By spinning 28 engaging mathematical tales, Orlin shows us that calculus is simply another language to express the very things we humans grapple with every day - love, risk, time and, most importantly, change. Divided into two parts, "Moments" and "Eternities," and drawing on everyone from Sherlock Holmes to Mark Twain to David Foster Wallace, Change is the Only Constant unearths connections between calculus, art, literature and a beloved dog named Elvis. This is not just maths for maths' sake; it's maths for the sake of becoming a wiser and more thoughtful human.

This stunningly illustrated book provides a rare window into the amazing, varied, and often beautiful world of viruses. Contrary to popular belief, not all viruses are bad for you. In fact, several are beneficial to their hosts, and many are crucial to the health of our planet. Virus offers an unprecedented look at 101 incredible microbes that infect all branches of life on Earth--from humans and other animals to insects, plants, fungi, and bacteria. Featuring hundreds of breathtaking color images throughout, this guide begins with a lively and informative introduction to virology. Here readers can learn about the history of this unique science, how viruses are named, how their genes work, how they copy and package themselves, how they interact with their hosts, how immune systems counteract viruses, and how viruses travel from host to host. The concise entries that follow highlight important or interesting facts about each virus. Learn about the geographic origins of dengue and why old tires and unused pots help the virus to spread. Read about Ebola, Zika, West Nile, Frog virus 3, the Tulip breaking virus, and many others--how they were discovered, what their hosts are, how they are transmitted, whether or not there is a vaccine, and much more. Each entry is easy to read and includes a graphic of the virus, and nearly every entry features a colorized image of the virus as seen through the microscope. Written by a leading authority, this handsomely illustrated guide reveals the unseen wonders of the microbial world. It will give you an entirely new appreciation for viruses.

'A stunner ... If you haven't got this book in your house, I don't know why' Chris Evans 'A startling wake-up call . . . Writing with the vim of a Bill Bryson and the technical knowledge of a scientist, Steele gives us a chance to grasp what's at stake' Independent 'An exhilarating journey . . . Steele is a superb guide' Telegraph 'A fascinating read with almost every page bursting with extraordinary facts . . . Read it now' Mail on Sunday Ageless is a guide to the biggest issue we all face. Ageing - not cancer, not heart disease - is the world's leading cause of death and suffering. What would the world be like if we could cure it? Living disease-free until the age of 100 is achievable within our lifetimes. In prose that is lucid and full of fascinating facts, Ageless introduces us to the cutting-edge research that is paving the way for this revolution. Computational biologist Andrew Steele explains what occurs biologically as we age, as well as practical ways we can slow down the process. He reveals how understanding the scientific implications of ageing could lead to the greatest discovery in the history of civilisation - one that has the potential to improve billions of lives, save trillions of dollars, and transform the human condition.

