A look at the facts and folklore of sleep that is mainly concerned with the problems of an increasingly sleep-deprived society, and the effects this has on people's work. The author shows, for example, that the "Exxon Valdez" oil spill and the space shuttle "Challenger" disaster were associated with people suffering from sleep deprivation. He also looks at some of the more subtle and insidious effects of sleep loss on our physical and mental health. The author attempts to answer a number of questions: Do fish sleep? Are there really "morning" and "night" people? Do some people really only need four hours sleep a night? He also includes accounts of sleep oddities, such as people who have committed murder in their sleep, and descriptions of fairly common disorders which may be responsible for unexplained infant deaths. The book also describes techniques to improve the quality and efficiency of the reader's own sleep.

'One of the most important worksof the twentieth century' The Times.Shadows of the Mind is a profound exploration of what modern physics has to tell us about the human mind. [Bokinfo]

"Cities are birthplaces of civilization; centers of culture, trade, and progress; cauldrons of opportunity -- and the home of eighty percent of the world's population by 2080. As the 21st century progresses, metropolitan areas will bear the brunt of global megatrends such as climate change, natural resource depletion, population growth, income inequality, mass migrations, education and health disparities, among many others. In The Well-Tempered City, Jonathan F.P. Rose-the man who "repairs the fabric of cities" -- distills a lifetime of interdisciplinary research and firsthand experience into a five-pronged model for how to design and reshape our cities with the goal of equalizing their landscape of opportunity. Drawing from the musical concept of "temperament" as a way to achieve harmony, Rose argues that well-tempered cities can be infused with systems that bend the arc of their development toward equality, resilience, adaptability, well-being, and the ever-unfolding harmony between civilization and nature. These goals may never be fully achieved, but our cities will be richer and happier if we aspire to them, and if we infuse our every plan and constructive step with this intention." --Publisher.

"A visionary in responsible urban development and renewal presents an interdisciplinary exploration of the development of cities from the beginning of civilization to the present, revealing the conditions that gave rise to the happiest communities, and the qualities that define them"--NoveList

THE INTELLIGENT MAN'S GUIDE TO VOLUME ONE, THE PHYSICAL SCIENCES; VOLUME TWO, THE BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES [ 1st ] [Hardcover] Isaac ASIMOV (Author)

Algunos descubrimientos científicos constituyen auténticos hitos históricos, ya sea por la extraordinaria utilidad de sus aplicaciones prácticas, ya por sus revolucionarias repercusiones en el pensamiento teórico. Isaac Asimov rememora en este volumen las figuras de treinta protagonistas de estos Momentos estelares de la ciencia, como Newton, Lavoisier, Watt, Faraday, Henry, Edison, Harvey, Jenner, Pasteur, Ehrlich, Roentgen, Becquerel, Curie, Einstein, Rutherford y Lawrence, entre otros.

Americans rank crime among the most urgent of social concerns. Overflowing prisons and public outcry have led many to propose that the criminal justice system could control crime more effectively by focusing on dangerous offenders. Recent social studies have suggested that serious criminality is highly concentrated and that high-rate offenders can be distinguished from others on the basis of prior criminal conduct, drug abuse, and employment record. Such studies urge judges to shift from rehabilitative sentencing to selective incapacitation, with longer prison sentences for convicted criminals who are deemed unusually dangerous. In response to these recommendations, some prosecutors' offices have established career criminal units designed to assure that repeat offenders will be prosecuted to the full measure of the law. Some police departments are experimenting with "perpetrator-oriented patrols" targeted on suspected high-rate offenders. The authors of this major book in criminal jurisprudence describe and analyze the intellectual and social challenge posed to public officials by this new thrust in criminal justice policy. They develop a framework for evaluating policies that focus on dangerous offenders. They first examine the general issues that arise as society considers the benefits and risks of concentrating on a particular category of criminals. They then outline how that approach might work at each stage of the criminal justice system--sentencing, pretrial detention, prosecution, and investigation. This cogently argued book provides much needed guidance on the crucial questions of whether sharpened attention to dangerous offenders is just, whether such a policy can be effective in managing the problem of crime, which applications seem particularly valuable, what the long-term risks to social institutions are, and what uncertainties must be monitored and resolved as the policy evolves.

Number 47, a fourteen-year-old slave boy growing up under the watchful eye of a brutal master in 1832, meets the mysterious Tall John, who introduces him to a magical science and also teaches him the meaning of freedom.

