Download or read book The Tomb of the Mili Mongga written by Samuel Turvey and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2024-02-15 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'The Tomb of the Mili Mongga lives up to its magnificent billing' DAILY TELEGRAPH - A fossil expedition becomes a thrilling search for a mythical beast deep in the Indonesian forest – and a fascinating look at how fossils, folklore, and biodiversity converge. A tale of exciting scientific discovery, The Tomb of the Mili Mongga tells the story of Samuel Turvey's expeditions to the island of Sumba in eastern Indonesia. While there, he discovers an entire recently extinct mammal fauna from the island's fossil record, revealing how islands support some of the world's most remarkable biodiversity, and why many of these unique endemic species are threatened with extinction or have already been lost. But as the story unfolds, an unexpected narrative emerges – Sumba's Indigenous communities tell of a mysterious wildman called the 'mili mongga', a giant yeti-like beast that supposedly lives in the island's remote forests. What is behind the stories of the mili mongga? Is there a link between this enigmatic entity and the fossils that Sam is looking for? And what did he discover when he finally found the tomb of a mili mongga? Combining evolution, anthropology, travel writing and cryptozoology, The Tomb of the Mili Mongga explores the relationship between biodiversity and culture, what reality means from different cultural perspectives, and how folklore, fossils and conservation can be linked together in surprising ways.

Download or read book The Tomb of the Mili Mongga written by Samuel Turvey and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2024-02-15 with total page 187 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'The Tomb of the Mili Mongga lives up to its magnificent billing' DAILY TELEGRAPH - A fossil expedition becomes a thrilling search for a mythical beast deep in the Indonesian forest – and a fascinating look at how fossils, folklore, and biodiversity converge. A tale of exciting scientific discovery, The Tomb of the Mili Mongga tells the story of Samuel Turvey's expeditions to the island of Sumba in eastern Indonesia. While there, he discovers an entire recently extinct mammal fauna from the island's fossil record, revealing how islands support some of the world's most remarkable biodiversity, and why many of these unique endemic species are threatened with extinction or have already been lost. But as the story unfolds, an unexpected narrative emerges – Sumba's Indigenous communities tell of a mysterious wildman called the 'mili mongga', a giant yeti-like beast that supposedly lives in the island's remote forests. What is behind the stories of the mili mongga? Is there a link between this enigmatic entity and the fossils that Sam is looking for? And what did he discover when he finally found the tomb of a mili mongga? Combining evolution, anthropology, travel writing and cryptozoology, The Tomb of the Mili Mongga explores the relationship between biodiversity and culture, what reality means from different cultural perspectives, and how folklore, fossils and conservation can be linked together in surprising ways.

Download or read book Images of the Wildman in Southeast Asia written by Gregory Forth and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2008-12-10 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book examines ‘wildmen’such as Homo floresiensis and ebu gogo, images of hairy humanlike creatures known to rural villagers and other local people in Southeast Asia and elsewhere. It explores the source of these representations and their status in local systems of knowledge.

Download or read book The Mummy s Tomb written by Roy Pond and published by . This book was released on 1994 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Beasts Before Us written by Elsa Panciroli and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2021-06-10 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For most of us, the story of mammal evolution starts after the asteroid impact that killed the dinosaurs, but over the last 20 years scientists have uncovered new fossils and used new technologies that have upended this story. In Beasts Before Us, palaeontologist Elsa Panciroli charts the emergence of the mammal lineage, Synapsida, beginning at their murky split from the reptiles in the Carboniferous period, over three-hundred million years ago. They made the world theirs long before the rise of dinosaurs. Travelling forward into the Permian and then Triassic periods, we learn how our ancient mammal ancestors evolved from large hairy beasts with accelerating metabolisms to exploit miniaturisation, which was key to unlocking the traits that define mammals as we now know them. Elsa criss-crosses the globe to explore the sites where discoveries are being made and meet the people who make them. In Scotland, she traverses the desert dunes of prehistoric Moray, where quarry workers unearthed the footprints of Permian creatures from before the time of dinosaurs. In South Africa, she introduces us to animals, once called 'mammal-like reptiles', that gave scientists the first hints that our furry kin evolved from a lineage of egg-laying burrowers. In China, new, complete fossilised skeletons reveal mammals that were gliders, shovel-pawed Jurassic moles, and flat-tailed swimmers. This book radically reframes the narrative of our mammalian ancestors and provides a counterpoint to the stereotypes of mighty dinosaur overlords and cowering little mammals. It turns out the earliest mammals weren't just precursors, they were pioneers.

