Download or read book The End of Evolution written by Peter Douglas Ward and published by Bantam. This book was released on 1995 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A finalist for a Los Angeles Times book award, this contagiously enthusiastic book eloquently recreates the dramatic history of life and its great extinctions, and issues an unprecedentedly compelling call to act to preserve our planet's biodiversity. Line art & photos.
Download or read book The Ghosts Of Evolution written by Connie Barlow and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2008-08-05 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new vision is sweeping through ecological science: The dense web of dependencies that makes up an ecosystem has gained an added dimension-the dimension of time. Every field, forest, and park is full of living organisms adapted for relationships with creatures that are now extinct. In a vivid narrative, Connie Barlow shows how the idea of "missing partners" in nature evolved from isolated, curious examples into an idea that is transforming how ecologists understand the entire flora and fauna of the Americas. This fascinating book will enrich and deepen the experience of anyone who enjoys a stroll through the woods or even down an urban sidewalk. But this knowledge has a dark side too: Barlow's "ghost stories" teach us that the ripples of biodiversity loss around us now are just the leading edge of what may well become perilous cascades of extinction.
Download or read book Grandmother Fish written by Jonathan Tweet and published by Feiwel & Friends. This book was released on 2016-09-06 with total page 40 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Where did we come from? It's a simple question, but not so simple an answer to explain—especially to young children. Charles Darwin's theory of common descent no longer needs to be a scientific mystery to inquisitive young readers. Meet Grandmother Fish. Told in an engaging call and response text where a child can wiggle like a fish or hoot like an ape and brought to life by vibrant artwork, Grandmother Fish takes children and adults through the history of life on our planet and explains how we are all connected. The book also includes comprehensive backmatter, including: - An elaborate illustration of the evolutionary tree of life - Helpful science notes for parents - How to explain natural selection to a child
Download or read book Evolution s End written by Joseph C. Pearce and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 1993-10-22 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It's time for the way we think about our families, our schools, and our lives to evolve. This passionate and provocative critique of the way we raise our children and undermine our society's future delineates the ways in which we thart our creative progess, and reveals a new landscape of possibilities for the next step in human evolution. Brilliantly synthesizing twenty years of research into human intelligence, Joseph Chilton Pearce -- author of the bestsellers The Crack in the Cosmic Egg and Magical Child -- show how: • contemporary childbirth and daycare create a dangerous sense of alienation from the surrounding world • TV impedes vital neurological development • synthetic hormones in our foods foster premature sexual development, increasing the likelihood of pregnancy and rape • premature schooling contributes to potentially explosive frustration and rebellion These everyday aspects of modern life have a cumulative effect, contributing to violence, child suicide, and deteriorating family and social structures. Proposing crucial yet simple solutions, Pearce persuasively argues that we have the power to get out of our own way and unleash, instead, our "unlimited", awesome, and unknown" human potential as the culmination of three billion years of evolution.
Download or read book The Evolution of Death written by Stanley Shostak and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2012-02-01 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Evolution of Death, the follow-up to Becoming Immortal: Combining Cloning and Stem-Cell Therapy, also published by SUNY Press, Stanley Shostak argues that death, like life, can evolve. Observing that literature, philosophy, religion, genetics, physics, and gerontology still struggle to explain why we die, Shostak explores the mystery of death from a biological perspective. Death, Shostak claims, is not the end of a linear journey, static and indifferent to change. Instead, he suggests, the current efforts to live longer have profoundly affected our ecological niche, and we are evolving into a long-lived species. Pointing to the artificial means currently used to prolong life, he argues that as we become increasingly juvenilized in our adult life, death will become significantly and evolutionarily delayed. As bodies evolve, the embryos of succeeding generations may be accumulating the stem cells that preserve and restore, providing the resources necessary to live longer and longer. If trends like this continue, Shostak contends, future human beings may join the ranks of other animals with indefinite life spans.
Download or read book Evolution written by Teri Terry and published by Charlesbridge Publishing. This book was released on 2020-08-11 with total page 419 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A thrilling showdown brings the Dark Matter trilogy to a satsifying close. Shay is trapped at the Multiverse compound while looking for the real Callie, and an unforgiving Kai is her best chance at outsmarting Alex and saving countless lives. Shay has left Kai once again by following Alex to his Multiverse compound. Her goal is to find the real Callie, but Shay discovers that the younger girl has no memory of her past. Their hope is to leave the community. While Shay pretends to be a devoted follower, Alex makes his own plans to use Shay to spread the epidemic he caused with his dark matter experiments. The survivors will be only the most worthy humans--those who evolve special abilities. The opportunistic Freja further poisons Kai's memories of his girlfriend. Angry and hurt, Kai doubles down on his mission to reveal that his former stepfather is behind the epidemic, but he has little luck convincing the authorities--until it's almost too late to save Shay from a fate worse than death.
