検索キーワード： 著者 "Scientific American" すべてのカテゴリー

The Olympics are the world’s most prestigious stage for athletic competition. Fans both casual and hardcore tune in religiously every few years to watch as men and women push themselves to the limits of human performance. But what makes a champion? Is it genetics? Hours of training? A psychological advantage? Of all the athletes who dedicate their lives - and bodies - to achieving that perfect moment of triumph, why will one person or team win out over another? Science has some compelling answers, and in this audiobook, Scientific American explores this topic from various angles.

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.

Take control and retrain your brain to achieve a happier, healthier state of mind. In this audiobook, we examine aspects of daily life that affect mood such as perception, social support, and time management and offer approaches shown to boost contentment, including reframing negative events, increasing resilience through self-compassion, and practicing mindfulness.

We harbor roughly the same number of microbes as we have cells. This complex ecosystem is crucial to our health, affecting many processes including immunity, child development, and bone density regulation. Research in this area has exploded, and in this audiobook, we highlight some of the most exciting work on how the microbiome develops, its influence on brain and behavior, and implications in both contributing to and treating various disorders.

Addiction is costly on many levels to the individuals affected, their families, and society as a whole, but science may soon be able to offer treatment options to make the road to recovery a little smoother. First, we investigate why and how people succumb to a veritable prison of the mind as sections one and two delve respectively into the psychology and the neurochemistry behind addiction. Subsequent sections break out addictive substances individually: recreational drugs, prescription drugs, alcohol, and nicotine. Finally, section seven examines new avenues for overcoming addiction.

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.

One of the biggest discoveries in physics, the quest for the Higgs boson demonstrates the value of a good theory. In July 2012, a Higgs-like particle was found near the energies scientists predicted. Now, armed with better evidence and better questions, the scientific process continues. In this audiobook, we’ve gathered our best reporting to explain that process - the theories, the search, the discovery, and the ongoing questions.

We humans are a strange bunch. We have self-awareness and yet often act on impulses that remain hidden. How did we get here? What is to become of us? To these age-old questions, science has in recent years brought powerful tools and reams of data, and in this audiobook, Becoming Human, we look at what this data has to tell us about who we are.

From increasingly severe storms to collapsing coral reefs to the displacement of Syrian citizens, in this audiobook we examine the effects of Earth’s changing climate on weather systems, ecosystems, and human habitability and what this means for our future.

In this audiobook, The Human Odyssey, we explore the evolution of those characteristics that make us human. The first section looks at our family tree and why some branches survived and not others. Swings in climate are emerging as a factor in what traits succeeded and failed; meanwhile, DNA analyses show that Homo sapiens interbred with other human species, which played a key role in our survival.

In this installment of the Ask the Experts series, Chemistry, our professors, scientists, and researchers tackle reader questions about the substances that compose all matter, their properties, and how they interact and change. Queries range from elementary questions, such as why some elements change color over a flame, to how chemistry works in everyday life, to how certain substances affect the body and more.

Boy or girl? Even before a person is born, that’s the first thing everyone wants to know - underscoring just how much value human societies of all types place on gender. In His Brain, Her Brain, we take a closer look at the anatomical, chemical, and functional differences in the brains of men and women - as well as some surprising similarities. For instance, studies of infants find few differences in cognitive skills between boys and girls; but there is no denying that boys love trucks, whereas girls prefer dolls.

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.

This audiobook contains a collection of columns written by Claudia Wallis, an award-winning science journalist whose work has appeared in The New York Times, Time, Fortune, and the New Republic. Claudia was the science editor at Time and the former managing editor of Scientific American Mind. Together, these stories will demystify recent medical research and developments and expand your understanding of how these developments impact the mind and body.

This fascinating and highly accessible book presents fantastic but totally feasible projections of what your brain may be capable of in the near future. It shows how scientific breakthroughs and amazing research are turning science fiction into science fact. In this brave new book, you'll explore.

Welcome to the new old age! There has never been a better time, in all of history, to grow old. But will your brain age as well as the rest of you? In her fourth engaging book about the brain, Judith Horstman presents a realistic and encouraging overview of the well-aged brain, a sobering look at what can go wrong, and the latest in what neuroscience is finding might help you - and your brain - stay healthy longer.

Strange and probabilistic, physics at the smallest scales is driving innovation and research into the nature of reality. In this audiobook, we examine the latest mind-bending studies in quantum mechanics, including theoretical mysteries such as entanglement, real-world applications, innovations in communications and computing, and more.

Science history is chock full of world-changing innovations that initially faced skepticism and ridicule for being too unconventional: light bulbs, cars, and home computers are just a few examples. In this audiobook, we take a look at the latest out-of-the-box ideas to tackle today’s biggest challenges, including so-called sponge cities designed to combat flooding, technology that mimics photosynthesis to produce fuel, modifying bacteria’s genetic circuits to treat genetic diseases, and much more.

Until recently, one idea has dominated research in treating Alzheimer’s disease: the amyloid hypothesis. Those therapies have repeatedly fallen short, and in this audiobook we take a look at where that hypothesis stands today. We examine recent research into the spectrum of disease causes, including inflammation and immune dysfunction; cutting-edge treatments, including deep-brain stimulation and magnetic resonance - guided focused ultrasound; as well as lifestyle interventions that can help protect from disease.

Anxiety and depression are two of the most common conditions affecting mental health and overall quality of life, but there are tools for managing them. In this audiobook, we’ll explore how depression shows up in the brain, different manifestations of depression and anxiety, various talk therapies, technological innovations, lifestyle interventions, and more.