How All Living Creatures Began to Blink PDF Download

Author: Anita Nair
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 9351185117
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 20

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Book Description
Read this fascinating myth from India recounted in this fabulously produced book. From wise sages to demonic asuras, beautiful river deities to arrogant kings, wayward gods to brave princes, each e-singles edition brings alive these enchanting and magical stories from Indian mythology, beautifully retold by noted author Anita Nair. With stunning full-colour illustrations, this story recreates the fantastic world of gods and demons like never before.

Author: Andrew Parker
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 9780738206073
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
The Cambrian Explosion is universally referred to as biology's "Big Bang." About 550 million years ago, there was literally an explosion of life forms, as all the major animal groups suddenly and dramatically appeared. Why did it happen this way? Why didn't these creatures continue the slow, plodding pace of evolution, appearing only very gradually in the fossil record? Although several books have been written about this surprising event, none have explained why it occurred. Indeed, none were able to.Here, for the first time, Oxford zoologist Andrew Parker reveals his theory of this great flourishing of life. Parker's "Light Switch Theory" holds that it was the development of vision in primitive animals that caused the explosion. Precambrian creatures were unable to see, making it impossible to find friend or foe. With the evolution of the eye, the size, shape, color, and behavior of animals was suddenly revealed for the first time. Once the lights were "turned on," all animals had to either adapt or die, and in a geological instant, the world became a very different place. A controversial theory but one that is quickly gaining ground, the Light Switch Theory promises to revolutionize our understanding of life and light. Drawing on evidence not just from biology but also from geology, physics, chemistry, history, and art, In the Blink of an Eye is the fascinating story of a young scientist's intellectual journey, and a celebration of the scientific method.

Author: Andrew Parker
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780565094003
Category : Evolution (Biology)
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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The Cambrian explosion is the "big bang" of evolution--a period of less than five million years during which life on Earth rapidly developed both armaments and defenses. Animals suddenly became both hunters and the hunted, and the number of animal groups with hard body parts mushroomed from three to 38. But why did the explosion happen when it did? Ground-breaking and accessible, this book unravels the evidence demonstrating that this was the period when the eye evolved, leading to an evolutionary scramble for survival.

Author: Larry Vardiman
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 856

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This book presents part two of the research results of an eight-year project titled Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth (RATE). A previous volume presenting part one of the research was published in 2000, titled Radioisotopes and the age of the Earth : a young-earth creationist research initiative. RATE Project sponsors included Institute for Creation Research and Creation Research Society, with start-up support from Answers in Genesis Ministries. Researchers included seven scientists and one biblical Hebrew scholar: Dr. Steven A. Austin, Dr. Andrew Snelling, Dr. John Baumgardner, Dr. Eugene F. Chaffin, Dr. Donald B. DeYoung, Dr. Russell Humphreys, Dr. Larry Vardiman and Dr. Steven W. Boyd.

Author: Lewis Thomas
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101667052
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 162

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Book Description
Elegant, suggestive, and clarifying, Lewis Thomas's profoundly humane vision explores the world around us and examines the complex interdependence of all things. Extending beyond the usual limitations of biological science and into a vast and wondrous world of hidden relationships, this provocative book explores in personal, poetic essays to topics such as computers, germs, language, music, death, insects, and medicine. Lewis Thomas writes, "Once you have become permanently startled, as I am, by the realization that we are a social species, you tend to keep an eye out for the pieces of evidence that this is, by and large, good for us."

Author: Anita Nair
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 935118353X
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
When Surya the sun god got married, his wife could not bear the heat of his rays and ran away. Surya was heartbroken and the world plunged into darkness. A dwarf asked a king for some land, which he measured with three footsteps, and ended up claiming the earth and the sky. Sage Daksha got his daughters married to the moon, but later, in a fit of rage, cursed the moon with consumption, making it wax and wane. These are some of the fifty myths from India recounted in this fabulously produced book. From wise sages to demonic asuras, beautiful river deities to arrogant kings, wayward gods to brave princes, this collection of myths showcases the most enchanting and magical stories from Indian mythology.

Author: Richard O. Prum
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 0385537220
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 435

