Download or read book Hidden Pathways to Extinction written by Giovanni Strona and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-05-17 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides, for the first time, a comprehensive overview of the fundamental roles that ecological interactions play in extinction processes, bringing to light an underground of hidden pathways leading to the same dark place: biodiversity loss.We are in the midst of the sixth mass extinction. We see species declining and vanishing one after another. Poached rhinos, dolphins and whales slaughtered, pandas surviving only in captivity are strong emotional testimonials of what is happening. Yet, the main threat to natural communities may be overshadowed by the disappearance of large species, with most extinctions happening unnoticed and involving less eye-catching organisms, such as parasites and pollinators. Ecosystems hide countless, invisible wires connecting organisms in dense networks of ecological interactions. Through these networks, perturbations can propagate from one species to another, producing unpredictable effects. In worst case scenarios, the loss of one species might doom many others to extinction. Ecologists now consider such mechanisms as a fundamental – and still poorly understood - driver of the ongoing biodiversity crisis. Hidden Pathways to Extinction makes the invisible links connecting the fates of species and organisms evident, exploring why complexity can enhance ecosystem stability and yet accelerate species loss. Page after page, Strona provides convincing evidence that we are primarily responsible for the fall in biodiversity, that we are falling too, and that we need to redouble our conservation efforts now, or it won't be long before we hit the ground.
Download or read book Footprints of Fallen Giants Pathways to Extinction in North American History written by Clay Sherrod and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2016-08-26 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Footprints is about an evolution revolution, the non-living world to the living tiny organisms of earliest Earth. each striving to have enough precious time to evolve so they might survive long enough to resist the effects of a changing world. And, yes - it is a story about Dinosaurs. But the story - being about evolution - has an unhappy ending for the great Dinosaurs of the Cretaceous. For what is surely natural reasons, as well as self-imposed doom by the creatures themselves, they fell fate to Extinction - just had many plants and animals had almost 200 million years earlier. This is not just the story of Dinosaurs and their extinction: all of the biological world is subject to - and ultimately succumbs to - demise through the processes of environment and nature. Today the possibilities of extinction are greatest because of the introduction of the newest form of life on Earth - humans - who have the capability of altering an otherwise natural progression of this world we live on.
Download or read book Global Challenges for a Sustainable Society written by José Alberto Benítez-Andrades and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2023-06-11 with total page 581 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: EURECA-PRO is the global educational core hub and interdisciplinary research and innovation leader in qualitative environmental and social framework development for responsible consumption and production. Through its novel approach, on the one hand, it holistically contributes to the highly topical issue of Sustainable Consumption and Production under the umbrella of Sustainable Development Goal 12, and on the other hand it effectively contributes to the development of the European Higher Education Area complimentary to Sustainable Development Goal 4. In this book readers will find the discussion results among professionals, academics and scientists on responsible consumption and production, regarding the latest advances to achieve a sustainable society. This book contents 5 chapters focused on: Smart and healthy societies, Recycling, reused and longer lasting products, fresh air, clean water, healthy soil and biodiversity, cleaner energy and cutting-edge clean technological innovation, and industry 4.0. This book also intends to show the current and future challenges, and innovative solutions considering the technological, humanistic, educational, economic, social and environmental dimensions of sustainability
Download or read book Phylogenetics written by Ibrokhim Y. Abdurakhmonov and published by BoD – Books on Demand. This book was released on 2017-09-06 with total page 122 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Phylogenetics aims to study the evolutionary relatedness of living organisms in our planet. Its application is extended to the key areas such as evolution, classification and taxonomy of living organisms; ecology, diversity, and conservation biology of agrobiocenosis; monitoring of pathogen spread, outbreaks and source of transmissions, forensic analyses, etc. Historically, phylogenetics studies were prevalently based on morphological features of species that helped to classify the 'Tree of Life' on Earth. Modern phylogenetics studies, however, rely more heavily on DNA sequences. In this Phylogenetics book, we aimed to present readers the latest developments in phylogenetics studies that highlight multi-kingdom systems, reticulated evolution and conservation biology of living organisms as well as 'omics'-based phylogenetics advances.
Download or read book The Mysteries of the Great Cross of Hendaye written by Jay Weidner and published by Inner Traditions / Bear & Co. This book was released on 2003-12-10 with total page 532 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Decodes the message held by this enigmatic monument, revealing the alchemical secret of time and the fate of humanity.
Download or read book The Economics of Optimal Growth Pathways written by S. Niggol Seo and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2023-02-25 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Every society aspires to be prosperous. It also endeavors to minimize the side effects of economic growth. This book entitled The Economics of Optimal Growth Pathways addresses numerous trade-offs faced by society to achieve prosperity and explores the best possible growth pathways. The theories explored in this book serve as a springboard to better understand key challenges and aspects of the economy, including food security, land use, forest and resource management, capital markets and interest rates, oil and gas extraction, fish and marine resources, saving and investment, and climate change. This book elucidates the concept of optimal economic growth pathways while addressing the challenges faced in natural resources and life on the planet. It will be relevant to students and researchers interested in resource and environmental economics.
