Scibooks

Spending time in nature has always been important, but now it’s an essential part of coping with the pandemic

Guest Author • Mar 16, 2021

• green space,
• Nature,
• Psychology

Catherine Knight, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington Even a short walk, an ocean view or a picnic by a river can leave us feeling invigorated and restored. There is now a growing body of evidence establishing the link between such nature encounters and our mental and physical well-being. The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance … Read More

Book Review: The Unintended Consequences of Taming Nature

Guest Author • Mar 01, 2021

• book review,
• climate change,
• ecology,
• environmental control,
• geoengineering,
• human intervention,
• invasive species

John Schwartz Elizabeth Kolbert lives her stories. In the course of reporting her new book, “Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future,” she got hit by a leaping carp near Ottawa, Illinois (“It felt like someone had slammed me in the shin with a Wiffle-ball bat”) and visited tiny endangered pupfish at Devils Hole, a … Read More

Book Review: The Power of Chance in Shaping Life and Evolution

Guest Author • Dec 15, 2020

• Chance,
• Darwinism,
• evolution,
• Probabilities

Dan Falk Prince Hamlet spent a lot of time pondering the nature of chance and probability in William Shakespeare’s tragedy. In the famous “To be or not to be” speech, he notes that we helplessly face “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” — though a little earlier in the play he declares that “there’s a special providence … Read More

Book review: How to Tame a Fox

Sarah-Jane O'Connor • Apr 11, 2018

• animal behaviour,
• cold war,
• domestication,
• Russia,
• silver foxes

As an undergraduate studying biology, I knew I was in the right place when we got to animal behaviour experiments and the insights they gave about evolution and domestication. Pavlov’s drooling dogs, Skinner’s lever-tapping rats, Lorenz’s imprinted goslings … I lapped it up, drool and all. And no experiment has ever piqued my interest quite like an almost-forgotten study … Read More

Book Review: The Tale of Mrs Possum – A Reflection on NZ Society

Jean Balchin • Mar 20, 2018

• biology,
• book review,
• chapter,
• childcare,
• epigenetics,
• Euthanasia,
• fashion,
• genetics,
• healthcare,
• history agriculture,
• human body,
• neuroscience,
• New Zealand,
• possum,
• Science Literacy

When I was a child, I was rather prone to misbehaving. On occasions when I was particularly naughty, my father would sit me down with a copy of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and would order me to rewrite four of my favourite entries. It wasn’t actually that bad a punishment; being rather childish and petulant, … Read More

Book review: Inferior – How Science Got Women Wrong

Sarah-Jane O'Connor • Dec 24, 2017

• evolution,
• gender bias,
• women in science

Alongside Naomi Alderman’s The Power, it’s the feminist book everyone’s been reading this year. Angela Saini’s Inferior tackles how science got women wrong and who’s resetting the agenda. Saini is a science journalist with a Masters in Engineering, so she can talk with first-hand experience about some of the issues faced in sciences. Inferior: How Science Got Women Wrong—and the New … Read More

Book review: Seabirds beyond the Mountain Crest

Sarah-Jane O'Connor • Dec 22, 2017

• hutton's shearwaters,
• kaikōura earthquake

Shortly after midnight on November 14, 2016, the adult Hutton’s shearwaters of the Kaikōura ranges would have been returning to their burrows when a magnitude 7.8 earthquake hit. There were fears that many of the birds could have died, their burrows buried by landslides. A year on, it’s timely to have a book on these elusive birds, that live … Read More

Book review: Zoo Ethics

Guest Author • Dec 22, 2017

• book review,
• compassionate,
• conservation,
• sanctuaries,
• welfare,
• zoo ethics,
• zoos

Reviewed by Susan Rapley Modern zoos exist at a difficult intersection: whether their containment and treatment of animals is morally and ethically justified, juxtaposed against an increasing need within the wider world for their research and conservation efforts. In Zoo Ethics: The Challenges of Compassionate Conservation, Jenny Gray seeks to investigate these conflicting concerns, a task she is well … Read More

After the quakes – hard lessons that help us all do better

Peter Griffin • Dec 08, 2017

• Christchurch,
• earthquakes,
• Paul Gorman

I was at the science communicator’s conference in Auckland on the afternoon of 22 February, 2011, when the massive earthquake struck Christchurch. The theme of the conference was “Listening to the other side” and we’d enjoyed several stimulating discussions during the day as non-scientists gave their views on ways to effectively communicate the science of complex issues. That abstract … Read More

Book review: Sea Change

Sarah-Jane O'Connor • Nov 23, 2017

• climate change,
• IPCC,
• Paris Agreement,
• sea change

The latest in Bridget Williams Books mini publications of short books on big topics focuses on the social justice of climate change. I picked up Sea Change: Climate Politics and New Zealand on a Friday evening thinking I’d skim through the intro to get a taste of what University of Canterbury’s Dr Bronwyn Hayward had offered in her 90-page BWB … Read More