EBookClubs

Read Books & Download eBooks Full Online

EBookClubs

Read Books & Download eBooks Full Online

Book Egg and Sperm Race

Download or read book Egg and Sperm Race written by Matthew Cobb and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Where do we come from? Where do animals come from? For thousands of years we really had no clue how living things were created -- great thinkers like Aristotle and Plato had attempted to explain what became known as the problem of 'generation', but neither really had the tools or the insight to solve the mystery. The result was a wealth of weird and wonderful ideas about the components necessary to create new life -- blood, 'vapours', strange pulses in the air. Nor did people make intuitive leaps that now seem self-evident: it was widely accepted that animals could breed different species, for example; the notion that two sheep can only make another sheep is a surprisingly modern idea.But all this confusion changed in a flurry of discovery in the mid-seventeenth century. In just a decade, a group of young scientists in Europe, all known to each other and in competition with each other, established the existence first of the human egg and then of the human sperm. At last, the building blocks were in place -- although, in one of the great ironies of science, it would be another 150 years before someone worked out how fertilisation actually took place.Focusing on the personalities and rivalries of this extraordinary period, Matthew Cobb has shed new light not just on an under-reported story of science but on our very nature -- what makes us, and how little we still know about one of the greatest miracles of Nature.

Book The Egg and Sperm Race

Download or read book The Egg and Sperm Race written by Frances R. Balkwill and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 1996-11 with total page 127 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This comprehensive guide to the body combines recent cell and molecular biology in a story that begins with the first life on earth. With a simple text and illustrations, it aims to make science fun.

Book Sex Cells

    Book Details:
  • Author : Rene Almeling
  • Publisher : Univ of California Press
  • Release : 2011-09-20
  • ISBN : 0520270967
  • Pages : 240 pages

Download or read book Sex Cells written by Rene Almeling and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2011-09-20 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “What happens when sex cells sell? Do human bodies become degraded objects of commerce? Challenging simplistic accounts of commodification, Almeling offers a compelling analysis of contemporary markets for eggs and sperm. A superb contribution to 21st century economic sociology.” -Viviana A. Zelizer, author of Economic Lives: How Culture Shapes the Economy “This is a highly informative book. Almeling provides a balanced approach to this highly controversial subject. Although you might be conflicted by the ethical issues, you will definitely be extremely well-informed when you finish this book.” -Alan H. DeCherney, MD, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development “Almeling offers a wonderfully thoughtful analysis and an innovative cultural lens for viewing the gendered lives of sex cells and their commodification in the contemporary USA.” -Rayna Rapp, author of Testing Women, Testing the Fetus: The Impact of Amniocentesis in America

Book Sperm Wars

    Book Details:
  • Author : Robin Baker
  • Publisher : Basic Books
  • Release : 2006-01-03
  • ISBN : 0465012965
  • Pages : 401 pages

Download or read book Sperm Wars written by Robin Baker and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2006-01-03 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This classic work on the rules of sex -- updated for a new generation -- is still as provocative as the day it was published, providing simple explanations for any and all questions about what happens in the bedroom. Sex isn't as complicated as we make it. In Sperm Wars, evolutionary biologist Robin Baker argues that every question about human sexuality can be explained by one simple thing: sperm warfare. In the interest of promoting competition between sperm to fertilize the same egg, evolution has built men to conquer and monopolize women while women are built to seek the best genetic input on offer from potential sexual partners. Baker reveals, through a series of provocative fictional scene, the far-reaching implications of sperm competition. 10% of children are not fathered by their "fathers;" over 99% of a man's sperm exists simply to fight off all other men's sperm; and a woman is far more likely to conceive through a casual fling than through sex with her regular partner. From infidelity, to homosexuality, to the female orgasm, Sperm Wars turns on every light in the bedroom. Now with new material reflecting the latest research on sperm warfare, this milestone of popular science will still surprise, entertain, and even shock.

Book Molecular Biology of the Cell

Download or read book Molecular Biology of the Cell written by and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Book Promiscuity

    Book Details:
  • Author : Tim Birkhead
  • Publisher : Harvard University Press
  • Release : 2000
  • ISBN : 9780674006669
  • Pages : 300 pages

Download or read book Promiscuity written by Tim Birkhead and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Birkhead reveals a world in which males and females vie with each other as they strive to maximize their reproductive success. Color illustrations.

Book Where Willy Went

    Book Details:
  • Author : Nicholas Allan
  • Publisher : Knopf Books for Young Readers
  • Release : 2011-11-30
  • ISBN : 0375983805
  • Pages : 83 pages

Download or read book Where Willy Went written by Nicholas Allan and published by Knopf Books for Young Readers. This book was released on 2011-11-30 with total page 83 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Never before have the facts of life been presented in such an accessible—or novel—way. Our hero is Willy, a little sperm who lives inside Mr. Browne with 300 million friends. Every day Willy practices for the Great Swimming Race. And when the day arrives, he swims faster than his 300 million friends to win the prize—a marvelous egg. Then something wonderful happens, and eventually Mr. and Mrs. Browne have a baby girl who has the same winning smile as Willy and who grows up to be a great swimmer. Hilariously funny, warm, and endearing, this is a picture book that appeals on different levels to both children and grown-ups. “Fresh, original, and imaginative. . . . Allan’s achievement is in couching fascinating facts within the construct of a gentle, direct narrative. A little knowledge is a wonderful thing, and as the rest of the facts of life fall into place, Allan’s readers will look back on this book with a mixture of fondness and wry amusement.” —The Guardian (UK)

