This is Improbable Too

Author: Marc Abrahams
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1780743629
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 336

Book Description
The mind behind the infamous Ig Nobel Prizes presents an addictive collection of improbable research all about us – and you Marc Abrahams collects the odd, the imaginative and the brilliantly improbable. Here he turns to research on the ins and outs of the very improbable evolutionary innovation that is the human body (brain included): • What’s the best way to get a monkey to floss regularly? • How much dandruff do Pakistani soldiers have? • If you add an extra henchman to your bank-robbing gang, how much more money will you 'earn'? • How many dimples will be found on the cheeks of 28,282 Greek children? • Who is the Einstein of pork carcasses?

Improbable Destinies

Author: Jonathan B. Losos
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0399184937
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 386

Book Description
A major new book overturning our assumptions about how evolution works Earth’s natural history is full of fascinating instances of convergence: phenomena like eyes and wings and tree-climbing lizards that have evolved independently, multiple times. But evolutionary biologists also point out many examples of contingency, cases where the tiniest change—a random mutation or an ancient butterfly sneeze—caused evolution to take a completely different course. What role does each force really play in the constantly changing natural world? Are the plants and animals that exist today, and we humans ourselves, inevitabilities or evolutionary flukes? And what does that say about life on other planets? Jonathan Losos reveals what the latest breakthroughs in evolutionary biology can tell us about one of the greatest ongoing debates in science. He takes us around the globe to meet the researchers who are solving the deepest mysteries of life on Earth through their work in experimental evolutionary science. Losos himself is one of the leaders in this exciting new field, and he illustrates how experiments with guppies, fruit flies, bacteria, foxes, and field mice, along with his own work with anole lizards on Caribbean islands, are rewinding the tape of life to reveal just how rapid and predictable evolution can be. Improbable Destinies will change the way we think and talk about evolution. Losos's insights into natural selection and evolutionary change have far-reaching applications for protecting ecosystems, securing our food supply, and fighting off harmful viruses and bacteria. This compelling narrative offers a new understanding of ourselves and our role in the natural world and the cosmos.

A Dream Too Big

Author: Caylin Louis Moore
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
ISBN: 1400209927
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 272

Book Description
In this inspiring and provocative memoir about a young black man, Caylin Moore tells the against-all-odds story of his rise from racial injustice and cruel poverty in gang-ridden Los Angeles to academic success at the University of Oxford, with hope as his compass. A Dream to Big is for readers who want to … enjoy a compelling, true, hard-to-believe inspirational story; thoughtfully embrace a long-overdue conversation about equality and justice in America; and be inspired and find hope from a firsthand account of redemption through even the most painful life experiences. When Caylin Louis Moore was a young child, his mother gathered her three young children and fled an abusive marriage, landing in poverty in a heavily policed, gang-ridden community. When Moore’s mother suffered from health complications and a devastating experience in the hospital and his father was sentenced to life imprisonment, Moore was forced to enter adulthood prematurely. His hope was fueled by embracing his mother's steely faith in a brighter future. Moore skirted the gangs, the police, and the violence endemic to Compton to excel as a student and athlete, eventually reaching the pinnacles of academic achievement as a Rhodes Scholar. Moore's eye-opening, against-all-odds story reveals that there is no such thing as a dream too big.

Improbable Scholars

Author: David L. Kirp
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199391092
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 271

Book Description
In Improbable Scholars, David L. Kirp challenges the conventional wisdom about public schools and education reform in America through an in-depth look at Union City, New Jersey's high-performing urban school district. In this compelling study, Kirp reveals Union's city's revolutionary secret: running an exemplary school system doesn't demand heroics, just hard and steady work.

Climbing Mount Improbable

Author: Richard Dawkins
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393070522
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 352

Book Description
A brilliant book celebrating improbability as the engine that drives life, by the acclaimed author of The Selfish Gene and The Blind Watchmaker. The human eye is so complex and works so precisely that surely, one might believe, its current shape and function must be the product of design. How could such an intricate object have come about by chance? Tackling this subject—in writing that the New York Times called "a masterpiece"—Richard Dawkins builds a carefully reasoned and lovingly illustrated argument for evolutionary adaptation as the mechanism for life on earth. The metaphor of Mount Improbable represents the combination of perfection and improbability that is epitomized in the seemingly "designed" complexity of living things. Dawkins skillfully guides the reader on a breathtaking journey through the mountain's passes and up its many peaks to demonstrate that following the improbable path to perfection takes time. Evocative illustrations accompany Dawkins's eloquent descriptions of extraordinary adaptations such as the teeming populations of figs, the intricate silken world of spiders, and the evolution of wings on the bodies of flightless animals. And through it all runs the thread of DNA, the molecule of life, responsible for its own destiny on an unending pilgrimage through time. Climbing Mount Improbable is a book of great impact and skill, written by the most prominent Darwinian of our age.

