eBook PDF Download Digital Library
Author: Dorion Sagan
Publisher: Kendall/Hunt Publishing Company
Published: 1993
Total Pages: 254
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →A wonderful exploration of the microbial world by way of drawings, photographs, and very readable text. The authors engender a contagious curiosity in the reader for these "subvisible" life-forms, providing a relatively painless education and framework for viewing life in the microcosm. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Author: Dorion Sagan
Publisher:
Published: 1995-03-01
Total Pages:
ISBN-13: 9780787201364
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Author: Lynn Margulis
Publisher: Basic Books
Published: 2008-08-05
Total Pages: 158
ISBN-13: 078672448X
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Although Charles Darwin's theory of evolution laid the foundations of modern biology, it did not tell the whole story. Most remarkably, The Origin of Species said very little about, of all things, the origins of species. Darwin and his modern successors have shown very convincingly how inherited variations are naturally selected, but they leave unanswered how variant organisms come to be in the first place. In Symbiotic Planet, renowned scientist Lynn Margulis shows that symbiosis, which simply means members of different species living in physical contact with each other, is crucial to the origins of evolutionary novelty. Ranging from bacteria, the smallest kinds of life, to the largest -- the living Earth itself -- Margulis explains the symbiotic origins of many of evolution's most important innovations. The very cells we're made of started as symbiotic unions of different kinds of bacteria. Sex -- and its inevitable corollary, death -- arose when failed attempts at cannibalism resulted in seasonally repeated mergers of some of our tiniest ancestors. Dry land became forested only after symbioses of algae and fungi evolved into plants. Since all living things are bathed by the same waters and atmosphere, all the inhabitants of Earth belong to a symbiotic union. Gaia, the finely tuned largest ecosystem of the Earth's surface, is just symbiosis as seen from space. Along the way, Margulis describes her initiation into the world of science and the early steps in the present revolution in evolutionary biology; the importance of species classification for how we think about the living world; and the way "academic apartheid" can block scientific advancement. Written with enthusiasm and authority, this is a book that could change the way you view our living Earth.
Author: Juergen Schieber
Publisher: Elsevier
Published: 2007-09-14
Total Pages: 325
ISBN-13: 0080549306
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Drawing on a combination of modern occurrences and likely ancient counterparts, this atlas is a treatise of mat-related sedimentary features that one may expect to see in ancient terrigenous clastic sedimentary successions. By combining modern and ancient examples, the connection is made to likely formative processes and the utilization of these features in the interpretation of ancient sedimentary rocks. The first full compilation of microbial mat features/structures preserved in the sliciclastic rock record High quality, full color photographs fully support the text Modern and ancient examples connect the formative processes and utilization of mat-related features in the interpretation of sedimentary rocks
Author: Lois N. Magner
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Published: 2009-04-30
Total Pages: 252
ISBN-13: 0275995054
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →A History of Infectious Diseases and the Microbial World offers readers answers to specific questions, as well as the challenge of a narrative that will stimulate their curiosity and encourage them to ask questions about the theory, practice, and assumptions of modern medicine. This work provides a broad introductory overview of the history of major infectious diseases, including their impact on different populations, the recognition of specific causative agents, and the development of methods used to prevent, control, and treat them. By stressing the major themes in the history of disease, this book allows readers to relate modern concerns to historical materials. It places modern developments concerning infectious diseases within their historical context, illuminating the relationships between patterns of disease and social, cultural, political, and economic factors. Upon completing this volume, readers will be prepared to answer contemporary questions concerning the threat of newly-emerging infectious diseases, potentially devastating pandemics, and the threat of bioterrorism. One will gain a precise understanding of the nature of different kinds of pathogens, the unique mechanisms behind disease transmission, and the means used to control, prevent, and treat infectious disease. Although only a few of these deadly illnesses can be addressed in detail, those that are discussed include: malaria, leprosy, bubonic plague, tuberculosis, syphilis, diphtheria, cholera, yellow fever, poliomyelitis, HIV/AIDS, and influenza.