Book Freezing Fertility

Download or read book Freezing Fertility written by Lucy van de Wiel and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2020-12-15 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Welcomed as liberation and dismissed as exploitation, egg freezing (oocyte cryopreservation) has rapidly become one of the most widely-discussed and influential new reproductive technologies of this century. In Freezing Fertility, Lucy van de Wiel takes us inside the world of fertility preservation—with its egg freezing parties, contested age limits, proactive anticipations and equity investments—and shows how the popularization of egg freezing has profound consequences for the way in which female fertility and reproductive aging are understood, commercialized and politicized. Beyond an individual reproductive choice for people who may want to have children later in life, Freezing Fertility explores how the rise of egg freezing also reveals broader cultural, political and economic negotiations about reproductive politics, gender inequities, age normativities and the financialization of healthcare. Van de Wiel investigates these issues by analyzing a wide range of sources—varying from sparkly online platforms to heart-breaking court cases and intimate autobiographical accounts—that are emblematic of each stage of the egg freezing procedure. By following the egg’s journey, Freezing Fertility examines how contemporary egg freezing practices both reflect broader social, regulatory and economic power asymmetries and repoliticize fertility and aging in ways that affect the public at large. In doing so, the book explores how the possibility of egg freezing shifts our relation to the beginning and end of life.

Book Count Down

    Book Details:
  • Author : Shanna H. Swan
  • Publisher : Simon and Schuster
  • Release : 2022-02-08
  • ISBN : 1982113677
  • Pages : 304 pages

Download or read book Count Down written by Shanna H. Swan and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2022-02-08 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An award-winning scientist, in this urgent, thought-provoking and meticulously researched book, shows how chemicals in the modern environment are changing--and endangering--human sexuality and fertility on the grandest scale.

Book Human Sperm Competition

Download or read book Human Sperm Competition written by R.R. Baker and published by Springer. This book was released on 1994-12-31 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Behavioural ecologists and evolutionary biologists have long been interested in the biological implications of sperm from different males competing for fertilization of the egg in the female tract. This book discusses these implications for human sexual behaviour and human infertility problems.

Book Sperm Competition in Humans

Download or read book Sperm Competition in Humans written by Todd K. Shackelford and published by Springer. This book was released on 2010-10-29 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In species with internal fertilization, sperm competition occurs when the sperm of two or more males simultaneously occupy the reproductive tract of a female and compete to fertilize an egg (Parker, 1970). A large body of empirical research has demonstrated that, as predicted by sperm competition theory, males and females in many species possess anatomical, behavioral, and physiological adaptations that have evolved to deal with the adaptive challenges associated with sperm competition. Moreover, in recent years, evolutionary biologists and psychologists have begun to examine the extent to which sperm competition may have been an important selective pressure during human evolution. Some research has suggested that male humans, like males of many bird, insect, and rodent species, might be able to adjust the number of sperm they inseminate according to the risk of sperm competition. Other research has examined whether such responses might be accompanied by psychological changes that motivate human males to pursue copulations when the risk of sperm competition is high. Furthermore, there is research suggesting that aspects of human penile anatomy might function to enhance success in sperm competition. Much of this work has been controversial; some of the findings have been disputed and others have been greeted with skepticism. However, the idea that some aspects of human psychology and behavior might best be understood as adaptations to sperm competition remains intriguing and, in certain cases, very persuasive.

Book Conceiving People

    Book Details:
  • Author : Daniel Groll
  • Publisher : Oxford University Press
  • Release : 2021-08-24
  • ISBN : 0190063076
  • Pages : 257 pages

Download or read book Conceiving People written by Daniel Groll and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021-08-24 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. Each year, tens of thousands of children are conceived with donated gametes (sperm or eggs). By some estimates, there are over one million donor-conceived people in the United States and, of course, many more the world over. Some know they are donor-conceived. Some do not. Some know the identity of their donors. Others never will. Questions about what donor-conceived people should know about their genetic progenitors are hugely significant for literally millions of people, including donor-conceived people, their parents, and donors. But the practice of gamete donation also provides a vivid occasion for thinking about questions that matter to everyone. What is the value of knowing who your genetic progenitors are? How are our identities bound up with knowing where we come from? What obligations do parents have to their children? And what makes someone a parent in the first place? In Conceiving People: Identity, Genetics and Gamete Donation, Daniel Groll argues that people who plan to create a child with donated gametes should choose a donor whose identity will be made available to the resulting child. This is not, Groll argues, because having genetic knowledge is fundamentally important. Rather, it is because donor-conceived people are likely to develop a significant interest in having genetic knowledge and parents must help satisfy their children's significant interests. In other words, because a donor-conceived person is likely to care about having genetic knowledge, their parents should care too.

