Join the SciFri Book Club online community to further the discussion with hundreds of readers nationwide. Get book recommendations, share your favorites, and talk about all things science and science fiction.
Unmasking AI
Author: Joy Buolamwini
Year: 2023
ISBN: 9780593241837
Abstract: "To most of us, it seems like recent developments in artificial intelligence emerged out of nowhere to pose unprecedented threats to humankind. But to Dr. Joy Buolamwini, who has been at the forefront of AI research, this moment has been a long time in the making. In Unmasking AI, Buolamwini explains how we've arrived at an era of AI harms and oppression, and what we can do to avoid its pitfalls. After tinkering with robotics as a high school student in Memphis and then developing mobile apps in Zambia as a Fulbright fellow, Buolamwini followed her lifelong passion for computer science, engineering, and art to MIT in 2015. As a graduate student at the "Future Factory," she did groundbreaking research that exposed widespread racial and gender bias in AI services from tech giants across the world, leading her to become "the conscience of the AI revolution" (Fortune). Unmasking AI goes beyond the headlines about existential risks produced by Big Tech. It is the remarkable story of how Buolamwini uncovered what she calls "the coded gaze" -- the evidence of encoded discrimination and exclusion in tech products -- and how she galvanized the movement to prevent AI harms by founding the Algorithmic Justice League. Applying an intersectional lens to both the tech industry and the research sector, she shows how racism, sexism, colorism, and ableism can overlap and render broad swaths of humanity "excoded" and therefore vulnerable in a world rapidly adopting AI tools. Computers, she reminds us, are reflections of both the aspirations and the limitations of the people who create them. Encouraging experts and non-experts alike to join this fight, Buolamwini writes, "The rising frontier for civil rights will require algorithmic justice. AI should be for the people and by the people, not just the privileged few."" -- Jacket flap.
Our Moon
Author: Rebecca Boyle
Year: 2024
ISBN: 9780593129722
Abstract: "Far from being a lifeless ornament in the sky, the Moon holds the answers to some of science's central questions... Who gets to decide how we use a celestial body that, Boyle argues, belongs to everyone and no one? How can we learn to protect this beautiful, spectral thing that we all share?"-- Provided by publisher.
Frostbite
Author: Nicola Twilley
Year: 2024
ISBN: 9780735223288
Abstract: "An engaging and far-reaching exploration of refrigeration, tracing its evolution from scientific mystery to globe-spanning infrastructure, and an essential investigation into how it has remade our entire relationship with food--for better and for worse. How often do we open the fridge or peer into the freezer with the expectation that we'll find something fresh and ready to eat? It's an everyday act, easily taken for granted, but just a century ago, eating food that had been refrigerated was cause for both fear and excitement. Banquets were held just so guests could enjoy the novelty of eggs, butter, and apples that had been preserved for months in cold storage--and demonstrate that such zombie foods were not deadly. The introduction of artificial refrigeration overturned millennia of dietary history, launching an entirely new chapter in human nutrition. We could now overcome not just rot, but also seasonality and geography. Tomatoes in January? Avocados in Shanghai? All possible. In FROSTBITE, New Yorker contributor and co-host of the award-winning podcast Gastropod Nicola Twilley takes readers with her on a tour of the cold chain from farm to fridge, visiting such off-the-beaten-track landmarks as Missouri's subterranean cheese caves, the banana-ripening rooms of New York City, and the vast refrigerated tanks that store the nation's OJ reserves. Today, more than three-quarters of everything on the average American plate is processed, shipped, stored, and sold under refrigeration. It's impossible to make sense of our food system without understanding the all-but-invisible network of thermal control that underpins it. Twilley's eye-opening book is the first to reveal the transformative impact refrigeration has had on our health and our guts; our farms, tables, kitchens, and cities; global economics and politics; and even our environment. In the developed world, we've reaped the benefits of refrigeration for more than a century, but as Twilley soon discovers, the costs are catching up with us. We've eroded our connection to our food, extending the distance between producers and consumers and redefining what "fresh" really means. More importantly, refrigeration is one of the leading contributors to climate change. As the developing world races to build a U.S.-style cold chain, Twilley asks, can we reduce our dependence on refrigeration? Should we? A deeply-researched and reported, original, and entertaining dive into the most important invention in the history of food and drink, FROSTBITE makes the case for a recalibration of our relationship with the fridge--and how our future might depend on it" -- Provided by publisher.
