Download or read book The Restless Plant written by Dov Koller and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2011-01-15 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Plants, so predictable, stay where they are. And yet, like all living things, they also move: they grow, adapt, shed leaves and bark, spread roots and branches, snare pollinators, and reward cultivators. This book, the first to thoroughly explore the subject since Darwin’s 1881 treatise on movements in plants, is a comprehensive, up-to-date account of the mechanisms and the adaptive values that move plants. Drawing on examples across the spectrum of plant families—including mosses, ferns, conifers, and flowering plants—the author opens a window on how plants move: within cells, as individual cells, and via organs. Opening with an explanation of how cellular motors work and how cells manage to move organs, Dov Koller considers the movement of roots, tubers, rhizomes, and other plant parts underground, as well as the more familiar stems, leaves, and flowers. Throughout, Koller presents information at the subcellular and cellular levels, including the roles of receptors, signaling pathways, hormones, and physiological responses in motor function. He also discusses the adaptive significance of movements. His book exposes the workings of a world little understood and often overlooked, the world of restless plants and the movements by which they accomplish the necessary functions of their lives.
Download or read book The Restless Girls written by Jessie Burton and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2019-03-05 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A riveting feminist retelling, filled with excitement, imagination, magic, and just the right touch of darkness." -Madeline Miller, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Circe From acclaimed New York Times bestselling author Jessie Burton comes her debut middle-grade--a girl-forward fairy tale retelling of "The Twelve Dancing Princesses" about sisterhood, imagination, and bravery, lushly packaged and with beautiful full-color illustrations. For the twelve daughters of King Alberto, Queen Laurelia's death is a disaster beyond losing a mother. The king decides his daughters must be kept safe at all costs, and for the girls, those costs include their lessons, their possessions, and most importantly, their freedom. But the sisters, especially the eldest, Princess Frida, will not bend to this fate. She still has one possession her father cannot take: the power of her imagination. And so, with little but wits and ingenuity to rely on, Frida and her sisters begin their fight to be allowed to live on their own terms. The Restless Girls is a sparkling whirl of a fairy tale--one that doesn't need a prince to save the day, and instead is full of brave, resourceful, clever young women.
Download or read book Lessons from Plants written by Beronda L. Montgomery and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2021-04-06 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An exploration of how plant behavior and adaptation offer valuable insights for human thriving. We know that plants are important. They maintain the atmosphere by absorbing carbon dioxide and producing oxygen. They nourish other living organisms and supply psychological benefits to humans as well, improving our moods and beautifying the landscape around us. But plants don’t just passively provide. They also take action. Beronda L. Montgomery explores the vigorous, creative lives of organisms often treated as static and predictable. In fact, plants are masters of adaptation. They “know” what and who they are, and they use this knowledge to make a way in the world. Plants experience a kind of sensation that does not require eyes or ears. They distinguish kin, friend, and foe, and they are able to respond to ecological competition despite lacking the capacity of fight-or-flight. Plants are even capable of transformative behaviors that allow them to maximize their chances of survival in a dynamic and sometimes unfriendly environment. Lessons from Plants enters into the depth of botanic experience and shows how we might improve human society by better appreciating not just what plants give us but also how they achieve their own purposes. What would it mean to learn from these organisms, to become more aware of our environments and to adapt to our own worlds by calling on perception and awareness? Montgomery’s meditative study puts before us a question with the power to reframe the way we live: What would a plant do?
Download or read book Plants and Empire written by Londa Schiebinger and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-07-01 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Plants seldom figure in the grand narratives of war, peace, or even everyday life yet they are often at the center of high intrigue. In the eighteenth century, epic scientific voyages were sponsored by European imperial powers to explore the natural riches of the New World, and uncover the botanical secrets of its people. Bioprospectors brought back medicines, luxuries, and staples for their king and country. Risking their lives to discover exotic plants, these daredevil explorers joined with their sponsors to create a global culture of botany. But some secrets were unearthed only to be lost again. In this moving account of the abuses of indigenous Caribbean people and African slaves, Schiebinger describes how slave women brewed the "peacock flower" into an abortifacient, to ensure that they would bear no children into oppression. Yet, impeded by trade winds of prevailing opinion, knowledge of West Indian abortifacients never flowed into Europe. A rich history of discovery and loss, Plants and Empire explores the movement, triumph, and extinction of knowledge in the course of encounters between Europeans and the Caribbean populations.
