New Arrivals: QH 1 - QH 9999
Showing 1 - 25 of 178 new items.
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© 2017,A groundbreaking book coauthored by the Nobel Prize winner who discovered telomerase and telomeres' role in the aging process and the health psychologist who has done original research into how specific lifestyle and psychological habits can protect telomeres, slowing disease and improving life. Have you wondered why some sixty-year-olds look and feel like forty-year-olds and why some forty-year-olds look and feel like sixty-year-olds? While many factors contribute to aging and illness, Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn discovered a biological indicator called telomerase, the enzyme that replenishes telomeres, which protect our genetic heritage. Dr. Blackburn and Dr. Elissa Epel's research shows that the length and health of one's telomeres are a biological underpinning of the long-hypothesized mind-body connection. They and other scientists have found that changes we can make to our daily habits can protect our telomeres and increase our health spans (the number of years we remain healthy, active, and disease-free). THE TELOMERE EFFECT reveals how Blackburn and Epel's findings, together with research from colleagues around the world, cumulatively show that sleep quality, exercise, aspects of diet, and even certain chemicals profoundly affect our telomeres, and that chronic stress, negative thoughts, strained relationships, and even the wrong neighborhoods can eat away at them. Drawing from this scientific body of knowledge, they share lists of foods and suggest amounts and types of exercise that are healthy for our telomeres, mind tricks you can use to protect yourself from stress, and information about how to protect your children against developing shorter telomeres, from pregnancy through adolescence. And they describe how we can improve our health spans at the community level, with neighborhoods characterized by trust, green spaces, and safe streets. THE TELOMERE EFFECT will make you reassess how you live your life on a day-to-day basis. It is the first book to explain how we age at a cellular level and how we can make simple changes to keep our chromosomes and cells healthy, allowing us to stay disease-free longer and live more vital and meaningful lives. -
© 2016,Urban development is one of the leading worldwide threats to conserving biodiversity. In the near future, wildlife management in urban landscapes will be a prominent issue for wildlife professionals. This new edition of Urban Wildlife Management continues the work of its predecessors by providing a comprehensive examination of the issues that increase the need for urban wildlife management, exploring the changing dynamics of the field while giving historical perspectives and looking at current trends and future directions. The book examines a range of topics on human interactions with wildlife in urbanized environments. It focuses not only on ecological matters but also on political, economic, and societal issues that must be addressed for successful management planning. This edition features an entirely new section on urban wildlife species, including chapters on urban communities, herpetofauna, birds, ungulates, mammals, carnivores, and feral and introduced species. The third edition features Five new chapters 12 updated chapters Four new case studies Seven new appendices and species profiles 90 new figures A comprehensive analysis of terrestrial vertebrate locations by state and urban observations Each chapter opens with a set of key concepts which are then examined in the following discussions. Suggested learning experiences to enhance knowledge conclude each chapter. The species profiles cover not only data about the animal concerned but also detail significant current management issues related to the species. An updated and expanded teaching tool, Urban Wildlife Management, Third Edition identifies the challenges and opportunities facing wildlife in urban communities as well as factors that promote or threaten their presence. It gives both students and professionals a solid grounding in the required fundamental ecological principles for understanding the effects of human-made environments on wildlife. -
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© 2015,The landscape of the Sonoran Desert Region varies dramatically from parched desert lowlands to semiarid tropical forests and frigid subalpine meadows. Covering southeasternmost California, much of southern and central Arizona, most of Baja California, and much of the state of Sonora, Mexico, it is home to an extraordinary variety of plants and animals. A Natural History of the Sonoran Desert takes readers deep into its vast expanse, looking closely at the relationships of plants and animals with the land and people, through time and across landscapes. In accessible language, more than forty scientists and/or naturalists examine the region's biodiversity, geology, weather, plants, and animals (from invertebrates to fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals), as well as potential threats to the species and habitats. The text is supplemented throughout with anecdotes, essays, photographs, maps, diagrams, and 450 finely rendered drawings. This new edition adds chapters on the Sky Islands, Sea of Cortez, desert pollinators, and conservation issues. Taxonomic nomenclature has been updated and new color plates and figures have been added. This comprehensive natural history, like the original edition, will surely become an invaluable companion for nature enthusiasts, birdwatchers, hikers, students, naturalists, and anyone interested in the desert Southwest. Published in association with the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum.
