Showing titles in Biological Sciences

What would it be like to visit the ancient landscapes of the past? To experience the Jurassic or Cambrian worlds, to wander among these other lands, as creatures extinct for millions of years roam? In this mesmerizing debut, award-winning palaeontologist Thomas Halliday gives us a breath-taking up-close encounter with worlds that are normally unimaginably distant.

As the planet emerged from the last ice age, a language was born between Europe and Asia, by the Black Sea. This ancient tongue, which we call Proto-Indo-European, soon exploded out of its cradle, changing and fragmenting as it went, until its offspring were spoken from Scotland to China. Today those descendants constitute the world’s largest language family, the thread that connects disparate cultures: Dante’s Inferno to the Rig Veda, The Lord of the Rings to the love poetry of Rumi. Indo-European languages are spoken by nearly half of humanity. How did this happen?

The key to living a happier, healthier life is inside us. Our gut is almost as important to us as our brain or our heart, yet we know very little about how it works. In Gut, Giulia Enders shows that rather than the utilitarian and - let's be honest - somewhat embarrassing body part we imagine it to be, it is one of the most complex, important, and even miraculous parts of our anatomy.

This audiobook is about pleasure. It's also about pain. Most importantly, it's about how to find the delicate balance between the two, and why now more than ever finding balance is essential. We're living in a time of unprecedented access to high-reward, high-dopamine stimuli: drugs, food, news, gambling, shopping, gaming, texting, sexting, Facebooking, Instagramming, YouTubing, tweeting. The increased numbers, variety and potency are staggering. The smartphone is the modern-day hypodermic needle, delivering digital dopamine 24/7 for a wired generation.

Over 10,000 years ago there were fewer than 10 million people on the planet. Today there are more than six billion, 99 per cent of whom are better fed, better sheltered, better entertained and better protected against disease than their Stone Age ancestors. Yet, bizarrely, however much things improve from the way they were before, people still cling to the belief that the future will be nothing but disastrous.

Naming Darwin's Black Box to the National Review's list of the 100 most important nonfiction works of the 20th century, George Gilder wrote that it "overthrows Darwin at the end of the 20th century in the same way that quantum theory overthrew Newton at the beginning". Discussing the book in the New Yorker in May 2005, H. Allen Orr said of Behe, "He is the most prominent of the small circle of scientists working on intelligent design, and his arguments are by far the best known."

Produced by McGraw Hill, Harrison's Podclass delivers illuminating and engaging discussions led by Drs. Cathy Handy Marshall and Charlie Wiener of The John Hopkins School of Medicine on key topics in medicine, featuring board-style case vignettes from Harrison's Review Questions and chapters from the acclaimed Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine – available on AccessMedicine from McGraw Hill.

We are about to cross a critical threshold in the history of our species. Everything is about to change. Soon we will live surrounded by AIs. They will carry out complex tasks-operating businesses, producing unlimited digital content, running core government services and maintaining infrastructure. This will be a world of DNA printers and quantum computers, engineered pathogens and autonomous weapons, robot assistants and abundant energy. It represents nothing less than a step change in human capability. We are not prepared.

When it comes to understanding the connection between our mental and physical health, we should be looking at the exceptions, not the rules. Dr Jeff Rediger, a world-leading Harvard psychiatrist, has spent the last fifteen years studying thousands of individuals from around the world, examining the stories behind extraordinary cases of recovery from terminal illness. In analysing the remarkable science of recovery, Dr Rediger reveals the power of our mind to heal our body and shows us the keys to good health.

In Your Dog Is Your Mirror, dog trainer Kevin Behan proposes a radical new model for understanding canine behavior: a dog’s behavior and emotion, indeed its very cognition, are driven by our emotion. The dog doesn’t respond to its owner based on what the owner thinks, says, or does; it responds to what the owner feels. And in this way, dogs can actually put people back in touch with their own emotions.

Why cooperate? This may be the most important scientific question we have ever, and will ever, face. The science of cooperation tells us not only how we got here, but also where we might end up. Cooperation explains how strands of DNA gave rise to modern-day nation states. It defines our extraordinary ecological success, as well as many of the most surprising features of what make us human: not only why we live in families, why we have grandmothers and why women experience the menopause, but also why we become paranoid and jealous, and why we cheat.

Chemistry and Our Universe: How It All Works is your in-depth introduction to this vital field, taught through 60 engaging half-hour lectures that are suitable for any background or none at all. Covering a year’s worth of introductory general chemistry at the college level, plus intriguing topics that are rarely discussed in the classroom, this amazingly comprehensive course requires nothing more advanced than high-school math. Your guide is Professor Ron B. Davis, Jr., a research chemist and award-winning teacher at Georgetown University.

One of the greatest scientific feats of our era is the astonishing progress made in understanding biology-the intricate machinery of life-a progress to which the period we are living in right now has contributed the most.As you read these words, researchers are delving ever deeper into the workings of living systems, turning their discoveries into new medical treatments, improved methods of growing food, and innovative products that are already changing the world.

In this brilliant exploration of our cosmic environment, the renowned particle physicist and New York Times best-selling author of Warped Passages and Knocking on Heaven's Door uses her research into dark matter to illuminate the startling connections between the farthest reaches of space and life here on Earth.

Psychologists study which cognitive operations underpin a given conscious perception. Neuroscientists track the neural correlates of consciousness in the brain, the organ of the mind. But why the brain and not, say, the liver? How can the brain, three pounds of highly excitable matter, a piece of furniture in the universe, subject to the same laws of physics as any other piece, give rise to subjective experience? Koch argues that what is needed to answer these questions is a quantitative theory that starts with experience and proceeds to the brain.

The population is terrified by reports of so-called COVID-19, measles, swine flu, SARS, BSE, AIDS, or polio. However, the authors of "Virus Mania", investigative journalist Torsten Engelbrecht, Dr. Claus Köhnlein, MD, Dr. Samantha Bailey, MD, and Dr. Stefano Scoglio, BSc PhD, show that this fearmongering is unfounded and that virus mayhem ignores basic scientific facts: The existence, the pathogenicity and the deadly effects of these agents have never been proven.

Bob Irwin's extraordinary life as a wildlife pioneer, father to wildlife warrior Steve and founder of Australia Zoo, told in his own words. Bob Irwin grew up in the Dandenong Ranges, where his passion for wildlife was born. A near-death experience while working as a plumber made Bob realise he needed to follow his dreams, so he and his wife, Lyn, moved their young family to Queensland, where they opened a wildlife park on the Sunshine Coast. The Irwin children grew up in and around the Beerwah Reptile and Wildlife Park.

The 1964 murder of a nationally known cancer researcher sets the stage for this gripping exposé of medical professionals enmeshed in covert government operations over the course of three decades. Following a trail of police records, FBI files, cancer statistics, and medical journals, this revealing book presents evidence of a web of medical secret-keeping that began with the handling of evidence in the JFK assassination and continued apace....

Discover the critical link between your brain and the food you eat, change the way you think about how your brain ages, and achieve optimal brain performance with this powerful new guide from media personality and leading voice in health Max Lugavere.

Based on O’Connor’s own trailblazing neuroimaging work, research in the field, and her real-life stories, The Grieving Brain combines storytelling, accessible science, and practical knowledge that will help us better understand what happens when we grieve and how to navigate loss with more ease and grace.