Search:

The spinning magnet : the force that created the modern world and could destroy it / by Mitchell, Alanna,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."The magnetic North Pole will eventually trade places with the South Pole. Satellite evidence suggests to some scientists that the move has already begun, but most still think it won't happen for many decades. All agree that it has happened many times before and will happen again. But this time it will be different. It will be a very bad day for modern civilization. Award-winning science journalist Alanna Mitchell tells in The Spinning Magnet the fascinating history of one of the four fundamental physical forces in the universe, electro-magnetism. From investigations into magnetism in 13th century feudal France and the realization six hundred years later in the Victorian era that electricity and magnetism were essentially the same, to the discovery that the earth was itself a magnet, spinning in space with two poles and that those poles aperiodically reverse, this is an utterly engrossing narrative history of ideas and science that readers of Stephen Greenblatt and Sam Kean will love. But the recent finding that the Earth's magnetic force field is decaying ten times faster than previously thought, portending an imminent pole reversal, ultimately gives this story a spine tingling urgency. When the poles switch, a process that takes many years, the Earth is unprotected from solar radiation storms that would, among other things, wipe out all electromagnetic technology. No satellites, no internet, no smart phones--maybe no power grid at all. Such potentially cataclysmic solar storms are not unusual. The last one occurred in 2012 and we avoided returning to the dark ages only because the part of the sun that erupted happened to be facing away from the Earth. One leading US researcher is already drawing maps of the parts of the planet that would likely become uninhabitable."--
Subjects: Geomagnetism.; Magnetic pole.; Electromagnetism.; Civilization, Modern;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
unAPI

Cobalt : cradle of the demon metals, birth of a mining superpower / by Angus, Charlie,1962-author.;
Includes bibliographical references."The world is desperate for cobalt. It fuels the digital economy and powers everything from cell phones to clean energy. But this 'demon metal,' this 'blood mineral,' has a horrific present and troubled history. Then there is the town in northern Canada, also called Cobalt. It created a model of resource extraction a hundred years ago--theft of Indigenous lands, rape of the earth, exploitation of workers, enormous wealth generation--that has made Toronto the mining capital of the world and given the mining industry a blueprint for resource extraction that has been exported everywhere. Charlie Angus unearths the history of the town and shows how it contributed to Canada's mining dominance. He connects the town to present-day Congo, with its cobalt production and misery, to horrendous mining practices in South America and demonstrates that global mining is as Canadian as hockey."--
Subjects: Mineral industries; Mineral industries; Cobalt mines and mining.;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
unAPI

Village in the dark / by Yamashita, Iris,author.;
"Detective Cara Kennedy thought she'd lost her husband and son in an accident, but harrowing evidence has emerged that points to murder-and she will stop at nothing to find the truth in this riveting mystery from the author of City Under One Roof. On a frigid February day, Anchorage Detective Cara Kennedy stands by the graves of her husband and son, watching as their caskets are raised from the earth. It feels sacrilegious, but she has no choice. Aaron and Dylan disappeared on a hike a year ago, their bones eventually found and buried. But shocking clues have emerged that foul play was involved, potentially connecting them to a string of other deaths and disappearances. Somehow tied to the mystery is Mia Upash, who grew up in an isolated village called Unity, a community of women and children in hiding from abusive men. Mia never imagined the trouble she would find herself in when she left home to live in Man's World. Although she remains haunted by the tragedy of what happened to the man and the boy in the woods, she has her own reasons for keeping quiet. Aided by police officer Joe Barkowski and other residents of Point Mettier, Cara's investigation will lead them on a dangerous path that puts their lives and the lives of everyone around them in mortal jeopardy"--
Subjects: Detective and mystery fiction.; Novels.; Missing persons; Murder; Police; Secrecy; Women detectives;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
unAPI