'If you want to see what that future might look like, Duncan's book is a fun place to start' NPR 'Intensely readable, downright terrifying, and surprisingly uplifting' Vanity Fair '5 books not to miss . . . A fascinating work of imaginative futurology' USA Today One of Time magazine's '32 Books You Need to Read This Summer' - 'a riveting read' One of David Baldacci and Elizabeth Acevedo's best summer reads, on USA Today's Today programme 'A refreshing variation on the will-intelligent-robots-bring-Armageddon genre . . . this colourful mixture of expert futurology and quirky speculation does not disappoint' Kirkus Reviews What robot and AI systems are being built and imagined right now? What do they say about us, their creators? Will they usher in a fantastic new future, or destroy us? What do some of our greatest thinkers, from physicist Brian Greene and futurist Kevin Kelly to inventor Dean Kamen, geneticist George Church, and filmmaker Tiffany Shlain, anticipate about our human-robot future? For even as robots and AI intrigue us and make us anxious about the future, our fascination with robots has always been about more than the potential of the technology - it's also about what robots tell us about being human. From present-day Facebook and Amazon bots to near-future 'intimacy' bots and 'the robot that swiped my job' bots, bestselling American popular science writer David Ewing Duncan's Talking to Robots is a wonderfully entertaining and insightful guide to possible future scenarios about robots, both real and imagined. Featured bots include robot drivers; doc bots; politician bots; warrior bots; sex bots; synthetic bio bots; dystopic bots that are hopefully just bad dreams; and ultimately, God Bot (as described by physicist Brian Greene). These scenarios are informed by discussions with well-known thinkers, engineers, scientists, artists, philosophers and others, who share with us their ideas, hopes and fears about robots. David spoke with, among others, Kevin Kelly, David Baldacci, Brian Greene, Dean Kamen, Craig Venter, Stephanie Mehta, David Eagleman, George Poste, George Church, General R. H. Latiff, Robert Seigel, Emily Morse, David Sinclair, Ken Goldberg, Sunny Bates, Adam Gazzaley, Tim O'Reilly, Tiffany Shlain, Eric Topol and Juan Enriquez. These discussions, along with some reporting on bot-tech, bot-history and real-time societal and ethical issues with robots, are the launch pads for unfurling possible bot futures that are informed by how people and societies have handled new technologies in the past. The book describes how robots work, but its primary focus is on what our fixation with bots and AI says about us as humans: about our hopes and anxieties; our myths, stories, beliefs and ideas about beings both real and artificial; and our attempts to attain perfection. We are at a pivotal moment when our ancient infatuation with human-like beings with certain attributes or superpowers - in mythology, religion and storytelling - is coinciding with our ability to actually build some of these entities.

Candid Science VI is the concluding volume of the series. It contains conversations with scientists from the biomedical sciences, chemistry, and physics. There are 31 Nobel laureates and 11 other luminaries among them. The scientists -- according to their loosely-defined fields -- are, in the biomedical sciences, Francis Crick, Sydney Brenner, Matthew Meselson, Paul M Nurse, R Timothy (Tim) Hunt, Seymour Benzer, Christiane Nusslein-Volhard, Werner Arber, David Baltimore, J Michael Bishop, Harold E Varmus, Peter Mansfield, Avram Hershko, Aaron Ciechanover, Irwin Rose, Alexander Varshavsky, Osamu Hayaishi; in chemistry, Ada Yonath, Isabella Karle, Jerome Karle, Yuan Tseh Lee, Darleane Hoffman; in physics, Richard L Garwin, Donald A Glaser, Nicholas Kurti, Herbert Kroemer, James Cronin, Wolfgang Panofsky, Burton Richter, Samuel Chao Chung Ting, Martin L Perl, Carlo Rubbia, Simon van der Meer, Douglas D Osheroff, Jack Steinberger, Masatoshi Koshiba, Riccardo Giacconi, Brian D Josephson, Ivar Giaever, Vitaly L Ginzburg, David Gross, and Frank Wilczek.

For many, a mummy is an Egyptian pharaoh, wrapped in cloth, found thousands of years later in a pyramid by archaeologists. But mummies need not be ancient. Modern-day mummies can be found under glass in special tombs built in their honor, in private collections where they have come to rest after decades on the carnival circuit, in dissecting rooms of medical schools, and in the basements of funeral homes waiting for decades to be claimed by the next of kin. Stories about the famous (Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, Ho Chi Minh, Eva Peron) and the not-so-famous (Leslie Hansell wanted her body mummified to bask in the sun rather than being buried in the cold ground) mummies are told here in great detail, along with a broader look at the history and process of mummification. The book includes a comprehensive study of the successful prolonged preservation of the human body, and delves into the law and science of modern mummification.

ESCAPE FROM EARTH is the untold story of the engineers, dreamers and rebels who started the American space programme. In particular, it is the story of Frank Malina, founder of what became Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the scientist who cracked the, as he called it, problem of escape from the Earth by rocket.

It's a wild ride. Jack Parsons, Malina's chemistry-expert research partner, was a bed-hopping occultist with delusions of grandeur. We get all the horrible details: drug parties and sex magic, cameos by Aleister Crowley and L Ron Hubbard, and an ill-fated attempt to start a mail-order religion.

