Showing results by narrator "Joel Richard" in All Categories

In Marbella, Spain, Dr. Kate Warner awakens to a horrifying reality: the human race stands on the brink of extinction. A pandemic unlike any before it has swept the globe. Nearly a billion people are dead—and those the Atlantis Plague doesn't kill, it transforms at the genetic level. A few rapidly evolve. The remainder devolve. As the world slips into chaos, radical solutions emerge. Industrialized nations offer a miracle drug, Orchid, which they mass produce and distribute to refugee camps around the world.

How does a neural network become a brain? While neurobiologists investigate how nature accomplishes this feat, computer scientists interested in AI strive to achieve this through technology. The Self-Assembling Brain tells the stories of both fields, exploring the historical and modern approaches taken by the scientists pursuing answers to the quandary: What information is necessary to make an intelligent neural network? As Peter Robin Hiesinger argues, "the information problem" underlies both fields.

Today, human exceptionalism is the norm. Despite occasional nods to animal welfare, we prioritize humanity, often neglecting the welfare of a vast number of beings. As a result, we use hundreds of billions of vertebrates and trillions of invertebrates every year for a variety of purposes. We also plan to use animals, AI systems, and other nonhumans at even higher levels in the future. Yet as the dominant species, humanity has a responsibility to ask: Which nonhumans matter, how much do they matter, and what do we owe them in a world reshaped by human activity and technology?

Microsoft Power Platform for Dummies covers the essentials you need to know to get started with Microsoft Power Platform, the suite of business intelligence applications designed to make your enterprise work smarter and more efficiently.

The ability to effectively communicate with data is no longer a luxury in today’s economy; it is a necessity. Transforming data into visual communication is only one part of the picture. It is equally important to engage your audience with a narrative—to tell a story with the numbers. Effective Data Storytelling will teach you the essential skills necessary to communicate your insights through persuasive and memorable data stories.

A vicious terrorist attack leaves nearly 70 US sailors dead and the entire United States Navy looking for answers. In the volatile waters of the Arabian Gulf, the USS Carl Vinson Strike Group - under the command of Admiral Heater Robinson - stands ready to unleash the full fury of a nuclear aircraft carrier against America's enemies. When it becomes clear that the government has no intention of punishing the murderers, Robinson decides to take justice into his own hands, no matter what the cost.

Michael Covel is the author of five books, including the international best seller, Trend Following and his investigative narrative, The Complete TurtleTrader. Fascinated by traders that quietly generate spectacular returns, those going against the grain of investment orthodoxy, he has uncovered astonishing insights about how they think, strategize, and execute their systems.

A Brief Guide to Maritime Strategy is a deliberately compact introductory work aimed at junior seafarers, those who make decisions affecting the sea services, and those who educate seafarers and decision-makers. It introduces listeners to the main theoretical ideas that shape how statesmen and commanders make and execute maritime strategy in times of peace and war.

The frontier is beginning to feel like home for the ragtag team who came together to fight the good fight and found a family in the process. Commander Beau Ward must take the fight to the pirates to rescue the rest of the colonists. To succeed, he needs a bigger team. The Admiral assigns the men Beau needs, but the newcomers are, unsurprisingly, misfits with a secret of their own that could compromise the entire mission.

Despite his recent victories, Nate Temple’s problems are only just beginning. Although it had been necessary, killing the most infamous of the Norse gods has consequences, and no one knows petty vengeance like the Aesir. Especially with Odin’s legendary spear mysteriously missing. But Nate has more important things to worry about than a pantheon of angry gods. Because the God of Mischief has been freed from his imprisonment, and so has his monstrosity of a son - a creature prophesied to play a major role in Ragnarok.

The fate of Taiwan hangs in the balance. If it falls to the Chinese, they will be one step closer to dominating all of Asia. Japan, Thailand, the Philippines - no one is safe from their hostile takeover. While North Korea no longer poses a significant threat, the incursions there have greatly weakened the United States military force. Will the President's draft and retooling of the economy move swiftly enough to make a victory possible? Or will America's resources be stretched so thin that Europe and Asia will both be lost?

In The Elephant in the Universe, Govert Schilling explores the fascinating history of the search for dark matter. Evidence for its existence comes from a wealth of astronomical observations. Theories and computer simulations of the evolution of the universe are also suggestive: they can be reconciled with astronomical measurements only if dark matter is a dominant component of nature.

What caused the extinction of the dinosaurs? Walter Alvarez, one of the Berkeley scientists who discovered evidence of the impact, tells the story behind the development of the initially controversial theory. It is a saga of high adventure in remote locations, of arduous data collection and intellectual struggle, of long periods of frustration ended by sudden breakthroughs, of friendships made and lost, and of the exhilaration of discovery that forever altered our understanding of Earth's geological history.

Black Mirror - the Emmy-winning Netflix series that holds up a dark, digital mirror of speculative technologies to modern society-shows us a high-tech world where it is all too easy to fall victim to ever-evolving forms of social control. In Black Mirror and Philosophy, original essays written by a diverse group of scholars invite you to peer into the void and explore the philosophical, ethical, and existential dimensions of Charlie Brooker's sinister stories.

In 1957 the Soviet Union sent Sputnik, the first man-made satellite, into space. America took up the challenge to explore the next frontier. A dozen years, and 25 billion dollars later, the mission of Apollo 11 would yield man's finest hour. For that was the first time man's foot left prints on another heavenly body. And that was only the beginning. Apollo 11 is the incredible story of how a nation forged the technology during the turbulent 1960s to slip humanity from the bonds of its native planet. This inside look remembers those who made the great enterprise succeed.

Revolutionary War officer Nathan Hale, one of America's first spies, said, "Any kind of service necessary to the public good becomes honorable by being necessary." A statue of Hale stands outside CIA headquarters, and the agency often cites his statement as one of its guiding principles. But who decides what is necessary for the public good, and is it really true that any kind of service is permissible for the public good? These questions are at the heart of James M. Olson's book, Fair Play: The Moral Dilemmas of Spying.

Do you ever think the stories you hear about great trading, and the gains produced, sound like luck? Do you ever wonder if there is a real method and philosophy behind the success stories? The concepts condensed into Trend Commandments were gleaned from Michael Covel's 15 years of pulling back the curtain on great trend-following traders. It is a one of a kind money-making experience that forever lays to rest the notion that successful trading is akin to winning the lottery.

Discover the science behind the most popular sci-fi franchise of all time. Capturing the imagination and hearts of crowds worldwide, Star Wars is a fantastic feat of science fiction and fantasy. We marvel at the variety of creatures and technology and the mystery behind the force. But how much of the Star Wars world is rooted in reality? Could we see some of the extraordinary inventions materialize in our world?

The United States of America has been the most powerful country in the world for more than 70 years, but recently the US National Security Strategy declared that the return of great power competition with Russia and China is the greatest threat to US national security. Further, many analysts predict that America's autocratic rivals will have at least some success in disrupting - and, in the longer term, possibly even displacing - US global leadership. Brilliant and engagingly written, The Return of Great Power Rivalry argues that this conventional wisdom is wrong.

Galileo Unbound traces the journey that brought us from Galileo's law of free fall to today's geneticists measuring evolutionary drift, entangled quantum particles moving among many worlds, and our lives as trajectories traversing a health space with thousands of dimensions. Remarkably, common themes persist that predict the evolution of species as readily as the orbits of planets or the collapse of stars into black holes.