You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
This book emphasizes the interfaces between the seemingly diverse fields of biochemistry and cosmochemistry. This link provides the basis for understanding of how life began on Earth and whether this process is universal. This area of study helps us to understand the long-asked questions of whether there is life beyond Earth, and whether our planet is one example of how life could originate and evolve on other worlds. Biochemistry demonstrates how life has originated and evolved into complex life forms ranging from small microbial forms such as bacteria to the upright walking creatures we call humans. Cosmochemistry explores whether the origin of life, and its evolution into complex life forms, is possible in other worlds. The focus is on amino acids which play an essential role in biochemistry on Earth and also are present elsewhere in our solar system. The book explores these issues through personal anecdotes from the author’s long and varied scientific career.
Each year brings to light new scientific discoveries that have the power to either test our faith or strengthen it--most recently the news that scientists have created artificial life forms in the laboratory. If humans can create life, what does that mean for the creation story found in Scripture? Biochemist and Christian apologist Fazale Rana, for one, isn't worried. In Creating Life in the Lab, he details the fascinating quest for synthetic life and argues convincingly that when scientists succeed in creating life in the lab, they will unwittingly undermine the evolutionary explanation for the origin of life, demonstrating instead that undirected chemical processes cannot produce a living entity.
Publisher Description
Amino Acids are not only the essential constituents of all living organisms, they also provide vital clues about life in the past. This book of contributed papers updates the science of amino acid geochemistry and replaces a classic but now outdated work, The Biogeochemistry of Amino Acids (out of print). The new book will have a wider focus than its predecessor, covering preservation of ancient proteins and amino acids, diagenesis of proteins and amino acids through geologic time and on short time scales (relevant to the preservation of museum materials), stable isotope geochemistry of proteins and amino acids, amino acid racemization, the origin of life, the stability of amino acids at hgh temperatures and pressures, and extraterrestrial amino acids. The primary audience for this book will be academics and graduate students in geochemistry, organic chemistry, archaeology, geochronology, and stratigraphy, although it will also be of interest to workers in forensic science.
A dynamic framework for studying social emergence The social sciences have sophisticated models of choice and equilibrium but little understanding of the emergence of novelty. Where do new alternatives, new organizational forms, and new types of people come from? Combining biochemical insights about the origin of life with innovative and historically oriented social network analyses, John Padgett and Walter Powell develop a theory about the emergence of organizational, market, and biographical novelty from the coevolution of multiple social networks. They demonstrate that novelty arises from spillovers across intertwined networks in different domains. In the short run actors make relations, ...
None
Many archaeologists, as primarily social scientists, do not have a background in the natural sciences. This can pose a problem because they need to obtain chemical and physical analyses on samples to perform their research. This manual is an essential source of information for those students without a background in science, but also a comprehensive overview that those with some understanding of archaeological science will find useful. The manual provides readers with the knowledge to use archaeological science methods to the best advantage. It describes and explains the analytical techniques in a manner that the average archaeologist can understand, and outlines clearly the requirements, ben...
From Meteorite Impact to Constellation City is a historical geography of the City of Greater Sudbury. The story that began billions of years ago encompasses dramatic physical and human events. Among them are volcanic eruptions, two meteorite impacts, the ebb and flow of continental glaciers, Aboriginal occupancy, exploration and mapping by Europeans, exploitation by fur traders and Canadian lumbermen and American entrepreneurs, the rise of global mining giants, unionism, pollution and re-greening, and the creation of a unique constellation city of 160,000. The title posits the book’s two main themes, one physical in nature and the other human: the great meteorite impact of some 1.85 billio...