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© 2016,Molecular Biology: Structure and Dynamics of Genomes and Proteomesillustrates the essential principles behind the transmission and expression of genetic information at the level of DNA, RNA, and proteins. This textbook emphasizes the experimental basis of discovery and the most recent advances in the field while presenting a structural, mechanistic understanding of molecular biology that is rigorous, yet concise. The text is written for advanced undergraduate or graduate-level courses in molecular biology.
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© 2016,How much energy is released in ATP hydrolysis? How many mRNAs are in a cell? How genetically similar are two random people? What is faster, transcription or translation? Cell Biology by the Numbersexplores these questions--and dozens of others--providing a richly illustrated and handy reference for students and researchers in molecular and cell biology, chemistry, and biophysics. The book features question-driven vignettes and "back of the envelope" calculations that investigate some of the key numbers in cell biology. Readers will learn about the sizes, concentrations, rates, energies, and other numbers that describe and drive the living world.
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© 2016,Through his organization Wild Sanctuary, Bernie Krause has traveled the globe to hear and record the sounds of diverse natural habitats. Wild Soundscapes, first published in 2002, inspires readers to follow in Krause's footsteps. The book enchantingly shows how to find creature symphonies (or, as Krause calls them, "biophonies"); use simple microphones to hear more; and record, mix, and create new expressions with the gathered sounds. After reading this book, readers will feel compelled to investigate a wide range of habitats and animal sounds, from the conversations of birds and howling sand dunes to singing anthills. This rewritten and updated edition explains the newest technological advances and research, encouraging readers to understand the earth's soundscapes in ways previously unimaginable. With links to the sounds that are discussed in the text, this accessible and engaging guide to natural soundscapes will captivate amateur naturalists, field recordists, musicians, and anyone else who wants to fully appreciate the sounds of our natural world.
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© 2016,A century of industrial development is the briefest of moments in the half billion years of the earth's evolution. And yet our current era has brought greater changes to the earth than any period in human history. The biosphere, the globe's life-giving envelope of air and climate, has been changed irreparably. In A World to Live In , the distinguished ecologist George Woodwell shows that the biosphere is now a global human protectorate and that its integrity of structure and function are tied closely to the human future. The earth is a living system, Woodwell explains, and its stability is threatened by human disruption. Industry dumps its waste globally and makes a profit from it, invading the global commons; corporate interests overpower weak or nonexistent governmental protection to plunder the planet. The fossil fuels industry offers the most dramatic example of environmental destruction, disseminating the heat-trapping gases that are now warming the earth and changing the climate forever. The assumption that we can continue to use fossil fuels and "adapt" to climate disruption, Woodwell argues, is a ticket to catastrophe. But Woodwell points the way toward a solution. We must respect the full range of life on earth -- not species alone, but their natural communities of plant and animal life that have built, and still maintain, the biosphere. We must recognize that the earth's living systems are our heritage and that the preservation of the integrity of a finite biosphere is a necessity and an inviolable human right.
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© 2015,Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species a little over one hundred and fifty years ago, and it changed everything. But many don't realize that it took Darwin over twenty years to develop his theory, that others had been advocating a similar theory before him, and many others have been developing it since. In A Remarkable Journey , R. Paul Thompson tells the story of evolutionary theory, of the empirical and theoretical discoveries and the endless heated debates that have led to our understanding of it today. As Thompson shows, the tortuous path from Darwin's brilliant formulation to today's robust and vibrant model is filled with intrigue. Evolutionary theory has become, in many respects, the center of biological science, and its maturation is an indication of a larger and more sophisticated scientific understanding more generally. But this development was not easily won, a point Thompson makes clear as he takes readers from one stage of the theory's maturation to the next, detailing all that went into the development of what most of us now take for granted as a basic--and beautiful--principle of life.
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© 2016,For anyone interested in wildlife, birds, wilderness areas, parks, ecology, conservation, environmental literature, and ethics, the name Aldo Leopold is sure to pop up. Since first publication, Aldo Leopold: A Fierce Green Fire has remained the classic short, inspiring biography of Leopold -the perfect companion to reading his ever popular A Sand County Almanac. Winning numerous awards, this comprehensive account of his life story is dynamic and readable, written in the context of the history of American conservation and illustrated with historic photographs. Marybeth Lorbiecki has now enriched A Fierce Green Fire in a way no other biography on Leopold has, adding numerous chapters on the ripple effects of his ideas, books, ecological vision, land ethic, and Shack, as well as of the ecological contributions of his children, graduate students,contemporary scholars, and organizations - and the wilderness lands he helped preserve. Lorbiecki weaves these stories and factual information into the biography in a compelling way that keeps both lay and academic readers engaged. In the introduction to this edition, Lorbiecki makes it clear how much better our lives are because Leopold lived and why today we so radically need what he left us to bring about paradigm shifts in our ethical, economic, and cultural thinking. Instead of losing relevance, Leopold's legacy hasgained ever more necessity and traction in the face of contemporary national and world challenges, such as species loss and climate change. Even the phenological studies he started at as a hobby are proving valuable, showing the climatic shifts that have occurred at the Shack lands since the 1930s,recognized by the plants and animals.
