検索キーワード： 制作 "Audible Studios" 科学

今回のテーマを取り上げようと思ったきっかけは、先日、米コンシューマリポートが報告した調査記事だった。同社は毎年、自動車メーカーのブランド力をいくつかの切り口からスコアリングして順位を付けている。ドイツのメーカーに比べ、日本メーカーは信頼感で勝るスコアを付けることが多く、とりわけレクサスやトヨタが強いランキングだ。今年もナンバーワンはレクサスだったが、2位には意外なメーカーが顔を覗かせていた。マツダである。3位以下はトヨタ、アウディ、スバル、ポルシェ、ビュイックと続く。マツダは昨年、トップ5にも入っていなかったというのに大躍進したのだ。こうした様々な自動車関連のランキングや評価が掲載されたコンシューマリポートの2015年の自動車特集号の表紙は、数ある新発表車種の中からMAZDA MX-5（日本名：ロードスター）が選ばれている。(本文より)本田雅一　続・モバイル通信リターンズはこちらから→http://yakan-hiko.com/honda.html

We're used to thinking about the self as an independent entity, something that we either have or are. In The Ego Tunnel, philosopher Thomas Metzinger claims otherwise: No such thing as a self exists. The conscious self is the content of a model created by our brain - an internal image, but one we cannot experience as an image. Everything we experience is "a virtual self in a virtual reality." But if the self is not "real," why and how did it evolve? How does the brain construct it?

In The Brain in Context, the bioethicist Jonathan D. Moreno and the neuroscientist Jay Schulkin provide an accessible and thought-provoking account of the evolution of neuroscience and the neuroscience of evolution. They emphasize that the brain is not an isolated organ - it extends into every part of the body and every aspect of human life. Understanding the brain requires studying the environmental, biological, chemical, genetic, and social factors that continue to shape it.

In Idiot Brain, Dr. Dean Burnett celebrates blind spots, blackouts, insomnia, and all the other downright laughable things our minds do to us while also exposing the many mistakes we've made in our quest to understand how our brains actually work. This is the best kind of popular science - lucid, funny, and whip smart - from a debut author who will be tickling funny bones and firing neurons for a long time to come.

Welcome to the Universe is a personal guided tour of the cosmos by three of today's leading astrophysicists. Inspired by the enormously popular introductory astronomy course that Neil deGrasse Tyson, Michael A. Strauss, and J. Richard Gott taught together at Princeton, this book covers it all - from planets, stars, and galaxies to black holes, wormholes, and time travel.

In The Soil Will Save Us, journalist and bestselling author Kristin Ohlson makes an elegantly argued, passionate case for "our great green hope"—a way in which we can not only heal the land but also turn atmospheric carbon into beneficial soil carbon—and potentially reverse global warming. Her discoveries and vivid storytelling will revolutionize the way we think about our food, our landscapes, our plants, and our relationship to Earth.

Bright Rivers chronicles the angling passions and frustrations of one of fly-fishing's greatest men of letters. A city dweller trapped in the complexities of modern life, Nick Lyons has always found solace in his pilgrimages to great rivers. It is there that he fishes for trout, and in Bright Rivers, Lyons recounts the sometimes moving, sometimes hilarious experiences of his expeditions to the Delaware, Beaverkill, Madison, Big Hole, and Yellowstone rivers, sharing reminiscences of trout taken, released, and sometimes lost.

Bridging the gap between the world of science and the realm of the spiritual, Wallace, a pioneer of modern consciousness research, offers a practical and revolutionary method for exploring the mind that combines the keenest insights of contemporary physics and philosophers with the time-honored meditative traditions of Buddhism.

By identifying the structure of DNA, the molecule of life, Francis Crick and James Watson revolutionized biochemistry and won themselves a Nobel Prize. At the time, Watson was only 24, a young scientist hungry to make his mark. His uncompromisingly honest account of the heady days of their thrilling sprint against other world-class researchers to solve one of science's greatest mysteries gives a dazzlingly clear picture of a world of brilliant scientists with great gifts, very human ambitions, and bitter rivalries.

■空気のようなインターネット 2016年に『さよならインターネット　まもなく消えるその「輪郭」について』という本を中央公論新社から出しました。インターネット論というほどのものではないけれど、これまでのインターネットと、これからのインターネットについて真面目に語ったもので、最近だとドワンゴの川上量生（かわかみ・のぶお）さんが出した『鈴木さんにも分かるネットの未来』（岩波書店）と、方向性は似ています。 発端は、僕が知り合いの編集者に、うちの会社にいる二十歳のインターンの子の話を、なにげなくしたことでした。 そのインターンの子は、こんなことを言っていました。 「家入さんはよくインターネットが大好きって言ってますけど、僕にはよくわか らないんです。なんだか、例えばハサミを好きって言ってるみたいで……」(本文より) 家入一真　「家入学級」はこちらから→ http://yakan-hiko.com/ieiri.html

