Science & Technology

After chemists crystallised a new chemical for the first time, it became easier and easier to crystallise in laboratories all over the world. After rats at Harvard first escaped from a new kind of water maze, successive generations learned quicker and quicker. Then rats in Melbourne, Australia learned yet faster. Rats with no trained ancestors shared in this improvement. Rupert Sheldrake sees...

Bill Bryson describes himself as a reluctant traveller: but even when he stays safely in his own study at home, he can't contain his curiosity about the world around him. A Short History of Nearly Everything is his quest to find out everything that has happened from the Big Bang to the rise of civilization - how we got from there, being nothing at all, to here, being us. Bill Bryson's challenge...

The truth about the climate crisis is an inconvenient one that means we are going to have to change the way we live our lives. Our climate crisis may at times appear to be happening slowly, but in fact it has become a true planetary emergency and we must recognise that we are facing a crisis. So why is it that some leaders seem not to hear the clarion warnings? Are they resisting the truth...

In this relevant, timely book a leading scientist asks, are scientific advances a curse or a blessing? Professor Winston argues that contained within each of our finest inventions is the potential for great harm.

Blood Secrets, by blood-spatter expert Rod Englert, is a fascinating inside look at what really happens during the reconstruction of a crime scene. Many of the most spine-tingling case studies are of lesser-known murderers, but Englert also reveals never-before-told details from his work on well-known cases involving O.J. Simpson, Robert Blake, Bob Crane and others. How can the police tell what...

In this title, technology is explored, explained and exploded. Widescreen TVs, mobile phones, even space rockets have turned what was once outlandish into the everyday. But how do they actually function? What are the secrets behind this science? And what would they look like if you could delve right into the heart of their insides? Let your child delve into a host of inventions, objects and...

The Origin of Species is the most famous book in science but its stature tends to obscure the genius of Charles Darwin's other works. The Beagle voyage, too, occupied only five of the fifty years of his career. He spent only five weeks on the Galapagos and on his return never left Britain again. Darwin wrote six million words, in nineteen books and innumerable letters, on topics as different as...

Einstein is the great icon of our age: the kindly refugee from oppression whose wild halo of hair, twinkling eyes, engaging humanity and extraordinary brilliance made his face a symbol and his name a synonym for genius. He was a rebel and nonconformist from boyhood days. His character, creativity and imagination were related, and they drove both his life and his science. In this marvellously...

What are things made of? What is the sun? Why is there night and day, winter and summer? Why do bad things happen? Are we alone? Throughout history people all over the world have invented stories to answer profound questions such as these. Have you heard the tale of how the sun hatched out of an emu's egg? Or what about the great catfish that carries the world on its back? Has anyone ever told...

Drawing from archaeology, anthropology and evolutionary psychology, the author confirms the awful truth: every man in history, back to the dawn of the species, did everything better, faster, stronger and smarter than any man today. Highlights include a biomechanical analysis proving that a Neanderthal woman would have beaten Arnold Schwarzenegger in an arm-wrestle. Every modern claim to masculine...

Since its foundation in 1660 with a remit to assist and promote the accumulation of useful knowledge, the Royal Society has pioneered scientific exploration and discovery of everything from gravity to archaeology. The oldest scientific academy in existence and arguably the most prestigious, its backbone is its Fellowship of the most eminent scientists in history, including Charles Darwin, Isaac...

In "Tesla: Man Out of Time, " Margaret Cheney explores the brilliant and prescient mind of one of the twentieth century's greatest scientists and inventors. Called a madman by his enemies, a genius by others, and an enigma by nearly everyone, Nikola Tesla was, without a doubt, a trailblazing inventor who created astonishing, sometimes world-transforming devices that were virtually...

James Hector was astounding. Scottish-born and trained as a surgeon, at 23 he took part in a daring British expedition to survey western Canada, and was given up for dead at a place still known - on account of his accident - as Kicking Horse Pass. Fortunately, he survived. Then head-hunted to carry out a geological survey of Otago, he arrived in New Zealand in 1861 and within a few years had...

Before there was CSI, there was one man who saw beyond the crime - and into the future of forensic science. His name was Sir Bernard Spilsbury, and through his use of cutting-edge science, he single-handedly brought criminal investigations into the modern age. As a young, charismatic physician in the early 20th century, Spilsbury hit the English justice system like a cannonball, garnering a...

In the last thirty years of his life Albert Einstein searched for a unified theory - a theory which could describe all the forces of nature in a single framework. But the time was not right for such a discovery in Einstein's day. Neither was the time right when, in 1988, Professor Stephen Hawking wrote A Brief History of Time in which he took us on a journey through classical physics, Einstein's...

Charles Darwin's masterpiece, On the Origin of Species, shook society to its core on publication in 1859. Darwin was only too aware of the storm his theory of evolution would provoke but he would surely have raised an incredulous eyebrow at the controversy still raging a century and a half later. Evolution is accepted as scientific fact by all reputable scientists and indeed theologians, yet...

Charles Darwin's masterpiece, "On the Origin of Species", shook society to its core on publication in 1859. Darwin was only too aware of the storm his theory of evolution would provoke but he would surely have raised an incredulous eyebrow at the controversy still raging a century and a half later. Evolution is accepted as scientific fact by all reputable scientists and indeed...

If you're looking for a book that focuses on just the most important, most useful, and most fun stuff about your iPhone 3G or 3GS--you've found it. There are basically two types of iPhone books out there: (1) The "tell-me-all-about-it" kind, which includes in-depth discussions on everything from wireless network protocols to advanced compression codes. (2) Then there's this book, which instead is...

Paul Dirac was one of the leading pioneers of the greatest revolution in 20th-century science: quantum mechanics. The youngest theoretician ever to win the Nobel Prize for Physics, he was also pathologically reticent, strangely literal-minded and legendarily unable to communicate or empathize. Through his greatest period of productivity, his postcards home contained only remarks about the...

The Well-Dressed Ape is a gleeful naturalist's extensive, profound, and entertaining biological description of a much-vaunted mammal, the human, including a treasure-trove of factoids about every species that shares this planet with us, and fresh answers to age-old human questions: Who are we, animally speaking? How do we compare? Where do we fit in? Science journalist Hannah Holmes wryly adopts...

Written by Dr Kerry Spackman, a leading consultant to a host of leading sports figures, The Winner's Bible is a ground-breaking manual for anyone looking to seek positive lifestyle changes. Where other self-help books have failed, The Winner's Bible provides a tool box of user-friendly methods and techniques grounded in science which enable the individual to take personal responsibility for their...