Bill Gates recently told Wired that if he were a teenager today, he would be hacking biology. "If you want to change the world in some big way," he says, "that's where you should start-biological molecules."The most disruptive force on the planet resides in DNA. Biotech companies and academic researchers are just beginning to unlock the potential of piecing together life from scratch. Champions of synthetic biology believe that turning genetic code into Lego-like blocks to build ne...

Bill Gates told Wired that if he were a teenager today, he would be hacking biology. “If you want to change the world in some big way,” he says, “that’s where you should start—biological molecules.”The most disruptive force on the planet resides in DNA. Biotech companies and academic researchers are just beginning to unlock the potential of piecing together life from scratch. Champions of synthetic biology believe that turning genetic code into Lego-like blocks to build ne...

A BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation of the evergreen classic novel by Louisa May Alcott.With their father away fighting in the American Civil War, the four March girls are facing a lean Christmas with their mother. But the sisters’ close bond and determination to make the best of things enables them to find happiness despite their poverty.As the years go by we follow their fortunes as they journey into womanhood. Meg the beauty, Jo the tomboy, shy Beth and precocious Amy ...

The New York Times bestselling “manifesto for the future that is grounded in practical solutions addressing the world’s most pressing concerns: overpopulation, food, water, energy, education, health care and freedom” (The Wall Street Journal).Since the dawn of humanity, a privileged few have lived in stark contrast to the hardscrabble majority. Conventional wisdom says this gap cannot be closed. But it is closing—and fast.In Abundance

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERFrom the former vice president and #1 New York Times bestselling author comes An Inconvenient Truth for everything—a frank and clear-eyed assessment of six critical drivers of global change in the decades to come.Ours is a time of revolutionary change that has no precedent in history. With the same passion he brought to the challenge of climate change, and with his decades of experience on the front lines ...

Ten thousand years ago, our species made a radical shift in its way of life: We became farmers rather than hunter-gatherers. Although this decision propelled us into the modern world, renowned geneticist and anthropologist Spencer Wells demonstrates that such a dramatic change in lifestyle had a downside that we’re only now beginning to recognize. Growing grain crops ultimately made humans more sedentary and unhealthy and made the planet more crowded. The expanding population and the need ...

In the history of planet earth, mass species extinctions have occurred five times, about once every 100 million years. A "sixth extinction" is known to be underway now, with over 200 species dying off every day. Not only that, but the cause of the sixth extinction is also the source of single biggest threat to human life: our own inventions.What this bleak future will truly hold, though, is much in dispute. Will our immune systems be attacked by so-called super bugs, always evolvin...

**The national bestselling author of The God Equation and renowned theoretical physicist examines the scientific revolutions that have reshaped the twentieth century—the quantum mechanics, biogenetics, and artificial intelligence—and shows how they will change and alter science and the way we live."An erudite, compelling insider's look into the most mind-bending potential of science research." —Chicago Tribune**The next century will witness more far-reachi...

BY THE WINNER OF THE 2020 NOBEL PRIZE IN CHEMISTRY | Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize“A powerful mix of science and ethics . . . This book is required reading for every concerned citizen—the material it covers should be discussed in schools, colleges, and universities throughout the country.”— New York Review of BooksNot since the atomic bomb has a technology so alarmed its inventors that they warned the world...

**A 2012 New York Times Notable BookA 2013 Los Angeles Times Book Award Winner in the Science & Technology categoryAn engaging narrative about an incredible, life-giving organ and its imperiled modern fate.**Did you know that breast milk contains substances similar to cannabis? Or that it’s sold on the Internet for 262 times the price of oil? Feted and fetishized, the breast is an evolutionary masterpiece. But in the modern world, the breast is chan...

The promise of a regenerative medicine -- the regrowth of lost limbs and organs, new hope for patients with Alzheimer's or multiple sclerosis, the "cellular fountain of youth" -- sounds like science fiction, but it's real and on the cutting edge of medicine. Veteran medical journalist Karen van Kamped looks at this new technology through the stories of the scientists who are creating it and the ethical and legal questions with which they must deal. Many companies and universities in Canada...

This "brilliant and provocative" (Walter Isaacson) guide shares nine principles to adapt and survive the technological changes shaping our future from the director of the MIT Media Lab and a veteran Wired journalist.The world is more complex and volatile today than at any other time in our history. The tools of our modern existence are getting faster, cheaper, and smaller at an exponential rate, transforming every aspect of society, from business to cultur...