Roger Highfield

The visionary science behind the digital human twins that will enhance our health and our futureVirtual You is a panoramic account of efforts by scientists around the world to build digital twins of human beings, from cells and tissues to organs and whole bodies. These virtual copies will usher in a new era of personalized medicine, one in which your digital twin can help predict your risk of disease, participate in virtual drug trials, shed light on the diet and lifestyle changes that are best for you, and help identify therapies to enhance your well-being and extend your lifespan—but thorny challenges remain.In this deeply illuminating book, Peter Coveney and Roger Highfield reveal what it will take to build a virtual, functional copy of a person in five steps. Along the way, they take you on a fantastic voyage through the complexity of the human body, describing the latest scientific and technological advances—from multiscale modeling to extraordinary new forms of computing—that will make “virtual you” a reality, while also considering the ethical questions inherent to realizing truly predictive medicine.With an incisive foreword by Nobel Prize–winning biologist Venki Ramakrishnan, Virtual You is science at its most astounding, showing how our virtual twins and even whole populations of virtual humans promise to transform our health and our lives in the coming decades.

"This sumptuously illustrated celebration of Hawking's life captures perfectly its depth and breadth." - Marcus Chown -- A behind-the-scenes tour of the inner sanctum of one of the world's most prominent scientific thinkers. In 2021, The Science Museum made a once-in-a-lifetime acquisition of the contents of Stephen Hawking's office. This book delves into that remarkable collection, using the seminal papers, items, and curiosities in his office to explain his theories and reveal more about one of the greatest minds in modern science. It's an unprecedented glimpse into the life of the best-known scientist of modern times. Artifacts include: A Simpsons bomber jacket gifted to him following his appearance on the showA copy of Hawking's PhD thesis: Properties of an Expanding UniverseSingularities and the Geometry of Space, written at the beginning of his vital collaboration with Roger PenroseHis blackboard, where he debated ideas and doodled with his contemporariesScientific bets made with colleagues to prove (and sometimes disprove) his theoriesHis Permobil F3 wheelchair and communications systemsHawking's Franklin medal and his CBE"In this unique book, Roger Highfield's clear expositions of Stephen Hawking's ideas are supplemented by fascinating illustrations that convey how he lived and worked. It's a beautifully-presented celebration of Stephen's amazing life - how his insights and discoveries were achieved against heavy odds." - Martin Rees, Baron Rees of Ludlow and Astronomer Royal

The visionary science behind the digital human twins that will enhance our health and our futureVirtual You is a panoramic account of efforts by scientists around the world to build digital twins of human beings, from cells and tissues to organs and whole bodies. These virtual copies will usher in a new era of personalized medicine, one in which your digital twin can help predict your risk of disease, participate in virtual drug trials, shed light on the diet and lifestyle changes that are best for you, and help identify therapies to enhance your well-being and extend your lifespan—but thorny challenges remain.In this deeply illuminating book, Peter Coveney and Roger Highfield reveal what it will take to build a virtual, functional copy of a person in five steps. Along the way, they take you on a fantastic voyage through the complexity of the human body, describing the latest scientific and technological advances—from multiscale modeling to extraordinary new forms of computing—that will make “virtual you” a reality, while also considering the ethical questions inherent to realizing truly predictive medicine.With an incisive foreword by Nobel Prize–winning biologist Venki Ramakrishnan, Virtual You is science at its most astounding, showing how our virtual twins and even whole populations of virtual humans promise to transform our health and our lives in the coming decades.

