Patterns in Nature

Patterns in Nature: Though at first glance the natural world may appear overwhelming in its diversity and complexity, there are regularities running through it, from the hexagons of a honeycomb to the spirals of a seashell and the branching veins of a leaf. Revealing the order at the foundation of the seemingly chaotic natural world, Patterns in Nature explores not only the math and science but also the beauty and artistry behind nature’s awe-inspiring designs. Unlike the patterns we create in technology, architecture, and art, natural patterns are formed spontaneously from the forces that act in the physical world. Very often the same types of pattern and form – spirals, stripes, branches, and fractals, say—recur in places that seem to have nothing in common, as when the markings of a zebra mimic the ripples in windblown sand. That’s because, as Patterns in Nature shows, at the most basic level these patterns can often be described using the same mathematical and physical principles: there is a surprising underlying unity in the kaleidoscope of the natural world. Richly illustrated with 250 color photographs and anchored by accessible and insightful chapters by esteemed science writer Philip Ball, Patterns in Nature reveals the organization at work in vast and ancient forests, powerful rivers, massing clouds, and coastlines carved out by the sea.   By exploring similarities such as those between a snail shell and the swirling stars of a galaxy, or t...

The Beautiful Cure

The Beautiful Cure: “Visceral.”—Wall Street Journal     “Illuminating.”—Publishers Weekly     “Heroic.”—Science The immune system holds the key to human health. In The Beautiful Cure, leading immunologist Daniel M. Davis describes how the scientific quest to understand how the immune system works—and how it is affected by stress, sleep, age, and our state of mind—is now unlocking a revolutionary new approach to medicine and well-being. The body’s ability to fight disease and heal itself is one of the great mysteries and marvels of nature. But in recent years, painstaking research has resulted in major advances in our grasp of this breathtakingly beautiful inner world: a vast and intricate network of specialist cells, regulatory proteins, and dedicated genes that are continually protecting our bodies. Far more powerful than any medicine ever invented, the immune system plays a crucial role in our daily lives. We have found ways to harness these natural defenses to create breakthrough drugs and so-called immunotherapies that help us fight cancer, diabetes, arthritis, and many age-related diseases, and we are starting to understand whether activities such as mindfulness might play a role in enhancing our physical resilience. Written by a researcher at the forefront of this adventure, The Beautiful Cure tells a dramatic story of scientific detective work and discovery, of puzzles solved and mysteries that li...

Plague Years

Plague Years: In 1992, Dr. Ross A. Slotten signed more death certificates in Chicago—and, by inference, the state of Illinois—than anyone else. As a family physician, he was trained to care for patients from birth to death, but when he completed his residency in 1984, he had no idea that many of his future patients would be cut down in the prime of their lives. Among those patients were friends, colleagues, and lovers, shunned by most of the medical community because they were gay and HIV positive. Slotten wasn’t an infectious disease specialist, but because of his unique position as both a gay man and a young physician, he became an unlikely pioneer, swept up in one of the worst epidemics in modern history.

Plague Years is an unprecedented first-person account of that epidemic, spanning not just the city of Chicago but four continents as well. Slotten provides an intimate yet comprehensive view of the disease’s spread alongside heartfelt portraits of his patients and his own conflicted feelings as a medical professional, drawn from more than thirty years of personal notebooks. In telling the story of someone who was as much a potential patient as a doctor, Plague Years sheds light on the darkest hours in the history of the LGBT community in ways that no previous medical memoir has.

Merchants of Medicines

Merchants of Medicines: The period from the late seventeenth to the early nineteenth century—the so-called long eighteenth century of English history—was a time of profound global change, marked by the expansion of intercontinental empires, long-distance trade, and human enslavement. It was also the moment when medicines, previously produced locally and in small batches, became global products. As greater numbers of British subjects struggled to survive overseas, more medicines than ever were manufactured and exported to help them. Most historical accounts, however, obscure the medicine trade’s dependence on slave labor, plantation agriculture, and colonial warfare.

In Merchants of Medicines, Zachary Dorner follows the earliest industrial pharmaceuticals from their manufacture in the United Kingdom, across trade routes, and to the edges of empire, telling a story of what medicines were, what they did, and what they meant. He brings to life business, medical, and government records to evoke a vibrant early modern world of London laboratories, Caribbean estates, South Asian factories, New England timber camps, and ships at sea. In these settings, medicines were produced, distributed, and consumed in new ways to help confront challenges of distance, labor, and authority in colonial territories. Merchants of Medicines offers a new history of economic and medical development across early America, Britain, and South Asia, revealing the unsettlingly close ties among medicine, finance,...

