Professional Engineer

Oliver Johnson reveals how mathematical thinking can help us understand the myriad data all around us. From the exponential growth of viruses to social media filter-bubbles; from share-price fluctuations to growth of computing power; from the datafication of our sports pages to quantifying climate change. Not to mention the things much closer to home: ever wondered when the best time is to leave a party? What are the chances of rain ruining your barbecue this weekend? How about which queue is the best to join in the supermarket?

In 2013, Kate Greene moved to Mars. That is, along with five fellow crew members, she embarked on NASA’s first HI-SEAS mission, a simulated Martian environment located on the slopes of Mauna Loa in Hawaii. For four months she lived, worked, and slept in an isolated geodesic dome, conducting a sleep study on her crew mates and gaining incredible insight into human behavior in tight quarters, as well as the nature of boredom, dreams, and isolation that arise amidst the promise of scientific progress and glory.

In Vera Rubin: A Life, Jacqueline Mitton and Simon Mitton provide a detailed, accessible overview of Rubin's work, showing how she leveraged immense curiosity, profound intelligence, and novel technologies to help transform our understanding of the cosmos. But Rubin's impact was not limited to her contributions to scientific knowledge. She also helped to transform scientific practice by promoting the careers of women researchers. Not content to be an inspiration, Rubin was a mentor and champion for hiring women faculty and honoring them with awards historically exclusive to men.

Katey Walter Anthony’s enchantment with lakes began when she was growing up amid the Sierra Nevada mountains. Today, her love for these bodies of water have taken her to the deepest reaches of Alaska and Siberia, where she is undertaking pioneering research on methane emissions. Chasing Lakes is her story.

It all started with a Hob Nob. As Dr Matt Morgan, an intensive care consultant, examined a patient who had suffered a cardiac arrest after inhaling some biscuit crumbs, he saw a flock of birds fly past the window. They must inhale objects all the time when flying, how do they survive? he thought to himself. This began an investigation that spanned continents, species and millennia. For animal science has so much to teach us about human medicine. While some of the overlaps and parallels are obvious, there is so much more that we have learnt from the animal world.

What is it really like to be a brain surgeon, to hold someone's life in your hands, to drill down into the stuff that creates thought, feeling and reason? In this brutally honest account, one of the country's top neurosurgeons reveals what it is to play god in life-and-death situations. Henry Marsh gives us a rare insight into the intense drama of the operating theatre and the exquisite complexity of the human brain.

We now know that the universe is mostly dark, made up of particles and forces undetectable by our most powerful telescopes. The discovery signaled a Copernican-like revolution in astronomy: not only are we not the center of the universe, neither is the stuff of which we're made. Vera Rubin played a pivotal role in this discovery. By showing that some astronomical objects seem to defy gravity, Rubin helped convince the scientific community of the possibility of dark matter. In Bright Galaxies, Dark Matter, and Beyond, Ashley Jean Yeager tells the story of Rubin's life and work.

Edwin Hubble was a man ahead of his time. For him only astronomy really mattered. He took advantage of the opportunity given to him to use the most advanced telescope of his time to determine the truth behind the most distant clouds of light visible to Earth-based observers. His major discoveries changed our knowledge of our place in the universe forever. His determination that the universe is expanding served as the foundation for the big bang theory.

A passionate student of Japanese poetry, theater, and art for much of her life, Gretel Ehrlich felt compelled to return to the earthquake-and-tsunami-devastated Tohoku coast to bear witness, listen to survivors, and experience their terror and exhilaration in villages and towns where all shelter and hope seemed lost.

Why the view from Here "is essential reading for every engineering student or young graduate.” You’re studying engineering at college or a newly graduated engineer ready to give it your all but you have way more questions than answers. You’re not interested in war stories or another speech about ‘back in the day’ but you are looking to a respected colleague for advice presented in such a way that you can take action. You’re looking for a mentor who is close enough in age to be connected to you but who’s senior enough to have demonstrated success in the past by practicing what ...

