"Mathletics" is a remarkably entertaining book that shows readers how to use simple mathematics to analyze a range of statistical and probability-related questions in professional baseball, basketball, and football, and in sports gambling. How does professional baseball evaluate hitters? Is a singles hitter like Wade Boggs more valuable than a power hitter like David Ortiz? Should NFL teams pass or run more often on first downs? Could professional basketball have used statistics to expose the crooked referee Tim Donaghy? Does money buy performance in professional sports? In "Mathletics", Wayne Winston describes the mathematical methods that top coaches and managers use to evaluate players and improve team performance, and gives math enthusiasts the practical tools they need to enhance their understanding and enjoyment of their...]]>
100 Essential Things You Didn't Know You Didn't Know - Answered!
door John Barrow

'If people do not believe that mathematics is simple, it is only because they do not realize how complicated life is' - John von Neumann. Mathematics can tell you things about the world that can't be learned in any other way. This hugely informative and wonderfully entertaining little book answers one hundred essential questions about existence. It unravels the knotty, clarifies the conundrums and sheds light into dark corners. From winning the lottery, placing bets at the races and escaping from bears to sports, Shakepeare, Google, game theory, drunks, divorce settlements and dodgy accounting; from chaos to infinity and everything in between, "100 Essential Things You Didn't Know You Didn't Know" has all the...]]>
Our Energy Future - Resources, Alternatives and the Environment
door Christian Ngo Joseph Natowitz

A Wiley Survival Guide on our Energy Future Concerned about our energy future? Turn to this guide for easy-to-grasp and up-to-date coverage of the many aspects of the energy value chain: * Oil and natural gas * Coal * Fossil fuels and the greenhouse effect * Energy from water * Biomass * Solar energy * Geothermal energy * Wind energy * Nuclear energy * Electricity * Energy storage * Transportation * Housing * Smart energy consumption * Hydrogen Armed with the knowledge in this book, students, teachers, decision-makers, politicians, and consumers can form educated and informed opinions on the future of energy and its impact on the economy, health, and the...]]>
Rivers of Europe
door Klement Tockner Urs Uehlinger, Christopher T. Robinson

Based on the bestselling book, "Rivers of North America", this new guide stands as the only primary source of complete and comparative baseline data on the biological and hydrological characteristics of more than 180 of the highest profile rivers in Europe. With numerous full-color photographs and maps, this book includes conservation information on current patterns of river use and the extent to which human society has exploited and impacted them. "Rivers of Europe" provides the information ecologists and conservation managers need to better assess their management and meet the EU legislative good governance targets. It covers more than 180 European rivers. This book: summarizes biological, ecological and biodiversity characteristics; provides conservation managers with information to resolve conflicts between recreational use of...]]>
Humans Who Went Extinct - Why Neanderthals Died Out and We Survived
door Clive Finlayson

Just 28,000 years ago, the blink of an eye in geological time, the last of Neanderthals died out in their last outpost, in caves near Gibraltar. Thanks to cartoons and folk accounts we have a distorted view of these other humans - for that is what they were. We think of them as crude and clumsy and not very bright, easily driven to extinction by the lithe, smart modern humans that came out of Africa some 100,000 years ago. But was it really as simple as that? Clive Finlayson reminds us that the Neanderthals were another kind of human, and their culture was not so very different from that of our own ancestors. In this book, he presents a wider view of the events that led to the migration of the moderns into Europe, what might have happened during the contact of the two populations, and what finally drove the Neanderthals to extinction....]]>
De betacanon

In De bètacanon komen vijftig kernbegrippen uit de natuurwetenschappen aan de orde, variërend van het getal nul tot ecologie, van evolutie tot plastics, van Einstein tot de koolzuurcyclus, van formules tot de oerknal. In korte opstellen, die in de bijlage 'Kennis' van de Volkskrant verschenen, leiden vijftig jonge Nederlandse onderzoekers de lezer telkens mee naar een kernachtig antwoord op de vraag wat hij van een bepaald onderwerp moet onthouden en waarom.