Many Things Under a Rock
Author: David Scheel ; illustrations by Laurel "Yoyo" Scheel
Year: 2023
ISBN: 9781324020691
Abstract: A behavioral ecologist's account of his decades-long obsession with octopuses: his discoveries, adventures, and his scientific understanding of their behaviors. Of all the creatures of the deep blue, none is as captivating as the octopus. In this book, a marine biologist investigates four major mysteries about these elusive beings. How can we study an animal with perfect camouflage and secretive habitats? How does a soft and boneless creature defeat sharks and eels, while thriving as a predator of the most heavily armored animals in the sea? How do octopus bodies work? And how does a solitary animal form friendships, entice mates, and outwit rivals? Over the course of his twenty-five years studying octopuses, the author has witnessed a sea change in what we know and are able to discover about octopus physiology and behavior - even an octopus's inner life. Here, he explores amazing scientific developments, weaving accounts of his own research and surprising encounters with stories and legends of Indigenous peoples - tales that illuminate our relationship with these creatures across centuries. In doing so, the author reveals a deep affinity between humans and even the most unusual and unique undersea dwellers. Octopuses are complex, emotional, and cognitive beings; even as the author unearths explanations for the key mysteries that have driven his work, he turns up many more things of wonder that lurk underneath. This is the story of what we have learned - and what we are still learning - about the natural history and wondrous lives of these animals with whom we share our blue planet. -- Provided by publisher.
Everything is Tuberculosis
Author: John Green
Year: 2025
ISBN: 9780525556572
Abstract: "Tuberculosis has been entwined with humanity for millennia. Once romanticized as a malady of poets, today tuberculosis is seen as a disease of poverty that walks the trails of injustice and inequity we blazed for it. In 2019, author John Green met Henry Reider, a young tuberculosis patient at Lakka Government Hospital in Sierra Leone. John became fast friends with Henry, a boy with spindly legs and a big, goofy smile. In the years since that first visit to Lakka, Green has become a vocal advocate for increased access to treatment and wider awareness of the healthcare inequities that allow this curable, preventable infectious disease to also be the deadliest, killing over a million people every year. In Everything is Tuberculosis, John tells Henry's story, woven through with the scientific and social histories of how tuberculosis has shaped our world--and how our choices will shape the future of tuberculosis"-- Provided by publisher.
When the Earth Was Green
Author: Riley Black ; [illustrations by Kory Bing]
Year: 2025
ISBN: 9781250288998
Abstract: "Winner, A Friend of Darwin Award, 2024. A gorgeously composed look at the longstanding relationship between prehistoric plants and life on Earth Fossils plants allow us to touch the lost worlds from billions of years of evolutionary backstory. Each petrified leaf and root show us that dinosaurs, saber-toothed cats, and even humans would not exist without the evolutionary efforts of their leafy counterparts. It has been the constant growth of plants that have allowed so many of our favorite, fascinating prehistoric creatures to evolve, oxygenating the atmosphere, coaxing animals onto land, and forming the forests that shaped our ancestors' anatomy. It is impossible to understand our history without them. Or, our future. Using the same scientifically-informed narrative technique that readers loved in the award-winning The Last Days of the Dinosaurs, in When the Earth Was Green, Riley Black brings readers back in time to prehistoric seas, swamps, forests, and savannas where critical moments in plant evolution unfolded. Each chapter stars plants and animals alike, underscoring how the interactions between species have helped shape the world we call home. As the chapters move upwards in time, Black guides readers along the burgeoning trunk of the Tree of Life, stopping to appreciate branches of an evolutionary story that links the world we know with one we can only just perceive now through the silent stone, from ancient roots to the present"-- Provided by publisher.
Ebook and audiobook available from the Alaska Digital Library.
Prodigal Summer
Author: Barbara Kingsolver
Year: 2000
ISBN: 9780060199654
Abstract: Wildlife biologist Deanna is caught off guard by an intrusive young hunter, while bookish city wife Lusa finds herself facing a difficult identity choice, and elderly neighbors find attraction at the height of a long-standing feud.
Ebook and audiobook available from the Alaska Digital Library.
Audiobook always available on hoopla.