Download or read book Nodding Off written by Alice Gregory and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2018-06-14 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sleep plays a crucial role in our waking lives, and we need to start paying it more attention. The latest research tells us that it's essential for learning and memory, for mental health and physical well-being, and yet we tend to only think about it when it's proving a struggle. Nodding Off leads you on a fascinating journey through the science of sleep as it evolves throughout our lives; from babies to teenagers, from middle age to the later years of our life, there are constantly new challenges to our sleep. Based on knowledge accumulated over almost two decades as a sleep researcher, Professor Alice Gregory shares real-life stories and interviews with other sleep experts to find the answers to questions, such as: - Why do so many adolescents enjoy lying in at the weekends? - Why do children experiencing anxiety, behavioural problems or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder so often have co-occurring sleep problems? - Why are scientists turning to sleep disorders such as sleep paralysis to try to understand paranormal experiences? With important tips on improving your sleep, Nodding Off is an essential read for anyone who sleeps, and more important still for those who don't get enough. Fans of Matthew Walker's Why We Sleep will love this book!

Download or read book Sway written by Pragya Agarwal and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2020-04-02 with total page 449 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Passionate and urgent.' Guardian, Book of the Week 'A must-read for all.' Stylist, best new books for 2020 'Cogently argued and intensely persuasive. Groundbreaking Work.' Waterstones, best new books of April 'Impressive and much-needed.' Financial Times, Best Business Books April to June 'Admirably detailed.' Prospect Magazine 'Practical, useful, readable and essential for the times we are living in.' Nikesh Shukla 'An eye-opening book that I hope will be widely read.' Angela Saini 'If you think you don't need to read this book, you really need to read this book.' Jane Garvey 'An eye-opening book looking at unconscious bias. Meticulously researched and well written. It will make you think hard about the judgements you make. An essential read for our times.' Kavita Puri, BBC Journalist and author For the first time, behavioural and data scientist, activist and writer Dr Pragya Agarwal unravels the way our implicit or 'unintentional' biases affect the way we communicate and perceive the world, how they affect our decision-making, and how they reinforce and perpetuate systemic and structural inequalities. Sway is a thoroughly researched and comprehensive look at unconscious bias and how it impacts day-to-day life, from job interviews to romantic relationships to saving for retirement. It covers a huge number of sensitive topics - sexism, racism, ageism, homophobia, colourism - with tact, and combines statistics with stories to paint a fuller picture and enhance understanding. Throughout, Pragya clearly delineates theories with a solid grounding in science, answering questions such as: do our roots for prejudice lie in our evolutionary past? What happens in our brains when we are biased? How has bias affected technology? If we don't know about it, are we really responsible for it? At a time when partisan political ideologies are taking centre stage, and we struggle to make sense of who we are and who we want to be, it is crucial that we understand why we act the way we do. This book will enables us to open our eyes to our own biases in a scientific and non-judgmental way.

Download or read book Seeds of Science written by Mark Lynas and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2018-04-05 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Mark Lynas is a saint' Sunday Times 'Fluent, persuasive and surely right.' Evening Standard Mark Lynas was one of the original GM field wreckers. Back in the 1990s – working undercover with his colleagues in the environmental movement – he would descend on trial sites of genetically modified crops at night and hack them to pieces. Two decades later, most people around the world – from New York to China – still think that 'GMO' foods are bad for their health or likely to damage the environment. But Mark has changed his mind. This book explains why. In 2013, in a world-famous recantation speech, Mark apologised for having destroyed GM crops. He spent the subsequent years touring Africa and Asia, and working with plant scientists who are using this technology to help smallholder farmers in developing countries cope better with pests, diseases and droughts. This book lifts the lid on the anti-GMO craze and shows how science was left by the wayside as a wave of public hysteria swept the world. Mark takes us back to the origins of the technology and introduces the scientific pioneers who invented it. He explains what led him to question his earlier assumptions about GM food, and talks to both sides of this fractious debate to see what still motivates worldwide opposition today. In the process he asks – and answers – the killer question: how did we all get it so wrong on GMOs? 'An important contribution to an issue with enormous potential for benefiting humanity.' Stephen Pinker 'I warmly recommend it.' Philip Pullman

