Download or read book Underbug written by Lisa Margonelli and published by Scientific American / Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2018-08-21 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The award-winning journalist Lisa Margonelli, national bestselling author of Oil on the Brain: Petroleum’s Long, Strange Trip to Your Tank, investigates the environmental and economic impact termites inflict on human societies in this fascinating examination of one of nature’s most misunderstood insects. Are we more like termites than we ever imagined? In Underbug, the award-winning journalist Lisa Margonelli introduces us to the enigmatic creatures that collectively outweigh human beings ten to one and consume $40 billion worth of valuable stuff annually—and yet, in Margonelli’s telling, seem weirdly familiar. Over the course of a decade-long obsession with the little bugs, Margonelli pokes around termite mounds and high-tech research facilities, closely watching biologists, roboticists, and geneticists. Her globe-trotting journey veers into uncharted territory, from evolutionary theory to Edwardian science literature to the military industrial complex. What begins as a natural history of the termite becomes a personal exploration of the unnatural future we’re building, with darker observations on power, technology, historical trauma, and the limits of human cognition. Whether in Namibia or Cambridge, Arizona or Australia, Margonelli turns up astounding facts and raises provocative questions. Is a termite an individual or a unit of a superorganism? Can we harness the termite’s properties to change the world? If we build termite-like swarming robots, will they inevitably destroy us? Is it possible to think without having a mind? Underbug burrows into these questions and many others—unearthing disquieting answers about the world’s most underrated insect and what it means to be human.
Download or read book Human Termites written by Kusum Chauhan and published by Partridge Publishing. This book was released on 2017-06-24 with total page 90 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If you are eager and ready to change then this book is especially for you. Dear friends, we all are living in a world where each wants to be different from others, and for this we all are running a race of competition. This race of ours is filling us all with frustration, ego, and jealousy, the three very dangerous human termites. These termites are the keys not for our success but for our downfall as we all know that motivation is one of the most wanted basic daily need to live a better life. The author has taken this initiative to share the awareness regarding the ruin of these dangerous termites. Though you can read this book in one sitting, if you take your time to go through it patiently than, definitely, you will feel the changes in you. This book will help you go beyond your imagination and will help you to build up your thoughts and feelings in a much better way. I think this book will be a great asset to you.
Download or read book The Human Termites and the Ambassador from Mars written by David H. Keller and published by . This book was released on 2017-06 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Armchair Fiction presents classic sci-fi double novels with original illustrations. The first novel is "The Human Termites" by David H. Keller. Hans Souderman was a brilliant scientist who knew the truth: Earth was on the brink of a massive invasion--by termites! Souderman had positive proof that mankind was in danger of extinction. He had studied termites and he now came to America to enlist aid in the battle against them. Unfortunately for humanity, in subterranean lairs, the masters of the termite race had been breeding a mammoth army of giant termites--millions upon millions of them--that was now ready to burst upon the surface and exterminate mankind! David H. Keller was one of the best authors of the pulp era. His imagination led to the creation of some of the most memorable stories of that time. "The Human Termites" is clearly one of his best. The second novel is about the struggles of a doomed planet, "The Ambassador From Mars" by Harl Vincent. Frank Chandler was slowly being overcome by the banality of his life. The young architect's youthful spirit had left him. Life was no longer a joy. Then one New York evening he fell victim to an extraordinary event--with the flick of his cigarette lighter, he found himself kidnapped to Mars! He woke up in a massive spaceship headed for the Red Planet, now in the care of the Neloia, the humanoids that inhabited Mars. Over the next several months, Frank became educated not only to the ways of the Neloia, but also to conditions on Mars itself, which--for the Neloia--were deplorable. Their entire race had been reduced to a fraction of its former size because of constant attacks by the dreaded Breggia, a race of monsters that lived beneath the Martian surface. Even worse, the planet Mars was dying. In a short span of years life would perish. It was up to Chandler to take this desperate message to Earth and negotiate a deal to save the last remnants of the Martian civilization.
Download or read book Science fiction written by Everett Franklin Bleiler and published by Kent State University Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 780 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Complementing Science-Fiction: The Early Years, which surveys science-fiction published in book form from its beginnings through 1930, the present volume covers all the science-fiction printed in the genre magazines--Amazing, Astounding, and Wonder, along with offshoots and minor magazines--from 1926 through 1936. This is the first time this historically important literary phenomenon, which stands behind the enormous modern development of science-fiction, has been studied thoroughly and accurately. The heart of the book is a series of descriptions of all 1,835 stories published during this period, plus bibliographic information. Supplementing this are many useful features: detailed histories of each of the magazines, an issue by issue roster of contents, a technical analysis of the art work, brief authors' biographies, poetry and letter indexes, a theme and motif index of approximately 30,0000 entries, and general indexes. Science-Fiction: The Gernsback Years is not only indispensable for reference librarians, collectors, readers, and scholars interested in science-fiction, it is also of importance to the study of popular culture during the Great Depression in the United States. Most of its data, which are largely based on rare and almost unobtainable sources, are not available elsewhere.