Download or read book The Sixth Extinction written by Elizabeth Kolbert and published by Henry Holt and Company. This book was released on 2014-02-11 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW'S 10 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR A major book about the future of the world, blending intellectual and natural history and field reporting into a powerful account of the mass extinction unfolding before our eyes Over the last half a billion years, there have been five mass extinctions, when the diversity of life on earth suddenly and dramatically contracted. Scientists around the world are currently monitoring the sixth extinction, predicted to be the most devastating extinction event since the asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs. This time around, the cataclysm is us. In The Sixth Extinction, two-time winner of the National Magazine Award and New Yorker writer Elizabeth Kolbert draws on the work of scores of researchers in half a dozen disciplines, accompanying many of them into the field: geologists who study deep ocean cores, botanists who follow the tree line as it climbs up the Andes, marine biologists who dive off the Great Barrier Reef. She introduces us to a dozen species, some already gone, others facing extinction, including the Panamian golden frog, staghorn coral, the great auk, and the Sumatran rhino. Through these stories, Kolbert provides a moving account of the disappearances occurring all around us and traces the evolution of extinction as concept, from its first articulation by Georges Cuvier in revolutionary Paris up through the present day. The sixth extinction is likely to be mankind's most lasting legacy; as Kolbert observes, it compels us to rethink the fundamental question of what it means to be human.
Download or read book Scientific American Explores the Hidden Mind written by Scientific American and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2002-05-15 with total page 104 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Free when packaged with any Worth text. This special collector's edition features articles that reveal the mysterious inner workings of mind and brain.
Download or read book AI IA 2011 Artificial Intelligence Around Man and Beyond written by Roberto Pirrone and published by Springer. This book was released on 2011-09-15 with total page 478 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 12th International Conference of the Italian Association for Artificial Intelligence, AI*IA 2011, held in Palermo, Italy, in September 2011. The 31 revised full papers presented together with 3 invited talks and 13 posters were carefully reviewed and selected from 58 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on machine learning; distributed AI: robotics and MAS; theoretical issues: knowledge representation and reasoning; planning, cognitive modeling; natural language processing; and AI applications.
Download or read book A New Earth written by George P Tsakraklides and published by Independently Published. This book was released on 2021-10-31 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Earth population: 1.8 billion. In a world already ravaged by climate change, society has become a dystopia of deep fake algorithms, vertical farms and digital totalitarianism. Among the very few remaining free thinkers, a retired extinction ecologist, a marine molecular biologist and a transgender woman accidentally discover a genetic locus that goes back to the origin of life on the planet. Will their discovery help them understand the biggest extinction event that Earth has ever faced? "This is impressing me like no author I've read since Kim Stanley Robinson. Bravo"
Download or read book Endangered Maize written by Helen Anne Curry and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2022-01-25 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Charting the political, social, and environmental history of efforts to conserve crop diversity. Many people worry that we're losing genetic diversity in the foods we eat. Over the past century, crop varieties standardized for industrial agriculture have increasingly dominated farm fields. Concerned about what this transition means for the future of food, scientists, farmers, and eaters have sought to protect fruits, grains, and vegetables they consider endangered. They have organized high-tech genebanks and heritage seed swaps. They have combed fields for ancient landraces and sought farmers growing Indigenous varieties. Behind this widespread concern for the loss of plant diversity lies another extinction narrative that concerns the survival of farmers themselves, a story that is often obscured by urgent calls to collect and preserve. Endangered Maize draws on the rich history of corn in Mexico and the United States to uncover this hidden narrative and show how it shaped the conservation strategies adopted by scientists, states, and citizens. In Endangered Maize, historian Helen Anne Curry investigates more than a hundred years of agriculture and conservation practices to understand the tasks that farmers and researchers have considered essential to maintaining crop diversity. Through the contours of efforts to preserve diversity in one of the world's most important crops, Curry reveals how those who sought to protect native, traditional, and heritage crops forged their methods around the expectation that social, political, and economic transformations would eliminate diverse communities and cultures. In this fascinating study of how cultural narratives shape science, Curry argues for new understandings of endangerment and alternative strategies to protect and preserve crop diversity.
