Science

By 1514, the reclusive cleric Nicolaus Copernicus had written and hand-copied an initial outline of his heliocentric theory-in which he defied common sense and received wisdom to place the sun, not the earth, at the center of our universe, and set the earth spinning among the other planets. Over the next two decades, Copernicus expanded his theory through hundreds of observations, while compiling in secret a book-length manuscript that tantalized mathematicians and scientists throughout Europe. For fear of ridicule, he refused to publish.

In 1539, a young German mathematician, Georg Joachim Rheticus, drawn by rumors of a revolution to rival the religious upheaval of Martin Luther's Reformation, traveled to Poland to seek out Copernicus. Two years later, the Protestant youth took leave of his aging Catholic mentor and arranged to have Copernicus's manuscript published, in 1543, as De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres)-the book that forever changed humankind's place in the universe.

In her elegant, compelling style, Dava Sobel chronicles, as nobody has, the conflicting personalities and extraordinary discoveries that shaped the Copernican Revolution. At the heart of the book is her play And the Sun Stood Still, imagining Rheticus's struggle to convince Copernicus to let his manuscript see the light of day. As she achieved with her bestsellers Longitude and Galileo's Daughter, Sobel expands the bounds of narration, giving us an unforgettable portrait of scientific achievement, and of the ever-present tensions between science and faith.

We are on the verge of the nation's worst nursing shortage in history. Dedicated nurses are leaving hospitals in droves, and there are not enough new recruits to the profession to meet demand. Even hospitals that were once very highly regarded for the quality of their nursing care, such as Boston's Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, now struggle to fill vacant positions. What happened? Dana Beth Weinberg argues that hospital restructuring in the 1990s is to blame.

In their attempts to retain profit margins or even just to stay afloat, hospitals adopted a common set of practices to cut costs and increase revenues. Many strategies squeezed greater productivity out of nurses and other hospital workers. Nurses' workloads increased to the point that even the most skilled nurses questioned whether they could provide minimal, safe care to patients. As hospitals hemorrhaged money, it seemed that no one--not hospital administrators, not doctors--felt they could afford to listen to nurses.

Through a careful look at the effects of the restructuring strategies chosen and implemented by Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, the author examines management's efforts to balance service and survival. By showing the effects of hospital restructuring on nurses' ability to plan, evaluate, and deliver excellent care, Weinberg provides a stinging indictment of standard industry practices that underestimate the contribution nurses make both to hospitals and to patient care.

One of the world's leading scientists explains why--and how--the search for intelligent life beyond Earth should be expanded.

Fifty years ago, a young astronomer named Frank Drake first pointed a radio telescope at nearby stars in the hope of picking up a signal from an alien civilization. Thus began one of the boldest scientific projects in history, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). After a half-century of scanning the skies, however, astronomers have little to report but an eerie silence--eerie because many scientists are convinced that the universe is teeming with life. Physicist and astrobiologist Paul Davies has been closely involved with SETI for three decades and chairs the SETI Post-Detection Taskgroup, charged with deciding what to do if we're suddenly confronted with evidence of alien intelligence. He believes the search so far has fallen into an anthropocentric trap--assuming that an alien species will look, think, and behave much like us. In this provocative book Davies refocuses the search, challenging existing ideas of what form an alien intelligence might take, how it might try to communicate with us, and how we should respond if it does.

With its clear, easy-to-use format, accurate line drawings, and concise descriptions, Edward Knobel's Field Guide can help make you an expert at identifying the common grasses, sedges, and rushes of the United States. Over 370 of the most common species are accurately described in this handy volume: varieties of timothy, rye, foxtail, fescue, bluegrass, nutrush, cottongrass, bulrush, etc. Knobel's emphasis is upon wild varieties of these plants common to the eastern and central United States, but many cultivated strains and food grains such as rice, oats, and maize are also included.
A general key on the first page of this book allows you to fit each plant into one of several basic structural categories. Further subdivisions, classified according to the structure of the ear and spikelet (the flowering part of the plant) identify the particular species. Each plant is then described according to common name, Latin name, height, color of flower and stem, texture, smell (if applicable), habitat, and even edibility. Close resemblances to other varieties are also noted, which helps to make identifications even easier. Each description is also accompanied by a drawing of an entire plant, and a second drawing of the actual spikelet (with scale of the drawing noted). The author includes a total of 28 plates and over 600 line drawings.
This new Dover edition has been completely revised, with common and scientific nomenclature updated, by Mildred E. Faust, Professor of Botany, Emeritus, Syracuse University.