Author: Lynn Margulis
Publisher: Basic Books
Published: 2008-08-01
Total Pages: 262
ISBN-13: 0786722606
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →In this groundbreaking book, Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan present an answer to one of the enduring mysteries of evolution -- the source of inherited variation that gives rise to new species. Random genetic mutation, long believed to be the main source of variation, is only a marginal factor. As the authors demonstrate in this book, the more important source of speciation, by far, is the acquisition of new genomes by symbiotic merger. The result of thirty years of delving into a vast, mostly arcane literature, this is the first book to go beyond -- and reveal the severe limitations of -- the "Modern Synthesis" that has dominated evolutionary biology for almost three generations. Lynn Margulis, whom E. O. Wilson called "one of the most successful synthetic thinkers in modern biology," and her co-author Dorion Sagan have written a comprehensive and scientifically supported presentation of a theory that directly challenges the assumptions we hold about the variety of the living world.
Author: Mitchell Thomashow
Publisher: MIT Press
Published: 2020-11-03
Total Pages: 287
ISBN-13: 0262539829
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Why environmental learning is crucial for understanding the connected challenges of climate justice, tribalism, inequity, democracy, and human flourishing. How can we respond to the current planetary ecological emergency? In To Know the World, Mitchell Thomashow proposes that we revitalize, revisit, and reinvigorate how we think about our residency on Earth. First, we must understand that the major challenges of our time—migration, race, inequity, climate justice, and democracy—connect to the biosphere. Traditional environmental education has accomplished much, but it has not been able to stem the inexorable decline of global ecosystems. Thomashow, the former president of a college dedicated to sustainability, describes instead environmental learning, a term signifying that our relationship to the biosphere must be front and center in all aspects of our daily lives. In this illuminating book, he provides rationales, narratives, and approaches for doing just that. Mixing memoir, theory, mindfulness, pedagogy, and compelling storytelling, Thomashow discusses how to navigate the Anthropocene's rapid pace of change without further separating psyche from biosphere; why we should understand migration both ecologically and culturally; how to achieve constructive connectivity in both social and ecological networks; and why we should take a cosmopolitan bioregionalism perspective that unites local and global. Throughout, Thomashow invites readers to participate as educational explorers, encouraging them to better understand how and why environmental learning is crucial to human flourishing.
Author: Eugenia Bone
Publisher: Rodale Books
Published: 2018-04-03
Total Pages: 290
ISBN-13: 1623367352
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →From Eugenia Bone, the critically acclaimed author of Mycophilia, comes an approachable, highly personal look at our complex relationship with the microbial world. While researching her book about mushrooms, Eugenia Bone became fascinated with microbes—those life forms that are too small to see without a microscope. Specifically, she wanted to understand the microbes that lived inside other organisms like plants and people. But as she began reading books, scholarly articles, blogs, and even attending an online course in an attempt to grasp the microbiology, she quickly realized she couldn’t do it alone. That’s why she enrolled at Columbia University to study Ecology, Evolution, and Environmental Biology. Her stories about being a middle-aged mom embedded in undergrad college life are spot-on and hilarious. But more profoundly, when Bone went back to school she learned that biology is a vast conspiracy of microbes. Microbes invented living and as a result they are part of every aspect of every living thing. This popular science book takes the layman on a broad survey of the role of microbes in nature and illustrates their importance to the existence of everything: atmosphere, soil, plants, and us.
Author: Diane Schmidt
Publisher: CRC Press
Published: 2001-12-06
Total Pages: 484
ISBN-13: 0824741714
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →"Provides an in-depth review of current print and electronic tools for research in numerous disciplines of biology, including dictionaries and encyclopedias, method guides, handbooks, on-line directories, and periodicals. Directs readers to an associated Web page that maintains the URLs and annotations of all major Inernet resources discussed in th
Author: Pablo Servigne
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Published: 2021-11-11
Total Pages: 163
ISBN-13: 1509547932
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →In the merciless arena of life, we are all subject to the law of the jungle, to ruthless competition and the survival of the fittest – such is the myth that has given rise to a society that has become toxic for our planet and for our and future generations. But today the lines are shifting. A growing number of new movements and thinkers are challenging this skewed view of the world and reviving words such as ‘altruism’, ‘cooperation’, ‘kindness’ and ‘solidarity’. A close look at the wide spectrum of living beings reveals that, at all times and in all places, animals, plants, microorganisms and human beings have practised different forms of mutual aid. And those which survive difficult conditions best are not necessarily the strongest, but those which help each other the most. Pablo Servigne and Gauthier Chapelle explore a vast, forgotten continent of mutual aid in order to discover the mechanisms of this ‘other law of the jungle’. In so doing, they provide a more rounded view of the world of living things and give us some of the conceptual tools we need to move beyond the vicious circle of competition and self-destruction that is leading our civilization to the verge of collapse.