'Quite simply the best book about science and life that I have ever read' - Alice Roberts How does life begin? What drives a newly fertilized egg to keep dividing and growing until it becomes 40 trillion cells, a greater number than stars in the galaxy? How do these cells know how to make a human, from lips to heart to toes? How does your body build itself?Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz was pregnant at 42 when a routine genetic test came back with that dreaded word: abnormal. A quarter of sampled cells contained abnormalities and she was warned her baby had an increased risk of being miscarried or born with birth defects. Six months later she gave birth to a healthy baby boy and her research on mice embryos went on to prove that – as she had suspected – the embryo has an amazing and previously unknown ability to correct abnormal cells at an early stage of its development. The Dance of Life will take you inside the incredible world of life just as it begins and reveal the wonder of the earliest and most profound moments in how we become human. Through Magda’s trailblazing research as a professor at Cambridge – where she has doubled the survival time of human embryos in the laboratory, and made the first artificial embryo-like structures from stem cells – you’ll discover how early life is programmed to repair and organise itself, what this means for the future of pregnancy, and how we might one day solve IVF disorders, prevent miscarriages and learn more about the dance of life as it starts to take shape.The Dance of Life is a moving celebration of the balletic beauty of life’s beginnings.

A renowned biologist's cutting-edge and unconventional examination of human reproduction and embryo research Scientists have long struggled to make pregnancy easier, safer, and more successful. In The Dance of Life, developmental and stem-cell biologist Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz takes us to the front lines of efforts to understand the creation of a human life. She has spent two decades unraveling the mysteries of development, as a simple fertilized egg becomes a complex human being of forty trillion cells. Zernicka-Goetz's work is both incredibly practical and astonishingly vast: her groundbreaking experiments with mouse, human, and artificial embryo models give hope to how more women can sustain viable pregnancies. Set at the intersection of science's greatest powers and humanity's greatest concern, The Dance of Life is a revelatory account of the future of fertility -- and life itself.

A renowned biologist's cutting-edge and unconventional examination of human reproduction and embryo research Scientists have long struggled to make pregnancy easier, safer, and more successful. In The Dance of Life, developmental and stem-cell biologist Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz takes us to the front lines of efforts to understand the creation of a human life. She has spent two decades unraveling the mysteries of development, as a simple fertilized egg becomes a complex human being of forty trillion cells. Zernicka-Goetz's work is both incredibly practical and astonishingly vast: her groundbreaking experiments with mouse, human, and artificial embryo models give hope to how more women can sustain viable pregnancies. Set at the intersection of science's greatest powers and humanity's greatest concern, The Dance of Life is a revelatory account of the future of fertility -- and life itself.

This book provides a timely and important discussion of the potential value of cloning and of the ethical choices that this radical new technology has raised, including the issues surrounding the current status of stem-cell research. As leader of the team that produced Dolly, the first animal to be cloned from an adult cell, Ian Wilmut has played a unique role both in the science of cloning and the ensuing international debate about its implications. He has testified before parliamentary and congressional committees in the UK, France and the US and given many public lectures on the subject, in addition to participating in numerous panel discussions on the uses of cloning. AFTER DOLLY: THE USES AND MISUSES OF HUMAN CLONING distils the essence of the current scientific and social policy discussions around these critically important issues and presents them in an understandable manner so the educated reader can have an informed opinion.

"Exactly the message we need to counter the mythology of the 'rugged individual'" (Bill Moyers, Progressive Reader).Martin Nowak, one of the world's experts on evolution and game theory, working here with bestselling science writer Roger Highfield, turns an important aspect of evolutionary theory on its head to explain why cooperation, not competition, has always been the key to the evolution of complexity. In his first book written for a wide audience, this hugely influential scientist explains his cutting-edge research into the mysteries of cooperation, from the rise of multicellular life to Good Samaritans, and from cancer treatment to the success of large companies. With wit and clarity, and an eye to its huge implications, Nowak and Highfield make the case that cooperation, not competition, is the defining human trait. SuperCooperators will expand our understanding of evolution and provoke debate for years to come.

Beyond The Survival of the Fittest: Why Cooperation, not Competition, is the Key to LifeIf life is about survival of the fittest, then why would we risk our own life to jump into a river to save a stranger? Some people argue that issues such as charity, fairness, forgiveness and cooperation are evolutionary loose ends, side issues that are of little consequence. But as Harvard's celebrated evolutionary biologist Martin Nowak explains in this groundbreaking and controversial book, cooperation is central to the four-billion-year-old puzzle of life. Indeed, it is cooperation not competition that is the defining human trait.