Through his pioneering work in science, technology and language design, Stephen Wolfram has developed his own signature way of thinking about an impressive range of subjects. From science consulting for a Hollywood movie, solving problems of AI ethics, hunting for the source of an unusual polyhedron, communicating with extraterrestrials, to finding the fundamental theory of physics and exploring the digits of pi, Adventures of a Computational Explorer captures the infectious energy and curiosity of one of the great pioneers of the computational world.

When a mysterious alien woman from the planet Laertes convinces Dr. Bashir to gamble for her at Quark's gaming tables, things seem innocent enough. Yet the more Dr. Bashir wins, the more things go wrong in the Ore ships vanish. Planets lose their atmosphere. Suns go nova. The cause and effect is hard to understand, but is proven by the bizarre Laertian science called Complexity Theory. When Bashir tries to stop gambling, a Laertian warfleet appears to force him to continue, while on the planet Laertes itself Major Kira and Science Officer Dax must battle their way through chaos and danger to find a way to stop the Laertians -- and save Deep Space Nine and the Federation from utter destruction!

The editors of this unique volume have selected 24 leading emotion theorists and asked them to address 12 fundamental questions about the subject of emotion. For example; Are there basic emotions? How do you distinguish emotions from moods, temperament, and emotional traits? Can we control our emotions? Can emotions be non-conscious? What is the relation between emotion and memory? What develops in emotional development? Each chapter addresses a different one of these fundamental questions about emotion, with often divergent answers from 3 to 7 of the following leading researchers: James Averill, Gordon Bower, Linda Camras, Lee Clark, Gerald Clore, Richard Davidson, Judy Dunn, Paul Ekman, Phoebe Ellsworth, Nico Frijda, Hill Goldsmith, Jeffrey Gray, Carroll Izard, Jerome Kaga, Richard Lazarus, Joseph Le Doux, Robert Levenson, Jaak Panksepp, Mary Rothbart, Klaus Shere, Richard Shweder, David Watson, and Robert Zajonc. At the end of each chapter the editors -- Ekman and Davidson -- highlight the areas of agreement and disagreement about each of the 12 questions about emotion. In the final chapter Affective Science: A Research Agenda, the editors describe the research they believe would help answer each of the questions. Not a textbook offering a single viewpoint, The Nature of Emotion, uniquely reveals the central issues in emotion research and theory in the words of many of the leading scientists working in the field today. It is ideal for students, researchers, and clinicians interested in emotion.

This science fiction book contains a new frontier with a new crew, a new ship, and a new mission. It includes, House of Cards, Into the void, The two-front war, and also End game.

In this historic 1971 debate, two of the twentieth century’s most influential thinkers discuss whether there is such a thing as innate human nature. In 1971, at the height of the Vietnam War and at a time of great political and social instability, two of the world’s leading intellectuals, Noam Chomsky and Michel Foucault, were invited by Dutch philosopher Fons Elders to debate an age-old question: Is there such a thing as “innate” human nature independent of our experiences and external influences? The resulting dialogue is one of the most original, provocative, and spontaneous exchanges to have occurred between contemporary philosophers. Above all, their discussion serves as a concise introduction to their two opposing theories. What begins as a philosophical argument rooted in linguistics (Chomsky) and the theory of knowledge (Foucault), soon evolves into a broader discussion encompassing a wide range of topics, from science, history, and behaviorism to creativity, freedom, and the struggle for justice in the realm of politics. In addition to the debate itself, this volume features a newly written introduction by noted Foucault scholar John Rajchman and includes substantial additional texts by Chomsky and Foucault. “[Chomsky is] arguably the most important intellectual alive.” ―The New York Times “Foucault . . . leaves no reader untouched or unchanged.” ―Edward Said

If you want to play the Game, you've got to know the Rules. In his international bestseller The Game , Neil Strauss delved into the secret world of pickup artists—men who have made a science out of the art of seduction. Now, in this bestselling companion book, Strauss breaks down the knowledge he learned and techniques he invented into simple step-by-step instructions that anyone can follow to have success with women. This expanded one-volume edition of Rules of the Game includes a new preface and a whole new book of powerful, field-tested word-for-word routines, published here for the first time. You don't need money, looks, or fame to succeed with women. All you need is an understanding of how attraction works—and this thirty-day workout program for your social skills, which has already guided tens of thousands of men from frustration to fulfillment.

