On the Origin of Evolution: Tracing 'Darwin's Dangerous Idea' from Aristotle to Dawkins by John Gribbin; Mary Gribbin

$45.00 AUD

Category: Science - Popular

The theory of evolution by natural selection did not spring fully formed and unprecedented from the brain of Charles Darwin. Rather it has been examined and debated by philosophers the world over for thousands of years. This lively history traces the evolution of the idea of evolution, showing how it ha s changed and been changed by different societies over time. It will put 'Darwin's Dangerous Idea' into its proper context, showing how it built on what went before and how it was developed in the twentieth century, through an understanding of genetics and the biochemical basis evolution. None of this diminishes the achievement of Darwin himself in perceiving the way evolution works at the level of individuals and species, but his contribution was one link in a chain that extends back into antiquity, and is still being forged today. ...Show more

Toxic: The Rotting Underbelly of the Tasmania Salmon Industry by Richard Flanagan

$24.99 AUD

Category: Science - Popular

Is Tasmanian salmon one big lie? In a triumph of marketing, the Tasmanian salmon industry has for decades succeeded in presenting itself as world’s best practice and its product as healthy and clean, grown in environmentally pristine conditions. What could be more appealing than the idea of Atlantic sa lmon sustainably harvested in some of the world’s purest waters? But what are we eating when we eat Tasmanian salmon? Richard Flanagan’s exposé of the salmon farming industry in Tasmania is chilling. In the way that Rachel Carson took on the pesticide industry in her ground-breaking book Silent Spring, Flanagan tears open an industry that is as secretive as its practices are destructive and its product disturbing. From the burning forests of the Amazon to the petrochemicals you aren’t told about to the endangered species being pushed to extinction you don’t know about; from synthetically pink-dyed flesh to seal bombs . . . If you care about what you eat, if you care about the environment, this is a book you need to read ...Show more

50 Psychology Classics

$15.00 AUD

Category: Science - Popular

Remember by Lisa Genova

$32.99 AUD

Category: Science - Popular

A fascinating exploration of the intricacies of how we remember, why we forget, and what we can do to protect our memories, from the Harvard-trained neuroscientist and bestselling author of Still Alice. Have you ever felt a crushing wave of panic when you can't for the life of you remember the name of that actor in the movie you saw last week, or you walk into a room only to forget why you went there in the first place? If you're over forty, you're probably not laughing. You might even be worried that these lapses in memory could be an early sign of Alzheimers or dementia. In reality, for the vast majority of us, these examples of forgetting are completely normal. Why? Because while memory is amazing, it is far from perfect. Our brains aren't designed to remember every name we hear, plan we make, or day we experience. Just because your memory sometimes fails doesn't mean it's broken or succumbing to disease. Forgetting is actually part of being human. In Remember, neuroscientist and acclaimed novelist Lisa Genova delves into how memories are made and how we retrieve them. You'll learn whether forgotten memories are temporarily inaccessible or erased forever and why some memories are built to exist for only a few seconds (like a passcode) while others can last a lifetime (your wedding day). You'll come to appreciate the clear distinction between normal forgetting (where you parked your car) and forgetting due to Alzheimers (that you own a car). And you'll see how memory is profoundly impacted by meaning, emotion, sleep, stress, and context. Once you understand the language of memory and how it functions, its incredible strengths and maddening weaknesses, its natural vulnerabilities and potential superpowers, you can both vastly improve your ability to remember and feel less rattled when you inevitably forget. You can set educated expectations for your memory, and in doing so, create a better relationship with it. You don't have to fear it anymore. And that can be life-changing. Using her expertise as a neuroscientist and her gifts as a storyteller, Genova explains the nuances of human memory. As with her previous books, this is an engaging and edifying read.- Steven Pinker, Johnstone Professor of Psychology, Harvard University, author of How the Mind Works. 'No one writes more brilliantly about the connections between the brain, the mind, and the heart. Remember is a beautiful, fascinating, and important book about the mysteries of human memory, what it is, how it works, and what happens when it is stolen from us. A scientific and literary treat that you will not soon forget.' - Daniel Gilbert, Edgar Pierce Professor of Psychology, Harvard University, New York Times bestselling author of Stumbling on Happiness 'In Remember, Lisa Genova provides easy-to-follow, no nonsense advice on how to maximize one of the greatest outputs of your brain, memory. But, more important, she also lets us know that while memory is a tremendous gift, the real you is much more than just what you can remember! -  Rudolph E. Tanzi, PhD, professor of neurology, Harvard Medical School, coauthor of The Healing Self ...Show more

