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The Milky Way: An Insider's Guide
Par William H. Waller. 2013
A grand tour of our dynamic home galaxyThis book offers an intimate guide to the Milky Way, taking readers on…
a grand tour of our home Galaxy's structure, genesis, and evolution, based on the latest astronomical findings. In engaging language, it tells how the Milky Way congealed from blobs of gas and dark matter into a spinning starry abode brimming with diverse planetary systems—some of which may be hosting myriad life forms and perhaps even other technologically communicative species.William Waller vividly describes the Milky Way as it appears in the night sky, acquainting readers with its key components and telling the history of our changing galactic perceptions. The ancients believed the Milky Way was a home for the gods. Today we know it is but one galaxy among billions of others in the observable universe. Within the Milky Way, ground-based and space-borne telescopes have revealed that our Solar System is not alone. Hundreds of other planetary systems share our tiny part of the vast Galaxy. We reside within a galactic ecosystem that is driven by the theatrics of the most massive stars as they blaze through their brilliant lives and dramatic deaths. Similarly effervescent ecosystems of hot young stars and fluorescing nebulae delineate the graceful spiral arms in our Galaxy's swirling disk. Beyond the disk, the spheroidal halo hosts the ponderous—and still mysterious—dark matter that outweighs everything else. Another dark mystery lurks deep in the heart of the Milky Way, where a supermassive black hole has produced bizarre phenomena seen at multiple wavelengths.Waller makes the case that our very existence is inextricably linked to the Galaxy that spawned us. Through this book, readers can become well-informed galactic "insiders"—ready to imagine humanity's next steps as fully engaged citizens of the Milky Way.Degenerate Diffusion Operators Arising in Population Biology (Annals of Mathematics Studies #185)
Par Charles L. Epstein, Rafe Mazzeo. 2013
This book provides the mathematical foundations for the analysis of a class of degenerate elliptic operators defined on manifolds with…
corners, which arise in a variety of applications such as population genetics, mathematical finance, and economics. The results discussed in this book prove the uniqueness of the solution to the Martingale problem and therefore the existence of the associated Markov process. Charles Epstein and Rafe Mazzeo use an "integral kernel method" to develop mathematical foundations for the study of such degenerate elliptic operators and the stochastic processes they define. The precise nature of the degeneracies of the principal symbol for these operators leads to solutions of the parabolic and elliptic problems that display novel regularity properties. Dually, the adjoint operator allows for rather dramatic singularities, such as measures supported on high codimensional strata of the boundary. Epstein and Mazzeo establish the uniqueness, existence, and sharp regularity properties for solutions to the homogeneous and inhomogeneous heat equations, as well as a complete analysis of the resolvent operator acting on Hölder spaces. They show that the semigroups defined by these operators have holomorphic extensions to the right half-plane. Epstein and Mazzeo also demonstrate precise asymptotic results for the long-time behavior of solutions to both the forward and backward Kolmogorov equations.The Great Brain Debate: Nature or Nurture? (Science Essentials #15)
Par John E. Dowling. 2007
Whether our personality, intelligence, and behavior are more likely to be shaped by our environment or our genetic coding is…
not simply an idle question for today's researchers. There are tremendous consequences to understanding the crucial role that environment and genes each play. How we raise and educate our children, how we treat various mental diseases or conditions, how we care for our elderly--these are just some of the issues that can be informed by a better understanding of brain development. In The Great Brain Debate, the eminent neuroscience researcher John Dowling looks at these and other important issues. The work that is being done on the connection between the brain and vision, as well as the ways in which our brains help us learn new languages, are particularly revealing. From this groundbreaking new research, Dowling explains startling new insights into how the brain functions and how it can (or cannot) be molded and changed. By studying the brain across the spectrum of our lives, from infancy through adulthood and into old age, Dowling shows the ways in which both nature and nurture play key roles over the course of a human lifetime.Parrots of the World (Princeton Field Guides #70)
Par Joseph M. Forshaw. 2011
The world’s parrots in one convenient field guideFrom the macaws of South America to the cockatoos of Australia, parrots are…
