The Nature of the Beast
Most of what we know about emotions is unreliable. It's gathered either by asking people about their feelings, or by putting them in an MRI and studying how they react to pretend situations, to which they are unlikely to respond as they would in real life. If we're ever going to understand how emotions work, we need a better way of studying them. In The Nature of the Beast, pioneering neuroscientist David J. Anderson reveals how he has begun to solve this problem. He and his team have figured out how to study the brain activity of animals as they navigate real-life scenarios, like foraging, fleeing a predator, or competing for a mate. His research has revolutionized what we know about animal fear and aggression. Here, he explains what his research can teach us about human behavior, offering new insights into why isolation makes us more aggressive, how sex and violence connect, and whether there's a link between aggression and mental illness. Part How Emotions Are Made, part Mama's Last Hug, The Nature of the Beast reconceptualizes how the brain regulates emotions--and explains why we have them at all.
The Nature of the Beast
The Nature of the Beast
The werewolf in popular fiction has begun to change rapidly. Literary critics have observed this development and its impact on the werewolf in fiction, with theorists arguing that the modern werewolf offers new possibilities about how we view identity and the self. Although this monograph is preoccupied with the same concerns, it represents a departure from other critical works by analysing the werewolf’s subjectivity/identity as a work-in-progress, where the fixed and final form is yet to be arrived at – and may never be fully accomplished. Using the critical theories of Deleuze and Guattari and their concepts of ‘multiplicities’ and ‘becoming’, this work argues that the werewolf is in a state of constant evolution as it develops new modes of being in popular fiction. Following on from this examination of lycanthropic subjectivity, the book goes on to examine the significant developments that have resulted from the advent of the werewolf as subject, few of which have received any sustained critical attention to date.
The Nature of the Beast
Professor Bryan Sykes, the world's leading expert on human genetics, set a goal to locate and analyse as many DNA samples as possible with links to the yeti. In doing so, he found himself entering a strange world of mystery and sensationalism, fraud and obsession and even the supernatural. Protected by the ruthless vigour of genetic analysis he was able to listen to the stories of the yeti without having to form an opinion. The only opinion that mattered was the DNA. Three hair samples from the miogi, the Bhutanese yeti are the cause of the investigation. The hairs did not surrender their secrets easily, but eventually two were identified as known species of bear. The third remained a mystery. One of the many theories to account for the yeti legend is that there were small groups of Neanderthals that had managed to survive until recent times. If so, would it be possible to detect recent interbreeding between our own species and Neanderthals in the genomes of indigenous people living in remote regions? Professor Sykes has made some surprising and significant discoveries. Discoveries that could change our understanding of human origins.
Nature of the Beast
She doesn't age. She doesn't die. She can transform at will into a deadly beast. But her immortality comes at a high price: she must kill to maintain her sanity, or else risk flying into a bloodthirsty rage. Establishing herself as an assassin for hire, she only accepts contracts for targets who deserve to die. Her system works to keep the bloodlust at bay. Until she is hired for the grandest job yet. Easy is a city overrun with violent, powerful gangs in post World War 3 America. Her contract is anything but easy: clean up the city and make it safe for civilians again. To accomplish this goal, she will have to turn the gangs against each other, while struggling to control her bloodlust ... and her attraction to the sociopathic second-in-command of the most vicious gang in town. Nothing in Easy is easy.