Download or read book Perils of a Restless Planet written by Ernest Zebrowski and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From epidemics and earthquakes to tornadoes and tidal waves, the overwhelming power of Nature never ceases to instil humankind with both terror and awe. As natural disasters continue to claim human lives and wreak havoc in their wake, Perils of a Restless Planet examines our attempts to understand and anticipate such phenomena. Drawing upon case studies from ancient to present times, this book focuses on scientific inquiry, technological innovation and public policy to provide a lucid and riveting look at natural disasters. While shedding light on the elusive quality of Nature and the limits scientific study and laboratory replication impose on our understanding of her mercurial ways, the author extrapolates from the history of science to suggest how we may someday learn to warn and protect vulnerable populations on our small and tempestuous planet. Anyone interested in the power of Nature will find this book compelling and informative.
Download or read book Restless Skies written by Paul Douglas and published by Sterling Publishing Company. This book was released on 2007 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Improved technology is teaching us more about the weather all the time, and with new knowledge comes new concerns and confusion. Is global warming real? What is a NEXRAD Doppler? Meteorologist Paul Douglas provides the answers to all these questions and more, along with fascinating illustrations, photos, trivia, and graphics. Find out what a difference a degree makes; as well as information about El Ni�o and how to protect yourself against the worst that the weather can bring. From the distinctions between a weather warning, watch, and advisory to the definition of an F-5 tornado, all the essentials are clearly explained.
Download or read book Restless written by William Boyd and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2012-12-01 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is 1939. Eva Delectorskaya is a beautiful 28-year-old Russian émigrée living in Paris. As war breaks out she is recruited for the British Secret Service by Lucas Romer, a mysterious Englishman, and under his tutelage she learns to become the perfect spy, to mask her emotions and trust no one, including those she loves most. Since the war, Eva has carefully rebuilt her life as a typically English wife and mother. But once a spy, always a spy. Now she must complete one final assignment, and this time Eva can't do it alone: she needs her daughter's help.
Download or read book The Life of Plants written by Emanuele Coccia and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2019-01-16 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We barely talk about them and seldom know their names. Philosophy has always overlooked them; even biology considers them as mere decoration on the tree of life. And yet plants give life to the Earth: they produce the atmosphere that surrounds us, they are the origin of the oxygen that animates us. Plants embody the most direct, elementary connection that life can establish with the world. In this highly original book, Emanuele Coccia argues that, as the very creator of atmosphere, plants occupy the fundamental position from which we should analyze all elements of life. From this standpoint, we can no longer perceive the world as a simple collection of objects or as a universal space containing all things, but as the site of a veritable metaphysical mixture. Since our atmosphere is rendered possible through plants alone, life only perpetuates itself through the very circle of consumption undertaken by plants. In other words, life exists only insofar as it consumes other life, removing any moral or ethical considerations from the equation. In contrast to trends of thought that discuss nature and the cosmos in general terms, Coccia’s account brings the infinitely small together with the infinitely big, offering a radical redefinition of the place of humanity within the realm of life.
Download or read book The Cabaret of Plants written by Richard Mabey and published by Profile Books. This book was released on 2015-10-22 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Cabaret of Plants, Mabey explores the plant species which have challenged our imaginations, awoken our wonder, and upturned our ideas about history, science, beauty and belief. Picked from every walk of life, they encompass crops, weeds, medicines, religious gathering-places and a water lily named after a queen. Beginning with pagan cults and creation myths, the cultural significance of plants has burst upwards, sprouting into forms as diverse as the panacea (the cure-all plant ginseng, a single root of which can cost up to $10,000), Newton's apple, the African 'vegetable elephant' or boabab - and the mystical, night-flowering Amazonian cactus, the moonflower. Ranging widely across science, art and cultural history, poetry and personal experience, Mabey puts plants centre stage, and reveals a true botanical cabaret, a world of tricksters, shape-shifters and inspired problem-solvers, as well as an enthralled audience of romantics, eccentric amateur scientists and transgressive artists. The Cabaret of Plants celebrates the idea that plants are not simply 'the furniture of the planet', but vital, inventive, individual beings worthy of respect - and that to understand this may be the best way of preserving life together on Earth.
