The Spark of Life: Electricity in the Human Body PDF Download
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Author: Frances Ashcroft
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393089541
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 367
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Book Description
"This is a wonderful book. Frances Ashcroft has a rare gift for making difficult subjects accessible and fascinating." —Bill Bryson, author of The Body: A Guide for Occupants What happens during a heart attack? Can someone really die of fright? What is death, anyway? How does electroshock treatment affect the brain? What is consciousness? The answers to these questions lie in the electrical signals constantly traveling through our bodies, driving our thoughts, our movements, and even the beating of our hearts. The history of how scientists discovered the role of electricity in the human body is a colorful one, filled with extraordinary personalities, fierce debates, and brilliant experiments. Moreover, present-day research on electricity and ion channels has created one of the most exciting fields in science, shedding light on conditions ranging from diabetes and allergies to cystic fibrosis, migraines, and male infertility. With inimitable wit and a clear, fresh voice, award-winning researcher Frances Ashcroft weaves together compelling real-life stories with the latest scientific findings, giving us a spectacular account of the body electric.
Author: Frances Ashcroft
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393089541
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 367
Get Book Here
Book Description
"This is a wonderful book. Frances Ashcroft has a rare gift for making difficult subjects accessible and fascinating." —Bill Bryson, author of The Body: A Guide for Occupants What happens during a heart attack? Can someone really die of fright? What is death, anyway? How does electroshock treatment affect the brain? What is consciousness? The answers to these questions lie in the electrical signals constantly traveling through our bodies, driving our thoughts, our movements, and even the beating of our hearts. The history of how scientists discovered the role of electricity in the human body is a colorful one, filled with extraordinary personalities, fierce debates, and brilliant experiments. Moreover, present-day research on electricity and ion channels has created one of the most exciting fields in science, shedding light on conditions ranging from diabetes and allergies to cystic fibrosis, migraines, and male infertility. With inimitable wit and a clear, fresh voice, award-winning researcher Frances Ashcroft weaves together compelling real-life stories with the latest scientific findings, giving us a spectacular account of the body electric.
Author: Timothy J. Jorgensen
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 069124815X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 456
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Book Description
A fresh look at electricity and its powerful role in life on Earth When we think of electricity, we likely imagine the energy humming inside our home appliances or lighting up our electronic devices—or perhaps we envision the lightning-streaked clouds of a stormy sky. But electricity is more than an external source of power, heat, or illumination. Life at its essence is nothing if not electrical. The story of how we came to understand electricity’s essential role in all life is rooted in our observations of its influences on the body—influences governed by the body’s central nervous system. Spark explains the science of electricity from this fresh, biological perspective. Through vivid tales of scientists and individuals—from Benjamin Franklin to Elon Musk—Timothy Jorgensen shows how our views of electricity and the nervous system evolved in tandem, and how progress in one area enabled advancements in the other. He explains how these developments have allowed us to understand—and replicate—the ways electricity enables the body’s essential functions of sight, hearing, touch, and movement itself. Throughout, Jorgensen examines our fascination with electricity and how it can help or harm us. He explores a broad range of topics and events, including the Nobel Prize–winning discoveries of the electron and neuron, the history of experimentation involving electricity’s effects on the body, and recent breakthroughs in the use of electricity to treat disease. Filled with gripping adventures in scientific exploration, Spark offers an indispensable look at electricity, how it works, and how it animates our lives from within and without.
Author: Frances M. Ashcroft
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 1846143012
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 358
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Book Description
We are all familiar with the idea that machines are powered by electricity, but perhaps not so aware that this is also true for ourselves. The Spark of Lifeis a spectacular account of the body electric, showing how, from before conception to the last breath we draw, electrical signals in our cells are essential to everything we think and do. These signals are produced by some amazing proteins that sit at the forefront of current scientific research - the ion channels. They are found in every cell in Earth and they govern every aspect of our lives, from consciousness to sexual attraction, fighting infection, our ability to see and hear, and the beating of our hearts. Ion channels are truly the 'spark of life'. Award-winning physiologist Frances Ashcroft weaves real-life stories with the latest scientific findings to explain the fundamental role of ion channels in our bodies. What happens when you have a heart attack? Why does an electric eel not shock itself? Can someone really die of fright? Why does Viagra turn the world blue? How do cocaine, LSD and morphine work? Why do chilli peppers taste hot? How do vampire bats sense their prey? Was Mary Shelley right when she inferred that electricity is the 'Spark of Life? Frances Ashcroft explains all this and more with wit and clarity. She introduces a cast of extraordinary personalities whose work has charted the links between molecule and mind over the centuries. She recounts the scientific detective stories involved in the development of our ideas about animal electricity, and shows how these are intimately entwined with our understanding of electricity itself. And she describes how the latest advances have led to the identification, and in some cases the cure, of a new class of disease. Anyone who has ever wondered about what makes us human will find this book a revelation.
Author: Frances Ashcroft
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520234208
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 354
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Book Description
Explores the limits of human survival and the physiological adaptations that enable us to exist under extreme conditions. The author reviews limits to human life underwater, at high altitudes, at high speeds, at micro levels, and at freezing and hot temperatures.
