The eminent biologist reflects on his own response to nature and the aesthetic aspects of his exploration of natural systems in an intensely personal essay that examines the essential links between mankind and the rest of the living world.

    Widely praised and much-discussed, this classic book explores how cooperation can emerge in a world of self-seeking egoists—whether superpowers, businesses, or individuals—when there is no central authority to police their actions. The problem of cooperation is central to many different fields. Robert Axelrod recounts the famous computer tournaments in which the “cooperative” program Tit for Tat recorded its stunning victories, explains its application to a broad spectrum of subjects, and suggests how readers can both apply cooperative principles to their own lives and teach cooperative principles to others.

    They are vehicles, a series of hypothetical, self-operating machines that exhibit increasingly intricate if not always successful or civilized behavior. Each of the vehicles in the series incorporates the essential features of all the earlier models and along the way they come to embody aggression, love, logic, manifestations of foresight, concept formation, creative thinking, personality, and free will. In a section of extensive biological notes, Braitenberg locates many elements of his fantasy in current brain research.

    Its authors present a new view of cognition that has important social and ethical implications, for, they assert, the only world we humans can have is the one we create together through the actions of our coexistence. Written for a general audience as well as for students, scholars, and scientists and abundantly illustrated with examples from biology, linguistics, and new social and cultural phenomena, this revised edition includes a new afterword by Dr. Varela, in which he discusses the effect the book has had in the years since its first publication.

    A Simon & Schuster eBook

    And these animals represent all orders of mammals, including, for example, carnivores, herbivores, insectivores, omnivores, sea mammals, primates, bats and marsupials.The most up-to-date and authoritative information on each species of mammal is provided in this book, with particular emphasis given to animal behavior, conservation and ecology.

    It has sold over 500 000 copies. The guide contains 132 superb full-colour plates showing all Australian bird species; key points of identification using the latest classification system; distribution maps for all species; over 900 black and white line illustrations; breeding information; a vagrant bird bulletin; a core library list; and easy-to-use indexes. This eighth edition has been revised and updated, including some beautiful new plates.

    Beginning with the simplest view of brain anatomy and operations and using the latest research available, Ornstein and Thomoson give the reader both an actual and a metaphorical picture of the human brain.

    It provides a sound basis for understanding random motions of molecules, subcellular particles, or cells, or of processes that depend on such motion or are markedly affected by it. Readers do not need to understand thermodynamics in order to acquire a knowledge of the physics involved in diffusion, sedimentation, electrophoresis, chromatography, and cell motility--subjects that become lively and immediate when the author discusses them in terms of random walks of individual particles.

    Three eminent scientists analyze the scientific, social, and political roots of biological determinism.

    This new edition has been entirely rewritten to take account of the latest work of historians and scientists. The sequence of chapters has been reconstructed in a way that will help students and general readers to understand the key phases in the development of modern evolutionism. The book's substantial bibliography has been updated to serve as a valuable introduction to the immense literature on this topic.

    Who mans the rampart against such onslaughts?A legion of interrelated health services, professional and amateur, guard us. Linked by training, interest and technology, they gather data and share resources to disarm these diseases before they get started.This is the second of two collections that bring together the best of Berton Roueche's ANNALS OF MEDICINE narratives.Originally published in The New Yorker magazine, the stories are classics of literary and medical lore.

    Both sustainable and plentiful, it has been used for millennia to make objects ranging from clothing and housing to more exotic luxuries like phonograph needles and children’s toys, to name but a few.This acclaimed sourcebook—part history, part illustrated catalog, part cultivation guide—details the myriad uses of bamboo, along with an immense bounty of information and lore on how to grow, maintain, and harvest this extraordinary plant; how to use it in craft and construction projects, including floors, fences, papers, and play equipment; and bamboo’s place in the literary, visual, and musical arts. An encyclopedic roster of more than 1,200 bamboo species is a book in itself, as is author David Farrelly’s A-to-Z catalog of artifacts made from bamboo: acupuncture needles, blowguns, bridges, kites, ships, violins, windmills, and a thousand other things.Strong, flexible, and beautiful in both its natural and finished states, bamboo is an abundant resource that could beneficially replace many less sustainable materials currently in use, and continue to transform our culture in the process.

    Of the many species that adorn the state, Texas Wildflowers provides clear and concise descriptions for more than 300, complemented by 381 stunning full-color photographs. Not only the most prevalent species but also rare and unusual plants of startling beauty are illustrated and described.For more than three decades Campbell and Lynn Loughmiller have photographed the wildflowers of Texas, and their most exquisite photographs are reproduced here. The loveliest flowers from all regions of the state are represented, from the graceful calopogon orchid of the Big Thicket to the surprisingly delicate blooms of the Trans-Pecos cacti.

