Genetic Science

Anderson Lake is a company man, AgriGen's Calorie Man in Thailand. Under cover as a factory manager, Anderson combs Bangkok's street markets in search of foodstuffs thought to be extinct, hoping to reap the bounty of history's lost calories. There, he encounters Emiko...Emiko is the Windup Girl, a strange and beautiful creature. One of the New People, Emiko is not human; instead, she is an engineered being, creche-grown and programmed to satisfy the decadent whims of a Kyoto businessman.

Scratch beneath the surface of a coffee bean, a red pepper flake, a poppy seed, a mold spore, a foxglove leaf, a magic-mushroom cap, a marijuana bud, or an apple seed, and we find a bevy of strange chemicals. We use these to greet our days (caffeine), titillate our tongues (capsaicin), recover from surgery (opioids), cure infections (penicillin), mend our hearts (digoxin), bend our minds (psilocybin), calm our nerves (CBD), and even kill our enemies (cyanide). But why do plants and fungi produce such chemicals? And how did we come to use and abuse some of them?

Tribalism is one of the most complex and ancient evolutionary forces; it gave us the capacity for cooperation and competition, and allowed us to navigate increasingly complex social landscapes. It is so powerful that it can predict our behavior even better than race, class, gender, or religion. But in our vast modern world, has this blessing become a curse? Our Tribal Future explores a central paradox of our species: how altruism, community, kindness, and genocide are all driven by the same core adaptation.

Geneticists like David Reich have made astounding advances in the field of genomics, which is proving to be as important as archaeology, linguistics, and written records as a means to understand our ancestry. In Who We Are and How We Got Here, Reich allows listeners to discover how the human genome provides not only all the information a human embryo needs to develop but also the hidden story of our species.

Il y a environ 4 000 millions d'années, la vie est apparue sur la Terre. Mais quelle est l'histoire de son évolution ? La vie était-elle inévitable ? La race humaine, telle que nous la connaissons, était-elle prévisible ? Quels autres êtres intelligents auraient pu la remplacer ? À partir de questionnements comme ceux-ci et des réponses scientifiques qui existent déjà, Juan Luis Arsuaga nous présente les découvertes-clés de la théorie de l'évolution et nous élève vers un questionnement plus vaste encore : pourquoi sommes-nous ici ?

The Island of Doctor Moreau is an 1896 science fiction novel by English author H. G. Wells. The text of the novel is the narration of Edward Prendick, a shipwrecked man rescued by a passing boat who is left on the island home of Doctor Moreau, a mad scientist who creates human-like hybrid beings from animals via vivisection. The novel deals with a number of philosophical themes, including pain and cruelty, moral responsibility, human identity, and human interference with nature. Wells described it as "an exercise in youthful blasphemy.

Once every year, Scoutmaster Tim Riggs leads a troop of boys into the Canadian wilderness for a weekend camping trip - a tradition as comforting and reliable as a good ghost story around a roaring bonfre. The boys are a tight-knit crew. There’s Kent, one of the most popular kids in school; Ephraim and Max, also well-liked and easygoing; then there’s Newt the nerd and Shelley the odd duck. For the most part, they all get along and are happy to be there - which makes Scoutmaster Tim’s job a little easier.

Earth...Population: 1 Her name is Eve14. She is the result of a 1000-year project by the robots of Earth to restore the planet after all life was wiped out in 2065. 27 robotic minds, copied from Earth's great scientists, carried on after the species died. They mixed and matched those minds in endless combinations, producing a whole race of machines with human personalities. Immortal, but with memories of sensations they can no longer experience, some renegade robots now have a daring agenda. They want human bodies.

Coyote America is both an environmental and a deep natural history of the coyote. It traces both the five-million-year-long biological story of an animal that has become the "wolf" in our backyards and its cultural evolution from a preeminent spot in Native American religions to the hapless foil of the Road Runner. A deeply American tale, the story of the coyote in the American West and beyond is a sort of Manifest Destiny in reverse.

High in the Canadian Rockies is a small limestone quarry formed 530 million years ago called the Burgess Shale. It holds the remains of an ancient sea where dozens of strange creatures lived—a forgotten corner of evolution preserved in awesome detail. In this book, Stephen Jay Gould explores what the Burgess Shale tells us about evolution and the nature of history.

