Résultats de "Scientific American" dans Toutes les catégories

Politics makes strange bedfellows, and that becomes even more apparent when trying to analyze the science of politics. Pulling from an array of disciplines including social science, behavioral science, and mathematics, this audiobook analyzes key factors in the process of electing a leader: from dissecting those qualities considered to be ideal, to how potential leaders are portrayed, to voter behavior, to the voting process - casting, collecting, and counting the votes.

We humans are a strange bunch. We have self-awareness and yet often act on impulses that remain hidden. How did we get here? What is to become of us? To these age-old questions, science has in recent years brought powerful tools and reams of data, and in this audiobook, Becoming Human, we look at what this data has to tell us about who we are.

From increasingly severe storms to collapsing coral reefs to the displacement of Syrian citizens, in this audiobook we examine the effects of Earth’s changing climate on weather systems, ecosystems, and human habitability and what this means for our future.

People say that they trust scientists, yet evidence often takes a back seat to emotions. In fact, for issues that cause the loudest public furor - like vaccine safety - there is almost no debate in the scientific community. This audiobook examines the science behind today’s most contentious debates - including gun control, GMOs, and evolution, as well as strategies for understanding and coping with denialism.

In this audiobook, The Human Odyssey, we explore the evolution of those characteristics that make us human. The first section looks at our family tree and why some branches survived and not others. Swings in climate are emerging as a factor in what traits succeeded and failed; meanwhile, DNA analyses show that Homo sapiens interbred with other human species, which played a key role in our survival.

In this installment of the Ask the Experts series, Chemistry, our professors, scientists, and researchers tackle reader questions about the substances that compose all matter, their properties, and how they interact and change. Queries range from elementary questions, such as why some elements change color over a flame, to how chemistry works in everyday life, to how certain substances affect the body and more.

Boy or girl? Even before a person is born, that’s the first thing everyone wants to know - underscoring just how much value human societies of all types place on gender. In His Brain, Her Brain, we take a closer look at the anatomical, chemical, and functional differences in the brains of men and women - as well as some surprising similarities. For instance, studies of infants find few differences in cognitive skills between boys and girls; but there is no denying that boys love trucks, whereas girls prefer dolls.

From irrational phobias to a midlife crisis, we’ve all experienced moments of utter confusion about the nature of our own behavior, emotions, or perception of reality. In this audiobook, neurologists and other scientists share what they know about how the mind works, including some of these baffling psychological experiences.

How exactly do children become the adults they were meant to be? In this audiobook, Understanding Child Development, we investigate this profoundly complicated process from infancy through early childhood (the teenage years will be covered in a separate audiobook). Included in this collection are several seminal studies on infant cognition where researchers found evidence that many of our abilities are “pre-programmed.”

We humans tend to think that we are unique in our intelligence, social skill, and depth of emotion, but we think too much of ourselves. The animal kingdom teems with hidden stories of the weird and fascinating, and in Amazing Animals, we gather recent research on animal behavior, including surprising discoveries of how animals think and feel, from man’s best friend to some of the earth’s oddest creatures.

During allergy season, sufferers know the drill: runny nose, watery eyes, sneezing up a storm. For the unlucky with asthma, symptoms might also include coughing and wheezing. However, asthma is not always caused by allergens like pollen and dust - nonallergenic asthma is brought on by a number of possible environmental or genetic triggers. Then there’s the common cold, which also presents with similar symptoms. So what’s causing your runny nose?

People behave in strange ways. We sometimes giggle when someone falls down, swear we've been to places we haven't, or continue believing in something despite scientific evidence to the contrary. For more than a decade, Scientific American MIND's long-running feature "Ask the Brains" has addressed questions from their readers on the quirks and quandaries of human behavior, psychology, and neurology. Here, in Ask the Brains, Part 1, they’ve compiled some of the best and most interesting inquiries about the human brain.

In Cyber Hacking: Wars in Virtual Space, we peer behind the cyber curtain. First, we look at the hackers - who they are, how they work, their motivations, and methods. The opening article examines hardware - specifically microprocessors and why they are vulnerable to tampering. Then we turn to the internal attacks, the worms and viruses whose resulting damage ranges from merely inconvenient and attention-getting to expensive and dangerous. Next, we take a broad look at issues of privacy and the technology used to gather and track personal information.

How do we define genius? Standardized testing to measure intelligence began in the first half of the 20th century, but a high IQ score is only one way to quantify genius. In this audiobook, Eureka! The Science of Genius, we review the latest research on the nature of intellectual and creative achievement, including traits that geniuses tend to share, how much of their ability is nature versus nurture, the cognitive processes involved during the stages of discovery and creativity, and, most importantly, what we can do to enhance intelligence.

The editors of Scientific American’s best-selling Fact or Fiction: Science Tackles 58 Popular Myths return with Fact or Fiction 2: 50 (More) Popular Myths Explained. We cast an analytical eye on another collection of urban lore and cultural myths that persist so long in our collective consciousness they acquire a ring of truth. Who hasn’t heard the “five-second rule”, which insists that food dropped on the floor is safe to eat if it’s picked up within five seconds? How many of us have been told to “feed a cold, starve a fever"?

Did NASA really spend millions creating a pen that would write in space? Is chocolate poisonous to dogs? Does stress cause gray hair? These questions are a sample of the urban lore investigated in this audiobook, Fact or Fiction: Science Tackles 58 Popular Myths. Drawing from Scientific American’s “Fact or Fiction” and “Strange But True” columns, we’ve selected 58 of the most surprising, fascinating, useful, and just plain wacky topics confronted by our writers over the years.

Creationists, or those who hold the belief that the universe and all life was made by divine creator, have tried to use a myriad of tactics either to ban the teaching of evolution entirely or to have creationism and intelligent design taught alongside one another in public schools. In Evolution vs. Creationism, we take a close look at the rise of Darwinism, the arguments and opposition by the creationist movement, whether faith and science can coexist, and what could happen if the US continues on an anti-science trajectory.

The fourth book in our Ask the Experts series, The Environment tackles questions about the world around us. In this book, our experts field queries on the weather, natural disasters, natural resources, climate change, and unusual phenomena.

The extreme drought in the US Southwest has brought the issues of water use and management to the forefront of media attention. Historically, arguments over water rights have plagued this area since the days of John Wesley Powell, and disputes mark the relations between states, city-dwellers, farmers, and environmentalists to this day. Add to that the challenges of climate change, which is altering rainfall patterns the world over, and the imperative to rethink water-management policies becomes acute.

Since the Industrial Revolution, our civilization has depended on fossil fuels for energy - first it was coal; then petroleum. If business as usual continues, we are looking at a world where sea levels will be high enough to submerge many coastal cities and extreme weather events like 2012’s Hurricane Sandy are the new normal. In this audiobook, The Future of Energy: Earth, Wind, and Fire, we review the energy problem and analyze the options from the mundane to the far out.