Real World Science

The restoration agriculture system described in this award-winning book works! It is possible for humans to produce staple foods using perennial agricultural ecosystems that actually improve the quality of the environment. This can be done on a backyard, farm, or ranch scale and is needed right now - on a global scale. Restoration Agriculture explains how we can have all of the benefits of natural, perennial ecosystems and create agricultural systems that imitate nature in form and function while still providing for our food, building, fuel, and many other needs.

Exploring and explaining a litany of glitches, near misses, and mathematical mishaps involving the internet, big data, elections, street signs, lotteries, the Roman Empire, and an Olympic team, Matt Parker uncovers the bizarre ways math trips us up, and what this reveals about its essential place in our world. Getting it wrong has never been more fun.

Edge AI is transforming the way computers interact with the real world, allowing IoT devices to make decisions using the 99% of sensor data that was previously discarded due to cost, bandwidth, or power limitations. With techniques like embedded machine learning, developers can capture human intuition and deploy it to any target—from ultra-low power microcontrollers to embedded Linux devices.

Athena Aktipis of Arizona State University is a self-professed apocalypse enthusiast, and as the host of the podcast Zombified, she knows the undead inside and out. With Zombified: Real-World Lessons from Fictional Apocalypses, she’s compiled her research and insights into a fascinating Audible Original that will have you thinking deeper about all those shambling, brain-hungry corpses in pop culture—not to mention our everyday lives. Drawing on years of research on zombies and zombification, these six lessons offer a fun way to explore and understand the many forces that influence us.

For any task you might want to do, there's a right way, a wrong way, and a way so monumentally complex, excessive, and inadvisable that no one would ever try it. How To is a guide to the third kind of approach. It's full of highly impractical advice for everything from landing a plane to digging a hole.

Based on news reports, you might think there's a major cybersecurity threat every four to five months. In reality, there's a cybersecurity attack happening every minute of every day. In Cyber Crisis, Eric Cole gives listeners a clear-eyed picture of the information war raging in cyberspace. Drawing on 30 years of experience, Cole offers practical, actionable advice that even those with little technical background can implement, including steps to take on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis to protect their businesses and themselves.

Peter Singer is often described as the world's most influential philosopher. Now, in Ethics in the Real World, Singer shows that he is also a master at dissecting important current events in a few hundred words. In this book of brief essays, he applies his controversial ways of thinking to issues like climate change, extreme poverty, animals, abortion, euthanasia, human genetic selection, sports doping, the sale of kidneys, the ethics of high-priced art, and ways of increasing happiness.

What accounts for the rise of the state, the creation of the first global system, and the dominance of the West? The conventional answer asserts that superior technology, tactics, and institutions forged by Darwinian military competition gave Europeans a decisive advantage in war from 1500 onward. Empires of the Weak argues that Europeans had no general military superiority in the early modern era. Sharman shows instead that European expansion is better explained by deference to strong Asian and African polities, disease in the Americas, and maritime supremacy earned by default.

AI is much more than a sexy marketing gimmick. At its core, it’s a powerful business tool that can make operations and decision-making more efficient, employees more productive, and customers delighted. Unfortunately, leaders who want to take advantage of artificial intelligence often don’t know where to start. The process can feel overwhelming—from analyzing existing processes and software systems and choosing where to apply AI automation, to preparing every tier of the organization for the transition.

From the kid who brought you Fargo Rock City, the first book in history to garner the praise of Stephen King, David Byrne, Donna Gaines, Sebastian Bach, Jonathan Lethem, and Rivers Cuomo, comes Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs, the first book in history to examine breakfast cereal, reality television, tribute bands, Internet porn, serial killers, and the Dixie Chicks.

Pirates have long lived in the realm of romance and fantasy, symbolizing risk, lawlessness, and radical visions of freedom. But at the root of this mythology is a rich history of pirate societies—vibrant, imaginative experiments in self-governance and alternative social formations at the edges of the European empire.

As Russian forces closed in on Berlin and Hitler’s premiership drew to a close, many Nazi officials fled Germany. In this startling, meticulously researched account, acclaimed journalist Uki Goñi unravels the complex network that led them to Argentina. Relying on international support—in Scandinavia, Switzerland, and Italy—and the enthusiasm of the Vatican and President Juan Perón, Goñi shows how this ratline allowed Adolf Eichmann—the architect of the Final Solution—Josef Mengele, Eric Priebke, and many more, into the country.

Peter Singer is often described as the world's most influential philosopher. He is also one of its most controversial. The author of important books such as Animal Liberation and Practical Ethics, he helped launch the animal rights and effective altruism movements and contributed to the development of bioethics. Now, in Ethics in the Real World, Singer shows that he is also a master at dissecting important current events in a few hundred words.

Does the real world, defined as a world of objects that exist independent of human interests, concerns, and cognitive activities, really exist? Jan Westerhoff argues that we have good reason to believe it does not. His discussion considers four main facets of the idea of the real world, ranging from the existence of a separate external and internal world (comprising various mental states congregated around a self), to the existence of an ontological foundation that grounds the existence of all the entities in the world.

Learn data science with Python by building five real-world projects! Experiment with card game predictions, tracking disease outbreaks, and more, as you build a flexible and intuitive understanding of data science. In Data Science Bookcamp, you’ll test and build your knowledge of Python with the kind of open-ended problems that professional data scientists work on every day. Downloadable data sets and thoroughly-explained solutions help you lock in what you’ve learned, building your confidence and making you ready for an exciting new data science career.

You don’t have to be Harry Potter, Hermione Granger or Dr. Strange to be slammed by toxic energy wielded by masters of the Dark Arts. This book helps you defend yourself against the negative energy and cruel words that drain the life from us. For you to live at your highest level of real-life success and happiness, you need to have “layers of countermeasures” to handle the toxic tactics that some people use. Toxic tactics include: Blame, Guilt, Denying your feelings, Shooting down what you say, Resistance and “Sick games.” The toxic person often uses a “Dark Arts Defense tactic...

The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe is your map through this maze of modern life. Here Dr. Steven Novella and friends will explain the tenets of skeptical thinking and debunk some of the biggest scientific myths, fallacies, and conspiracy theories - from anti-vaccines to homeopathy, UFO sightings to N-rays. You'll learn the difference between science and pseudoscience, essential critical thinking skills, ways to discuss conspiracy theories with that crazy co-worker of yours, and how to combat sloppy reasoning, bad arguments, and superstitious thinking.

Douglas Preston's journalistic explorations have taken him from the haunted country of Italy to the jungles of Honduras. The Lost Tomb brings together an astonishing and compelling collection of true stories about buried treasure, enigmatic murders, lost tombs, bizarre crimes, and other fascinating tales of the past and present.

Andrei Lankov has gone where few outsiders have ever been. A native of the former Soviet Union, he lived as an exchange student in North Korea in the 1980s. He has studied it for his entire career, using his fluency in Korean and personal contacts to build a rich, nuanced understanding. In The Real North Korea, Lankov substitutes cold, clear analysis for the overheated rhetoric surrounding this opaque police state.

In Your AI Survival Guide, Sol Rashidi delivers an insightful and practical discussion of how to deploy artificial intelligence in your company. Having helped IBM launch Watson in 2011, Sol has firsthand knowledge of the ups, downs, and change management intricacies that can help you with a successful deployment beyond all the AI hype. She walks you through various frameworks for how to establish your AI strategy, pick your use cases, prepare your non-technology teams, and overcome the most common obstacles standing in the way of successfully implementing AI in your business.