The adventurer's son : a memoir / by Dial, Roman,author.;
"In the tradition of Into the Wild comes an instant classic of outdoor literature, a riveting work of uncommon depth. The Adventurer's Son is Roman Dial's extraordinary account of his two-year quest to unravel the mystery of his son's fate. In the predawn hours of July 10, 2014, the twenty-seven-year-old son of preeminent Alaskan scientist and National Geographic Explorer Roman Dial, walked alone into Corcovado National Park, an untracked rainforest along Costa Rica's remote Pacific Coast that shelters miners, poachers, and drug smugglers. He carried a light backpack and machete. Before he left, Cody Roman Dial emailed his father: "I am not sure how long it will take me, but I'm planning on doing 4 days in the jungle and a day to walk out. I'll be bounded by a trail to the west and the coast everywhere else, so it should be difficult to get lost forever." They were the last words Dial received from his son. As soon as he realized Cody Roman's return date had passed, Dial set off for Costa Rica. As he trekked through the dense jungle, interviewing locals and searching for clues--the authorities suspected murder--the desperate father was forced to confront the deepest questions about himself and his own role in the events. Roman had raised his son to be fearless, to be at home in earth's wildest places, travelling together through rugged Alaska to remote Borneo and Bhutan. Was he responsible for his son's fate? Or, as he hoped, was Cody Roman safe and using his wilderness skills on a solo adventure from which he would emerge at any moment? Part detective story set in the most beautiful yet dangerous reaches of the planet, The Adventurer's Son emerges as a far deeper tale of discovery--a journey to understand the truth about those we love the most."--
Subjects: Autobiographies.; Biographies.; Dial, Roman; Dial, C. Roman, 1987-2014.; Adventure and adventurers; Explorers; Fathers and sons.; Murder;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
unAPI

I know how this ends / by Smale, Holly,author.;
Margot Wayward is in manically gleeful self-destruct mode. Following the implosion of a ten-year relationship, she's wilfully derailing her successful career, joyfully taking down men on dating apps, and living in total chaos. Until one day, when Margot has a vision of herself with a man she's never met before. She doesn't believe in fate. But when Margot meets single-dad Henry, the vision comes true: exactly as she'd foreseen it. As her future continues to reveal itself, a glimpse at a time, Margot realises she knows exactly what's going to happen, and when. And there's nothing she can do to change any of it. So Margot has to decide how to live, how to love again, and how to be herself ... Because if you can't change your destiny, how on earth do you live your present?
Subjects: Domestic fiction.; Psychological fiction.; Novels.; Fate and fatalism; Man-woman relationships; Meteorologists; Single fathers; Visions; Women;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 2
unAPI

Krypto the Superdog. [videorecording] / by Dobson, Michael,voice actor.; Drummond, Brian,voice actor.; Ghisi, Alberto,voice actor.; Kelamis, Peter,1967-voice actor.; Kennedy, Ellen,voice actor.; Klassen, Terry,voice actor.; McNeil, Scott,1962-voice actor.; Oliver, Mark,1961-voice actor.; St. Germain, Tabitha,voice actor.; Vincent, Sam,1971-voice actor.; Warner Bros. Entertainment,publisher.;
Voices: Sam Vincent, Brian Drummond, Scott McNeil, Alberto Ghisi, Tabitha St. Germain, Terry Klassen, Ellen Kennedy, Michael Dobson, Peter Kelamis, Mark Oliver.Taking a bite out of cosmic crime, Krypto The Superdog follows the comedic canine adventures of Metropolis' heroic Superdog from Planet Krypton. After traveling across galaxies as a test pilot pup aboard a malfunctioning rocket ship built by Superman's father, the Kryptonian canine arrives on Earth a full-grown, fun-loving dog in search of a new best friend and family. He finds it in the young Kevin Whitney, who soon realizes that Krypto has superpowers. Thanks to a special intergalactic communicator, Kevin's the only human able to speak with Krypto, who uses his powers of superstrength, heat vision, and flying to fight crime in Metropolis. With the help of Kevin, Ace the Bathound (Batman's caped canine), Streaky, the neighbor's cat, and the super pets in the Dog Star Patrol, Krypto responds to the call of duty, embarking on adventures to save those in need.Canadian Home Video Rating: G.Subtitled for the deaf and hard-of-hearing (SDH).DVD ; wide screen presentation ; Dolby Digital 2.0.
Subjects: Action and adventure television programs.; Animated television programs.; Children's television programs.; Superhero television programs.; Television programs.; Video recordings for the hearing impaired.; Krypto, the Superdog (Fictitious character); Dogs; Superheroes;
For private home use only.
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
unAPI

Beautiful you / by Palahniuk, Chuck,author.;
A novel about the apocalyptic marketing possibilities of female pleasure. Penny Harrigan is a low-level associate in a big Manhattan law firm with an apartment in Queens and no love life at all. So it comes as a great shock when she finds herself invited to dinner by one C. Linus Maxwell, aka "Climax-Well," a software mega-billionaire and lover of the most gorgeous and accomplished women on earth. After dining at Manhattan's most exclusive restaurant, he whisks Penny off to a hotel suite in Paris, where he proceeds, notebook in hand, to bring her to previously undreamed-of heights of orgasmic pleasure for days on end. What's not to like? This: Penny discovers that she is a test subject for the final development of a line of sex toys to be marketed in a nationwide chain of boutiques called Beautiful You. So potent and effective are these devices that women by the millions line up outside the stores on opening day and then lock themselves in their room with them and stop coming out. Except for batteries. Maxwell's plan for erotically enabled world domination must be stopped. But how?"--Jacket flap.
Subjects: Erotic fiction.; Humorous fiction.; Suspense fiction.; Apocalyptic fantasies;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
unAPI

