Scientific American launched its e-Book program this summer, starting with The Science of Sports: Winning in the Olympics. Each month, we will add new titles selected from the most relevant issues facing science today. We are delighted to announce that our e-Books for the end of the summer and early fall seasons are available. Keep checking this blog for new titles. Coming soon are e-Books on the science of politics, the flu, battling the drought and more. Stay tuned! ____________________________________________ August Titles HIV and AIDS: A Global Health Pandemic Recognition of this aggressive viral disease dawned on June 5, 1981, when the Centers for Disease Control alerted the medical research community to a mysterious new illness that caused immune system failure. A year passed before it received even a name: AIDS. Reported infections skyrocketed while scientists raced to understand this quickly mutating retrovirus that can hide among our cells. Three decades later, remarkable progress has been made in treatment and prevention, but much more remains to be understood and accomplished. HIV and AIDS: A Global Health Pandemic chronicles the war against the disease from its discovery by biomedical researchers Robert Gallo and Luc Montagnier to the latest advances in gene editing and potential drug targets. Articles explore where the disease came from, how it spreads, the search for a vaccine and cultural and sociological factors. Readers may explore not only an authoritative record of the unprecedented global response to a new infectious agent that exploded to become a pandemic, but also an essential source to understanding the biomedical effort to end the HIV/AIDS crisis once and for all. HIV and AIDS: A Global Health Pandemic is available at most e-Book retailers, including: Amazon: Apple:   Exploring Mars: Secrets of the Red Planet Our nearest planetary neighbor has been the subject of endless fascination and wide-ranging theories throughout history. Is there life on Mars? Was there ever life on Mars? What was the atmosphere like thousands or millions of years ago? From Percival Lowell, who built his own observatory so he could dedicate himself to studying the red planet, to NASA landing the car-sized Opportunity rover in 2012, this e-Book, Exploring Mars: Secrets of the Red Planet, traces Scientific American's coverage of the observation and exploration of Mars. The first section outlines early 20th century theories about Mars, including the possibility of an intricate canal system built by an intelligent species. Once the space probes enter the picture, most of those ideas were debunked, but even more questions arose. The second section covers current missions, which found evidence of ancient oceans and a thicker atmosphere that has since been lost. The third section raises even more exciting possibilities with ambitious plans for future missions. In this book, you'll follow these advances in astronomy and planetary science as better and better technology brings us incrementally closer to unlocking the secrets of Mars. Exploring Mars: Secrets of the Red Planet is available at most e-Book retailers, including: Amazon: Apple: ____________________________________________ September Titles The Science of Education: Back to School Pell Grants, charter schools, home schooling, SATs, report cards, and yes, even permanent records. the language of education is familiar to most everyone, but the science of education is much more elusive. Educators, academics and scientists have struggled with issues like how to make learning approachable yet challenging, what to include in the curriculum and when, what the optimal class size is and so on. In this collection Scientific American explores the many, many ways that learning is also a scientific process and offers the latest theories of teaching and learning. Section 1, The Lesson Plan, begins with how children learn, including an eye-opening piece by Scientific American Editor Ingrid Wickelgren on how honing certain psychological skills not only enhances learning but helps kids fight frustration and ward off stress. Section 2 focuses on the three Rs, including the relationship between math and language skills and effective methods to teach reading. Section 3 offers insight into the special requirements of gifted children, while sections 4 and 5 discuss the classroom itself, delving into class size and roles of teachers and parents. Finally, the book closes with an issue near and dear to Scientific American: the importance of improving science education. What is the best method to teach science? How do children think and acquire knowledge? What policy changes should be made at state and federal levels to improve the quality of education? Science in education is far more than a subject--it is an approach, an aid, and a resource. In this anthology, Scientific American has gathered some of its best reporting on the challenges, successes and the execution of a scientific approach to education. Together, they help construct a path for success for the next generation. The Science of Education: Back to School is available at most e-Book retailers, including: Amazon: Apple:   The Higgs Boson: Searching for God As the old adage goes, where there's smoke, there's fire. Where there is effect, there must be cause. The planet Neptune was found in 1846 because the mathematics of Newton's laws, when applied to the orbit of Uranus, said some massive body had to be there. Astronomers eventually found it, using the best telescopes available to peer into the sky. This same logic is applied to the search for the Higgs boson. One consequence of the prevailing theory of physics, called the Standard Model, is that there has to be some field that gives particles their particular masses. With that there has to be a corresponding particle, made by creating waves in the field, and this is the Higgs boson, the so-called God particle. This book chronicles the ongoing search--and demonstrates the power of a good theory. Based on the Standard Model, physicists believed something had to be there, but it wasn't until the Large Hadron Collider was built that anyone could see evidence of the Higgs--and finally in July 2012, they did. A Higgs-like particle was found near the energies scientists expected to find it. Now, armed with better evidence and better questions, the scientific process continues. This book gathers the best reporting and analysis from Scientific American to explain that process--the theories, the search, the ongoing questions. In essence, everything you need to know to separate Higgs from hype. The Higgs Boson: Searching for God is available at most e-Book retailers, including: Amazon: Apple: