Natural Diversity in the New Millennium

Natural Diversity in the New Millennium PDF Author: Joanna M. Cross
Publisher: Frontiers Media SA
ISBN: 2889199525
Category : Botany
Languages : en
Pages : 175

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Book Description
Natural diversity has been extensively used to understand plant biology and improve crops. However, studies were commonly based on visual phenotypes or on a few measurable parameters. Nowadays, a large number of parameters can be measured thanks to next generation sequencing, metabolomics, proteomics, and transcriptomics thus providing an unprecedented resolution in the detection of natural diversity. This enhanced resolution offers new possibilities in terms of understanding plant biology. Technology advances also contribute to a better assessment of the biodiversity loss currently taking place. Hence, the topic presents an overview on efforts for maintaining biological diversity in crops, on possibilities offered by recent technologies in the assessment of natural variation, and ends with examples of the diversity found even at the cellular level.

Natural Diversity in the New Millennium

Natural Diversity in the New Millennium PDF Author: Joanna M. Cross
Publisher: Frontiers Media SA
ISBN: 2889199525
Category : Botany
Languages : en
Pages : 175

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Book Description
Natural diversity has been extensively used to understand plant biology and improve crops. However, studies were commonly based on visual phenotypes or on a few measurable parameters. Nowadays, a large number of parameters can be measured thanks to next generation sequencing, metabolomics, proteomics, and transcriptomics thus providing an unprecedented resolution in the detection of natural diversity. This enhanced resolution offers new possibilities in terms of understanding plant biology. Technology advances also contribute to a better assessment of the biodiversity loss currently taking place. Hence, the topic presents an overview on efforts for maintaining biological diversity in crops, on possibilities offered by recent technologies in the assessment of natural variation, and ends with examples of the diversity found even at the cellular level.

Natural Diversity in the New Millennium

Natural Diversity in the New Millennium PDF Author: Nourollah Ahmadi
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 173

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Book Description
Natural diversity has been extensively used to understand plant biology and improve crops. However, studies were commonly based on visual phenotypes or on a few measurable parameters. Nowadays, a large number of parameters can be measured thanks to next generation sequencing, metabolomics, proteomics, and transcriptomics thus providing an unprecedented resolution in the detection of natural diversity. This enhanced resolution offers new possibilities in terms of understanding plant biology. Technology advances also contribute to a better assessment of the biodiversity loss currently taking place. Hence, the topic presents an overview on efforts for maintaining biological diversity in crops, on possibilities offered by recent technologies in the assessment of natural variation, and ends with examples of the diversity found even at the cellular level

Beginning Again

Beginning Again PDF Author: David Ehrenfeld
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0195096371
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 233

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Book Description
Early in this volume, David Ehrenfeld describes what prophecy really is. Referring to the biblical prophets, he says they were not the "holy fortunetellers that the word prophet has come to signify....The business of prophecy is not simply foretelling the future; rather it is describing the present with exceptional truthfulness and accuracy." Once this is done, then it can be seen that broad aspects of the future have suddenly become apparent. The twentieth century is drawing to a chaotic close amidst portents of unprecedented change and upheaval. The unravelling of societies and civilizations and the destruction of nature march together--linked--a fact whose enormous significance is often lost. In Beginning Again, David Ehrenfeld has undertaken the difficult task of describing the present clearly enough to reveal the future. Out of his broad vision emerges a glimpse of a new millennium: a vision at once frightening and comforting, a scene of great devastation and great rebuilding. Ehrenfeld ranges far and wide to present a coherent vision of our relationship with Nature--its many aspects and implications--as our century opens into the next millennium. Whether he is writing about the problem of loyalty to organizations, rights versus obligations, our over-managed society, the vanishing of established knowledge, the failure of experts, the triumph of dandelions, Dr. Seuss, Edward Teller, or the future of farming, he is always concerned with the intricate interaction between technology and nature. As in his classic book, The Arrogance of Humanism, Ehrenfeld never loses sight of our fatal love affair with the fantasy of control. We now have no choice, he argues, but to transform the dream of control, of progress, from one of overweening hubris, love of consumption, and the idiot's goal of perpetual growth, to one based on "the inventive imitation of nature," with its honesty, beauty, resilience, and durability. Few American writers and even fewer scientists can describe these timeless, transcendent qualities of nature so well. In "Places," the opening chapter, David Ehrenfeld tells about nightly vigils he spent alone on the moonlit beach of Tortuguero, watching giant sea turtles emerging from the sea to lay their eggs in the black sand where they were born. "I could watch the perfect white spheres falling," he writes. "Falling as they have fallen for a hundred million years, with the same slow cadence, always shielded from the rain or stars by the same massive bulk with the beaked head and the same large, myopic eyes rimmed with crusts of sand washed out by tears. Minutes and hours, days and months dissolve into eons. I am on an Oligocene beach, an Eocene beach, a Cretaceous beach--the scene is the same. It is night, the turtles are coming back, always back; I hear a deep hiss of breath and catch a glint of wet shell as the continents slide and crash, the oceans form and grow."