From advice columnist Meredith Goldstein, a dazzling, romantic, and emotionally resonant YA debut about a teen science whiz in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who tries to crack the chemical equation for lasting love and instead wreaks havoc on herself and the boys in her life. For seventeen-year-old Maya, the equation for happiness is simple: a dream internship at MIT + two new science nerd friends + a perfect boyfriend = one amazing summer. Then Whit dumps her out of the blue. Maya is miserable until she discovers that her scientist mother, before she died, was conducting research on manipulating pheromones to enhance human attraction. If Maya can finish her mother's work, maybe she can get Whit back. But when her experiment creates chaos in her love life, she realizes that maybe love and loss can't be understood using the scientific method. Can she learn to trust the unmeasurables of love and attraction instead?

The beginning of the 21st century is a watershed in modern science, a time that will forever change our understanding of the universe, Susskind contends. Several decades ago, he introduced the revolutionary concept of string theory to the world of physical science. In doing so, he inspired a generation of physicists who believed that the theory would uniquely predict the properties of our universe. Now, in his first book, Susskind argues that the very idea of such an "elegant theory" no longer suits our understanding of the universe, and that our narrow 20th-century view of a unique universe will have to give way to the much broader concept of a gigantic cosmic landscape--a megaverse, pregnant with new possibilities.--[Résumé de l'éditeur].

"Leo Strauss is known primarily for reviving classical political philosophy through careful analyses of works by ancient thinkers. As with his published writings, Strauss’s seminars devoted to specific philosophers were notoriously dense, accessible only to graduate students and scholars with a good command of the subject. In 1965, however, Strauss offered an introductory course on political philosophy at the University of Chicago. Using a conversational style, he sought to make political philosophy, as well as his own ideas and methods, understandable to those with little background on the subject. Leo Strauss on Political Philosophy brings together the lectures that comprise Strauss’s “Introduction to Political Philosophy.” Strauss begins by emphasizing the importance of political philosophy in determining the common good of society and critically examining the two most powerful contemporary challenges to the possibility of using political theory to learn about and develop the best political order: positivism and historicism. In seeking the common good, classical political philosophers like Plato and Aristotle did not distinguish between political philosophy and political science. Today, however, political philosophy must contend with the contemporary belief that it is impossible to know what the good society really is. Strauss emphasizes the need to study the history of political philosophy to see whether the changes in the understanding of nature and conceptions of justice that gradually led people to believe that it is not possible to determine what the best political society is are either necessary or valid. In doing so, he ranges across the entire history of political philosophy, providing a valuable, thematically coherent foundation, including explications of many canonical thinkers, such as Auguste Comte and Immanuel Kant, about whom Strauss did not write extensively in his published writings." -- Jacket.

A man of action and a man of science, Dr. Henry Pym invented an amazing growth serum and a cybernetic helmet, and with them he became - the Astonishing Ant-Man! Pym soon teamed with Janet Van Dyne, the winsome Wasp, and the two tiny titans went on to battle an array of mini- and maxi-sized menaces from the Scarlet Beetle to the Black Knight! But adventures in the microscopic world weren't enough for one of the Marvel Age's first super heroes. Soon, Ant-Man became the biggest Avenger there ever was -Giant-Man! Collecting: Tales To Astonish (1959) 27, 35-59

'We are workers who are adding to the growth of objective knowledge as masons work on a cathedral.' - Karl Popper, Objective Knowledge The extent and scope of human knowledge is arguably one of humankind's greatest achievements. Since Descartes, however, the theory of human knowledge has been mainly what philosophers call subjectivist: even scientific knowledge was regarded as a special kind of human belief, but human nonetheless. In Objective Knowledge , which contains some of his most important writings on epistemology, Karl Popper breaks decisively and controversially with this view of human knowledge. A realist and a fallibilist, he argues that human knowledge, stated in human language, is no longer part of ourselves but open to objective criticism. Above all, Popper argues that human knowledge grows through a process of conjecture, testing and criticism. Such objective knowledge has significance also for us as individuals, as critical interaction with problem-situation and the constant process of trial and error playing a role in all walks of life, from philosophy and science to music and art. A brilliant exposition of Popper's theory of knowledge, this Routledge Classics edition includes a new Introduction by Jeremy Shearmur, which provides some helpful context to Objective Knowledge and Popper's philosophy in general.