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© 2016,Rising at 11,750 feet in the Sangre de Cristo range and snaking 926 miles through New Mexico and Texas to the Rio Grande, the Pecos River is one of the most storied waterways in the American West. It is also one of the most troubled. In 1942, the National Resources Planning Board observed that the Pecos River basin "probably presents a greater aggregation of problems associated with land and water use than any other irrigated basin in the Western U.S." In the twenty-first century, the river's problems have only multiplied. Bitter Waters , the first book-length study of the entire Pecos, traces the river's environmental history from the arrival of the first Europeans in the sixteenth century to today. Running clear at its source and turning salty in its middle reach, the Pecos River has served as both a magnet of veneration and an object of scorn. Patrick Dearen, who has written about the Pecos since the 1980s, draws on more than 150 interviews and a wealth of primary sources to trace the river's natural evolution and man's interaction with it. Irrigation projects, dams, invasive saltcedar, forest proliferation, fires, floods, flow decline, usage conflicts, water quality deterioration--Dearen offers a thorough and clearly written account of what each factor has meant to the river and its prospects. As fine-grained in detail as it is sweeping in breadth, the picture Bitter Waters presents is sobering but not without hope, as it also extends to potential solutions to the Pecos River's problems and the current efforts to undo decades of damage. Combining the research skills of an accomplished historian, the investigative techniques of a veteran journalist, and the engaging style of an award-winning novelist, this powerful and accessible work of environmental history may well mark a turning point in the Pecos's fortunes.
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© 2015,In this book, the distinguished geneticist David Botstein offers help and advice to scientists and physicians daunted by the arcane technical terms that flourish in his discipline. The science of gene function has a vocabulary of specialized, sometimes confusing terms to explain how traits and diseases are inherited, how genes are organized and regulated in the genome, and how the genetic code is read and translated by cells. These terms are often a barrier to full understanding of the underlying concepts. Yet, as more and more individuals learn about their genomes, the information these sequences contain cannot be understood or explained without reference to the basic ideas of genetics. Botstein draws on his long experience as a teacher and pioneering scientist to explain and illuminate what many genetic terms mean and how they entered common usage.
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© 2015,In this hugely entertaining sequel to the New York Times bestselling memoir An Appetite for Wonder, Richard Dawkins delves deeply into his intellectual life spent kick-starting new conversations about science, culture, and religion and writing yet another of the most audacious and widely read books of the twentieth century--The God Delusion. Called "one of the best nonfiction writers alive today" (Stephen Pinker) and a "prize-fighter" (Nature), Richard Dawkins cheerfully, mischievously, looks back on a lifetime of tireless intellectual adventure and engagement. Exploring the halls of intellectual inquiry and stardom he encountered after the publication of his seminal work, The Selfish Ge≠ affectionately lampooning the world of academia, publishing, and television; and studding the pages with funny stories about the great men and women he's known, Dawkins offers a candid look at the events and ideas that encouraged him to shift his attention to the intersection of culture, religion, and science. He also invites the reader to look more closely at the brilliant succession of ten influential books that grew naturally out of his busy life, highlighting the ideas that connect them and excavating their origins. On the publication of his tenth book, the smash hit, The God Delusion, a "resounding trumpet blast for truth" (Matt Ridley), Richard Dawkins was catapulted from mere intellectual stardom into a circle of celebrity thinkers dubbed, "The New Atheists"--including Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, and Daniel Dennett. Throughout A Brief Candle in the Dark, Dawkins shares with us his infectious sense of wonder at the natural world, his enjoyment of the absurdities of human interaction, and his bracing awareness of life's brevity: all of which have made a deep imprint on our culture.