    Winner, Ottis Lock Endowment Award for the best book on East Texas, East Texas Historical Association, 1985 Texas Literary Festival Award for Nonfiction (Southwestern Booksellers Association & Dallas Times Herald), 1985 Annual Publication Award, Texas Chapter of the Wildlife Society, 1984The story of the land, wildlife, and ecology of East Texas.

    It is also a celebration of writing and words, of sex - 'the finest celebration of being alive" - of farming, of water and soil.Top lips taste sweet, bottom lips acrid. The tracts between have their own flavours. I kissed her once in a Bathurst motel. It was hot early summer afternoon. We had travelled several hundred kilometres. We were naked and about to shower together. I kissed her again and extended the kisses. She was saltier than sea water all over...

    For the first time since its publication in l984, a completely updated and revised edition of this best-selling atlas which brings it into the 1990s, incorporating the new events, issues, and statistics of the past decade.

    The authors include Discovery Institute fellows Charles Thaxton and Walter Bradley, and they conclude that the prebiotic soup from which the first cell supposedly arose is a myth. The Miller-Urey experiments employed an unrealistic gas mixture, and there is no geological evidence for its existence in Earth's distant past. The "soup" faces a myriad of other problems, such as inevitable rapid destruction at the hands of radiation.The authors also take aim at the dominant paradigm for chemical evolution using technical arguments from thermodynamics. The second law of thermodynamics has been misused by creationists who failed to treat the fact that Earth is an open system. But Thaxton, Bradley, and Olsen takes this point into account as they argue that thermodynamics is eminently applicable to assessing whether unguided chemical reactions can organize matter into life. Their conclusion is that natural laws cannot account for the encoded "specified complexity" inherent in biomolecules.The epilogue looks forward to other possible explanations for the origin of life. The book was published in 1984 when the United States was immersed in debate over Genesis-based creationism. Yet these authors take a different approach that is ahead of its time. They recognize that science requires an observation-based understanding of cause-and-effect relationships. Thus they set aside biblical arguments and focus instead on observations about the natural world and intelligence. After demonstrating that various undirected causes lack the power to produce complex information, they note, "We have observational evidence in the present that intelligent investigators can (and do) build contrivances to channel energy down nonrandom chemical pathways to bring about some complex chemical synthesis, even gene building." The authors then pose a simple question: "May not the principle of uniformity suggest that DNA had an intelligent cause at the beginning?""A valuable summary of the evidence against the chemical evolution of life out of non-living matter. It presents a very well thought-out and clearly written analysis of the alternatives to the accepted scientific theory of the origin of life." - Robert Jastrow, Founder and Former Director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies of NASA, author of several acclaimed books including God and The Astronomers."The authors have made an important contribution to the origin of life field. Many workers in this area believe that an adequate scientific explanation for the beginning of life on Earth has already been made. Their point of view has been widely disseminated in texts and the media, and to a large extent, has been accepted by the public. This new work brings together the major scientific arguments that demonstrate the inadequacy of current theories. Although I do not share the final philosophical conclusion that the authors reach, I welcome their contribution. It will help to clarify our thinking... I would recommend this book to everyone with a scientific background and interest in the origin of life."- Robert Shapiro, Professor of Chemistry at New York University, and co-author of Life Beyond Earth."Arguments are cogent, original and compelling... The authors believe, and I now concur, that there is a fundamental flaw in all current theories of the chemical origins of life."- Dean H. Kenyon, Professor of Biology at San Francisco State University, and co-author of Biochemical Predestination.

    We tend to think of animal function in chemical terms and talk of water, salts, proteins, enzymes, oxygen, energy, and so on. We should not forget, however, that physical laws are equally important, for they determine rates of diffusion and heat transfer, transfer of force and momentum, the strength of structures, the dynamics of locomotion, and other aspects of the functioning of animal bodies. Physical laws provide possibilities and opportunities for an organism, yet they also impose constraints, setting limits to what is physically possible. This book aims to give an understanding of these rules because of their profound implications when we deal with animals of widely different size and scale. The reader will find that the book raises many questions. Remarkable and puzzling information makes it read a little like a detective story, but the last chapter, instead of giving the final solution, neither answers all questions nor provides one great unifying principle.

    

    

    

    Irecently spotted the unforgettablecover featuring a giraffe, a seaserpent or kraken, a mythicalArabian Nights type bird (Rukh)carrying an elephant, a schooner,abutterfly and an anachronistichelicopter, on an Ebay listing for“Rare and antiquarian literature”. The author gives a briefdescription and I am quoting fromit :“One book is not really enoughto tell about the many differentrelationships between Man andanimals. Nor have I tried toembrace the subject in itsentirety. I wrote this book forchildren, striving, above all, tomake them understand howimportant it is to know, love andprotect animals” .

