Spineless : The Science of Jellyfish and the Art of Growing a Backbone by Juli Berwald

$32.99 AUD

Category: Science

"Witty, insightful. . . .The story of jellyfish. . . is a significant part of the environmental story. Berwald's engaging account of these delicate, often ignored creatures shows how much they matter to our oceans' future." --New York Time Book Review  Jellyfish have been swimming in our ocea ns for well over half a billion years, longer than any other animal that lives on the planet. They make a venom so toxic it can kill a human in three minutes. Their sting--microscopic spears that pierce with five million times the acceleration of gravity--is the fastest known motion in the animal kingdom. Made of roughly 95 percent water, some jellies are barely perceptible virtuosos of disguise, while others glow with a luminescence that has revolutionized biotechnology. Yet until recently, jellyfish were largely ignored by science, and they remain among the most poorly understood of ocean dwellers. More than a decade ago, Juli Berwald left a career in ocean science to raise a family in landlocked Austin, Texas, but jellyfish drew her back to the sea. Recent, massive blooms of billions of jellyfish have clogged power plants, decimated fisheries, and caused millions of dollars of damage. Driven by questions about how overfishing, coastal development, and climate change were contributing to a jellyfish population explosion, Juli embarked on a scientific odyssey. She traveled the globe to meet the biologists who devote their careers to jellies, hitched rides on Japanese fishing boats to see giant jellyfish in the wild, raised jellyfish in her dining room, and throughout it all marveled at the complexity of these alluring and ominous biological wonders. Gracefully blending personal memoir with crystal-clear distillations of science, Spineless is the story of how Juli learned to navigate and ultimately embrace her ambition, her curiosity, and her passion for the natural world. She discovers that jellyfish science is more than just a quest for answers. It's a call to realize our collective responsibility for the planet we share. ...Show more

How to Be Human: The Manual by Ruby Wax

$32.99 AUD

Category: Science

In How to be Human, Ruby Wax tries to come up with some answers to that niggling question about how we can learn to like and love ourselves. With the input of a Buddhist monk (an expert on our inner lives) and a neuroscientist (an expert on the brain), Ruby explores how to find happiness in the modern w orld - despite the constant bombardment of bad news, the need to choose between 5,000 different types of toothpaste, and the loneliness of having hundreds of friends who we've never met and don't know us. Filled with witty anecdotes from Ruby's own life, and backed up by scientific authority, How to be Human is the only guide you need for building a healthy, happy relationship with yourself. ...Show more

Swearing is Good for You The Amazing Science of Bad Language by Emma Byrne

$29.99 AUD

Category: Science

Swearing, it turns out, is an incredibly useful part of our linguistic repertoire. Not only has some form of swearing existed since the earliest humans began to communicate, but it has been shown to reduce physical pain, help stroke victims recover their language, and encourage people to work together a s a team.Swearing Is Good For You is a spirited and hilarious defence of our most cherished dirty words, backed by historical case studies and cutting-edge research. From chimpanzees creating their own curse words, to a man who lost half his brain in a mining accident experiencing a new-found compulsion to swear - Dr Emma Byrne outlines the fascinating science behind swearing; how it affects us both physically and emotionally, and how it is more natural and beneficial than we are led to believe. ...Show more

The River of Consciousness by Oliver Sacks

$32.99 AUD

Category: Science

Two weeks before his death, Oliver Sacks outlined the contents of The River of Consciousness, the last book he would oversee. The bestselling author of On the Move, Musicophilia, and The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Sacks is known for his illuminating case histories about people living with neuro logical conditions at the far borderlands of human experience. But his grasp of science was not restricted to neuroscience or medicine; he was fascinated by the issues, ideas and questions of all the sciences. That wide-ranging expertise and passion informs the perspective of this book, in which he interrogates the nature not only of human experience but of all life.In The River of Consciousness, Dr. Sacks takes on evolution, botany, chemistry, medicine, neuroscience and the arts, and calls upon his great scientific and creative heroes - above all, Darwin, Freud and William James. For Sacks, these thinkers were constant companions from an early age; the questions they explored - the meaning of evolution, the roots of creativity and the nature of consciousness - lie at the heart of science and of this book.The River of Consciousness demonstrates Sacks's unparalleled ability to make unexpected connections, his sheer joy in knowledge and his unceasing, timeless endeavour to understand what makes us human. ...Show more

The Number Games by Adam Spencer

$34.99 AUD

Category: Science

Following on from his Big Book of Numbers (2014), World of Numbers (2015), and Time Machine (2016), Australia's funniest mathematician is back with a brand new book of number puzzles and trivia! Featuring hundreds of mind-bending, head-scratching, intelligence-testing number games, puzzles, and quizzes - plus tonnes of hilarious and fascinating number-based trivia - this is a book that will make you think, laugh, and cry (and quite possibly stare in amazement as your kids solve things before you do!). We all know how important it is to nourish and train our bodies, but our minds need exercising too. So keep your brains active and lively, and test yourselves against your friends and family, with 2017's biggest and best book of numerical fun. ...Show more

A Farewell to Ice : A Report from the Arctic by Peter Wadhams

$24.99 AUD

Category: Science

'Astonishing ... beautiful, compelling and terrifying' Observer'Wadhams' writing sparkles ... a lyrical sense of wonder at the natural world ... essential reading ... may be the best reader-friendly account of the greenhouse effect available to date' John Burnside, New StatesmanIce is beautiful and c omplex. It regulates our planet's temperature. And it is vanishing - fast. Peter Wadhams, the world's leading expert on sea ice, draws on his lifetime's research in the Arctic region to illuminate what is happening, what it means for the future, and what can be done.'This most experienced and rational scientist states what so many other researchers privately fear but cannot publicly say' John Vidal, Guardian'Wadhams brings huge expertise to his subject - and he is an excellent writer' Martin Rees'Utterly extraordinary' Jonathon Porritt ...Show more