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© 2015,For the better part of the last century, "preservation" and "multi-use conservation" were the watchwords for managing federal lands and resources. But in the 1990s, amidst notable failures and overwhelming needs, policymakers, land managers, and environmental scholars were calling for a new paradigm: ecosystem management. Such an approach would integrate federal land and resource management across jurisdictional boundaries; it would protect biodiversity and economic development; and it would make federal management more collaborative and less hierarchical. That, at any rate, was the idea. Where the idea came from--why ecosystem management emerged as official policy in the 1990s--is half of the story that James Skillen tells in this timely book. The other half: Why, over the course of a mere decade, the policy fell out of favor? This closely focused history describes an old system of preservation and multi-use conservation ill equipped to cope with the new ecological, legal, and political realities confronting federal agencies. Ecosystem management, it was assumed, would not demand choices between substantive and procedural needs. Looming even larger in the push for the new approach was a shift of emphasis in both ecology and political science--from stability and predictability to dynamism and contingency. Ecosystem management offered more modest managerial goals informed by direct public participation as well as scientific expertise. But as Skillen shows, this purported balance proved to be the policy's undoing. Different interpretations presented conflicting emphases on scientific and democratic authority. By 2001, when both models had been tested, the Bush administration faulted federal ecosystem management for running "willy-nilly all over the west," and shelved the policy. In this book, Skillen gets at the truth behind these contrary interpretations and claims to clarify how federal ecosystem management worked--and didn't--and how many of the principles it embodied continue to influence federal land and resource management in the twenty-first century. How the policy's lessons apply to our politically and environmentally fraught moment is, finally, considerably clearer with this informed and thoughtful book in hand.
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© 2016,The California Current--part of the large, swirling North Pacific gyre--flows slowly southward along the west coast of North America, stretching nearly 2,000 miles from southern British Columbia to the tip of Baja California in Mexico. To a casual observer standing on the shore, the vast current betrays no discernible signs, yet life abounds just over the horizon. Stan Ulanski takes us into the water on a journey through this magnificent, unique marine ecosystem, illuminating the scientific and biological marvels and the astonishing array of flora and fauna streaming along our Pacific coast. The waters of the California Current yield a complex broth of planktonic organisms that form the base of an elaborate food web that many naturalists have compared to the species-rich Serengeti ecosystem of Africa. Every year, turtles, seals, fish, and seabirds travel great distances to feast in the current's distinct biological oases and feeding sites. Apex predators, such as the California gray whale, humpback whale, salmon shark, and bluefin tuna, undertake extensive north-south migrations within the current to find enough to eat. The California Current energizes us to celebrate and protect a marine ecosystem integral to the myriad fisheries, coastal communities, and cultures of the Pacific coast.
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© 2015,Evolution: The Whole Story provides an in-depth and up-to-the- minute account of evolution, one of the ultimate keystone theories in modern science. Ten esteemed experts thoroughly survey how each of Earth''s major groups of living things diversified and evolved through time and using visual features that make the story comprehensible, the book gives readers, even those with no previous knowledge of the topic, a clear understanding of evolution and how it brought us to the present day. Each of seven chapters takes one of Earth''s major living groups and describes the evolution of its subgroups and how they diversified and evolved. The stories are fascinating. In some cases, a subgroup fell off the evolutionary chain, like the dinosaurs that were part of the Early Reptiles group, and which became extinct by the second extinction event. In other cases, a living subgroup may contain a life form virtually the same as its evolutionary ancestors, such as the horseshoe crab from the Invertebrates group, which is a "living fossil" closely related to prehistoric sea scorpions. Along with profiles of the most important scientists that have influenced evolutionary theory, the book reveals how these advances have added to and often changed the story. For example, the now-extinct Pederpes, formerly thought to be a fish, was restudied and reclassified in 2002 and is now known to be the first four-limbed vertebrate to evolve to a life on land. Evolution: The Whole Story makes the story of evolution comprehensible, straightforward and stimulating. The introduction provides an important overview. It includes: Modern evolutionary theory Terms such as convergent evolution and speciation; time charts and their eras, periods and epochs Explanations of graphic devices such as phylogenies and cladograms that depict evolutionary relationships How we know or surmise about long-gone animals, plants, habitats, and ecosystems Factors and pressures that drove evolution How fossils formed and are studied. Having laid the base for readers, the story begins. Important features include: Thematic essays that provide a complete account of all the major life groups, explaining in detail their comparative anatomy and evolutionary legacies. Photographic features that investigate the characteristics of individual organisms, including living species, fossils and skeletons, and how they are direct ancestors or relatives to members of modern life groups. 