Members of the phylum Mollusca are among the most ancient animals on the planet. Their shells provide homes for other animals, and across the ages, people have used shells not only as trinkets but also as a form of money, and as powerful symbols of sex and death, prestige and war.The science and natural history of shells are woven into a compelling narrative, revealing their cultural importance and the ways they have been used by humans over the millennia. (Seashells have even been tapped as a source of mind-bending drugs.) Marine biologist Helen Scales shows how seashells have been sculpted by the fundamental rules of mathematics and evolution; how they gave us color, gems, food, and new medicines.After surviving multiple mass extinctions millions of years ago, molluscs and their shells still face an onslaught of anthropogenic challenges, including climate change and corrosive oceans. But rather than dwelling on all that is lost, Scales emphasizes that seashells offer an accessible way to reconnect people with nature, helping to bridge the gap between ourselves and the living world. Spirals in Time: The Secret Life and Curious Afterlife of Seashells shows why nature matters, and reveals the hidden wonders that you can hold in the palm of your hand.

    Prosek travels the globe to tell the story of the eel--from New York to New Zealand; from Europe to Japan and the small island of Pohnpei in Micronesia, where freshwater eels are worshipped by members of the eel clan.

    From New England aquarium tanks to the reefs of French Polynesia and the Gulf of Mexico, she has befriended octopuses with strikingly different personalities—gentle Athena, assertive Octavia, curious Kali, and joyful Karma. Each creature shows her cleverness in myriad ways: escaping enclosures like an orangutan; jetting water to bounce balls; and endlessly tricking companions with multiple “sleights of hand” to get food.Scientists have only recently accepted the intelligence of dogs, birds, and chimpanzees but now are watching octopuses solve problems and are trying to decipher the meaning of the animal’s color-changing techniques. With her “joyful passion for these intelligent and fascinating creatures” (Library Journal Editors’ Spring Pick), Montgomery chronicles the growing appreciation of this mollusk as she tells a unique love story. By turns funny, entertaining, touching, and profound, The Soul of an Octopus reveals what octopuses can teach us about the meeting of two very different minds.

    In the new edition of Biochemistry, instructors will see the all the hallmark features that made this a consistent bestseller for the undergraduate biochemistry course: exceptional clarity and concision, a more biological focus, cutting-edge content, and an elegant, uncluttered design.  Accomplished in both the classroom and the laboratory, coauthors Jeremy Berg and John Tymoczko draw on the field's dynamic research to illustrate its fundamental ideas.

    Now in it's tenth edition, this text makes chemistry exciting to students by showing them why important concepts are relevant to their lives and future careers.

    The book covers habituation, classical conditioning, instrumental conditioning, stimulus control, aversive control, and their applications to the study of cognition and to the alleviation of behavior problems. Biological constraints on learning are integrated throughout the text, as are applications boxes that relate animal research to human learning and behavior. The book closely reflects the field of research it represents in terms of topics covered, theories discussed, and experimental paradigms described.

    1 comes a fascinating chronicle of life’s history told not through the fossil record but through the stories of organisms that have survived, almost unchanged, throughout time. Evolution, it seems, has not completely obliterated its tracks as more advanced organisms have evolved; the history of life on earth is far older—and odder—than many of us realize.   Scattered across the globe, these remarkable plants and animals continue to mark seminal events in geological time. From a moonlit beach in Delaware, where the hardy horseshoe crab shuffles its way to a frenzy of mass mating just as it did 450 million years ago, to the dense rainforests of New Zealand, where the elusive, unprepossessing velvet worm has burrowed deep into rotting timber since before the breakup of the ancient supercontinent, to a stretch of Australian coastline with stromatolite formations that bear witness to the Precambrian dawn, the existence of these survivors offers us a tantalizing glimpse of pivotal points in evolutionary history. These are not “living fossils” but rather a handful of tenacious creatures of days long gone.   Written in buoyant, sparkling prose, Horseshoe Crabs and Velvet Worms is a marvelously captivating exploration of the world’s old-timers combining the very best of science writing with an explorer’s sense of adventure and wonder.

