Symphony in C: Carbon and the Evolution of (Almost) Everything

Symphony in C: Carbon and the Evolution of (Almost) Everything PDF Author: Robert M. Hazen
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393609448
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 366

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Book Description
A Science News Favorite Book of 2019 An earth scientist reveals the dynamic biography of the most resonant—and most necessary—chemical element on Earth. Carbon. It’s in the fibers in your hair, the timbers in your walls, the food that you eat, and the air that you breathe. It’s worth billions of dollars as a luxury and half a trillion as a necessity, but there are still mysteries about the element that can be both diamond and coal. Where does it come from, what does it do, and why, above all, does life need it? With poetic storytelling, Robert M. Hazen leads us on a global journey through the origin and evolution of life’s most essential and ubiquitous element.

Symphony in C: Carbon and the Evolution of (Almost) Everything

Symphony in C: Carbon and the Evolution of (Almost) Everything PDF Author: Robert M. Hazen
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393609448
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 366

Get Book Here

Book Description
A Science News Favorite Book of 2019 An earth scientist reveals the dynamic biography of the most resonant—and most necessary—chemical element on Earth. Carbon. It’s in the fibers in your hair, the timbers in your walls, the food that you eat, and the air that you breathe. It’s worth billions of dollars as a luxury and half a trillion as a necessity, but there are still mysteries about the element that can be both diamond and coal. Where does it come from, what does it do, and why, above all, does life need it? With poetic storytelling, Robert M. Hazen leads us on a global journey through the origin and evolution of life’s most essential and ubiquitous element.

The Story of Earth

The Story of Earth PDF Author: Robert M. Hazen
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0143123645
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
Hailed by The New York Times for writing “with wonderful clarity about science . . . that effortlessly teaches as it zips along,” nationally bestselling author Robert M. Hazen offers a radical new approach to Earth history in this intertwined tale of the planet’s living and nonliving spheres. With an astrobiologist’s imagination, a historian’s perspective, and a naturalist’s eye, Hazen calls upon twenty-first-century discoveries that have revolutionized geology and enabled scientists to envision Earth’s many iterations in vivid detail—from the mile-high lava tides of its infancy to the early organisms responsible for more than two-thirds of the mineral varieties beneath our feet. Lucid, controversial, and on the cutting edge of its field, The Story of Earth is popular science of the highest order. "A sweeping rip-roaring yarn of immense scope, from the birth of the elements in the stars to meditations on the future habitability of our world." -Science "A fascinating story." -Bill McKibben

Life's Ratchet

Life's Ratchet PDF Author: Peter M. Hoffmann
Publisher:
ISBN: 0465022537
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
Life, Hoffman argues, emerges from the random motions of atoms filtered through the sophisticated structures of our evolved machinery. People are essentially giant assemblies of interacting nanoscale machines.

Science Matters

Science Matters PDF Author: Robert M. Hazen
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 0307456641
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 386

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Book Description
A science book for the general reader that is informative enough to be a popular textbook and yet well-written enough to appeal to general readers. “Hazen and Trefil [are] unpretentious—good, down-to-earth, we-can-explain-anything science teachers, the kind you wish you had but never did.”—The New York Times Book Review Knowledge of the basic ideas and principles of science is fundamental to cultural literacy. But most books on science are often too obscure or too specialized to do the general reader much good. Science Matters is a rare exception—a science book that is informative enough for introductory courses in high school and college, and yet lucid enough for readers uncomfortable with scientific jargon and complicated mathematics. And now, revised and expanded, it is up-to-date, so that readers can enjoy Hazen and Trefil's refreshingly accessible explanations of the most recent developments in science, from particle physics to biotechnology.

I Like to Wash My Face with Seawater

I Like to Wash My Face with Seawater PDF Author: Saumitra Saxena, Dhiraj Singh
Publisher: Notion Press
ISBN: 1647835488
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 106

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Book Description
Introducing Saumitra’s poetry to an English relishing readership is like reliving its flavor a few years ago in Hindi when these very poems caught the print eye of an eminent publisher, Bharatiya Gyanpith. Saumitra’s selection was not only published from there but also awarded the ‘Yuva Puruskar’ and these poems have been expertly translated by Dhiraj Singh who gives a Midas touch of his pen when moving from one language to another. Saumitra is, by profession an engineer and by passion, a poet. He has moved away from India, but his sensibility is filled with boyhood memories and tender moments of his youth. With an economy of words, he expresses himself in short verses that look like a map of his moods. All aspects of nature find expression with Saumitra so much so that he emerges as a friend of live landscapes, changing skies and the smell of raw mangoes. He has a Wordsworthian involvement with nature and with the simple sweet voice of humanity. The translation by Dhiraj Singh is equally sensitive and soulful, conveying the author’s creativity convincingly. To quote the very first poem- ‘Every tree Calls out to her But she chooses Her tree and sits on it She chooses and sits And that is all There is to it.’ At first sight these may appear to be single–focus expressions but page after page you come across sensitive lines like these you are bound to feel involved. ‘I am a bird Let me laugh In your skies Have fun in the furrows of Your fields And your shimmering Irrigation ponds’ Poetry is not a sealed-off entity of nature alone. We live in an urban world and our concerns are city-bred. Then what impacts our young poet to focus on greener landscapes. Actually this appears to be Saumitra’s retort to the mechanized, mundane metro culture that leaves us myopic to personal pleasures and the bounty of nature. - Mamta Kalia

Genesis

Genesis PDF Author: Robert M. Hazen
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 9780309103107
Category : Electronic books
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Scientist Robert Hazen attempts to offer a scientific explanation of how life on Earth began nearly four billion years ago, describing the sequence of events that caused non-living chemicals to become alive and create life.

