All of us have lurking in our DNA a most remarkable gene. Its job is to protect us from cancer. This gene-known simply as p53-constantly scans our cells to ensure that when they grow and divide as part of the routine maintenance of our bodies, they do so without mishap. If a cell makes a mistake in copying its DNA during the process of division, p53 stops it in its tracks, sending in the repair team before allowing the cell to carry on dividing. If...

"Immune explores the incredible arsenal that lives within us - how it knows what to attack and what to defend, and how it kills everything from the common cold virus to plague bacteria. We see what happens when the immune system turns on us, and how life is impossible without its protection. We learn how diseases try to evade the immune system and exploit its vulnerabilities, and we discover how scientists are designing new drugs to harness the power...

"Long before there was the ready meal, humans processed food to preserve it and make it safe. From fire to fermentation, our ancestors survived periods of famine by changing the very nature of their food. This ability to process food has undoubtedly made us one of the most successful species on the planet, but have we gone too far? Through manipulating chemical reactions and organisms, scientists have unlocked all kinds of methods of to improve food...

In Seeds of Science, eco-activist Mark Lynas lifts the lid on the controversial story and misunderstood science of GMOs. In the mid-1990s, as the global media stirred up a panic about the risks of genetically modified crops, Lynas destroyed crop fields and spoke out in the press...until he realized he was wrong. This book explains why. Twenty years after GMO crops became a source of controversy, scientists are working hard to devise new farming methods...

In 1974 a message was beamed towards the stars by the giant Arecibo telescope in Puerto Rico, a brief blast of radio waves designed to alert extraterrestrial civilizations to our existence. Of course, we don't know if such civilizations really exist. But for the past six decades a small cadre of researchers have been on a quest to find out, as part of SETI, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. The silence from the stars is prompting some...

Drawing on psychology, philosophy, anthropology and statistics, Love Understood combines evidence, theory and everyday experience to explain how we think, feel and behave when it comes to love.

A deep dive into the science behind the creative ways Shakespeare killed off his characters. William Shakespeare found dozens of different ways to kill off his characters, and audiences today still enjoy the same reactions – shock, sadness, fear – that they did more than 400 years ago when these plays were first performed. But how realistic are these deaths, and did Shakespeare have the knowledge to back them up? In the Bard's day...

Experiments have shown that our brains categorize people by race in less than one-tenth of a second, about 50 milliseconds before determining sex. This means that we are labelling people by race and associating certain characteristics to them without even hearing them speak or getting to know them. This subtle cognitive process starts in the amygdala, the area of the brain associated with strong emotions. Does this mean that unconscious biases are...

From atomic structures to theories about magnetic forces, scientific progress has given us a good grasp on the properties of many different materials. However, most scientists cannot measure the temperature of steel just by looking at it, or sculpt stone into all kinds of shapes, or know how it feels to blow up a balloon of glass. This book is the story of materials through making and doing. The author, a materials scientist, journeys into the domain...