In 1996 Trainspotting was the biggest thing in British culture. Brilliantly and aggressively marketed, it crossed into the mainstream despite being a black comedy set against the backdrop of heroin addiction in Edinburgh. Produced by Andrew Macdonald, scripted by John Hodge and directed by Danny Boyle, the team behind Shallow Grave (1994), Trainspotting was an adaptation of Irvine Welsh's barbed novel of the same title. The film is crucial for understanding Briti...

In the mid-1950s C.P. Snow began his campaign against the 'two cultures' - the debilitating divide, as he saw it, between traditional 'literary intellectual' culture, and the culture of the sciences, urging in its place a 'third culture' which would draw upon and integrate the resources of disciplines spanning the natural and social sciences, the arts and the humanities. Murray Smith argues that, with the ever-increasing influence of evolutionary theory and neuroscience, and the pervasive ...

Characters - those fictional agents populating the fictional worlds we spend so much time absorbed in - are ubiquitous in our lives. We track their fortunes, judge their actions, and respond to them with anger, amusement, and affection - indeed the whole palette of human emotions. Powerfully drawn characters transcend their stories, entering into our imaginations and deliberations about the actual world, acting as analogies and points of reference. And yet there has been remarkably little ...

This book is best used in conjunction with the youtube videos found at youtube.com/user/RobertMurraySmith where I will be happy to answer any questions you may have. The electrochemical supercapacitor is an emerging technology that promises to play an important role in meeting the demands of electronic devices and systems both now and in the future. This book traces the history of the development of the technology, and explores the principles and theory of operation as well as giving some ...

A deliciously wicked comedy that proves that the female of the species is not only deadlier, but funnier than the male. From the author of the West End-hit, Honour.Thirty years ago Margot Mason, pioneer of the 1970's Women's Liberation movement and fearless academic, wrote her groundbreaking work, The Cerebral Vagina. Numerous best-sellers and international adulation followed, but now she has writer's block.As she sits in her country house struggling with ...

Graphene is a two dimensional material consisting of a single layer of carbon atoms arranged in a honeycomb or chicken wire structure. It is the thinnest material known to man and yet is also one of the strongest materials there is. It conducts electricity as well as copper and is better than all other materials as a conductor of heat. Graphene is almost completely transparent, yet so dense that even the smallest of atoms cannot pass through it.Being such a fascinating material lots...

This book describes the basics of the Stirling engine, as well as some of the most promising alternative models, how to go about building them and how they can be used to generate power for home use. Home power generation is not new. You can buy home generator kits and solar panels by the ton. The main problem is they cost so much. The Stirling is astonishingly easy to make and can be built from scrap or commonly found components at a fraction of the cost of a home solar kit and yet produc...

Bioplastics is one of those areas that the home inventor has the advantage. The raw materials are cheap, readily available and easy to work with. There has been relatively little study done so far as the field is still quite new and there are a significant amount of discoveries to be made.What you have to realise here is that you are not attempting to synthesise polymers from monomers or synthesis new monomers. What you are trying to do is source and extract existing polymers from b...

Soap making is really easy and there are basically only two ingredients:LardLyeIf that seems a bit complicated there is an even easy method. One tremendous secret of soap making is that soap melts! This might not seem earth shattering. But, as it melts you can use simple cheap soaps as a base for your own creations.There are certain cautions that you do need to take, however, thousands of people around the world make homemade soap every day of the year safely an...

'I'm ignited by three small words. I will not.'It's 9 October, 2012. She's been PM for two years and four months and she's worn down. She's been hounded, slurred, dissected, libelled. She's been violated over and over again by words. Julia Gillard's prime ministership was marred by the Australian media monopoly's inability to step over one thing: that she was a woman. A woman who, as a young aspiring lawyer, was told, 'When you are on your way up, don't forget the flowers ...

A spine-tingling romantic thriller.Charlotte is a Berliner through and through. Tom is a foreigner, travelling around Europe. After meeting in a bar, sparks fly between them and she invites him to spend the night at her place. As they navigate the ritual of seduction, their desire gives way to secrets that cannot be ignored and questions neither of them can answer. Does young love stand a chance against the suffocating reach of the past?Joanna Murray-Smith is one o...

Natural dyes have been used for centuries. Archaeologists have found evidence of textile dyeing dating back to the Neolithic period. In China, dyeing with plants, barks and insects has been traced back more than 5,000 years. The essential process of dyeing changed little over time. Typically, the dye material is put in a pot of water and then the textiles to be dyed are added to the pot, which is heated and stirred until the colour is transferred. Textile fibre may be dyed before spinning ...