Evolution History

Just 150 years ago, most of our world was an unexplored wilderness. Our sense of its age was vastly off the mark. And what we believed to be the history of our own species consisted of fantastic myths and fairy tales; fossils, known for millennia, were seen as the bones of dragons and other imagined creatures. How did we learn so much so quickly? Remarkable Creatures celebrates the pioneers who replaced our fancies with the even more remarkable real story of how our world evolved.

Since its formation nearly five billion years ago, our planet has been the sole living world in a vast and silent universe. Now, Earth's isolation is coming to an end. Over the past two decades, astronomers have discovered thousands of "exoplanets" orbiting other stars, including some that could be similar to our own world. Studying those distant planets for signs of life will be crucial to understanding life's intricate mysteries right here on Earth. In a firsthand account of this unfolding revolution, Lee Billings draws on interviews with top researchers.

For Irwin Shapiro, science starts with questions. This book provides a broad and entertaining survey of major scientific discoveries that have changed our views of nature and, in turn, spawned further questions. Shapiro, an award-winning scientist and beloved teacher, separates his inquiry into three parts: looking up at the universe; looking down at the earth and its fossils; and looking in at the story of life. His framework encourages listeners to view science as a detective story—to observe and question nature and natural phenomena, and to base all conclusions on scientific evidence.

Life histories can be defined as the means by which individuals (or more precisely genotypes) vary their age- or stage-specific expenditures of reproductive effort in response to genetic, phenotypic, and environmental correlates of survival and fecundity. Life histories reflect the expression of traits most closely related to individual fitness, such as age and size at maturity, number and size of offspring, and the timing of the expression of those traits throughout an individual's life. Life-history research plays an integral role in species conservation and management.

In 1955, on a visit to South Africa, Robert Ardrey became aware of the growing evidence that man had evolved on the African continent from carnivorous, predatory stock - ones who had also, long before man, achieved the use of weapons. A dramatist, Ardrey's interest in the African discoveries sprang less from purely scientific grounds than from the radical new light they cast on the eternal question: Why do we behave as we do? Are we naturally inclined towards war and weapons?

Un anciano con un solo ojo, con un manto gris y sombrero de ala ancha, apoyándose de un bastón. Un vagabundo que aparece cuando menos se le espera, trayendo triunfo o perdición. El dios de la profecía, la poesía y el destino. Un cambiaformas. Un hechicero. El dios Odín es una figura dramática en la mitología nórdica y es aún parte del imaginario popular. Ha sido la inspiración para figuras como Gandalf el Gris, de J.R.R. Tolkien, y todavía figura en literatura moderna tan variada como los cómics de Marvel o la novela de Neil Gaiman American Gods (2001).

Un martillo que ningún mortal puede levantar. Un flamante dios de la tormenta, con cabello cual llamas. Un héroe-dios-alienígena que defiende a la humanidad. La esvástica. Incluso el nombre Thursday [jueves en inglés] es “Thor’s Day” [el día de Thor]. A pesar de la virtual desaparición de la religión autóctona y mitología nórdica siglos atrás, aún se encuentra con regularidad en la sociedad moderna al dios de la tormenta, Thor, quien continúa siendo traído de vuelta a la vida en forma de literatura y más recientemente, como protagonista de películas taquilleras de Hollywood.

Brilliant offers a sweeping view of a surprisingly revealing aspect of human history - from the stone lamps of the Pleistocene to the LEDs embedded in fabrics of the future. Jane Brox plumbs the class implications of light - who had it, who didn't - through the many centuries when crude lamps and tallow candles constricted waking hours. Brillant is infused with human voices, startling insights, and - only a few years before it becomes illegal to sell most incandescent light bulbs in the United States - timely questions about how our future lives will be shaped by light.

Crusades against the automobile are nothing new. Its arrival sparked battles over street space, pitting the masses against the millionaires who terrorized pedestrians. When the masses got cars of their own, they learned to love driving, too. During World War II, Washington nationalized Detroit and postwar Americans embraced car and country as if they were one.

Nearly 150 years later, the theory of evolution continues to create tension between the scientific and religious communities. Challenges about teaching the theory of evolution in schools occur annually all over the country. This same debate raged within Darwin himself, and played an important part in his marriage: his wife, Emma, was quite religious, and her faith gave Charles a lot to think about as he worked on a theory that continues to spark intense debates.

Brains Through Time examines how vertebrate nervous systems evolved in conjunction with other organ systems and the planet's ecology. Surveying an enormous range of information on genes and proteins, sensory and motor systems, central neural circuits, physiology, and animal behavior, the authors reconstruct the major changes that occurred as vertebrates emerged and then diversified.

Kendrick Mercer's Whole Self tells the story of the birth, evolution, and history of human consciousness and its impact on the human psyche. This is the most powerful unfolding force on the Earth, with the potential to lead us either to annihilate ourselves by generating conflict or to work together wisely and in common purpose.

Human history mirrors the history of climate change. Human origins, for example, can be traced to five million years ago when the climate of East Africa became progressively hotter and drier. This caused the lush tropical jungles to disappear and be replaced by arid plains and savannahs. Our pre-human ancestors learned to exploit those new ecosystems by gathering the seed-bearing grasses, nuts, and tubers that thrived in these semi-arid conditions. Also, by foraging in the heat of the day, proto-humans could minimize unwelcome contact with nocturnal predators.

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.

If you could bring back one living being from the whole of the history of time, what would you choose? Comedian and former stem-cell biologist Helen Pilcher has thought about this problem - a lot. In Bring Back the King, Helen explains the cutting-edge science that makes the resurrection of extinct animals a very real possibility and highlights her choices from eras gone by, from the king of the dinosaurs, Tyrannosaurus rex, to the King of Rock 'n' Roll, Elvis Presley.

School is out in the summer of 1925 in Dayton, Tennessee. For Frances Robinson, a 15-year-old daydreamer with a crush on her teacher, John T. Scopes, summer vacation promises tennis and Coca-Colas from her father's drug store. But when Frances' father, the school board chairman, has Scopes arrested for teaching evolution, the sleepiest place on earth becomes a hotbed for famous thinkers, including H.L. Mencken, Clarence Darrow, and William Jennings Bryan.

A survey of Chinese naval operational history, Li's book focuses on the major battles and important engagements of Chinese naval operations from 1949-2009. His findings elucidate the origin of and changes of the People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) by examining its adaptation, modernization, and setbacks in the past sixty years.

Charles Darwin did not deliberately set out to be the destroyer of mythical beliefs,” some of which, in his early days as a young Christian, he had previously espoused. He was a modest man who liked to avoid controversy of any kind, yet paradoxically, he was to be the cause of the greatest controversy in the history of science and religion.When Darwin embarked on the HMS Beagle in late December 1831, bound for the southern hemisphere, he could not have imagined that the experience would lead him to formulate a theory that would totally revolutionize the way in which we viewed the natural world.

World War II was thus the culmination of a quarter century of tank development, and it would also be the first major test of tanks in mobile warfare, during which they had to face other tanks. As each new, improved model came off the assembly lines, the opposing powers rushed to create a tank that could beat it. In that regard, World War II was also a war between rival engineers. The Evolution of Tanks in World War II looks at the most important tanks from 1942 to 1945, and how doctrines changed in the wake of Germany’s conquest of Western Europe.

A history and examination of cursing, swearing, whatever you want to effing call it! Is it useful? Is it effective?