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Wayfinding : the science and mystery of how humans navigate the world / by O'Connor, M. R.,1982-author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."At once far flung and intimate, a fascinating look at how finding our way make us human. In this compelling narrative, O'Connor seeks out neuroscientists, anthropologists and master navigators to understand how navigation ultimately gave us our humanity. Biologists have been trying to solve the mystery of how organisms have the ability to migrate and orient with such precision -- especially since our own adventurous ancestors spread across the world without maps or instruments. O'Connor goes to the Arctic, the Australian bush and the South Pacific to talk to masters of their environment who seek to preserve their traditions at a time when anyone can use a GPS to navigate. O'Connor explores the neurological basis of spatial orientation within the hippocampus. Without it, people inhabit a dream state, becoming amnesiacs incapable of finding their way, recalling the past, or imagining the future. Studies have shown that the more we exercise our cognitive mapping skills, the greater the grey matter and health of our hippocampus. O'Connor talks to scientists studying how atrophy in the hippocampus is associated with afflictions such as impaired memory, dementia, Alzheimer's Disease, depression and PTSD. Wayfinding is a captivating book that charts how our species' profound capacity for exploration, memory and storytelling results in topophilia, the love of place"--
Subjects: Orientation (Physiology); Space perception.;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The Serengeti rules [videorecording] / by Brown, Nicolas Roether,television director.; Carroll, Sean B.Serengeti rules.; Carroll, Sean B.,screenwriter.; Estes, J. A.(James A.),1945-commentator.; Excell, Jaime,commentator.; Kriek, Greg,commentator.; Lopez, Ashlyn,commentator.; McCrae, M.,commentator.; Newport, Jonathan,commentator.; Nugent, Samantha,commentator.; Paine, Robert T.,1933-2016,commentator.; Power, Mary E.,commentator.; Scott, Campbell,narrator.; Sinclair, A. R. E.(Anthony Ronald Entrican),commentator.; Terborgh, John,1936-commentator.; Unwin, Ty,composer.; Howard Hughes Medical Institute,production company.; Passion Planet (Firm),production company.; PBS Distribution (Firm),film distributor.; Public Broadcasting Service (U.S.),publisher.; Sandbox Films,production company.; Tangled Bank Studios, LLC,production company.; Thirteen Productions,production company.; WNET (Television station : New York, N.Y.),production company.;
Music composer, Ty Unwin.Narrator, Campbell Scott ; commentator, Bob Paine, Matthiesen McCrae, Jim Estes, Jaime Excell, John Terborgh, Jonathan Newport, Mary Power, Ashlyn Lopez, Samantha Nugent, Tony Sinclair, Greg Kriek.Travel back in time, from the Arctic Ocean to Pacific tide pools, with a pioneering group of scientists who make surprising discoveries that transform human understanding of nature and ecology.E.DVD; NTSC, Region 1; widescreen presentation; 5.1 surround.
Subjects: Nonfiction television programs.; Documentary television programs.; Nature television programs.; Science television programs.; Video recordings for people with visual disabilities.; Video recordings for the hearing impaired.; Biological control systems.; Biology; Biotic communities.; Ecology; Life (Biology); Nature;
For private home use only.
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Seeds on ice : Svalbard and the Global Seed Vault / by Fowler, Cary,author.; Tefre, Mari,photographer.; Richardson, Jim,1947 December 5-photographer.;
Includes bibliographical references.Closer to the North Pole than to the Arctic Circle, on an island in a remote Norwegian archipelago, lies a vast global seed bank buried within a frozen mountain. At the end of a 130-meter long tunnel chiseled out of solid stone is a room filled with humanity's precious treasure, the largest and most diverse seed collection ever assembled: more than a half billion seeds containing the world's most prized crops, a safeguard against catastrophic starvation. The Global Seed Vault, a visionary model of international collaboration, is the brainchild of Cary Fowler, renowned scientist, conservationist, and biodiversity advocate. In SEEDS ON ICE, Fowler tells for the first time the comprehensive inside story of how the "doomsday seed vault" came to be, while the breathtaking photographs offer a stunning guided tour not only of the private vault, but of the windswept beauty and majesty of Svalbard and the enchanting community of people in Longyearbyen. With growing evidence that unchecked climate change will seriously undermine food production and threaten the diversity of crops around the world, SEEDS ON ICE offers a personal and passionate reminder that we shouldn't take our reliance on the world of plants for granted--and that, in a very real sense, the future of the human race rides on this frozen and indispensable biodiversity.
