Showing titles in Biology

A cockroach can live for a week without its head, before dying of starvation? Slugs have four noses? So, if you thought that couldn't get more disgusting, now imagine them with a cold. The natural world is an amazing, compelling and funny place: a place where fact is always more staggering - and often funnier - than fiction. Based on BBC Radio 4's hit science and comedy series Nature Table, and with an introduction from the show's presenter, Sue Perkins, A Housefly Buzzes in the Key of F is a celebration of the astonishing everyday occurrences that happen right under our noses.

While anger is a normal emotion, when it goes unmanaged, it can wreak havoc on everyone else's life, including your own. Whenever you are unable to control the fits of anger, the end results are often destructive, leading to problems in personal relationships, at work, and overall affecting your entire existence. Anger can damage your relationships and health when you don't express it at all, if you express it unsafe ways, or if you express it at the wrong time.

“Compulsively readable—a masterpiece, maybe the masterpiece of science journalism.” —Bill McKibben, Audubon A brilliant, stirring work, breathtaking in its scope and far-reaching in its message, The Song of the Dodo is a crucial book in precarious times. Through personal observation...

Adventures for you in art, anthropology, and science, Nose Dive is a broad introduction to olfactory culture meant for artists or anyone curious about the power of scent. Something is in the air with respect to our most powerful and least regarded sense. This book demystifies the world of scent, provides springboards for further study, and presents exercises for shifting gears with your nose. A must-listen for anyone intrigued by the superpower right under our noses.

For many of us, the great scientific discoveries of the modern age—the Big Bang, evolution, quantum physics, relativity—point to an existence that is bleak, devoid of meaning, pointless. But in The Sacred Depths of Nature, eminent biologist Ursula Goodenough shows us that the scientific world view need not be a source of despair. Indeed, it can be a wellspring of solace and hope. This volume reconciles the modern scientific understanding of reality with our timeless spiritual yearnings for reverence and continuity.

A compelling investigation into one of our most coveted and cherished ideals, and the efforts of modern science to penetrate the mysterious nature of this timeless virtue. We all recognize wisdom, but defining it is more elusive. In this fascinating journey from philosophy to science, Stephen S. Hall gives us a dramatic history of wisdom, from its sudden emergence in four different locations (Greece, China, Israel, and India) in the fifth century B.C. to its modern manifestations.

Anthony Warner, author of The Angry Chef, is back, and he wants answers. In The Truth About Fat he scrutinises the explanations of academics, doctors, researchers and journalists. He lays out the best evidence available, rails against quack theories preying on the desperate and considers whether we are blaming our bodies for other people’s ignorance and cruelty. What remains is the unvarnished truth about one of the great preoccupations of our age.

John Parrington draws on the latest research on the human brain to show how it differs strikingly from those of other animals in its structure and function at a molecular and cellular level. And he argues that this 'shift', enlarging the brain, giving it greater flexibility and enabling higher functions such as imagination, was driven by tool use, but especially by the development of one remarkable tool - language.

What if aging isn’t just a number—but a rhythm your cells can remember, forget, and even relearn? In The Clock Within, neurobiologist Dr. Moawiah Naffaa takes listeners on an intimate journey through the hidden chronometers that shape every heartbeat, every thought, and every dawn of renewal. From DNA methylation clocks and mitochondrial oscillations to the subtle conversations between glia, microbes, and the immune system, this book reveals how life keeps time—and what happens when those rhythms falter.

Too often, Christians appear reluctant to stand up for their beliefs because they feel they lack the expertise to reply when confronted by contrary arguments that refer to scientific information. But in fact, the degree of complexity found in the biology of our own bodies is indicative of a Creator, one who can design amazingly intricate biochemical pathways that are beautifully balanced and seamlessly interwoven.

A fascinating guide to a career in marine biology written by bestselling journalist Virginia Morell and based on the real-life experiences of an expert in the field—essential reading for someone considering a path to this profession. For the last two decades, Dr. Robin Baird has spent two...

Cystic fibrosis was once a mysterious disease that killed infants and children. Now it could be the key to healing millions with genetic diseases of every type - from Alzheimer's and Parkinson's to diabetes and sickle cell anemia. Told from the perspectives of the patients, families, physicians, scientists, and philanthropists fighting on the front lines, Breath from Salt is a remarkable story of unlikely scientific and medical firsts, of setbacks and successes, and of people who refused to give up hope....

The ocean teems with life that thrives under difficult situations in unusual environments. The Extreme Life of the Sea takes listeners to the absolute limits of the ocean world - the fastest and deepest, the hottest and oldest creatures of the oceans. It dives into the icy Arctic and boiling hydrothermal vents - and exposes the eternal darkness of the deepest undersea trenches - to show how marine life thrives against the odds. This thrilling book brings to life the sea's most extreme species, and tells their stories as characters in the drama of the oceans.

More than any other modern scientists, Stephen Jay Gould has opened up to millions the wonders of evolutionary biology. His genius as an essayist lies in his unmatched ability to use his knowledge of the world, including popular culture, to illuminate the realm of science.

This engaging memoir reveals the true story of the Search for ExtraterrestrialIntelligence (SETI), and discloses what we may very soon discover. Chronicling the program’s history with insight and humor, SETI senior astronomer Seth Shostak assures us that if there is sentient life in the universe, we are within decades of picking up its signal.

Antibiotics are powerful drugs that can prevent and treat infections, but they are becoming less effective as a result of drug resistance. Resistance develops because the bacteria that antibiotics target can evolve ways to defend themselves against these drugs. When antibiotics fail, there is very little else to prevent an infection from spreading. Unnecessary use of antibiotics in both humans and animals accelerates the evolution of drug-resistant bacteria, with potentially catastrophic personal and global consequences. 

Topics explored in this dialogue include: how you can address the greatest challenge of our times, the role of the arts in deep ecology, how the shift from linear thinking to systems thinking in the sciences affects us now and in the future, understanding the complexity of living systems and life itself, why creativity is the driving force of evolution, what religion and deep ecology have in common, what's really behind the information age, and the mathematics of complexity.

Winner of the National Outdoor Book Award for Natural History and a New York Times Editors Choice Pick "After reading Super Fly, you will never take a fly for granted again. Thank you, Jonathan Balcombe, for reminding us of the infinite marvels of everyday creatures." —Sy Montgomery, Author of...

How do you sniff out danger? What is a sense of direction or a gut instinct? You know about your five senses: hearing, sight, smell, taste and touch. But recent research has shown that we actually have at least 32. We take our senses for granted but what would be possible if we properly understood how they all work? Award-winning science Writer Emma Young has spent over a decade finding out, and in Super Senses she takes us on an exhilarating sensory journey.

Where did I come from? Why do I have two arms but just one head? How is my left leg the same size as my right one? Why are the fingerprints of identical twins not identical? How did my brain learn to learn? Why must I die? Questions like these remain biology's deepest and most ancient challenges. They force us to confront a fundamental biological problem: How can something as large and complex as a human body organize itself from the simplicity of a fertilized egg?