Biology Run Amok!

Biology Run Amok! PDF

Author: Mark C. Glassy

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2018-04-23

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 1476664722

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Science fiction movie audiences may sometimes wonder how fictitious the science in a film really is. Yet for many--call them the "Jurassic Park generation"--film and popular media can present a seemingly plausible melding of science and fiction that forms a distorted understanding of scientific facts and concepts. Recognizing that film is both the dominant entertainment medium and an effective tool for teaching, this book--featuring articles originally published in the magazine Scary Monsters--separates biological reality from fantasy in dozens of science fiction films, including The Island of Lost Souls (1933), The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957), War of the Worlds (1953), A Clockwork Orange (1971), Scanners (1980), The Serpent and the Rainbow (1987) and Outbreak (1995).

The Oxford Handbook of New Science Fiction Cinemas

The Oxford Handbook of New Science Fiction Cinemas PDF

Author: J. P. Telotte

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2023

Total Pages: 361

ISBN-13: 0197557724

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"For the contemporary film audience, science fiction has become a key locus for displaying-and imaginatively addressing-its most pressing concerns. Those concerns increasingly surface not just as displaced subjects, injected into conventional sf narratives, but as inflections in the very nature of the genre. We might describe these issues that bulk so large in our everyday world as angling into the world of science and technology, becoming a kind of slant presence in the genre, and in the process altering the thrust of our sf films and other screen media, resulting in what seems like a proliferation of sub-genre labels that mark off a substantially "new" group of sf cinemas. These cinemas challenge us to view or "read" them differently, from perspectives that are just coming into focus. Through an introductory overview and series of articles on various of these contemporary "slants" and the theories that drive them, this volume offers a guide to both what the new sf cinemas are about and how we have come to think about or "read" them differently. In the process, it also links these fragments of the constantly growing sf supertext to our changing sense of how genres function as a process, marked by consistent growth and evolution, and discussed in ways that reflect contemporary culture's own constant changes"--

Literature, Science, and Public Policy

Literature, Science, and Public Policy PDF

Author: Jay Clayton

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2023-07-31

Total Pages: 275

ISBN-13: 1009263528

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Literature, Science, and Public Policy shows how literature can influence scientific controversies and shape policy concerning evolution, genetics, and genomics.

Darwinism in Philosophy, Social Science and Policy

Darwinism in Philosophy, Social Science and Policy PDF

Author: Alexander Rosenberg

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2000-03-28

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 9780521664073

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A collection of essays by Alexander Rosenberg, the distinguished philosopher of science. The essays cover three broad areas related to Darwinian thought and naturalism: the first deals with the solution of philosophical problems such as reductionism, the second with the development of social theories, and the third with the intersection of evolutionary biology with economics, political philosophy, and public policy. Specific papers deal with naturalistic epistemology, the limits of reductionism, the biological justification of ethics, the so-called 'trolley problem' in moral philosophy, the political philosophy of biological endowments, and the Human Genome Project and its implications for policy. Rosenberg's important writings on a variety of issues are here organized into a coherent philosophical framework which promises to be a significant and controversial contribution to scholarship in many areas.

Energy and Information Transfer in Biological Systems

Energy and Information Transfer in Biological Systems PDF

Author: Francesco Musumeci

Publisher: World Scientific

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 371

ISBN-13: 9812384197

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This volume contains papers based on the workshop ?Energy and Information Transfer in Biological Systems: How Physics Could Enrich Biological Understanding?, held in Italy in 2002. The meeting was a forum aimed at evaluating the potential and outlooks of a modern physics approach to understanding and describing biological processes, especially regarding the transition from the microscopic chemical scenario to the macroscopic functional configurations of living matter. In this frame some leading researchers presented and discussed several basic topics, such as the photon interaction with biological systems also from the viewpoint of photon information processes and of possible applications; the influence of electromagnetic fields on the self-organization of biosystems including the nonlinear mechanism for energy transfer and storage; and the influence of the structure of water on the properties of biological matter.

