Popular science

This book traces the history of birds right back to their reptilian origins. It underlines their homogeneity - flight, beak, skeleton and feathers are a bird's reference points - without losing sight of their diversity. Morphological and biological diversity (reproduction especially), but also adaptative. How do they withstand the cold and the predators, how do flightless birds run, how do you fly when you are a vulture? This book explores the intimacy of birds whose habits awaken the curiosity - the Grey Cuckoo, certain species of pigeon or the Hamerkop. It also discusses the relationship between humans and birds.

From the saga of major industrial brewing groups to the microbreweries, from Gaulish ale to Irish Guinness, from English stout to Burkina dolo, from traditional barley malt beer to Congolese munkoyo via South-American chicha, this e-pub will take you on a journey around the world to discover the history and brewing of beers.Videos, animated diagrams and an impressive bibliography and webography will satisfy the curiosity of the beer enthusiast or anyone looking for information on this agelong drink.

This e-pub is based on the printed edition by the same authors . Do all beers have foam?(Quæ, 2010). It is full of texts, links and multimedia objects.

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Is salt required to make soap?Is salt need to mummify?Is the Dead Sea really lifeless?Why does water dissolve salt?Why do you put salt in a champagne bucket?The author answers original, concise and highly-educational questions lightheartedly and with plenty of humour.The book provides the basics of everything you need to know about salt and what makes it so culturally rich.

Why do desert mammals have such large ears?Why do the cactus breathe in reverse fashion to other plants?How did human beings choose to live in such hostile regions?What pushes man to cross these immense open spaces?The author is a specialist in deserts. He leads us through grandiose landscapes of stone and sand, in the wake of caravans, in the world of gold seekers, he makes us share the hard life of hunters-collectors and discover marvellous plants and animals as well as sometimes surprising stories of lost explorers or entire towns appearing from nowhere.

December 2004, tsunami in Sumatra, January 2010, earthquake in Haiti, March 2011, earthquake in Tohoku and tsunami in Fukushima - all human dramas that remind us constantly that forecasting earthquakes and tsunamis is still a complex and difficult science.This simple, concise book is an introduction to the broad elementary notions of earthquakes and an inventory on their forecasting.

Organic agriculture was born at the beginning of the 20th century and relaunched in 2008 by the Grenelle Environment Round Table.Featuring as strongly in food headlines as in farming, this labelled agriculture continues to bemuse the general public. A trend?A real change? Do we really know what is organic agriculture?

In eighty questions, this book addresses all the rumours involving aquaculture, all the concerns, all the accusations, without any taboos, to shed light on an activity decried for years for its lack of prospects and criticised today for its success.

Fair trade is fashionable and has made dazzling progress. What is it? Where does it come from? Where is it going?

Made up of some thirty themed problem entries, this dictionary is the fruit of a joint project designed by specialist fair trade and alternative trade researchers within the Fairness association.

Admired, raised, illustrated, harvested, chased, collected, eradicated, sold, threatened and protected - humans have been focusing on butterflies for two centuries. How many are there? Where do they live? What do they eat? Why are certain species never seen? Why do some like honey whilst others imitate wasps? Can a private individual contribute to their study? A hundred questions and a hundred answers to explore this light and seemingly fragile world which has more than 135,000 listed species worldwide.

The author examines the strategies of pseudo-scientific arguments, from negationist creationisms to philosophical creationisms which call on the scientific community to participate in a "quest for meaning". Through the theory of evolution and its appropriation by the public, the book raises the issue of scientificity criteria.