Armed with hitherto unpublished letters, journals, and documents from the Malina family archives, Fraser MacDonald reveals what we didn't know. Jack Parsons betrayed Frank Malina to the FBI, cooperating fully in their investigation of Malina for un-American activities. The Jet Propulsion Lab's second director secretly denounced Frank as a Communist. Frank's research group had close ties to the spy network of the infamous Rosenbergs - the only Americans executed during the Red Scare. This is a story of soaring ideals entangled in the most human of complications: infidelity and divorce, betrayal and treason.

This is a mathematics book written specifically for the enjoyment of non-mathematicians and those who "hated math in school." The book is organized into two sections: (I) Beauty for the Eye (shallow water for the non-swimmer); and (II) A Feast for the Mind (slowly getting deeper for the more adventurous). The author covers beautiful infinite series beginning with those that a young child can understand to one that even Isaac Newton, Gottfried Liebniz and the famous Bernoulli brothers could not sum.

More than 200 million years ago, a cataclysmic event known as the Permian extinction destroyed more than 90% of all species and nearly 97% of all living things. Its origins have long been a puzzle for paleontologists, and during the 1990s and the early part of this century a great battle was fought between those who thought that death had come from above and those who thought something more complicated was at work.

Paleontologist Peter D. Ward, fresh from helping prove that an asteroid had killed the dinosaurs, turned to the Permian problem, and he has come to a stunning conclusion. In his investigations of the fates of several groups of mollusks during those extinctions and others, he discovered that the near-total devastation at the end of the Permian was caused by rising levels of carbon dioxide leading to climate change. But it's not the heat (nor the humidity) that's directly responsible for the extinctions, and the story of the discovery of what is responsible makes for an fascinating, globe-spanning adventure.

Time travel is a familiar theme of science fiction, but is it really possible? Surprisingly, time travel is not forbidden by the laws of physics - and John Gribbin argues that if it is not impossible then it must be possible. Gribbin brilliantly illustrates the possibilities of time travel by comparing familiar themes from science fiction with their real-world scientific counterparts, including Einstein's theories of relativity, black holes, quantum physics, and the multiverse, illuminated by examples from the fictional tales of Robert Heinlein, Larry Niven, Carl Sagan and others. The result is an entertaining guide to some deep mysteries of the Universe which may leave you wondering whether time actually passes at all, and if it does, whether we are moving forwards or backwards. A must-read for science fiction fans and anyone intrigued by deep science.

One of the world's most outstanding astrophysicists provides a state-of-the-art investigation into the possibility of time travel. Human beings have a strong desire to travel through time. Although scientists are not yet taking out patents on a time machine, they are investigating whether it is possible under the laws of physics. In Newton's three-dimensional world this would have been inconceivable. But with Einstein's theory of relativity a fourth dimension time enters the frame. Is it really inconceivable that we can travel along the timeline? In this book Richard Gott offers an intellectually expansive, witty and engaging study of the viability of time travel, which takes us from the dream of time travel itself in H. G. Wells's path-breaking novel THE TIME MACHINE to cutting-edge research into astrophysics and quantum teleportation. He explores the scientific, social and moral implications of time travel, and looks at recent remarkable experiments in which fundamental particles were actually sent into the future.

One in four of us experience a mental health problem each year, with anxiety and depression alone affecting over 500 million people worldwide.

Why are these conditions so widespread? What is it about modern life that has such an impact on our mental health? And why is there still so much confusion and stigma around these issues?

In Psycho-Logical, neuroscientist and bestselling author Dean Burnett answers these questions and more, revealing what is actually going on in our brains when we suffer mental health issues such as anxiety, depression and addiction.

Combining illuminating scientific research with first-hand insights from people who deal with mental health problems on a daily basis, this is an honest, entertaining and reassuring account of how and why these issues occur, and how to make sense of them.