Download or read book Termite Parade written by Joshua Mohr and published by Two Dollar Radio. This book was released on 2010-06-11 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A mature second novel from the best-selling author of Some Things That Meant the World to Me.
Download or read book Termites in the Trading System written by Jagdish Bhagwati and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2008-07-14 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jagdish Bhagwati, the internationally renowned economist who uniquely combines a reputation as the leading scholar of international trade with a substantial presence in public policy on the important issues of the day, shines here a critical light on Preferential Trade Agreements, revealing how the rapid spread of PTAs endangers the world trading system. Numbering by now well over 300, and rapidly increasing, these preferential trade agreements, many taking the form of Free Trade Agreements, have re-created the unhappy situation of the 1930s, when world trade was undermined by discriminatory practices. Whereas this was the result of protectionism in those days, ironically it is a result of misdirected pursuit of free trade via PTAs today. The world trading system is at risk again, the author argues, and the danger is palpable. Writing with his customary wit, panache and elegance, Bhagwati documents the growth of these PTAs, the reasons for their proliferation, and their deplorable consequences which include the near-destruction of the non-discrimination which was at the heart of the postwar trade architecture and its replacement by what he has called the spaghetti bowl of a maze of preferences. Bhagwati also documents how PTAs have undermined the prospects for multilateral freeing of trade, serving as stumbling blocks, instead of building blocks, for the objective of reaching multilateral free trade. In short, Bhagwati cogently demonstrates why PTAs are Termites in the Trading System.
Download or read book Termites of the State written by Vito Tanzi and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 457 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A sweeping historical account of the crises of income inequality and crony capitalism from a world-renowned public economist.
Download or read book Lark and Termite written by Jayne Anne Phillips and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2009-01-06 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the award-winning author a "powerful and emotionally piercing" novel (The New York Times) set during the 1950 in West Virginia and Korea, that intertwines family secrets, war, dreams, and ghosts in a story about the love that unites us all. Lark and Termite is a rich, wonderfully alive novel about seventeen year old Lark and her brother, Termite, living in West Virginia in the 1950s. Their mother, Lola, is absent, while their aunt, Nonie, raises them as her own, and Termite’s father, Corporal Robert Leavitt, is caught up in the early days of the Korean War. Told with deep feeling, the novel invites us deep into the hearts and thoughts of Lark, on the verge of adulthood, and her brother, Termite, a child unable to walk and talk, who is filled with radiance. We are also with Corporal Leavitt, trapped by friendly fire alongside the Korean children he tries to rescue. We see Lark’s dreams for Termite and her own future, and how, with the aid of a childhood love and a spectral social worker, she makes them happen. We learn of Lola’s love for her soldier husband and her children, and unravel the mystery of her relationship with Nonie. We discover the lasting connections between past and future on the night the town experiences an overwhelming flood, and we follow Lark and Termite as their lives are changed forever.
Download or read book How to Be Animal written by Melanie Challenger and published by Canongate Books. This book was released on 2021-02-04 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Humans are the most inquisitive, emotional, imaginative, aggressive and baffling animals on the planet. But how well do we really know ourselves? How to Be Animal offers a radical take on what it means to be human and argues that at the heart of our psychology is a profound struggle with being animal. Tracing the history of this thinking through to its far-reaching effects on our lives, and drawing on a range of disciplines, Challenger proposes that being an animal is a process, beautiful and unpredictable, and that we have a chance to tell ourselves a new story; to realise that if we matter, so does everything else.
Download or read book The Human Story written by Robin Dunbar and published by Faber & Faber. This book was released on 2011-02-03 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fascinating account of the latest thinking on human evolution, by 'one of the most respected evolutionary psychologists in Britain'.For scientists studying evolution, the past decade has seen astonishing advances across many disciplines - discoveries which have revolutionised scientific thinking and turned upside down our understanding of who we are. The Human Story brings together these threads of research in genetics, behaviour and psychology to provide an understanding of just what it is that makes us human. Robin Dunbar looks in particular at how the human mind has evolved, and draws on his own research during the last five years into the deep psychological and biological bases of music and religion.
Download or read book Edible Insects and Human Evolution written by Julie J. Lesnik and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 2019-02-13 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Researchers who study ancient human diets tend to focus on meat eating because the practice of butchery is very apparent in the archaeological record. In this volume, Julie Lesnik highlights a different food source, tracing evidence that humans and their hominin ancestors also consumed insects throughout the entire course of human evolution. Lesnik combines primatology, sociocultural anthropology, reproductive physiology, and paleoanthropology to examine the role of insects in the diets of hunter-gatherers and our nonhuman primate cousins. She posits that women would likely spend more time foraging for and eating insects than men, arguing that this pattern is important to note because women are too often ignored in reconstructions of ancient human behavior. Because of the abundance of insects and the low risk of acquiring them, insects were a reliable food source that mothers used to feed their families over the past five million years. Although they are consumed worldwide to this day, insects are not usually considered food in Western societies. Tying together ancient history with our modern lives, Lesnik points out that insects are highly nutritious and a very sustainable protein alternative. She believes that if we accept that edible insects are a part of the human legacy, we may have new conversations about what is good to eat—both in past diets and for the future of food.