Download or read book Extinction written by Michael Charles Boulter and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mikhail Gorbachev and Zdenek Mlynar were friends for half a century, since they first crossed paths as students in 1950. Although one was a Russian and the other a Czech, they were both ardent supporters of communism and socialism. One took part in laying the groundwork for and carrying out the Prague spring; the other opened a new political era in Soviet world politics. In 1993 they decided that their conversations might be of interest to others and so they began to tape-record them. This book is the product of that "thinking out loud" process. It is an absorbing record of two friends trying to explain to one another their views on the problems and events that determined their destinies. From reminiscences of their starry-eyed university days to reflections on the use of force to "save socialism" to contemplation of the end of the cold war, here is a far more candid picture of Gorbachev than we have ever seen before.
Download or read book Evolution written by Donald R. Prothero and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2017-08-22 with total page 891 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Donald R. Prothero’s Evolution is an entertaining and rigorous history of the transitional forms and series found in the fossil record. Its engaging narrative of scientific discovery and well-grounded analysis has led to the book’s widespread adoption in courses that teach the nature and value of fossil evidence for evolution. Evolution tackles systematics and cladistics, rock dating, neo-Darwinism, and macroevolution. It includes extensive coverage of the primordial soup, invertebrate transitions, the development of the backbone, the reign of the dinosaurs, and the transformation from early hominid to modern human. The book also details the many alleged “missing links” in the fossil record, including some of the most recent discoveries that flesh out the fossil timeline and the evolutionary process. In this second edition, Prothero describes new transitional fossils from various periods, vividly depicting such bizarre creatures as the Odontochelys, or the “turtle on the half shell”; fossil snakes with legs; and the “Frogamander,” a new example of amphibian transition. Prothero’s discussion of intelligent design arguments includes more historical examples and careful examination of the “experiments” and observations that are exploited by creationists seeking to undermine sound science education. With new perspectives, Prothero reframes creationism as a case study in denialism and pseudoscience rather than a field with its own intellectual dynamism. The first edition was hailed as an exemplary exploration of the fossil evidence for evolution, and this second edition will be welcome in the libraries of scholars, teachers, and general readers who stand up for sound science in this post-truth era.
Download or read book The Next Species written by Michael Tennesen and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2015-03-17 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Delving into the history of the planet and based on reports and interviews with scientists, a science writer--traveling to rain forests, canyons, craters, and caves all over the world to explore the potential winners and losers of the next era of evolution--describes what life on earth could look like after the next mass extinction.
Download or read book The Final Evolution written by Jeff Somers and published by Orbit. This book was released on 2011-07-01 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The world is dying. With avatars replacing humans and the birth rate non-existent, the human race is almost extinct. In the end, it comes down to Canny Orel; Avery's long sought after nemesis -- transformed now into something other than human. Orel might hold the secret to humanity's salvation, if he can be convinced -- or forced -- to relinquish it. And when Cates chances on a way to trick his old master, he suddenly has a choice to make: get his long-delayed revenge, or save the world.
Download or read book Evolution written by Wallace Arthur and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2010-03-11 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is aimed at students taking courses on evolution in universities and colleges. Its approach and its structure are very different from previously-published evolution texts. The core theme in this book is how evolution works by changing the course of embryonic and post-embryonic development. In other words, it is an evolution text that has been very much influenced by the new approach of evolutionary developmental biology, or 'evo-devo'. Key themes include the following: developmental repatterning; adaptation and coadaptation; gene co-option; developmental plasticity; the origins of evolutionary novelties and body plans; and evolutionary changes in the complexity of organisms. As can be seen from this list, the book includes information across the levels of the gene, the organism, and the population. It also includes the issue of mapping developmental changes onto evolutionary trees. The examples used to illustrate particular points range widely, including animals, plants and fossils. "I have really enjoyed reading this book. One of the strengths of the book is the almost conversational style. I found the style easy to read, but also feel that it will be invaluable in teaching. One of our tasks in university level teaching is to develop students' critical thinking skills. We need to support them in their intellectual development from a "just the facts" approach to being able to make critical judgements based on available evidence. The openness and honesty with which Arthur speaks to uncertainty in science is refreshing and will be a baseline for discussions with students." -Professor Patricia Moore, Exeter University "This book, written as an undergraduate text, is a really most impressive book. Given the burgeoning interest in the role of developmental change in evolution in recent times, this will be a very timely publication. The book is well structured and, like the author's other books, very well written. He communicates with a clear, lucid style and has the ability to explain even the more difficult concepts in an accessible manner." ---Professor Kenneth McNamara, University of Cambridge The companion site can be found at www.wiley.com/go/arthur/evolution. Here you download all figures from the book, captions, tables, and table of contents.
Download or read book Icons of Evolution written by Jonathan Wells and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2002-01-01 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Everything you were taught about evolution is wrong.
