Download or read book The Antarctic A Very Short Introduction written by Klaus Dodds and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2012-07-26 with total page 167 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Antarctic is one the most hostile natural environments in the world. It is an extraordinary physical space, which changes significantly in shape and size with the passing of the seasons. Politically, it is unique as it contains one of the few areas of continental space not claimed by any nation-state. Scientifically, the continental ice sheet has provided us with vital evidence about the Earth's past climate. In this Very Short Introduction, Klaus Dodds provides a modern account of Antarctica, highlighting the main issues facing the continent today. Looking at how the Antarctic has been explored and represented in the last hundred years, Dodds considers the main exploratory and scientific achievements of the region. He explains how processes such as globalization mean that the Antarctic is increasingly involved in a wider circuit of ideas, goods, people, trade, and governance - all of which have an impact on the future of the region. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.
Download or read book Global Warming written by Mark Maslin and published by Voyageur Press (MN). This book was released on 2007 with total page 72 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Describes the evidence of global warming, its causes, its predicted impacts, and how its detrimental effects can be reduced.
Download or read book Marine Biology a Very Short Introduction written by Philip Mladenov and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2020-02-27 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The oceans are our planet's most distinctive and imposing natural habitat. They cover 71 percent of its surface; support a remarkably diverse and exquisitely adapted array of life forms, from microscopic viruses, bacteria, and plankton to the largest existing animals; and possess many of Earth's most significant, intriguing, and inaccessible ecosystems. In an era in which humans are significantly altering the global environment, the oceans are undergoing rapid and profound changes. The study of marine biology is thus taking on added importance and urgency as people struggle to understand and manage these changes to protect our marine ecosystems. Healthy oceans produce half of the oxygen we breathe; stabilize our climate; create ecosystems that protect our coasts from storms; provide us with abundant food; and host diverse organisms that provide us with natural products for medicine and biotechnology. In this Very Short Introduction, marine biologist Philip Mladenov provides an accessible and up-to-date overview of marine biology, offering a tour of marine life and marine processes that ranges from the unimaginably abundant microscopic organisms that drive the oceans' food web to the apex predators that we exploit for food; from polar ocean ecosystems to tropical coral reefs; and from the luxurious kelp beds of the coastal ocean to deep-ocean hydrothermal vents where life exists without the energy of the sun. Throughout the book he considers the human impacts on marine life including overfishing, plastic and nutrient pollution, the spread of exotic species, and ocean warming and acidification. He discusses the threats these pose to our welfare, and the actions required to put us on a path to a more sustainable relationship with our oceans so that they can be restored and protected for future generations. Mladenov concludes with a new chapter offering an inspiring vision for the future of our oceans in 2050 that can be realised if we are wise enough to accelerate actions already underway and be bold with implementing new approaches. The next decade will decide the state of the oceans that we leave behind for future generations. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.
Download or read book The Animal Kingdom A Very Short Introduction written by Peter Holland and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2011-11-24 with total page 145 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Molecular biology has revolutionized our understanding of animals and their evolution. In this Very Short Introduction, Peter Holland provides an authoritative summary of the modern view of animal life, its origins, and the new classification resulting from DNA studies.
Download or read book Climate Change A Very Short Introduction written by Mark Maslin and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2014-10-23 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Climate change is still, arguably, the most critical and controversial issue facing the world in the twenty-first century. Previously published as Global Warming: A Very Short Introduction, the new edition is now Climate Change: A Very Short introduction, reflecting an important change in the terminology of the last decade. In the third edition, Mark Maslin includes crucial updates from the last few years, including the results of the 2013 IPCC Fifth Assessment Report, the effects of ocean acidification, and the impact of changes to global population and health. Exploring all of the key topics in the debate, Maslin makes sense of the complexities climate change involves, from political and social issues to environmental and scientific. Looking at its predicated impacts, he explores all of the controversies, and also explains the various proposed solutions. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.
Download or read book Human Evolution written by Bernard Wood and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2019 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The study of human evolution is advancing rapidly. Newly discovered fossil evidence is adding ever more pieces to the puzzle of our past, whilst revolutionary technological advances in the study of ancient DNA are completely reshaping theories of early human populations and migrations.In this Very Short Introduction Bernard Wood traces the history of paleoanthropology from its beginnings in the eighteenth century to the very latest fossil finds. In this new edition he discusses how Ancient DNA studies have revolutionized how we view the recent (post-550 ka) human evolution, andthe process of speciation. The combination of ancient and modern human DNA has contributed to discoveries of new taxa, as well as the suggestion of "ghost" taxa whose fossil records still remain to be discovered. Considering the contributions of related sciences such as paleoclimatology,geochronology, systematics, genetics, and developmental biology, Wood explores our latest understandings of our own evolution.ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, andenthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.
