Know this : today's most interesting and important scientific ideas, discoveries, and developments

Title:

Author:

Brockman, John, 1941- editor.

ISBN:

9780062562067

Edition:

First edition.

Physical Description:

xxviii, 573 pages ; 21 cm

General Note:

Source of cataloging data: WCP

Abstract:

"The latest volume in the bestselling series from Edge.org-- dubbed 'the world's smartest website' by The Guardian-- brings together 175 of the world's most innovative and brilliant thinkers to discuss recent scientific breakthroughs that will shape the future. Scientific developments radically alter our understanding of the world. Whether it's technology, climate change, health research, or the latest revelations of neuroscience, physics, or psychology, science has, as Edge editor John Brockman says, 'become a big story, if not the big story.' In that spirit, this new addition to Edge.org's fascinating series asks a powerful and provocative question: What do you consider the most interesting and important recent scientific news?"--Amazon.com.

Contents:

Preface : the edge question / Human progress quantified / Doing more with less / The "specialness" of humanity / J.M. Bergoglio's 2015 review of global ecology / Leaking, thinning, sliding ice / Glaciers / Our collective blind spot / Three de-carbonizing scientific breakthroughs / Juice / A call to action / A bridge between the 21st and 22nd century / The greatest environmental disaster / Technobiophilic cities / LENR could supplant fossil fuels / Emotions influence environmental well-being / Global warming redux : a serious challenge to our species / Blue marble 2.0 / High-tech stone age / The dematerialization of consumption / Science made this possible / The brain is a strange planet / The abdication of spacetime / The news that wasn't there / No news is astounding news / One hundred years of failure / Hope beyond the Higgs Boson / An unexpected, haunting signal / News about how the physical world operates / Unpublicized implications of Hawking black-hole evaporation / The energy of nothing / The big bang cannot be what we thought it was / Anomalies / Looking where the light isn't / Simplicity

The LHC is working at full energy / New probes of Einstein's curved spacetime--and beyond? / Supermassive black holes / Gigantic black holes at the center of galaxies / The universe is infinite / Advanced LIGO and advanced Virgo / The news is not the news / We know all the particles and forces we're made of / Computational complexity and the nature of reality / Einstein was wrong / Replacing magic with mechanism? / Quantum entanglement is independent of space and time / Breakthroughs become part of the culture / Space exploration, new and old / Pluto is a bump in the road / Pluto now, then on to 550 AU / The universe surprised us, close to home / Progress in rocketry / The space age takes off ... and returns to Earth again / How widely should we draw the circle? / A new algorithm showing what computers can and cannot do / Designer humans / Cellular alchemy / A terrible beauty has been born / DNA programming

Human chimeras / The race between genetic meltdown and germline engineering / The ongoing battles with pathogens / Antibiotics are dead; long live antibiotics! / The 6 billion letters of our genome / Systems medicine / Growing a brain in a dish / Self-driving genes are coming / Life diverging / Fundamentally newsworthy / Paleo-DNA and de-extinction / The wisdom race is heating up / Tabby's star / Extraterrestrials don't land on Earth! / We are not unique, but we are very much alone / Breakthrough listen / Life in the Milky Way / There is (already) life on Mars / The breathtaking future of a connected world / Everything is computation / Identifying the principles, perhaps the laws, of intelligence / Neuro-news / Microbial attractions / The epidemic of absence / Bugs R Us / Fecal microbiota transplants / Hi, guys / The anti-democratic trend / The age of awareness / A large-scale personality research method / The conquest of human scale / Big data and better government / This is the science-news essay you want to read / Those annoying ads? The harbinger of good things to come / Biology versus choice / How to be bad together / Psychology's crisis / The truthiness of scientific research

Blinded by data / The epistemic trainwreck of soft-side psychology / Science itself / A compelling explanation for scientific misconduct / Sub-prime science / The infancy of meta-science / The disillusion and the disaffection of poor white Americans / Inequality of wealth and income : a runaway process / The age of visible thought / Our changing conceptions of what it means to be human / Complete head transplants / The en-gendering of genius / Diversity in science / The democratization of science / News about science news / The broadening scope of science / Q-bio / Mathematics and reality / Synthetic learning / A genuine science of learning / Bayesian program learning / FSM (feces-standard money) / The ironies of higher arithmetic / Broke people ignoring $20 bills on the sidewalk / We fear the wrong things / Living in terror of terrorism / The state of the world isn't as bad as you think / The healthy diet u-turn / Fatty foods are good for your health / Partisan hostility / Cognitive science transforms moral philosophy / Morality is made of meat / People kill because it's the right thing to do / Interdisciplinary social research / Intellectual convergence / Weapons technology powered human evolution / The immune system : a grand unifying theory for biomedical research / Harnessing our natural defenses against cancer