Download or read book The End of Evolution written by Martin Lyons and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2016-05-16 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The human race: what exactly are we racing towards? Our desires are endless, and our actions in pursuit of their fulfillment are unsustainable, along with their consequences. Indeed many people today wonder about the survival of our species. To change the direction we're headed in, we need to take a new, critical look at the underlying beliefs that are steering us. The reason we see for our future is a natural extension of the reason we see for our past - i.e. our belief about how we got here. The End of Evolution? will inform and uplift your perspective on life, its evolution and purpose. In the words of one reviewer: "The End of Evolution? is a bold and captivating book that critically explores not only the topic of evolution, but also dogma in all its forms - including the dogmas of science and of religion. It is a book that, with tremendous clarity and charm, reveals the essential value of rational skepticism, particularly with regard to the theory of evolution. ... Through wise and poignant analogies, Lyons again and again eloquently disarms some of science's most sacred doctrines. Yet his open and unhostile voice welcomes readers of all backgrounds (I am myself an agnostic), and the curious reader who bares an open mind is rewarded on every page." The End of Evolution? questions today's most widely accepted belief with an open-minded rational appraisal of where we are, and where we are likely headed. Thomas Nagel, one of the world's foremost atheistic philosophers, recently lent serious credibility and relevance to precisely such questioning in his book: Mind & Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinist Conception is Almost Certainly False. The old out-of-hand dismissal of any anti-evolutionary stance as being but a religious promotion, no longer holds true. Many scientists and scholars now challenge this theory due to its own flaws and inadequacies without any reference to personal beliefs or ideologies. The End of Evolution? is free from the tired motive of hoping to establish some brand of religion by default. The current accepted 'truth' of how we all got here may be false. The purpose of this book is to reinvigorate the paths of scientific and philosophical enquiry. This will rejuvenate the general direction society is taking. The End of Evolution? promises to empower you, the reader. Written in an easy and non-technical style with many analogies and examples from nature, the subject becomes readily accessible and clear. It will extend you an opportunity, and an invitation, to think critically for yourself unburdened by either secular or religious dogmas.
Download or read book Evolution and Learning written by Bruce H. Weber and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Essays on the contributions to historical and contemporary evolutionary theory of the Baldwin effect, which postulates the effects of learned behaviors on evolutionary change.
Download or read book Evolution written by Carl Zimmer and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2010-11-23 with total page 530 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “This brilliant book is a virtual Voyage of the Beagle! Carl Zimmer shows, with the benefit of a hundred and fifty years of hindsight, how right Darwin was.” —Steve Jones, author of Darwin’s Ghost Darwin’s The Origin of Species was breathtaking—beautifully written, staunchly defended, defiantly radical. Yet it emerged long before modern genetics, molecular biology, and contemporary findings in paleontology. In this remarkable book, a rich and up-to-date view of evolution is presented that explores the far-reaching implications of Darwin’s theory. At a time when controversies surrounding creationism and education are bursting into public consciousness, this book’s emphasis on the power, significance, and relevance of evolution will make it a catalyst for public debate. Evolution marks a turning point in the 150-year debate and will be an indispensable asset to any serious reader with an interest in the life sciences, a passion for truth in education, or a concern for the future of the planet. “The evolution of life over four billion years is a grand narrative, full of plots, intrigues, surprises and deaths. Carl Zimmer tells the tale with zest and style.” —Matt Ridley, New York Times–bestselling author “Proceeding from the flurry of preparations for Darwin’s famous voyage, Carl Zimmer leads us off on a journey of our own, tracking the development—and the implications—of one of the most powerful ideas in the biological sciences.” —Scientific American “Science writer Zimmer does a superb job of providing a sweeping overview of most of the topics critical to understanding evolution, presenting his material from both a historical and a topical perspective.” —Publishers Weekly “Popular science that will truly be popular.” —Booklist
Download or read book Evolution written by James Alan Shapiro and published by Pearson Education. This book was released on 2011 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book proposes an important new paradigm for understanding biological evolution. Shapiro demonstrates why traditional views of evolution are inadequate to explain the latest evidence, and presents an alternative. His information- and systems-based approach integrates advances in symbiogenesis, epigenetics, and saltationism, and points toward an emerging synthesis of physical, information, and biological sciences.
Download or read book Improbable Destinies written by Jonathan B. Losos and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2017-08-08 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A major new book overturning our assumptions about how evolution works Earth’s natural history is full of fascinating instances of convergence: phenomena like eyes and wings and tree-climbing lizards that have evolved independently, multiple times. But evolutionary biologists also point out many examples of contingency, cases where the tiniest change—a random mutation or an ancient butterfly sneeze—caused evolution to take a completely different course. What role does each force really play in the constantly changing natural world? Are the plants and animals that exist today, and we humans ourselves, inevitabilities or evolutionary flukes? And what does that say about life on other planets? Jonathan Losos reveals what the latest breakthroughs in evolutionary biology can tell us about one of the greatest ongoing debates in science. He takes us around the globe to meet the researchers who are solving the deepest mysteries of life on Earth through their work in experimental evolutionary science. Losos himself is one of the leaders in this exciting new field, and he illustrates how experiments with guppies, fruit flies, bacteria, foxes, and field mice, along with his own work with anole lizards on Caribbean islands, are rewinding the tape of life to reveal just how rapid and predictable evolution can be. Improbable Destinies will change the way we think and talk about evolution. Losos's insights into natural selection and evolutionary change have far-reaching applications for protecting ecosystems, securing our food supply, and fighting off harmful viruses and bacteria. This compelling narrative offers a new understanding of ourselves and our role in the natural world and the cosmos.
