the Gemini program. It was no easy jump from manned missions in low-Earth orbit to a successful moon landing, and the ten-flight, twenty-month celestial story of the Gemini program is an extraordinary one. There was unavoidable darkness in the program—the deaths and near-deaths that defined it, and the blood feud with the Soviet Union that animated it.

Erik Larson dépeint une nouvelle tragédie américaine, s’intéressant cette fois à la folie des hommes qui pensent pouvoir maîtriser les lois de la nature, et au combat héroïque d’Isaac Cline, coupable d’une erreur fatale qu’il paiera au prix fort.

In Night Life, John Lewis-Stempel heads back out into the night to discover how nocturnal wildlife takes charge of their ink-black domain. Using the stars above as his guide, and only his faithful dog by his side, he moves across the wilderness to explore the effect the night has on our senses, and see what we can learn from our animal friends.

The rollicking, rowdy and hilarious memoir of Top Gear and The Grand Tour, from the elusive man behind the camera

We humans have a complicated relationship with the dark. We fear it, and make great efforts to blot it out. But we also long for it, especially if we live in cities, or remember the starry skies of our childhoods. Darkness opens us up to risk, delight and transformation. Is it possible to prise it free of its negative associations, which are as old as human thought itself? Drawing on memory and imagination, history and ecology, literature and myth, Night Vision is an expansive, thrilling journey into the true dark.

We all understand that knowledge shapes the fate of business and the growth of nations, but few of us are aware of the principles that govern its motion. The Infinite Alphabet unravels the laws describing the growth and diffusion of knowledge by taking you from a failed attempt to build a city of knowledge in Ecuador to the growth of China’s innovation economy. Through dozens of stories, you will learn why aircraft manufacturers in Italy began manufacturing scooters after the Second World War and how migrants like Samuel Slater shaped the industrial fabric of the United States.

In Waves and Stones, Graham Harman shows that this paradoxical interaction – the question of whether reality is made up of sudden jumps, or is laid out along a gentle gradient with no clear divisions between the various things in the world – permeates every area of human life. What’s more, this paradox is as old as human thought itself.

The spinosaurs – the controversial group that includes the largest land predator of all time, the awe-inspiring Spinosaurus – are brought to life in this cutting-edge review. The giant sail-backed carnivorous dinosaur Spinosaurus is one of the most famous of all dinosaurs; a staple of documentaries, books and video games, and the species that bested the mighty Tyrannosaurus rex in Jurassic Park III. The spinosaurs were some of the strangest predatory dinosaurs, combining a long low skull with powerfully clawed hands. Some species had huge sails over their backs, as well as fin-like tails.

Mat Watson knows everything there is to know about cars. In his 25-year career as a motor journalist, he has driven and tested every vehicle under the sun, from engineering marvels such as the Bugatti Chiron and Ferrari F50, to the grand-touring stalwarts of highways and motorways the world over – to absolute crapheaps which should never have made it out of the factory gates. He has crawled into hundreds of boots, peered under thousands of bonnets, kicked tens of thousands of tyres, and has perfected a nose for what makes a beautiful, brilliant and, sometimes truly atrocious, car.

Veteran science broadcaster and journalist Jay Ingram, author of twenty popular science titles, including the bestselling Science of Why series, has researched the latest science behind our beloved furry, and not-so-furry, creatures that sleep on our sofas and eat our pizza crusts. Along the way, he discusses the myths and misconceptions about our companions: do dogs always do their business facing north? Why are we seeing a rise in exotic pets such as tigers and bears? Are the deer and foxes we see “rescued” on Instagram considered pets and could they be domesticated?

In this thought-provoking exploration, physicists Chris Ferrie and Geraint F. Lewis delve into the fundamental questions that have puzzled humanity for centuries. With clarity and precision, Ferrie and Lewis navigate the realms of quantum physics, relativity, and cosmology, providing accessible explanations that engage both novices and enthusiasts.

In his latest book, award-winning author and renowned wolf researcher Rick McIntyre explores the intricate world of wolf behavior in Yellowstone National Park and highlights the individual character traits that allow wolf packs to thrive. Unveiling power struggles, pack politics, the roles of family protection, inter-pack conflicts, and more, Rick skillfully follows the intricacy of packs and the unique attributes each wolf has.

The growing concern about global environmental change and human impacts on the planet has led to the emergence of a broad field of study on the 'sustainability' of human societies. The term's common usage can be traced back to the advent of the Earth Summit in 1992 when 'sustainable development' was broadly embraced by the international community as an ostensibly win-win proposition for economic development, social inclusion, and ecological conservation. Yet both the natural science underpinnings and the social implications of a quest for sustainability have been diffuse.

In Why Whales Sing, bioacoustician and cognitive scientist Eduardo Mercado transforms our understanding of these enigmatic sounds and proposes a groundbreaking theory that challenges decades of established science.

If you have an appetite for digestible science, you will find plenty of tasty morsels here. Discover why some people see red over red food dyes, why Sherlock Holmes was interested in jellyfish, why King George III was plagued with purple urine, and why phrenology is a pseudoscience.

Part mind-bending medical mystery—part cutting-edge science—Hidden Guests uncovers the astonishing phenomenon of microchimerism: the presence of foreign cells inside our own bodies. The incredible story of how those cells got there—and what they do once they arrive—might change everything we know about the immune system, lineage, and identity.

Deep in the snowy forests of Northeast Asia roams the majestic and revered Amur tigers, more popularly known as ‘The Siberian Tiger’. But in the final years of the Cold War, only a few hundred of these graceful animals remained in their home of the Amur River basin. As the Soviet Union fell, catastrophe arrived, with poaching and logging taking a fast, astonishing toll on an already vulnerable species.

If you listen, can you hear the stones speak? The question seems absurd. After all, rocks are lifeless, inert, and silent. In The Whispers of Rock earth scientist Anjana Khatwa asks us to think again, and listen to their stories. Boldly alternating between modern science and ancient wisdom, Khatwa takes us on an exhilarating journey through deep time, from origins of the green pounamu that courses down New Zealand rivers to the wonder of the bluestone megaliths of Stonehenge, from the tuff-hewn churches of Lalibela, Ethiopia, to Manhattan’s bedrock of schist.