Download or read book African Edible Insects As Alternative Source of Food Oil Protein and Bioactive Components written by Abdalbasit Adam Mariod and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-01-10 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The harvesting, processing and consumption of edible insects is one of the main keys to the sustainability of food chains on the African continent. Insects are the largest and most successful group of animals on the planet and it is estimated that they comprise 80% of all animals. This makes edible insects extremely important to the future survival of large populations across Africa and the world. Insects offer a complete animal protein that includes all 9 essential amino acids and are very competitive with other protein sources. They are also a good source of beneficial unsaturated fats, and many insects have a perfect Omega 3:6 balance. African Edible Insects As Alternative Source of Food, Oil, Protein and Bioactive Components comprehensively outlines the importance of edible insects as food and animal feed and the processing of insects in Africa. The text also highlights indigenous knowledge of edible insects and shows the composition and nutritional value of these insects, plus presents reviews of current research and developments in this rapidly expanding field. All of the main types of edible insects are covered, including their nutritional value, chemical makeup, and harvesting and processing details. The various preparation technologies are covered for each insect, as are their individual sensory qualities and safety aspects. A key aspect of this work is its focus on the role of insects in edible oils and gelatins. Individual chapters focus on entomophagy in Africa and the various key aspects of the continent's growing edible insect consumption market. As it becomes increasingly clear that the consumption of insects will play a major role in the sustainability of food chains in Africa, this work can be used as a comprehensive and up-to-date singular source for researchers looking for a complete overview on this crucial topic.
Download or read book Brother Termite written by Patricia Anthony and published by . This book was released on 1995 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the author of Cold Allies comes a new novel--a skillful mix of Washington politics and numbing mind control, the story of a future America taken over by insect-like aliens. "Utterly moving, convincing aliens".--Kirkus Reviews.
Download or read book Biology of Termites a Modern Synthesis written by David Edward Bignell and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2010-10-20 with total page 580 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Biology of Termites, a Modern Synthesis brings together the major advances in termite biology, phylogenetics, social evolution and biogeography. In this new volume, David Bignell, Yves Roisin and Nathan Lo have brought together leading experts on termite taxonomy, behaviour, genetics, caste differentiation, physiology, microbiology, mound architecture, biogeography and control. Very strong evolutionary and developmental themes run through the individual chapters, fed by new data streams from molecular sequencing, and for the first time it is possible to compare the social organisation of termites with that of the social Hymenoptera, focusing on caste determination, population genetics, cooperative behaviour, nest hygiene and symbioses with microorganisms. New chapters have been added on termite pheromones, termites as pests of agriculture and on destructive invasive species.
Download or read book An Assessment of the Health Risks of Seven Pesticides Used for Termite Control written by Board On Toxicology and Environmental Committee on Toxicology and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 1982-01-01 with total page 82 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Smart Swarm written by Peter Miller and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2010-08-05 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What ants, bees, fish, and smart swarms can teach us about communication, organization, and decision-making The modern world may be obsessed with speed and productivity, but twenty-first-century humans actually have much to learn from the ancient instincts of swarms. A fascinating new take on the concept of collective intelligence and its colorful manifestations in some of our most complex problems, The Smart Swarm introduces a compelling new understanding of the real experts on solving our own complex problems relating to such topics as business, politics, and technology. Based on extensive globe-trotting research, this lively tour from National Geographic reporter Peter Miller introduces thriving throngs of ant colonies, which have inspired computer programs for streamlining factory processes, telephone networks, and truck routes; termites, used in recent studies for climate-control solutions; schools of fish, on which the U.S. military modeled a team of robots; and many other examples of the wisdom to be gleaned about the behavior of crowds-among critters and corporations alike. In the tradition of James Surowiecki's The Wisdom of Crowds and the innovative works of Malcolm Gladwell, The Smart Swarm is an entertaining yet enlightening look at small-scale phenomena with big implications for us all.
Download or read book In Search of the Primitive written by Stanley Diamond and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-06-21 with total page 405 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Anthropology is a kind of debate between human possibilities—a dialectical movement between the anthropologist as a modern man and the primitive peoples he studies. In Search of the Primitive is a tough-minded book containing chapters ranging from encounters in the field to essays on the nature of law, schizophrenia and civilization, and the evolution of the work of Claude Lévi-Strauss. Above all it is reflective and self-critical, critical of the discipline of anthropology and of the civilization that produced that discipline. Diamond views the anthropologist who refuses to become a searching critic of his own civilizations as not merely irresponsible, but a tool of Western civilization. He rejects the associations which have been made in the ideology of our civilization, consciously or unconsciously, between Western dominance and progress, imperialism and evolution, evolution and progress.