among the most beautiful and exotic birds in the world—and among the most endangered. This stunningly illustrated, easy-to-use field guide covers all 356 species and well-differentiated subspecies of parrots, and is the only guide organized by geographical distribution—Australasian, Afro-Asian, and neotropical. It features 146 superb color plates depicting every kind of parrot, as well as detailed, facing-page species accounts that describe key identification features, distribution, subspeciation, habitat, and status. Color distribution maps show ranges of all subspecies, and field identification is further aided by relevant upperside and underside flight images. This premier field guide also shows where to observe each species in the wild, helping make this the most comprehensive and user-friendly guide to the parrots of the world.The only parrot guide to focus on geographical distributionCovers all 356 speciesFeatures 146 color plates depicting all species and well-differentiated subspeciesProvides detailed facing-page species accounts that describe key identification features, distribution, subspeciation, habitat, and statusIncludes color distribution mapsShows where to observe each species in the wildThe Nature of Nutrition: A Unifying Framework from Animal Adaptation to Human Obesity
Par Stephen J. Simpson, David Raubenheimer. 2012
The first book to address nutrition's complex role in biologyNutrition has long been considered more the domain of medicine and…
agriculture than of the biological sciences, yet it touches and shapes all aspects of the natural world. The need for nutrients determines whether wild animals thrive, how populations evolve and decline, and how ecological communities are structured. The Nature of Nutrition is the first book to address nutrition's enormously complex role in biology, both at the level of individual organisms and in their broader ecological interactions.Stephen Simpson and David Raubenheimer provide a comprehensive theoretical approach to the analysis of nutrition—the Geometric Framework. They show how it can help us to understand the links between nutrition and the biology of individual animals, including the physiological mechanisms that determine the nutritional interactions of the animal with its environment, and the consequences of these interactions in terms of health, immune responses, and lifespan. Simpson and Raubenheimer explain how these effects translate into the collective behavior of groups and societies, and in turn influence food webs and the structure of ecosystems. Then they demonstrate how the Geometric Framework can be used to tackle issues in applied nutrition, such as the problem of optimizing diets for livestock and endangered species, and how it can also help to address the epidemic of human obesity and metabolic disease.Drawing on a wealth of examples from slime molds to humans, The Nature of Nutrition has important applications in ecology, evolution, and physiology, and offers promising solutions for human health, conservation, and agriculture.Brahms and His World: Revised Edition (The Bard Music Festival #20)
Par Walter Frisch and Kevin C. Karnes. 2009
Since its first publication in 1990, Brahms and His World has become a key text for listeners, performers, and scholars…
interested in the life, work, and times of one of the nineteenth century's most celebrated composers. In this substantially revised and enlarged edition, the editors remain close to the vision behind the original book while updating its contents to reflect new perspectives on Brahms that have developed over the past two decades. To this end, the original essays by leading experts are retained and revised, and supplemented by contributions from a new generation of Brahms scholars. Together, they consider such topics as Brahms's relationship with Clara and Robert Schumann, his musical interactions with the "New German School" of Wagner and Liszt, his influence upon Arnold Schoenberg and other young composers, his approach to performing his own music, and his productive interactions with visual artists. The essays are complemented by a new selection of criticism and analyses of Brahms's works published by the composer's contemporaries, documenting the ways in which Brahms's music was understood by nineteenth- and early twentieth-century audiences in Europe and North America. A new selection of memoirs by Brahms's friends, students, and early admirers provides intimate glimpses into the composer's working methods and personality. And a catalog of the music, literature, and visual arts dedicated to Brahms documents the breadth of influence exerted by the composer upon his contemporaries.Mutualistic Networks (Monographs in Population Biology #53)
Par Jordi Bascompte, Pedro Jordano. 2014
Mutualistic interactions among plants and animals have played a paramount role in shaping biodiversity. Yet the majority of studies on…
mutualistic interactions have involved only a few species, as opposed to broader mutual connections between communities of organisms. Mutualistic Networks is the first book to comprehensively explore this burgeoning field. Integrating different approaches, from the statistical description of network structures to the development of new analytical frameworks, Jordi Bascompte and Pedro Jordano describe the architecture of these mutualistic networks and show their importance for the robustness of biodiversity and the coevolutionary process. Making a case for why we should care about mutualisms and their complex networks, this book offers a new perspective on the study and synthesis of this growing area for ecologists and evolutionary biologists. It will serve as the standard reference for all future work on mutualistic interactions in biological communities.Nuclear Physics in a Nutshell (In a Nutshell #4)
