Showing titles in Evolution & Genetics

يصف المؤلف بيل برايسون نفسه بأنه الرحّالة المتردد، ولكن حتى حين يبقى آمناً في المنزل فإنه لا يستطيع أن يوقف فضوله حيال العالم الذي حوله...لذا فإن كتاب "موجز تاريخ كل شيء تقريباً" هو بحث هدفه فهم كل شيء سبق أن حدث منذ الإنفجار الكبير حتى نشوء الحضارة؛ كيف أتينا من العدم، إلى هنا، حيث صرنا ما نحن عليه...

هل صحيح بأنَّ الإنسان قد تطوَّر من كائنٍ حي لا يشبه صورته التي هو عليها اليوم؟ إذا ما كانت نظرية التطوّر صحيحة فلماذا نرى العلماء اليوم يحاربون دارون ويتهمونه بالجنون و الإلحاد؟ ماذا تعرف عن نظرية الإنفجار الأعظم وما علاقتها ببدء الخلق؟ وما هي المعالم الخارقة التي ارتكزت عليها هذه النظرية؟

Mary Anning was only 12 years old when, in 1811, she discovered the first dinosaur skeleton - of an ichthyosaur - while fossil hunting on the cliffs of Lyme Regis, England. Until Mary's incredible discovery, it was widely believed that animals did not become extinct.

The cells in our bodies consist of molecules, made up of the same carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen atoms found in air and rocks. But molecules, such as water and sugar, are not alive. So how do our cells - assemblies of otherwise "dead" molecules - come to life, and together constitute a living being? In Life’s Ratchet, physicist Peter M. Hoffmann locates the answer to this age-old question at the nanoscale.

Epigenetics is the science of living DNA, charting the chemical pathways that spur DNA into action by turning genes on and off. While the Human Genome Project of the early 2000s was hailed as the key to understanding human heredity and disease, that historic effort was just the beginning. It has taken epigenetics to fill in the picture, explaining how the fixed code of our genome is implemented in countless living processes.

Astrobiology is an exciting new subject, and one, arguably, more interdisciplinary than any other. Astrobiologists seek to understand the origin and evolution of life on Earth in order to illuminate and guide the search for life on other planets. In this Very Short Introduction, David C. Catling introduces the subject through our understanding of the factors that allowed life to arise and persist on our own planet, and for the signs we are looking for in the search for extraterrestrial life.

Who are we, and how did we get here? These are two of the most fundamental and far-reaching questions facing scientists and cosmologists alike and have rested at the center of human intellectual endeavor since its beginning. They are questions that stretch across numerous disciplines. Philosophy, theology, evolutionary biology, and mathematics are just some of the fields looking to explain the emergence of human life.

Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution now forms the basis for all the life sciences, but it ignited widespread controversy upon its 1859 publication. The idea that humans and animals might have evolved from a common source came as a shock to readers at the time, and people struggle with the implications of Darwin’s theory to this day. But Darwin foresaw this resistance and argued his case with extensive examples and rigorous logic - and his theory continues to push us toward a deeper understanding of life on Earth.

What defines who we are? For decades, the biological answer has been our genes. In The Master Builder, leading biologist Alfonso Martinez Arias breaks with decades of scientific and popular tradition to make a bold argument: what defines us is our cells. Drawing on new research from his lab and others, Martinez Arias reveals that we are composed of a thrillingly complex, constantly rearranging symphony of cells that know how to count, feel, and ultimately give form to our bodies.

By identifying the structure of DNA, the molecule of life, Francis Crick and James Watson revolutionized biochemistry and won themselves a Nobel Prize. At the time, Watson was only 24, a young scientist hungry to make his mark. His uncompromisingly honest account of the heady days of their thrilling sprint against other world-class researchers to solve one of science's greatest mysteries gives a dazzlingly clear picture of a world of brilliant scientists with great gifts, very human ambitions, and bitter rivalries.

Not since the atomic bomb has a technology so alarmed its inventors that they warned the world about its use. Not, that is, until the spring of 2015, when biologist Jennifer Doudna called for a worldwide moratorium on the use of the new gene-editing tool CRISPR - a revolutionary new technology that she helped create - to make heritable changes in human embryos.

In The Social Leap, William von Hippel lays out a revolutionary hypothesis, tracing human development through three critical evolutionary inflection points to explain how events in our distant past shape our lives today. From the mundane, such as why we exaggerate, to the surprising, such as why we believe our own lies and why fame and fortune are as likely to bring misery as happiness, the implications are far-reaching and extraordinary.

She Has Her Mother’s Laugh presents a profoundly original perspective on what we pass along from generation to generation. Charles Darwin played a crucial part in turning heredity into a scientific question, and yet he failed spectacularly to answer it. The birth of genetics in the early 1900s seemed to do precisely that. Gradually, people translated their old notions about heredity into a language of genes. As the technology for studying genes became cheaper, millions of people ordered genetic tests to link themselves to missing parents, to distant ancestors, to ethnic identities....

Explore the world through its most unlikely creatures: Cryptozoology, the study of hidden, monstrous, and legendary animals, is truly the art of discovering the unknown. Richard Freeman, Zoological Director of Centre for Fortean Zoology, has explored the corners of the five continents on the search for creatures that many people believe are non-existent. In this book, he shares the exciting stories of his investigations of the Yeti, Mongolian Deathworm, Loch Ness Monster, Orang-Pendak, Ninki-Naka, and more.

Over the past 20 years, paleontologists have made tremendous fossil discoveries, including fossils that mark the growth of whales, manatees, and seals from land mammals and the origins of elephants, horses, and rhinos. Today there exists an amazing diversity of fossil humans, suggesting we walked upright long before we acquired large brains, and new evidence from molecules that enable scientists to decipher the tree of life as never before.

Since the publication in 1859 of Charles Darwin's remarkable On the Origin of Species, the modern science of biology and genetics has added surprising new dimensions to evolutionary theory. In this course, you’ll discover what Darwin didn’t know, covering much of the curriculum of an introductory college course in evolutionary biology. No background in science is needed to follow these engaging lectures, delivered by Professor Scott Solomon of Rice University, a gifted teacher and widely traveled field biologist.

High in the Canadian Rockies is a small limestone quarry formed 530 million years ago called the Burgess Shale. It holds the remains of an ancient sea where dozens of strange creatures lived—a forgotten corner of evolution preserved in awesome detail. In this book, Stephen Jay Gould explores what the Burgess Shale tells us about evolution and the nature of history.

The scuba-diving philosopher and best-selling author of Other Minds explores the origins of animal consciousness. Dip below the ocean’s surface and you are soon confronted by forms of life that could not seem more foreign to our own: sea sponges, soft corals and flower-like worms, whose rooted bodies and intricate geometry are more reminiscent of plant life than anything recognisably animal. Yet these creatures are our cousins.

Our understanding of the ‘tree of life’, with powerful implications for human genetics, human health and our own human nature, has recently completely changed. This book is about a new method of telling the story of life on earth - through molecular phylogenetics. It involves a fairly simple method - the reading of the deep history of life by looking at the variation in protein molecules found in living organisms. For instance, we now know that roughly eight percent of the human genome arrived not through traditional inheritance from directly ancestral forms, but sideways by viral infection.

Challenging leading scientific theories that claim that our senses report back objective reality, cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman argues that while we should take our perceptions seriously, we should not take them literally. How can it be possible that the world we see is not objective reality? And how can our senses be useful if they are not communicating the truth? Hoffman grapples with these questions and more over the course of this eye-opening work.