Biology

An important look at a groundbreaking forty-year study of Darwin's finches Renowned evolutionary biologists Peter and Rosemary Grant have produced landmark studies of the Galápagos finches first made famous by Charles Darwin. In How and Why Species Multiply, they offered a complete evolutionary history of Darwin's finches since their origin almost three million years ago. Now, in their richly illustrated new book, 40 Years of Evolution, the authors turn their attention to events taking place on a contemporary scale.

Bestselling author of Broken Ground “offers fascinating glimpses” into the real world of criminal forensics from its beginnings to the modern day (The Boston Globe). The dead can tell us all about themselves: where they came from, how they lived, how they died, and, of course, who killed them. Using the messages left by a corpse, a crime scene, or the faintest of human traces, forensic scientists unlock the mysteries of the past and serve justice.

n 1816, the climate went berserk. The winter brought extreme cold, and torrential rains unleashed massive flooding in Asia. Western Europe and North America experienced a ‘year without a summer’, while failed harvests in 1817 led to the ‘year of famine’. At the time, nobody knew that all these disturbances were the result of a single event: the eruption of Mount Tambora in what is now Indonesia – the greatest volcanic eruption in recorded history.

Meat Planet explores the quest to grow meat in laboratories--a substance sometimes called "cultured meat"--And asks what it means to imagine that this is the future of food. This book takes the reader on a tour of the laboratories, kitchens, public debates, and media events that may launch this novel food technology. While pundits and entrepreneurs promote cultured meat as a solution to the ethical and environmental problems of industrial meat, Meat Planet meditates on the philosophical, historical and anthropological meanings of future flesh

In an age of unprecedented exploration and innovation, our oceans remain largely unknown, and endlessly fascinating. Streever celebrates the daring pioneers who tested the limits of what the human body can endure under water as he traces both the little-known history and exciting future of how we travel and study the depths. He covers seventeenth-century leather-hulled submarines, their nuclear-powered descendants, and robots capable of roving unsupervised between continents. Discover all the adventures our seas have to offer-- and why they are in such dire need of conservation.

he world of development thinkers and practitioners is abuzz with a new lexicon: the idea of "the nexus" between water, food, and energy which is intuitively compelling. It promises better integration of multiple sectoral elements, a better transition to greener economies, and sustainable development. However, there appears to be little agreement on its precise meaning, whether it only complements existing environmental governance approaches or how it can be enhanced in national contexts.

Over 300 million years ago, an early land vertebrate developed an egg that contained the embryo in an amnion, allowing it to be deposited on land. This moment marked the first step in the fascinating and complex evolutionary journey of the reptiles. In The Rise of Reptiles, paleontologist Hans-Dieter Sues explores the diversity of reptilian lineages, discussing the relationships among turtles, crocodylians, lizards and snakes, and many extinct groups.

Many girls want to become scientists when they grow up, just like many boys do. But for these girls, the struggle to do what they love and to be treated with respect has been much harder because of the discrimination and bias in our society. In Women in Microbiology, we meet women who, despite these obstacles and against tough odds, have become scientific leaders and revered mentors. The women profiled in this collection range from historic figures like Alice Catherine Evans and Ruth Ella Moore to modern heroes like Michele Swanson and Katrina Forest. What binds all of these remarkable women are a passion for their work, a zest for life, a warm devotion to mentoring others--especially younger women--and a sense of justice and fairness that they are willing to fight tirelessly to obtain.

Presents a history of the human understanding of heredity and how it has shaped society, chronicling the transitions brought about by genetic research and making predictions about how evolving understandings are likely to impact the future.

In our unique genomes, every one of us carries the story of our species--births, deaths, disease, war, famine, migration, and a lot of sex. But those stories have always been locked away--until now. Who are our ancestors? Where did they come from? Geneticists have suddenly become historians, and the hard evidence in our DNA has blown the lid off what we thought we knew.

Climate change impacts-more heat, drought, extreme rainfall, and stronger storms-have already harmed communities around the globe. Even if the world could cut its carbon emissions to zero tomorrow, further significant global climate change is now inevitable. Although we cannot tell with certainty how much average global temperatures will rise, we do know that the warming we have experienced to date has caused significant losses, and that the failure to prepare for the consequences of further warming may prove to be staggering.

At the end of the 19th century, everyone knew that people were defined by their race and sex and were fated by birth and biology to be more or less intelligent, able, nurturing, or warlike. But one rogue researcher looked at the data and decided everyone was wrong. Franz Boas was the very image of a mad scientist: a wild-haired immigrant with a thick German accent. By the 1920s he was also the foundational thinker and public face of a new school of thought at Columbia University called cultural anthropology.

Why are humans so fond of water? Why is our skin colour so variable? Why aren't we hairy like our close ape relatives? mA savannah scenario of human evolution has been widely accepted primarily due to fossil evidence; and fossils do not offer insight into these questions. Other alternative evolutionary scenarios might, but these models have been rejected.

FNA presents for the first time, in one published reference source, information on the names, taxonomic relationships, continent-wide distributions, and morphological characteristics of all plants native and naturalized found in North America north of Mexico.

Built unit-by-unit, Campbell Biology in Focus achieves a balance between breadth and depth of concepts to move students away from memorization. Streamlined content enables students to prioritize essential biology content, concepts, and scientific skills that are needed to develop conceptual understanding and an ability to apply their knowledge in future courses.