Par Carlos A. Bertulani. 2007
Nuclear Physics in a Nutshell provides a clear, concise, and up-to-date overview of the atomic nucleus and the theories that…
seek to explain it. Bringing together a systematic explanation of hadrons, nuclei, and stars for the first time in one volume, Carlos A. Bertulani provides the core material needed by graduate and advanced undergraduate students of physics to acquire a solid understanding of nuclear and particle science. Nuclear Physics in a Nutshell is the definitive new resource for anyone considering a career in this dynamic field. The book opens by setting nuclear physics in the context of elementary particle physics and then shows how simple models can provide an understanding of the properties of nuclei, both in their ground states and excited states, and also of the nature of nuclear reactions. It then describes: nuclear constituents and their characteristics; nuclear interactions; nuclear structure, including the liquid-drop model approach, and the nuclear shell model; and recent developments such as the nuclear mean-field and the nuclear physics of very light nuclei, nuclear reactions with unstable nuclear beams, and the role of nuclear physics in energy production and nucleosynthesis in stars. Throughout, discussions of theory are reinforced with examples that provide applications, thus aiding students in their reading and analysis of current literature. Each chapter closes with problems, and appendixes address supporting technical topics.Theories of Population Variation in Genes and Genomes (Princeton Series in Theoretical and Computational Biology #4)
Par Freddy Bugge Christiansen. 2008
This textbook provides an authoritative introduction to both classical and coalescent approaches to population genetics. Written for graduate students and…
advanced undergraduates by one of the world's leading authorities in the field, the book focuses on the theoretical background of population genetics, while emphasizing the close interplay between theory and empiricism. Traditional topics such as genetic and phenotypic variation, mutation, migration, and linkage are covered and advanced by contemporary coalescent theory, which describes the genealogy of genes in a population, ultimately connecting them to a single common ancestor. Effects of selection, particularly genomic effects, are discussed with reference to molecular genetic variation. The book is designed for students of population genetics, bioinformatics, evolutionary biology, molecular evolution, and theoretical biology--as well as biologists, molecular biologists, breeders, biomathematicians, and biostatisticians. Contains up-to-date treatment of key areas in classical and modern theoretical population genetics Provides in-depth coverage of coalescent theory Discusses genomic effects of selection Gives examples from empirical population genetics Incorporates figures, diagrams, and boxed features throughout Includes end-of-chapter exercises Speaks to a wide range of students in biology, bioinformatics, and biostatisticsSolid Biomechanics
Par Roland Ennos. 2012
Solid Biomechanics is the first book to comprehensively review the mechanical design of organisms. With a physical approach and a…
minimum of mathematics, the textbook introduces readers to the world of structural mechanics and sheds light on the dazzling array of mechanical adaptations that link creatures as dissimilar as bacteria, plants, and animals. Exploring a wide range of subjects in depth, from spider silks and sharkskin to climbing plants and human food processing, this immensely accessible text demonstrates that the bodies of animals and plants are masterpieces of engineering, enabling them to survive in a hostile world. The textbook describes how organisms construct materials from limited components, arrange materials into efficient structures that withstand different types of stresses, and interact mechanically with their environment. Looking at practical and historical aspects of the subject, the book delves into how the mechanics of organisms might be applied to other engineering scenarios and considers the ways structural biomechanics could and should develop in the future if more is to be learned about the form and function of organisms. Solid Biomechanics will be useful to all those interested in how organisms work, from biologists and engineers to physicists and students of biomechanics, bionics, and materials science. The first comprehensive review of the structural mechanics of organisms Introduces the subject using a physical approach involving minimal mathematics Three complementary sections: materials, structures, and mechanical interactions of organisms Links the dazzling array of mechanical adaptations seen in widely differing organisms Practical and historical approach shows how mechanical adaptations have been discovered and how readers can perform their own investigationsThe Origin Then and Now: An Interpretive Guide to the Origin of Species
