The Happy Brain. The Science of Where Happiness Comes From, and Why

Who do we love? Who loves us? And why? Is love really a mystery, or can neuroscience offer some answers to these age-old questions? In her third enthralling book about the brain, Judith Horstman takes us on a lively tour of our most important sex and love organ and the whole smorgasbord of our many kinds of love-from the bonding of parent and child to the passion of erotic love, the affectionate love of companionship, the role of animals in our lives, and the love of God. Drawing on the latest neuroscience, she explores why and how we are born to love-how we're hardwired to crave the companionship of others, and how very badly things can go without love. Among the findings: parental love makes our brain bigger, sex and orgasm make it healthier, social isolation makes it miserable-and although the craving for romantic love can be described as an addiction, friendship may actually be the most important loving relationship of your life. Based on recent studies and articles culled from the prestigious Scientific American and Scientific American Mind magazines, The Scientific American Book of Love, Sex, and the Brain offers a fascinating look at how the brain controls our loving relationships, most intimate moments, and our deep and basic need for connection.

Michael Gross has been writing about science full time for the last eight years and as a night time hobby for the previous seven. From his treasure troves, he now presents his favourite science stories from these 15 years. What are the attractions that make him revisit a topic or reread an article again and again? Often, it's the sheer craziness of wildly unexpected findings or grotesquely oversized challenges. In other stories, there is a sexy element or an unexpected insight into the human condition. And sometimes, when reporting new and future technologies, the author just can't help thinking: >cooooooool!< So here are more than 60 crazy, sexy and cool science stories for you to enjoy.

A guide to ending America's jobs emergency by accelerating the true engine of job creation—start-ups Four years after the end of the Great Recession, 23 million Americans remain unemployed, underemployed, or have left the workforce discouraged. Even worse, Washington policymakers seem out of ideas. Where the Jobs Are: Entrepreneurship and the Soul of the American Economy shows how America can restore its great job-creation machine. Recent research has demonstrated that virtually all net new job creation in the United States over the past thirty years has come from businesses less than a year old—true «start-ups.» Start-up businesses create an average of three million new jobs each year, while existing businesses of any size or age shed a net average of about one million jobs annually. Unfortunately, the vital signs of America's job-creating entrepreneurial economy are flashing red alert. After remaining remarkably consistent for decades, the rate of new business formation has declined significant in recent years, and the number of new jobs created by new firms is also falling. In Where the Jobs Are, the authors recount the findings of a remarkable summer they spent traveling the country to meet and conduct roundtables with entrepreneurs in a dozen cities. More than 200 entrepreneurs participated—explaining in specific and vividly personal terms the issues, frustrations, and obstacles that are undermining their efforts to launch new businesses, expand existing young firms, and create jobs. Those obstacles include a dangerously underperforming education system, self-defeating immigration policies that thwart the attraction and retention of the world's best talent, access to capital difficulties, a mounting regulatory burden, unnecessary tax complexity, and severe Washington-produced economic uncertainty. Explains how start-ups are different from existing businesses, large or small, and why they represent the engine of job creation Reveals how policymakers' failure to understand the unique nature and needs of start-ups has undermined efforts to stimulate the economy following the Great Recession Presents a detailed, innovative, and uniquely credible 30-point policy agenda based on what America's job creators said they urgently need Engaging and informative, Where the Jobs Are reveals with unprecedented precision and clarity the major obstacles undermining the fragile economic recovery, and provides a vitally important game plan to unleash the job-creating capacity of the entrepreneurial economy and put a beleaguered nation back to work.

Most conventional gardening books concentrate on how and when to carry out horticultural tasks such as pruning, seed sowing and taking cuttings. This book is unique in explaining in straightforward terms some of the science that underlies these practices. It is principally a book of 'Why' – Why are plants green? Why should one cut beneath a leaf node when taking cuttings? Why do plants need so much water? But it also goes on to deal with the 'How', providing rationale behind the practical advice. The coverage is wide-ranging and comprehensive and includes the basic structure and functioning of garden plants, nomenclature, genetics and plant breeding, environmental factors affecting growth, methods of propagation and production, pest and disease control, and post harvest management and storage. Published on behalf of the Royal Horticultural Society, this book will be a most valuable text for those sitting the RHS general examination, and horticultural students at certificate and diploma levels; it will also appeal to gardeners, growers and scientists.

Doing business in the digital age The Great Fragmentation: And Why the Future of All Business is Small is a business survival manifesto for the technology revolution. As the world moves from the industrial era to the digital age, power is shifting and fragmenting. Power is no longer about might and ownership; power in a digital world is about access. Existing businesses need to understand this shift and position themselves to survive and thrive in an environment where entrepreneurs and start-ups enabled by access to technology are genuine threats. Author Steve Sammartino is widely regarded as a thought leader on the subject of technology and business, and helps companies transition from industrial-era thinking to the mindset and processes required to compete in today's digital marketplace. The Great Fragmentation shows how technological changes such as Big Data, gamification, crowdfunding, Bitcoin, 3D printing, social media, mashup culture and artisanal production will forever change business and the way we live our lives. Examine how the digital era has altered where we work, how we work, where we live and what we do Discover how the digital era has impacted social and economic structures, including educational systems, financial systems and government policy Understand that the social media and collecting 'friends' is just the tip of the iceberg in a digital business environment Weaving together insights from business, technology and anthropology, The Great Fragmentation provides both corporations and entrepreneurs with a playbook for the future of work, life and business in the digital era.