Cancer drugs for brain diseases / The most powerful carcinogen may be entropy / The decline of cancer / The mating crisis among educated women / The most important x ... y ... z ... / The mother of all addictions / The trust metric / Optogenetics / The state of brain science / Nootropic neural news / Memory is a labile fabrication / The continually new you / Toddlers can master computers / The predictive brain / A new imaging tool / Sensors : accelerating the pace of scientific discovery / 3D printing in the medical field / Deep science / A world that counts / Programming reality / Pointing is a prerequisite for language / Macro-criminal networks / Virtual reality goes mainstream / The twin tides of change / Imaging deep learning / The neural net reloaded / Differentiable programming / Deep learning, semantics, and society / Seeing our cyborg selves / The rejection of science itself / Re-thinking artificial intelligence / I, for one / Data sets over algorithms / Biological models of mental illness reflect essentialist biases / Neuroprediction / The thin line between mental illness and mental health / Theodiversity / Modernity is winning / Religious morality is mostly below the belt

A science of the consequences / Creation of a "no ethnic majority" society / Interconnectedness / Early life adversity and collective outcomes / We're still behind / Neural hacking, handprints, and the empathy deficit / Send in the drones / That dress / Anthropic capitalism and the new gimmick economy / The origin of Europeans / The platinum rule : dense, heavy, but worth it / Adjusting to feathered dinosaurs / People are animals / The longevity of news / Weather prediction has quietly gotten better / The word : first as art, then as science / The convergence of images and technology / The mindful meeting of minds / Carpe diem / Linking the levels of human variation / Challenging the value of a university education / The hermeneutic hypercycle / Rethinking authority with the blockchain crypto enlightenment / Envoi : we may all die horribly

Subject Term:

Discoveries in science -- Popular works.

Science -- Forecasting.

Technological innovations.

Added Author:

Brockman, John, 1941-

Available:*

Library	Material Type	Call Number	Status	Item Holds
Searching... Sugar Grove - Todd Library	Book	Q180.55 .D57 K58 2017	Searching... Unknown	Searching... Unavailable

Bound With These Titles

On Order

Summary

Today's most visionary thinkers reveal the cutting-edge scientific ideas and breakthroughs you must understand.

Scientific developments radically change and enlighten our understanding of the world -- whether it's advances in technology and medical research or the latest revelations of neuroscience, psychology, physics, economics, anthropology, climatology, or genetics. And yet amid the flood of information today, it's often difficult to recognize the truly revolutionary ideas that will have lasting impact. In the spirit of identifying the most significant new theories and discoveries, John Brockman, publisher of Edge.org ("The world's smartest website" -- The Guardian), asked 198 of the finest minds What do you consider the most interesting recent scientific news What makes it important

Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Guns, Germs, and Steel Jared Diamond on the best way to understand complex problems * author of Seven Brief Lessons on Physics Carlo Rovelli on the mystery of black holes * Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker on the quantification of human progress * TED Talks curator Chris J. Anderson on the growth of the global brain * Harvard cosmologist Lisa Randall on the true measure of breakthrough discoveries * Nobel Prize-winning physicist Frank Wilczek on why the twenty-first century will be shaped by our mastery of the laws of matter * philosopher Rebecca Newberger Goldstein on the underestimation of female genius * music legend Peter Gabriel on tearing down the barriers between imagination and reality * Princeton physicist Freeman Dyson on the surprising ability of small (and cheap) upstarts to compete with billion-dollar projects. Plus Nobel laureate John C. Mather, Sun Microsystems cofounder Bill Joy, Wired founding editor Kevin Kelly, psychologist Alison Gopnik, Genome author Matt Ridley, Harvard geneticist George Church, Why Does the World Exist author Jim Holt, anthropologist Helen Fisher, and more.

Reviews (1)

Publisher's Weekly Review

Brockman follows his critical collection This Idea Must Die with a collection of short essays by various writers that has a more positive outlook on recent scientific developments. Though chapters on climate change are predictably gloomy, rays of hope appear as futurist Bill Joy and artist James Croak each discuss improvement in batteries; engineer Carl Page outlines the potential of harnessing low energy nuclear reactions; and Leonard Susskind, Andrei Linde, and Stephon Alexander giddily share news from the edges of theoretical physics. The geneticists included relay their concerns with the ethics of gene editing and the debate over "designer children." In that vein, the biology-focused essays largely address "ethical, moral, and governance challenges." Computer scientist Marti Hearst lampoons the Big Data fad so prevalent in tech culture. To broaden perspectives, Brockman smartly includes psychologists, economists, sociologists, and linguists along with artists, poets, musicians, and philosophers. As welcome as the social sciences are in a volume such as this, many of the problems addressed demand political, not technological, solutions. Brockman's array of contributors and subject matter makes for an often lively collection, but with nearly 200 essays, the book could use an organizing principle. Agent: Max Brockman, Brockman Inc. (Feb.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.