Life as We Made It

Life as We Made It PDF Author: Beth Shapiro
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 1541644158
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 313

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Book Description
From the first dog to the first beefalo, from farming to CRISPR, the human history of remaking nature When the 2020 Nobel Prize was awarded to the inventors of CRISPR, the revolutionary gene-editing tool, it underlined our amazing and apparently novel powers to alter nature. But as biologist Beth Shapiro argues in Life as We Made It, this phenomenon isn’t new. Humans have been reshaping the world around us for ages, from early dogs to modern bacteria modified to pump out insulin. Indeed, she claims, reshaping nature—resetting the course of evolution, ours and others’—is the essence of what our species does. In exploring our evolutionary and cultural history, Shapiro finds a course for the future. If we have always been changing nature to help us survive and thrive, then we need to avoid naive arguments about how we might destroy it with our meddling, and instead ask how we can meddle better. Brilliant and insightful, Life as We Made It is an essential book for the decades to come.

Life as We Made It

Life as We Made It PDF Author: Beth Shapiro
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 1541644158
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 313

Get Book Here

Book Description
From the first dog to the first beefalo, from farming to CRISPR, the human history of remaking nature When the 2020 Nobel Prize was awarded to the inventors of CRISPR, the revolutionary gene-editing tool, it underlined our amazing and apparently novel powers to alter nature. But as biologist Beth Shapiro argues in Life as We Made It, this phenomenon isn’t new. Humans have been reshaping the world around us for ages, from early dogs to modern bacteria modified to pump out insulin. Indeed, she claims, reshaping nature—resetting the course of evolution, ours and others’—is the essence of what our species does. In exploring our evolutionary and cultural history, Shapiro finds a course for the future. If we have always been changing nature to help us survive and thrive, then we need to avoid naive arguments about how we might destroy it with our meddling, and instead ask how we can meddle better. Brilliant and insightful, Life as We Made It is an essential book for the decades to come.

Life as We Knew it

Life as We Knew it PDF Author: Susan Beth Pfeffer
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 0152061541
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
I guess I always felt even if the world came to an end, McDonald's still would be open. High school sophomore Miranda's disbelief turns to fear in a split second when an asteroid knocks the moon closer to Earth, like "one marble hits another." The result is catastrophic. How can her family prepare for the future when worldwide tsunamis are wiping out the coasts, earthquakes are rocking the continents, and volcanic ash is blocking out the sun? As August turns dark and wintery in northeastern Pennsylvania, Miranda, her two brothers, and their mother retreat to the unexpected safe haven of their sunroom, where they subsist on stockpiled food and limited water in the warmth of a wood-burning stove. Told in a year's worth of journal entries, this heart-pounding story chronicles Miranda's struggle to hold on to the most important resource of all--hope--in an increasingly desperate and unfamiliar world. An extraordinary series debut Susan Beth Pfeffer has written several companion novels to Life As We Knew It, including The Dead and the Gone, This World We Live In, and The Shade of the Moon.

Can Science Make Sense of Life?

Can Science Make Sense of Life? PDF Author: Sheila Jasanoff
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1509522743
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 110

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Book Description
Since the discovery of the structure of DNA and the birth of the genetic age, a powerful vocabulary has emerged to express science’s growing command over the matter of life. Armed with knowledge of the code that governs all living things, biology and biotechnology are poised to edit, even rewrite, the texts of life to correct nature’s mistakes. Yet, how far should the capacity to manipulate what life is at the molecular level authorize science to define what life is for? This book looks at flash points in law, politics, ethics, and culture to argue that science’s promises of perfectibility have gone too far. Science may have editorial control over the material elements of life, but it does not supersede the languages of sense-making that have helped define human values across millennia: the meanings of autonomy, integrity, and privacy; the bonds of kinship, family, and society; and the place of humans in nature.

Worth It

Worth It PDF Author: Brit Barron
Publisher: Broadleaf Books
ISBN: 1506463282
Category : Self-Help
Languages : en
Pages : 168

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Book Description
Brit Barron grew up in an Evangelical megachurch in the '90s, trying to fit neatly inside the boundaries her church and its narrow view of God had placed around her. She was boxed in by her fears, unable to realize her full potential. All that changed when she met a girl named Sami, fell in love, and chose to leave behind those narrow boundaries in favor of a fuller and more vibrant life. In Worth It, Brit tells her story to inspire all of us to overcome our own fears--the kinds of fears that keep us from evolving beyond the narratives that have been handed to us by others. We can't avoid or outrun these fears, but if we face them, we'll find out that it was so worth it!

