Genetic Justice: DNA Data Banks, Criminal Investigations, and Civil Liberties

Sheldon Krimsky and Tania Simoncelli. Columbia University Press 448 pp. $29.95 (2010)

Governments worldwide are increasingly storing the DNA profiles of their populations. Medical ethics advisers Sheldon Krimsky and Tania Simoncelli describe the US situation, placing those trends in context with precedents in other nations. They examine ethical issues such as holding DNA from juveniles and broadening searches to include a suspect's family members. The fallibility of DNA profiling, they suggest, has major implications for criminal justice.

Networks of the Brain

  • Olaf Sporns
The MIT Press 375 pp. $40 (2010)

The study of brain connectivity increasingly borrows from theories of complex systems. Points of contact between these disciplines are explored in this wide-ranging book by neuroscientist Olaf Sporns. From individual cells and synapses to whole cognitive systems, he explains how networks connect levels of organization in the brain and how their structures link to brain function. As well as documenting the latest developments — using an informal approach that does not rely on mathematics — he traces the historical roots of the field.

The Cuban Cure: Reason and Resistance in Global Science

  • Simon M. Reid-Henry
University Of Chicago Press 216 pp. $39 (2010)

Since Fidel Castro took over the nation in 1959, Cuba has taken science seriously. Its biotechnology programme is especially advanced — it has produced a meningitis B vaccine and cutting-edge cancer therapies despite poverty and a trade embargo. Geographer Simon M. Reid-Henry examines the culture clashes that arise when biomedical scientists from Cuba work on the international stage and compete with big pharma. He asks what lessons Cuba holds for the science bases of other developing countries.

Once Before Time: A Whole Story of the Universe

  • Martin Bojowald
Knopf 320 pp. $27.95 (2010)

The origin of the Universe before the Big Bang is difficult to model mathematically. Physicist Martin Bojowald describes his own work to overcome this problem using loop quantum cosmology — a model he developed a decade ago based on the theory of loop quantum gravity, which merges general relativity and quantum mechanics. He explains his search for testable hypotheses. If verified, these might show that the Big Bang was not a one-off event, but one of many recyclings of a Universe that alternately swells and contracts.

From Man to Ape: Darwinism in Argentina, 1870–1920

Adriana Novoa and Alex Levine. University Of Chicago Press 328 pp. $49 (2010)

Charles Darwin's ideas about evolution were received differently in Latin America than elsewhere. Focusing on Darwin's use of analogies, science philosophers Adriana Novoa and Alex Levine explore how Argentina's culture influenced interpretations of evolution in the nineteenth century. Darwin's 'tree of life' became a 'tree of death' in the hands of one local scientist. Argentina's diverse peoples and unusual fossils also contributed alternative views of nature.