Genetic Science

Darwin's theory of evolution is accepted by most educated Americans as simple fact. This easy acceptance, however, hides from us the many ways in which evolution - as an idea - shapes our thinking about a great many things. What if this idea is wrong? What if "evolution" is just a word that covers up scientific ignorance of how the wonders of the living world could have been created? Berkeley law professor Phillip Johnson looks at the evidence for Darwinistic evolution the way a lawyer would - with a cold dispassionate eye for logic and proof.

In this sequel to Pulse, a genetic disease known as Brugada Syndrome kills its victims without warning, without symptom. When the president of the United States falls victim to a weaponized and contagious strain of the disease, the Chess Team - King, Queen, Rook, Knight, and Bishop - are assigned to protect Sara Fogg, a CDC detective, as she journeys to the source of the new strain: the Annamite Mountains in Vietnam.

"It's the animal in us," we often hear when we've been bad. But why not when we're good? Primates and Philosophers tackles this question by exploring the biological foundations of one of humanity's most valued traits: morality.In this provocative book, primatologist Frans de Waal argues that modern-day evolutionary biology takes far too dim a view of the natural world, emphasizing our "selfish" genes.

A corporate aristocracy descended from Africa rules a colony on a distant planet. Life here is easy—for the rarified and privileged few. The aristocrats enjoy a powerful cybernetic technology that extends their life spans and ensures their prosperity. Those who serve them suffer under a heavy hand. But within this ruthless society are agents of hope and change. In a secret underwater laboratory, a separatist cult has created a threat to the aristocracy. The Primes are highly intelligent, manipulative products of genetic engineering, designed to lead a rebellion.

The crew of the Capricious seems to leave a trail of devastation wherever they go. But with powerful enemies in pursuit and family and friends under attack planetside, there's no time to worry about all that. Ensnared by the legend of Origin, humanity's birthplace, and a long-dead form of magic, the Capricious takes off on a journey to find the first colony ship...and power that could bring down gods.

In the great halls of science, dogma holds that Darwin's theory of natural selection explains every branch on the tree of life: which species thrive, which wither away to extinction, and what features each evolves. But can adaptation by natural selection really account for everything we see in nature? Yale University ornithologist Richard Prum - reviving Darwin's own views - thinks not.

Entre Seul sur Mars et Dark Matter, un thriller de science-fiction inventif et trépidant, bientôt adapté au cinéma par Bong Joon-ho (Parasite) ! Mourir n'est pas une partie de plaisir... mais c'est une manière de gagner sa vie. Mickey7 est un Consommable : un employé jetable d'une expédition humaine envoyée sur Niflheim, un monde de glace, pour le coloniser. Dès qu'une mission paraît trop dangereuse - voire suicidaire -, l'équipage se tourne vers lui. À la mort d'une version, un nouveau corps est régénéré, sa mémoire pratiquement intacte.

To the modern mind, the idea of honor is outdated, sexist, and barbaric. It evokes Hamilton and Burr and pistols at dawn, not visions of a well-organized society. But for philosopher Tamler Sommers, a sense of honor is essential to living moral lives. In Why Honor Matters, Sommers argues that our collective rejection of honor has come at great cost. Reliant only on Enlightenment liberalism, the United States has become the home of the cowardly, the shameless, the selfish, and the alienated. Properly channeled, honor encourages virtues like courage, integrity, and solidarity.

In a society where everyone's DNA determines their destiny, being a Natural means automatic relegation to the gritty and dangerous Outskirts. Born a Natural, Lee Urban was adopted into the Enhanced high society of the Asian Federation and forced to conceal her genetic roots. When her dream of attending Peking University becomes a reality, she is determined to go despite a warning from a mysterious source. Targeted by a hacker bent on exposing her true DNA, Urban faces off with an Artificial Intelligence Game that puts her—and her lies—to the test.

They don’t just want her body. They want her mind. Willow has just graduated as the youngest PhD in decades in the new field of cognitive redesign. She is desperate to find a cure for the disease that is slowly deteriorating her mother’s mind, tearing her mother from her. What she thought was a chance to work at a prestigious biotech company turns into a nightmare where she is the prize in a struggle between the brother she loves and the biotech’s plans.