A timely investigation into the ethics, history, and potential of human cloning from Professor Ian Wilmut, who shocked scientists, ethicists, and the public in 1997 when his team unveiled Dolly that very special sheep who was cloned from a mammary cell. With award-winning science journalist Roger Highfield, Wilmut explains how Dolly launched a medical revolution in which cloning is now used to make stem cells that promise effective treatments for many major illnesses. Dolly's birth also unleashed an avalanche of speculation about the eventuality of cloning babies, which Wilmut strongly opposes. However, he does believe that scientists should one day be allowed to combine the cloning of human embryos with genetic modification to free families from serious hereditary disease. In effect, he is proposing the creation of genetically altered humans."

Behind the magic of Harry Potter--a witty and illuminating look at the scientific principles, theories, and assumptions of the boy wizard's world, newly come to life again in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child and the upcoming film Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald Can Fluffy the three-headed dog be explained by advances in molecular biology? Could the discovery of cosmic "gravity-shielding effects" unlock the secret to the Nimbus 2000 broomstick's ability to fly? Is the griffin really none other than the dinosaur Protoceratops? Roger Highfield, author of the critically acclaimed The Physics of Christmas, explores the fascinating links between magic and science to reveal that much of what strikes us as supremely strange in the Potter books can actually be explained by the conjurings of the scientific mind. This is the perfect guide for parents who want to teach their children science through their favorite adventures as well as for the millions of adult fans of the series intrigued by its marvels and mysteries. - An ALA Booklist Editors' Choice -

An irresistible stocking-filler: a hilarious romp through the science of Christmas.How does snow form? Why are we always depressed after Christmas? How does Santa manage to deliver all those presents in one night? (He has, in fact, little over two ten-thousandths of a second to get between each of the 842 million households he must visit.) This book contains information on how drugs might make us see flying reindeer, how pollution is affecting the shape of Christmas trees and the intriguing correlation between the length of our Christmas card list and brain size.

Can reindeer fly? Could scientists clone the perfect Christmas tree? How does Santa manage to deliver presents to an estimated 824 million households in a single night? These are among the questions explored in an irresistibly witty book that illuminates the cherished rituals, legends, and icons of Christmas from a unique and fascinating perspective: science. "Excellent entertainment for the Christmas connoisseurs in your circle." --USA Today

"SCIENCE JOURNALISM AT ITS BEST. . . An impeccably researched, amazingly up-to-date, crisply written and well-illustrated survey."--NatureAt the cutting edge of the sciences, a dynamic new concept is emerging: complexity. In this groundbreaking new book, Peter Coveney and Roger Highfield explore how complexity in mathematics, physics, biology, chemistry, and even the social sciences is transforming not only the way we think about the universe, but also the very assumptions that underlie conventional science. Complexity is a watchword for a new way of thinking about the behavior of interacting units, whether they are atoms, ants in a colony, or neurons firing in a human brain. The rise of the electronic computer provided both the key and the catalyst to our exploration of complexity. A new generation of computers that runs on light and exploits the bizarre properties of quantum mechanics promises to deepen our understanding still further. The advances we have already witnessed are spectacular. The authors take us inside laboratories where scientists are evolving the genetic molecules that enabled life to emerge on earth and generating universes teeming with virtual creatures in cyber-space. We witness the utterly realistic behavior of a school of virtual fish--computer-generated replicas that have been trained to swim gracefully, hunt for food, and scatter at the approach of a leopard shark. Compelling in its clarity, far-reaching in its implications, vibrant with the excitement of new discovery, Frontiers of Complexity is an arresting account of how far science has come in the past fifty years and an essential guide to the rapidly approaching future." A] MARVELOUS AND COMPREHENSIVE WORK . . . Virtually any scientist or interested lay reader will find this book engrossing, edifying and inspiring."--Publishers Weekly (starred review)