New to the Third Edition: New or expanded sections covering: Pandemic Flu Response to Hurricane Katrina FDA Regulation of Tobacco Promoting Physical Activity Poisoning (now the #2 cause of injury death) Nonfatal Traumatic Brain Injuries National Children's Study Coal Ash and other unregulated waste from power plants Medical errors Information Technology New information/discussion on: H1N1 swine flu Conflicts of interest in drug trials Problems in planning for the 2010 census Genomic medicine Cell phones/texting while driving National birth defects prevention study The new HPV vaccine controversy Lead paint in toys imported from china Bisphenol A (BPA) and phthalates The recent Salmonella outbreak in Peanut Butter Contaminated drug imports from China Managed care efforts to control medical costs Evaluation of Healthy People 2010 and planning for Healthy People 2020 New examples including: Andrew Speaker/Extremely Drug Resistant (XDR) Tuberculosis Football players and increased risk for dementia later in life.

Brief text explores how soil is formed, its layers, and its importance as a natural resource that living things need to survive.

Wall Street Journal Bestseller New York Times bestselling author Dan Heath explores how to prevent problems before they happen, drawing on insights from hundreds of interviews with unconventional problem solvers. So often in life, we get stuck in a cycle of response. We put out fires. We deal with emergencies. We stay downstream, handling one problem after another, but we never make our way upstream to fix the systems that caused the problems. Cops chase robbers, doctors treat patients with chronic illnesses, and call-center reps address customer complaints. But many crimes, chronic illnesses, and customer complaints are preventable. So why do our efforts skew so heavily toward reaction rather than prevention? Upstream probes the psychological forces that push us downstream—including “problem blindness,” which can leave us oblivious to serious problems in our midst. And Heath introduces us to the thinkers who have overcome these obstacles and scored massive victories by switching to an upstream mindset. One online travel website prevented twenty million customer service calls every year by making some simple tweaks to its booking system. A major urban school district cut its dropout rate in half after it figured out that it could predict which students would drop out—as early as the ninth grade. A European nation almost eliminated teenage alcohol and drug abuse by deliberately changing the nation’s culture. And one EMS system accelerated the emergency-response time of its ambulances by using data to predict where 911 calls would emerge—and forward-deploying its ambulances to stand by in those areas. Upstream delivers practical solutions for preventing problems rather than reacting to them. How many problems in our lives and in society are we tolerating simply because we’ve forgotten that we can fix them?