Even before COVID-19 lockdowns, most of us spent 90 percent of our time indoors. Not only do thousands of microbes live alongside us but light and noise exposure, outdoor views, and other environmental factors affect both our mental and physical well-being, Emily Anthes reports in The Great Indoors: The Surprising Science of How Buildings Shape Our Behavior, Health, and Happiness.
Although nailing a bent strip of iron to a horse’s hoof dates to Roman times, widespread use of horseshoes arose only at the end of the 800s. Horseshoes provided better traction and boosted draft horses’ endurance, helping foster greater agricultural productivity, John Farrell reports in The Clock and the Camshaft and Other Medieval Inventions We Still Can’t Live Without.
As a self-described “green mom,” Shannon Brescher Shea aims to help other families embrace earth-friendly tactics in daily life. In Growing Sustainable Together: Practical Resources for Raising Kind, Engaged, Resilient Children, she encourages parents and children to walk, bike, and use public transit, lower home energy use, avoid acquiring “stuff,” and volunteer in their communities.
The termination of NASA’s space shuttle program in 2011 sparked opportunities for the commercial space industry. For 2008-2018: A NewSpace Primer, David Bullock interviewed CEOs, scientists, lawyers, and others in this emerging field. His compact overview addresses advantages of competitive pricing and reuse of equipment. He also created a picture book for young children, What Is Up In Space?
Thousands of crows roost nightly in cold months at a Seattle parking lot. River otters, beavers, and muskrats thrive in city parks. Colonies of eight-legged water bears, microscopic animals aka tardigrades, may live on your roof. In Nature Obscura: A City's Hidden Natural World, Kelly Brenner offers a paean to the vast diversity of organisms urban dwellers can see and study close to home.
A diagnosis of COVID-19 depends in part on an accurate thermometer, a device made possible by adding boron to glass in the late 1800s. In The Alchemy of Us: How Humans and Matter Transformed One Another, Ainissa Ramirez tells how advances in materials science shape our lives. Along with glass, her topics include clocks, steel, telegraph wires, photographic materials, silicon chips, and more.
Cancer cells act in the body like bad roommates, Athena Aktipis writes in 'The Cheating Cell: How Evolution Helps Us Understand and Treat Cancer.' They stop cooperating, over-use resources, and invade every space in the house. Cancer is the literal embodiment of evolution, Aktipis says. We can’t win a war against a process of evolution, she says, but altering it may make cancer easier to tolerate.
According to a 2019 Gallup poll, 33% of U.S. adults believe alien spacecraft visiting Earth from other planets or galaxies account for some UFO sightings. About 16% of Americans claim to have seen a UFO. “What intrigued me most was not the UFOs,” Sarah Scoles relates. “It was the people obsessed with UFOs.” She tells their stories in They Are Already Here: UFO Culture and Why We See Saucers.
People who manifest a specific pattern of brain activity while letting their minds wander can learn a second language more easily than those who don’t show it. A computer interpreting brainwaves can generate speech that sounds “as clear as Alexa,” Douglas Fields relates in Electric Brain: How the New Science of Brainwaves Reads Minds, Tells Us How We Learn, and Helps Us Change for the Better.
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