Resultados de "Scientific American" en Todas las categorias

Have you ever wondered why humans lost their body hair? Curious about what causes a hangover? Or what makes that popping sound when we crack our knuckles? What about the oft-cited maxim that we only use 10 percent of our brains? Professors, scientists, and biologists provide answers that are at once accurate, understandable, and sometimes just plain funny.

Why do facts fail to change people’s minds? In this audiobook, we examine how we form our beliefs and maintain them with a host of cognitive biases, the difference between intelligence and thinking rationally, and some solutions for how to overcome these obstacles both in reasoning with others and in dealing with our own prejudices.

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.

The science of education is elusive. Educators, academics, and scientists have struggled with issues like how to make learning approachable yet challenging, what to include in the curriculum and when, what the optimal class size is, and so on. In this collection, we explore the many ways that learning is also a scientific process and offer the latest theories of teaching and learning.

For more than a century, scientists across disciplines have investigated the workings of nature’s most complex organ. Findings from cutting-edge neuroscience are moving us closer to understanding processes like how we make decisions or navigate our environment. In this audiobook, we examine the latest research on cognition, how the brain gives rise to consciousness, and how we can improve mental health.

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.

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.

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.

Is time an illusion? Is time travel possible? Could time end? In this audiobook, A Question of Time, we take an interdisciplinary look at the fourth dimension, exploring the latest thinking on the nature of time and the ways it dominates our physical and mental worlds.

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?

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.

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.

For going on two decades, Scientific American’s “Ask the Experts” column has been answering reader questions on all fields of science. We’ve taken your questions from the basic to the esoteric and reached out to top scientists, professors, and researchers to find out why the sky is blue or whether we really only use 10 percent of our brains. Now, we’ve combed through our archives and have compiled some of the most interesting questions (and answers) into a series of books.

Science fiction has imagined some pretty wild ideas about how the universe could work - from hidden extra dimensions in Interstellar to life as a mental projection in The Matrix. But these imaginings seem downright tame compared to the mind-bending science now coming out of physics and astronomy, and in this audiobook, we look at the strange and fascinating discoveries shaping (and reshaping) the field today.

Neuroscientists have shown that music recruits nearly every area of the brain, fostering connections across different regions. In this book, we examine the latest imaging studies and discuss the effects of music on emotion, cognition, sensation, and motor function. This includes an examination of the brain’s anatomy when listening to or creating music, of music’s relationship to learning math and language skills, and of its role in promoting social connections and treating brain disorders and injuries.

The Science of Diet & Exercise examines traditional weight loss advice and finds it wanting. Data shows that the kinds of foods you eat are as important as how much you eat, and studies of physically active hunter-gatherers illustrate that energy expenditure (caloric burn) stays virtually constant, regardless of activity. The nine articles in this collection present the most recent research examining the details of the metabolic process and testing new approaches, some of which can be applied to how we think about diet and exercise today.

The reason we need sleep has long mystified scientists, but it’s crystal clear that we do need it. In fact, the more we learn about what happens while we snooze, the more we discover new benefits for multiple processes including hormone balance, immune function, emotional health, learning, and memory. Studies show that even one night of disturbed rest leads to measurable impairments, and for this mini-collection, we’ve gathered the most recent research on the mechanisms of sleep.

The fundamental outlines of the physical world, from its tiniest particles to massive galaxy clusters, have been apparent for decades. Does this mean physicists are about to tie it all up into a neat package? Not at all. Just when you think you’re figuring it out, the universe begins to look its strangest, and this book illustrates how answers often lead to more questions and open up new paths to insight.

Brain diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s affect an estimated one in six Americans and are increasing in incidence as the population ages. In this audiobook, we examine these and other conditions involving the damage and loss of neurons, including other forms of dementia, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), and multiple sclerosis (MS).

This audiobook, Tomorrow's Medicine, looks at some of the more fascinating areas where technology that could transform health is being developed, including cybernetics, regenerative medicine, nanotechnology, and genetically tailored treatments. Although many of these advances may not be ready to treat humans for many years, some of them may someday profoundly change - and extend - our lives. As exciting as the possibilities are to extend both the length and quality of life, immortality - or at least agelessness - may be forever out of our reach.