Medical Monopoly

Medical Monopoly: During most of the nineteenth century, physicians and pharmacists alike considered medical patenting and the use of trademarks by drug manufacturers unethical forms of monopoly; physicians who prescribed patented drugs could be, and were, ostracized from the medical community. In the decades following the Civil War, however, complex changes in patent and trademark law intersected with the changing sensibilities of both physicians and pharmacists to make intellectual property rights in drug manufacturing scientifically and ethically legitimate. By World War I, patented and trademarked drugs had become essential to the practice of good medicine, aiding in the rise of the American pharmaceutical industry and forever altering the course of medicine.             Drawing on a wealth of previously unused archival material, Medical Monopoly combines legal, medical, and business history to offer a sweeping new interpretation of the origins of the complex and often troubling relationship between the pharmaceutical industry and medical practice today. Joseph M. Gabriel provides the first detailed history of patent and trademark law as it relates to the nineteenth-century pharmaceutical industry as well as a unique interpretation of medical ethics, therapeutic reform, and the efforts to regulate the market in pharmaceuticals before World War I. His book will be of interest not only to historians of medicine and science and intellectual property scholars but also to anyo...

Heredity under the Microscope

Heredity under the Microscope: By focusing on chromosomes, Heredity under the Microscope offers a new history of postwar human genetics. Today chromosomes are understood as macromolecular assemblies and are analyzed with a variety of molecular techniques. Yet for much of the twentieth century, researchers studied chromosomes by looking through a microscope. Unlike any other technique, chromosome analysis offered a direct glimpse of the complete human genome, opening up seemingly endless possibilities for observation and intervention. Critics, however, countered that visual evidence was not enough and pointed to the need to understand the molecular mechanisms.
 
Telling this history in full for the first time, Soraya de Chadarevian argues that the often bewildering variety of observations made under the microscope were central to the study of human genetics. Making space for microscope-based practices alongside molecular approaches, de Chadarevian analyzes the close connections between genetics and an array of scientific, medical, ethical, legal, and policy concerns in the atomic age. By exploring the visual evidence provided by chromosome research in the context of postwar biology and medicine, Heredity under the Microscope sheds new light on the cultural history of the human genome.

Make Labs’ Biosphere

Make Labs’ Biosphere

Roleplaying for Healthcare Training: Game On, And Let The Learning Begin!

Roleplaying for Healthcare Training: Game On, And Let The Learning Begin!: How a learning and research center uses simulation games to help caregivers work better together  “The tension in the [...]

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Ants care for wounded comrades by licking their wounds clean

Ants care for wounded comrades by licking their wounds clean: If a Matabele ant loses a limb in a battle with termites, its nestmates will tend its injuries - a behaviour never before seen in any non-human animal

Hearing implant uses lasers to shoot sound into your ear

Hearing implant uses lasers to shoot sound into your ear: Using lasers instead of electrodes to vibrate the hairs in the inner ears could lead to less damaging cochlear implants

How social stress makes your brain vulnerable to depression

How social stress makes your brain vulnerable to depression: Bullying and other social stresses may make it easier for inflammatory substances to enter your brain, altering your mood and leaving you susceptible to depression

Facebook can make your profile pic wink and scowl

Facebook can make your profile pic wink and scowl: Like portraits and pictures in Harry Potter, your Facebook image will soon react to visitors’ actions with happiness, sadness, or anger

Grow fake versions of rare delicacies like sea urchin at home

Grow fake versions of rare delicacies like sea urchin at home: Japanese meat culturing project goes beyond hamburger to copy problematic delicacies like sea urchin, foie gras - and someday maybe dinosaur

Gluten-sensitive? It may actually be a carb making you ill

Gluten-sensitive? It may actually be a carb making you ill: Rather than gluten, fructan molecules seem to be to blame for sensitive guts. If true, gluten-free people could eat soy sauce and sourdough bread again

A bizarre supernova keeps exploding over and over again

A bizarre supernova keeps exploding over and over again: The weirdest supernova ever seen is a zombie star that keeps collapsing and coming back to life. It’s so strange, it may be a whole new kind of celestial object

Sheep learn to recognise celebrity faces from different angles

Sheep learn to recognise celebrity faces from different angles

Shark on the menu: Species hunted for their fins

Shark on the menu: Species hunted for their fins: The rising popularity of shark's fin soup in China is increasing fishing for sharks across the globe. Let's see which species are on the menu

Sharks now protected no matter whose waters they swim in

Sharks now protected no matter whose waters they swim in: 126 countries have signed up to cross-border protection measures to conserve whale sharks and many other endangered migratory species

Alzheimer’s may be able to spread through blood transfusions

Alzheimer’s may be able to spread through blood transfusions: A protein might be capable of spreading Alzheimer’s through blood transfusions and surgical equipment, but we don’t know yet how much of a risk this is