Par David N. Reznick. 2009
An accessible modern guide to Darwin's masterworkCharles Darwin's Origin of Species is one of the most widely cited books in…
modern science. Yet tackling this classic can be daunting for students and general readers alike because of Darwin's Victorian prose and the complexity and scope of his ideas. The "Origin" Then and Now is a unique guide to Darwin's masterwork, making it accessible to a much wider audience by deconstructing and reorganizing the Origin in a way that allows for a clear explanation of its key concepts. The Origin is examined within the historical context in which it was written, and modern examples are used to reveal how this work remains a relevant and living document for today.In this eye-opening and accessible guide, David Reznick shows how many peculiarities of the Origin can be explained by the state of science in 1859, helping readers to grasp the true scope of Darwin's departure from the mainstream thinking of his day. He reconciles Darwin's concept of species with our current concept, which has advanced in important ways since Darwin first wrote the Origin, and he demonstrates why Darwin's theory unifies the biological sciences under a single conceptual framework much as Newton did for physics. Drawing liberally from the facsimile of the first edition of the Origin, Reznick enables readers to follow along as Darwin develops his ideas.The "Origin" Then and Now is an indispensable primer for anyone seeking to understand Darwin's Origin of Species and the ways it has shaped the modern study of evolution.The First Fossil Hunters: Dinosaurs, Mammoths, and Myth in Greek and Roman Times
Par Adrienne Mayor. 2011
The fascinating story of how the fossils of dinosaurs, mammoths, and other extinct animals influenced some of the most spectacular…
creatures of classical mythologyGriffins, Centaurs, Cyclopes, and Giants—these fabulous creatures of classical mythology continue to live in the modern imagination through the vivid accounts that have come down to us from the ancient Greeks and Romans. But what if these beings were more than merely fictions? What if monstrous creatures once roamed the earth in the very places where their legends first arose? This is the arresting and original thesis that Adrienne Mayor explores in The First Fossil Hunters. Through careful research and meticulous documentation, she convincingly shows that many of the giants and monsters of myth did have a basis in fact—in the enormous bones of long-extinct species that were once abundant in the lands of the Greeks and Romans.As Mayor shows, the Greeks and Romans were well aware that a different breed of creatures once inhabited their lands. They frequently encountered the fossilized bones of these primeval beings, and they developed sophisticated concepts to explain the fossil evidence, concepts that were expressed in mythological stories. The legend of the gold-guarding griffin, for example, sprang from tales first told by Scythian gold-miners, who, passing through the Gobi Desert at the foot of the Altai Mountains, encountered the skeletons of Protoceratops and other dinosaurs that littered the ground.Like their modern counterparts, the ancient fossil hunters collected and measured impressive petrified remains and displayed them in temples and museums; they attempted to reconstruct the appearance of these prehistoric creatures and to explain their extinction. Long thought to be fantasy, the remarkably detailed and perceptive Greek and Roman accounts of giant bone finds were actually based on solid paleontological facts. By reading these neglected narratives for the first time in the light of modern scientific discoveries, Adrienne Mayor illuminates a lost world of ancient paleontology.Tambora: The Eruption That Changed the World
Par Gillen D’Arcy Wood. 2014
A global history of the climate catastrophe caused by the Tambora eruptionWhen Indonesia's Mount Tambora erupted in 1815, it unleashed…
the most destructive wave of extreme weather the world has witnessed in thousands of years. The volcano’s massive sulfate dust cloud enveloped the Earth, cooling temperatures and disrupting major weather systems for more than three years. Communities worldwide endured famine, disease, and civil unrest on a catastrophic scale.Here, Gillen D’Arcy Wood traces Tambora’s global and historical reach: how the volcano’s three-year climate change regime initiated the first worldwide cholera pandemic, expanded opium markets in China, and plunged the United States into its first economic depression. Bringing the history of this planetary emergency to life, Tambora sheds light on the fragile interdependence of climate and human societies to offer a cautionary tale about the potential tragic impacts of drastic climate change in our own century.Principles of Animal Locomotion
Par R. McNeill Alexander. 2002
How can geckoes walk on the ceiling and basilisk lizards run over water? What are the aerodynamic effects that enable…
