Showing titles in Biology

An invisible world of astonishing complexity is all around you. A world so small you can’t see it with the naked eye. A world so crowded that its population staggers the mind. A world in which you participate every day - often without even knowing it. The inhabitants of this world are trillions of bacteria, viruses, fungi, and other organisms, collectively known as microbes. Hundreds of thousands could fit on the period at the end of this sentence. And many play a powerful role in your life.

How did life begin? It is perhaps the most important question science has ever asked. Over the centuries, the search for an answer has been entwined with some of science's most revolutionary advances, including van Leeuwenhoek's microscope, Darwin's theory of evolution, and Crick and Watson's unveiling of DNA.

Master microbiology without the overwhelm. If you've ever felt buried under organism names, virulence factors, and antibiotic mechanisms that refuse to stick, you're not alone. Most microbiology textbooks pack in dense paragraphs and endless details—bacteria blur with viruses, and you're rereading without actually learning. Microbiology Made Easy is different. This is a complete learning system built on brain science, designed to help nursing, medical, and PA students learn faster, remember longer, and walk into exams and clinical rotations with confidence.

Most of us have heard of such popular butterflies as the Monarch or Painted Lady. But what about the Fender's Blue? Or the St. Francis' Satyr? Because of their extreme rarity, these butterflies are not well-known, yet they are remarkable species with important lessons to teach us. The Last Butterflies spotlights the rarest of these creatures - some numbering no more than what can be held in one hand. 

This science classic by Paul de Kruif chronicles the pioneering bacteriological work of the first scientists to see and learn from the microscopic world. Paul de Kruif's Microbe Hunters is a timeless dramatization of the scientists, bacteriologists, doctors, and medical technicians who discovered microbes and invented the vaccines to counter them.

Dolphins have fascinated humans for millennia, giving rise to an abundance of stories and myths about them, yet the actual details of their lives in the sea have remained elusive. In this enthralling book, Kathleen M. Dudzinski and Toni Frohoff take us into the dolphins' aquatic world to witness firsthand how they live their lives, communicate, and interact with one another and with other species, including people.

Why do people believe bunk? And what causes them to embrace such pseudoscientific beliefs and practices? Noted skeptic Massimo Pigliucci sets out to separate the fact from the fantasy in this entertaining exploration of the nature of science, the borderlands of fringe science, and - borrowing a famous phrase from philosopher Jeremy Bentham - the nonsense on stilts.

In this audiobook, Dr Kruszelnicki takes us on another exploration of the dazzling world of science. Does cranberry juice cure urinary tract infections? Is the hookah really a safer way to smoke? Will the Large Hadron Collider destroy the Earth and the Universe?

The book introduces us to an incredible, essential, and oft-overlooked kingdom of life - fungi - and all the potential it holds for our future, through the work and research being done by an unforgettable community of mushroom-mad citizen scientists and microbe devotees. This entertaining and mind-expanding journey will captivate listeners who are curious about the hidden worlds and networks that make up our planet.

With curiosity and wit, Ina Park's Strange Bedfellows rips back the sheets on the mysteries of what happens when STDs enter the sack.

Systems biology came about as growing numbers of engineers and scientists from other fields created algorithms which supported the analysis of biological data in incredible quantities. Whereas biologists of the past had been forced to study one item or aspect at a time, due to technical and biological limitations, it suddenly became possible to study biological phenomena within their natural contexts. 

A path-breaking journey into the brain, showing how perception, thought, and action are products of "maps" etched into your gray matter - and how technology can use them to read your mind.

'Thrilling and delightful' - George Monbiot 'Vital, brilliant, wholly absorbing... A masterpiece of science writing' - Isabella tree To appreciate the wonders of the world around us, we're often told to look up. But what if we need to look down instead? Everything that happens below ground...

For many of us, the buzzing of a bee elicits panic. But the next time you hear that low droning sound, look closer: the bee has navigated to this particular spot for a reason using a fascinating set of tools. What a Bee Knows: Exploring the Thoughts, Memories, and Personalities of Bees invites us to follow bees' mysterious paths and experience their alien world.

Ignác Semmelweis is remembered for the now-commonplace notion that doctors must wash their hands before examining patients. In mid-19th century Vienna, however, this was a subversive idea. With deaths from childbed fever exploding, Semmelweis discovered that doctors themselves were spreading the disease. While his simple reforms worked immediately - childbed fever in Vienna all but disappeared - they brought down upon Semmelweis the wrath of the establishment, and led to his tragic end. 

In Unfit for Purpose, biologist and broadcaster Adam Hart explores the mismatch between our fundamental biology and the modern world we have created. In each chapter Adam reveals the many ways in which biological adaptations that evolved to help us survive and thrive now work against us. For example, in the modern world stress is a killer, but how did 'fight or flight' instincts turn from life-savers to life-takers? Obesity might be a disease now, but is it really just a troublesome side-effect of our complex evolutionary past?

In What's Eating You? Eugene Kaplan recounts the true and harrowing tales of his adventures with parasites, and in the process introduces readers to the intimately interwoven lives of host and parasite.

Evolution is one of the most important processes in life. It not only explains the detailed history of life on earth, but its scope also extends into many aspects of our own contemporary behavior - who we are and how we got to be here, our psychology, our cultures - and greatly impacts modern advancements in medicine and conservation biology. Perhaps its most important claim for science is its ability to provide an overarching framework that integrates the many life sciences into a single unified whole. Yet, evolution has been, and continues to be, regarded with suspicion by many.

Piping Hot Bees and Boisterous Buzz-Runners takes listeners inside a world seldom seen even by beekeepers, shedding light on twenty of the most compelling mysteries of honey bee behavior.

“Read this book and discover sex again, but from a scientific perspective, and see why it evolved. It’s almost as much fun, and needs less energy.” — Peter Macinnis, author of 100 Discoveries: The Greatest Breakthroughs in History "How Sex Works manages to inject science writing with the...