Welcome to our book review site go-pdf.online!
You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
Conflict and Cooperation in Microbial Societies
The most evident aspect of biodiversity is the variety of complex forms and behaviors among organisms, both living and extinct. Comparative molecular and physiological studies show that the evolution of complex phenotypic traits involves multiple levels of biological organization (i.e. genes, chromosomes, organelles, cells, individual organisms, species, etc.). Regardless of the specific molecular mechanisms and details, the evolution of different complex biological organizations share a commonality: cooperation and conflict among the parts of the biological unit under study. The potential for conflict among parts is abundant. How then do complex systems persist, given the necessity of coope...
Variation and Evolution in Plants and Microorganisms
"The present book is intended as a progress report on [the] synthetic approach to evolution as it applies to the plant kingdom." With this simple statement, G. Ledyard Stebbins formulated the objectives of Variation and Evolution in Plants, published in 1950, setting forth for plants what became known as the "synthetic theory of evolution" or "the modern synthesis." The pervading conceit of the book was the molding of Darwin's evolution by natural selection within the framework of rapidly advancing genetic knowledge. At the time, Variation and Evolution in Plants significantly extended the scope of the science of plants. Plants, with their unique genetic, physiological, and evolutionary features, had all but been left completely out of the synthesis until that point. Fifty years later, the National Academy of Sciences convened a colloquium to update the advances made by Stebbins. This collection of 17 papers marks the 50th anniversary of the publication of Stebbins' classic. Organized into five sections, the book covers: early evolution and the origin of cells, virus and bacterial models, protoctist models, population variation, and trends and patterns in plant evolution.
Chance in Evolution
The first book to synthesize scientific and philosophical work on chance, this edited volume brings together leading biologists, philosophers of science, and historians of science, who collectively explore the role that chance plays or doesn t play, as the case may be in evolution. The first part of the volume places chance in historical context and explores how Darwin, along with his contemporaries, understood chance in addition to its related concepts; how these various concepts changed as Darwin s theory of evolution by natural selection developed into the Modern Synthesis; and how the chanciness of Darwinian theory affected theological resistance to it. The second part explores the impor...
Adaptive Speciation
First published in 2004, this book by internationally recognized leaders in the field clarifies how adaptive processes, rather than geographic isolation, can cause speciation.
Magic Universe
This is a marvellously engaging tour covering the whole of modern science, from transgenic crops to quantum tangles. Written by one of the most experienced and well-known names in science writing, it is also assuredly reliable science. Although arranged for convenience and quick reference as a collection of topics in alphabetical order, it is very different from any conventional encyclopedia. Each topic tells a story, making the book eminently browsable. Packed with information, yet carrying its immense learning lightly, this is a book that would appeal to anyone with the slightest interest in how the world works.
Data-Centric Biology
In recent decades, there has been a major shift in the way researchers process and understand scientific data. Digital access to data has revolutionized ways of doing science in the biological and biomedical fields, leading to a data-intensive approach to research that uses innovative methods to produce, store, distribute, and interpret huge amounts of data. In Data-Centric Biology, Sabina Leonelli probes the implications of these advancements and confronts the questions they pose. Are we witnessing the rise of an entirely new scientific epistemology? If so, how does that alter the way we study and understand life—including ourselves? Leonelli is the first scholar to use a study of contemp...
The Nature of Life and Its Potential to Survive
This book looks at the persistence of life and how difficult it would be to annihilate life, especially a species as successful as humanity. The idea that life in general is fragile is challenged by the hardiness of microbes, which shows that astrobiology on exoplanets and other satellites must be robust and plentiful. Microbes have adapted to virtually every niche on the planet, from the deep, hot biosphere, to the frigid heights of the upper troposphere. Life, it seems, is almost indestructible. The chapters in this work examine the various scenarios that might lead to the extermination of life, and why they will almost always fail. Life's highly adaptive nature ensures that it will cling on no matter how difficult the circumstances. Scientists are increasingly probing and questioning life's true limits in, on and above the Earth, and how these limits could be pushed elsewhere in the universe. This investigation puts life in its true astronomical context, with the reader taken on a journey to illustrate life's potential and perseverance.
Philosophy of Molecular Medicine
Philosophy of Molecular Medicine: Foundational Issues in Theory and Practice aims at a systematic investigation of a number of foundational issues in the field of molecular medicine. The volume is organized around four broad modules focusing, respectively, on the following key aspects: What are the nature, scope, and limits of molecular medicine? How does it provide explanations? How does it represent and model phenomena of interest? How does it infer new knowledge from data and experiments? The essays collected here, authored by prominent scientists and philosophers of science, focus on a handful of mainstream topics in the philosophical literature, such as causation, explanation, modeling, and scientific inference. These previously unpublished contributions shed new light on these traditional topics by integrating them with problems, methods, and results from three prominent areas of contemporary biomedical science: basic research, translational and clinical research, and clinical practice.
The Individual in the Animal Kingdom
The groundbreaking first book by a major evolutionary biologist, published in 1912, that anticipated current thinking about organismal complexity. Julian Huxley’s The Individual in the Animal Kingdom, published in 1912, is a concise and groundbreaking work that is almost entirely unknown today. In it, Huxley analyzes the evolutionary advances in life’s organizational complexity, anticipating many of today’s ideas about changes in individuality. Huxley’s overarching system of concepts and his coherent logical principles were so far ahead of their time that they remain valid to this day. In part, this is because his explicitly Darwinian approach carefully distinguished between the inte...
Cuatro Ciénegas Ecology, Natural History and Microbiology
The aim of this first book is to introduce the readers of the series to why Cuatro Ciénegas Basin (CCB) is so unique, starting with the reason why astrobiologists became interested in this oasis in the first place; namely, the high diversity and abundance of stromatolites and microbial mats in continental waters to be found in the desert oasis. As NASA has long since discovered, the basin may offer the best analog of early Earth. In essence, CCB is a time machine that can take us far back and forth in time. In the respective chapters, the contributing authors explain the extraordinary microbial diversity of Cuatro Ciénegas Basin from various perspectives. In order to do so, they explain their journey as well as the different tools used to unravel the basin’s mysteries, such as: Why are there so many species in a place without food? How has life there survived the enormity of tectonic shifts through the ages, maintaining its ancient marine heritage?
