How New Humans are Made

How New Humans are Made PDF Author: Charles E. Boklage
Publisher: World Scientific Publishing Company Incorporated
ISBN: 9789812835130
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 499

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Book Description
In this book, when technical terminology is the only way, or the best way, to say what needs to be said, it is defined and explained - making the words a worthwhile part of what is here to be learned. --

How New Humans are Made

How New Humans are Made PDF Author: Charles E. Boklage
Publisher: World Scientific Publishing Company Incorporated
ISBN: 9789812835130
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 499

Get Book Here

Book Description
In this book, when technical terminology is the only way, or the best way, to say what needs to be said, it is defined and explained - making the words a worthwhile part of what is here to be learned. --

How New Humans Are Made

How New Humans Are Made PDF Author: Charles E. Boklage
Publisher: World Scientific
ISBN: 9812835148
Category : Embryology, Human
Languages : en
Pages : 516

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Book Description
It is not okay to call something a miracle without even trying to understand it. This is human developmental biology (human embryology, in terms of cells and molecules) for everyone curious enough to see it through, from the perspective of the business of becoming human as individuals and as species; making new humans; how it happens (cells do it, ALL of it); and common variations of the process. It cannot be made quite simple and be kept quite true, but we will move as far toward simple as we can without losing touch with sound evidence. Variations from the normal version of the process, particularly malformations and twinning and chimerism, figure prominently in the story because there is no better way to learn about the usual than to study the unusual and see what differences in the endings these observable differences at the beginnings can make. In this book, when technical terminology is the only way, or the best way, to say what needs to be said, it is defined and explained making the words a worthwhile part of what is here to be learned. This book defines its own new field. We cannot claim to understand how anything human] works as human], with no effort at understanding the emergence of its form and functions. Old and new unanswered questions are waiting to be dug out from under old unquestioned answers about how becoming human unfolds. We will also address some popular and weighty, but deeply empty assertions about the circumstances and mechanisms of our beginnings and our ceaseless becoming. We will find fundamental questions from the humanities' unanswerable except from biology. Human developmental biology is a foundational discipline within the humanities.

Life as We Made It

Life as We Made It PDF Author: Beth Shapiro
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1786079410
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 383

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Book Description
A Times Best Book of 2021 From the very first dog to glowing fish and designer pigs – the human history of remaking nature. Virus-free mosquitoes, resurrected dinosaurs, designer humans – such is the power of the science of tomorrow. But the idea that humans have only recently begun to tinker with the natural world is false. We’ve been meddling with nature since the last ice age, and we’re getting a lot better at it. Drawing on decades of research, Beth Shapiro reveals the surprisingly long history of human intervention in evolution – for good and for ill – and looks ahead to the future, casting aside scaremongering myths about the dangers of interference. New biotechnologies can present us with the chance to improve our own lives, and increase the likelihood that we will continue to live in a rich and biologically diverse world.

Catching Fire

Catching Fire PDF Author: Richard Wrangham
Publisher: Profile Books
ISBN: 1847652107
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 318

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Book Description
In this stunningly original book, Richard Wrangham argues that it was cooking that caused the extraordinary transformation of our ancestors from apelike beings to Homo erectus. At the heart of Catching Fire lies an explosive new idea: the habit of eating cooked rather than raw food permitted the digestive tract to shrink and the human brain to grow, helped structure human society, and created the male-female division of labour. As our ancestors adapted to using fire, humans emerged as "the cooking apes". Covering everything from food-labelling and overweight pets to raw-food faddists, Catching Fire offers a startlingly original argument about how we came to be the social, intelligent, and sexual species we are today. "This notion is surprising, fresh and, in the hands of Richard Wrangham, utterly persuasive ... Big, new ideas do not come along often in evolution these days, but this is one." -Matt Ridley, author of Genome

First Steps

First Steps PDF Author: Jeremy DeSilva
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062938517
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 389

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Book Description
A Science News Best Science Book of the Year: “A brilliant, fun, and scientifically deep stroll through history, anatomy, and evolution.” —Agustín Fuentes, PhD, author of The Creative Spark: How Imagination Made Humans Exceptional Winner of the W.W. Howells Book Prize from the American Anthropological Association Blending history, science, and culture, this highly engaging evolutionary story explores how walking on two legs allowed humans to become the planet’s dominant species. Humans are the only mammals to walk on two rather than four legs—a locomotion known as bipedalism. We strive to be upstanding citizens, honor those who stand tall and proud, and take a stand against injustices. We follow in each other’s footsteps and celebrate a child’s beginning to walk. But why, and how, exactly, did we take our first steps? And at what cost? Bipedalism has its drawbacks: giving birth is more difficult and dangerous; our running speed is much slower than other animals; and we suffer a variety of ailments, from hernias to sinus problems. In First Steps, paleoanthropologist Jeremy DeSilva explores how unusual and extraordinary this seemingly ordinary ability is. A seven-million-year journey to the very origins of the human lineage, this book shows how upright walking was a gateway to many of the other attributes that make us human—from our technological abilities to our thirst for exploration and our use of language—and may have laid the foundation for our species’ traits of compassion, empathy, and altruism. Moving from developmental psychology labs to ancient fossil sites throughout Africa and Eurasia, DeSilva brings to life our adventure walking on two legs. Includes photographs “A book that strides confidently across this complex terrain, laying out what we know about how walking works, who started doing it, and when.” —The New York Times Book Review “DeSilva makes a solid scientific case with an expert history of human and ape evolution.” —Kirkus Reviews “A brisk jaunt through the history of bipedalism . . . will leave readers both informed and uplifted.” —Publishers Weekly “Breezy popular science at its best.” —Science News