An intimate glimpse inside a silent epidemic that is harming teens, and a pathway for parents to help them reclaim the restorative power of sleep. If you could protect your child from unnecessary anxiety, depression, and chronic stress, and foster a greater sense of happiness and well-being in their lives, wouldn't you? In this book, the authors of The Happy Sleeper, the classic book on helping babies and young children develop healthy sleep habits, uncover one of the greatest threats to our teenagers' physical and mental health: sleep deprivation. Caught in a perfect storm of omnipresent screens, academic overload, and unnecessarily early school-start times, our children are operating in a constant state of sleep debt while struggling to meet the demands of adolescence. In this essential book, Heather Turgeon and Julie Wright draw on the latest scientific research to reveal that today's teenagers are, in fact, the most sleep-deprived population in human history. In fact, at a critical phase of development, many teens need more sleep than their younger siblings - but they're getting drastically less. Generation Sleepless guides families in building healthy habits around sleep by: * establishing family agreements around sleep habits; * altering family practices around phones, social media, and screen time; * regaining overall equilibrium in the home; and * remaking bedtime routines Packed with years of research and in-depth reporting, Generation Sleepless is a wake-up call for parents that equips them with the right tools to start a family conversation about sleep and to ultimately regain connection with their tweens and teens.

In 1900, David Hilbert posed a set of 23 unsolved mathematical problems, thus setting an agenda for mathematics that lasted throughout the 20th Century. Some, like Fermat's last theorem, have now been solved; others, such as the Riemann hypothesis, continue to challenge the best mathematical brains of our time. This book addresses the nature of Hilbert and his problems, and their significance for the progress of mathematics in our time.

During the past century, tropical rain forests have been reduced to about half of their original area, with consequent loss of biodiversity.

Written by leading experts with years of practical and academic experience, this book focuses on the erosion of biodiversity in tropical rain forests, and the role of protected areas in stemming that loss. The book looks at a system of protected areas which could be the cornerstone of all conservation strategies aimed at limiting the inevitable reduction of the planet's biodiversity.

It is well known that Einstein founded twentieth-century physics with his work on relativity and quanta, but what do we really know about these ground breaking ideas? How were they discovered? What should we retain today from the conceptual upheavals he initiated? Through a selection of concrete scenes taken from Einstein's life, the author offers a view into the formation of his theories, as well as reminders of the day-to-day applications of his ideas. Simultaneously the reader is lead through a reflection on their philosophical impact: How should we think of time according to the theory of relativity, which removes any meaningful "now" and shows that twins can have different ages? How should we think of reality when quantum theory predicts that spatially separated objects nevertheless remain connected through Einstein's notion of "entanglement," which has recently been verified through scientific observation? This book puts readers in Einstein's place, allowing them to share some of those particular moments when he succeeded in "lifting a corner of the great veil."

Despite originating more than two-and-a-half thousand years ago, Aesop’s Fables are still passed on from parent to child, and are embedded in our collective consciousness. The morals we have learned from these tales continue to inform our judgements, but have the stories also informed how we regard their animal protagonists? Are wolves deceptive villains? Are crows insightful geniuses? And could a tortoise really beat a hare in a race? What truths about the animal world lie behind these tales? In Aesop’s Animals, zoologist Jo Wimpenny turns a critical eye to the fables to examine the science behind Aesop’s portrayal of the animal kingdom. She brings the tales into the twenty-first century, introducing the latest findings from the world of behavioural ecology – the study of why animals do the things they do, in areas such as tool use, plans and projections, self-recognition, cooperation and deception. How close to verifiable scientific truths do these ancient tales lay? Sifting facts from fiction, Aesop’s Animals explores and challenges our notions about animals, the ways in which they behave, and the roles we both play in our shared world.

THE PERFECT CHRISTMAS GIFT FOR ALL BIBLIOMANES A TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR A FINANCIAL TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR A SPECTATOR BOOK OF THE YEAR A WATERSTONES BEST POPULAR SCIENCE BOOK 2022 AS HEARD ON BBC RADIO 4 WOMAN'S HOUR AND START THE WEEK Plunge into this rich, surprising and stunningly designed A-Z compendium to discover how our fixations have taken shape, from the Middle Ages to the present day, as bestselling author Kate Summerscale deftly traces the threads between the past and present, the psychological and social, the personal and the political. 'Fascinating ... Phobias and manias create a magical space between us and the world' Malcolm Gaskill, author of the No. 1 bestseller The Ruin of All Witches 'Fascinating' Observer 'An endlessly intriguing book ... All the bibliomanes (book nutters) I know will love it' Daily Mail 'A new book from Summerscale is always a treat ... Her sub-title might echo Neil MacGregor, but this reads more like a book by Oliver Sacks, with dashes of Roald Dahl' Spectator