Subjects: Svalbard Global Seed Vault.; Biodiversity; Climatic changes; Germplasm resources conservation.; Germplasm resources; Germplasm resources, Plant.; Seed supply.; Seeds;
Available copies: 0 / Total copies: 1
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Migrations / by McConaghy, Charlotte,author.;
"Franny Stone has always been a wanderer. By following the ocean's tides and the birds that soar above, she can forget the losses that have haunted her life. But when the wild she so loves begins to disappear, Franny can no longer wander without a destination. She arrives in remote Greenland with one purpose: to find the world's last flock of Arctic terns and follow them on their final migration. She convinces Ennis Malone, captain of the Saghani, to take her onboard, winning over his salty, eccentric crew with promises that the birds she is tracking will lead them to fish. As the Saghani fights its way south, Franny's new shipmates begin to realize that the beguiling scientist in their midst is not who she seems. Battered by night terrors, accumulating a pile of letters to her husband, and dead set on following the terns at any cost, Franny is full of dark secrets. When the story of her past begins to unspool, Ennis and his crew must ask themselves what Franny is really running toward-and running from. Propelled by a narrator as fierce and fragile as the terns she is following, Migrations is a shatteringly beautiful ode to the wild places and creatures now threatened. But at its heart, it is about the lengths we will go, to the very edges of the world, for the people we love"--
Subjects: Action and adventure fiction.; Sea fiction.; Environmental degradation; Ocean travel; Secrecy; Terns;
Available copies: 0 / Total copies: 2
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Migrations [sound recording] / by McConaghy, Charlotte,author.; Kreinik, Barrie,narrator.; Macmillan Audio (Firm),publisher.;
Read by Barrie Kreinik."Franny Stone has always been a wanderer. By following the ocean's tides and the birds that soar above, she can forget the losses that have haunted her life. But when the wild she so loves begins to disappear, Franny can no longer wander without a destination. She arrives in remote Greenland with one purpose: to find the world's last flock of Arctic terns and follow them on their final migration. She convinces Ennis Malone, captain of the Saghani, to take her onboard, winning over his salty, eccentric crew with promises that the birds she is tracking will lead them to fish. As the Saghani fights its way south, Franny's new shipmates begin to realize that the beguiling scientist in their midst is not who she seems. Battered by night terrors, accumulating a pile of letters to her husband, and dead set on following the terns at any cost, Franny is full of dark secrets. When the story of her past begins to unspool, Ennis and his crew must ask themselves what Franny is really running toward-and running from. Propelled by a narrator as fierce and fragile as the terns she is following, Migrations is a shatteringly beautiful ode to the wild places and creatures now threatened. But at its heart, it is about the lengths we will go, to the very edges of the world, for the people we love"--
Subjects: Action and adventure fiction.; Audiobooks.; Sea fiction.; Environmental degradation; Ocean travel; Secrecy; Terns;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Horizon / by Lopez, Barry Holstun,1945-author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."From the National Book Award-winning writer, humanitarian, environmentalist and author of the now-classic Arctic Dreams: a vivid, poetic, capacious work that recollects the travels around the world and the encounters--human, animal, and natural--that have shaped his extraordinary life. Poignantly, powerfully, it also asks "How do we move forward?" Taking us nearly from pole to pole--from modern megacities to some of the most remote regions on the earth--Barry Lopez, hailed by the Los Angeles Times Book Review as "one of our finest writers," gives us his most far-ranging yet personal work to date, in a book that moves through decades of his life as it describes his travels to six regions of the world: from the Oregon coast where he lives to the northernmost reaches of Canada; to the Galapagos; to the Kenyan desert; to Botany Bay in Australia; and in the resounding last section of this magisterial book, unforgettably to the ice shelves of Antarctica. As he revisits his growing up and these myriad travels, Lopez also probes the long history of humanity's quests and explorations, including the prehistoric peoples who trekked across Skraeling Island in northern Canada; the colonialists who plundered Central Africa; an Enlightenment-era Englishman who sailed the Pacific and a Native American emissary who arrived in Japan before it opened to the West. He confronts today's ecotourism in the tropics and visits the haunting remnants of a French colonial prison on Île du Diable in French Guiana. Through these journeys, and friendships forged along the way with scientists, archeologists, artists and local residents, Lopez searches for meaning and purpose in a broken world. With tenderness and intimacy, Horizon evokes the stillness and the silence of the hottest, the coldest and the most desolate places on the globe. It speaks with beauty and urgency to the invisible ties that unite us; voices concern and frustration alongside humanity and hope; and looks forward to our shared future as much as it looks back at a single life. Revelatory, powerful, profound, this is an epic work of nonfiction that makes you see the world differently: a crowning achievement by one of our most humane voices--one needed now more than ever."--
Subjects: Lopez, Barry Holstun, 1945-; Travel; Tourism; Natural history.;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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