Synthetic

Synthetic PDF Author: Sophia Roosth
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022644046X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
In the final years of the twentieth century, emigres from mechanical and electrical engineering and computer science resolved that if the aim of biology was to understand life, then making life would yield better theories than experimentation. Sophia Roosth, a cultural anthropologist, takes us into the world of these self-named synthetic biologists who, she shows, advocate not experiment but manufacture, not reduction but construction, not analysis but synthesis. Roosth reveals how synthetic biologists make new living things in order to understand better how life works. What we see through her careful questioning is that the biological features, theories, and limits they fasten upon are determined circularly by their own experimental tactics. This is a story of broad interest, because the active, interested making of the synthetic biologists is endemic to the sciences of our time."

This World We Live in

This World We Live in PDF Author: Susan Beth Pfeffer
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 0547248040
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 261

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Book Description
The highly anticipated follow-up to Life As We Knew It and The Dead and the Gone

The End of Life as We Know It

The End of Life as We Know It PDF Author: Michael Guillen
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1621577163
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 396

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Book Description
"It's happening this second. Scientists are re-imagining and re-engineering the world forever. With brutal honesty and engaging story-telling, Michael Guillen gives us a clear-eyed look at a future that is already here. Consider this unsettling, brilliantly written, must-read book your official wake up call." -- ERIC METAXAS, #1 national bestselling author of Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy "Michael Guillen has tackled an important subject in The End of Life as We Know It... This book is a sobering look at where we could be headed. A fascinating read." -- DAVID LIMBAUGH, bestselling author of Jesus is Risen and The True Jesus In all aspects of life, humans are crossing lines of no return. Modern science is leading us into vast uncharted territory—far beyond the invention of nuclear weapons or taking us to the moon.Today, in labs all over the world, scientists are performing experiments that threaten to fundamentally alter the practical character and ethical color of our everyday lives. In The End of Life as We Know It: Ominous News from the Frontiers of Science, bestselling author and Emmy award winning science journalist Michael Guillen takes a penetrating look at how the scientific community is pushing the boundaries of morality, including: • Scientists who detached the head of a Russian man from his crippled, diseased body, and stitching it onto a healthy new donated body. • Fertility experiments aimed at allowing designer babies to be conceived with the DNA from three or more biological parents. • The unprecedented politicization of science – for example, in the global discussion about climate change that is pitting “deniers” against “alarmists” and inspiring Draconian legislation, censorship, and legal prosecutions. • The integration of Artificial Intelligence into communications and the economy. The End of Life as We Know Ittakes us into labratories and boardrooms where these troubling advances are taking place and asks the question no scientists seem to be asking: What does this mean for the future of humanity? PREVIOUS PRAISE FOR MICHAEL GUILLEN: “Guillen succeeds triumphantly…He writes with extraordinary grace and clarity.” — CHRISTOPHER LEHMANN-HAUPT, The New York Times “Guillen knows how to tell a story.” — Wall Street Journal “Michael Guillen is ‘Winsomely brilliant.’” — ERIC METAXAS, #1 national bestselling author of Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy “Michael Guillen bridges the seeming gap between science and faith better than anyone I know.” — CAL THOMAS, Syndicated and USA Today columnist/Fox News contributor

Design the Life You Love

Design the Life You Love PDF Author: Ayse Birsel
Publisher: Ten Speed Press
ISBN: 1607748819
Category : Self-Help
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
An interactive journal that serves as a joyful, inspirational guide to building the life you've always dreamed of, using the principles and creative process of an award-winning product designer. Life, just like a design problem, is full of constraints -- time, money, age, location, and circumstances. You can’t have everything, so you have to be creative to make what you want and what you need co-exist. Design the Life You Love is a joyful, inspirational guide to building the life you’ve always wanted, using the principles and creative process of an award-winning product designer. Through four steps that reveal hidden skills and wisdom, anyone can design a life they love!

The Genesis Quest

The Genesis Quest PDF Author: Michael Marshall
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022671537X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 369

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Book Description
From the primordial soup to meteorite impact zones, the Manhattan Project to the latest research, this book is the first full history of the scientists who strive to explain the genesis of life. How did life begin? Why are we here? These are some of the most profound questions we can ask. For almost a century, a small band of eccentric scientists has struggled to answer these questions and explain one of the greatest mysteries of all: how and why life began on Earth. There are many different proposals, and each idea has attracted passionate believers who promote it with an almost religious fervor, as well as detractors who reject it with equal passion. But the quest to unravel life’s genesis is not just a story of big ideas. It is also a compelling human story, rich in personalities, conflicts, and surprising twists and turns. Along the way, the journey takes in some of the greatest discoveries in modern biology, from evolution and cells to DNA and life’s family tree. It is also a search whose end may finally be in sight. In The Genesis Quest, Michael Marshall shows how the quest to understand life’s beginning is also a journey to discover the true nature of life, and by extension our place in the universe.

The Vital Question

The Vital Question PDF Author: Nick Lane
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781781250372
Category : Cells
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
A game-changing book on the origins of life, called the most important scientific discovery 'since the Copernican revolution' in The Observer.