{"product_id":"future-science-isbn-9780307741912","title":"Future Science","description":"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. \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eFuture Science\u003c\/i\u003e 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\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003e* William McEwan, a virologist, discussing his research into the biology of antiviral immunity\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e* Naomi Eisenberger, a neuroscientist, wondering how social rejection affects us physically\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e* Jon Kleinberg, a computer scientist, showing what massive datasets can teach us about society and ourselves\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e* Anthony Aguirre, a physicist, who gives readers a tantalizing glimpse of infinity\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“\u003ci\u003eFuture Science\u003c\/i\u003e 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.”\u003cbr\u003e—Steven Pinker, author of \u003ci\u003eThe Stuff of Thought\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cb\u003eKevin P. Hand: \u003c\/b\u003eOn the Coming Age of Ocean Exploration\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eWhat 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.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFelix Warneken:\u003c\/b\u003e Children’s Helping Hands\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eSeveral novel empirical findings suggest that human altruism has deeper roots than previously thought.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWilliam McEwan: \u003c\/b\u003eMolecular Cut and Paste: The New Generation of Biological Tools\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eA 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.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAnthony Aguirre: \u003c\/b\u003eNext Step: Infinity\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eInfinity can violate our human intuition, which is based on finite systems, and create perplexing philosophical problems.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eDaniela Kaufer \u0026amp; Darlene Francis: \u003c\/b\u003eNurture, Nature, and the Stress That Is Life\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eWhy is it that when faced with the same challenges, some of us crumble, some of us survive, and some of us even thrive?\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eJon Kleinberg: \u003c\/b\u003eWhat Can Huge Data Sets Teach Us About Society and Ourselves?\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eVast 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.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eCoren Apicella:\u003c\/b\u003e On the Universality of Attractiveness\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eMy quest to understand the natural origins of attractiveness preferences led me to the African savannah near Lake Eyasi in Tanzania.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLaurie R. Santos: \u003c\/b\u003eTo Err Is Primate\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eWhy do house sellers, professional golfers, experienced investors, and the rest of us succumb to strategies that make us systematically go wrong?\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSamuel M. McClure: \u003c\/b\u003eOur Brains Know Why We Do What We Do\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe goal of the new field of decision neuroscience\u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003eis a greatly improved understanding of the variability that dominates our moment-to-moment decision-making behavior.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eJennifer Jacquet:\u003c\/b\u003e Is Shame Necessary?\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eBalancing 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.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eKirsten Bomblies:\u003c\/b\u003e Plant Immunity in a Changing World\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eTo what degree plant populations can adapt to novel disease pressures in an altered and increasingly unpredictable climate remains largely unknown.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAsif A. Ghazanfar:\u003c\/b\u003e The Emergence of Human Audiovisual Communication\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe 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.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eNaomi I. Eisenberger: \u003c\/b\u003eWhy Rejection Hurts \u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe experience of social pain, while temporarily distressing and hurtful, is an evolutionary adaptation that promotes social bonding and, ultimately, survival.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eJoshua Knobe: \u003c\/b\u003eFinding the Mind in the Body\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003ePeople’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.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFiery Cushman: \u003c\/b\u003eShould the Law Depend on Luck?\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eHow will advances in the science of moral judgment change the way we think about the law?\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLiane Young:\u003c\/b\u003e How We Read People’s Moral Minds \u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eRecent work suggests that our moral judgment of another person depends on specific brain regions for reasoning about that other person’s mental state.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eDaniel Haun: \u003c\/b\u003eHow Odd I Am!\u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eCross-culturally, the human mind varies more than we generally assume.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eJoan Y. Chiao:\u003c\/b\u003e Where Does Human Diversity Come From?