Download or read book Clandestine Marriage written by Theresa M. Kelley and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2012-11-15 with total page 397 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Botany in the romantic era played a role in debates about life, nature, and knowledge, as evidenced in this ambitious, beautifully illustrated study. Winner, 2012 British Society for Literature and Science Book Prize Romanticism was a cultural and intellectual movement characterized by discovery, revolution, and the poetic as well as by the philosophical relationship between people and nature. Botany sits at the intersection where romantic scientific and literary discourses meet. Clandestine Marriage explores the meaning and methods of how plants were represented and reproduced in scientific, literary, artistic, and material cultures of the period. Theresa M. Kelley synthesizes romantic debates about taxonomy and morphology, the contemporary interest in books and magazines devoted to plant study and images, and writings by such authors as Mary Wollstonecraft and Anna Letitia Barbauld. Period botanical paintings of flowers are reproduced in vibrant color, bringing her argument and the romantics' passion for plants to life. In addition to exploring botanic thought and practice in the context of British romanticism, Kelley also looks to the German philosophical traditions of Kant, Hegel, and Goethe and to Charles Darwin’s reflections on orchids and plant pollination. Her interdisciplinary approach allows a deeper understanding of a time when exploration of the natural world was a culture-wide enchantment.
Download or read book The Restless Republic Britain without a Crown written by Anna Keay and published by HarperCollins UK. This book was released on 2022-03-03 with total page 331 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: THE SUNDAY TIMES HISTORY BOOK OF THE YEAR 2022 WINNER OF THE POL ROGER DUFF COOPER PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION SHORTLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE Eleven years when Britain had no king.
Download or read book The Restless and Relentless Mind of Wes Jackson written by Robert Jensen and published by University Press of Kansas. This book was released on 2024-03-22 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In more than four decades as president of The Land Institute, Wes Jackson became widely known as one of the founders of the sustainable agriculture movement for his work on perennial grains and Natural Systems Agriculture. But Jackson’s contribution to contemporary intellectual and political life goes well beyond plant breeding. Ever since he created one of the first university environmental studies programs in the early 1970s, Jackson has been exploring the human predicaments around sustainability and justice, asking questions that pull not only on agriculture and ecology but also on politics, economics, and culture. That work has appeared in four sole-authored books by Jackson, but nowhere is there an accessible summary of his key ideas. Robert Jensen provides a short, elegant introduction to Jackson’s ideas on ways to provide humanity with a truly sustainable foundation in grain agriculture, presented in a way that connects to the growing concern about climate change and other ecological crises. Jackson’s strength has been in generating new ideas and pushing the envelope not only on sustainable agriculture but also on the other dramatic changes necessary if we are to create a sustainable and just society. This volume helps the reader to organize those exciting ideas in a way that can expand the horizons of students and lay readers as well as challenge specialists in these fields. In a time when critical thinking and clear understanding are desperately needed if we are to face the multiple, cascading ecological and social crises, The Restless and Relentless Mind of Wes Jackson presents Jackson’s crucial insights about the natural world and human societies that can help provide a framework for understanding the tough decisions we will have to make. But just as important is the book’s glimpse into the curiosity that drives Jackson and the creativity that distinguishes his intellectual and activist work.
Download or read book Success with Flowers a Floral Magazine written by and published by . This book was released on 1894 with total page 584 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Cooking with the Young and the Restless written by Robert Waldron and published by Rutledge Hill Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Attend an elegant dinner party at Katherine Chancellor's estate, Thanksgiving with the Abbots, and a power breakfast with Victor Newman. There's also a tailgate party with the Green Bay Packers and a Fourth of July cookout at the Newman Ranch. Viewers will also get menus from such Genoa City restaurants as Gina's Place, The Saigon Shack, and the Colonnade Room. Recipes from the cast round out this souvenir gift book for the show's fans. Full-color illustrations.
Download or read book The Restless Tide written by Richard M. Krause and published by . This book was released on 1981 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Romance of Plant Hunting written by Francis Kingdon Ward and published by . This book was released on 1924 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Air The Restless Shaper of the World written by William Bryant Logan and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2012-08-20 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines the science of the air we breathe and how the smallest molecular changes in composition can make the difference between life and death.