Download or read book First Light written by Emma Chapman and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2020-11-26 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Astronomers have successfully observed a great deal of the Universe's history, from recording the afterglow of the Big Bang to imaging thousands of galaxies, and even to visualising an actual black hole. There's a lot for astronomers to be smug about. But when it comes to understanding how the Universe began and grew up we are literally in the dark ages. In effect, we are missing the first one billion years from the timeline of the Universe. This brief but far-reaching period in the Universe's history, known to astrophysicists as the 'Epoch of Reionisation', represents the start of the cosmos as we experience it today. The time when the very first stars burst into life, when darkness gave way to light. After hundreds of millions of years of dark, uneventful expansion, one by the one these stars suddenly came into being. This was the point at which the chaos of the Big Bang first began to yield to the order of galaxies, black holes and stars, kick-starting the pathway to planets, to comets, to moons, and to life itself. Incorporating the very latest research into this branch of astrophysics, this book sheds light on this time of darkness, telling the story of these first stars, hundreds of times the size of the Sun and a million times brighter, lonely giants that lived fast and died young in powerful explosions that seeded the Universe with the heavy elements that we are made of. Emma Chapman tells us how these stars formed, why they were so unusual, and what they can teach us about the Universe today. She also offers a first-hand look at the immense telescopes about to come on line to peer into the past, searching for the echoes and footprints of these stars, to take this period in the Universe's history from the realm of theoretical physics towards the wonder of observational astronomy.

Download or read book Our Only Home written by Dalai Lama and published by Harlequin. This book was released on 2020-11-17 with total page 125 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “This impassioned account is ideal for readers well versed in current climate change activism, especially efforts spearheaded by Greta Thunberg.”—Library Journal From the voice of the beloved world religious leader comes an eye-opening manifesto that empowers the generation of today to step up, take action and save our environment. Saving the climate is our common duty. With each passing day, climate change is causing Pacific islands to disappear into the sea, accelerating the extinction of species at alarming proportions and aggravating a water shortage that has affected the entire world. In short, climate change can no longer be denied—it threatens our existence on earth. In this new book, the Dalai Lama, one of the most influential figures of our time, calls on political decision makers to finally fight against deadlock and ignorance on this issue and to stand up for a different, more climate-friendly world and for the younger generation to assert their right to regain their future.

Download or read book What Climate Justice Means And Why We Should Care written by Elizabeth Cripps and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2022-02-03 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We owe it to our fellow humans – and other species – to save them from the catastrophic harm caused by climate change. Philosopher Elizabeth Cripps approaches climate justice not just as an abstract idea but as something that should motivate us all. Using clear reasoning and poignant examples, starting from irrefutable science and uncontroversial moral rules, she explores our obligations to each other and to the non-human world, unravels the legacy of colonialism and entrenched racism, and makes the case for immediate action. The second half of the book looks at solutions. Who should pay the bill for climate action? Who must have a say? How can we hold multinational companies, organisations – even nations – to account? Cripps argues powerfully that climate justice goes beyond political polarization. Climate activism is a moral duty, not a political choice.

Download or read book Farmageddon written by Philip Lymbery and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2014-01-30 with total page 608 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Farm animals have been disappearing from our fields as the production of food has become a global industry. We no longer know for certain what is entering the food chain and what we are eating. We are reaching a tipping point as the farming revolution threatens our countryside, health and the quality of our food wherever we live in the world. From the antibiotics routinely given to industrially farmed animals to the chemicals that are killing our insect populations, Farmageddon is a fascinating and terrifying investigative journey behind the closed doors of a runaway industry across the world – from Europe to the USA, from China to Latin America. It is both a wake-up call to change our current food production and eating practices, and an attempt to find a way to a better farming future.

Download or read book Spirals in Time written by Helen Scales and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2015-05-07 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The beautifully written story of shells and their makers, and our relationships with them. Seashells are the sculpted homes of a remarkable group of animals: the molluscs. These are some of the most ancient and successful animals on the planet. But watch out. Some molluscs can kill you if you eat them. Some will kill you if you stand too close. That hasn't stopped people using shells in many ways over thousands of years. They became the first jewelry and oldest currencies; they've been used as potent symbols of sex and death, prestige and war, not to mention a nutritious (and tasty) source of food. Spirals in Time is an exuberant aquatic romp, revealing amazing tales of these undersea marvels. Helen Scales leads us on a journey into their realm, as she goes in search of everything from snails that 'fly' underwater on tiny wings to octopuses accused of stealing shells and giant mussels with golden beards that were supposedly the source of Jason's golden fleece, and learns how shells have been exchanged for human lives, tapped for mind-bending drugs and inspired advances in medical technology. Weaving through these stories are the remarkable animals that build them, creatures with fascinating tales to tell, a myriad of spiralling shells following just a few simple rules of mathematics and evolution. Shells are also bellwethers of our impact on the natural world. Some species have been overfished, others poisoned by polluted seas; perhaps most worryingly of all, molluscs are expected to fall victim to ocean acidification, a side-effect of climate change that may soon cause shells to simply melt away. But rather than dwelling on what we risk losing, Spirals in Time urges you to ponder how seashells can reconnect us with nature, and heal the rift between ourselves and the living world.