Author: Eileen Day McKusick
Publisher: St. Martin's Essentials
ISBN: 1250262151
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 231
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Book Description
Tap into the extraordinary power of electricity to heal your body and empower your life Everything is electric. This seemingly simple observation has transformational repercussions on the way we think about and approach physical, mental, and emotional health. Electric Body, Electric Health is a manifesto for personal empowerment based on an electrical view of life. Author of Tuning the Human Biofield, Eileen Day McKusick is an expert in the emerging field of electric health and has taught thousands how to transform effortlessly through learning to “think electrically.” By illuminating the biological nature of our electrical bodies, McKusick empowers readers to clear the static, noise, and resistance from this system and experience greater energy, clarity, and order. Electric Body, Electric Health makes use of simple, easy-to-implement practices such as: - Awareness practices - Perspective shifts - Breathing practices - Simple lifestyle changes - Improved emotional management - and more... in order to help readers improve their health and enhance their daily lives. It will give you the tools to transform your relationship with your body, your mind, your emotions, and the electrical world around you.
Author: Nikola Tesla
Publisher: A Distant Mirror
ISBN:
Category : Young Adult Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 137
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Book Description
NIKOLA TESLA was a gifted electrical and mechanical engineer, and was one of the most influential inventors of the last century. Eventually holding over 700 patents, Tesla worked in a number of fields, including electricity, robotics, radar, and the wireless transmission of energy. His discoveries laid the groundwork for many of the twentieth century’s greatest technological advances. This book contains Tesla’s thoughts on humanity’s relationship with the universe, and also his explanation and scientific extrapolation on the technological advancements embodied in his work. This text, first published in Century Illustrated Magazine in June 1900, is yet another example of the genius of Nikola Tesla. CONTENTS Introduction • The onward movement of humanity• The energy of the movement• The three ways of increasing human energy 1 • The first problem: how to increase human mass• The burning of atmospheric nitrogen 2 • The second problem: how to reduce the force retarding the human mass• The art of telautomatics 3 • The third problem: how to increase the force accelerating the human mass• The harnessing of the Sun’s energy 4 • The source of human energy• The three ways of drawing energy from the Sun 5 • Great possibilities offered by iron for increasing human performance• Enormous waste in iron manufacture 6 • Economical production of iron by a new process 7• The coming of age of aluminium• The doom of the copper industry• The great civilizing potency of the new metal 8 • Efforts toward obtaining more energy from coal• Electric transmission• The gas engine• The cold-coal battery 9 • Energy from the medium• The windmill and the solar engine• Motive power from terrestrial heat• Electricity from natural sources 10 • A departure from known methods• The possibility of a ‘self-acting’ engine or machine• The ideal way of obtaining motive power 11 • First efforts to produce the self-acting engine• The mechanical oscillator• The work of Dewar and Linde• Liquid air 12 • Discovery of unexpected properties of the atmosphere• Strange experiments• Transmission of electrical energy through one wire without return• Transmission through the Earth without any wire 13 • Wireless telegraphy• The secret of tuning• Errors in the Hertzian investigations• A receiver of wonderful sensitivity 14• Development of a new principle• The electrical oscillator• Production of immense electrical movements• The Earth responds to man• Interplanetary communication now probable 15 • Transmission of electrical energy to any distance without wires now possible• The best means of increasing the force accelerating the human mass
Author: Daniel Keown
Publisher: Singing Dragon
ISBN: 0857011545
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 307
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Book Description
Challenging those who believe acupuncture to bear no relation to Western medicine, this witty, accessible and highly original book shows how Chinese medicine can explain mysteries of the body and how an integration of Chinese and Western medicine can lead to a fuller understanding of how our bodies function.
Author: J. Patrick Reilly
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1461216648
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 581
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Book Description
Electric currents and electromagnetic fields have been applied to biological systems, particularly humans, with both therapeutic and pathological results. This text discusses biological responses to electric currents and electromagnetic fields, including medical applications and shock hazards. It covers fundamental physical and engineering principles of responses to short-term electrical exposure and emphasises human reactions, although animal responses are considered as well, and the treatment covers reactions from the just-detectable to the clearly detrimental. An important new chapter discusses standards for human exposure to electromagnetic fields and electric current and demonstrates how these standards have been developed using the principles treated in earlier chapters.
Author: Tom McNichol
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1118047028
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 187
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Book Description
AC/DC tells the little-known story of how Thomas Edison wrongly bet in the fierce war between supporters of alternating current and direct current. The savagery of this electrical battle can hardly be imagined today. The showdown between AC and DC began as a rather straightforward conflict between technical standards, a battle of competing methods to deliver essentially the same product, electricity. But the skirmish soon metastasized into something bigger and darker. In the AC/DC battle, the worst aspects of human nature somehow got caught up in the wires; a silent, deadly flow of arrogance, vanity, and cruelty. Following the path of least resistance, the war of currents soon settled around that most primal of human emotions: fear. AC/DC serves as an object lesson in bad business strategy and poor decision making. Edison's inability to see his mistake was a key factor in his loss of control over the ?operating system? for his future inventions?not to mention the company he founded, General Electric.
Author: Stephanie O'Rourke
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316519023
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 273
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Book Description
Innovative, alternative account of romanticism, exploring how art and science together contested the evidentiary authority of the human body.
