How do scientists design the medicine we use to improve our lives? It turns out that many are happy accidents or overlooked mixtures of carbon and hydrogen that go on to not only improve the lives of people the world over, but become million- and billion-dollar makers for pharmaceutical companies. In Making Medicine: Surprising Stories from the History of Drug Discovery, author Keith Veroneseexamines fifteen different molecules and their unlikely discovery –or in many cases, their second discovery –en route to becoming invaluable medications. From the famous story of Alexander Fleming’s discovery of penicillin, to lesser-known stories surrounding drugs like quinine (derived from the bark of the cinchona tree and responsible for saving the lives of millions in the fight against malaria), Veronese reveals the “how” and the “who” behind the pharmaceutical breakthroughs that continue to impact our world. With subjects including cancer-fighting therapies and over-the-counter pain relievers; hair regrowth creams and antidepressants; readers will no doubt have a personal connection to at least one molecule in this book. Like all discoveries made by mankind, the stories behind these breakthroughs and their introduction to the world are often messy, sometimes controversial, and always human. Take digoxin, which correctly prescribed can help heart efficiency, but in higher doses can prove fatal –a fact known all too well by Charles Cullen, a nurse who used digoxin to kill over forty patients. Making Medicine also details how modern pharmaceutical discovery works, including the monumental challenge and accomplishment of creating a COVID-19 vaccine. This fascinating book highlights the serendipitous nature of the discovery of these miracle molecules, along with how they do (or don't) interact with the human body to produce the desired result.
How will your life change when the supply of tantalum dries up? You may have never heard of this unusual metal, but without it smartphones would be instantly less omniscient, video game systems would falter, and laptops fail. Tantalum is not alone. Rhodium. Osmium. Niobium. Such refugees from the bottom of the periodic table are key components of many consumer products like cell phones, hybrid car batteries, and flat screen televisions, as well as sophisticated medical devices and even weapon systems. Their versatile properties have led manufacturers to seek these elements out to maximize longevity, value, and efficiency, but not without a human price. In addition to explaining the chemistry behind rare earth metals, Rare delves into the economic and geopolitical issues surrounding these “conflict minerals,” blending tales of financial and political struggles with glimpses into the human lives that are shattered by the race to secure them. In the past decade, the Congo has been ravaged by tribal wars fought to obtain control of tantalum, tungsten, and tin supplies in the region, with over five million people dying at the crossroads of supply and demand. A burgeoning black market in China, Africa, and India is propped up by school-age children retrieving and purifying these metals while risking their lives and health in the process. Fears of future political struggles inside China, the world’s largest supplier of these metals, have already sent the United States, Great Britain, and Japan racing to find alternative sources. Will scientists be able to create lab substitutes for some or all of these metals? Will Afghanistan be the next big supplier of rare metals? What happens when the limited supply runs out? Whatever the answers, it is clear that our modern lifestyle, dependent on technology, is far from stable.
Keith Haring is synonymous with the downtown New York art scene of the 1980's. His artwork-with its simple, bold lines and dynamic figures in motion-filtered in to the world's consciousness and is still instantly recognizable, twenty years after his death. This Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition features ninety black-and-white images of classic artwork and never-before-published Polaroid images, and is a remarkable glimpse of a man who, in his quest to become an artist, instead became an icon. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
To what extent can one speak of 'the Renaissance' in terms of grammar: did the medieval curricular subject grammatica survive into the Renaissance unchanged or was it transformed by the pedagogical programme of the humanists? The studies collected here focus on this question and trace the development of humanistic approaches to grammar. The first section consists of essays on the general characteristics of grammar in the period and on its connections with rhetoric. The following parts are devoted to three major grammatical writers: Guarino Veronese (1374-1460), Niccolò Perotti (1419/1420-1480), and Antonio de Nebrija (1441/1444?-1522). There is finally a section dealing with other figures, such as the famous Lorenzo Valla (1407-1457). Professor Percival focuses throughout on widely disseminated textbooks, beginning with the earliest attempt at a humanistic rejuvenation of grammar, the brief 'Regulae grammaticales' of Guarino Veronese (c. 1418), followed by Perotti's comprehensive 'Rudimenta grammatices', published in 1473 by Rome's first printers, and finally Nebrija's commercially successful 'Introductiones Latinae' (Salamanca, 1481). Nebrija's textbook proved the longest-lived, but Perotti's was also an international best-seller, going through many editions in several countries.
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