Thomas R Scott

The universe that science reveals to us can seem far outside the comfort zone of the human mind. Subjects near and far open up dizzying vistas, from the infinitesimal to the colossal. Humanity, the unlikely product of uncountable coincidences on unimaginable scales, inhabits a tumultuous universe that extends from our immediate environs to the most distant galaxies and beyond. But when the mind balks at the vertiginous complexity of the universe, science unveils the elegance amid the chaos. In this book, Thomas R. Scott ventures into the known and the unknown to explain our universe and the laws that govern it. The Universe as It Really Is begins with physics and the building blocks of the universe—time, gravity, light, and elementary particles—and chemistry’s ability to explain the interactions among them. Scott, with the assistance of James Lawrence Powell, next tours the earth and atmospheric sciences to explain the forces that shape our planet and then takes off for the stars to describe our place in the cosmos. He provides vivid introductions to our collective scientific inheritance, narrating discoveries such as the shape of the atom and the nature of the nucleus or how we use GPS to measure time and what that has to do with relativity. A clear demonstration of the power of scientific reasoning to bring the incomprehensible within our grasp, The Universe as It Really Is gives an engrossing account of just how much we do understand about the world around us.

How does the nose know what it smells? How do we taste foods? What gives foods their characteristic flavours? How do the methods of food preparation and processing change the flavours of foods? Food Flavours answers these questions and much more, in a clear and understandable manner, describing the composition of flavour compounds and the contributions they make to our sensory experiences. The book begins with the chemical reactions by which chemical compounds develop in plants, and continues through the processing and preparation of foods. It then turns to our chemical sensory systems to describe the recognition and neural processing of these compounds in the nervous system, and the reactions that we have to flavours. The way that chemical qualities give foods their characteristic flavours, and the ways various methods of food preparation and preservation affect those compounds and the resulting flavours are dealt with in detail, both from a chemical and a biological aspect. Throughout, Food Flavours provides special in-depth coverage of taste/odour physiology, and it contains a unique chapter providing a learning and problem-solving technique that will prove invaluable to students in all areas of food science, as well as in biological, organic and analytical chemistry, and will be a good addition to any food technologist's bookshelf.