Biology's First Law

Biology's First Law PDF Author: Daniel W. McShea
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226562271
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 186

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Book Description
Life on earth is characterized by three striking phenomena that demand explanation: adaptation—the marvelous fit between organism and environment; diversity—the great variety of organisms; and complexity—the enormous intricacy of their internal structure. Natural selection explains adaptation. But what explains diversity and complexity? Daniel W. McShea and Robert N. Brandon argue that there exists in evolution a spontaneous tendency toward increased diversity and complexity, one that acts whether natural selection is present or not. They call this tendency a biological law—the Zero-Force Evolutionary Law, or ZFEL. This law unifies the principles and data of biology under a single framework and invites a reconceptualization of the field of the same sort that Newton’s First Law brought to physics. Biology’s First Law shows how the ZFEL can be applied to the study of diversity and complexity and examines its wider implications for biology. Intended for evolutionary biologists, paleontologists, and other scientists studying complex systems, and written in a concise and engaging format that speaks to students and interdisciplinary practitioners alike, this book will also find an appreciative audience in the philosophy of science.

Sophie's World

Sophie's World PDF Author: Jostein Gaarder
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 1466804270
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 735

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Book Description
A page-turning novel that is also an exploration of the great philosophical concepts of Western thought, Jostein Gaarder's Sophie's World has fired the imagination of readers all over the world, with more than twenty million copies in print. One day fourteen-year-old Sophie Amundsen comes home from school to find in her mailbox two notes, with one question on each: "Who are you?" and "Where does the world come from?" From that irresistible beginning, Sophie becomes obsessed with questions that take her far beyond what she knows of her Norwegian village. Through those letters, she enrolls in a kind of correspondence course, covering Socrates to Sartre, with a mysterious philosopher, while receiving letters addressed to another girl. Who is Hilde? And why does her mail keep turning up? To unravel this riddle, Sophie must use the philosophy she is learning—but the truth turns out to be far more complicated than she could have imagined.

The Circle

The Circle PDF Author: Dave Eggers
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0385351402
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 464

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Book Description
INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER • A bestselling dystopian novel that tackles surveillance, privacy and the frightening intrusions of technology in our lives—a “compulsively readable parable for the 21st century” (Vanity Fair). When Mae Holland is hired to work for the Circle, the world’s most powerful internet company, she feels she’s been given the opportunity of a lifetime. The Circle, run out of a sprawling California campus, links users’ personal emails, social media, banking, and purchasing with their universal operating system, resulting in one online identity and a new age of civility and transparency. As Mae tours the open-plan office spaces, the towering glass dining facilities, the cozy dorms for those who spend nights at work, she is thrilled with the company’s modernity and activity. There are parties that last through the night, there are famous musicians playing on the lawn, there are athletic activities and clubs and brunches, and even an aquarium of rare fish retrieved from the Marianas Trench by the CEO. Mae can’t believe her luck, her great fortune to work for the most influential company in the world—even as life beyond the campus grows distant, even as a strange encounter with a colleague leaves her shaken, even as her role at the Circle becomes increasingly public. What begins as the captivating story of one woman’s ambition and idealism soon becomes a heart-racing novel of suspense, raising questions about memory, history, privacy, democracy, and the limits of human knowledge.

Alay-Oop

Alay-Oop PDF Author: William Gropper
Publisher: New York Review of Books
ISBN: 1681373009
Category : Comics & Graphic Novels
Languages : en
Pages : 217

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Book Description
A lost, early classic of the graphic novel, now back in print for the first time since 1930. William Gropper was one of the great American cartoonists and illustrators of the twentieth century. A student of George Bellows and Robert Henri, he was a prolific newspaper cartoonist, WPA muralist, Guggenheim Fellow, and committed political activist--the first visual artist called before the House Un-American Activities Committee, after which he was blacklisted (though he got revenge with his pen). He was also a master of visual storytelling, best seen in his only full-length narrative work, Alay-Oop. First published in 1930, just as Gropper was coming to the height of his powers, this lost classic of the graphic novel presents an unusual love triangle: two circus acrobats and the honey-tongued schemer who comes between them. In page after page of charming, wordless art, Gropper takes us from the big top to bustling New York streets, from a cramped tenement apartment to the shifting landscape of a dream, as his characters struggle with the conflicting demands of career, family, and romance. A timeless and surprisingly modern yarn--with backflips aplenty.