2016年3月に筆者はアメリカ・サンフランシスコに出張した。出かける前後、日本で話題になっていたのが、Googleが開発した囲碁用AI「AlphaGo」と、囲碁の世界チャンピオン・李世ドルの対決だ。アメリカでは日本ほど話題になっていないようだが、そこは囲碁というゲームに対する認知度というか、注目度の差かな、と思う。筆者は囲碁にはさほど詳しくない。弱いながら、将棋とチェスはそこそこわかるが、囲碁はルールを知っている程度。場の展開の有利・不利がどうにも見通せない、というレベルに過ぎない。だが、囲碁というゲームの複雑さや、先を読むことの難しさを思うと、ここまでの囲碁用AIが作れたことには、感嘆を禁じえない。囲碁は、ゲーム理論の世界では「二人ゼロサム有限確定完全情報ゲーム」と呼ばれる。意思決定に関わる情報のすべてが盤面に存在するため、コンピュータにとっては比較的与し易いものとされ、AI研究の初期から研究が続けられてきた。それでも囲碁と将棋は難しく、プロに確実に勝つソフトを作るのは、一つの目標とされてきた。(本文より)小寺・西田の「金曜ランチビュッフェ　はこちらから→http://yakan-hiko.com/kode-nishi.html

Drawing together many histories - of anatomical evolution and city design, of treadmills and labyrinths, of walking clubs and sexual mores - Rebecca Solnit creates a fascinating portrait of the range of possibilities presented by walking. Arguing that the history of walking includes walking for pleasure as well as for political, aesthetic, and social meaning, Solnit focuses on the walkers whose everyday and extreme acts have shaped our culture, from philosophers to poets to mountaineers.

Mit einem klugen Zwischenruf intervenieren fünf Philosophinnen und Philosophen in ein Stimmengewirr, das anderes braucht als populistische Empörung oder müdes Abwinken. Wer eine Position vertreten will, muss sie erst einmal begründen können. Dieses Buch ermutigt alle, die unsere Zukunft nicht den Lautesten überlassen wollen – und zeigt, wie nützlich die Philosophie für die großen Entscheidungen der Gegenwart ist.

The periodic table is one of the most potent icons in science. It lies at the core of chemistry and embodies the most fundamental principles of the field. The one definitive text on the development of the periodic table by van Spronsen (1969), has been out of print for a considerable time. The present book provides a successor to van Spronsen, but goes further in giving an evaluation of the extent to which modern physics has, or has not, explained the periodic system. The book is written in a lively style to appeal to experts and interested lay-persons alike.

Since the fall of the Soviet Union, long-suppressed information has emerged on Heisenberg’s role in the Nazi atomic bomb project. In Beyond Uncertainty, Cassidy interprets this and other previously unknown material within the context of his vast research and tackles the vexing questions of a scientist’s personal responsibility and guilt when serving an abhorrent military regime.

Think you have a good memory? Think again. Memories are our most cherished possessions. We rely on them every day of our lives. They make us who we are. And yet the truth is they are far from being the accurate records of the past we like to think they are. True, we can all admit to having suffered occasional memory lapses, such as entering a room and immediately forgetting why or suddenly being unable to recall the name of someone we've met dozens of times. But what if we have the potential for more profound errors of memory?

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to find yourself strapped to a giant rocket that's about to go from zero to 17,500 miles per hour? Or to look back on Earth from outer space and see the surprisingly precise line between day and night? Or to stand in front of the Hubble Space Telescope, wondering if the emergency repair you're about to make will inadvertently ruin humankind's chance to unlock the universe's secrets? Mike Massimino has been there, and in Spaceman he puts you inside the suit.

A preeminent geneticist hunts the Neanderthal genome to answer the biggest question of them all: what does it mean to be human? What can we learn from the genes of our closest evolutionary relatives? Neanderthal Man tells the story of geneticist Svante Pbo’s mission to answer that question, beginning with the study of DNA in Egyptian mummies in the early 1980s and culminating in his sequencing of the Neanderthal genome in 2009.

In this lively and illuminating discussion of his landmark research, esteemed primatologist Frans de Waal argues that human morality is not imposed from above but instead comes from within. Moral behavior does not begin and end with religion but is in fact a product of evolution. For many years, de Waal has observed chimpanzees soothe distressed neighbors and bonobos share their food. Now he delivers fascinating fresh evidence for the seeds of ethical behavior in primate societies that further cements the case for the biological origins of human fairness.

When leading Princeton physicist Paul Steinhardt began working in the 1980s, scientists thought they knew all the conceivable forms of matter. The Second Kind of Impossible is the story of Steinhardt’s 35-year-long quest to challenge conventional wisdom. It begins with a curious geometric pattern that inspires two theoretical physicists to propose a radically new type of matter - one that raises the possibility of new materials with never-before-seen properties but that violates laws set in stone for centuries.