Life on the Edge

Life on the Edge PDF Author: Johnjoe McFadden
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 0307986837
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 370

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Book Description
New York Times bestseller • Life on the Edge alters our understanding of our world's fundamental dynamics through the use of quantum mechanics. Life is the most extraordinary phenomenon in the known universe; but how did it come to be? Even in an age of cloning and artificial biology, the remarkable truth remains: nobody has ever made anything living entirely out of dead material. Life remains the only way to make life. Are we still missing a vital ingredient in its creation? Using first-hand experience at the cutting edge of science, Jim Al-Khalili and Johnjoe Macfadden reveal that missing ingredient to be quantum mechanics. Drawing on recent ground-breaking experiments around the world, each chapter in Life on the Edge illustrates one of life's puzzles: How do migrating birds know where to go? How do we really smell the scent of a rose? How do our genes copy themselves with such precision? Life on the Edge accessibly reveals how quantum mechanics can answer these probing questions of the universe. Guiding the reader through the rapidly unfolding discoveries of the last few years, Al-Khalili and McFadden describe the explosive new field of quantum biology and its potentially revolutionary applications, while offering insights into the biggest puzzle of all: what is life? As they brilliantly demonstrate in these groundbreaking pages, life exists on the quantum edge. Winner, Stephen Hawking Medal for Science Communication

Life on the Edge

Life on the Edge PDF Author: Johnjoe McFadden
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 0307986837
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 370

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Book Description
New York Times bestseller • Life on the Edge alters our understanding of our world's fundamental dynamics through the use of quantum mechanics. Life is the most extraordinary phenomenon in the known universe; but how did it come to be? Even in an age of cloning and artificial biology, the remarkable truth remains: nobody has ever made anything living entirely out of dead material. Life remains the only way to make life. Are we still missing a vital ingredient in its creation? Using first-hand experience at the cutting edge of science, Jim Al-Khalili and Johnjoe Macfadden reveal that missing ingredient to be quantum mechanics. Drawing on recent ground-breaking experiments around the world, each chapter in Life on the Edge illustrates one of life's puzzles: How do migrating birds know where to go? How do we really smell the scent of a rose? How do our genes copy themselves with such precision? Life on the Edge accessibly reveals how quantum mechanics can answer these probing questions of the universe. Guiding the reader through the rapidly unfolding discoveries of the last few years, Al-Khalili and McFadden describe the explosive new field of quantum biology and its potentially revolutionary applications, while offering insights into the biggest puzzle of all: what is life? As they brilliantly demonstrate in these groundbreaking pages, life exists on the quantum edge. Winner, Stephen Hawking Medal for Science Communication

Edge City

Edge City PDF Author: Joel Garreau
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 0307801942
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 575

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Book Description
First there was downtown. Then there were suburbs. Then there were malls. Then Americans launched the most sweeping change in 100 years in how they live, work, and play. The Edge City.

Life On The Edge

Life On The Edge PDF Author: Michael Gross
Publisher: Hachette UK
ISBN: 0465011470
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
Can life exist in the Antarctic ice, in the deep subsurface, in dilute sulfuric acid, in hot springs-even on Mars? What degree of high or low temperature, pressure, or salt concentration can living cells tolerate? In recent years, scientists have discovered many single-cell creatures that exist in-in fact, are perfectly adapted to-extreme environments that were considered uninhabitable just one or two decades ago. In Life on the Edge, author Michael Gross explores how microorganisms adapt to their hostile environments and how they affect our current definition of the "normal" conditions for life. He also describes the vast implications of these extremophiles and other amazing creatures-from potential breakthroughs in medicine and biotechnology to the search for life elsewhere in the universe.

Life on the Edge

Life on the Edge PDF Author: Carl G. Thelander
Publisher: Heyday Books
ISBN:
Category : Biodiversity conservation
Languages : en
Pages : 594

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Book Description


Complexity

Complexity PDF Author: Roger Lewin
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226476551
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
"Put together one of the world's best science writers with one of the universe's most fascinating subjects and you are bound to produce a wonderful book. . . . The subject of complexity is vital and controversial. This book is important and beautifully done."—Stephen Jay Gould "[Complexity] is that curious mix of complication and organization that we find throughout the natural and human worlds: the workings of a cell, the structure of the brain, the behavior of the stock market, the shifts of political power. . . . It is time science . . . thinks about meaning as well as counting information. . . . This is the core of the complexity manifesto. Read it, think about it . . . but don't ignore it."—Ian Stewart, Nature This second edition has been brought up to date with an essay entitled "On the Edge in the Business World" and an interview with John Holland, author of Emergence: From Chaos to Order.