Download or read book Worlds in Shadow written by Patrick Nunn and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2021-08-05 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discover ancient civilizations that have disappeared beneath the ocean's surface and explore how the science of submergence adds to our knowledge of human history. The traces of much of human history – and that which preceded it – lie beneath the ocean surface; broken up, dispersed, often buried and always mysterious. This is fertile ground for speculation, even myth-making, but also a topic on which geologists and climatologists have increasingly focused in recent decades. We now know enough to tell the true story of some of the continents and islands that have disappeared throughout Earth's history, to explain how and why such things happened, and to unravel the effects of submergence on the rise and fall of human civilizations. In Worlds in Shadow Patrick Nunn sifts the facts from the fiction, using the most up-to-date research to work out which submerged places may have actually existed versus those that probably only exist in myth. He looks at the descriptions of recently drowned lands that have been well documented, those that are plausible, and those that almost certainly didn't exist. Going even further back, Patrick examines the presence of more ancient lands, submerged beneath the waves in a time that even the longest-reaching folk memory can't touch. Such places may have played important roles in human evolution, but can only be reconstructed through careful geological detective work. Exploring how lands become submerged, whether from sea-level changes, tectonic changes, gravity collapse, giant waves or volcanoes, helps us determine why, when and where land may disappear in the future, and what might be done to prevent it.

Download or read book Atolls of the Maldives written by Stefano Malatesta and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2021-03-01 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beyond the tropical paradise and beyond the fear of climate change effects, the Maldives is a fascinating island country that faces social, cultural, economic and environmental transformations. Atolls of the Maldives: Nissology and Geography provides a spatial analysis on some key challenges the Maldivian society has to deal with, and guides the reader in the discovery of the human and environmental geography of this Indian Ocean archipelago. Geographers, political scientists, sociologists, geologists, biologists and experts in environmental policies help the audience to move through the complex systems of interrelations, connections and disconnections that shape the environment and the geography of this extraordinary archipelagic country.

Download or read book Handmade written by Anna Ploszajski and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2021-05-13 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fresh and entertaining perspective on materials science involving the craftspeople who have built their careers around working with materials such as clay, stone, steel and wool. From atomic structures to theories about magnetic forces, scientific progress has given us a good grasp on the properties of many different materials. However, most scientists cannot measure the temperature of steel just by looking at it, or sculpt stone into all kinds of shapes, or know how it feels to blow up a balloon of glass. Handmade is the story of materials through making and doing. Author and material scientist Anna Ploszajski journeys into the domain of makers and craftspeople to comprehend how the most popular materials really work. Anna has the fresh perspective of someone at the forefront of the field. Each chapter features her accounts of learning from masters of their respective crafts. Along the way, Anna builds a fuller picture of materials and their place in society, as well as how they have intersected with her own life experiences – from land racing on American salt flats to swimming the English Channel. She visits a blacksmith, explores how working with the primal material, clay, has brought about some of the most advanced technologies, and delves down to the atomic scale of glass to find out what makes it 'glassy'. Handmade affords us a new understanding of the materials we encounter every day and an appreciation for the skills needed to fashion them into objects that are perfectly formed for the jobs they do.

Download or read book Our Biggest Experiment written by Alice Bell and published by Catapult. This book was released on 2021-09-21 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Traversing science, politics, and technology, Our Biggest Experiment shines a spotlight on the little-known scientists who sounded the alarm to reveal the history behind the defining story of our age: the climate crisis. Our understanding of the Earth's fluctuating environment is an extraordinary story of human perception and scientific endeavor. It also began much earlier than we might think. In Our Biggest Experiment, Alice Bell takes us back to climate change science's earliest steps in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, through the point when concern started to rise in the 1950s and right up to today, where the “debate” is over and the world is finally starting to face up to the reality that things are going to get a lot hotter, a lot drier (in some places), and a lot wetter (in others), with catastrophic consequences for most of Earth's biomes. Our Biggest Experiment recounts how the world became addicted to fossil fuels, how we discovered that electricity could be a savior, and how renewable energy is far from a twentieth-century discovery. Bell cuts through complicated jargon and jumbles of numbers to show how we're getting to grips with what is now the defining issue of our time. The message she relays is ultimately hopeful; harnessing the ingenuity and intelligence that has driven the history of climate change research can result in a more sustainable and bearable future for humanity.