Genetic History

Discover how Galileo worked out his scientific theories of motion and inertia, why Isaac Newton gets the credit for them, and what the discovery of DNA meant. All the big scientific ideas are brought to life with pithy quotes and step-by-step 'mind maps' - from evolution and continental drift to black holes and genetic engineering, showing how the ideas of famous scientists have affected our understanding of the world.

When a solar super-storm hits the Earth, the end of the world as we know it becomes a new beginning for mankind. A society in which life is much better for everyone thanks to The ACME Corporation. But is it enough to ensure mankind's long-term survival? Mankind 2.0 is the third book of The Chaos Trilogy*. It is preceded by The Chaos Machine and Second Contact. Mankind 2.0 bridges the first two books and ties everything together. Author's note: Whether you enjoy reading this or not, I would appreciate any honest reviews. It's the only way I can get any feedback as to how I'm doing as an ...

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.

It was the most radical human-breeding experiment in American history, and no one knew how it turned out. The Repository for Germinal Choice, nicknamed the Nobel Prize sperm bank, opened to notorious fanfare in 1980, and for two decades, women flocked to it from all over the country to choose a sperm donor from its roster of Nobel-laureate scientists, mathematical prodigies, successful businessmen, and star athletes.

This new book by Spencer Wells, the internationally known geneticist, anthropologist, author, and director of the Genographic Project, focuses on the seminal event in human history: mankind's decision to become farmers rather than hunter-gatherers.

With the ongoing advancement of AI and other technologies, our world is becoming increasingly intelligent. From chatbots to innovations in brain-computer interfaces to the possibility of superintelligences leading to the Singularity later this century, our reality is being transformed before our eyes. This is commonly seen as the natural result of progress, but what if there's more to it than that? What if intelligence is an inevitability, an underlying property of the universe?

Eryn’s deep connection to both his frog family and the humans led him to use his empathic power to ensure the cannibalistic frog monsters hibernate while the last civilization of humans is safe. He secretly observes the captivating firstborn twins in Phoenix and longs to join them. But, Eryn’s egg brother Ernest is a cunning psycho, more frog than man is hungry for human blood.

From the big bang to the origin and evolution of intelligent life in a search for the meaning of human existence, Why Are We Here?, by author Bruce Brodie, offers a look at evolution and the future of life on the planet.

Today's generation is bombarded with theories about humankind and its origins. The danger for Christians lies in the wealth of misinformation and miscommunication about simple biblical truths such as: (1) How and when the world began, (2) Whether humans are unique or merely a happenstance of evolution, (3) The distinction between humankind and other living creatures, (4) The evolution of life on this planet, and (5) The spiritual dimensions of the human soul.

We are all familiar with the "march of progress," the representation of evolution that depicts a series of apelike creatures becoming progressively taller and more erect before finally reaching the upright human form. Its emphasis on linear progress has had a decisive impact on public understanding of evolution, yet the image contradicts modern scientific conceptions of evolution as complex and branching.

Offering a bold new understanding of who we are, where we came from, and where we are going, noted ecologist Mark Bertness argues that human beings and their civilization are the products of the same self-organization, evolutionary adaptation, and natural selection processes that have created all other life on Earth. Bertness follows the evolutionary process from the primordial soup of two billion years ago through today, exploring the ways opposing forces of competition and cooperation have led to current assemblages of people, animals, and plants.

Palaeontologist Steve Brusatte weaves together the history and evolution of our mammal forebears with stories of the scientists whose fieldwork and discoveries underlie our knowledge, both of iconic mammals like the mammoths and sabre-toothed tigers of which we have all heard, and of fascinating species that few of us are aware of. For what we see today is but a very limited range of the mammals that have existed; in this fascinating and groundbreaking book, Steve Brusatte tells their—and our—story.

Wars with aliens make for strange bedfellows. Five hundred years ago I died. In most cases that would have been the end of it. The thing is, I didn't stay dead. Well, actually I did, but more to the point my mind woke up in brand spanking new, state-of-the-art cloned body custom built by the Imperium to fight the B'dar. This is my story. This is the future history of me.

Ego: The Fall of the Twin Towers and the Rise of a New Humanity is the first book to explore the positive evolutionary potential hidden in one of the most destructive events in history. In their examination of the evolutionary implications of 9/11 and its aftermath, the authors contend we are not falling into the grip of a new dark age at all, rather we are on the verge of a much brighter one as the Darwinian process of natural selection continues to advance humankind.

Throughout history, people have sought to reduce suffering, eliminate disease and enhance desirable qualities in their children. In the Victorian era eugenics, a full-blooded attempt to impose control over unruly biology, began to grow among the powerful and quickly spread to dozens of countries around the world. But these ideas are not merely historical: today, with new gene editing techniques, conversations are happening about tinkering with the DNA of our unborn children to make them smarter, fitter, stronger.

In The Synthetic Age, Christopher Preston argues that what is most startling about this coming epoch is not only how much impact humans have had but, more important, how much deliberate shaping they will start to do. Emerging technologies promise to give us the power to take over some of Nature's most basic operations. It is not just that we are exiting the Holocene and entering the Anthropocene; it is that we are leaving behind the time in which planetary change is just the unintended consequence of unbridled industrialism.

The field of biotechnology has evolved over the past four decades, developing medicines which are curing diseases. But this journey of success has been tough and arduous, built upon the shoulders of major failures.

Few of us know much about the biology of sex determination, but what could be more interesting than to discover how we are shaped into males and females? In this book, Elof Carlson tells the incredible story of the difficult quest to understand how the body forms girls and boys. Carlson's history takes us from antiquity to the present day to detail how each component of human reproduction and sexuality was identified and studied....

How did species wind up where they are today? Scientists have long conjectured that plants and animals dispersed throughout the world by drifting on large landmasses as they broke up, but in The Monkey’s Voyage, biologist Alan de Queiroz offers a radical new theory that displaces this passive view.

From the Siberian permafrost to balmy California, scientists across the globe are working to resurrect all kinds of extinct animals, from ones that just left us to those that have been gone for many thousands of years. Their tools in this hunt are both fossils and cutting-edge genetic technologies. Some of these scientists are driven by sheer curiosity; others view the lost species as a powerful weapon in the fight to preserve rapidly changing ecosystems. It seems certain that these animals will walk the earth again, but what world will that give us? And is any of this a good idea?