The perfect gift for fans of All Creatures Great and Small, this is a charming collection of classic stories from James Herriot’s much-loved books with insights into his life and work from his children Rosie and Jim. With astute observations and boundless humour, country vet Herriot captures the spirit of the Yorkshire Dales and of rural communities on the cusp of change, before tractors and machines had taken over and modern medicines and antibiotics transformed veterinary work.

W czasach Kopernika nic nie wskazywało na to, że do największej naukowej rewolucji dojdzie w Europie. O gwiazdach Chińczycy i Arabowie wiedzieli więcej, ale to my jako pierwsi zrozumieliśmy, jakie jest miejsce Ziemi w kosmosie. Ktoś może powiedzieć, że to przede wszystkim zasługa Keplera, Galileusza, Newtona–ale gdybyśmy zapytali tych panów o zdanie, wskazaliby na dzieło bardzo skromnego, genialnego uczonego, który by pracować w spokoju nad swoim odkryciem, zaszył się na skraju Europy.

In the summer of 1964, a reclusive young professor at the University of Edinburgh wrote two scientific papers which have come to change our understanding of the most fundamental building blocks of matter and the nature of the universe. Peter Higgs posited the existence an almost infinitely tiny particle—today known as the Higgs boson—which is the key to understanding why particles have mass, and but for which atoms and molecules could not exist.

The spark of life, fount of emotion, house of the soul - the heart lies at the centre of every facet of our existence. It’s so bound up in our deepest feelings that it can even suffer such distress from emotional trauma as to physically change shape. Practising cardiologist Sandeep Jauhar beautifully weaves his own experiences with the defining discoveries of the past to tell the story of our most vital organ. We see Daniel Hale Williams perform the first open heart surgery and Wilson Greatbatch invent the pacemaker - by accident.

In 2007, after 20 years of living in London, Kate Humble and her husband Ludo decided it was time to leave city life behind them. Three years later, now the owner of a Welsh smallholding, Kate hears that a nearby farm is to be broken up and sold off. Another farm lost; another opportunity for a young farmless farmer gone. Desperate to stop the sale, Kate contacts the council with an alternative plan - to keep the farm working and to run a rural skills and animal husbandry school alongside it. Against all odds, she succeeds.

The Carry Home is both a moving celebration of the outdoor life shared between Ferguson and his wife, Jane, who died tragically in a canoeing accident in Northern Ontario in 2005, and a chronicle of the mending, uplifting power of nature. Confronting his unthinkable loss, Ferguson set out to fulfill Jane's final wish: the scattering of her ashes in five remote, wild locations they loved and shared.

Noah Adams's adventure in search of Wilbur and Orville Wright is a journey that takes him across the country as he follows in the footsteps of the famous brothers in an attempt to know them more deeply, not just as inventors and pilots but as individuals as well.

Narain Gehani tells the fascinating story of the transition Bell Labs is undergoing as it adapts to new business conditions. Bell Labs researchers, who once were free to focus on innovation, research excellence, and prizes, now have to worry about business relevance. The culture of lifetime employment is gone and the pendulum has swung from basic to applied research.

America is in the midst of a meat zeitgeist. Butchers have emerged as the rock stars of the culinary world, and cozy gastropubs serving up pork belly, lamb burgers, and sweetbreads rule the restaurant scene. If butchers are our new rock stars, then Berlin Reed is their front man. Through the lens of Berlin's personal story, The Ethical Butcher educates listeners about how they can improve the meat industry by participating in it.

Elon Musk is among the most controversial titans of Silicon Valley. To some, he's a genius and a visionary, and to others, he's a mercurial huckster. Billions of dollars have been gained and lost on his tweets, and his personal exploits are the stuff of tabloids. But for all his outrageous talk of mind-uploading and space travel, his most audacious vision is the one closest to the ground: the electric car.