De keuze van de kernbegrippen lag in handen van de commissie-Dijkgraaf. De commissie-Dijkgraaf bestaat uit Louise Fresco, Salomon Kroonenberg, Frans van Lunteren, Bas Haring, Harry Lintsen, Sander Bais en RobbertDijkgraaf. Tot zijn aantreden als minister van Onderwijs, Cultuur en Wetenschappen maakte ook Ronald Plasterk deel uit van het...]]>
Introduction to Nanoscience
door Stuart Lindsay

Nanoscience is not physics, chemistry, engineering or biology. It is all of them, and it is time for a text that integrates the disciplines. This is such a text, aimed at advanced undergraduates and beginning graduate students in the sciences. The consequences of smallness and quantum behaviour are well known and described Richard Feynman's visionary essay 'There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom' (which is reproduced in this book). Another, critical, but thus far neglected, aspect of nanoscience is the complexity of nanostructures. Hundreds, thousands or hundreds of thousands of atoms make up systems that are complex enough to show what is fashionably called 'emergent behaviour'. Quite new phenomena arise from rare configurations of the system. Examples are the Kramer's theory of reactions (Chapter 3), the Marcus theory of electron...]]>
Seeing Further - The Story of Science and the Royal Society
door Bill Bryson

Edited and introduced by Bill Bryson, with contributions from Richard Dawkins, Margaret Atwood, Richard Holmes, Martin Rees, Richard Fortey, Steve Jones, James Gleick and Neal Stephenson amongst others, this beautiful, lavishly illustrated book tells the story of science and the Royal Society, from 1660 to the present. On a damp weeknight in November, 350 years ago, a dozen or so men gathered at Gresham College in London. A twenty-eight year old -- and not widely famous -- Christopher Wren was giving a lecture on astronomy. As his audience listened to him speak, they decided that it would be a good idea to create a Society to promote the accumulation of useful knowledge. With that, the Royal Society was born. Since its birth, the Royal Society has pioneered scientific exploration and discovery. Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Albert...]]>
Assessment of the Ecological Status of European Surface Waters
door Peeter Noges, Wouter van de Bund, Ana Cristina Cardoso

The complex impact that man has on aquatic ecosystems creates a need for assessment systems that are able to adequately appraise and integrate the effects of various pressures. Chemical analysis alone can easily overlook some factors vital for life. With the adoption of the EU Water Framework Directive (WFD) in the year 2000 which defined the ecological status of surface water as '...an expression of the quality of the structure and functioning of aquatic ecosystems associated with surface waters', biological indicators were brought to the forefront for the first time and became drivers to the water management practices. Assessment of ecological status and quantification of its relationships with anthropogenic pressures critically depend on knowledge of relevant biotic and abiotic settings and processes. Needs raised by the...]]>
De Wereld Bosatlas / 2e editie - In herdruk, vanaf 15 maart 2010 leverbaar

De Wereld Bosatlas is in een aantal jaren uitgegroeid tot het Nederlandse standaardwerk. Deze editie is volledig geactualiseerd en sterk uitgebreid; een cartografisch meesterwerk! Alle bijzonderheden op een rij: De wereld in 640 pagina's met kaarten, satellietbeelden en stadsplattegronden, nieuwe zeer gedetailleerde kaart van Nederland (26 pagina's; 1 : 200 000), veel aandacht voor Europese vakantiegebieden, thematische kaarten met boeiende achtergrondinformatie, unieke kaarten van zeeën en oceanen, fascinerende satellietbeelden, gedetailleerde plattegronden van 72 wereldsteden, register met 120 000 geografische namen. De enige wereldatlas met speciale aandacht voor Nederland De Wereld Bosatlas is de enige wereldatlas die geheel vanuit het Nederlandse perspectief is samengesteld. De kaart van Nederland is zeer gedetailleerd...]]>