Genetic History

The question of teaching evolution in the public schools is a continuing and frequently heated political issue in America. From Tennessee's Scopes Trial in 1925 to recent battles that have erupted in Louisiana, Kansas, Ohio, and countless other localities, the critics and supporters of evolution have fought nonstop over the role of science and religion in American public life. In American Genesis, Jeffrey P. Moran explores the ways in which the evolution debate has reverberated beyond the confines of state legislatures and courthouses.

In this landmark medical narrative, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists Mark Johnson and Kathleen Gallagher chronicle the story of Nic Volker, the Wisconsin boy at the center of a daring breakthrough in medicine - a complete gene sequencing to discover the cure for an otherwise undiagnosable illness.

Wars with aliens make for strange bedfellows. Five hundred years ago I died. In most cases that would have been the end of it. The thing is, I didn't stay dead. Well, actually I did, but more to the point my mind woke up in brand spanking new, state-of-the-art cloned body custom built by the Imperium to fight the B'dar. This is my story. This is the future history of me.

Who decides where we are born and who we love? Luna is an immortal entity in the Upperworld learning how to assign human souls to the body and life they’re intended for. Onyx is her mentor and guide there, teaching her everything she needs to know about assigning souls and dispatching them to Earth. Everything goes well until Luna’s friend makes a major mistake and Luna is sent to earth after covering for her. In her absence, an unbelievable secret is revealed that changes everything she thought she knew about how the world works.

Does human life have any meaning? Does the question even make sense today? For centuries, the question of the meaning or purpose of human life was assumed by scholars and theologians to have a religious answer: Life has meaning because humans were made in the image of a good god. In the 19th century, however, Charles Darwin's theory of evolution changed everything - and the human organism was seen to be more machine than spirit.

Vor 65 Millionen Jahren stürzte ein großer Meteorit nahe der mexikanischen Halbinsel Yucatán auf die Erde. Das war das Ende der Dinosaurier und von etwa 90 Prozent allen Lebens. Es war auch das Ende einer Zivilisation, von der wir heute nichts mehr wissen. Aber diese Vor-Menschen haben ihren Nachfolgern ein Erbe hinterlassen: zwölf Container, sicher verborgen auf dem Mond. Der Inhalt: Unschätzbar wertvoll. Jetzt ist es soweit: "Das Erbe der ersten Menschheit" wird geborgen und die Entdeckungen beginnen. Sind Sie dabei?

From the Siberian permafrost to balmy California, scientists across the globe are working to resurrect all kinds of extinct animals, from ones that just left us to those that have been gone for many thousands of years. Their tools in this hunt are both fossils and cutting-edge genetic technologies. Some of these scientists are driven by sheer curiosity; others view the lost species as a powerful weapon in the fight to preserve rapidly changing ecosystems. It seems certain that these animals will walk the earth again, but what world will that give us? And is any of this a good idea?

Impressive Deception offers an inside look at the deceiving portrayal of evolution by the media and in our public schools. DeeDee Briski uncovers the media bias that forms the basis of the worldview that has become the accepted view in our mainstream educational systems.

When did the human species turn against the planet that we depend on for survival? Human industry and consumption of resources have altered the climate, polluted the water and soil, destroyed ecosystems, and rendered many species extinct, vastly increasing the likelihood of an ecological catastrophe. How did humankind come to rule nature to such an extent? To regard the planet's resources and creatures as ours for the taking? To find ourselves on a seemingly relentless path toward ecocide?

From best-selling, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Edward Humes comes a dramatic story of faith, science, and courage unlike any since the famous Scopes Monkey Trial. Monkey Girl takes you behind the scenes of the recent war on evolution in Dover, Pennsylvania, when the town's school board decision to confront the controversy head-on thrust its students, then the entire community, onto the front lines of America's culture wars.

The field of biotechnology has evolved over the past four decades, developing medicines which are curing diseases. But this journey of success has been tough and arduous, built upon the shoulders of major failures.

This delightful and insightful series of essays on the practice of science was written by one of the great minds of the 19th century, Thomas Henry Huxley, a great friend and defender of Charles Darwin and his theory of evolution by natural selection. It includes Huxley's autobiography and essays covering improving natural knowledge; a liberal education; on a piece of chalk; the principle subjects of education; the method of scientific investigation.

Over the past 100 years, gulls have been brought ashore by modernity. They now live not only on the coasts, but in our slipstream following trawlers, barges, and garbage trucks. They are more our contemporaries than most birds, living their wild lives among us in towns and cities. In many ways, they live as we do, walking the built-up world and grabbing a bite where they can. Yet this disturbs us. We’ve started fearing gulls for getting good at being among us. We see them as scavengers, not entrepreneurs; oceangoing aliens, not refugees.

They say curiosity killed the cat. But according to The Curiosity Gene, inquisitiveness actually plays the opposite role - responsible for not only human survival but also our evolutionary advancement to become the most intelligent creature on the planet. This groundbreaking new book by award-winning science writer and computer engineer Alexandros Kourt combines anthropology, archaeology, psychology, and evolution with computer theory to help listeners better understand themselves and the human brain.

Roughgarden rejects both junk science based on spurious metaphors and junk religion based on spurious theology. In their place, she offers an inspiring accommodation between thoughtful science and compassionate religion.

Viruses are the world's most abundant life form, and now, when humanity is in the midst of a close encounter with their immense power, perhaps the most feared. But do we understand viruses? Possibly the most enigmatic of living things, they are sometimes not considered a life form at all. Everything about them is extreme, including the reactions they evoke. However, for every truism about viruses, the opposite is also often true.

Most claims of Native American ancestry rest on the mother's ethnicity. This can be verified by a DNA test determining what type of mitochondrial DNA she passed to you. A hundred participants in DNA Consultants multi-phase Cherokee DNA Study did just that. What they had in common is they were previously rejected - by commercial firms, genealogy groups, government agencies and tribes. Their mitochondrial DNA was not classified as Native American. These are the "anomalous" Cherokee.

Everyone has heard the story of DNA as the story of Watson, Crick, and Rosalind Franklin, but knowing the structure of DNA was only part of a greater struggle to understand life's secrets. Life's Greatest Secret is the story of the discovery and cracking of the genetic code, the thing that ultimately enables a spiraling molecule to give rise to the life that exists all around us. This great scientific breakthrough has had far-reaching consequences for how we understand ourselves and our place in the natural world.

How did species wind up where they are today? Scientists have long conjectured that plants and animals dispersed throughout the world by drifting on large landmasses as they broke up, but in The Monkey’s Voyage, biologist Alan de Queiroz offers a radical new theory that displaces this passive view.

The Mesozoic Era, which lasted from about 252 to 66 million years ago, is divided into three periods, the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous. During this era, one type of life came to dominate the planet more completely and for a longer period than had been seen before or since; this was the Age of Reptiles. Beginning in the Triassic but especially in the Jurassic period, reptiles came to dominate the oceans, the land and even the skies.