Energy and Information Transfer in Biological Systems

Energy and Information Transfer in Biological Systems PDF

Author: Francesco Musumeci

Publisher: World Scientific

Published: 2003-06-13

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 9814485640

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This volume contains papers based on the workshop “Energy and Information Transfer in Biological Systems: How Physics Could Enrich Biological Understanding”, held in Italy in 2002. The meeting was a forum aimed at evaluating the potential and outlooks of a modern physics approach to understanding and describing biological processes, especially regarding the transition from the microscopic chemical scenario to the macroscopic functional configurations of living matter. In this frame some leading researchers presented and discussed several basic topics, such as the photon interaction with biological systems also from the viewpoint of photon information processes and of possible applications; the influence of electromagnetic fields on the self-organization of biosystems including the nonlinear mechanism for energy transfer and storage; and the influence of the structure of water on the properties of biological matter. Contents:Soliton Mechanism of Charge, Energy and Information Transfer in Biosystems (L Brizhik)Delayed Luminescence and Motional Harmonicity (L Cordone et al.)62 AMEV Proton Beam for the Treatment of Ocular Melanoma at LNS — INFN (G Cuttone et al.)Search for Quantum and Classical Modes of Information Processing in Microtubules: Implications for “the Living State” (S Hameroff et al.)From ‘Molecular Machines’ to Coherent Organisms (M-W Ho)On the Physics of Ultraweak Bioluminescence and Intercellular Photon Signaling (V S Letokhov & A L Dobryakov)Nonlinearity in Biological Systems: How Can Physics Help? (A A Marino & C Frilot)Life as a Fourth Level of Quantum Organization of Nature (S P Sit'ko)Concept of Photon Storage Capacity in Cell Biology (R van Wijk)and other papers Readership: Graduate students and researchers in physics and biology. Keywords:Biophysics;Delayed Luminescence;Consciousness;Structure of Water;Electromagnetic Field and Biology;Nonlinearity in Biological Systems;Solitons in Biological Systems;Information and Life

Constructing Race

Constructing Race PDF

Author: Tracy Teslow

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2014-07-21

Total Pages: 415

ISBN-13: 1107011736

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This book explores how physical anthropologists struggled to understand variation in bodies and cultures in the twentieth century, how they represented race to professional and lay publics, and how their efforts contributed to an American formulation of race that has remained rooted in both bodies and cultures, as well as heredity and society.

Animal Lessons

Animal Lessons PDF

Author: Kelly Oliver

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 377

ISBN-13: 0231147279

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Philosophy reads humanity against animality, arguing that "man" is man because he is separate from beast. Deftly challenging this position, Kelly Oliver proves that, in fact, it is the animal that teaches us to be human. Through their sex, their habits, and our perception of their purpose, animals show us how not to be them. This kinship plays out in a number of ways. We sacrifice animals to establish human kinship, but without the animal, the bonds of "brotherhood" fall apart. Either kinship with animals is possible or kinship with humans is impossible. Philosophy holds that humans and animals are distinct, but in defending this position, the discipline depends on a discourse that relies on the animal for its very definition of the human. Through these and other examples, Oliver does more than just establish an animal ethics. She transforms ethics by showing how its very origin is dependent upon the animal. Examining for the first time the treatment of the animal in the work of Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Derrida, Agamben, Freud, Lacan, and Kristeva, among others, Animal Lessons argues that the animal bites back, thereby reopening the question of the animal for philosophy.

A First Course in Systems Biology

A First Course in Systems Biology PDF

Author: Eberhard Voit

Publisher: Garland Science

Published: 2017-09-05

Total Pages: 480

ISBN-13: 1351332945

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A First Course in Systems Biology is an introduction for advanced undergraduate and graduate students to the growing field of systems biology. Its main focus is the development of computational models and their applications to diverse biological systems. The book begins with the fundamentals of modeling, then reviews features of the molecular inventories that bring biological systems to life and discusses case studies that represent some of the frontiers in systems biology and synthetic biology. In this way, it provides the reader with a comprehensive background and access to methods for executing standard systems biology tasks, understanding the modern literature, and launching into specialized courses or projects that address biological questions using theoretical and computational means. New topics in this edition include: default modules for model design, limit cycles and chaos, parameter estimation in Excel, model representations of gene regulation through transcription factors, derivation of the Michaelis-Menten rate law from the original conceptual model, different types of inhibition, hysteresis, a model of differentiation, system adaptation to persistent signals, nonlinear nullclines, PBPK models, and elementary modes. The format is a combination of instructional text and references to primary literature, complemented by sets of small-scale exercises that enable hands-on experience, and large-scale, often open-ended questions for further reflection.