Some Assembly Required: Decoding Four Billion Years of Life, from Ancient Fossils to DNA
Neil Shubin - 2020
Shubin describes how over the last half-century, scientists have been able to explore how genetic recipes build bodies during embryological development--how these inventions and adaptations occur in a nonprogressive manner in different contexts, at different speeds. Paleontology has been transformed over the last 50 years by tools and techniques of molecular biology--and it is that revolution in our understanding of the evolution of life that Shubin traces here. Each of us is a mosaic of precursors that came about at different times and places, with deep rooted connections across species that Darwin, for all he understood, could never even have imagined.
Born in Africa: The Quest for the Origins of Human Life
Martin Meredith - 2011
Buried there lie answers about the origins of humankind. After a century of investigation, scientists have transformed our understanding about the beginnings of human life. But vital clues still remain hidden. In Born in Africa, Martin Meredith follows the trail of discoveries about human origins made by scientists over the last hundred years, recounting their intense rivalry, personal feuds, and fierce controversies as well as their feats of skill and endurance.The results have been momentous. Scientists have identified more than twenty species of extinct humans. They have firmly established Africa as the birthplace not only of humankind but also of modern humans. They have revealed how early technology, language ability, and artistic endeavour all originated in Africa; and they have shown how small groups of Africans spread out from Africa in an exodus sixty thousand years ago to populate the rest of the world. We have all inherited an African past.
Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past
David Reich - 2018
Now, in The New Science of the Human Past, Reich describes just how the human genome provides not only all the information that a fertilized human egg needs to develop but also contains within it the history of our species. He delineates how the Genomic Revolution and ancient DNA are transforming our understanding of our own lineage as modern humans; how genomics deconstructs the idea that there are no biologically meaningful differences among human populations (though without adherence to pernicious racist hierarchies); and how DNA studies reveal the deep history of human inequality--among different populations, between the sexes, and among individuals within a population.
This Is Your Brain on Sports: The Science of Underdogs, the Value of Rivalry, and What We Can Learn from the T-Shirt Cannon
L. Jon Wertheim - 2016
Jon Wertheim teams up with Tufts psychologist Sam Sommers to take readers on a wild ride into the inner world of sports. Through the prism of behavioral economics, neuroscience, and psychology, they reveal the hidden influences and surprising cues that inspire and derail us—on the field and in the stands—and by extension, in corporate board rooms, office settings, and our daily lives. In this irresistible narrative romp, Wertheim and Sommers usher us from professional football to the NBA to Grand Slam tennis, from the psychology of athletes self-handicapping their performance in the boxing ring or the World Series, to an explanation of why even the glimpse of a finish line can lift us beyond ordinary physical limits. They explore why Tom Brady and other starting NFL quarterbacks all seem to look like fashion models; why fans of teams like the Cubs, Mets, and any franchise from Cleveland love rooting for a loser; why the best players make the worst coaches; why hockey goons (and fans) would rather fight at home than on the road; and why the arena t-shirt cannon has something to teach us about human nature. This is Your Brain on Sports is an entertaining and thought-provoking journey into how psychology and behavioral science collide with the universe of wins-and-losses, coaching changes, underdogs, and rivalry games.
Life Ascending: The Ten Great Inventions of Evolution
Nick Lane - 2009
Comparing gene sequences, examining atomic structures of proteins, and looking into the geochemistry of rocks have helped explain evolution in more detail than ever before. Nick Lane expertly reconstructs the history of life by describing the ten greatest inventions of evolution (including DNA, photosynthesis, sex, and sight), based on their historical impact, role in organisms today, and relevance to current controversies. Who would have guessed that eyes started off as light-sensitive spots used to calibrate photosynthesis in algae? Or that DNA’s building blocks form spontaneously in hydrothermal vents? Lane gives a gripping, lucid account of nature’s ingenuity, and the result is a work of essential reading for anyone who has ever pondered or questioned the science underlying evolution’s greatest gifts to man.
Einstein's Greatest Mistake: A Biography
David Bodanis - 2016
Yet in the final decades of his life, he was ignored by most working scientists, and his ideas were opposed by even his closest friends. How did this happen? Einstein's imagination and self-confidence served him well when he was young. But when it came to the new field of quantum mechanics, the same traits undermined him. Bestselling biographer David Bodanis traces Einstein from the skeptical, erratic student to the world's most brilliant physicist—and then to the desolate, fallen-from-grace celebrity. An intimate biography touching on the romances and rivalries of the celebrated physicist, as much as on his scientific goals, Einstein's Greatest Mistake reveals what we owe Einstein today—and how much more he might have achieved if not for his all-too-human flaws.
Good Germs, Bad Germs: Health and Survival in a Bacterial World
Jessica Snyder Sachs - 2007
As a result, antibiotic resistance now ranks among the gravest medical problems of modern times. Good Germs, Bad Germs addresses not only this issue but also what has become known as the "hygiene hypothesis"-- an argument that links the over-sanitation of modern life to now-epidemic increases in immune and other disorders. In telling the story of what went terribly wrong in our war on germs, Jessica Snyder Sachs explores our emerging understanding of the symbiotic relationship between the human body and its resident microbes--which outnumber its human cells by a factor of nine to one! The book also offers a hopeful look into a future in which antibiotics will be designed and used more wisely, and beyond that, to a day when we may replace antibacterial drugs and cleansers with bacterial ones--each custom-designed for maximum health benefits.
