Download or read book The Vital Question written by Nick Lane and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A game-changing book on the origins of life, called the most important scientific discovery 'since the Copernican revolution' in The Observer.
Download or read book The Vital Question written by Nick Lane and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why is life the way it is? Bacteria evolved into complex life just once in four billion years of life on earth-and all complex life shares many strange properties, from sex to ageing and death. If life evolved on other planets, would it be the same or completely different?In The Vital Question, Nick Lane radically reframes evolutionary history, putting forward a cogent solution to conundrums that have troubled scientists for decades. The answer, he argues, lies in energy: how all life on Earth lives off a voltage with the strength of a bolt of lightning. In unravelling these scientific enigmas, making sense of life's quirks, Lane's explanation provides a solution to life's vital questions: why are we as we are, and why are we here at all?This is ground-breaking science in an accessible form, in the tradition of Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species, Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene, and Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel.
Download or read book The Vital Question written by Nick Lane and published by Profile Books. This book was released on 2015-04-23 with total page 476 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why is life the way it is? Bacteria evolved into complex life just once in four billion years of life on earth-and all complex life shares many strange properties, from sex to ageing and death. If life evolved on other planets, would it be the same or completely different? In The Vital Question, Nick Lane radically reframes evolutionary history, putting forward a cogent solution to conundrums that have troubled scientists for decades. The answer, he argues, lies in energy: how all life on Earth lives off a voltage with the strength of a bolt of lightning. In unravelling these scientific enigmas, making sense of life's quirks, Lane's explanation provides a solution to life's vital questions: why are we as we are, and why are we here at all? This is ground-breaking science in an accessible form, in the tradition of Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species, Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene, and Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel.
Download or read book Power Sex Suicide written by Nick Lane and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2005-10-13 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mitochondria are tiny structures located inside our cells that carry out the essential task of producing energy for the cell. They are found in all complex living things, and in that sense, they are fundamental for driving complex life on the planet. But there is much more to them than that. Mitochondria have their own DNA, with their own small collection of genes, separate from those in the cell nucleus. It is thought that they were once bacteria living independent lives. Their enslavement within the larger cell was a turning point in the evolution of life, enabling the development of complex organisms and, closely related, the origin of two sexes. Unlike the DNA in the nucleus, mitochondrial DNA is passed down exclusively (or almost exclusively) via the female line. That's why it has been used by some researchers to trace human ancestry daughter-to-mother, to 'Mitochondrial Eve'. Mitochondria give us important information about our evolutionary history. And that's not all. Mitochondrial genes mutate much faster than those in the nucleus because of the free radicals produced in their energy-generating role. This high mutation rate lies behind our ageing and certain congenital diseases. The latest research suggests that mitochondria play a key role in degenerative diseases such as cancer, through their involvement in precipitating cell suicide. Mitochondria, then, are pivotal in power, sex, and suicide. In this fascinating and thought-provoking book, Nick Lane brings together the latest research findings in this exciting field to show how our growing understanding of mitochondria is shedding light on how complex life evolved, why sex arose (why don't we just bud?), and why we age and die. This understanding is of fundamental importance, both in understanding how we and all other complex life came to be, but also in order to be able to control our own illnesses, and delay our degeneration and death. 'An extraordinary account of groundbreaking modern science... The book abounds with interesting and important ideas.' Mark Ridley, Department of Zoology, University of Oxford
Download or read book Vital Questions written by Philip Stott and published by Reformation Media & Press. This book was released on 2002-12 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Vital Questions" examines issues which have enormous influence in shaping the attitudes of our society and the way we think and look at life. Most of us have assumed for years that there must be overwhelming proof for such well established ideas as the Big bang, Relativity, and Evolution. On closer investigation one finds that the evidence is astonishingly flimsy. A number of theories taken as indisputable, from primary school to university, are examined and found to be in serious doubt.
