Archives de catégorie : Popular Science

Les livres « Ada Twist » bientôt adaptés par Netflix et produite par les Obama

Higher Ground, la société de production de Barack et Michelle Obama, adaptera bientôt les livres jeunesse « Ada Twist » pour Netflix en partenariat avec la scénariste et productrice Chris Nee. La série tv mettra en scène la jeune héroïne Afro-américaine de 8 ans, scientifique en herbe très curieuse, qui vient à l’aide de ses amis et de ses proches et résout des énigmes grâce à la science. La diffusion est prévue courant 2021. (Lire l’article de Deadline)

   

ADA TWIST, SCIENTIST, album écrit par Andrea Beaty et illustré par David Roberts, est paru en septembre 2016 chez Abrams aux Etats-Unis, au sein de la série « The Questioneers ». Un activity book est paru en avril 2018, ainsi qu’un chapter book, ADA TWIST AND THE PERILOUS PANTS, en octobre 2019.

Les droits de langue française sont toujours disponibles.

OUR MOON de Rebecca Boyle

Science journalist Rebecca Boyle explores the cultural and scientific history of the Moon and discovers that far from being a lifeless ornament of the sky, the Moon holds the answers to some of our most fundamental questions—from the origins of the Earth and the genesis of life to the nature of time itself.

OUR MOON:
Uncovering the Secrets It Holds to Our Past and Our Future
by Rebecca Boyle
Random House, January 2024
(via DeFiore and Co.)

The Moon is our constant companion. It has been watching over us since before there was an “us.” From our earliest beginnings, we have worshipped the moon, used it to mark our days, depended on its predictability to grow our crops and follow migrating herds, and looked to it for artistic and spiritual inspiration. The Moon has played many roles in our lives, and now it is ready to tell us all it knows.
In OUR MOON, award-winning science journalist Rebecca Boyle traces our relationship with the Moon over the centuries and explores the latest scientific findings into what the Moon can now tell us about Earth’s origins and its future. As we prepare to return to the Moon, it is more important than ever to take a closer look at this still mysterious neighbor of ours.
No other book has delved into the cultural and scientific history of the Moon. A subject with truly global appeal, OUR MOON is for readers who enjoy single-subject works such as Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens and David George Haskell’s The Songs of Trees.

Rebecca Boyle is a contributing writer for The Atlantic, a frequent contributor at FiveThirtyEight, and a freelance journalist whose work has been published in the New York Times, Wired, Aeon, Quanta, Popular Science, The New Yorker, and Scientific American. Boyle was a 2011 Ocean Science Journalism fellow at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and a 2013 journalism fellow at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado. This is her first book.

THE BLACK BOX de Paul Scharre

An award-winning defense expert tells the story of the new great power rivalry to control artificial intelligence—and how this powerful technology is shaping national power relationships and geopolitics in the 21st century.

THE BLACK BOX
by Paul Scharre
W.W. Norton, January 2023
(via Kaplan/Defiore Rights)

Artificial intelligence is bringing a new digital order—it is changing war, surveillance, and disinformation, with profound effects on human freedom, global security, and power dynamics. THE BLACK BOX takes us inside the immensely competitive global struggle to lead in the four key elements of AI advantage: data, computing power, talent, and institutions. A world expert in AI-enabled weapons, Paul Scharre examines the strengths and weaknesses of today’s major superpowers, including China, the United States, Europe, and the Big Tech corporations that control the global supply of data and compute.
With unique access to the world of automated warfare and surveillance—including on-site visits with major Chinese players and Pentagon startups—national security expert Paul Scharre guides readers through the alarming ways the AI revolution is reshaping the world, and the challenges democracies must overcome if they hope to maintain their global edge.

Paul Scharre is is the author of Army of None: Autonomous Weapons and the Future of War, which won the 2019 Colby Award and was named one of Bill Gates’ top five books of 2018. A former Army Ranger, he is a senior fellow and director of the 20YY Future of Warfare Initiative at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), based in Washington, DC. From 2008 to 2013, he worked in the Office of the U.S. Secretary of Defense on policies for robotics, autonomy, and other emerging weapons technologies. He led the drafting of the official U.S. Department of Defense policy on autonomous weapons.