2021 Australasian Sky Guide by Nick Lomb

$16.95 AUD

Category: Science - Popular

Compact, easy to use and reliable, this popular guide by well-known astronomer and author Dr Nick Lomb has been providing stargazers with everything they need to know about the southern night sky for over 30 years. The 2021 guide contains the latest information and clear explanations on the solar system , a historical astronomy feature, monthly sky maps, viewing tips and highlights for city dwellers, and details of the year's exciting celestial events.Wherever you are in Australia or New Zealand, easy calculations allow you to estimate local rise and set times for the Sun, Moon and planets. The 2021 Australasian Sky Guide also provides information on the solar system, updated with the latest findings from space probes.Published annually, the Sky Guide continues to be a favourite with photographers, event planners, sports organisers, teachers, students — and anyone who looks up at the stars and wants to know more.Highlights for 2021:• Venus close to Saturn and Jupiter February• Supermoons in April and May• Moon covers Venus in May• Venus close to Mercury in May• Venus close to Mars in July• Partial eclipse of the Moon in November• Partial eclipse of the Sun in December ...Show more

A Human's Guide to the Future by Jordan Nguyen

$34.99 AUD

Category: Science - Popular

TECHNOLOGY IS EVOLVING AT THE FASTEST RATE WE'VE EVER SEEN, BUT IT MAY BE THE SLOWEST RATE WE'LL EVER SEE AGAIN! What does this mean for the future of the human race? Do we resist these changes or embrace them?Australian biomedical engineer, inventor and visionary Dr Jordan Nguyen has lived a life of cu riosity and wonder - exploring positive opportunities in science and technology, including robotics, artificial intelligence, bionics, extended reality and avatars. He believes that technology is a powerful tool that we as humans can choose to harness to create a better tomorrow.In A Human's Guide to the Future, Dr Jordan takes us on a journey through the big innovations being developed around the world, along the fun and amazing rollercoaster of his own adventures, and to envisage where our collective future is headed.Written by one of this generation's most exciting voices, this is a book that will deepen your understanding of new and emerging technologies and fuel your imagination at the dawn of what will be the most transformative era in human history. ...Show more

A Letter to Layla - Travels to Our Deep Past and near Future by Ramona Koval

$34.99 AUD

Category: Science - Popular

How might the origins of our species inform the way we think about our planet? At a point of unparalleled crisis, can human ingenuity save us from ourselves? Much-loved writer and broadcaster Ramona Koval travels the globe in a quest to answer these difficult questions and more. She speaks with an emin ent paleo-archaeologist in the Republic of Georgia, meets the next generation of robots in Berlin, attends a transhumanist conference in California, and explores a cave in southern France before talking with the world's leading authority on cave art. And throughout, she returns to her quick-witted, ever-engaging youngest granddaughter, Layla, whose development in infancy spurs Koval to find out what makes us human, what separates us from the other apes. Filled with insightful and unexpected discussions with scientists whose knowledge of the past could hold the key to our future, A Letter to Laylawill surprise and delight in equal measure. ...Show more

Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty by Patrick Radden Keefe

$34.99 AUD

Category: Science - Popular

The highly-anticipated portrait of three generations of the Sackler family, by the prize-winning, bestselling author of Say Nothing. The Sackler name adorns the walls of many storied institutions - Harvard; the Metropolitan Museum of Art; Oxford; the Louvre. They are one of the richest families in the w orld, known for their lavish donations in the arts and the sciences. The source of the family fortune was vague, however, until it emerged that the Sacklers were responsible for making and marketing Oxycontin, a blockbuster painkiller that was a catalyst for the opioid crisis-an international epidemic of drug addiction which has killed nearly half a million people. In this masterpiece of narrative reporting and writing, Patrick Radden Keefe exhaustively documents the jaw-dropping and ferociously compelling reality. Empire of Pain is the story of a dynasty: a parable of 21st century greed. ...Show more

Energy Paradox: How to Stop Being Sick and Tired and Finally Feel Good Again by Steven R. Gundry

