Mother Earth and the Gene Machines

Mother Earth and the Gene Machines PDF Author: A. Carlson Whalen
Publisher: A. Carlson Whalen
ISBN: 9780533153398
Category : Human ecology
Languages : en
Pages : 308

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Book Description

Mother Earth and the Gene Machines

Mother Earth and the Gene Machines PDF Author: A. Carlson Whalen
Publisher: A. Carlson Whalen
ISBN: 9780533153398
Category : Human ecology
Languages : en
Pages : 308

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Book Description


Gene Machine

Gene Machine PDF Author: Venki Ramakrishnan
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 046509337X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
A Nobel Prize-winning biologist tells the riveting story of his race to discover the inner workings of biology's most important molecule "Ramakrishnan's writing is so honest, lucid and engaging that I could not put this book down until I had read to the very end." -- Siddhartha Mukherjee, author of The Emperor of All Maladies and The Gene Everyone has heard of DNA. But by itself, DNA is just an inert blueprint for life. It is the ribosome -- an enormous molecular machine made up of a million atoms -- that makes DNA come to life, turning our genetic code into proteins and therefore into us. Gene Machine is an insider account of the race for the structure of the ribosome, a fundamental discovery that both advances our knowledge of all life and could lead to the development of better antibiotics against life-threatening diseases. But this is also a human story of Ramakrishnan's unlikely journey, from his first fumbling experiments in a biology lab to being the dark horse in a fierce competition with some of the world's best scientists. In the end, Gene Machine is a frank insider's account of the pursuit of high-stakes science.

The Ascent of Information

The Ascent of Information PDF Author: Caleb Scharf
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0593087259
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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Book Description
“Full of fascinating insights drawn from an impressive range of disciplines, The Ascent of Information casts the familiar and the foreign in a dramatic new light.” —Brian Greene, author of The Elegant Universe Your information has a life of its own, and it’s using you to get what it wants. One of the most peculiar and possibly unique features of humans is the vast amount of information we carry outside our biological selves. But in our rush to build the infrastructure for the 20 quintillion bits we create every day, we’ve failed to ask exactly why we’re expending ever-increasing amounts of energy, resources, and human effort to maintain all this data. Drawing on deep ideas and frontier thinking in evolutionary biology, computer science, information theory, and astrobiology, Caleb Scharf argues that information is, in a very real sense, alive. All the data we create—all of our emails, tweets, selfies, A.I.-generated text and funny cat videos—amounts to an aggregate lifeform. It has goals and needs. It can control our behavior and influence our well-being. And it’s an organism that has evolved right alongside us. This symbiotic relationship with information offers a startling new lens for looking at the world. Data isn’t just something we produce; it’s the reason we exist. This powerful idea has the potential to upend the way we think about our technology, our role as humans, and the fundamental nature of life. The Ascent of Information offers a humbling vision of a universe built of and for information. Scharf explores how our relationship with data will affect our ongoing evolution as a species. Understanding this relationship will be crucial to preventing our data from becoming more of a burden than an asset, and to preserving the possibility of a human future.

The Selfish Gene

The Selfish Gene PDF Author: Richard Dawkins
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 9780192860927
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 372

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Book Description
Science need not be dull and bogged down by jargon, as Richard Dawkins proves in this entertaining look at evolution. The themes he takes up are the concepts of altruistic and selfish behaviour; the genetical definition of selfish interest; the evolution of aggressive behaviour; kinshiptheory; sex ratio theory; reciprocal altruism; deceit; and the natural selection of sex differences. 'Should be read, can be read by almost anyone. It describes with great skill a new face of the theory of evolution.' W.D. Hamilton, Science

Klara and the Sun

Klara and the Sun PDF Author: Kazuo Ishiguro
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0593318188
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Once in a great while, a book comes along that changes our view of the world. This magnificent novel from the Nobel laureate and author of Never Let Me Go is “an intriguing take on how artificial intelligence might play a role in our futures ... a poignant meditation on love and loneliness” (The Associated Press). • A GOOD MORNING AMERICA Book Club Pick! Here is the story of Klara, an Artificial Friend with outstanding observational qualities, who, from her place in the store, watches carefully the behavior of those who come in to browse, and of those who pass on the street outside. She remains hopeful that a customer will soon choose her. Klara and the Sun is a thrilling book that offers a look at our changing world through the eyes of an unforgettable narrator, and one that explores the fundamental question: what does it mean to love?