    Also new to the 3rd edition are newer issues-of-the-day such as nanoparticulate toxicants, second hand smoke, food contamination, lead in toys, and others. As such, the book provides the basics of toxicology in easy-to-understand language as well as a fuller understanding of the daily insults to which our bodies are subjected.

    It had everything you want to know about entomology! I learned the basic facts of insects. I learned the different facts you should know if you are going to be an entomologist, and trust me, after reading this book, you won't put it down until you got the job to be an entomologist. Excellent book!

    It presents a powerful analysis of the evolutionary concepts of natural selection, fitness, and adaptation and clarifies controversial issues concerning altruism, group selection, and the idea that organisms are survival machines built for the good of the genes that inhabit them."Sober's is the answering philosophical voice, the voice of a first-rate philosopher and a knowledgeable student of contemporary evolutionary theory. His book merits broad attention among both communities. It should also inspire others to continue the conversation."-Philip Kitcher, Nature"Elliott Sober has made extraordinarily important contributions to our understanding of biological problems in evolutionary biology and causality. The Nature of Selection is a major contribution to understanding epistemological problems in evolutionary theory. I predict that it will have a long lasting place in the literature."-Richard C. Lewontin

    This book describes how the abilities of organisms to thrive in widely different environments derive from two fundamental classes of biochemical adaptions: modifications of core biochemical processes that allow a common set of physiological functions to be conserved, and inventions of new biochemical traits that allow entry into novel habitats. Biochemical Adaptation: Mechanisms and Process in Physiological Evolution asks two primary questions. First, how have the core biochemical systems found in all species been adaptively modified to allow the same fundamental types of physiological processes to be sustained throughout the wide range of habitat conditions found in the biosphere? Second, through what types of genetic and biochemical processes have new physiological functions been fabricated? The primary audience for this book is faculty, senior undergraduates, and graduate students in environmental biology, comparative physiology, and marine biology. Other likely readers include workers in governmental laboratories concerned with environmental issues, medical students interested in some elements of the book, and medical researchers.

    A unique prescription of humorous and intriguing anecdotes, encompassing the unusual, the mysterious, the historical, and some of the more gruesome aspects of the medical profession, from Egyptian times right up to the present day.

    Similarly, studies of birds, fish, amphibians, and invertebrates demonstrate egg and larval mortality in these species, a phenomenon directly analogous to infanticide in mammals. In this collection, Hausfater and Hrdy draw together work on animal and human infanticide and place these studies in a broad evolutionary and comparative perspective.Infanticide presents the theoretical background and taxonomic distribution of infanticide, infanticide in nonhuman primates, infanticide in rodents, and infanticide in humans. It examines closely sex allocation and sex ratio theory, surveys the phylogeny of mammalian interbirth intervals, and reviews data on sources of egg and larval mortality in a variety of invertebrate and lower vertebrate species. Dealing with infanticide in nonhuman primates, two chapters critically examine data on infanticide in langurs and its broader theoretical implications. By reviewing sources of infant mortality in populations of small mammals and new laboratory analyses of the causes and consequences of infanticide, this work explores such issues as the ontogeny of infanticide, proximate cues of infants and females which elicit infanticidal behavior in males, the genetical basis of infanticide, and the hormonal determinants.Hausfater and Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, through their selection of materials for this book, evaluate the frequency, causes, and function of infanticide. Historical, ethnographic, and recent data on infanticide are surveyed. "Infanticide" summarizes current research on the evolutionary origins and proximate causation of infanticide in animals and man. As such it will be indispensable reading for anthropologists and behavioral biologists as well as ecologists, psychologists, demographers, and epidemiologists.

    The Body Book: A Fantastic Voyage To The World Within

    Quaternary Extinctions presents the latest and most comprehensive examination of these questions." —Geological Magazine "May be regarded as a kind of standard encyclopedia for Pleistocene vertebrate paleontology for years to come." —American Scientist "Should be read by paleobiologists, biologists, wildlife managers, ecologists, archeologists, and anyone concerned about the ongoing extinction of plants and animals." —Science "Uncommonly readable and varied for watchers of paleontology and the rise of humankind." —Scientific American "Represents a quantum leap in our knowledge of Pleistocene and Holocene palaeobiology. . . . Many volumes on our bookshelves are destined to gather dust rather than attention. But not this one." —Nature "Two strong impressions prevail when first looking into this epic compendium. One is the judicious balance of views that range over the whole continuum between monocausal, cultural, or environmental explanations. The second is that both the data base and theoretical sophistication of the protagonists in the debate have improved by a quantum leap since 1967." —American Anthropologist

    Contains over 200 color plates with excellent descriptions of native plants seen along the roadsides and hiking trails in Southern California.