What We Are Reading Today: ‘The Standard Model’

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Updated 25 June 2025
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What We Are Reading Today: ‘The Standard Model’

Authors: Yuval Grossman and Yossi Nir

“The Standard Model” is an elegant and extremely successful theory that formulates the laws of fundamental interactions among elementary particles.

This incisive textbook introduces students to the physics of the Standard Model while providing an essential overview of modern particle physics, with a unique emphasis on symmetry principles as the starting point for constructing models.

“The Standard Model” equips students with an in-depth understanding of this impressively predictive theory.


What We Are Reading Today: ‘Elephants and Their Fossil Relatives’

Updated 12 January 2026
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What We Are Reading Today: ‘Elephants and Their Fossil Relatives’

Authors: Asier Larramendi Aand Marco P. Ferretti

Today, only three species of elephants survive—the African savanna elephant (Loxodonta africana), the African forest elephant (Loxodonta cyclotis), and the Asian elephant (Elephas maximus).

However, these modern giants represent just a fraction of the vast and diverse order Proboscidea, which includes not only living elephants but also their many extinct relatives.

Over the past 60 million years, proboscideans have evolved and adapted across five continents, giving rise to an astonishing variety of forms.