What is the principle purpose of a brain? A simple question, but the answer has taken millennia for us to begin to understand. So critical for our everyday existence, the brain still remains somewhat of a mystery. Gary L. Wenk takes us on a tour of what we do know about this enigmatic organ, showing us how the workings of the human brain produce our thoughts, feelings, and fears, and answering questions such as: How did humans evolve such a big brain? What is an emotion and why do we have them? What is a memory and why do we forget so easily? How does your diet affect how you think and feel?...

Although climate change and pollution make near-daily appearances in the news, humans have not always recognized that the environment needs to be protected. Only after the publication of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring in 1962 did environmental protection became a political and social priority.
In Environmental Protection: What Everyone Needs to Know(R), environmental lawyer Pamela Hill offers clear, engaging answers to some of the most pressing questions facing us today. She discusses the science behind current environmental issues, defining key terms such as ecosystems,...

We live more and more of our lives online; we rely on the internet as we work, correspond with friends and loved ones, and go through a multitude of mundane activities like paying bills, streaming videos, reading the news, and listening to music. Without thinking twice, we operate with the understanding that the data that traces these activities will not be abused now or in the future. There is an abstract idea of privacy that we invoke, and, concrete rules about our privacy that we can point to if we are pressed. Nonetheless, too often we are uneasily reminded that our privacy is not...

3000. That's the number of marketing messages the average American confronts on a daily basis from TV commercials, magazine and newspaper print ads, radio commercials, pop-up ads on gaming apps, pre-roll ads on YouTube videos, and native advertising on mobile news apps. These commercial messages are so pervasive that we cannot help but be affected by perpetual come-ons to keeping buying. Over the last decade, advertising has become more devious, more digital, and more deceptive, with an increasing number of ads designed to appear to the untrained eye to be editorial content. It's easy to see...

Immunization is regarded by many as one of the greatest advances in modern civilization. The widespread use of vaccines has led to increases in life expectancy, reductions in the occurrence of childhood diseases, and is generally credited with saving millions of lives annually.

But since their discovery two centuries ago, vaccines have been dogged by pockets of persistent distrust among those who are skeptical of their science or who find compulsory immunization at odds with personal liberty. The rise of these voices in contemporary culture has contributed to trends of vaccine delay and...

Corruption regularly makes front page headlines: public officials embezzling government monies, selling public offices, and trading bribes for favors to private companies generate public indignation and calls for reform. In Corruption: What Everyone Needs to Know(R), renowned scholars Ray Fisman and Miriam A. Golden provide a deeper understanding of why corruption is so damaging politically, socially, and economically. Among the key questions examined are: is corruption the result of perverse economic incentives? Does it stem from differences in culture and tolerance for illicit acts...

More than 80,000 new chemicals have been developed and released into the global environment during the last four decades. Today the World Health Organization attributes more than one-third of all childhood deaths to environmental causes, and as rates of childhood disease skyrocket -- autism, asthma, ADHD, obesity, diabetes, and even birth defects -- it raises serious, difficult questions around how the chemical environment is impacting children's health.

Children and Environmental Toxins: What Everyone Needs to Know(R) offers an accessible guide to understanding and identifying...

Alzheimer's is swiftly on the rise: it is estimated that every 67 seconds, someone develops the disease. For many, the words "Alzheimer's diseas" or "dementia" immediately denote severe mental loss and, perhaps, madness. Indeed, the vast majority of media coverage of Alzheimer's disease (AD) and other types of dementia focuses primarily on the losses experienced by people diagnosed and the terrible burden felt by care partners yearning for a "magic bullet" drug cure.

Providing an accessible, question-and-answer-format primer on what touches so many lives, and yet so few of us understand,...

As the largest and youngest minority group in the United States, the 60 million Latinos living in the U.S. represent the second-largest concentration of Hispanic people in the entire world, after Mexico. Needless to say, the population of Latinos in the U.S. is causing a shift, not only changing the demographic landscape of the country, but also impacting national culture, politics, and spoken language. While Latinos comprise a diverse minority group -- with various religious beliefs, political ideologies, and social values-commentators on both sides of the political divide have lumped Latino...

In the referendum of 23 June 2016, the UK voted to leave the European Union. However, in constitutional terms, nothing has changed. The Leave side won but Brexit has not been triggered. The UK remains a member of the EU. No formal negotiations have been held; no exit terms have been decided. Despite demands by leading EU figures, the EU cannot force the UK to send the formal Article 50 notification that would begin the process of leaving. It is even conceivable that no notification will ever be sent. The UK's prime minister has declared that 'Brexit means Brexit' -- but the UK government is...