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A FINALIST FOR THE PULITZER PRIZE NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW, SMITHSONIAN, AND WALL STREET JOURNAL A major reimagining of how evolutionary forces work, revealing how mating preferences—what Darwin termed "the taste for the beautiful"—create the extraordinary range of ornament in the animal world. In the great halls of science, dogma holds that Darwin's theory of natural selection explains every branch on the tree of life: which species thrive, which wither away to extinction, and what features each evolves. But can adaptation by natural selection really account for everything we see in nature? Yale University ornithologist Richard Prum—reviving Darwin's own views—thinks not. Deep in tropical jungles around the world are birds with a dizzying array of appearances and mating displays: Club-winged Manakins who sing with their wings, Great Argus Pheasants who dazzle prospective mates with a four-foot-wide cone of feathers covered in golden 3D spheres, Red-capped Manakins who moonwalk. In thirty years of fieldwork, Prum has seen numerous display traits that seem disconnected from, if not outright contrary to, selection for individual survival. To explain this, he dusts off Darwin's long-neglected theory of sexual selection in which the act of choosing a mate for purely aesthetic reasons—for the mere pleasure of it—is an independent engine of evolutionary change. Mate choice can drive ornamental traits from the constraints of adaptive evolution, allowing them to grow ever more elaborate. It also sets the stakes for sexual conflict, in which the sexual autonomy of the female evolves in response to male sexual control. Most crucially, this framework provides important insights into the evolution of human sexuality, particularly the ways in which female preferences have changed male bodies, and even maleness itself, through evolutionary time. The Evolution of Beauty presents a unique scientific vision for how nature's splendor contributes to a more complete understanding of evolution and of ourselves.

Author: Miljenko Jergović
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300179278
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 450

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An epic novel of twentieth-century Balkan life, from the decline of the Ottoman Empire through the bloodshed of the Bosnian War This grand novel encompasses nearly all of Yugoslavia's tumultuous twentieth century, from the decline of the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires through two world wars, the rise and fall of communism, the breakup of the nation, and the terror of the shelling of Dubrovnik. Tackling universal themes on a human scale, master storyteller Miljenko Jergovic traces one Yugoslavian family's tale as history irresistibly casts the fates of five generations. What is it to live a life whose circumstances are driven by history? Jergovic investigates the experiences of a compelling heroine, Regina Delavale, and her many family members and neighbors. Telling Regina's story in reverse chronology, the author proceeds from her final days in 2002 to her birth in 1905, encountering along the way such traumas as atrocities committed by Nazi Ustashe Croats and the death of Tito. Lyrically written and unhesitatingly told, The Walnut Mansion may be read as an allegory of the tragedy of Yugoslavia's tormented twentieth century.

Author: Mary Laura Philpott
Publisher: Atria Books
ISBN: 1982102810
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
NATIONAL BESTSELLER A charmingly relatable and wise memoir-in-essays by acclaimed writer and bookseller Mary Laura Philpott, “the modern day reincarnation of…Nora Ephron, Erma Bombeck, Jean Kerr, and Laurie Colwin—all rolled into one” (The Washington Post), about what happened after she checked off all the boxes on a successful life’s to-do list and realized she might need to reinvent the list—and herself. Mary Laura Philpott thought she’d cracked the code: Always be right, and you’ll always be happy. But once she’d completed her life’s to-do list (job, spouse, house, babies—check!), she found that instead of feeling content and successful, she felt anxious. Lost. Stuck in a daily grind of overflowing calendars, grueling small talk, and sprawling traffic. She’d done everything “right” but still felt all wrong. What’s the worse failure, she wondered: smiling and staying the course, or blowing it all up and running away? And are those the only options? Taking on the conflicting pressures of modern adulthood, Philpott provides a “frank and funny look at what happens when, in the midst of a tidy life, there occur impossible-to-ignore tugs toward creativity, meaning, and the possibility of something more” (Southern Living). She offers up her own stories to show that identity crises don’t happen just once or only at midlife and reassures us that small, recurring personal re-inventions are both normal and necessary. Most of all, in this “warm embrace of a life lived imperfectly” (Esquire), Philpott shows that when you stop feeling satisfied with your life, you don’t have to burn it all down. You can call upon your many selves to figure out who you are, who you’re not, and where you belong. Who among us isn’t trying to do that? “Be forewarned that you’ll laugh out loud and cry, probably in the same essay. Philpott has a wonderful way of finding humor, even in darker moments. This is a book you’ll want to buy for yourself and every other woman you know” (Real Simple).

Author: Edward O. Wilson
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 1631490834
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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"An audacious and concrete proposal…Half-Earth completes the 86-year-old Wilson’s valedictory trilogy on the human animal and our place on the planet." —Jedediah Purdy, New Republic In his most urgent book to date, Pulitzer Prize–winning author and world-renowned biologist Edward O. Wilson states that in order to stave off the mass extinction of species, including our own, we must move swiftly to preserve the biodiversity of our planet. In this "visionary blueprint for saving the planet" (Stephen Greenblatt), Half-Earth argues that the situation facing us is too large to be solved piecemeal and proposes a solution commensurate with the magnitude of the problem: dedicate fully half the surface of the Earth to nature. Identifying actual regions of the planet that can still be reclaimed—such as the California redwood forest, the Amazon River basin, and grasslands of the Serengeti, among others—Wilson puts aside the prevailing pessimism of our times and "speaks with a humane eloquence which calls to us all" (Oliver Sacks).