The Electric Gene Machine

The Electric Gene Machine PDF Author: Thomas A. Easton
Publisher: Wildside Press LLC
ISBN: 1587150700
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 194

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Book Description
Genetic engineering is a technological infant, barely taking it's first baby steps. This collection of stories explores what happens when a boy starts doing strange things with Moms' violets; sports cars run away and go to sea, and Mother Goose comes to life with pumpkin houses and giant bean stalks.

Finding the Mother Tree

Finding the Mother Tree PDF Author: Suzanne Simard
Publisher: Knopf
ISBN: 0525656103
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • From the world's leading forest ecologist who forever changed how people view trees and their connections to one another and to other living things in the forest—a moving, deeply personal journey of discovery Suzanne Simard is a pioneer on the frontier of plant communication and intelligence; her TED talks have been viewed by more than 10 million people worldwide. In this, her first book, now available in paperback, Simard brings us into her world, the intimate world of the trees, in which she brilliantly illuminates the fascinating and vital truths--that trees are not simply the source of timber or pulp, but are a complicated, interdependent circle of life; that forests are social, cooperative creatures connected through underground networks by which trees communicate their vitality and vulnerabilities with communal lives not that different from our own. Simard writes--in inspiring, illuminating, and accessible ways—how trees, living side by side for hundreds of years, have evolved, how they learn and adapt their behaviors, recognize neighbors, compete and cooperate with one another with sophistication, characteristics ascribed to human intelligence, traits that are the essence of civil societies--and at the center of it all, the Mother Trees: the mysterious, powerful forces that connect and sustain the others that surround them. And Simard writes of her own life, born and raised into a logging world in the rainforests of British Columbia, of her days as a child spent cataloging the trees from the forest and how she came to love and respect them. And as she writes of her scientific quest, she writes of her own journey, making us understand how deeply human scientific inquiry exists beyond data and technology, that it is about understanding who we are and our place in the world.

A Brief Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind

A Brief Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind PDF Author: Jack S. Crumley
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
ISBN: 0742572129
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 237

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Book Description
A Brief Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind is written to engage the beginning student, offering a balanced, accessible entrZe into a notoriously complex field of inquiry. Crumley introduces four core areas in contemporary philosophy of the mind: the mind/body problem, mental content (intentionality), mental causation, and the nature of consciousness. The book is distinctive in its further coverage of such fascinating topics as the nature of mental images, theories of concepts, and whether or not computers can think, as well as brief accounts of the disciplines with which the philosophy of mind is often associated, among them neuroscience and cognitive psychology.

The New Atheist Novel

The New Atheist Novel PDF Author: Arthur Bradley
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1441157921
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 147

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Book Description
The New Atheist Novel is the first study of a major new genre of contemporary fiction. It examines how Richard Dawkins's so-called 'New Atheism' movement has caught the imagination of four eminent modern novelists: Ian McEwan, Martin Amis, Salman Rushdie and Philip Pullman. For McEwan and his contemporaries, the contemporary novel represents a new front in the ideological war against religion, religious fundamentalism and, after 9/11, religious terror: the novel apparently stands for everything - freedom, individuality, rationality and even a secular experience of the transcendental - that religion seeks to overthrow. In this book, Bradley and Tate offer a genealogy of the New Atheist Novel: where it comes from, what needs it serves and, most importantly, where it may go in the future. What is it? How does it dramatise the war between belief and non-belief? To what extent does it represent a genuine ideological alternative to the religious imaginary or does it merely repeat it in secularised form? This fascinating study offers an incisive critique of this contemporary testament of literary belief and unbelief.

Screwing Mother Nature for Profit

Screwing Mother Nature for Profit PDF Author: Elaine Smitha
Publisher: Watkins Media Limited
ISBN: 1780282095
Category : Self-Help
Languages : en
Pages : 341

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Book Description
If the recent mining and oil drilling disasters have taught us anything, it's that it's time to stop screwing Mother Nature for profit - and this impassioned book shows us how, on the analogy of the body, we can create a business model for a sustainable future.