Today, the language of science is English. But the dominance of this particular language is a relatively recent phenomenon - and far from a foregone conclusion. In a sweeping history that takes us from antiquity to the modern day, Michael D. Gordin untangles the web of politics, money, personality and international conflict that created the monoglot world of science we now inhabit. Beginning with the rise of Latin, Gordin reveals how we went on to use (and then lose) Dutch, Italian, Swedish and many other languages on the way, and sheds light on just how significant language is in the nationalistic realm of science - just one word mistranslated into German from Russian triggered an inflammatory face-off between the two countries for the credit of having discovered the periodic table. Intelligent, revealing and full of compelling stories, Scientific Babel shows how the world has shaped science just as much as science has transformed the world.

Through an examination of examples from performance, museum displays and popular culture that stage the body as a specimen, Performing Specimens maps the relations between these performative acts and the medical practices of collecting, storing and showing specimens in a variety of modes and contexts. Moving from an examination of the medical and historical contexts of specimen display in the museum and the anatomy theatre to contemporary performance, Gianna Bouchard engages with examples from live art, bio-art, popular culture and theatre that stage the performer's body as a specimen. It examines the ethical relationships involved in these particular moments of display - both in the staging and in how we look at the specimen body. This is a landmark study for those working in the fields of theatre, performance and the medical humanities, with a specific focus on the ethics of display and the ethics of spectatorship, emerging at the intersection of performance and medicine. Among the works and examples considered are 18th-century anatomical waxes from the Museo di Storia Naturale la Specola in Florence, Italy, and their contemporary version in the Bodyworlds exhibition of 'plastinated' corpses; organ retention scandals; current legislation, such as the Human Tissue Act 2004; the work of performance company Clod Ensemble and Stein|Holum Projects, the performer and disability activist, Mat Fraser and live artist, Martin O'Brien, alongside visual artists Helen Pynor and Peta Clancy , artists Peggy Shaw and ORLAN.

A journey through the history and science of epidemics and pandemics – from measles to coronavirus.

For centuries mankind has waged war against the infections that, left untreated, would have the power to wipe out communities, or even entire populations. Yet for all our advanced scientific knowledge, only one human disease – smallpox – has ever been eradicated globally. In recent years, outbreaks of Ebola and Zika have provided vivid examples of how difficult it is to contain an infection once it strikes, and the panic that a rapidly spreading epidemic can ignite.

But while we chase the diseases we are already aware of, new ones are constantly emerging, like the coronavirus that spread across the world in 2020. At the same time, anti-microbial resistance is harnessing infections that we once knew how to control, enabling them to thrive once more.

Meera Senthilingam presents a timely look at humanity’s ongoing battle against infection, examining the successes and failures of the past, along with how we are confronting the challenges of today, and our chances of eradicating disease in the future.

From the Royal Society Winton Prize winner 'Sean Carroll examines what it means to exist on this speck of dust in a possibly infinite universe. It's fascinating to see a real working physicist thinking these things through and trying to come to a conclusion.' - Professor Brian Cox on The Big Picture, a Mail on Sunday Book of the Year Quantum physics is not mystifying. The implications are mind-bending, and not yet fully understood, but this revolutionary theory is truly illuminating. It stands as the best explanation of the fundamental nature of our world. Spanning the history of quantum discoveries, from Einstein and Bohr to the present day, Something Deeply Hidden is the essential guide to the most intriguing subject in science. Acclaimed physicist and writer Sean Carroll debunks the myths, resurrects and reinstates the Many-Worlds interpretation, and presents a new path towards solving the apparent conflict between quantum mechanics and Einstein's theory of general relativity. In doing so, he fills a gap in the science that has existed for almost a century. A magisterial tour, Something Deeply Hidden encompasses the cosmological and everyday implications of quantum reality and multiple universes. And - finally - it all makes sense.