small insects to fly? What are the relative merits of squids' jet-propelled swimming and fishes' tail-powered swimming? Why do horses change gait as they increase speed? What determines our own vertical leap? Recent technical advances have greatly increased researchers' ability to answer these questions with certainty and in detail. This text provides an up-to-date overview of how animals run, walk, jump, crawl, swim, soar, hover, and fly. Excluding only the tiny creatures that use cilia, it covers all animals that power their movements with muscle--from roundworms to whales, clams to elephants, and gnats to albatrosses. The introduction sets out the general rules governing all modes of animal locomotion and considers the performance criteria--such as speed, endurance, and economy--that have shaped their selection. It introduces energetics and optimality as basic principles. The text then tackles each of the major modes by which animals move on land, in water, and through air. It explains the mechanisms involved and the physical and biological forces shaping those mechanisms, paying particular attention to energy costs. Focusing on general principles but extensively discussing a wide variety of individual cases, this is a superb synthesis of current knowledge about animal locomotion. It will be enormously useful to advanced undergraduates, graduate students, and a range of professional biologists, physicists, and engineers.Explaining the Cosmos: The Ionian Tradition of Scientific Philosophy
Par Daniel W. Graham. 2006
Explaining the Cosmos is a major reinterpretation of Greek scientific thought before Socrates. Focusing on the scientific tradition of philosophy,…
Daniel Graham argues that Presocratic philosophy is not a mere patchwork of different schools and styles of thought. Rather, there is a discernible and unified Ionian tradition that dominates Presocratic debates. Graham rejects the common interpretation of the early Ionians as "material monists" and also the view of the later Ionians as desperately trying to save scientific philosophy from Parmenides' criticisms. In Graham's view, Parmenides plays a constructive role in shaping the scientific debates of the fifth century BC. Accordingly, the history of Presocratic philosophy can be seen not as a series of dialectical failures, but rather as a series of theoretical advances that led to empirical discoveries. Indeed, the Ionian tradition can be seen as the origin of the scientific conception of the world that we still hold today.What rational justification is there for conceiving of all living things as possessing inherent worth? In Respect for Nature, Paul…
Taylor draws on biology, moral philosophy, and environmental science to defend a biocentric environmental ethic in which all life has value. Without making claims for the moral rights of plants and animals, he offers a reasoned alternative to the prevailing anthropocentric view--that the natural environment and its wildlife are valued only as objects for human use or enjoyment. Respect for Nature provides both a full account of the biological conditions for life--human or otherwise--and a comprehensive view of the complex relationship between human beings and the whole of nature. This classic book remains a valuable resource for philosophers, biologists, and environmentalists alike--along with all those who care about the future of life on Earth. A new foreword by Dale Jamieson looks at how the original 1986 edition of Respect for Nature has shaped the study of environmental ethics, and shows why the work remains relevant to debates today.Fly Me to the Moon: An Insider's Guide to the New Science of Space Travel
Par Edward Belbruno. 2007
When a leaf falls on a windy day, it drifts and tumbles, tossed every which way on the breeze. This…
is chaos in action. In Fly Me to the Moon, Edward Belbruno shows how to harness the same principle for low-fuel space travel--or, as he puts it, "surfing the gravitational field." Belbruno devised one of the most exciting concepts now being used in space flight, that of swinging through the cosmos on the subtle fluctuations of the planets' gravitational pulls. His idea was met with skepticism until 1991, when he used it to get a stray Japanese satellite back on course to the Moon. The successful rescue represented the first application of chaos to space travel and ushered in an emerging new field. Part memoir, part scientific adventure story, Fly Me to the Moon gives a gripping insider's account of that mission and of Belbruno's personal struggles with the science establishment. Along the way, Belbruno introduces readers to recent breathtaking advances in American space exploration. He discusses ways to capture and redirect asteroids; presents new research on the origin of the Moon; weighs in on discoveries like 2003 UB313 (now named Eris), a dwarf planet detected in the far outer reaches of our solar system--and much more. Grounded in Belbruno's own rigorous theoretical research but written for a general audience, Fly Me to the Moon is for anybody who has ever felt moved by the spirit of discovery.Reflections on the Musical Mind: An Evolutionary Perspective
Par Jay Schulkin. 2013
What's so special about music? We experience it internally, yet at the same time it is highly social. Music engages…
