Genetic Science

For centuries, people have been returning to the same tired nature-versus-nurture debate, trying to determine what we learn and what we inherit. In Dancing Cockatoos and the Dead Man Test, biologist Marlene Zuk goes beyond the binary and instead focuses on interaction, or the way that genes and environment work together. Driving her investigation is a simple but essential question: How does behavior evolve?

The discovery of DNA’s structure is the story of five towering minds in pursuit of the advancement of science, and for almost all of them, the prospect of fame and immortality: Watson, Crick, Rosalind Franklin, Maurice Wilkins, and Linus Pauling. Howard Markel skillfully recreates the intense intellectual journey, and fraught personal relationships, that ultimately led to a spectacular breakthrough. But it is Rosalind Franklin - fiercely determined, relentless, and an outsider at Cambridge and the University of London in the 1950s - who becomes a focal point for Markel.

Tucked away in Siberia, there are furry, four-legged creatures with wagging tails and floppy ears that are as docile and friendly as any lapdog. But, despite appearances, these are not dogs - they are foxes. They are the result of the most astonishing experiment in breeding ever undertaken - imagine speeding up thousands of years of evolution into a few decades. In 1959, biologists Dmitri Belyaev and Lyudmila Trut set out to do just that, by starting with a few dozen silver foxes from fox farms in the USSR and attempting to recreate the evolution of wolves into dogs in real time.

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.

Haleck Cain fights free of a failing life pod only to learn the space station he doesn’t recognize is in a degrading orbit. Battling for basic survival, he quickly realizes nothing is as it should be. He’s alone, damaged, and surrounded by new enemies. Ten years have passed and the civilization he helped build is in ruins. Cain’s search for his friends will take him to the most dangerous parts of Maglan and reveal a secret he never suspected.

In September 1838, a young Englishman named Charles Darwin hit upon the idea that "natural selection" among competing individuals would lead to wondrous adaptations and species diversity. Twenty-one years passed between that epiphany and publication of On the Origin of Species. The human drama and scientific controversy of that time constitute a fascinating, tangled tale that illuminates this cautious naturalist who sparked an intellectual revolution.

Dr. Jack Greer's startling discovery beneath the Gulf of Mexico proved to the world we were not alone in the universe. But when images from the Voyager One space probe reveal an alien doomsday ship hurtling toward the Earth, the human race seems marked for extinction. As news of the approaching ship spreads panic around the globe, signs of a sinister plot begin to emerge - one that threatens to unravel the already fragile fabric of society and everything Jack and Dr. Mia Ward have fought for.

Reality after reality is being destroyed by THE BLEED. With their options narrowing by the second, and with their group scattered far and wide across the multiverse, it's down to less than 10 people to try and save the lives of billions upon billions of others. If they fail, THE BLEED will rule. Nothing and no one else will survive.

Framed for the murder of an influential leader, Section 9 is left scattered and exposed deep within hostile territory. Tycho and Section 9 must now cross the eastern half of the divided city to reach the safety of the west. Along the way, enemies of all kind will hunt them, including corporate enforcers, syndicate bounty hunters, and a specialized unit of monstrous technological chimera.

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?

Despite the authority of the Sol Federation, major corporations hold most of the power. When the head of one such company, Chief Executive Julian Huxley, is killed, his body is left undiscovered for over three years. Arbiter Tycho Barrett is sent to investigate the executive's death, but what he finds reveals more than he could have imagined. Now, Tycho must search for an android who was once human, forcing him to question everything around him.

Over the past 20 years, paleontologists have made tremendous fossil discoveries, including fossils that mark the growth of whales, manatees, and seals from land mammals and the origins of elephants, horses, and rhinos. Today there exists an amazing diversity of fossil humans, suggesting we walked upright long before we acquired large brains, and new evidence from molecules that enable scientists to decipher the tree of life as never before.

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.

He can be any legally authorized fictional character or dead celebrity he wants for six to eight hours, simply by injecting a DNA-laced cocktail into his brainstem. It's called Big Egos and it's the ultimate role-playing fantasy from Engineering Genetics Organization and Systems (a.k.a. EGOS). And, as one of the quality controllers for EGOS, he's the ultimate ego-tripper, taking on more artificial identities than advisable - and having a hell of a time doing it. Problem is, he's starting to lose the ability to separate fact from fiction.

When you're the king of the mountain, everyone wants to see you fall. He’s secured all three Relics. All problems solved, right? Wrong. Monsters from the Gate roam deserted Earth and Daniel Hunt is first in line to chase them down. Meanwhile, an invisible enemy increases its hold on the human race; infecting one by one as it spreads across the population. This alien pandemic soon reaches those closest to Daniel.The Galactic Government looks to W.O.L.F. led by Daniel Hunt for help in their darkest hour. Will the aid of the Relics be enough?

This 1911 collection of thirty-three stories, selected and revised by the author from amongst his huge output of short fiction, includes tales of comedy, horror, monsters, and strange worlds. In his Introduction, Wells writes that the book brings together, “All the short stories by me that I care for any one to read again,” and that, “No short story of mine of the slightest merit is excluded from this volume.”

Bethany Anne has started to make a difference in the first week of being awake. Now, America has been losing good men since their teams don't have a vampire to help them. Frank is hoping Bethany Anne can, and will, help. Further, the American Pack Council is having internal problems with their own young-and-dumb weres who want to ignore Michael's strictures. With no one seeing Michael, the fear of the Boogeyman is starting to recede.

Director G.T. Titus inserted an obedience chip into his brain and sent him on a secret mission 800 light-years away. On a distant planet, he broke the programming, smashed the chip, and remembered that he was Force Leader Marcus Cade of Battle Unit 175. Now, he’s heading back to Earth to find his wife. If Director Titus tried to use her as well....

For five long years, Richard Stavos has been spilling blood in the arena of the interstellar prison Xan. Within the impenetrable walls of the galaxy's most notorious prison complex, the former lieutenant of the Commonwealth Federation Forces had only his technomancy skills to rely on. Though Stavos has accepted that life outside Xan is nothing but a pipe dream, the forces shaping the galaxy call to him once more. Great changes wash over humankind, threatening to drown civilizations. Changes that push the Technomancer to question his role in the universe.

In Hurricane Lizards and Plastic Squid, biologist Thor Hanson tells the remarkable story of how plants and animals are responding to climate change: adjusting, evolving, and sometimes dying out. Anole lizards have grown larger toe pads, to grip more tightly in frequent hurricanes. Warm waters cause the development of Humboldt squid to alter so dramatically that fishermen mistake them for different species. Brown pelicans move north, and long-spined sea urchins south, to find cooler homes.