Natural Science

Eating one's own kind is a completely natural behavior in thousands of species, including humans. Throughout history we have engaged in cannibalism for reasons related to famine, burial rites, and medicine. Cannibalism has also been used as a form of terrorism and as the ultimate expression of filial piety. With unexpected wit and a wealth of knowledge, Bill Schutt takes us on a tour of the field, exploring exciting new avenues of research and investigating questions like why so many fish eat their offspring and some amphibians consume their mothers' skin.

It is rare for life to change Earth, yet three organisms have profoundly transformed our planet over the long course of its history. Elemental reveals how microbes, plants, and people used the fundamental building blocks of life to alter the climate, and with it, the trajectory of life on Earth in the past, present, and future. Taking listeners from the deep geologic past to our current era of human dominance, Stephen Porder focuses on five of life’s essential elements—hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus.

Some of the only truly feral cattle in the world wander a long-abandoned island off the northernmost tip of Scotland. A variety of wildlife not seen in many lifetimes has rebounded on the irradiated grounds of Chernobyl. A lush forest supports thousands of species that are extinct or endangered everywhere else on earth in the Korean peninsula's narrow DMZ.

Cutting-edge techniques across biology, chemistry, physics, and geology have transformed our understanding of the deep past, including the discovery of a previously unknown mass extinction. This compelling evidence, revealing a series of environmental crises resulting in the near collapse of life on Earth, illuminates our current dilemmas in exquisite detail.

I murder the bad guys on my downtime. You could say it’s one of my favorite hobbies. If someone wanted to get rid of me, I have this entire history of arson and murder they could have used. So, who framed me for embezzling and why? And why was I sent to Scorchwood as a first-time offender? It’s in Hell because that’s where they send the truly evil to rot.

Fibromyalgia is characterised by fatigue, muscle aches, wandering chronic pains, depression, and anxiety. It often develops slowly, usually over several years. This book will help you to understand the symptoms of fibromyalgia and provides tools you can use to feel better.

A valuable discovery under the world's second-largest temperate wetland and in the traditional lands of the Cree and Ojibway casts light on the growing conflict among resource development, environmental stewardship, and Indigenous rights. In this colorful tale, Virginia Heffernan draws on her bush and newsroom experiences to illustrate the complexities of resource development at a time when Indigenous rights are becoming enshrined globally.

There are many amazing sights to be seen in the sky. In the daytime there may be unusual cloud formations, rainbows, and moonbows. At night you might see a comet, meteorites, or the Aurora Borealis. The Science Behind Wonders in the Sky looks at some of these phenomena, explaining how and why they occur.

In Bite, zoologist Bill Schutt makes a surprising case: it is teeth that are responsible for the long-term success of vertebrates. The appearance of teeth, roughly half a billion years ago, was an adaptation that allowed animals with backbones, such as fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, dinosaurs and mammals—including us—to chow down in pretty much every conceivable environment.

Five short stories that give glimpses into the lives of Griffin, Jorie, and the other characters from Second Nature.

Trapped in the demon world, Louis, one of the most powerful sorcerers in existence, will find himself struggling with the darkness that has seeped into his soul. His family are determined to save him, but they have no idea what the demons have unleashed. And when a sorcerer of his strength loses control, there's a chance that no one will survive the fallout.

Were dinosaurs really dumber than lizards? Why, after all, are roughly the same number of men and women born into the world? What led the famous Dr. Down to his theory of mongolism, and its racist residue? What do the panda's magical "thumb" and the sea turtle's perilous migration tell us about imperfections that prove the evolutionary rule? The wonders and mysteries of evolutionary biology are elegantly explored in these and other essays by the celebrated natural history writer Stephen Jay Gould.

In early May of 2005, Captain Tom Tighe and first mate, Loch Reidy, of the sailboat Almeisan welcomed three new crew members, two men and a woman, for a five-day voyage from Connecticut to Bermuda. While Tighe and Reidy had made the journey countless times, the rest of the crew were paying passengers learning about offshore sailing—and looking for adventure. Four days into their voyage, they got adventure but nothing that they had expected or had any training to handle.

Tyson Compass, as one of the famed Compass quads, is not a wizard used to living with regrets. Except for one: Grace Carter. Grace is a healer witch he rejected many years ago. After completely disappearing from his life, she has returned and turned his world upside down. Tyson does everything he can to prove he will never hurt her again, and just when he thinks there might be a chance for them, she has to leave again. She makes him promise not to follow her, but after almost two months with no word, he’s done waiting. He’s going to find his girl.

Bailed out by a mysterious wizard, John Smoke, an ex-con turned bounty hunter, is returned to his home with his life hanging by a thread. Aided by his sharpshooting wife, Sid, they set out on an explosive mission against dragon invaders sent to enslave mankind. Through inter-dimensional portals, savage winged dragon men, ferocious dragons and shapeshifting monstrosities wielding otherworldly magical powers threaten the very existence of humanity. And it will take more than flesh and blood to stop them before they seal the world's fate.

The earth has died many times, and it always comes back looking different. In an exhilarating, surprising exploration of our planet, Craig Childs takes listeners on a firsthand journey through apocalypse, touching the truth behind the speculation. Apocalyptic Planet is a combination of science and adventure that reveals the ways in which our world is constantly moving toward its end and how we can change our place within the cycles and episodes that rule it.

Natural Language Processing in Action is your guide to building machines that can read and interpret human language. In it, you'll use readily available Python packages to capture the meaning in text and react accordingly. The book expands traditional NLP approaches to include neural networks, modern deep learning algorithms, and generative techniques as you tackle real-world problems like extracting dates and names, composing text, and answering free-form questions.

Even those who take no interest in the field of dragon naturalism have heard of Lady Trent's expedition to the inhospitable deserts of Akhia. Her discoveries there are the stuff of romantic legend, catapulting her from scholarly obscurity to worldwide fame. The details of her personal life during that time are hardly less private, having provided fodder for gossips in several countries.

Two women awaken from a drugged sleep to find themselves imprisoned in an abandoned property in the middle of a desert. The Natural Way of Things is a gripping, starkly imaginative exploration of contemporary misogyny and corporate control, and of what it means to hunt and be hunted. But most of all, it is the story of two friends, their sisterly love and courage.

People love what's natural: It's the best way to eat, the best way to parent, even the best way to act - naturally, just as nature intended. Appeals to the wisdom of nature are among the most powerful arguments in the history of human thought. Yet Nature (with a capital N) and natural goodness are not objective or scientific. In this groundbreaking book, scholar of religion Alan Levinovitz demonstrates that these beliefs are actually religious and highlights the many dangers of substituting simple myths for complicated realities.