$34.99 AUD

Category: Science - Popular

The author of the bestselling Plant Paradox series takes a fresh look at one of the top health issues plaguing Americans-fatigue-and offers a revolutionary plan for boosting energy and revitalizing mental and physical stamina. In his bestselling books, The Plant Paradox and The Longevity Paradox, Dr. St even R. Gundry offered game-changing perspectives on our wellbeing. In The Energy Paradox, Dr. Gundry expands upon his previous discussions of gut, microbiome, and mitochondrial health, linking immune malfunction to the mental and physical symptoms of fatigue-including exhaustion, brain fog, depression, anxiety, and low metabolism.As Dr. Gundry explains, feeling tired, moody, and zapped of energy is not normal, no matter your workload or age. Fatigue is an SOS flare from the body, one that is intended to alert us that something is wrong. In his clinical work, Dr. Gundry has found that his patients who complain of feeling sick and tired all the time almost always have something in common: the inflammation markers of a leaky gut.In The Energy Paradox, Dr. Gundry will offer readers the information and tools necessary to quiet the autoimmune battle raging within-a battle that depletes precious energy reserves, leaving you drained and prone to mood disorders and weight gain. With new guidelines on how to increase mitochondrial energy production and nourish the microbiome; 30 new Plant Paradox-approved recipes; and lists of energy-boosting foods to consume and energy-depleting foods to avoid, The Energy Paradox will help readers take back their lives, giving them the energy they need to feel, look, and be their best. ...Show more

First Light - Switching on Stars at the Dawn of Time by Emma Chapman

$29.99 AUD

Category: Science - Popular

Astronomers have successfully observed a great deal of the Universe's history, from recording the afterglow of the Big Bang to imaging thousands of galaxies, and even to visualising an actual black hole. There's a lot for astronomers to be smug about. But when it comes to understanding how the Universe began and grew up we are literally in the dark ages. In effect, we are missing the first one billion years from the timeline of the Universe. This brief but far-reaching period in the Universe's history, known to astrophysicists as the 'Epoch of Reionisation', represents the start of the cosmos as we experience it today. The time when the very first stars burst into life, when darkness gave way to light. After hundreds of millions of years of dark, uneventful expansion, one by the one these stars suddenly came into being. This was the point at which the chaos of the Big Bang first began to yield to the order of galaxies, black holes and stars, kick-starting the pathway to planets, to comets, to moons, and to life itself. Incorporating the very latest research into this branch of astrophysics, this book sheds light on this time of darkness, telling the story of these first stars, hundreds of times the size of the Sun and a million times brighter, lonely giants that lived fast and died young in powerful explosions that seeded the Universe with the heavy elements that we are made of. Emma Chapman tells us how these stars formed, why they were so unusual, and what they can teach us about the Universe today. She also offers a first-hand look at the immense telescopes about to come on line to peer into the past, searching for the echoes and footprints of these stars, to take this period in the Universe's history from the realm of theoretical physics towards the wonder of observational astronomy. ...Show more

Marie Curie - The Pioneer, the Nobel Laureate by Richard Gunderman

$39.99 AUD

Category: Science - Popular | Series: Amazing Minds Ser.

When Marie Curie and her husband, Pierre, discovered the atomic nature of radioactivity, and isolated polonium and radium, they revolutionized modern science. Her work not only contributed to our understanding of the structure of the atom, but also laid the foundation for modern medical innovations such as X-rays and radiotherapy. This illustrated biography details Marie's tumultuous personal life at a time of social upheaval, and her struggle to gain recognition in an era when women scientists were almost unknown. ...Show more

Monsters The Hindenburg Disaster and the Birth of Pathological Technology by Ed Regis

$20.00 AUD

Category: Science - Popular

"Oh, the humanity " Radio reporter Herbert Morrison's words on witnessing the destruction of the Hindenburg are etched in our collective memory. Yet, while the Hindenburg-like the Titanic-is a symbol of the technological hubris of a bygone era, we seem to have forgotten the lessons that can be learned f rom the infamous 1937 zeppelin disaster. Zeppelins were steerable balloons of highly flammable, explosive gas, but the sheer magic of seeing one of these behemoths afloat in the sky cast an irresistible spell over all those who saw them. In Monsters, Ed Regis explores the question of how a technology now so completely invalidated (and so fundamentally unsafe) ever managed to reach the high-risk level of development that it did. Through the story of the zeppelin's development, Regis examines the perils of what he calls "pathological technologies"-inventions whose sizeable risks are routinely minimized as a result of their almost mystical allure. Such foolishness is not limited to the industrial age: newer examples of pathological technologies include the US government's planned use of hydrogen bombs for large-scale geoengineering projects; the phenomenally risky, expensive, and ultimately abandoned Superconducting Super Collider; and the exotic interstellar propulsion systems proposed for DARPA's present-day 100 Year Starship project. In case after case, the romantic appeal of foolishly ambitious technologies has blinded us to their shortcomings, dangers, and costs. Both a history of technological folly and a powerful cautionary tale for future technologies and other grandiose schemes, Monsters is essential reading for experts and citizens hoping to see new technologies through clear eyes. ...Show more