The United States is embarking on a medical revolution. Supporters of personalized, or precision, medicine—the tailoring of health care to our genomes—have promised to usher in a new era of miracle cures. Advocates of this gene-guided health-care practice foresee a future where skyrocketing costs can be curbed by customization and unjust disparities are vanquished by biomedical breakthroughs. Progress, however, has come slowly, and with a price too high for the average citizen.

Marco Morelli, a rookie marine private, botches his first op and gets transferred to the most rough-and-tumble outfit in the Merged Earth Colonies: Cygni Corps. Though the Corps is filled with the military’s rejects, Marco soon learns it’s also the testing ground for a new serum that will make him and his comrades the finest soldiers in the galaxy.

The Blues are rapidly reproducing, growing more intelligent and lethal each day. With hundreds of millions still covering the earth, the future of humankind looks bleak. Yet Bruce and his Clan refuse to die without a fight to the bitter end. Meanwhile, the remnants of the US government are experimenting on Blues, teaching them how to fire weapons. It’s up to Bruce and his team to stop this atrocity before they lose the only advantage they have over the Blues. They have no idea that what they find will change the course of the human race forever.

Nicolelis undertakes the first attempt to explain the entirety of human history, culture, and civilization based on a series of recently uncovered key principles of brain function. This new cosmology is centered around three fundamental properties of the human brain: its insurmountable malleability to adapt and learn; its exquisite ability to allow multiple individuals to synchronize their minds around a task, goal, or belief; and its incomparable capacity for abstraction.

United States of Japan is set in a gripping alternate history where the Japanese Empire rules over America with huge robots. Is resistance possible in the form of subversive video games? Decades ago, Japan won the Second World War. Americans worship their infallible emperor, and nobody believes that Japan's conduct in the war was anything but exemplary. Nobody, that is, except the George Washingtons, a group of rebels fighting for freedom.

Did you know women walk more, eat less, socialize more, meet more men, dance more, and flirt more when they're ovulating? Or that PMS may have evolved to get rid of boyfriends with unfit sperm? Behind the "fickle" differences in what women find sexy about men, or what they like to wear, there's a hidden adaptive intelligence shaped over eons. Rather than making women irrational - as the conventional and irredeemably sexist wisdom goes - the female hormonal cycle has been exquisitely fine-tuned to give women the advantages they needed to succeed in our ancestral environments, and perhaps also today.

Leading archaeogeneticist Johannes Krause and journalist Thomas Trappe investigate what DNA can tell us about how we got where we are and what our future might be. They show how the first humans were defeated again and again and suffered fatal setbacks, and how Homo sapiens succeeded in conquering continents, overcoming natural borders, and bringing other species under its control. But the genetic blueprint that enabled us to get to the place where we are today had one flaw: it didn't factor in planetary boundaries.

Everything you were taught about evolution is wrong. In this shocking book, Berkeley-educated doctor of biology Jonathan Wells lets you in on scientific discoveries you won't learn about from college and high-school textbooks - and reveals a dirty little secret known only to some of his fellow biologists.

The Queen Bitch returns to the planet of her birth, and gathers the heroes who rose up to defend Irth in her absence. Meanwhile, the Federation is under attack from all sides. While Bethany Anne’s rage scorches the Irth, Lance gets to experience the unity he always dreamed of. Long awaited family reunions must take place under the shadow of the final war. Old faces and new faces come together to fight for what is theirs....and no one is immune from the consequences of war. Don’t miss out on the universe-shattering conclusion to The Kurtherian Endgame series.

More than a century has passed since Bethany Anne’s Armada left the Federation to tackle the Gödel and the Kurtherians head-on. In her absence, have certain parties within the Federation grown too big for their boots? The Federation Council has become engorged with corrupt representatives from the corporate families who believe their wealth entitles them to subvert the principles the Federation was founded upon. Bethany Anne returns alone in ass-kicking mode, determined to oust the families hell-bent on taking over - but have the families become too powerful, even for her?