The answer seems obvious until you try to seriously answer it. Is the apple sitting on your kitchen counter alive, or is only the apple tree it came from deserving of the word? Life's Edge is an utterly fascinating investigation that no one but one of the most celebrated science writers of our generation could craft.
Zimmer journeys through the strange experiments that have attempted to re-create life. Literally hundreds of definitions of what that should look like now exist, but none has yet emerged as an obvious winner. Lists of what living things have in common do not add up to a theory of life. It's never clear why some items on the list are essential and others not.
Coronaviruses have altered the course of history, and yet many scientists maintain they are not alive. Chemists are creating droplets that can swarm, sense their environment, and multiply. Have they made life in the lab? Whether he is handling pythons in Alabama or searching for hibernating bats in the Adirondacks, Zimmer revels in astounding examples of life at its most bizarre.
He tries his own hand at evolving life in a test tube with unnerving results. Charting the obsession with Dr. For years it was generally assumed that the origin of flight was the main driving force for the evolution of feathers. However, various discoveries of dinosaur species with filamentous body coverings, made over the past 20 years, have fundamentally challenged this idea and produced new evolutionary scenarios for the origin of feathers.
This book is devoted to the origin and evolution of feathers, and highlights the impact of palaeontology on this research field by reviewing a number of spectacular fossil discoveries that document the increasing morphological complexity along the evolutionary path to modern birds.
Also featuring chapters on fossil feather colours, feather development and its genetic control, the book offers a timely and comprehensive overview of this popular research topic. Using the Biological Literature: A Practical Guide, Fourth Edition is an annotated guide to selected resources in the biological sciences, presenting a wide-ranging list of important sources. This completely revised edition contains numerous new resources and descriptions of all entries including textbooks.
The guide emphasizes current materials in the English language and includes retrospective references for historical perspective and to provide access to the taxonomic literature. It covers both print and electronic resources including monographs, journals, databases, indexes and abstracting tools, websites, and associations—providing users with listings of authoritative informational resources of both classical and recently published works.
With chapters devoted to each of the main fields in the basic biological sciences, this book offers a guide to the best and most up-to-date resources in biology. It is appropriate for anyone interested in searching the biological literature, from undergraduate students to faculty, researchers, and librarians. The guide includes a supplementary website dedicated to keeping URLs of electronic and web-based resources up to date, a popular feature continued from the third edition.
Encyclopedia of Ecology Author : Brian D. It covers all scales of biological organization, from organisms, to populations, to communities and ecosystems. Laboratory, field, simulation modelling, and theoretical approaches are presented to show how living systems sustain structure and function in space and time. New areas of focus include micro- and macro scales, molecular and genetic ecology, and global ecology e. In addition, new, international experts in ecology contribute on a variety of topics.
Offers the most broad-ranging and comprehensive resource available in the field of ecology Provides foundational content and suggests further reading Incorporates the expertise of over outstanding investigators in the field of ecology, including top young scientists with both research and teaching experience Includes multimedia resources, such as an Interactive Map Viewer and links to a CSDMS Community Surface Dynamics Modeling System , an open-source platform for modelers to share and link models dealing with earth system processes.
Accompanys: Spotlighting these conceptual difficulties and presenting alternate theoretical interpretations that alleviate this incompatibility, Massimo Pigliucci and Jonathan Kaplan intertwine scientific and philosophical analysis to produce a coherent picture of evolutionary biology. Innovative and controversial, Making Sense of Evolution encourages further development of the Modern Synthesis and outlines what might be necessary for the continued refinement of this evolving field.
If, unlike their counterparts in physics, biologists are generally wary of a grand, overarching theory, at what kinds of explanation do biologists aim? How will we know when we have 'made sense' of life? Such questions, Evelyn Fox Keller suggests, offer no simple answers. Explanations in the biological sciences are typically provisional and partial, judged by criteria as heterogeneous as their subject matter.
It is Keller's aim in this bold and challenging book to account for this epistemological diversity--particularly in the discipline of developmental biology. In particular, Keller asks, what counts as an 'explanation' of biological development in individual organisms?
Her inquiry ranges from physical and mathematical models to more familiar explanatory metaphors to the dramatic contributions of recent technological developments, especially in imaging, recombinant DNA, and computer modeling and simulations. A history of the diverse and changing nature of biological explanation in a particularly charged field, 'Making Sense of Life' draws our attention to the temporal, disciplinary, and cultural components of what biologists mean, and what they understand, when they propose to explain life.
Each chapter covers an important topic or factor pertinent to a modern understanding of evolutionary theory, allowing easy access to particular topics for either study or review. Will be used in accordance with our Privacy Policy. Log in. Next product. Add to wishlist. SKU: evolution-making-sense-of-life-2nd-edition-ebook-pdf Tags: , , , , evolution , Zimmers. Like this: Like Loading…. Reviews 0 Reviews There are no reviews yet.
Currently, we only ship within the US. Monday — Friday delivery time is days. Monday — Friday Shipping rates are:. Related products Quick view.
0コメント