Showing titles in Biology

Growth has been both an unspoken and an explicit aim of our individual and collective striving. It governs the lives of microorganisms and galaxies; it shapes the capabilities of our extraordinarily large brains and the fortunes of our economies. Growth is manifested in annual increments of continental crust, a rising gross domestic product, a child's growth chart, the spread of cancerous cells. In this magisterial book, Vaclav Smil offers systematic investigation of growth in nature and society, from tiny organisms to the trajectories of empires and civilizations.

With so much variation that can be handed down genetically, for better or worse, the way we understand our biology holds huge importance for how we understand our world and one another, including the biggest questions of our day, such as social inequality. Eye-opening and profound, Adaptable is a revolutionary reappraisal of an overlooked science.

From the battlefields of Homer's Iliad, where muscles first entered world literature, to the Victorian-era gymnasiums where women built strength and muscle by lifting heavy weights, to a retirement home in Boston, where a young doctor discovered that training at high intensity can produce the same relative gains for frail ninety-year-olds as for thirty-year-olds, Stronger places the science and significance of our muscles in an astonishing new light.

A journey into the weird, wonderful and truly astonishing lives of the small but mighty creatures who keep the world turning. Out of sight, underfoot, unseen beyond fleeting scuttles or darting flights, insects occupy a hidden world, yet are essential to sustaining life on earth. Insects influence our ecosystem like a ripple effect on water. They arrived when life first moved to dry land, they preceded – and survived – the dinosaurs, they outnumber the grains of sand on all the world’s beaches, and they will be here long after us.

In a book that will recalibrate our view of this defining feature of our planet, physicist Helen Czerski dives deep to illuminate the murky depths of the ocean engine, examining the messengers, passengers and voyagers that live in it, travel over it, and survive because of it. From the ancient Polynesians who navigated the Pacific by reading the waves to permanent residents of the deep such as the Greenland shark that can live for hundreds of years, she explains the vast currents, invisible ocean walls and underwater waterfalls that all have their place in the ocean's complex system.

Life is the most extraordinary phenomenon in the known universe; but how does it work? Even in this age of cloning and synthetic biology, the remarkable truth remains: nobody has ever made anything living entirely out of dead material. Life remains the only way to make life. Are we missing a vital ingredient in its creation? Like Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene, which provided a new perspective on how evolution works, Life on the Edge alters our understanding of life's dynamics.

Saviez-vous que notre corps est colonisé de milliards de bactéries et champignons essentiels à notre santé ? Et que selon leur rôle, ils se regroupent par zones dans notre corps ? Chaque famille participe alors à la formation d'un microbiote, chacun d'entre eux jouant un rôle bien défini qu'il s'agit de préserver.

The ocean has shaped and sustained life on Earth from the beginning of time. Its vast waters are alive with meaning, and connect every living thing on Earth. Deep Water is a hymn to the beauty, mystery and wonder of the ocean. Weaving together science, history and personal experience, it offers vital new ways of understanding not just humanity's relationship with the planet, but our past - and perhaps most importantly, our future.

The Ancestor's Tale is a pilgrimage back through time - a journey on which we meet up with fellow pilgrims as we and they converge on our common ancestors. Chimpanzees join us at about six million years in the past, gorillas at seven million years, orangutans at 14 million years, as we stride on together, a growing band. The journey provides the setting for a collection of some 40 tales.

In LIFE AS NO ONE KNOWS IT, physicist and astrobiologist Sara Imari Walker argues that solving the origin of life requires radical new thinking and an experimentally testable theory for what life is. This is an urgent issue for efforts to make life from scratch in laboratories here on Earth and missions searching for life on other planets. Walker proposes a new paradigm for understanding what physics encompasses and what we recognize as life.

This humbling and revelatory book shows how infectious disease has shaped humanity at every stage, from the first success of Homo sapiens over the equally intelligent Neanderthals to the fall of Rome and the rise of Islam. How did an Indonesian volcano help cause the Black Death, setting Europe on the road to capitalism? How could 168 men extract the largest ransom in history from an opposing army of eighty thousand? The latest science reveals that infectious diseases are not just something that happens to us, but a fundamental part of who we are.

'When we know what to look for and what it means, seasonal moments that were once hidden shine brightly.' In The Hidden Seasons , Tristan Gooley shows us how to read the clues that the sun, moon, stars, plants, fungi, animals, water and weather give us - but that we continually miss, because we don't know how and where to look. Spring is the time of wildflower signs, unique cloud shapes and curious animal behaviour. Summer is a time of coastal clues, astronomical extremes and secret grass patterns. Autumn is a time for reading leaves, deciphering scents and investigating fungi.

The Blind Watchmaker, knowledgably narrated by author Richard Dawkins, is as prescient and timely a book as ever. The watchmaker belongs to the 18th-century theologian William Paley, who argued that just as a watch is too complicated and functional to have sprung into existence by accident, so too must all living things, with their far greater complexity, be purposefully designed. Charles Darwin's brilliant discovery challenged the creationist arguments; but only Richard Dawkins could have written this elegant riposte.

Why is the world the way it is? How did we get here? Does everything happen for a reason, or are some things left to chance? Philosophers and theologians have pondered these questions for millennia, but startling scientific discoveries over the past half century are revealing that we live in a world driven by chance. A Series of Fortunate Events tells the story of the awesome power of chance and how it is the surprising source of all the beauty and diversity in the living world.

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of Blueprint, written and read by Robert Plomin. The blueprint for our individuality lies in the 1 percent of DNA that differs between people. Our intellectual capacity, our introversion or extraversion, our vulnerability to mental illness, even whether we are a morning person - all of these aspects of our personality are profoundly shaped by our inherited DNA differences.

Most of us are aware of the hive mind—the power of bees as an amazing collective. But do we know how uniquely intelligent bees are as individuals? In The Mind of a Bee, Lars Chittka draws from decades of research, including his own pioneering work, to argue that bees have remarkable cognitive abilities. He shows that they are profoundly smart, have distinct personalities, can recognize flowers and human faces, exhibit basic emotions, count, use simple tools, solve problems, and learn by observing others. They may even possess consciousness.

Perhaps the most influential science book ever written, On the Origin of Species has continued to fascinate for more than a century after its initial publication. Its controversial theory that populations evolve and adapt through a process known as natural selection led to heated scientific, philosophical, and religious debate, revolutionizing every discipline in its wake. With its clear, concise, and surprisingly enjoyable prose, On the Origin of Species is both captivating and edifying.

Humans are a puzzling species. On the one hand, we struggle to survive on our own in the wild, often failing to overcome even basic challenges, like obtaining food, building shelters, or avoiding predators. On the other hand, human groups have produced ingenious technologies, sophisticated languages, and complex institutions that have permitted us to successfully expand into a vast range of diverse environments. What has enabled us to dominate the globe, more than any other species, while remaining virtually helpless as lone individuals?

While plenty of entertaining books have been written about the history of alcohol and other intoxicants, none have offered a comprehensive, convincing answer to the basic question of why humans want to get high in the first place. Drunk elegantly cuts through the tangle of urban legends and anecdotal impressions that surround our notions of intoxication to provide the first rigorous, scientifically grounded explanation for our love of alcohol.

Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion and a life-long committed Darwinist, abridges and reads this special audio version of Charles Darwin's famous book. A literally world-changing book, Darwin put forward the anti-religious and scientific idea that humans in fact evolved over millions of generations from animals, starting with fish, all the way up through the ranks to apes, then to our current form.