Download or read book The Hidden Life of Life written by Elizabeth Marshall Thomas and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2018-03-24 with total page 163 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An iconoclast and best-selling author of both nonfiction and fiction, Elizabeth Marshall Thomas has spent a lifetime observing, thinking, and writing about the cultures of animals such as lions, wolves, dogs, deer, and humans. In this compulsively readable book, she provides a plainspoken, big-picture look at the commonality of life on our planet, from the littlest microbes to the largest lizards. Inspired by the idea of symbiosis in evolution—that all living things evolve in a series of cooperative relationships—Thomas takes readers on a journey through the progression of life. Along the way she shares the universal likenesses, experiences, and environments of “Gaia’s creatures,” from amoebas in plant soil to the pets we love, from proud primates to Homo sapiens hunter-gatherers on the African savanna. Fervently rejecting “anthropodenial,” the notion that nonhuman life does not share characteristics with humans, Thomas instead shows that paramecia can learn, plants can communicate, humans aren’t really as special as we think we are—and that it doesn’t take a scientist to marvel at the smallest inhabitants of the natural world and their connections to all living things. A unique voice on anthropology and animal behavior, Thomas challenges scientific convention and the jargon that prevents us all from understanding all living things better. This joyfully written book is a fascinating look at the challenges and behaviors shared by creatures from bacteria to larvae to parasitic fungi, a potted hyacinth to the author herself, and all those in between.
Download or read book Biological Extinction written by Partha Dasgupta and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-09-05 with total page 465 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Questions why species are becoming extinct, and how we can protect the natural world on which we all depend.
Download or read book The Wisdom of the Adepts written by Thomas Lake Harris and published by . This book was released on 1884 with total page 578 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Plasticity in Spatial Neglect Recovery and Rehabilitation written by Georg Kerkhoff and published by IOS Press. This book was released on 2006-12 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Animal experiments, functional imaging studies and longitudinal outcome studies suggest that injured brains can change their function and connectivity. This book provides opportunities for an interdisciplinary exchange of research ideas between basic neuroscience, applied clinical neuropsychology, neurorehabilitation and neurotechnology.
Download or read book Galaxy Collisions written by Curtis Struck and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2011-02-04 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The spectacular images of galaxy collisions capture the imagination. This book will show what is out there in the universe, what it’s like in other galaxies, what they might look like, and how cosmic processes might affect life in other solar systems. It will explain crucial stages in the development of physical structure in the universe, and the effect of galaxy scale processes. Professor Struck will explore all the issues surrounding galaxy collisions. He will begin with a brief broad review of the background on galaxies, the history of their discovery, and how this has been driven by steadily improving technology. Chapters 2 gives details of the early stages of different types of galaxy collision - Rings of Fire, Tidal Swings and Retrograde and Sideways Reels - while Chapter 3 describes collisions between galaxies of very different masses: minor merger or dwarf destruction. Chapter 4 covers ultra-luminous infrared galaxies and major mergers and Chapter 5 briefly examines the techniques used for computer simulation results and how increasing computer capacity has affected the development of this field. The following chapter looks at understanding the physical processes of triggered star formation and nuclear activity. Chapters 7-9 look at the broader view of cosmological structure growth which determines the environment and conditions in which galaxy collisions occur. In the densest environments, this process repeats itself on the larger scale of galaxy clusters. The concluding chapter considers what a galaxy collision looks like from a solar system like ours. Although the galaxy is completely restructured and the night sky view would change greatly over the course of several hundred million years, the direct effects on our planet would be few and infrequent, with only a small probability of being truly catastrophic. These issues will be explored along with the ideas that galaxies must reach a certain evolutionary "maturity" before they can even form solar systems, and that there are habitable zones within galaxies. Thus, galaxy scale processes, like collisions, can determine the fate of life on Earth-like planets.
Download or read book Beloved Beasts Fighting for Life in an Age of Extinction written by Michelle Nijhuis and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2021-03-09 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Sierra Club's 2021 Rachel Carson Award One of Chicago Tribune's Ten Best Books of 2021 Named a Top Ten Best Science Book of 2021 by Booklist and Smithsonian Magazine "At once thoughtful and thought-provoking,” Beloved Beasts tells the story of the modern conservation movement through the lives and ideas of the people who built it, making “a crucial addition to the literature of our troubled time" (Elizabeth Kolbert, author of The Sixth Extinction). In the late nineteenth century, humans came at long last to a devastating realization: their rapidly industrializing and globalizing societies were driving scores of animal species to extinction. In Beloved Beasts, acclaimed science journalist Michelle Nijhuis traces the history of the movement to protect and conserve other forms of life. From early battles to save charismatic species such as the American bison and bald eagle to today’s global effort to defend life on a larger scale, Nijhuis’s “spirited and engaging” account documents “the changes of heart that changed history” (Dan Cryer, Boston Globe). With “urgency, passion, and wit” (Michael Berry, Christian Science Monitor), she describes the vital role of scientists and activists such as Aldo Leopold and Rachel Carson, reveals the origins of vital organizations like the Audubon Society and the World Wildlife Fund, explores current efforts to protect species such as the whooping crane and the black rhinoceros, and confronts the darker side of modern conservation, long shadowed by racism and colonialism. As the destruction of other species continues and the effects of climate change wreak havoc on our world, Beloved Beasts charts the ways conservation is becoming a movement for the protection of all species including our own.