Download or read book Antarctica written by David Day and published by What Everyone Needs to Know(r). This book was released on 2019 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this addition to the What Everyone Needs to Know® series, David Day examines the most forbidding and formidably inaccessible continent on Earth. For over a century following its discovery by European explorers in 1820, Antarctica played host to competing claims by rival nations vying for access to the frozen land's vast marine resources -- namely the skins and oils of seals and whales. Though the Antarctic Treaty of 1959 was meant to end this contention, countries have found other means of extending control over the land, with scientific bases establishing at least symbolic claims. Exploration and drilling by the United States, Great Britain, Russia, Japan, and others has led to discoveries about the world's climate in centuries past -- and in the process intimations of its alarming future. Delving into all the relevant issues -- the history of the continent, its wildlife, underwater mountain ranges, arguments over governance, and the continent's effect on global climate change -- Day's work sheds new light on a territory that, despite being the coldest, driest, and windiest continent in the world, will continue to be the object of intense speculation and competition. With new evidence that Antarctica's ice is melting three times faster than it was a decade ago, the need to understand the world's southernmost region has never been more pressing.
Download or read book Lakes written by Warwick F. Vincent and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 169 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ranging from vast inland seas to hydro-reservoirs, lakes are unique, complex, ecosystems. Warwick Vincent introduces lake science, or limnology, and the importance of protecting and sustaining these vitally important living resources. He explains the impact of factors such as climate, seasons, salinity, and sedimentation on lake biodiversity.
Download or read book Rivers A Very Short Introduction written by Nick Middleton and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2012-04-26 with total page 153 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rivers have played an extraordinarily important role in creating the world in which we live. They create landscapes and provide water to people, plants and animals, nourishing both town and country. The flow of rivers has enthused poets and painters, explorers and pilgrims. Rivers have acted as cradles for civilization and agents of disaster; a river may be a barrier or a highway, it can bear trade and sediment, culture and conflict. A river may inspire or it may terrify. This Very Short Introduction is a celebration of rivers in all their diversity. Nick Middleton covers a wide and eclectic range of river-based themes, from physical geography to mythology, to industrial history and literary criticism. Worshipped and revered, respected and feared, rivers reflect both the natural and social history of our planet. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.
Download or read book The Greening of Antarctica written by Alessandro Antonello and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-05-03 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Greening of Antarctica Alessandro Antonello investigates the development of an international regime of environmental protection and management between the signing of the Antarctic Treaty in 1959 and the signing of the Convention on the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources in 1980. In those two decades, the Antarctic Treaty parties and an international community of scientists reimagined what many considered a cold, sterile, and abiotic wilderness as a fragile and extensive regional ecosystem. Antonello investigates this change by analyzing the negotiations and developments surrounding four environmental agreements: the Agreed Measures for the Conservation of Antarctic Fauna and Flora in 1964; the Convention for the Conservation of Antarctic Seals in 1972; a voluntary restraint resolution on Antarctic mining in 1977; and the Convention on the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources in 1980. Though distant from world populations, Antarctica has long been a site of inter-state contest for geopolitical power and standing. This book reveals how a range of contests, geopolitical, epistemic and imaginative, created the environmental protection regime of the Antarctic Treaty System, and discusses the tension between states' individual searches for power and the collective desire for stability in the region. In this international and diplomatic context, the actors were not only trying to keep relations between themselves orderly, but they were also using treaties to order the human relationship with the environment. Drawing on a wide range of international archives, many newly-opened, The Greening of Antarctica offers the first detailed narrative of a crucial period in Antarctic history and reveals the contours of global environmental thought and diplomacy in the transformative Age of Ecology.
Download or read book Bacteria A Very Short Introduction written by Sebastian G. B. Amyes and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2013-05-30 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bacteria form a fundamental branch of life. They are the oldest forms of life as we know it, and they are still the most prolific living organisms. They inhabit every part of the Earth's surface, its ocean depths, and even terrains such as boiling hot springs. They are most familiar as agents of disease, but benign bacteria are critical to the recycling of elements and all ecology, as well as to human health. In this Very Short Introduction, Sebastian Amyes explores the nature of bacteria, their origin and evolution, bacteria in the environment, and bacteria and disease. In looking at our efforts to manage co-evolving bacteria, he also considers the challenges of resistance to antibiotics. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.