Life on the Edge

Life on the Edge PDF Author: James C. Dobson
Publisher: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.
ISBN: 1414355688
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 252

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Book Description
As a young adult, you will face crucial questions about identity, education, marriage, career, God's will, and much more. Some of the most dramatic and permanent changes in life will occur during the “critical decade”—those ten years between 16 and 26. Are you prepared to make the right choices? You can be. Like a trusted friend who understands, Dr. James Dobson candidly addresses the issues that today's young adults face. In his warm, conversational style, he reveals principles to help you make right choices and get the direction you need in order to look forward to a bright and successful future.

Life on the Edge

Life on the Edge PDF Author: Jennifer Comeaux
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780990434245
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Book Description
Nineteen-year-old Emily is new to pairs skating, but she and her partner Chris have a big dream-to be the first American team to win Olympic gold. Their young coach Sergei, who left Russia after a mysterious end to his skating career, believes they can break through and make history. Emily and Chris are on track to be top contenders at the Winter Games. But when forbidden feelings spark between Emily and Sergei, broken trust and an unexpected enemy threaten to derail Emily's dreams of gold.

The Edge of Life

The Edge of Life PDF Author: Mike Berridge
Publisher: Bridget Williams Books
ISBN: 0908321341
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 128

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Book Description
‘The world beyond the thought horizon is as vast as the universe, and probing it is the stuff of dreams, imaginative thinking and new technologies.’ The gap between rapid scientific progress and public understanding faces unprecedented challenges. Leading research scientist Mike Berridge explores this troubled ground from a rare vantage point. His descriptions of stunning new advances in human health are offset by hard questions about society’s ability to keep pace. This exploration brings us into contact with hotly contested public health issues, such as cancer treatment, sugar consumption, and water fluoridation. It is also a heartfelt plea to place robust and impartial science at the centre of our thinking for the future.

Carrie Fisher: A Life on the Edge

Carrie Fisher: A Life on the Edge PDF Author: Sheila Weller
Publisher: Sarah Crichton Books
ISBN: 0374717729
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 416

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Book Description
A remarkably candid biography of the remarkably candid—and brilliant—Carrie Fisher In her 2008 bestseller, Girls Like Us, Sheila Weller—with heart and a profound feeling for the times—gave us a surprisingly intimate portrait of three icons: Carole King, Joni Mitchell, and Carly Simon. Now she turns her focus to one of the most loved, brilliant, and iconoclastic women of our time: the actress, writer, daughter, and mother Carrie Fisher. Weller traces Fisher’s life from her Hollywood royalty roots to her untimely and shattering death after Christmas 2016. Her mother was the spunky and adorable Debbie Reynolds; her father, the heartthrob crooner Eddie Fisher. When Eddie ran off with Elizabeth Taylor, the scandal thrust little Carrie Frances into a bizarre spotlight, gifting her with an irony and an aplomb that would resonate throughout her life. We follow Fisher’s acting career, from her debut in Shampoo, the hit movie that defined mid-1970s Hollywood, to her seizing of the plum female role in Star Wars, which catapulted her to instant fame. We explore her long, complex relationship with Paul Simon and her relatively peaceful years with the talent agent Bryan Lourd. We witness her startling leap—on the heels of a near-fatal overdose—from actress to highly praised, bestselling author, the Dorothy Parker of her place and time. Weller sympathetically reveals the conditions that Fisher lived with: serious bipolar disorder and an inherited drug addiction. Still, despite crises and overdoses, her life’s work—as an actor, a novelist and memoirist, a script doctor, a hostess, and a friend—was prodigious and unique. As one of her best friends said, “I almost wish the expression ‘one of a kind’ didn’t exist, because it applies to Carrie in a deeper way than it applies to others.” Sourced by friends, colleagues, and witnesses to all stages of Fisher’s life, Carrie Fisher: A Life on the Edge is an empathic and even-handed portrayal of a woman who—as Princess Leia, but mostly as herself—was a feminist heroine, one who died at a time when we need her blazing, healing honesty more than ever.

The Biology of Human Survival

The Biology of Human Survival PDF Author: Claude A. Piantadosi
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190290021
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
The range of environments in which people can survive is extensive, yet most of the natural world cannot support human life. The Biology of Human Survival identifies the key determinants of life or death in extreme environments from a physiologist's perspective, integrating modern concepts of stress, tolerance, and adaptation into explanations of life under Nature's most austere conditions. The book examines how individuals survive when faced with extremes of immersion, heat, cold or altitude, emphasizing the body's recognition of stress and the brain's role in optimizing physiological function in order to provide time to escape or to adapt. In illustrating how human biology adapts to extremes, the book also explains how we learn to cope by blending behavior and biology, first by trial and error, then by rigorous scientific observation, and finally by technological innovation. The book describes life-support technology and how it enables humans to enter once unendurable realm, from the depths of the ocean to the upper reaches of the atmosphere and beyond. Finally, it explores the role that advanced technology might play in special environments of the future, such as long journeys into space.