our cognitive/affective and sensory systems. We use music to communicate with one another--and even with other species--the things that we cannot express through language. Music is both ancient and ever evolving. Without music, our world is missing something essential.In Reflections on the Musical Mind, Jay Schulkin offers a social and behavioral neuroscientific explanation of why music matters. His aim is not to provide a grand, unifying theory. Instead, the book guides the reader through the relevant scientific evidence that links neuroscience, music, and meaning. Schulkin considers how music evolved in humans and birds, how music is experienced in relation to aesthetics and mathematics, the role of memory in musical expression, the role of music in child and social development, and the embodied experience of music through dance. He concludes with reflections on music and well-being. Reflections on the Musical Mind is a unique and valuable tour through the current research on the neuroscience of music.Paths of Fire: An Anthropologist's Inquiry into Western Technology
Par Robert M. Adams. 1997
Technology, perhaps the most salient feature of our time, affects everything from jobs to international law yet ranks among the…
most unpredictable facets of human life. Here Robert McC. Adams, renowned anthropologist and Secretary Emeritus of the Smithsonian Institution, builds a new approach to understanding the circumstances that drive technological change, stressing its episodic, irregular nature. The result is nothing less than a sweeping history of technological transformation from ancient times until now. Rare in antiquity, the bursts of innovations that mark the advance of technology have gradually accelerated and now have become an almost continuous feature of our culture. Repeatedly shifting in direction, this path has been shaped by a host of interacting social, cultural, and scientific forces rather than any deterministic logic. Thus future technological developments, Adams maintains, are predictable only over the very short term.Adams's account highlights Britain and the United States from early modern times onward. Locating the roots of the Industrial Revolution in British economic and social institutions, he goes on to consider the new forms of enterprise in which it was embodied and its loss of momentum in the later nineteenth century. He then turns to the early United States, whose path toward industrialization initially involved considerable "technology transfer" from Britain. Propelled by the advent of mass production, world industrial leadership passed to the United States around the end of the nineteenth century. Government-supported research and development, guided partly by military interests, helped secure this leadership.Today, as Adams shows, we find ourselves in a profoundly changed era. The United States has led the way to a strikingly new multinational pattern of opportunity and risk, where technological primacy can no longer be credited to any single nation. This recent trend places even more responsibility on the state to establish policies that will keep markets open for its companies and make its industries more competitive. Adams concludes with an argument for active government support of science and technology research that should be read by anyone interested in America's ability to compete globally.Jean Sibelius and His World (The Bard Music Festival #25)
Par Daniel M. Grimley. 2011
New perspectives on the greatest Finnish composer of all timePerhaps no twentieth-century composer has provoked a more varied reaction among…
the music-loving public than Jean Sibelius (1865–1957). Originally hailed as a new Beethoven by much of the Anglo-Saxon world, he was also widely disparaged by critics more receptive to newer trends in music. At the height of his popular appeal, he was revered as the embodiment of Finnish nationalism and the apostle of a new musical naturalism. Yet he seemingly chose that moment to stop composing altogether, despite living for three more decades. Providing wide cultural contexts, contesting received ideas about modernism, and interrogating notions of landscape and nature, Jean Sibelius and His World sheds new light on the critical position occupied by Sibelius in the Western musical tradition.The essays in the book explore such varied themes as the impact of Russian musical traditions on Sibelius, his compositional process, Sibelius and the theater, his understanding of music as a fluid and improvised creation, his critical reception in Great Britain and America, his "late style" in the incidental music for The Tempest, and the parallel contemporary careers of Sibelius and Richard Strauss.Documents include the draft of Sibelius's 1896 lecture on folk music, selections from a roman à clef about his student circle in Berlin at the turn of the century, Theodor Adorno's brief but controversial tirade against the composer, and the newspaper debates about the Sibelius monument unveiled in Helsinki a decade after the composer's death.The contributors are Byron Adams, Leon Botstein, Philip Ross Bullock, Glenda Dawn Goss, Daniel Grimley, Jeffrey Kallberg, Tomi Mäkelä, Sarah Menin, Max Paddison, and Timo Virtanen.