Diversity in the Next Millennium

Diversity in the Next Millennium PDF Author: Peter Risher
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Biodiversity
Languages : en
Pages : 55

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Book Description


Environmentalism for a New Millennium

Environmentalism for a New Millennium PDF Author: Leslie Paul Thiele
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195352459
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 331

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Book Description
The vast majority of people in the industrialized world consider themselves environmentalists. Yet environmental problems continue to worsen. While the environmental movement is winning the battle for the hearts and minds of citizens in the United States and across the globe, it may be losing the war to preserve the health of the planet and its biological diversity. The reasons become clear in this book. Leslie Paul Thiele provides a much needed analysis of the driving forces within the environmental movement and the key challenges that it faces. He begins with a concise history of the movement in the United States, where he identifies four successive waves of environmental thought and action. The first wave, conservation, emerged in the mid 1800s and focused on the responsible use of natural resources and the preservation of isolated tracts of wilderness. By the 1960s, the general public had become aware of the widespread impact of environmental problems on human health and welfare. A concern for the containment of industrial society's environmental degradation emerged. This second wave was followed by a period of co optation beginning in the 1980s, as a now popular social movement made a significant impact on public policy and witnessed the dilution of its goals. Thiele largely focuses on the fourth and current wave of coevolution. Coevolutionary thought and action is grounded in the interdependence of humans and nature in a global context. With the goal of sustainable development in mind, contemporary environmentalists argue that human livelihoods must be integrated into complex and evolving ecological systems. This affirmation of coevolutionary interdependence has brought coherence to an inherently diverse social movement. Through extensive interviews and a critical study of environmental publications and scholarly research, the author provides an inside look at the environmental movement. His analysis illuminates the social, economic, political and cultural forces that shape the environmental movement today and set its trajectory for the 21st century. Anyone interested the future of environmentalism will find this book an invaluable guide.

Biodiversity

Biodiversity PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description


Biological Diversity

Biological Diversity PDF Author: Michael A. Huston
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521369305
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 708

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Book Description
The key to preserving and managing biodiversity is understanding which processes are important at different scales, and how changes affect different components of biodiversity. In this book, existing theories on diversity are synthesised into a logical framework. Global and landscape-scale patterns of biodiversity are described in the first section. In the second, the spatial and temporal dynamics of diversity are emphasised. The third section develops an integrated set of mechanistic explanations for diversity patterns at the levels of population, community, ecosystem and landscape. Finally, case studies examine diversity patterns in marine and terrestrial ecosystems and the effects of biological invasions. The book concludes with a discussion of the economics of preserving biological diversity. This book will interest research workers and students of ecology, biology and conservation.