One hundred years from now, and against all the odds, Earth has found a new stability; the political order has reached some sort of balance, and the new colony on Mars is growing. But the fraught years of the 21st century have left an uneasy legacy.... Genetically engineered alpha males designed to fight the century's wars have no wars to fight and are surplus to requirements. And a man bred and designed to fight is a dangerous man to have around in peacetime....

In this landmark book of popular science, Daniel E. Lieberman - chair of the department of human evolutionary biology at Harvard University and a leader in the field - gives us a lucid and engaging account of how the human body evolved over millions of years, even as it shows how the increasing disparity between the jumble of adaptations in our Stone Age bodies and advancements in the modern world is occasioning this paradox: greater longevity but increased chronic disease.

Cherry Bomb, an A.I. made human—and immortal—is out for revenge against her creator, Will, who left her on the Galahad, a ship full of unholy monsters, traversing the universe from beginning to end, ad infinitum. Countless years pass, giving her more than enough time to plot her revenge. Upon gaining control of the ship, she sets her plan in motion, building a vast army and reforming the universe as she sees fit.

Having worked on numerous high-profile genetic investigations, including one focused on the famed Iceman of the Italian Alps, Bryan Sykes has become a premier authority on human genetics. In DNA USA, Sykes examines the unique fabric of the population of the United States - one of the world’s most genetically variegated countries. His fascinating discoveries offer new insights into the biological profile of the great melting pot.

Jonas kills people...with his mind. He reaches out, focuses for a moment, and feels a snap of pain between his eyes. Then his target falls over dead: a hole in the center of their brains. The cause of death is unknown to all aside from Jonas, and his lone companion, Bubbles, a sarcastic AI with aspirations to be more human, or a serial killer. One of the two. Maybe both. Jonas calls his ability...mind bullet.

“An exceptional book” (Helen Fisher) by a leading evolutionary psychologist and sex researcher that lays out a new theory of sexual conflict, exposing the roots of the dangerous dynamics that underpin men’s predatory behavior - and what can be done to address it.

Livre sur l'évolution # 1 par l'auteur des bestsellers incroyables "Le Gène égoïste" et "La magie de la réalité" ! Scientifique parmi les plus connus au monde, Richard Dawkins, dans un style accessible et plein d'humour, nous révèle la grande histoire de la vie sur la terre qui se mue en une bouleversante épopée. "Il était une fois nos ancêtres: Une histoire de l'évolution" nous guide dans la logique de l'évolution. Embarquons pour une aventure unique au cours de laquelle nous grimperons dans notre arbre généalogique élargi à l'échelle du vivant tout entier !

When Charles Darwin finished The Origin of Species, he thought that he had explained every clue but one. Though his theory could explain many facts, Darwin knew that there was a significant event in the history of life that his theory did not explain. During this event, the "Cambrian explosion", many animals suddenly appeared in the fossil record without apparent ancestors in earlier layers of rock. In Darwin's Doubt, Stephen C. Meyer tells the story of the mystery surrounding this explosion of animal life.

The Hygrometric Dehabitation Region, or the "Zone," is a growing band of rainforest on the equator, where the heat and humidity make it impossible for warm-blooded animals to survive. A human being without protection in the Zone is dead in minutes. Twenty years ago, Marks went into the rainforest with a group of researchers led by Doctor Elaine Fell, to study the extraordinary climate and see if it could be used in agriculture. The only thing she learned was that the Zone was no place for people. There were deaths, and the program was cut short. Now, they're sending her back in.

7 joueurs, 7 visions du futur. Chacun tente d'influencer l'avenir. Mais c'est sans compter sur le 8ème joueur, notre mère la Terre, qui n'a pas dit son dernier mot... Le plus scientifique de nos romanciers poursuit sa saga des micro-humains sur fond d'apocalypse. Alors qu'une 3ème guerre mondiale se profile à l'horizon, Gaïa, la Terre, semble vouloir se rebeller contre ses habitants. Humains et micro-humains prêteront-ils attention à sa voix ?