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"The renowned Nobel Prize-winning scientist's elegant and concise explanation of the fundamental ideas in biology and their uses today. Hailed by Philip Pullman as "a great communicator" who is also "as distinguished a scientist as there could be," Paul Nurse writes with delight at life's richness and a sense of the urgent role of biology in our time. With What Is Life? he delivers a brief but powerful work of popular science in the vein of Carlo...
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Today, a scientific explanation is not meant to ascribe agency to natural phenomena: we would not say a rock falls because it seeks the center of the earth. Even for living things, in the natural sciences and often in the social sciences, the same is true. A modern botanist would not say that plants pursue sunlight. This has not always been the case, nor, perhaps, was it inevitable. Since the seventeenth century, many thinkers have made agency, in...
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Life is an enduring mystery. Yet, science tells us that living beings are merely sophisticated structures of lifeless molecules. If this view is correct, where do the seemingly purposeful motions of cells and organisms originate? In Life's Ratchet, physicist Peter M. Hoffmann locates the answer to this age-old question at the nanoscale.
Below the calm, ordered exterior of a living organism lies microscopic chaos, or what Hoffmann calls the molecular...
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Natalie Angier has taken great pains to learn her science from the molecule up. She knows all that scientists know-and sometimes more-about the power of symmetry in sexual relations, about the brutal courting habits of dolphins, about the grand deceit of orchids, and about the impact of female and male preferences on evolution. The Beauty of the Beastly takes the pulse of everything from the supple structure of DNA to the erotic ways of barn swallows,...
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The global temperature is rising, the ice caps are melting, and levels of pollution across the world have reached unprecedented heights. According to eminent scientist James Lovelock, in order to survive an assault from her dependents, the Earth is lurching ever closer to a permanent "hot state." Within the next century, we will almost certainly be forced to give up many of the comforts of western living as supplies are threatened. Only the fittest-and...
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Living things are always evolving to become better adapted to the world around them. This has led to the incredible speed of the cheetah, the fangs of the king cobra, and even bacteria that lives near the hottest vents on Earth! This volume highlights some of the most extreme examples of living things surviving, from long distance migration to supersenses. A colorful, vibrant design accompanies main content that support life science and biology curricula....
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"How did life begin? How many species are on our planet? Can we bring extinct species back to life? When it comes to life on our planet, there are a whole lot of questions we're still trying to answer. Get ready to explore the unknown and discover how scientists are working to solve the mysteries of living things"--
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The marvelous microbes that made life on Earth possible and support our very existence
For almost four billion years, microbes had the primordial oceans all to themselves. The stewards of Earth, these organisms transformed the chemistry of our planet to make it habitable for plants, animals, and us. Life's Engines takes readers deep into the microscopic world to explore how these marvelous creatures made life on Earth possible-and how human life...
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"What is life? In The Biology of Wonder, scientist Andreas Weber resolves this fundamental enigma, arguing that humans, like all living beings, are creative, evolutionary forces who cannot exist apart from nature. This landmark work demonstrates that our connection to Earth's complex web of dynamic, interconnected relationships underpins the entire range of human experience, giving rise to a new ecological ethos."--
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If a tree is a living thing, does that mean a wooden table is alive? If a cat is alive because it can run and chase a toy, does that mean a robot is a living thing because it can move? In this title packed with fun challenges, readers will consolidate their understanding of living, non-living, and things that used to be alive.
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