It fills up our oceans, endangers our wildlife and never goes away. So it's time to take action, find ways to cut down our plastic use and help protect our environment. Together we can make a difference!As a lifelong supporter of environmental causes and a key player in the campaign to ban microbeads in the UK, Dougie is always on the hunt for ways to reduce and replace plastic. This campaigning book, his first solo authored project, draws on his own experiences in the fight against plastic waste – the problems he's encountered and the solutions he's found. It covers the history of plastic, introduces us to some key campaigners and eco entrepreneurs and is full of top tips and infographics. The clear and easy steps in Plastic Sucks! You can Make a Difference show us how we can all make small changes and become champions for our planet.

    Told through an examination of animal and plant life today - with occasional juxtapositions of extinct fossil forms to reveal the origin of living creatures - "Life on Earth" is an astonishing pageant of life, with a cast of characters drawn from the whole range of living animals the world over. Attenborough's perceptive, dynamic approach to the evolution of some four million species of living organisms that populate the planet is to trace the most significant thread in the history of each major group. He then proceeds to explain from the evidence of living representatives and fossil remains why certain animals adapted and survived, evolved to more complex and "higher" forms of life, while others, by some inherent limitation imposed by their physiology or structure, failed and became extinct. "Life on Earth" is a book of wonders. A model of clarity and ease as a guide, Attenborough takes the reader around the world with him into jungles where orchids have petals that "impersonate" wasps to attract pollinating insects; to Australia, where honeypot ants force feed nectar to workers of a special caste, then hang them up by their forelegs like living storage jars; to remote mountains in Japan where little monkeys called macaques have learned to combat the winter snows by bathing in hot volcanic springs.

    The ability to duplicate that process in a lab, once thought impossible, may now be closer than we think. Today, teams of scientists around the world are being assembled by the boldest entrepreneurs, big business, and governments to solve what is the most difficult technological challenge humanity has ever faced: building the equivalent of a star on earth. If their plans to capture star power are successful, they will unlock thousands, potentially millions, of years of clean, carbon-free energy. Not only would controlled nuclear fusion help solve the climate crisis, it could also make other highly desired technological ambitions possible—like journeying to the stars. Given the rising alarm over deterioration of the environment, and the strides being made in laser and magnetic field technology, powerful momentum is gathering behind fusion and the possibilities it offers. In The Star Builders, award-winning young plasma physicist Arthur Turrell “offers an optimistic outlook for the future of fusion power and is adamant about the need to invest in it” (The New York Times). Turrell describes fascinating star machines with ten times as many parts as the NASA Space Shuttle, and structures that extend over 400 acres in an accessible and entertaining account, spotlighting the individuals, firms, and institutions racing for the finish line: science-minded entrepreneurs like Jeff Bezos and Peter Thiel, companies like Goldman Sachs and Google, universities like Oxford and MIT, and virtually every rich nation. It’s an exciting and game-changing international quest that will make all of us winners.

    All of them - hikers, hunters, fishermen, campers, and canoeists - are drawn to the woods for some special reason. Yet few of them see the forest as a whole, as the web of life it truly is. Here, from New York Times bestselling author Richard M. Ketchum, is the extraordinary story of forests and the trees that comprise them.

    This book shows how easy it is to fill our gardens with everything from foxes, frogs and mice, to butterflies, ladybirds and thousands of fascinating creepy-crawlies.

    As Lord Shackleton, former president of the Royal Geographical Society, said of an earlier edition, it is "the finest reference atlas ever published." Now, The Times Atlas of the World, Tenth Comprehensive Edition, the first completely revised edition since The Times Atlas of the World debuted in 1967, establishes an even higher standard among all reference atlases, and a new benchmark in its own unparalleled tradition. The Tenth Comprehensive Edition opens with stunning satellite images of the continents and the oceans as they appear from space. This preliminary section continues with a series of graphics, photographs, maps, tables, and charts reviewing the cosmos, the natural world, and humanity's interaction with our home planet. Next is a comparative list of Earth's physical features, from rivers to mountains to islands to deserts, and a complete statistical guide to the states and territories of the world. This opening section concludes with a fascinating chronicle on the evolution of world mapping, beginning with our first attempt to map the world more than a thousand years ago. The central section of The Tenth Comprehensive Edition, with 248 pages of breathtakingly detailed reference maps, provides the most accurate and up-to-date visual presentation of geographical knowledge in any atlas today. Each map, drawn with generous scale and projection, has been entirely redesigned since the last edition, using the latest digital technology. While creating maps of optimum accuracy, these new methods also provide enhanced clarity and greater legibility than ever before, even for an atlas that was already legendary for the readability of its maps. In addition to recording the new states and republics created by political upheaval in this last decade before the millennium, The Tenth Comprehensive Edition includes a multitude of renamed towns and cities, along with many revised national borders. The revised and expanded index, covering more than 200,000 place names, is the largest index ever found in a single-volume atlas, virtually ensuring that any location a reader may be looking for will be included in the book. The index is also unique in scope, giving the name, description, regional and country locations, the map grid reference, page number, and latitude and longitude. No other atlas comes close to providing such an index, either in sheer numbers or in reference value.In the last three decades, The Times Atlas of the World has been in the vanguard of a revolution in the science of cartography, replacing maps formerly created on hand-etched copper plates with maps that are computer-generated. The Times Atlas of the World, Tenth Comprehensive Edition, represents the fullest flowering yet of this remarkable revolution in cartography. It is the finest atlas ever published, sure to be treasured by students, scholars, armchair travelers, global sightseers, and anyone seeking better understanding of our dynamic planet.