The Diversity of Life

The Diversity of Life PDF Author: Edward O. Wilson
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674212985
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 458

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Book Description
View a collection of videos on Professor Wilson entitled "On the Relation of Science and the Humanities" "In the Amazon Basin the greatest violence sometimes begins as a flicker of light beyond the horizon. There in the perfect bowl of the night sky, untouched by light from any human source, a thunderstorm sends its premonitory signal and begins a slow journey to the observer, who thinks: the world is about to change." Watching from the edge of the Brazilian rain forest, witness to the sort of violence nature visits upon its creatures, Edward O. Wilson reflects on the crucible of evolution, and so begins his remarkable account of how the living world became diverse and how humans are destroying that diversity. Wilson, internationally regarded as the dean of biodiversity studies, conducts us on a tour through time, traces the processes that create new species in bursts of adaptive radiation, and points out the cataclysmic events that have disrupted evolution and diminished global diversity over the past 600 million years. The five enormous natural blows to the planet (such as meteorite strikes and climatic changes) required 10 to 100 million years of evolutionary repair. The sixth great spasm of extinction on earth--caused this time entirely by humans--may be the one that breaks the crucible of life. Wilson identifies this crisis in countless ecosystems around the globe: coral reefs, grasslands, rain forests, and other natural habitats. Drawing on a variety of examples such as the decline of bird populations in the United States, the extinction of many species of freshwater fish in Africa and Asia, and the rapid disappearance of flora and fauna as the rain forests are cut down, he poignantly describes the death throes of the living world's diversity--projected to decline as much as 20 percent by the year 2020. All evidence marshaled here resonates through Wilson's tightly reasoned call for a spirit of stewardship over the world's biological wealth. He makes a plea for specific actions that will enhance rather than diminish not just diversity but the quality of life on earth. Cutting through the tangle of environmental issues that often obscure the real concern, Wilson maintains that the era of confrontation between forces for the preservation of nature and those for economic development is over; he convincingly drives home the point that both aims can, and must, be integrated. Unparalleled in its range and depth, Wilson's masterwork is essential reading for those who care about preserving the world biological variety and ensuring our planet's health.

Dante for the New Millennium

Dante for the New Millennium PDF Author: Teodolinda Barolini
Publisher: Fordham Medieval Studies
ISBN: 9780823222711
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Table of contents

Protection of Global Biodiversity

Protection of Global Biodiversity PDF Author: Lakshman D. Guruswamy
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 9780822321880
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 444

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Book Description
The rate of extinction of biological species is greater today than at any time in the last 65 million years. Some predict that if this rate continues, two-thirds of all living species will disappear during the next century. Because reaching consensus on specific courses of action involves complex issues, any adequate response to this impending crisis must include coverage of many areas of inquiry and understanding. Protection of Global Biodiversity features essays by distinguished international experts who communicate with each other across disciplinary boundaries to address the challenge of formulating policies to protect biodiversity. Although the global community has recently adopted a Convention of Biological Diversity, the agreement sets forth only abstract goals. Contributors to this volume advance the Convention's initial steps by providing workable solutions that can be implemented regionally, nationally, and locally. The contributors--including natural, social, and political scientists; economists; lawyers; and environmentalists; and decisionmakers in business, agriculture, and government--have united to create a common discourse and to evaluate and propose strategies for halting this alarming loss of biodiversity. In recognizing the diverse aspects of this task--scientific, economic, institutional, moral, and legal--this book presents a new picture of emerging action. Contributors. S. James Anaya, Gregory Benford, Graciela Chichilnisky, S. Todd Crider, Yvonne Cripps, Robert T. Fraley, Anil K. Gupta, Lakshman D. Guruswamy, G. M. Heal, Brent Hendricks, Robert B. Horsch, Laura L. Jackson, Annie Lovejoy, Ariel E. Lugo, Jeffrey A. McNeely, Brian G. Norton, Elinor Ostrom, Peter H. Raven, John W. Reid, Walter V. Reid, Mark Sagoff, Roger A. Sedgo, R. David Simpson, Ana Sittenfeld, Christopher D. Stone, Gary H. Toenniessen