Download or read book Oxygen written by Nick Lane and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2002 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Oxygen offers fresh perspectives on our own lives and deaths, explaining modern killer diseases, why we age, and what we can do about it. Advancing revelatory new ideas, following chains of evidence, the book ranges through many disciplines, from environmental sciences to molecular medicine. Damage to DNA caused by oxidative stress appears to explain aging and many of its diseases, hence the popularity in alternative health circles of antioxidants. But antioxidants alone fail to prevent aging. Lane suggests two different avenues of study: modulation of the immune system, which generates free radicals as part of its defense against infectious diseases; and ways of improving the health of our cellular mitochondria, on which many age-related ailments seem to depend. Provocative and complexly argued. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Download or read book Life Ascending written by Nick Lane and published by Profile Books. This book was released on 2010-10-01 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the 2010 Royal Society Prize for science books Powerful new research methods are providing fresh and vivid insights into the makeup of life. Comparing gene sequences, examining the atomic structure of proteins and looking into the geochemistry of rocks have all helped to explain creation and evolution in more detail than ever before. Nick Lane uses the full extent of this new knowledge to describe the ten greatest inventions of life, based on their historical impact, role in living organisms today and relevance to current controversies. DNA, sex, sight and consciousnesses are just four examples. Lane also explains how these findings have come about, and the extent to which they can be relied upon. The result is a gripping and lucid account of the ingenuity of nature, and a book which is essential reading for anyone who has ever questioned the science behind the glories of everyday life.
Download or read book 3 Vital Questions written by David Emerald and published by . This book was released on 2019-03-26 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Finalist, 2019 Indie Book Awards, Careers Category Transform Workplace Drama into Workforce Empowerment! If you have ever experienced infighting, such as a team or a department pitting itself against another team or department; if you have ever worked for a micromanaging and overbearing boss; if you have ever navigated the changes that come with a merger or other significant restructuring process, then you have had a front-row seat for organizational drama. 3 Vital Questions is a teaching story about transforming workplace drama and its heavy costs to organizations. Working late at night, Lucas, a middle manager in a large organization, meets a custodian named Ted. The two strike up a friendship as Ted teaches Lucas three vital questions with the power to transform the disillusionment he is experiencing at work. Readers follow Lucas as he learns how to shift from feeling like a Victim to acting as a Creator in his career. With the wise guidance of Ted and Kasey, a senior manager, Lucas applies the three vital questions and begins transforming his workplace relationships, with exciting results. At home, Lucas and his wife Sarah discover how the questions can spark creative collaboration with each other and their two young children. This long-awaited and highly enjoyable read by the author of the bestselling self-leadership title, The Power of TED* (*The Empowerment Dynamic) ushers in a new era of possibility for the world of work. This book teaches David Emerald's groundbreaking 3 Vital Questions(R) approach for empowering leaders and teams to become collaborative, engaged, and resilient in the face of the rapid changes that mark today's increasingly complex competitive environment.
Download or read book Changing Senses of Place written by Christopher M. Raymond and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-08-05 with total page 501 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Global challenges ranging from climate change and ecological regime shifts to refugee crises and post-national territorial claims are rapidly moving ecosystem thresholds and altering the social fabric of societies worldwide. This book addresses the vital question of how to navigate the contested forces of stability and change in a world shaped by multiple interconnected global challenges. It proposes that senses of place is a vital concept for supporting individual and social processes for navigating these contested forces and encourages scholars to rethink how to theorise and conceptualise changes in senses of place in the face of global challenges. It also makes the case that our concepts of sense of place need to be revisited, given that our experiences of place are changing. This book is essential reading for those seeking a new understanding of the multiple and shifting experiences of place.
