Bonus Content
Book Excerpts, Author Articles and Author Podcasts
Check out selected excerpts from books, bonus articles from authors and author interviews and presentations on emerging scientific topics such as genetics, evolution, neuroscience, medicine, biotech, environmental science, and other emerging scientific fields.
Article: Waves at the Oasis
By Andrew Koob, author of The Root of Thought
The cell-based notion of thought and everything that has sprung from it might be an illusion – a mirage in the field of ‘neuro’ science. But in the past 20 years, it has come to the attention of ‘neuro’ scientists that the neuron might not be exclusively responsible for higher thought. Read More...
Excerpt: Shrimp,
“Going Shrimping”
At age 18, I (Jack) had managed to get a job collecting marine specimens for a biologist at a local university. The scientist needed live batfish, a little brown leathery-skinned fish that can barely swim but walks on the bottom like a frog, and I had gone to the waterfront hoping to catch a ride on a shrimp boat to try and collect some. Read More...
Excerpt: The Root of Thought,
“Cities and Highways”
Andrew Koob dispels the notions that we only use 10% of our brain and discusses how the importance of the neuron is being aggressively challenged in the field. The recovery from brain injury, the cause of degenerative diseases of the brain, the treatments for psychiatric disorders, and an understanding of human intelligence can be fully realized only through the study of glia. Read More...
Excerpt: It Takes a Genome,
“The Adolescent Game”
Greg Gibson explains that disease arises because humans, like all other species on the planet, are an unfinished symphony. Perhaps we are even more unfinished than most, thoroughly out of equilibrium with the modern world, and even a little bit uncomfortable in our own skin. In short, we possess an adolescent genome. Read More...
Excerpt: Lies, Damned Lies, and Science,
“Potions, Plot, Personalities: Understand How Science Progresses and Why Scientists Sometimes Disagree”
Because the science that comes to us in our daily lives is usually science-in-the-making, to make sense of it, it is essential to understand how science really progresses. Read More...