Becoming wild : how animal cultures raise families, create beauty, and achieve peace / by Safina, Carl,1955-author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."Some people insist that culture is strictly a human feat. What are they afraid of? This book looks into three cultures of other-than-human beings in some of Earth's remaining wild places. It shows how if you're a sperm whale, a scarlet macaw, or a chimpanzee, you too experience your life with the understanding that you are an individual in a particular community. You too are who you are not by genes alone; your culture is a second form of inheritance. You receive it from thousands of individuals, from pools of knowledge passing through generations like an eternal torch. You too may raise young, know beauty, or struggle to negotiate a peace. And your culture, too, changes and evolves. The light of knowledge needs adjusting as situations change, so a capacity for learning, especially social learning, allows behaviors to adjust, to change much faster than genes alone could adapt. Becoming Wild offers a glimpse into cultures among non-human animals through looks at the lives of individuals in different present-day animal societies. By showing how others teach and learn, Safina offers a fresh understanding of what is constantly going on beyond humanity. With reporting from deep in nature, alongside individual creatures in their free-living communities, this book offers a very privileged glimpse behind the curtain of Life on Earth, and helps inform the answer to that most urgent of questions: Who are we here with?"--
Subjects: Animal communities.; Animal societies.;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
unAPI

Everything you ever wanted / by Sauma, Luiza,author.;
You wake up, you go to work. You don't go outside for twelve hours at a time. You have strategy meetings about how to use hashtags. After work you order expensive drink after expensive drink until you're so blackout drunk you can't remember the circumstances which have led you to waking up in bed with your colleague. The next day you stay in bed until the afternoon, scrolling through your social media feeds and wondering why everyone else seems to be achieving so much. Sometimes you don't get out of bed at all. Then you hear about Life on Nyx, a programme that allows 100 lucky winners the chance to escape it all, move to another planet and establish a new way of life. One with meaning and purpose. One without Instagram and online dating. There's one caveat-- if you go, you can never come back. But you aren't worried about that. After all, what on Earth could there possibly be to miss?
Subjects: Science fiction.; Life on other planets; Extraterrestrial bases; Businesswomen; Reality television programs;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
unAPI

Every living thing : the great and deadly race to know all life / by Roberts, Jason(President of Panmedia Corporation),author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."From the bestselling author of A Sense of the World comes this dramatic, globe-spanning and meticulously-researched story of two scientific rivals and their race to survey all life on Earth. In the 18th century, two men dedicated their lives to the same daunting task: identifying and describing all life on Earth. Their approaches could not have been more different. Carl Linnaeus, a pious Swedish doctor with a huckster's flair, believed that life belonged in tidy, static categories. Georges-Louis de Buffon, an aristocratic polymath and keeper of France's royal garden, viewed life as a dynamic swirl of complexities. Both began believing their work to be difficult, but not impossible--how could the planet possibly hold more than a few thousand species? Stunned by life's diversity, both fell far short of their goal. But in the process they articulated starkly divergent views on nature, on humanity's role in shaping the fate of our planet and on humanity itself. The rivalry between these two unique, driven individuals created reverberations that still echo today. Linnaeus, with the help of acolyte explorers he called "apostles" (only half of whom returned alive), gave the world such concepts as mammal, primate and homo sapiens--but he also denied species change and promulgated racist pseudo-science. Buffon coined the term reproduction, formulated early prototypes of evolution and genetics, and argued passionately against prejudice. It was a clash that, during their lifetimes, Buffon seemed to be winning. But their posthumous fates would take a very different turn. With elegant, propulsive prose grounded in more than a decade of research, featuring appearances by Voltaire, Benjamin Franklin and Charles Darwin, bestselling author Jason Roberts tells an unforgettable true-life tale of intertwined lives and enduring legacies, tracing an arc of insight and discovery that extends across three centuries into the present day"--
Subjects: Biographies.; Buffon, Georges Louis Leclerc, comte de, 1707-1788.; Linné, Carl von, 1707-1778.; Biology; Life (Biology); Natural history; Naturalists; Naturalists;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
unAPI