Advanced Concepts in Operating Systems
Mukesh Singhal - 1994
Numerous examples are provided to reinforce the concepts and relevant case studies illustrate the concepts and mechanisms described.
The A To Z of Practical Building Construction and its Management
Sandeep Mantri
It is an ideal book for engineers, consultants, contractors and builders. Printed in large format, this book is easy to follow
The Principia: Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy
Isaac Newton - 1687
Even after more than three centuries and the revolutions of Einsteinian relativity and quantum mechanics, Newtonian physics continues to account for many of the phenomena of the observed world, and Newtonian celestial dynamics is used to determine the orbits of our space vehicles.This completely new translation, the first in 270 years, is based on the third (1726) edition, the final revised version approved by Newton; it includes extracts from the earlier editions, corrects errors found in earlier versions, and replaces archaic English with contemporary prose and up-to-date mathematical forms. Newton's principles describe acceleration, deceleration, and inertial movement; fluid dynamics; and the motions of the earth, moon, planets, and comets. A great work in itself, the Principia also revolutionized the methods of scientific investigation. It set forth the fundamental three laws of motion and the law of universal gravity, the physical principles that account for the Copernican system of the world as emended by Kepler, thus effectively ending controversy concerning the Copernican planetary system.The illuminating Guide to the Principia by I. Bernard Cohen, along with his and Anne Whitman's translation, will make this preeminent work truly accessible for today's scientists, scholars, and students.
Genome: the Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters
Matt Ridley - 1999
The Extended Phenotype: The Long Reach of the Gene
Richard Dawkins - 1982
He proposes that we look at evolution as a battle between genes instead of between whole organisms. We can then view changes in phenotypes—the end products of genes, like eye color or leaf shape, which are usually considered to increase the fitness of an individual—as serving the evolutionary interests of genes.Dawkins makes a convincing case that considering one’s body, personality, and environment as a field of combat in a kind of “arms race” between genes fighting to express themselves on a strand of DNA can clarify and extend the idea of survival of the fittest. This influential and controversial book illuminates the complex world of genetics in an engaging, lively manner.
Mind Reader: Unlocking the Secrets and Powers of a Mentalist
Lior Suchard - 2012
He can delve into your innermost thoughts, and know what you are going to say even before you do. His outstanding performances of mind reading, thought influencing, predicting and telekinesis have earned him international acclaim as a top class supernatural entertainer and mentalist. Suchard was born in Tel Aviv, the youngest of three sons. At seven years old, he first realized he had an extraordinary mental power. His two older brothers served as guinea pigs as he explored his abilities, and he'd ask them to think of numbers or have hide small objects in their hands and have him guess in which hand. In high school, a math teacher, aware of what Suchard could do, made a deal with him, giving him five minutes at the end of every class to demonstrate what he could do. Lior would ask him to think of a formula, which he would write down in his notebook. Then the teacher would write it on the board and it would be the same. Suchard graduated from high school and completed the mandatory three years in the Israeli army, where they made good use of his skills. Suchard gained worldwide recognition after winning the international competition show "The Successor" to officially take over for celebrated mystifier Uri Geller. Now 27, Suchard is a world renowned supernatural entertainer and mentalist with an extraordinary talent for mind reading, thought influencing and telekinesis. He takes you on an incredible journey through the wonders of the human brain.
माझी जन्मठेप
V.D. Savarkar - 1927
The curtain has been brought down on it. Two life-sentences have been run. And I have brought together my recollections of them within the cover of this book. They are narrated in brief and put together within the narrowest.When I came into this world, God sent me here possibly on a sort of life-sentence. It was the span of life allotted to me by time to stay in this ‘prison-house of life’. This story is but a chapter of that book of life, which is a longer story not yet ended. You can finish reading the book in a day, while I had to live it for 14 long years of transportation. And if the story is so tiresome, unendurable and disgusting to you, how much must have been the living of it for me! Every moment of those 14 years in that jail has been an agony of the soul and the body to me, and to my fellow convicts in that jail. It was not only fatiguing, unbearable and futile to us all, it was equally or more excruciating to them as to me. And it is only that you may know it and feel the fatigue, the disgust and the pain of it as we have felt it, that I have chosen to write it for you. —Excerpts from this bookThis is the story of Swatantrayaveer Vinayak Damodar Savarkar—a great revolutionary, politician, poet and seer who tried to free India from the British yoke!British policy was to torture and persecute the political prisoners/revolutionaries so that they would reveal the names of all their colleagues or go mad or commit suicide. My Transportation for Life is a firsthand story of the sufferings and humiliation of an inmate of the infamous Cellular Jail of Andamans, the legendary Kala Paani. The physical tortures inside the high walls were made all the more insufferable by the sickening attitude of the men who mattered—the native leaders back home. This is a running commentary on the prevalent political conditions in India and a treatise for students of revolution. It is a burning story of all Tapasvis who were transported to Andaman.