Future Science (eBook, ePUB)

Essays from the Leading Edge
Redaktion: Brockman, Max

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

In this fascinating collection of writings that introduce the very latest theories and discoveries in science, editor Max Brockman presents the work of some of today's brightest and most innovative young researchers. Future Science features eighteen young scientists, most of whom are presenting their work and ideas to a general audience for the first time. Included in this collection are

* William McEwan, a virologist, discussing his research into the biology of antiviral immunity * Naomi Eisenberger, a neuroscientist, wondering how social rejection affects us physically * Jon Kleinberg, a computer scientist, showing what massive datasets can teach us about society and ourselves * Anthony Aguirre, a physicist, who gives readers a tantalizing glimpse of infinity "Future Science shares with the world a delightful secret that we academics have been keeping-that despite all the hysteria about how electronic media are dumbing down the next generation, a tidal wave of talent has been flooding into science, making their elders feel like the dumb ones. . . . It has a wealth of new and exciting ideas, and will help shake up our notions regarding the age, sex, color, and topic clichés of the current public perception of science." -Steven Pinker, author of The Stuff of Thought

---

Dieser Download kann aus rechtlichen Gründen nur mit Rechnungsadresse in A, B, BG, CZ, D, DK, EW, E, FIN, F, GR, HR, H, I, LT, L, LR, NL, PL, P, R, S, SLO, SK ausgeliefert werden.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
• Seitenzahl: 272
• Erscheinungstermin: 9. August 2011
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9780307743244
• Artikelnr.: 39249291

Autorenporträt

Max Brockman is the CEO of Brockman, Inc., a literary agency, and the editor of What's Next? Dispatches on the Future of Science. He also works with the Edge Foundation, Inc., a nonprofit organization that publishes www.edge.org. He lives in New York City.

Inhaltsangabe

Kevin P. Hand: On the Coming Age of Ocean Exploration
What makes ocean worlds like Jupiter’s moon Europa compelling places for
astrobiology? Despite considerable evidence to the contrary, Earth was not
a particularly good place for life to arise. The main ingredients for life
as we know it are a lot easier to find farther out in the solar system.
 
Felix Warneken: Children’s Helping Hands
Several novel empirical findings suggest that human altruism has deeper
roots than previously thought.
 
William McEwan: Molecular Cut and Paste: The New Generation of Biological
Tools
A combination of cheap DNA synthesis, freely accessible databases, and our
ever expanding knowledge of protein science is conspiring to permit a
revolution in creating powerful molecular tools.
 
Anthony Aguirre: Next Step: Infinity
Infinity can violate our human intuition, which is based on finite systems,
and create perplexing philosophical problems.
 
Daniela Kaufer & Darlene Francis: Nurture, Nature, and the Stress That Is
Life
Why is it that when faced with the same challenges, some of us crumble,
some of us survive, and some of us even thrive?
 
Jon Kleinberg: What Can Huge Data Sets Teach Us About Society and
Ourselves?
Vast digital trails of social interaction allow us to begin investigating
questions that have been the subject of theoretical inquiry and small-scale
analysis for a century or more.
 
Coren Apicella: On the Universality of Attractiveness
My quest to understand the natural origins of attractiveness preferences
led me to the African savannah near Lake Eyasi in Tanzania.
 
Laurie R. Santos: To Err Is Primate
Why do house sellers, professional golfers, experienced investors, and the
rest of us succumb to strategies that make us systematically go wrong?
 
Samuel M. McClure: Our Brains Know Why We Do What We Do
The goal of the new field of decision neuroscience is a greatly improved
understanding of the variability that dominates our moment-to-moment
decision-making behavior.
 
Jennifer Jacquet: Is Shame Necessary?
Balancing group and self-interest has never been easy, yet human societies
display a high level of cooperation. To attain that level, specialized
traits had to evolve, including such emotions as shame.
 
Kirsten Bomblies: Plant Immunity in a Changing World
To what degree plant populations can adapt to novel disease pressures in an
altered and increasingly unpredictable climate remains largely unknown.
 
Asif A. Ghazanfar: The Emergence of Human Audiovisual Communication
The basic patterns of neocortical anatomy that produce a set of fixed
neural rhythms are conserved throughout the mammalian lineage, and they
predate the elaboration of vocal repertoires.
 
Naomi I. Eisenberger: Why Rejection Hurts
The experience of social pain, while temporarily distressing and hurtful,
is an evolutionary adaptation that promotes social bonding and, ultimately,
survival.
 
Joshua Knobe: Finding the Mind in the Body
People’s intuitions about whether a given entity has a mind do not appear
to be based entirely on a scientific attempt to explain that entity’s
behavior.
 
Fiery Cushman: Should the Law Depend on Luck?
How will advances in the science of moral judgment change the way we think
about the law?
 
Liane Young: How We Read People’s Moral Minds
Recent work suggests that our moral judgment of another person depends on
specific brain regions for reasoning about that other person’s mental
state.
 
Daniel Haun: How Odd I Am!
Cross-culturally, the human mind varies more than we generally assume.
 
Joan Y. Chiao: Where Does Human Diversity Come From?
Culture-gene coevolutionary theory describes a complementary process by
which adaptive mechanisms in the human mind and brain evolved to facilitate
social group living through both cultural and genetic selection.