160 Key Focus features that investigate topics of particular interest. Stimulating lifelike reconstructions of past habitats and ecosystems. Historical timelines highlighting key evolutionary events and discoveries. In-depth coverage of 20 eminent scientists that have made major contributions to our understanding of evolution. Coverage of Mass Extinctions in their chronological position on the evolutionary timescale. The 160 Key Focus features investigate topics that add color while they reveal important developments in evolution and its study. Examples are: Hallucigenia, a wormlike creature so odd that a scientist thought he was hallucinating. Flowers, insects and co-evolution -- how organisms can progress "hand-in-hand" Peripatus, today''s walking worm with stumpy legs, which may show how arthropods evolved Eurypterus, at almost 5 feet long it was a real monster for its time. Arthropleura, a giant millipede-like arthropod the size of a sports car. Othniel Charles Marsh, Edward Drinker Cope and the Bone Wars, as rivals competed to find the biggest, best dinosaur fossils. Hobbits, an amazing discovery in 2003 of 3-feet-tall fossil humans -- are they a distinct species? Reversing evolution and de-extinction -- will we be able to "de-extinct" long-gone species? Gigantopithecus, a 10-feet-tall close cousin of humans living in Asia up to 100,000 years ago. Today''s sea eagle -- what modern eagles tell us about the evolution of their group. Are new species evolving? Evolutionary theorists, paleontologists, paleoecologists, molecular biologists, geneticists, climatologists, the occasional amateur fossil-hunter, and many more people, have contributed to our understanding of evolution. Their passion and work will continue to unravel the complex and challenging story, but in the meantime, Evolution: The Whole Story reveals the compelling evidence we have today. This book is ideal for all general readers and anyone working in or interested in fields related to the study of evolution. It is an essential selection.
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© 2016,National Best Seller Named One of TIME magazine's "100 Most Influential People" An illuminating debut memoir of a woman in science; a moving portrait of a longtime friendship; and a stunningly fresh look at plants that will forever change how you see the natural world Acclaimed scientist Hope Jahren has built three laboratories in which she's studied trees, flowers, seeds, and soil. Her first book is a revelatory treatise on plant life--but it is also so much more. Lab Girl is a book about work, love, and the mountains that can be moved when those two things come together. It is told through Jahren's remarkable stories: about her childhood in rural Minnesota with an uncompromising mother and a father who encouraged hours of play in his classroom's labs; about how she found a sanctuary in science, and learned to perform lab work done "with both the heart and the hands"; and about the inevitable disappointments, but also the triumphs and exhilarating discoveries, of scientific work. Yet at the core of this book is the story of a relationship Jahren forged with a brilliant, wounded man named Bill, who becomes her lab partner and best friend. Their sometimes rogue adventures in science take them from the Midwest across the United States and back again, over the Atlantic to the ever-light skies of the North Pole and to tropical Hawaii, where she and her lab currently make their home. Jahren's probing look at plants, her astonishing tenacity of spirit, and her acute insights on nature enliven every page of this extraordinary book. Lab Girl opens your eyes to the beautiful, sophisticated mechanisms within every leaf, blade of grass, and flower petal. Here is an eloquent demonstration of what can happen when you find the stamina, passion, and sense of sacrifice needed to make a life out of what you truly love, as you discover along the way the person you were meant to be.
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© 2015,Over a decade ago, as the Human Genome Project completed its mapping of the entire human genome, hopes ran high that we would rapidly be able to use our knowledge of human genes to tackle many inherited diseases, and understand what makes us unique among animals. But things didn't turn outthat way. For a start, we turned out to have far fewer genes than originally thought - just over 20,000, the same sort of number as a fruit fly or worm. What's more, the proportion of DNA consisting of genes coding for proteins was a mere 2%. So, was the rest of the genome accumulated 'junk'?Things have changed since those early heady days of the Human Genome Project. But the emerging picture is if anything far more exciting. In this book, John Parrington explains the key features that are coming to light - some, such as the results of the international ENCODE programme, still muchdebated and controversial in their scope. He gives an outline of the deeper genome, involving layers of regulatory elements controlling and coordinating the switching on and off of genes; the impact of its 3D geometry; the discovery of a variety of new RNAs playing critical roles; the epigeneticchanges influenced by the environment and life experiences that can make identical twins different and be passed on to the next generation; and the clues coming out of comparisons with the genomes of Neanderthals as well as that of chimps about the development of our species. We are learning moreabout ourselves, and about the genetic aspects of many diseases. But in its complexity, flexibility, and ability to respond to environmental cues, the human genome is proving to be far more subtle than we ever imagined.
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