Biology

Climate Change Biology, 2e examines the evolving discipline of human-induced climate change and the resulting shifts in the distributions of species and the timing of biological events. The text focuses on understanding the impacts of human-induced climate change by drawing on multiple lines of evidence, including paleoecology, modeling, and current observation.

An analysis of the life and ideas of Charles Darwin draws on his notebooks, manuscripts, and everyday possessions.

Essential Cell Biology provides a readily accessible introduction to the central concepts of cell biology, and its lively, clear writing and exceptional illustrations make it the ideal textbook for a first course in both cell and molecular biology.

Few concepts played a more important role in twentieth-century life sciences than that of the gene. Yet at this moment, the field of genetics is undergoing radical conceptual transformation, and some scientists are questioning the very usefulness of the concept of the gene, arguing instead for more systemic perspectives.   The time could not be better, therefore, for Hans-Jörg Rheinberger and Staffan Müller-Wille's magisterial history of the concept of the gene. Though the gene has long been the central organizing theme of biology, both conceptually and as an object of study, Rheinberger and Müller-Wille conclude that we have never even had a universally accepted, stable definition of it. Rather, the concept has been in continual flux--a state that, they contend, is typical of historically important and productive scientific concepts. It is that very openness to change and manipulation, the authors argue, that made it so useful: its very mutability enabled it to be useful while the technologies and approaches used to study and theorize about it changed dramatically.  

his second edition provides updated and new chapters on selected genetic, molecular, biochemical, and cell biological techniques. Chapter's guide readers through methods and principles on primordial germ cells and germline stem cells, however many of these principles can be applied to different types of adult stem cells.

The Handbook of Water and Wastewater Microbiology provides a definitive and comprehensive coverage of water and wastewater microbiology.

In Places of the Heart, Colin Ellard explores how our homes, workplaces, cities, and nature--places we escape to and can't escape from--have influenced us throughout history, and how our brains and bodies respond to different types of real and virtual space.

Regenerative Medicine Applications in Organ Transplantation illustrates exactly how these two fields are coming together and can benefit one another. It discusses technologies being developed, methods being implemented, and which of these are the most promising. The text encompasses tissue engineering, biomaterial sciences, stem cell biology, and developmental biology, all from a transplant perspective.

Why efforts to create a scientific basis of morality are neither scientific nor moral   In this illuminating book, James Davison Hunter and Paul Nedelisky trace the origins and development of the centuries-long, passionate, but ultimately failed quest to discover a scientific foundation for morality. The "new moral science" led by such figures as E. O. Wilson, Patricia Churchland, Sam Harris, Jonathan Haidt, and Joshua Greene is only the newest manifestation of that quest. Though claims for its accomplishments are often wildly exaggerated, this new iteration has been no more successful than its predecessors. But rather than giving up in the face of this failure, the new moral science has taken a surprising turn. Whereas earlier efforts sought to demonstrate what is right and wrong, the new moral scientists have concluded, ironically, that right and wrong don't actually exist. Their (perhaps unwitting) moral nihilism turns the science of morality into a social engineering project. If there is nothing moral for science to discover, the science of morality becomes, at best, a feeble program to achieve arbitrary societal goals. Concise and rigorously argued, Science and the Good is a definitive critique of a would-be science that has gained extraordinary influence in public discourse today and an exposé of that project's darker turn.

Human genomes are 99.9 percent identical--with one prominent exception. Instead of a matching pair of X chromosomes, men carry a single X, coupled with a tiny chromosome called the Y. Tracking the emergence of a new and distinctive way of thinking about sex represented by the unalterable, simple, and visually compelling binary of the X and Y chromosomes, Sex Itself examines the interaction between cultural gender norms and genetic theories of sex from the beginning of the twentieth century to the present, postgenomic age.

It all started with Nathanael Johnson’s decision to teach his daughter the name of every tree they passed on their walk to day care in San Francisco. This project turned into a quest to discover the secrets of the neighborhood’s flora and fauna, and yielded more than names and trivia: Johnson developed a relationship with his nonhuman neighbors. Johnson argues that learning to see the world afresh, like a child, shifts the way we think about nature: Instead of something distant and abstract, nature becomes real—all at once comical, annoying, and beautiful.