Science

An incredible read.… While unflinching in her analysis, Soderstrom nevertheless gifts us with a message of hope and resilience. — MAUDE BARLOW, activist and author of Still Hopeful: Lessons from a Lifetime of Activism.

What can we learn about coping with rising sea levels from ancient times?

The scenario we are facing is scary: within a few decades, sea levels around the world may well rise by a metre or more as glaciers and ice caps melt due to climate change. Large parts of our coastal cities will be flooded, the basic outline of our world will be changed, and torrential rains will present their own challenges. But this is not the first time that people have had to cope with threatening waters, because sea levels have been rising for thousands of years, ever since the end of the last Ice Age. Stories told by the Indigenous people in Australia and on the Pacific coast of North America, and those found in the Bible and the Epic of Gilgamesh, as well as Roman and Chinese histories all bear witness to just how traumatic these experiences were. The responses to these challenges varied: people adapted by building dikes, canals, and seawalls; by resorting to prayer or magic; and, very often, by moving out of the way of the rushing waters.

Against the Seas explores these stories as well as the various measures being taken today to combat rising waters, focusing on five regions: Indonesia, Shanghai, the Sundarbans of Bangladesh, the Salish Sea, and the estuary of the St. Lawrence River. What happened in the past and what is being tried today may help us in the future and, if nothing else, give us hope that we will survive.

Dawson worked for the International Boundary Commission and the Geological Survey of Canada. He surveyed the 49th parallel, vast tracts of land in British Columbia’s Interior, and many rivers in the Yukon. He knew the value of the Klondike gold fields ten years before the rush of 1898.

Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr walk into the famous Hotel Métropole and sit down at the author’s table to discuss the state of quantum mechanics today.

Particles that exist in two places at once, consequences that occur without a cause, objects that exist only if you look at them — quantum mechanics proves that all of this is possible, and not just in dark science labs. Look no further than your smartphone or tablet for technology made conceivable by quantum theory.
From quantum computers to “teleporting” data, medicine to photosynthesis and the quantum compass in some migratory birds, Martijn van Calmthout plainly explains — to his readers and to an astounded Einstein and Bohr — how Quantum 2.0 is increasingly part of everyone’s daily life. Rather than being the exceptional domain, Van Calmthout shows how quantum mechanics is actually part of our tangible world, and may even be the very crux of our existence.

A resource for understanding the regions geology and seeing the evidence of important processes typical of the unique geological system in Jasper National Park.

Our Genetic Destiny is a fascinating account of the origin, evolution, and organization of our genes. At the heart of life, genes tell our cells what to do, when to grow, and what to become. They are passed on faithfully from one generation to the next, from parent to child, a seemingly comfortable constant across millennia.

In the past few years, however, genes have been found to be imponderably complex, more subtle and intricate than we ever imagined. They amplify and duplicate themselves; they leap from one chromosome to another; they reshuffle to create new images of themselves. Far from being predictably stable, following a preset schedule, genes are surprisingly versatile.

Biologists are now able to retrace the steps to the origin of life when the first cell appeared some 3.8 billion years ago. Ever since, the descendants of that original ancestor have become increasingly diverse. This upward trend, punctuated by bursts of innovations, is underpinned by the genes, which are organized into elaborate networks. Understanding the nature of this genetic architecture is a long quest of biologists, who seek to find the unifying principle that governs life. As the outlines of this come into sharp focus, we are granted unparalleled insights into our genetic past, present, and future.

The new knowledge about genes has important practical implications. As we understand in greater detail how living cells work, the causes of some crippling and dreaded diseases are being unraveled. This information is already being used to craft new drugs to deal with a wide range of illnesses, sush as blood disorders like thalassaemia and heaemophilia, cystic fibrosis, muscular dystriophy, cardeovascular diseases, cancer, and AIDS.

Our Genetic Destiny provides a stimulating description of what may well be science’s greatest and most challenging field.