The Boy Who Played with Fusion: Extreme Science, Extreme Parenting and How to Make a Star by Tom Clynes

$22.99 AUD

Category: Science

By the age of 11, Taylor Wilson had mastered the science of rocket propulsion. At 13, his grandmother's cancer diagnosis drove him to investigate medical uses for radioactive isotopes. And at 14, Wilson became the youngest person in history to achieve nuclear fusion. How could someone so young achieve s o much, and what can Wilson's story teach parents and teachers about how to support high-achieving children? In The Boy Who Played with Fusion, science journalist Tom Clynes follows Taylor Wilson's extraordinary journey - from his Arkansas home where his parents encouraged his intellectual passions, to the present, when now-17-year-old Wilson is winning international science competitions with devices designed to prevent terrorists from shipping radioactive material into the US.Brilliant, funny and inspiring, The Boy Who Played with Fusion will delight anyone who believes in the ability of gifted children to change the world. ...Show more

Selfie - How We Became So Self-Obsessed and What It's Doing To Us by Will Storr

$32.99 AUD

Category: Science

Caesar's Last Breath by Sam Kean

$35.00 AUD

Category: Science

It's invisible. It's ever-present. Without it, you would die in minutes. And it has an epic story to tell. In Caesar's Last Breath, New York Times bestselling author Sam Kean takes us on a journey through the periodic table, around the globe, and across time to tell the story of the air we breathe, whic h, it turns out, is also the story of earth and our existence on it. With every breath, you literally inhale the history of the world. On the ides of March, 44 BC, Julius Caesar died of stab wounds on the Senate floor, but the story of his last breath is still unfolding; in fact, you're probably inhaling some of it now. Of the sextillions of molecules entering or leaving your lungs at this moment, some might well bear traces of Cleopatra's perfumes, German mustard gas, particles exhaled by dinosaurs or emitted by atomic bombs, even remnants of stardust from the universe's creation. Tracing the origins and ingredients of our atmosphere, Kean reveals how the alchemy of air reshaped our continents, steered human progress, powered revolutions, and continues to influence everything we do. Along the way, we'll swim with radioactive pigs, witness the most important chemical reactions humans have discovered, and join the crowd at the Moulin Rouge for some of the crudest performance art of all time. Lively, witty, and filled with the astounding science of ordinary life, Caesar's Last Breath illuminates the science stories swirling around us every second. ...Show more

Pandemic by Sonia Shah

$24.99 AUD

Category: Science

More than three hundred infectious diseases have emerged or reemerged in new territory during the past fifty years, and ninety percent of epidemiologists expect that one of them will cause a disruptive, deadly pandemic sometime in the next two generations. To reveal how that might happen, Sonia Shah tra cks each stage of cholera's dramatic journey from harmless microbe to world-changing pandemic, from its 1817 emergence in the South Asian hinterlands to its rapid dispersal across the nineteenth-century world and its latest beachhead in Haiti. She reports on the pathogens following in cholera's footsteps, from the MRSA bacterium that besieges her own family to the never-before-seen killers emerging from China's wet markets, the surgical wards of New Delhi, the slums of Port-au-Prince, and the suburban backyards of the East Coast. A deep-dive into the convoluted science, strange politics, and checkered history of one of the world's deadliest diseases, Pandemic reveals what the next epidemic might look like--and what we can do to prevent it. ...Show more

Sane New World: Taming the Mind by Ruby Wax

$19.99 AUD

Category: Science

Ruby Wax - comedian, writer and mental health campaigner - shows us how our minds can jeopardize our sanity. With her own periods of depression and now a Masters from Oxford in Mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapy to draw from, she explains how our busy, chattering, self-critical thoughts drive us to anx iety and stress. If we are to break the cycle, we need to understand how our brains work, rewire our thinking and find calm in a frenetic world. Helping you become the master, not the slave, of your mind, here is the manual to saner living. ...Show more

Endure: Mind, Body and the Curiously Elastic Limits of Human Performance by Alex Hutchinson

$32.99 AUD

Category: Science

`This book is AMAZING!' - MALCOLM GLADWELL `If you want to gain insight into the mind of great athletes, adventurers, and peak performers then prepare to be enthralled by Alex Hutchinson's Endure.' - BEAR GRYLLS How high or far or fast can humans go? And what about individual potential: what defines a p erson's limits? From running a two-hour marathon to summiting Mount Everest, we're fascinated by the extremes of human endurance, constantly testing both our physical and psychological limits. In Endure Alex Hutchinson, Ph.D., reveals why our individual limits may be determined as much by our head and heart, as by our muscles. He presents an overview of science's search for understanding human fatigue, from crude experiments with electricity and frogs' legs to sophisticated brain imaging technology. Going beyond the traditional mechanical view of human limits, he instead argues that a key element in endurance is how the brain responds to distress signals-whether heat, or cold, or muscles screaming with lactic acid-and reveals that we can train to improve brain response. An elite distance runner himself, Hutchinson takes us to the forefront of the new sports psychology - brain electrode jolts, computer-based training, subliminal messaging - and presents startling new discoveries enhancing the performance of athletes today, showing us how anyone can utilize these tactics to bolster their own performance - and get the most out of their bodies. ...Show more