FOSSIL MEN de Kermit Pattison

A behind-the-scenes account of the shocking discovery of the skeleton of “Ardi,” a human ancestor far older than Lucy—a find that shook the world of paleoanthropology and radically altered our understanding of human evolution. FOSSIL MEN is popular science at its best, and a must read for fans of Jared Diamond, Richard Dawkins, and Edward O. Wilson.

FOSSIL MEN:
The Quest for the Oldest Skeleton and the Origins of Humankind
by Kermit Pattison
William Morrow/HarperCollins, June 2020

In 1994, a team led by fossil-hunting legend Tim White—”the Steve Jobs of paleoanthropology”—uncovered the bones of a human ancestor in Ethiopia’s Afar region. Radiometric dating of nearby rocks indicated the skeleton, classified as Ardipithecus ramidus, was 4.4 million years old, more than a million years older than “Lucy,” then the oldest known human ancestor. The findings challenged many assumptions about human evolution—how we started walking upright, how we evolved our nimble hands, and, most significantly, whether we were descended from an ancestor that resembled today’s chimpanzee—and repudiated a half-century of paleoanthropological orthodoxy. FOSSIL MEN is the first full-length exploration of Ardi, the fossil men who found her, and her impact on what we know about the origins of the human species. It is a scientific detective story played out in anatomy and the natural history of the human body. Kermit Pattison brings into focus a cast of eccentric, obsessive scientists, including one of the world’s greatest fossil hunters, Tim White—an exacting and unforgiving fossil hunter whose virtuoso skills in the field were matched only by his propensity for making enemies; Gen Suwa, a Japanese savant who sometimes didn’t bother going home at night to devote more hours to science; Owen Lovejoy, a onetime creationist-turned-paleoanthropologist; Berhane Asfaw, who survived imprisonment and torture to become Ethiopia’s most senior paleoanthropologist and who fought for African scientists to gain equal footing in the study of human origins; and the Leakeys, for decades the most famous family in paleoanthropology.

“An entertaining update on a process as ‘red in tooth and claw’ as nature itself… Pattison delivers a gripping and reasonably balanced account… Big personalities, simmering turmoil, and fascinating popular science.” —Kirkus, starred review

Kermit Pattison is a journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Times, GQ, Fast Company, and Inc., among many other publications. He spent more a decade doing research for FOSSIL MEN, a large portion of which was spent in the field in Ethiopia with the team that discovered Ardi. This is his first book. He lives in St. Paul, Minnesota.

EINGEFROREN AM NORDPOL de Markus Rex

One year in the eternal ice – a milestone in climate research

EINGEFROREN AM NORDPOL
(Frozen at the North Pole)
by Markus Rex
C. Bertelsmann, November 2020

On the 20th September 2019 began the largest polar expedition of all time: The research vessel RV Polarstern set off from the port of Tromsø, Norway, to be frozen to the ice of the North Pole. Scientists from 20 countries have boarded to research the consequences of climate change for one whole year. Markus Rex, the head of this research expedition called MOSAiC, recounts in his book the story of this unique endeavour. He tells of everyday life in the extreme environment of the Arctic, of the challenges in terms of logistics and planning, and of the scientific findings that the researchers were able to gather. EINGEFROREN AM NORDPOL is not only the story of the largest research adventure ever but at the same time a vivid insight into the dramatic consequences of climate change.

Markus Rex is the head of atmospheric research at the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Sea Research, and he is professor for atmospheric physics at the University of Potsdam. He had already joined numerous expeditions to the Arctic, Antarctica and other remote regions of the world to research the complex climatic processes that lead to at times dramatic climate changes. He heads the MOSAiC project, a unique research collaboration by 90 institutions from 20 countries.