Book Motherhood  Rescheduled

Download or read book Motherhood Rescheduled written by Sarah Elizabeth Richards and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2013-05-07 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: THE CLOCK TICKER’S REPRIEVE tells the stories of five women who freeze their eggs and chronicles how it affects their lives.

Book Race  Ethnicity  and Nation

Download or read book Race Ethnicity and Nation written by Peter Wade and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2007-12-01 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Race, ethnicity and nation are all intimately linked to family and kinship, yet these links deserve closer attention than they usually get in social science, above all when family and kinship are changing rapidly in the context of genomic and biotechnological revolutions. Drawing on data from assisted reproduction, transnational adoption, mixed race families, Basque identity politics and post-Soviet nation-building, this volume provides new and challenging ways to understand race, ethnicity and nation.

Book Life s Greatest Secret

    Book Details:
  • Author : Matthew Cobb
  • Publisher : Hachette UK
  • Release : 2015-07-07
  • ISBN : 0465062660
  • Pages : 464 pages

Download or read book Life s Greatest Secret written by Matthew Cobb and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2015-07-07 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Everyone has heard of the story of DNA as the story of Watson and Crick and Rosalind Franklin, but knowing the structure of DNA was only a part of a greater struggle to understand life's secrets. Life's Greatest Secret is the story of the discovery and cracking of the genetic code, the thing that ultimately enables a spiraling molecule to give rise to the life that exists all around us. This great scientific breakthrough has had farreaching consequences for how we understand ourselves and our place in the natural world, and for how we might take control of our (and life's) future. Life's Greatest Secret mixes remarkable insights, theoretical dead-ends, and ingenious experiments with the swift pace of a thriller. From New York to Paris, Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Cambridge, England, and London to Moscow, the greatest discovery of twentieth-century biology was truly a global feat. Biologist and historian of science Matthew Cobb gives the full and rich account of the cooperation and competition between the eccentric characters -- mathematicians, physicists, information theorists, and biologists -- who contributed to this revolutionary new science. And, while every new discovery was a leap forward for science, Cobb shows how every new answer inevitably led to new questions that were at least as difficult to answer: just ask anyone who had hoped that the successful completion of the Human Genome Project was going to truly yield the book of life, or that a better understanding of epigenetics or "junk DNA" was going to be the final piece of the puzzle. But the setbacks and unexpected discoveries are what make the science exciting, and it is Matthew Cobb's telling that makes them worth reading. This is a riveting story of humans exploring what it is that makes us human and how the world works, and it is essential reading for anyone who'd like to explore those questions for themselves.

Book Surrogacy and Embryo  Sperm    Egg Donation  What Were You Thinking

Download or read book Surrogacy and Embryo Sperm Egg Donation What Were You Thinking written by Theresa M. Erickson and published by iUniverse. This book was released on 2010-07-29 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Surrogacy and Embryo, Sperm, & Egg Donation: What Were You Thinking?, an attorney who practices exclusively in reproductive law shares her expert guidance for those ready to create a family via third-party reproduction. Theresa Erickson, managing partner of Erickson Law, APLC, and the Founder and Chair of Conceptual Options, The Surrogacy and Egg Donation Center, educates and guides parents, surrogates, egg donors, sperm donors, and embryo donors through fertility, infertility, IVF, and third-party reproduction. Erickson includes a glossary of terms, a list of recommended reading for both parents and their children, and legal forms while covering a multitude of relatable topics such as the: Top ten myths of third-party family building History of reproduction technologies Ways to begin the process Ethical and legal issues Questions to ask when building a family the nontraditional way Methods to select a physician and attorney Four fertility options Infertility is a global tragedy that no one should have to endure alone. This guidebook provides valuable information for anyone ready to embark on the journey of becoming parents through third-party reproduction.

Book The Ovary of Eve

    Book Details:
  • Author : Clara Pinto-Correia
  • Publisher : University of Chicago Press
  • Release : 2007-12-01
  • ISBN : 0226669505
  • Pages : 424 pages

Download or read book The Ovary of Eve written by Clara Pinto-Correia and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2007-12-01 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Ovary of Eve is a rich and often hilarious account of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century efforts to understand conception. In these early years of the Scientific Revolution, the most intelligent men and women of the day struggled to come to terms with the origins of new life, and one theory—preformation—sparked an intensely heated debate that continued for over a hundred years. Clara Pinto-Correia traces the history of this much maligned theory through the cultural capitals of Europe. "The most wonderfully eye-opening, or imagination-opening book, as amusing as it is instructive."—Mary Warnock, London Observer "[A] fascinating and often humorous study of a reproductive theory that flourished from the mid-17th century to the mid-18th century."—Nina C. Ayoub, Chronicle of Higher Education "More than just a good story, The Ovary of Eve is an object lesson about the history of science: Don't trust it. . . . Pinto-Correia says she wants to tell the story of history's losers. In doing so, she makes defeat sound more appealing than victory."—Emily Eakin, Nation. "A sparkling history of preformation as it once affected every facet of European culture."—Robert Taylor, Boston Globe