When we think of plagues, we think of AIDS, Ebola, anthrax spores, and, of course, the Black Death. But in 1918 the Great Flu Epidemic killed an estimated forty million people virtually overnight. If such a plague returned today, taking a comparable percentage of the US population with it, 1.5 million Americans would die.

In Flu, Gina Kolata, an acclaimed reporter for The New York Times, unravels the mystery of this lethal virus with the high drama of a great adventure story. From Alaska to Norway, from the streets of Hong Kong to the corridors of the White House, Kolata tracks the race to recover the live pathogen and probes the fear that has impelled government policy.

A gripping work of science writing, Flu addresses the prospects for a great epidemic's recurrence and considers what can be done to prevent it.

Four rival anatomists and their race to answer the age-old question: Where does life come from?

Generation is the story of the exciting, largely forgotten decade during the seventeenth century when a group of young scientists--Jan Swammerdam, the son of a Protestant apothecary, Nils Stensen (also known as Steno), a Danish anatomist who first discovered the human tear duct, Reinier de Graaf, the attractive and brilliant son of a rich and successful Catholic architect, and Antoni Leeuwenhoek, a self-taught draper--dared to challenge thousands of years of orthodox thinking about where life comes from. By meticulous experimentation, dissection, and observation with the newly invented microscope, they showed that like breeds like, that all animals come from an egg, that there is no such thing as spontaneous generation, and that there are millions of tiny, wriggling "eels" in semen. However, their ultimate inability to fully understand the evidence that was in front of them led to a fatal mistake. As a result, the final leap in describing the process of reproduction--which would ultimately give birth to the science of genetics--took nearly two centuries for humanity to achieve. Including previously untranslated documents, Generation interweaves the personal stories of these scientists against a backdrop of the Dutch "Golden Age." It is a riveting account of the audacious men who swept away old certainties and provided the foundation for much of our current understanding of the living world.

There's no easier, faster, or more practical way to learn the really tough subjects

Genetics Demystified offers an up-to-date, highly readable explanation of the basic principles of genetics, covering key topics such as human genetics, DNA, heredity, mutations, traits, chromosomes, and much more. This self-teaching guide comes complete with key points, background information, quizzes at the end of each chapter, and even a final exam. Simple enough for beginners but challenging enough for advanced students, this is a lively and entertaining brush-up, introductory text, or classroom supplement.

Hollywood actress and math whiz Danica McKellar has completely shattered the "math nerd" stereotype. For years, she's been showing girls how to feel confident and ace their math classes - with style! With Girls Get Curves, she applies her winning techniques to high school geometry, giving readers the tools they need to feel great and totally "get" everything from congruent triangles to theorems, and more. Inside you'll find:

- Time-saving tips and tricks for homework and tests

- Illuminating practice problems (and proofs!) with detailed solutions

- Totally relatable real-world examples

- True stories from Danica's own life as an actress and math student

- A Troubleshooting Guide, for getting unstuck during even the trickiest proofs!

With Danica as a coach, girls everywhere can stop hiding from their homework and watch their scores rise!

The electrical grid goes everywhere -- it's the largest and most complex machine ever made. Yet the system is built in such a way that the bigger it gets, the more inevitable its collapse.

Named the greatest engineering achievement of the 20th century by the National Academy of Engineering, the electrical grid is the largest industrial investment in the history of humankind. It reaches into your home, snakes its way to your bedroom, and climbs right up into the lamp next to your pillow. At times, it almost seems alive, like some enormous circulatory system that pumps life to big cities and the most remote rural areas.

Constructed of intricately interdependent components, the grid operates on a rapidly shrinking margin for error. Things can -- and do -- go wrong in this system, no matter how many preventive steps we take. Just look at the colossal 2003 blackout, when 50 million Americans lost power due to a simple error at a power plant in Ohio; or the one a month later, which blacked out 57 million Italians. And these two combined don't even compare to the 2001 outage in India, which affected 226 million people.

The Grid is the first history of the electrical grid intended for general readers, and it comes at a time when we badly need such a guide. As we get more and more dependent on electricity to perform even the most mundane daily tasks, the grid's inevitable shortcomings will take a toll on populations around the globe. At a moment when energy issues loom large on the nation's agenda and our hunger for electricity grows, The Grid is as timely as it is compelling.