Résultats Éditeur "Audible Studios for Bloomsbury" dans Sciences biologiques

Early in 2013 Neil Hayward was at a crossroads. He didn't want to open a bakery or whatever else executives do when they quit a lucrative but unfulfilling job. He didn't want to think about his failed relationship with 'the one' or his potential for ruining a new relationship with 'the next one'. And he almost certainly didn't want to think about turning 40. And so instead he went birding. Birding was a lifelong passion. It was only among the birds that Neil found a calm that had eluded him in the confusing world of humans.

Adored by children and adults alike, tyrannosaurus is the most famous dinosaur in the world, one that pops up again and again in pop culture, often battling other beasts such as King Kong, triceratops, or velociraptors in Jurassic Park. But despite the hype, tyrannosaurus and the other tyrannosaurs are fascinating animals in their own right and are among the best-studied of all dinosaurs.

"The demon of speed is often associated with forgetting, with avoidance...and slowness with memory and confronting," observes Milan Kundera in his novel Slowness. With that purpose in mind - a search for slowness and tranquility - Andy Merrifield sets out on a journey of the soul with a friend's donkey, Gribouille, to walk amid the ruins and spectacular vistas of southern France's Haute-Auvergne.

p53: The Gene That Cracked the Cancer Code reveals the tale of the search for this gene, as well as the excitement of the hunt for new cures - the hype, the lost opportunities, the blind alleys, and the thrilling breakthroughs. As the long-anticipated revolution in cancer treatment tailored to each individual patient's symptoms starts to take off at last, p53 is still at the forefront of the game. This is a timely tale of scientific discovery and advances in our understanding of a disease that still affects more than one in three of us at some point in our lives.

A paradigm shift is roiling the environmental world. For decades people have unquestioningly accepted the idea that our goal is to preserve nature in its pristine, pre-human state. But many scientists have come to see this as an outdated dream that thwarts bold new plans to save the environment and prevents us from having a fuller relationship with nature. Humans have changed the landscapes they inhabit since prehistory, and climate change means even the remotest places now bear the fingerprints of humanity.

Lynn Schooler had recently lost a dear friend and was feeling his marriage slipping away from him when he set out on a daring journey - first by boat, then on foot - into the Alaskan wilderness to clear his head. His solo expedition, recounted in Walking Home, is filled with the awe and danger of being on one's own in the wild, being battered by the elements and even, for two harrowing days, becoming the terrified quarry of a grizzly bear. But the formidable, lonely landscape is also rich with human stories....

In the early 19th century passenger pigeons accounted for 25 to 40 percent of North America’s birds, traveling in flocks so massive as to block out the sun for hours. Although adults weighed only twelve ounces, they nested and roosted in the millions, destroying large oaks as if hit by hurricanes. Their favorite foods were the seeds and nuts of beech, chestnuts, and other forest trees, but they also raided farmers’ buckwheat, wheat, corn, and rye crops.

Frankenstein: Or, Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley had a huge impact on Gothic horror and science fiction genres. The name Frankenstein has become part of our everyday language, often used in derogatory terms to describe scientists who have overstepped a perceived moral line. But how did a 19-year-old woman with no formal education come up with the idea for an extraordinary novel such as Frankenstein?

All life as we know it is carbon-based and reliant on sources of liquid water and energy for its survival; it is also, of course, known from just one planet: the Earth, a world perfectly suited to host life. But across a universe of at least 100 billion habitable, earthlike worlds, life cannot be restricted to just this one place. Or can it?

Animals, and our ever-changing relationships with them, have left an indelible mark on human history. From the dawn of our existence, animals and humans have been constantly redefining their relationships with one another, and entire civilizations have risen and fallen upon this curious bond we share with our fellow fauna.

Imagine what it would be like to one day wake up and find that you were suddenly completely blind. This is what happened to Vanessa Potter. Her condition is unique. It has no name. Over the course of the next six months, Vanessa slowly recovered her vision. This mesmerising account tells the story of Patient H69 in her own words, based on these detailed diaries she kept during her time of blindness and through the scientific research that was to follow.

A list of the attributes that define a mammal is a ragbag of things - fur, live birth, three bones in the middle ear, a brain whose two halves are robustly joined together.... But this curious collection of features contain the roots of all the biology that makes us what we are: monkeys with massive brains who parent extensively, enjoy sport and think lots. Which is to say, what makes us mammals makes us human.

The human body is like an exceedingly well-fortified castle, defended by billions of soldiers - some live for less than a day, others remember battles for decades, but all are essential in protecting us from disease. This hidden army is our immune system, and without it we could not survive the eternal war between us and our microscopic enemies. Immune explores the incredible arsenal that lives within us - how it knows what to attack and what to defend and how it kills everything from the common cold to the plague bacterium.

As you read these words, planet Earth teems with trillions of life-forms, all going about their own business: eating, reproducing, thriving.... Yet the life of almost every single organism draws nearer to certain death. On the other hand, "suicide" inside the mitochondria that live within us results in the death of millions of cells each second for our own good! Why is death such a universal companion to life on Earth? Why haven't animals evolved to break free of its shackles?

Many people will remember that Rachel Carson predicted a silent spring, but she also warned of a fruitless fall, a time with no pollination and no fruit. The fruitless fall nearly became a reality when, in 2007, beekeepers watched 30 billion bees mysteriously die. And they continue to disappear. The remaining pollinators, essential to the cultivation of a third of American crops, are now trucked across the country and flown around the world, pushing them ever closer to collapse.

For millennia plant and animal species have received little sustained attention as subjects of Christian theology and ethics in their own right. Focused on the human dilemma of sin and redemptive grace, theology has considered the doctrine of creation to be mainly an overture to the main drama of human being`s relationship to God. What value does the natural world have within the framework of religious belief?

The book traces Conor Jameson's travels in search of the Goshawk, a magnificent yet rarely seen (in Britain at least) raptor. Each episode of the narrative arises from personal experience, investigation, and the unearthing of information from research, exploration, and conversations. The journey takes him from an encounter with a stuffed Goshawk in a glass case, through travels into supposed Goshawk territories in Britain, to Berlin - where he finds the bird at ease in the city. Why, he wants to know, is the bird so rarely seen in Britain?

A tour of some of the world's most iconic and endangered species - and what we can do to save them. Climate change and habitat destruction are not the only culprits behind so many animals facing extinction. The impact of consumer demand for cheap meat is equally devastating, and it is vital that we confront this problem if we are to stand a chance of reducing its effect on the world around us. Our planet's resources are reaching a breaking point.

How are eggs of different shapes made, and why are they the shapes they are? When does the shell of an egg harden? Why do some eggs contain two yolks? How are the colours and patterns of eggshells created, and why do they vary? And which end of an egg is laid first - the blunt end or the pointy end?

The question of how and why organisms age has teased scientists for centuries. There are myriad competing theories, from the idea that ageing is a simple wear and tear process, like the rusting of a car, to the belief that ageing and death are genetically programmed and controlled. In fact, there is no clearly defined limit to life and no single, predictable program playing itself out: different things are happening within and between tissues, and each system or organ accumulates damage at its own pace, according to the kind of insults imposed on it by daily living.