Start here · Essential guide
How the Five Senses Work
A plain-language overview of how sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch turn physical signals into nerve impulses that the brain reads as experience.
Body and Mind
How we sense the world, inherit traits and defend against disease.
Start here · Essential guide
A plain-language overview of how sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch turn physical signals into nerve impulses that the brain reads as experience.
General information on what antibiotics target inside bacteria, why they do not work on viruses, and how antibiotic resistance evolves and spreads.
Follow food from the mouth through the stomach and intestines, and see how enzymes, bile and the gut lining break it down and absorb nutrients.
An introduction to the layers of the immune system, from skin and inflammation to white blood cells, antibodies and immune memory, in plain language.
Learn the basics of genetics: how genes and alleles are passed from parents, what dominant and recessive mean, and why children resemble their parents.
Follow light through the cornea, lens and retina, and see how rods, cones and the brain turn it into the images we see, plus why vision sometimes blurs.
See how the outer, middle and inner ear turn sound vibrations into nerve signals, and how the brain interprets pitch and loudness.
A plain-language look at DNA: the double helix, the four-letter code, how genes are used to make proteins, and what mutations are.
An explainer on the microbes living in the digestive tract, what they are known to do, and the open questions that researchers are still working on.
What scientists know about dreaming and REM sleep, and the leading theories about why we dream, from memory to emotion, none of which is settled.
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