Wondrous Truths

Author: J.D. Trout
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199385092
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 265

Book Description
A fresh, daring, and genuine alternative to the traditional story of scientific progress Explaining the world around us, and the life within it, is one of the most uniquely human drives, and the most celebrated activity of science. Good explanations are what provide accurate causal accounts of the things we wonder at, but explanation's earthly origins haven't grounded it: we have used it to account for the grandest and most wondrous mysteries in the natural world. Explanations give us a sense of understanding, but an explanation that feels right doesn't mean it is true. For every true explanation, there is a false one that feels just as good. A good theory's explanations, though, have a much easier path to truth. This push for good explanations elevated science from medieval alchemy to electro-chemistry, or a pre-inertial physics to the forces underlying nanoparticles. And though the attempt to explain has existed as long as we have been able to wonder, a science timeline from pre-history to the present will reveal a steep curve of theoretical discovery that explodes around 1600, primarily in the West. Ranging over neuroscience, psychology, history, and policy, Wondrous Truths answers two fundamental questions-Why did science progress in the West? And why so quickly? J.D. Trout's answers are surprising. His central idea is that Western science rose above all others because it hit upon successive theories that were approximately true through an awkward assortment of accident and luck, geography and personal idiosyncrasy. Of course, intellectual ingenuity partially accounts for this persistent drive forward. But so too does the persistence of the objects of wonder. Wondrous Truths recovers the majesty of science, and provides a startling new look at the grand sweep of its biggest ideas.

Ig Nobel Prizes

Author: Marc Abrahams
Publisher: Orion Publishing Company
ISBN: 9780752842615
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 427

Book Description
WHAT: The Ig Nobel Prize honours individuals whose achievements in science cannot or should not be reproduced. 10 prizes are given to people who have done remarkably bizarre things in science over the previous year. WHY: The 'Igs' are intended to celebrate the unusual, honour the imaginative and shine a spotlight onto the weird corners of laboratories around the world. PAST WINNERS: Peter Fong's experiment in which he fed Prozac to clams on the basis that if they chilled out more they'd taste better. Harold Hillman's report on 'The Possible Pain Experienced during Execution by Different Methods'...

And Another Thing...

Author: Eoin Colfer
Publisher: Hachette Books
ISBN: 1401394809
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 364

Book Description
And Another Thing ... will be the sixth novel in the now improbably named Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy trilogy. Eight years after the death of its creator, Douglas Adams, the author's widow, Jane Belson, has given her approval for the project to be continued by the international number one bestselling children's writer, Eoin Colfer, author of the Artemis Fowl novels. Douglas Adams himself once said, 'I suspect at some point in the future I will write a sixth Hitchhiker book. Five seems to be a wrong kind of number, six is a better kind of number.' Belson said of Eoin Colfer, 'I love his books and could not think of a better person to transport Arthur, Zaphod and Marvin to pastures new.' Colfer, a fan of Hitchhiker since his schooldays, said, 'Being given the chance to write this book is like suddenly being offered the superpower of your choice. For years I have been finishing this incredible story in my head and now I have the opportunity to do it in the real world.' Prepare to be amazed...

Improbable

Author: Adam Fawer
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 006073678X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 468

Book Description
From a brilliant new talent comes a riveting novel of chance, fate, and numbers, and one man's strange journey past the boundaries of the possible. David Caine inhabits a world of obsession, rich rewards, and rapid, destructive downfalls. A compulsive gambler and brilliant mathematician prone to crippling epileptic seizures, he possesses the uncanny ability to calculate odds of any hand in the blink of an eye. But one night at an underground poker club, Caine makes a costly mi scalculation, sending his life spinning out of control. Desperate, he agrees to test an experimental drug with unnerving side effects: inexplicable visions of the past, present, and future. Unsure whether he's perceiving an alternate reality or suffering a psychotic breakdown, Caine embarks on a journey that stretches beyond the possible into the world of the improbable. Gradually, he discovers the extent of his astonishing new ability -- but powerful, shadowy forces know Caine's secret. Now Caine must fight for his survival -- and his sanity . . .

The Improbable Theory of Ana and Zak

Author: Brian Katcher
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062272799
Category : Young Adult Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 191

Book Description
Perfect for fans of Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist and The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight, The Improbable Theory of Ana and Zak is Stonewall Award-winning author Brian Katcher's hilarious he said/she said romance about two teens discovering themselves on an out-of-this-world accidental first date at a sci-fi convention. When Ana Watson's brother ditches a high school trip to run wild at Washingcon, type-A Ana knows that she must find him or risk her last shot at freedom from her extra-controlling parents. In her desperation, she's forced to enlist the last person she'd ever want to spend time with—slacker Zak Duquette—to help find her brother before morning comes. But over the course of the night, while being chased by hordes of costumed Vikings and zombies, Ana and Zak begin to open up to each other. Soon, what starts as the most insane nerdfighter manhunt transforms into so much more. . . .