\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eCulture-gene coevolutionary theory\u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003edescribes 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.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cp\u003e“A title wave of talent. . . . A wealth of new and exciting ideas.\"\u003cbr\u003e—Stephen Pinker, author of \u003ci\u003eThe Stuff of Thought\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“I would have killed for books like this when I was a student!”\u003cbr\u003e—Brian Eno\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“This remarkable collection of fluent and fascinating essays reminds me that there is almost nothing as spine-tinglingly exciting as glimpsing a new nugget of knowledge for the first time. These young scientists give us a treasure trove of precious new insights.”\u003cbr\u003e—Matt Ridley, author of \u003ci\u003eThe Red Queen \u003c\/i\u003eand \u003ci\u003eRational Optimism\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“A good overview of what’s happening in today’s laboratories.”\u003cbr\u003e—\u003ci\u003eBooklist\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“A glimpse of how today’s daring science is defining tomorrow’s lines for inquiry. . . . Readers will delight in the complexity of its exciting mosaic.”\u003cbr\u003e—\u003ci\u003eKirkus Reviews\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eMax Brockman is the CEO of Brockman, Inc., a literary agency, and the editor of \u003ci\u003eWhat’s Next? Dispatches on the Future of Science\u003c\/i\u003e. He also works with the Edge Foundation, Inc., a nonprofit organization that publishes www.edge.org. He lives in New York City.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cb\u003ePreface\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAcademia, with its somewhat old-fashioned structure and rules, can appear quite a strange place when observed from the outside. Frequently, through my work as a literary agent, I’ve noticed that if you’re an academic who writes about your work for a general audience, you’re thought by some of your colleagues to be wasting your time and perhaps endangering your academic career. For younger scientists (i.e., those without tenure), this is almost universally true.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThere are some good reasons for this peer pressure, the most obvious being that getting published in academic journals is an essential step on the very diffi cult road to tenure. However, one unfortunate result is that those of us outside academia are blocked from looking in on the research being done by this next generation of scientists, some of whom will go on to become leading doers and communicators of science.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis opacity was the impetus for the first essay collection in this series, \u003ci\u003eWhat’s Next?: Dispatches on the Future\u003c\/i\u003e \u003ci\u003eof Science\u003c\/i\u003e. Essays seemed to be an ideal and appropriate way for representatives of this group of scientists to communicate their ideas. The title of the new collection is different, but the organization is the same. \u003ci\u003eFuture Science\u003c\/i\u003e features essays from nineteen young scientists from a variety of fields, writing about what they’re working on and what excites them the most. To come up with the list of contributors, I fi elded recommendations from top scientists on the rising stars in their various disciplines.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAmong those you will hear from in \u003ci\u003eFuture Science\u003c\/i\u003e are:\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e• Kevin P. Hand, a planetary scientist and astrobiologist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, on the possibilities for life elsewhere in the solar system (and the universe)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e• Felix Warneken, who heads the Social Cognitive Development Group at Harvard’s Laboratory for Developmental Studies, on investigating the evolutionary roots of human altruism in his studies of young children and Ugandan chimpanzees\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e• William McEwan, a virologist and postdoctoral researcher at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge, U.K., who probes the biology of antiviral immunity by designing his own viruses\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e• Anthony Aguirre, a physicist and cosmologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who maintains that infi nity has been brought into the domain of testable physical science\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e• Daniela Kaufer and Darlene Francis of the University of California, Berkeley, neurobiologists who have taken a transdisciplinary approach to the study of the effects of stress on mind and body\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e• Jon Kleinberg, a professor of computer science at Cornell University, who is working on ways to extract significance from the enormous data sets we are building in the Internet age.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWorking on \u003ci\u003eFuture Science\u003c\/i\u003e has been an extremely rewarding experience, and I look forward to putting together the next collection in this series. These passionate young scientists, by giving us a glimpse of the work they’re doing today, are in a sense providing a window into the world to come.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMax Brockman\u003cbr\u003eNew York\u003cbr\u003eAugust 2011","brand":"Vintage","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46302297358565,"sku":"NP9780307741912","price":15.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780307741912.jpg?v=1767727813","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/future-science-isbn-9780307741912","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}