    This is the sky as it has never been presented before: the realm of stars and planets, but also of gods, devils, weather wizards, flying sailors, medieval aliens, mythological animals and rampaging spirits. The reader is taken on a tour of star-obsessed cultures around the world, learning about Tibetan sky burials, star-covered Inuit dancing coats, Mongolian astral prophets and Sir William Herschel's 1781 discovery of Uranus, the first planet to be found since antiquity. Even stranger are the forgotten stories from European history, like the English belief of the Middle Ages in ships that sailed a sea above the clouds, 16th-century German UFO sightings and the Edwardian aristocrat who mistakenly mapped alien-made canals on the surface of Mars.As the intricacies of our universe are today being revealed with unprecedented clarity, there has never been a better time for a highly readable book as beautiful as the night sky to contextualise the scale of these achievements for the general reader.

    

    Architectural marvels, including the M.C. Escher-like stepwells in India. Mind-boggling events, like the Baby Jumping Festival in Spain, where men dressed as devils literally vault over rows of squirming infants. Not to mention the Great Stalacpipe Organ in Virginia, Turkmenistan’s 45-year hole of fire called the Door of Hell, coffins hanging off a side of a cliff in the Philippines, eccentric bone museums in Italy, or a weather-forecasting invention that was powered by leeches, still on display in Devon, England.Atlas Obscura revels in the weird, the unexpected, the overlooked, the hidden, and the mysterious. Every page expands our sense of how strange and marvelous the world really is. And with its compelling descriptions, hundreds of photographs, surprising charts, maps for every region of the world, it is a book you can open anywhere.

    And now, with the release of the 5.0 version of Java, O'Reilly has given the book that defined the "in a Nutshell" category another impressive tune-up.In this latest revision, readers will find "Java in a Nutshell," 5th Edition, does more than just cover the extensive changes implicit in 5.0, the newest version of Java. It's undergone a complete makeover--in scope, size, and type of coverage--in order to more closely meet the needs of the modern Java programmer.To wit, "Java in a Nutshell," 5th Edition now places less emphasis on coming to Java from C and C++, and adds more discussion on tools and frameworks. It also offers new code examples to illustrate the working of APIs, and, of course, extensive coverage of Java 5.0. But faithful readers take comfort: it still hasn't lost any of its core elements that made it such a classic to begin with.This handy reference gets right to the heart of the program with an accelerated introduction to the Javaprogramming language and its key APIs--ideal for developers wishing to start writing code right away. And, as was the case in previous editions, " Java in a Nutshell," 5th Edition is once again chock-full of poignant tips, techniques, examples, and practical advice. For as longas Java has existed, "Java in a Nutshell" has helped developers maximize the capabilities of the program's newest versions. And this latest edition is no different.

    It also contains one of the world's largest supplies of natural gas, a resource that has been dismissed as inaccessible until recently. Technological developments that combine horizontal drilling with hydraulic fracturing ("fracking") have removed physical and economic barriers to extracting hundreds of trillions of cubic feet of gas from bedrock deep below the Appalachian basin. Beginning in 2006, the first successful Marcellus gas wells by Range Resources, combined with a spike in the value of natural gas, spurred a modern-day gold rush a "gas rush" with profound ramifications for environmental policy, energy markets, political dynamics, and the lives of the people living in the Marcellus region. Under the Surface is the first book-length journalistic overview of shale gas development and the controversies surrounding it.Control over drilling rights is at stake in the heart of Marcellus country northeast Pennsylvania and central New York. The decisions by landowners to work with or against the companies and the resulting environmental and economic consequences are scrutinized by neighbors faced with similar decisions, by residents of cities whose water supply originates in the exploration area, and by those living across state lines with differing attitudes and policies concerning extraction industries. Wilber's evenhanded treatment gives a voice to all constituencies, including farmers and landowners tempted by the prospects of wealth but wary of the consequences, policymakers struggling with divisive issues, and activists coordinating campaigns based on their respective visions of economic salvation and environmental ruin. Wilber describes a landscape in which the battle over the Marcellus ranges from the very local yard signs proclaiming landowners' allegiances for or against shale gas development to often conflicting municipal, state, and federal legislation intended to accelerate, delay, or discourage exploration.For millions of people with a direct stake in shale gas exploration in the Marcellus or any number of other emerging shale resources in the United States and worldwide, or for those concerned about the global energy outlook, Under the Surface offers a worthwhile and engaging look at the issues.

