Passages of autobiography and anecdote enliven the hard science, but the book's real drama is at a cellular level.

ECONOMIST: When memory fails

At a cellular level, he surmised, we are affected by what we eat, so he performed autopsies on two sets of humans.

NPR: How A-Bomb Testing Changed Our Trees

So much goes on at a cellular level when you float.

CNN: Floating to good health

Tracking these cells in animals at a cellular level over a whole year allowed the scientists to come up with mathematical models to predict what happens to our skin over long periods.

BBC: NEWS | Health | Skin cell find offers cancer clue

While it hasn't cured her symptoms, the treatment was a success at the cellular level, as her bone marrow now produces the collagen that she had been unable to make on her own.

CNN: A child's struggle inspires drive for cure

But if the propensity to addiction is also genetically controlled in humans, it could provide a mechanism to address the problem at the cellular level, by regulating tyramine or its vertebrate equivalent.

ECONOMIST: Flying high