Download or read book Antarctica written by Gabrielle Walker and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2013-01-15 with total page 463 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The acclaimed science writer presents a wide-ranging exploration of Antarctica’s history, nature, and global significance in this “rollicking good read” (Kirkus). From the early expeditions of Ernest Shackleton to David Attenborough’s documentary series Frozen Planet, the continent of Antarctica has captured the world’s imagination. After the Antarctic Treaty of 1961, decades of scientific research revealed the true extent of its many mysteries. Now former Nature magazine staff writer Gabrielle Walker tells the full story of Antarctica—from its fascinating history to its uncertain future and the international teams of researchers who brave its forbidding climate. Drawing on her broad travels across the continent, Walker weaves all the significant threads of life on the vast ice sheet into a multifaceted narrative, illuminating what it really feels like to be there and why it draws so many different kinds of people. She chronicles cutting-edge science experiments, visits to the South Pole, and unsettling portents about our future in an age of global warming. “We are all anxious Antarctic watchers now, and Walker's book is the essential primer.”—The Guardian, UK
Download or read book The Lost Photographs of Captain Scott written by Dr. David M. Wilson and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2012-01-16 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The myth of Scott of the Antarctic, Captain Robert Falcon Scott, icon of fortitude and courage who perished with his fellow explorers on their return from the South Pole on March 29th, 1912, is an enduring one, elevated, dismantled and restored during the turbulence of the succeeding century. Until now, the legend of the doomed Terra Nova expedition has been constructed out of Scott's own diaries and those of his companions, the sketches of 'Uncle Bill' Wilson and the celebrated photographs of Herbert Ponting. Yet for the final, fateful months of their journey, the systematic imaging of this extraordinary scientific endeavor was left to Scott himself, trained by Ponting. In the face of extreme climactic conditions and technical challenges at the dawn of photography, Scott achieved an iconic series of images; breathtaking polar panoramas, geographical and geological formations, and action photographs of the explorers and their animals, remarkable for their technical mastery as well as for their poignancy. Lost, fought over, neglected and finally resurrected, Scott's final photographs are here collected, accurately attributed and catalogued for the first time: a new dimension to the last great expedition of the Heroic Age and a humbling testament to the men whose graves still lie unmarked in the vastness of the Great Alone.
Download or read book Galaxies A Very Short Introduction written by John Gribbin and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2008-03-27 with total page 137 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this fascinating Very Short Introduction, popular science writer John Gribben tells the story of our growing understanding of galaxies, from the days before Galileo to our present-day observations of our many hundreds of millions of galactic neighbors. Not only are galaxies fascinating astronomical structures in themselves, but their study has revealed much of what we know today about the cosmos, providing a window on the Big Bang and the origins of the Universe. Gribben looks at our own "Milky Way" Galaxy in detail, from the different kinds of stars that are born within it, to the origins of its magnificent spiral structure. Perhaps most interesting, Gribben describes the many exciting discoveries have been made about our own galaxy and about those beyond: how a supermassive black hole lurks at the center of every galaxy, how enormous forces are released when galaxies collide, how distant galaxies provide a window on the early Universe, and how the formation of young galaxies shed needed light on the mysteries of Cold Dark Matter. John Gribbin is one of the best-known current popular science writers. His many books include the acclaimed The Universe: A Biography, In Search of Schrodinger's Cat, and Science: A History. He has written for many newspapers and regularly contributes to radio and television documentaries and debates, and also writes science fiction novels. He formerly worked for Nature and New Scientist and is presently a Visiting Fellow in Astronomy at the University of Sussex. 1. A Very Short Introduction 2. The Great Debate 3. Our Island 4. The Expanding Universe 5. Across the Universe 6. The Origin of Galaxies 7. The Universe at Large References & Further Reading Index
Download or read book Geopolitics written by Klaus Dodds and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2019 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Présentation de l'éditeur : "Encompassing everything from great power politics to everyday objects such as smart phones, geopolitics affects citizens, governments, and international bodies, and is far more than simply the impact of geographical features on political developments. This book considers both geopolitics' intellectual historical origins and its current concerns."
Download or read book Let Heroes Speak written by Michael H. Rosove and published by Berkley Trade. This book was released on 2002 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Whitehots Apr/02.
