It has long been known that the rate of oxidative metabolism (the process that uses oxygen to convert food into energy) in any animal has a profound effect on its living patterns. The high metabolic r...
As you read this， nearly 80，000 Americans are waiting for a new heart， kidney or some other organ that could save their life. Tragically， about 6，000 of them will die this year——nearly twice as many p...
Scientists have known since 1952 that DNA is the basic stuff of heredity. They’ve known its chemical structure since 1953. They know that human DNA acts like a biological computer program some 3 billi...
Text18One hundred and thirteen million Americans have at least one bank-issued credit card. They give their owners automatic 1 in stores, restaurants, and hotels, at home, across the country, and even...
Text19About 40 percent of Americans think of themselves as shy, while only 20 percent say they have never suffered from shyness at some point in their lives. Shyness occurs when a person’s apprehensio...
Text20What is your earliest childhood memory? Can you remember learning to walk? Or talk? The first time you heard thunder or watched a television program? Adults seldom 1 events much earlier than the...
Everybody loves afat pay rise. Yet pleasure at your own can vanish if you learn that a colleaguehas been given a bigger one. Indeed, if he has a reputation for slacking, youmight even be outraged. Suc...
Do you rememberall those years when scientists argued that smoking would kill us but thedoubters insisted that we didn’t know for sure? That the evidence was inconclusive, the scienceuncertain? That t...
Of all thecomponents of a good night’s sleep, dreams seem to be least within our control. In dreams, awindow opens into a world where logic is suspended and dead people speak. Acentury ago, Freud form...
Americans no longerexpect public figures, whether in speech or in writing, to command the Englishlanguage with skill and gift. Nor do they aspire to such command themselves. Inhis latest book, Doing O...