Edited and introduced by Bill Bryson, with contributions from Richard Dawkins, Margaret Atwood, Richard Holmes, Martin Rees, Richard Fortey, Steve Jones, James Gleick and Neal Stephenson amongst others, this beautiful, lavishly illustrated book tells the story of science and the Royal Society, from 1660 to the present.On a damp weeknight in November, 350 years ago, a dozen or so men gathered at Gresham College in London. A twenty-eight year old – and not widely famous – Christopher Wren was giving a lecture on astronomy. As his audience listened to him speak, they decided that it would be a good idea to create a Society to promote the accumulation of useful knowledge. With that, the Royal Society was born.Since its birth, the Royal Society has pioneered scientific exploration and discovery. Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein, Robert Hooke, Robert Boyle, Joseph Banks, Humphry Davy, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, John Locke, Alexander Fleming – all were fellows. Bill Bryson’s favourite fellow was Reverend Thomas Bayes, a brilliant mathematician who devised Bayes’ theorem. Its complexity meant that it had little practical use in Bayes’ own lifetime, but today his theorem is used for weather forecasting, astrophysics and stock market analysis. A milestone in mathematical history, it only exists because the Royal Society decided to preserve it – just in case.The Royal Society continues to do today what it set out to do all those years ago. Its members have split the atom, discovered the double helix, the electron, the computer and the World Wide Web. Truly international in its outlook, it has created modern science. ‘Seeing Further’ celebrates its momentous history and achievements, bringing together the very best of science writing. Filled with illustrations of treasures from the Society’s archives, this is a unique, ground-breaking and beautiful volume, and a suitable reflection of the immense achievements of science.

Everyone from journalists to market pros are turning to behavioral finance to explain, analyze, and predict market direction. In contrast to old-school assumptions of cool-headed rationality, the new behavioral school embraces hot-blooded human irrationality as a core feature of both individuals and financial markets. The 2002 Nobel Prize in Economics was awarded to scholars of this new scientific approach to irrationality. In Mean Markets and Lizard Brains, Terry Burnham, an economist who has a proven ability to translate complex topics into everyday language, reveals the biological causes of irrationality. The human brain contains ancient structures that exert powerful and often unconscious influences on behavior. This «lizard brain» may have helped our ancestors eat and reproduce, but it wreaks havoc with our finances. Going far beyond cataloguing our financial foibles, Dr. Burnham applies this novel approach to all of today's most important financial topics: the stock market, the economy, real estate, bonds, mortgages, inflation, and savings. This broad and scholarly investigation provides an in-depth look at why manias, panics, and crashes happen, and why people are built to want to buy at irrationally high prices and sell at irrationally low prices. Most importantly, by incorporating the new science of irrationality, readers can position themselves to profit from financial markets that often seem downright mean. Mean Markets and Lizard Brains skillfully identifies the craziness that is part of human nature, helps us see it in ourselves, and then shows us how to profit from a world that doesn't always make sense.

Employ cognitive theory in the classroom every day Research into how we learn has opened the door for utilizing cognitive theory to facilitate better student learning. But that's easier said than done. Many books about cognitive theory introduce radical but impractical theories, failing to make the connection to the classroom. In Small Teaching, James Lang presents a strategy for improving student learning with a series of modest but powerful changes that make a big difference—many of which can be put into practice in a single class period. These strategies are designed to bridge the chasm between primary research and the classroom environment in a way that can be implemented by any faculty in any discipline, and even integrated into pre-existing teaching techniques. Learn, for example: How does one become good at retrieving knowledge from memory? How does making predictions now help us learn in the future? How do instructors instill fixed or growth mindsets in their students? Each chapter introduces a basic concept in cognitive theory, explains when and how it should be employed, and provides firm examples of how the intervention has been or could be used in a variety of disciplines. Small teaching techniques include brief classroom or online learning activities, one-time interventions, and small modifications in course design or communication with students.

The social sciences and humanities worldwide are discovering the necessity to self-critically reshape their theorizing: The first critique of social science theorizing calls for ‘globalizing’, the second, parallel critique, for ‘de-colonizing’ social thought. In his highly topical book, Michael Kuhn discusses · why and how the ‘globalization’ of social science theorizing introduces thinking through nation state perspectives as an up-to-date methodological must; · how the ‘de-colonialization’ of social science theorizing with the critique of Eurocentrism and its thinking through space paves the way for the worldwide implementation of thinking through nation-state views, transforming the social science world into a multiplicity of ’provincialized’ theories; · with which odd argumentations the ’indigenization’ of thought produces contributions to the ideological armament of the new states in the so-called 3rd world after their transformation into the very society system of the former colonizers; · how these indigenized theories make discourses among de-colonized theories a matter of which ‘provincialized’ theory manages to rule the worldwide creation of theories; · how the masterminds of globally de-colonized thinking present imperial thought as guiding theories for mankind’s thinking; · what templates for the turn from anti-capitalist towards nationalistic thinking Historical Materialism has provided, and · what consequences all this has for the social sciences as a voice in political debates about the world.

Why do I feel so sad when I am so happy? I must be a bad mother. Having a baby is usually a reason for happiness and celebration. Depression after childbirth causes emotional pain and suffering that lives side by side with the joy. That is the underlying paradox and it is that paradox that frequently leads to sense of bewilderment and guilt. Through the stories of 24 women trying to negotiate their lives as mothers, Paula Nicolson helps women understand more about the realities of motherhood. Ninety percent of new mothers find themselves in tears and feeling «down» soon after giving birth and one in ten will become depressed during the first year. Postnatal Depression: Facing the paradox of loss, happiness and motherhood shows how better self-knowledge and a greater understanding of PND can help lift the burden and restore self esteem and harmony to mothers and their families.