Download or read book Transformer The Deep Chemistry of Life and Death written by Nick Lane and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2022-07-12 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the renowned biochemist and author of The Vital Question, an illuminating inquiry into the Krebs cycle and the origins of life. “Nick Lane’s exploration of the building blocks that underlie life’s big fundamental questions—the origin of life itself, aging, and disease—have shaped my thinking since I first came across his work. He is one of my favorite science writers.”—Bill Gates What brings the Earth to life, and our own lives to an end? For decades, biology has been dominated by the study of genetic information. Information is important, but it is only part of what makes us alive. Our inheritance also includes our living metabolic network, a flame passed from generation to generation, right back to the origin of life. In Transformer, biochemist Nick Lane reveals a scientific renaissance that is hiding in plain sight —how the same simple chemistry gives rise to life and causes our demise. Lane is among the vanguard of researchers asking why the Krebs cycle, the “perfect circle” at the heart of metabolism, remains so elusive more than eighty years after its discovery. Transformer is Lane’s voyage, as a biochemist, to find the inner meaning of the Krebs cycle—and its reverse—why it is still spinning at the heart of life and death today. Lane reveals the beautiful, violent world within our cells, where hydrogen atoms are stripped from the carbon skeletons of food and fed to the ravenous beast of oxygen. Yet this same cycle, spinning in reverse, also created the chemical building blocks that enabled the emergence of life on our planet. Now it does both. How can the same pathway create and destroy? What might our study of the Krebs cycle teach us about the mysteries of aging and the hardest problem of all, consciousness? Transformer unites the story of our planet with the story of our cells—what makes us the way we are, and how it connects us to the origin of life. Enlivened by Lane’s talent for distilling and humanizing complex research, Transformer offers an essential read for anyone fascinated by biology’s great mysteries. Life is at root a chemical phenomenon: this is its deep logic.
Download or read book How Could This Happen written by Dan McMillan and published by Basic Books a Member of Perseus Books Group. This book was released on 2014-04-08 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A German historian attempts to explain how the Holocaust happened, discussing how widespread acceptance of anti-Semitism and scientific racism in the politically divided post-World War I era lessened the value of human life. 17,500 first printing.
Download or read book The Origin and Nature of Life on Earth written by Eric Smith and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2016-03-31 with total page 703 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Uniting the foundations of physics and biology, this groundbreaking multidisciplinary and integrative book explores life as a planetary process.
Download or read book What s to be Done written by Nikolay Gavrilovich Chernyshevsky and published by . This book was released on 1886 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Tell Me How It Ends written by Valeria Luiselli and published by Coffee House Press. This book was released on 2017-03-13 with total page 72 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Part treatise, part memoir, part call to action, Tell Me How It Ends inspires not through a stiff stance of authority, but with the curiosity and humility Luiselli has long since established." —Annalia Luna, Brazos Bookstore "Valeria Luiselli's extended essay on her volunteer work translating for child immigrants confronts with compassion and honesty the problem of the North American refugee crisis. It's a rare thing: a book everyone should read." —Stephen Sparks, Point Reyes Books "Tell Me How It Ends evokes empathy as it educates. It is a vital contribution to the body of post-Trump work being published in early 2017." —Katharine Solheim, Unabridged Books "While this essay is brilliant for exactly what it depicts, it helps open larger questions, which we're ever more on the precipice of now, of where all of this will go, how all of this might end. Is this a story, or is this beyond a story? Valeria Luiselli is one of those brave and eloquent enough to help us see." —Rick Simonson, Elliott Bay Book Company "Appealing to the language of the United States' fraught immigration policy, Luiselli exposes the cracks in this foundation. Herself an immigrant, she highlights the human cost of its brokenness, as well as the hope that it (rather than walls) might be rebuilt." —Brad Johnson, Diesel Bookstore "The bureaucratic labyrinth of immigration, the dangers of searching for a better life, all of this and more is contained in this brief and profound work. Tell Me How It Ends is not just relevant, it's essential." —Mark Haber, Brazos Bookstore "Humane yet often horrifying, Tell Me How It Ends offers a compelling, intimate look at a continuing crisis—and its ongoing cost in an age of increasing urgency." —Jeremy Garber, Powell's Books