Candid Science V: Conversations with Famous Scientists contains 36 interviews with well-known scientists, including 19 Nobel laureates, Wolf Prize winners, and other luminaries. These in-depth conversations provide a glimpse into the greatest achievements in science during the past few decades, featuring stories of the discoveries, and showing the human drama behind them. The greatest scientists are brought into close human proximity as if readers were having a conversation with them. This volume departs from the previous ones in that it contains interviews with mathematicians in addition to physicists, chemists, and biomedical scientists. Another peculiarity of this volume is that it includes nine interviews from another project, the collection of the late Clarence Larson, former Commissioner of the Atomic Energy Commission and his wife, Jane ("Larson Tapes"). The 36 interviewees include famous personalities of our time, such as Donald Coxeter, John Conway, Roger Penrose, Alan Mackay, Dan Shechtman, Charles Townes, Arthur Schawlow, Leon Cooper, Alexei Abrikosov, Luis Alvarez, William Pickering, William Fowler, Vera Rubin, Neta Bahcall, Rudolf Peierls, Emilio Segre, Harold Agnew, Clarence Larson, Nelson Leonard, Princess Chulabhorn, Linus Pauling, Miklos Bodanszky, Melvin Calvin, Donald Huffman Alan MacDiarmid, Alan Heeger, Jens Christian Skou, Paul Lauterbur, Gunther Stent, John Sulston, Renato Dulbecco, Baruch Blumberg, Arvid Carlsson, Oleh Hornykiewicz, Paul Greengard, and Eric Kandel.

Candid Science V: Conversations with Famous Scientists contains 36 interviews with well-known scientists, including 19 Nobel laureates, Wolf Prize winners, and other luminaries. These in-depth conversations provide a glimpse into the greatest achievements in science during the past few decades, featuring stories of the discoveries, and showing the human drama behind them. The greatest scientists are brought into close human proximity as if readers were having a conversation with them. This volume departs from the previous ones in that it contains interviews with mathematicians in addition to physicists, chemists, and biomedical scientists. Another peculiarity of this volume is that it includes nine interviews from another project, the collection of the late Clarence Larson, former Commissioner of the Atomic Energy Commission and his wife, Jane ("Larson Tapes"). The 36 interviewees include famous personalities of our time, such as Donald Coxeter, John Conway, Roger Penrose, Alan Mackay, Dan Shechtman, Charles Townes, Arthur Schawlow, Leon Cooper, Alexei Abrikosov, Luis Alvarez, William Pickering, William Fowler, Vera Rubin, Neta Bahcall, Rudolf Peierls, Emilio Segre, Harold Agnew, Clarence Larson, Nelson Leonard, Princess Chulabhorn, Linus Pauling, Miklos Bodanszky, Melvin Calvin, Donald Huffman Alan MacDiarmid, Alan Heeger, Jens Christian Skou, Paul Lauterbur, Gunther Stent, John Sulston, Renato Dulbecco, Baruch Blumberg, Arvid Carlsson, Oleh Hornykiewicz, Paul Greengard, and Eric Kandel.

Why are we influenced by the behaviour of complete strangers? Why does the brain register similar pleasure when I perceive something as 'fair' or when I eat chocolate? Why can we be so profoundly hurt by bereavement? What are the evolutionary benefits of these traits? The young discipline of 'social cognitive neuroscience' has been exploring this fascinating interface between brain science and human behaviour since the late 1990s. Now one of its founding pioneers, Matthew D. Lieberman, presents the discoveries that he and fellow researchers have made. Using fMRI scanning and a range of other techniques, they have been able to see that the brain responds to social pain and pleasure the same way as physical pain and pleasure; and that unbeknown to ourselves, we are constantly 'mindreading' other people so that we can fit in with them. It is clear that our brains are designed respond to and be influenced by others. For good evolutionary reasons, he argues, we are wired to be social. The implications are numerous and profound. Do we have to rethink what we understand by identity, and free will? How can managers improve the way their teams relate and perform? Could we organize large social institutions in ways that would work far better? And could there be whole new methods of education?