Genetic Science

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.

Just outside Los Angeles, a prisoner hidden away for 70 years sits up, gets off the bed and disappears through a solid wall. In Australia, a magician impresses audiences by producing real elephants. Nobody realizes it's not an illusion. Across the world, individuals and organizations with supernatural power suddenly detect the presence of something even they can't understand. At the center of it all, Seb Varden, a 32-year old musician with a secret in his past, slits his wrists, is shot dead and run over on the freeway.

The exciting final three volumes of the Free Trader in one package! New enemies abound from the southern tip to the northernmost settlement and onward into space. Braden, Micah, the Golden Warrior, and Fealona lead the charge against those who would tear the fabric of a rebuilt society.

Once, we humans could only observe evolution. Suddenly, we had conquered it. And yet, in Life as We Made It, evolutionary biologist Beth Shapiro argues that - despite how amazing our new technologies are - our ability to alter the course of evolution isn’t new. What is new is that where once we shaped evolution through brute force, we can now do it as artisans. That power comes not a moment too soon. If we are going to survive in the next few centuries, we must revise the book of life.

Con el ser humano termina el proceso de evolución natural, automático. El ser humano es el último producto de la evolución inconsciente. Con él se inicia la evolución consciente. Primero, la evolución inconsciente es mecánica y natural. Ocurre por sí sola. A través de este tipo de evolución, la consciencia se desarrolla. Pero en el momento en que la consciencia comienza a manifestarse, la evolución inconsciente se detiene porque ha alcanzado su objetivo. La evolución inconsciente es necesaria solo hasta el momento en que lo consciente nace.

What makes you the way you are - and what makes each of us different from everyone else? In Innate, leading neuroscientist and popular science blogger Kevin Mitchell traces human diversity and individual differences to their deepest level: in the wiring of our brains.

Nathan Underhill is right at the cutting edge of stem-cell research: attempting to recreate mythological creatures in order to cure medical conditions like Alzheimer’s and MS. After five years of research, he loses his funding. He discovers that Doctor Zauber, owner of the local care home, has brought to life the basilisk, which could reputedly kill any living thing with a single stare. When Nathan’s wife, Grace, is put into a coma after nearly being killed, Nathan is forced to choose...

For many of us, the great scientific discoveries of the modern age—the Big Bang, evolution, quantum physics, relativity—point to an existence that is bleak, devoid of meaning, pointless. But in The Sacred Depths of Nature, eminent biologist Ursula Goodenough shows us that the scientific world view need not be a source of despair. Indeed, it can be a wellspring of solace and hope. This volume reconciles the modern scientific understanding of reality with our timeless spiritual yearnings for reverence and continuity.

Kalifornien, County Sierra, Goldgräberprovinz: Sheriff Luther Opoku hat mit Kleindelikten und illegalem Drogenanbau zu kämpfen. 300 Meilen westlich davon, im Silicon Valley, wetteifern IT Visionäre um die Erschaffung des ersten ultraintelligenten Computers mit dem Ziel, die großen Probleme der Menschheit zu lösen. Als eine Biologin in Sierra unter rätselhaften Umständen ums Leben kommt, muss Luther erkennen, dass sein verschlafenes Naturidyll längst Testgelände eigenwilliger Experimente geworden ist.

Around 250,000 people have had their genomes sequenced, and scientists expect that number to rise to one billion by 2025. Professor Steven J. Heine argues that the first thing we will do on receiving our DNA test results is to misinterpret them completely. Despite breathless (often lightly researched) media coverage about newly discovered "cancer" or "divorce" or "IQ" genes, the prospect of a DNA test forecasting how your life is going to turn out is vanishingly small.

After buying her favourite rum distillery and settling down, she thought she'd heard the last of her arch nemesis, Evanrute Saarien. But Saarien, fresh out of prison for his misdeeds in Windswept, has just fabricated a new religion, positioning himself as its holy leader. He's telling his congregation to go on strike, to fight the system. And unfortunately, they're listening to him.

In this Hugo nominated science fiction thriller by Mur Lafferty, a crew of clones awakens aboard a space ship to find they're being hunted-and any one of them could be the killer. Maria Arena awakens in a cloning vat streaked with drying blood. She has no memory of how she died. This is new...

For Mack McKinley and his team of GhostWalker killing machines, urban warfare is an art. But despite a hard-won knowledge of the San Francisco streets, Mack knows from experience that too many things can still go wrong. Danger was just another part of the game--and now he's come face-to-face with a woman who can play just as tough. She's Jaimie, a woman with a sapphire stare so potent it can destroy a man. Years ago she and Mack had a history--volatile, erotic, and electric.

In “Terraform,” AJ—Ell’s soon to be brother-in-law—gently takes her to task for not being bold enough to undertake the terraforming of Mars. They begin the first steps to initiate that massive undertaking. Ell’s son Zage, a prodigy who’s now turning six, is continuing to follow his interests in biology and genetics by working in Dr. Reggie Barnes research lab. There he’s become interested in Alzheimer’s disease. Unfortunately, Zage’s friend Carley is having trouble with her newly found brother. Eli’s proving to be an abusive alcoholic like his father.

“There is no good reason why human societies should not be described and explained with the same precision and success as the rest of nature.” Thus argues evolutionary psychologist Pascal Boyer in this uniquely innovative book. Integrating recent insights from evolutionary biology, genetics, psychology, economics, and other fields, Boyer offers precise models of why humans engage in social behaviors such as forming families, tribes, and nations, or creating gender roles.

They call it Company Town - a city-size oil rig off the coast of the Canadian Maritimes, now owned by one very wealthy, powerful, byzantine family: Lynch Ltd. Hwa is of the few people in her community (which constitutes the whole rig) to forgo bioengineered enhancements. As such, she's the last truly organic person left on the rig - making her doubly an outsider as well as a neglected daughter and bodyguard extraordinaire.

We colonized 700 planets. Humankind enjoyed the benefits of expansion room and the end of wars. We even disbanded our military. Then the Krall found us. The Krall have used thousands of years of combat to select the genes of the strongest and fastest warriors. They are a species determined to dominate the entire galaxy, through destruction and annihilation of every opponent.

Koban is an uninhabited high-gravity planet with impossibly fast savage animals, which employ organic superconducting nerves. This deadly world is where the Krall tested humans for war capability.

He’s a genetic experiment. The merging of human and lion DNA his creators call a Breed. And they have no idea just what kind of the creature they brought into being. Callan Lyons wanted only to be left in peace to protect the small group of Breeds he rescued from a New Mexico lab, but those...

When Asha said she wanted to give the Chinese hackers a piece of her mind, she didn’t mean it literally. But that’s what happens when medical technology goes awry. Doctors said they could train her brain to interpret digital signals from the camera in her artificial eye. The module even has Wi-Fi so they can monitor signal traffic across her optic nerve. What they didn’t anticipate was that her brain would figure out how to use the Wi-Fi connection both ways. Asha can now see the internet.

When deep-space travel altered the genes of the first interstellar colonists, Earth abandoned them. But some of the colonies survived, and a new civilization of mental and physical “Variants” has been established, centered around clusters of space stations known as the outworlds. Now the unthinkable has happened: a suicide assault has destroyed the life support system of a major waystation. All that is known about the young men responsible is that in their last living moments they were receiving messages from an uninhabited sector of space and were playing a virtual reality game.