How to Grow a Human

How to Grow a Human PDF Author: Philip Ball
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022667617X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 385

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Book Description
The award-winning science writer shares “a winding romp through advances in cell biology [that] pushes readers to ponder the boundaries of life” (Science). In the summer of 2017, scientists removed a tiny piece of flesh from Philip Ball’s arm and turned it into a rudimentary “mini-brain.” The skin cells, removed from his body, did not die but were instead transformed into nerve cells that independently arranged themselves into a dense network and communicated with each other, exchanging the raw signals of thought. This was life—but whose? That disconcerting question is the focus of Philip Ball’s How to Grow a Human. In this mind-bending tour of cutting-edge cell biology, Ball shows how recent innovations could lead to tailor-made replacement organs; new medical advances for repairing damage and assisting conception; and new ways of “growing a human.” Such methods would also create new options for gene editing, with all the attendant moral dilemmas. Ball argues that these advances can never be “just about the science,” because they are already laden with a host of social narratives, preconceptions, and prejudices. But beyond even that, these developments raise provocative questions about identity and self, birth and death, and force us to ask how mutable the human body really is—and what forms it might take in years to come.

Future Humans

Future Humans PDF Author: Scott Solomon
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300208715
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 234

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Book Description
"Evolutionary biologist Scott Solomon draws on the explosion of discoveries in recent years to examine the future evolution of our species. Combining knowledge of our past with current trends, Solomon offers convincing evidence that evolutionary forces still affect us today. But how will modernization--including longer lifespans, changing diets, global travel, and widespread use of medicine and contraceptives--affect our evolutionary future?" --publisher description.

Lone Survivors

Lone Survivors PDF Author: Chris Stringer
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 1429973447
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 346

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Book Description
A top researcher proposes a controversial new theory of human evolution in a book “combining the thrill of a novel with a remarkable depth of perspective” (Nature). In this groundbreaking and engaging work of science, world-renowned paleoanthropologist Chris Stringer sets out a new theory of humanity’s origin, challenging both the multiregionalists (who hold that modern humans developed from ancient ancestors in different parts of the world) and his own “out of Africa” theory, which maintains that humans emerged rapidly in one small part of Africa and then spread to replace all other humans within and outside the continent. Stringer’s new theory, based on archeological and genetic evidence, holds that distinct humans coexisted and competed across the African continent—exchanging genes, tools, and behavioral strategies. Stringer draws on analyses of old and new fossils from around the world, DNA studies of Neanderthals (using the full genome map) and other species, and recent archeological digs to unveil his new theory. He shows how the most sensational recent fossil findings fit with his model, and he questions previous concepts (including his own) of modernity and how it evolved. With photographs included, Lone Survivors will be the definitive account of who and what we were—and will change perceptions about our origins and about what it means to be human. “An essential book for anyone interested in psychology, sociology, anthropology, human evolution, or the scientific process.” —Library Journal “Highlights just how many tantalizing discoveries and analytical advances have enriched the field in recent years.” —Literary Review

The Evolved Apprentice

The Evolved Apprentice PDF Author: Kim Sterelny
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262526662
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 259

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Book Description
A new theory of the evolution of human cognition and human social life that emphasizes the role of information sharing across generations. Over the last three million years or so, our lineage has diverged sharply from those of our great ape relatives. Change has been rapid (in evolutionary terms) and pervasive. Morphology, life history, social life, sexual behavior, and foraging patterns have all shifted sharply away from those of the other great apes. In The Evolved Apprentice, Kim Sterelny argues that the divergence stems from the fact that humans gradually came to enrich the learning environment of the next generation. Humans came to cooperate in sharing information, and to cooperate ecologically and reproductively as well, and these changes initiated positive feedback loops that drove us further from other great apes. Sterelny develops a new theory of the evolution of human cognition and human social life that emphasizes the gradual evolution of information-sharing practices across generations and how these practices transformed human minds and social lives. Sterelny proposes that humans developed a new form of ecological interaction with their environment, cooperative foraging. The ability to cope with the immense variety of human ancestral environments and social forms, he argues, depended not just on adapted minds but also on adapted developmental environments.

Who We Are and How We Got Here

Who We Are and How We Got Here PDF Author: David Reich
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192554387
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 400

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Book Description
The past few years have seen a revolution in our ability to map whole genome DNA from ancient humans. With the ancient DNA revolution, combined with rapid genome mapping of present human populations, has come remarkable insights into our past. This important new data has clarified and added to our knowledge from archaeology and anthropology, helped resolve long-existing controversies, challenged long-held views, and thrown up some remarkable surprises. The emerging picture is one of many waves of ancient human migrations, so that all populations existing today are mixes of ancient ones, as well as in many cases carrying a genetic component from Neanderthals, and, in some populations, Denisovans. David Reich, whose team has been at the forefront of these discoveries, explains what the genetics is telling us about ourselves and our complex and often surprising ancestry. Gone are old ideas of any kind of racial 'purity', or even deep and ancient divides between peoples. Instead, we are finding a rich variety of mixtures. Reich describes the cutting-edge findings from the past few years, and also considers the sensitivities involved in tracing ancestry, with science sometimes jostling with politics and tradition. He brings an important wider message: that we should celebrate our rich diversity, and recognize that every one of us is the result of a long history of migration and intermixing of ancient peoples, which we carry as ghosts in our DNA. What will we discover next?