Showing titles in Biological Sciences

Your body is teeming with tens of trillions of microbes. It's an entire world, a colony full of life. In other words, you contain multitudes. These microscopic companions sculpt our organs, protect us from diseases, guide our behaviour and bombard us with their genes. They also hold the key to understanding all life on earth. In I Contain Multitudes, Ed Yong opens our eyes and invites us to marvel at ourselves and other animals in a new light, less as individuals and more as thriving ecosystems.

"Winner of the 2014 Samuel Johnson PrizeShortlisted for the 2014 Costa Biography Award‘. In real life, goshawks resemble sparrowhawks the way leopards resemble housecats. Bigger, yes. But bulkier, bloodier, deadlier, scarier, and much, much harder to see. Birds of deep woodland, not gardens, they’re the birdwatchers’ dark grail.’ As a child Helen Macdonald was determined to become a falconer. She learned the arcane terminology and read all the classic books, including T. H.

A riveting exploration of how microbes are transforming the way we see nature and ourselves - and could revolutionize agriculture and medicine. Prepare to set aside what you think you know about yourself and microbes. Good health - for people and for plants - depends on Earth's smallest creatures. The Hidden Half of Nature tells the story of our tangled relationship with microbes and their potential to revolutionize agriculture and medicine, from garden to gut.

An accessible and compelling story of a scientist's discovery of plant communication and how it influenced her research and changed her life.

Today's kids have adopted sedentary lifestyles filled with television, video games, and computer screens. But more and more, studies show that children need "rough and tumble" outdoor play in order to develop their sensory, motor, and executive functions. Disturbingly, a lack of movement has been shown to lead to a number of health and cognitive difficulties, such as attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), emotion regulation and sensory processing issues, and aggressiveness at school recess break.

Sloths are the slowest mammals on earth. They can hardly see. They live in rainforests among jaguars, pumas, and countless other predators. Yet they survive. And they do it by being so incredibly slow, and living a life covered in algae. In this episode, we hang with a sloth in the jungle of Costa Rica as he spends a month digesting one single leaf, and we see the symbiosis and collaboration that surrounds him.

We like to think of ourselves as exceptional beings, but are we really any more special than other animals? Humans are the slightest of twigs on a single family tree that encompasses four billion years, a lot of twists and turns and a billion species. All of those organisms are rooted in a single origin, with a common code that underwrites our existence. This paradox - that our biology is indistinct from all life, yet we consider ourselves to be special - lies at the heart of who we are.

Zero to Finals Medicine, 2nd edition, is part of the Zero to Finals series, aimed at providing key learning material for students. The books are designed to be studied from cover to cover in preparation for your exams. There is a focus on the key information that is tested in exams, without the waffle. It contains the concepts, vocabulary and latest guidelines you need, as well as helpful TOM TIPs, which are pearls of wisdom from the author, gained over more than a decade of sitting medical exams.

We are on the cusp of a major revolution in psychiatric medicine and neuroscience. After fifty years of prohibition, criminalisation and fear, science is finally showing us that psychedelics are not dangerous or harmful. Instead, when used according to tested, safe and ethical guidelines, they are our most powerful newest treatment of mental health conditions, from depression, PTSD, and OCD to disordered eating and even addiction and chronic pain. This book contains the knowledge you need to know about a drug that is about to go mainstream, free from the hot air, direct from the expert.

Platypuses are mammals unlike any other on earth. They lay eggs, ooze milk through their skin, and can sense electricity. In this episode, we travel with a platypus as he moves through his nightly routine on the island of Tasmania. He uses electroreceptors to hunt underwater and does a synchronized swimming courtship ritual with his mate, who then digs a burrow 40 feet deep into the riverbank to nest.

Part guide to the best practice in every aspect of working with this renewable energy source, part meditation on the human instinct for survival, this definitive handbook on the art of chopping, stacking and drying wood in the Scandinavian way has resonated across the world, with more than a million copies sold worldwide.

Over 500,000 years ago, a single gene mutated. It spread over time, becoming critical in the journey transforming our earliest ancestors into fully modern humans, capable of navigating the entire planet and beyond. Then just a few thousand years ago, humans gradually outsourced knowledge to writing, and we displaced art and music from the heart of learning. This is the extraordinary story of the discovery of a supergene that makes us uniquely human.

Carrying little more than a change of clothes and a pair of binoculars, two young Americans, Mark and Delia Owens, caught a plane to Africa, bought a thirdhand Land Rover, and drove deep into the Kalahari Desert. There they lived for seven years, in an unexplored area with no roads, no people, and no source of water for thousands of square miles. In this vast wilderness the Owenses began their zoology research, working along animals that had never before been exposed to humans.

Research over the last few decades shows that many of us – sufferers of chronic pain and health practitioners alike – are victims of a trick of the nervous system. Where we believe that pain has its root in a damaged body, it is the brain that prolongs the hurting after the body has healed. Paul Biegler, a science journalist and former doctor who has been on his own pain journey, investigates the true source of chronic pain – our brain’s so-called neuroplasticity – and emerging therapies that take advantage of that neuroplasticity to rewire the brain and end the suffering.

Françoise Malby-Anthony never expected to find herself responsible for a herd of elephants with a troubled past. A chic Parisienne, her life changed forever when she fell in love with South African conservationist Lawrence Anthony. Together they founded a game reserve but after Lawrence’s death, Françoise faced the daunting responsibility of running Thula Thula without him. Poachers attacked their rhinos, their security team wouldn’t take orders from a woman and the authorities were threatening to cull their beloved elephant family.

A lover, not a fighter. That was wolf 302. A renegade with an eye for the ladies, 302 was anything but Yellowstone’s perfect alpha male. For starters, he fled from danger. He begged for food from other wolves, ditched females he’d gotten pregnant, and even napped during a heated battle with a rival pack! But this is not the story of 302’s failures. This is the story of his dramatic transformation. And legendary wolf writer Rick McIntyre witnessed it all from the sidelines.

The enormity of climate change and biodiversity loss can leave us feeling overwhelmed. How can an individual ever make a difference? Isabella Tree and Charlie Burrell know firsthand how spectacularly nature can bounce back if you give it the chance. And what comes is not just wildlife in super-abundance, but solutions to the other environmental crises we face. The Book of Wilding is a handbook for how we can all help restore nature.

From the best-selling author of the essential new 2019 book on animal agriculture and climate crisis: We are the Weather. Discover Jonathan Safran Foer's eye-opening and life-changing account of the meat we eat. Eating Animals is the most original and urgent book on the subject of food written this century. It will change the way you think and change the way you eat. For good. Whether you're flirting with veganuary, trying to cut back on animal consumption, or a lifelong meat eater, you need to listen to this book.

We use DNA routinely - to cure diseases, solve crimes, and reunite families. Yet we've known about it for only 60 years. And what we're continuing to learn about it every day has the potential to transform our health, our nutrition, our society, and our future. But what, exactly is DNA, the self-replicating material present in nearly all living organisms?

In this inspiring, uplifting and heartwarming memoir, world-renowned veterinary surgeon Professor Noel Fitzpatrick explores his journey to becoming The Supervet. Growing up on the family farm in Ballyfin, Ireland, Noel's childhood was spent tending to the cattle and sheep, the hay and silage, the tractors and land, his beloved sheepdog, Pirate, providing solace from the bullies that plagued him at school. It was this bond with Pirate, and a fateful night spent desperately trying to save a newborn lamb, that inspired Noel to enter the world of veterinary science.