    To understand it fully, we must look beneath the surface. The positive side is that technology is making machines smarter. However, the deeper view explained in this book shows that AI is also making a growing number of people cognitively and psychologically dependent on digital networks. Whether you are a social media fanatic, a diehard AI aficionado, or a paranoid sceptic, it is impossible to escape the ubiquitous impact of AI. Artificial Intelligence is the brains bringing together quantum computing, nanotechnology, medical technology, brain-machine interface, robotics, aerospace, 5G, Internet of Things, and more. It is amplifying human ingenuity and disrupting the foundations of healthcare, military, entertainment, education, marketing and manufacturing.Artificial Intelligence and The Future of Power argues that this AI-driven revolution will have an unequal impact on different segments of humanity. There will be new winners and losers, new haves and have-nots, resulting in an unprecedented concentration of wealth and power. After analyzing society’s vulnerabilities to the impending tsunami, the book raises troubling questions that provoke immediate debate: Is the world headed toward digital colonization by USA and China? Will depopulation become eventually unavoidable?Artificial Intelligence and The Future of Power is a wakeup call to action, compelling public intellectuals to be better informed and more engaged. It educates the social segments most at risk and wants them to demand a seat at the table where policies on Artificial Intelligence are being formulated.

    Writing in the form of a journal, Rick Bass brings a lyric imagination to the oil geologist’s craft, measuring people’s short lives and relationships against the seemingly immutable history of the earth, showing mountains and forests that do not move while we are free to race across them, living our lives in the ultimate freedom of speed. To dig for oil is a way to dig deep into human experience, a kind of subterranean exploration of self. And nothing escapes this writer’s eye or imagination. In lean, considered prose, Bass’s essays and notes offer fascinating insights into the oil industry while skillfully painting the picture of a young man on the verge of adulthood. Oil Notes successfully conveys the excitement of possibility—a stimulating career, the pursuit of a wonderful woman, the beautiful mystery of the earth—that so addresses and captivates us in our own lives. Bass provides a new introduction for this edition reflecting how much—and how little—has changed since his youth in the oil industry.

    Sixty-six million years ago, the Earth’s most fearsome creatures vanished. Today they remain one of our planet’s great mysteries. Now The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs reveals their extraordinary, 200-million-year-long story as never before.In this captivating narrative (enlivened with more than seventy original illustrations and photographs), Steve Brusatte, a young American paleontologist who has emerged as one of the foremost stars of the field—naming fifteen new species and leading groundbreaking scientific studies and fieldwork—masterfully tells the complete, surprising, and new history of the dinosaurs, drawing on cutting-edge science to dramatically bring to life their lost world and illuminate their enigmatic origins, spectacular flourishing, astonishing diversity, cataclysmic extinction, and startling living legacy. Captivating and revelatory, The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs is a book for the ages.Brusatte traces the evolution of dinosaurs from their inauspicious start as small shadow dwellers—themselves the beneficiaries of a mass extinction caused by volcanic eruptions at the beginning of the Triassic period—into the dominant array of species every wide-eyed child memorizes today, T. rex, Triceratops, Brontosaurus, and more. This gifted scientist and writer re-creates the dinosaurs’ peak during the Jurassic and Cretaceous, when thousands of species thrived, and winged and feathered dinosaurs, the prehistoric ancestors of modern birds, emerged. The story continues to the end of the Cretaceous period, when a giant asteroid or comet struck the planet and nearly every dinosaur species (but not all) died out, in the most extraordinary extinction event in earth’s history, one full of lessons for today as we confront a “sixth extinction.”Brusatte also recalls compelling stories from his globe-trotting expeditions during one of the most exciting eras in dinosaur research—which he calls “a new golden age of discovery”—and offers thrilling accounts of some of the remarkable findings he and his colleagues have made, including primitive human-sized tyrannosaurs; monstrous carnivores even larger than T. rex; and paradigm-shifting feathered raptors from China.An electrifying scientific history that unearths the dinosaurs’ epic saga, The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs will be a definitive and treasured account for decades to come.

    This methodology revealed distinct cyclical patterns that were used to provide the foundation for his forecasting. The wonderful advances in science add to the mix, but are tools to use, not answers that should automatically be accepted as we see with the climate agenda. The lesson in weather, in history, in anything, is that the foundation you stand on today is built from yesterday to reach for tomorrow. The book examines the clash between that philosophy and one that minimizes lessons of the past, or ignores them, and uses climate and weather to simply further an agenda that has very little to do with either. An uncurious media is a willing accomplice in advancing the missive to the population, The Climate Chronicles reveals that clash in an effort to get the reader to search beyond what they are told. As such its a must read for those seeking not an agenda driven answer, but the right answer, wherever it may lead them. Bastardi's goal is not to get you to blindly accept what he says, but to dig in and examine for yourself. The book shows, given the implications of not doing so, more is at stake than just tomorrows weather.