Download or read book What Happened to the Vital Center written by Nicholas Jacobs and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-08-18 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Taking the reader through a long view of American history, What Happened to the Vital Center? offers a novel and important contribution to the ongoing scholarly and popular discussion of how America fell apart and what might be done to end the Cold Civil War that fractures the country and weakens the national resolve. In What Happened to the Vital Center?, Nicholas Jacobs and Sidney Milkis tackle a foundational question within American political history: Is current partisan polarization, aggravated by populist disdain for constitutional principles and institutions, a novel development in American politics? Populism is not a new threat to the country's democratic experiment, but now insurgents intrude directly on elections and government. During previous periods of populist unrest, the US was governed by resilient parties that moderated extremist currents within the political system. This began to crumble during the 1960s, as anti-institutionalist incursions into the Democratic and Republican organizations gave rise to reforms that empowered activists at the expense of the median voter and shifted the controlling power over parties to the executive branch. Gradually, the moderating influence that parties played in structuring campaigns and the policy process eroded to the point where extreme polarization dominated and decision-making power migrated to the presidency. Weakened parties were increasingly dominated by presidents and their partnerships with social activists, leading to a gridlocked system characterized by the politics of demonization and demagoguery. Executive-centered parties more easily ignore the sorts of moderating voices that had prevailed in an earlier era. While the Republican Party is more susceptible to the dangers of populism than the Democrats, both parties are animated by a presidency-led, movement-centered vision of democracy. After tracing this history, the authors dismiss calls to return to some bygone era. Rather, the final section highlights the ways in which the two parties can be revitalized as institutions of collective responsibility that can transform personal ambition and rancorous partisanship into principled conflict over the profound issues that now divide the country. The book will transform our understanding of how we ended up in our current state of extreme polarization and what we can do to fix it.
Download or read book Fix This Next written by Mike Michalowicz and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2020-04-28 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Mike Michalowicz, the author of PROFIT FIRST, CLOCKWORK, and THE PUMPKIN PLAN, comes the ultimate diagnostic tool for every entrepreneur. The biggest problem entrepreneurs have is that they don't know what their biggest problem is. If you find yourself trapped between stagnating sales, staff turnover, and unhappy customers, what do you fix first? Every issue seems urgent -- but there's no way to address all of them at once. The result? A business that continues to go in endless circles putting out urgent fires and prioritizing the wrong things. Fortunately, Mike Michalowicz has a simple system to help you eradicate these frustrations and get your business moving forward, fast. Mike himself has lived through the struggles and countless distractions of entrepreneurship, and devoted years to finding a simple way to pinpoint exactly where to direct attention for rapid growth. He figured out that every business has a hierarchy of needs, and if you can understand where you are in that hierarchy, you can identify what needs immediate attention. Simply fix that one thing next, and your business will naturally and effortlessly level-up. Over the past decade, Mike has developed an ardent following for his funny, honest, and actionable insights told through the stories of real entrepreneurs. Now, Fix This Next offers a simple, unique, and wildly powerful business compass that has already helped hundreds of companies get to the next level, and will do the same for you. Immediately.
Download or read book Creation written by Adam Rutherford and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2013-06-13 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is life? Humans have been asking this question for thousands of years. But as technology has advanced and our understanding of biology has deepened, the answer has evolved. For decades, scientists have been exploring the limits of nature by modifying and manipulating DNA, cells and whole organisms to create new ones that could never have existed on their own. In Creation, science writer Adam Rutherford explains how we are now radically exceeding the boundaries of evolution and engineering entirely novel creatures—from goats that produce spider silk in their milk to bacteria that excrete diesel to genetic circuits that identify and destroy cancer cells. As strange as some of these creations may sound, this new, synthetic biology is helping scientists develop radical solutions to some of the world’s most pressing crises—from food shortages to pandemic disease to climate change—and is paving the way for inventions once relegated to science fiction. Meanwhile, these advances are shedding new light on the biggest mystery of all—how did life begin? We know that every creature on Earth came from a single cell, sparked into existence four billion years ago. And as we come closer and closer to understanding the ancient root that connects all living things, we may finally be able to achieve a second genesis—the creation of new life where none existed before. Creation takes us on a journey four billion years in the making—from the very first cell to the ground-breaking biological inventions that will shape the future of our planet.
