Catalog All books
Georges Charpak, Richard L. Garwin
Power People and Nuclear Mushrooms
How can we control nuclear power ? This question has been preoccupying Georges Charpak and Richard Garwin for a long time. They here engage themselves in a thought-process concerning the stakes of nuclear power in civil society and the military. It is high time to see the issue clearly, and steering clear of sterile polemics, to denounce the true risks. This book describes in detail everything we need to know about the question : what is a chain reaction ? What exactly happened at Chernobyl ? What should be done with radioactive waste ? How are nuclear arms made and what would future war confrontations be like ? etc... Georges Charpak is a Nobel Prize winner in physics. Richard Garwin is a nuclear physicist.
Stanislas Dehaene
A Good Head for Maths
Did you know that babies can count? And did you know that some animals can do simple arithmetic? Whether we possess astounding mathematical talents or the most basic of counting skills, we are all born with numerical intuition. In this book, the author describes some amazing scientific experiments that demonstrate the mental foundations of numerical intuition. If you want to know why you cant remember how much 7 x 8 makes, or how a cerebral lesion can make you forget 3 - 1, or if you want to figure out the fifth root of 759,375, just follow the author in a series of tortuous mental calculations and you dont even have to be a mathematical wizard. Stanislas Dehaene is a senior research fellow at Inserm and works at the Laboratory of cognitive sciences and of psycholinguistics at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales.
John Dixon Hunt
The Art of the Garden and its History (Product of the Collège de France)
What can a garden reveal about ourselves and our culture ?
Jean-François Mattei
The Rights of Life
Medically assisted procreation, prenatal diagnostic, organ transplants, genetic testing : all are part of the spectacular progress characteristic of scientific and medical research in the last few years. These new techniques confront us with totally new situations and oblige us to take responsabilities and make difficult choices. Should we do these things just because we can ? Who should decide what to do and on what criteria ? The individual or society ? Doctors or politicians ? This book invites us into a stimulating and incisive thought process concerning the future of medicine.
Michael S. Gazzaniga
The Social Brain
This book investigates the concepts of the "right brain" and the "left brain". According to the author the brain is most certainly made up of relatively autonomous modules which react independantly to environmental pressures. At least one of the modules, situated on the left side of the brain, is responsible for the interpretation of answers which may be contradictory with others, whereas yet another module on the same side translates into words the result of this interpretation. So, instead of being a unique, monolithic system that we imagined, the brain would appear to be a collectivity of systems - a social brain. This approach enlightens us as to the functioning of the human brain, and according to Gazzaniga, affects the very roots of our belief systems and societies. Renowned American neurologist, Michael Gazzaniga is Director of the Cognitive Neuroscience Division of Cornell University and chairman of Neuropsychology.