    In fact the currently accepted history of life on Earth is flawed and out of date. Now two pioneering scientists, one already an award-winning popular author, deliver an eye-opening narrative that synthesizes a generation's worth of insights from new research.Writing with zest, humor, and clarity, Ward and Kirschvink show that many of our long-held beliefs about the history of life are wrong. Three central themes emerge from the narrative. First, the development of life was not a stately, gradual process: Catastrophe, argue Ward and Kirschvink, shaped life's history more than all other forces combined-from notorious events like the sudden extinction of dinosaurs to recently discovered ones like "Snowball Earth" and the "Great Oxygenation Event." One startling possibility: that life arrived on Earth from Mars. Second, life consists of carbon, but three other molecules have determined how it evolved: oxygen, carbon dioxide, and hydrogen sulfide are carbon's silent partners. Third, ever since Darwin we have thought of evolution in terms of species. Yet it is the evolution of ecosystems-from deep-ocean vents to rainforests-that has formed the living world as we know it.Drawing on their years of experience in paleontology, biology, chemistry, and astrobiology, Ward and Kirschvink tell a story of life on Earth that is at once too fabulous to imagine and too familiar to dismiss. And in a provocative coda, they assemble discoveries from the latest cutting-edge research to imagine how the history of life might unfold deep into the future.

    Recent, massive blooms of billions of jellyfish have clogged power plants, decimated fisheries, and caused millions of dollars of damage. Driven by questions about how overfishing, coastal development, and climate change were contributing to a jellyfish population explosion, Juli embarked on a scientific odyssey. She traveled the globe to meet the biologists who devote their careers to jellies, hitched rides on Japanese fishing boats to see giant jellyfish in the wild, raised jellyfish in her dining room, and throughout it all marveled at the complexity of these alluring and ominous biological wonders.

    It presents the important traditional content of mineralogy including crystallography, chemical bonding, controls on mineral structure, mineral stability, and crystal growth to provide a foundation that enables students to understand the nature and occurrence of minerals. Physical, optical, and X-ray powder diffraction techniques of mineral study are described in detail, and common chemical analytical methods are outlined as well. Detailed descriptions of over 100 common minerals are provided, and the geologic context within which these minerals occur is emphasized. Appendices provide tables and diagrams to help students with mineral identification, using both physical and optical properties. Numerous line drawings, photographs, and photomicrographs help make complex concepts understandable. Introduction to Mineralogy not only provides specific knowledge about minerals but also helps students develop the intellectual tools essential for a solid, scientific education. This comprehensive text is useful for undergraduate students in a wide range of mineralogy courses.

    An evolutionary perspective forms the foundation of the entire discussion. The book begins with the natural history of the planet, considers portions of the whole in the middle chapters, and ends with another perspective of the entire planet in the concluding chapter. Its unique organization of focusing only on several key concepts in each chapter sets it apart from the competition. .

    However, rather than resting on that reputation, the new edition of this text marks a significant advance in the already excellent quality of the book. While preserving concise language, state of the art educational pedagogy, and top-notch worked examples, the Eighth Edition features a unified art design as well as streamlined and carefully reorganized problem sets that enhance the thoughtful instruction for which Raymond A. Serway and John W. Jewett, Jr. earned their reputations. Likewise, PHYSICS FOR SCIENTISTS AND ENGINEERS, will continue to accompany Enhanced WebAssign in the most integrated text-technology offering available today. In an environment where new Physics texts have appeared with challenging and novel means to teach students, this book exceeds all modern standards of education from the most solid foundation in the Physics market today.

    Emphasis is placed on connections in nature, the importance of ecology to environmental health and services, and links to evolution.

    The book analyzes the major political and military events in British history, and where appropriate, looks at these within a wider, international context. It also describes everyday life for men and women from different levels of society in different ages: the kind of work they did, family life, etc. Emphasis is also placed on cultural, intellectual, scientific and economic developments. Major developments within Scotland, Ireland and Wales and the relations between these countries and England are also discussed.

    H. Freeman and Company.  Visit the  Life, Eighth Edition preview site.  LIFE HAS EVOLVED. . . from its original publication to this dramatically revitalized Eighth Edition. LIFE has always shown students how biology works, offering an engaging and coherent presentation of the fundamentals of biology by describing the landmark experiments that revealed them. This edition builds on those strengths and introduces several innovations.As with previous editions, the Eighth Edition will also be available in three paperback volumes:  • Volume I: The Cell and Heredity, Chapters 1-20  • Volume II: Evolution, Diversity and Ecology, Chapters 1, 21-33, 52-57  • Volume III: Plants and Animals, Chapters 1, 34-51