Dr. Steven J. Fisher is a young and brilliant biochemist (special subject: the female orgasm). He's invented a Viagra-like pill for women—now he just needs his results to be perfect. Annie is an orgasmically-challenged arts student (special subject: Victorian semicolons). She's just volunteered to be one of Fisher's case studies—but for some reason his miracle treatment isn't working. As scientist and subject bond over romantic meals lit by the flickering glow of a Bunsen burner, Dr. Fisher is surprised to find his feelings taking a most unscientifc turn. . . What if love is one thing science can't explain?
What if there were a pill for love? Or an anti-love drug, designed to help us break up? This controversial and timely new book argues that recent medical advances have brought chemical control of our romantic lives well within our grasp. Substances affecting love and relationships, whether prescribed by doctors or even illicitly administered, are not some far-off speculation – indeed our most intimate connections are already being influenced by pills we take for other purposes, such as antidepressants. Treatments involving certain psychoactive substances, including MDMA—the active ingredient in Ecstasy—might soon exist to encourage feelings of love and help ordinary couples work through relationship difficulties. Others may ease a breakup or soothe feelings of rejection. Such substances could have transformative implications for how we think about and experience love. This brilliant intervention into the debate builds a case for conducting further research into "love drugs" and "anti-love drugs" and explores their ethical implications for individuals and society. Rich in anecdotal evidence and case-studies, the book offers a highly readable insight into a cutting-edge field of medical research that could have profound effects on us all. Will relationships be the same in the future? Will we still marry? It may be up to you to decide whether you want a chemical romance.
“This eloquent, elegant book thoughtfully plumbs the . . . consequences of our dependence on plastics” (The Boston Globe, A Best Nonfiction Book of 2011). From pacemakers to disposable bags, plastic built the modern world. But a century into our love affair, we’re starting to realize it’s not such a healthy relationship. As journalist Susan Freinkel points out in this eye-opening book, we’re at a crisis point. Plastics draw on dwindling fossil fuels, leach harmful chemicals, litter landscapes, and destroy marine life. We’re drowning in the stuff, and we need to start making some hard choices. Freinkel tells her story through eight familiar plastic objects: a comb, a chair, a Frisbee, an IV bag, a disposable lighter, a grocery bag, a soda bottle, and a credit card. With a blend of lively anecdotes and analysis, she sifts through scientific studies and economic data, reporting from China and across the United States to assess the real impact of plastic on our lives. Her conclusion is severe, but not without hope. Plastic points the way toward a new creative partnership with the material we love, hate, and can’t seem to live without. “When you write about something so ubiquitous as plastic, you must be prepared to write in several modes, and Freinkel rises to this task. . . . She manages to render the most dull chemical reaction into vigorous, breathless sentences.” —SF Gate “Freinkel’s smart, well-written analysis of this love-hate relationship is likely to make plastic lovers take pause, plastic haters reluctantly realize its value, and all of us understand the importance of individual action, political will, and technological innovation in weaning us off our addiction to synthetics.” —Publishers Weekly “A compulsively interesting story. Buy it (with cash).” —Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature “What a great read—rigorous, smart, inspiring, and as seductive as plastic itself.” —Karim Rashid, designer
In concise and distilled prose, Lemus presents a collection of still lifes, landscapes, and portraits of a challenging year that threatened all she loved most. “A love story that’s profoundly rooted in the emotional, geographical, and sociopolitical terrain of today . . . Like song lyrics or snapshots, her wisps and fragments of language take on a coded and otherworldly atmosphere, one that conveys wonder and dread almost subliminally . . . Particulate Matter is a moving example of how to write about climate change, not didactically, but with the deep impact of both personal loss and literary elegance.” —NPR Books “A tiny, powerful flame of a book. Lemus’ writing lands like sparks and ash, fragmented and tinged with grief . . . Particulate Matter is . . . an exploration of the simultaneity of delight, yearning, grief and confusion of being in love with a person and a place. Of being alive at all.” —San Francisco Chronicle Particulate Matter is the story of a year in Felicia Luna Lemus’s marriage when the world turned upside down. It’s set in Los Angeles, and it’s about love and crisis, loss and grief, the city and the ocean, ancestral ghosts and history haunting. Nature herself seemed to howl. Fires raged and covered the house Lemus and her spouse shared in ash. Everything crystallized. It was the most challenging and terrifying time she had ever experienced, and yet it was also a time when the sublime beauty of the everyday shone through with particular power and presence.
Presents a picture of our world and the forces that threaten its existence. It gives a prescription for a cure and cause for hope, rallying readers to action with the contention that our fight for the planet will draw its strength from love for the Earth itself.
In this charming, boy-meets-girl-in-a-sex-study love story, a clueless scientist falls for his most incurable patient and learns that romance is far more than a simple solution to a chemical equation. Dr. Steven J. Fisher is fascinated by the elusive nature of the female orgasm, passionately proclaiming it “the last great unexplored territory.” But for all of his scientific candor about human sexuality in the lab, Dr. Fisher is really just a shy chemist who is a beginner in the ways of love. Trock, a major pharmaceutical company, has sponsored his Oxford research team to develop the first pill to cure Female Sexual Dysfunction, and Dr. Fisher is just weeks away from launching his miracle cure at their upcoming conference. When a beautiful and brilliant (and orgasmically challenged) Ph.D. student named Annie begins participating in his study, everything Dr. Fisher thinks he knows about women is turned on its head—and his research becomes more and more complicated with the addition of her perplexing data. Is it the pill making her feel this way, or is it love? What scientific phenomenon can explain the changes in his own feelings? With pressure mounting from the Trock, Annie’s mystery must be solved by any means possible. Cleverly presented through excerpts from Steven’s clinical study and Annie’s blog entries—Chemistry for Beginners gets to the heart of what makes us all tick, showing that love is in fact, all about chemistry.
This book presents IPQMS (Integrated Planning and Quality Management System) as a powerful management methodology. This system ensures cost-effectiveness as well as quality in the constructed project, environmental cleanups, and other sectors - providing an integrative force for essential teamwork in industry and government. This book contains business and engineering case studies, illustrating a principle, issue, or approach in making a decision. Each case study examines the spectrum of a particular project, demonstrating the interrelationships among policy makers, planners, designers, implementers, and managers in creating a project.
The Patient Will See You Now addresses the core transformational issues of health care delivery that are enabled by the recent and profound knowledge of the genome. This important and timely book explores the movement to a personalized, mission-driven health care system that is being defined and developed on a foundation of predictive approaches to health and disease management--it is a convergence of scientific knowledge about the human body and technology advances.
