Genetic Science

What is life? This is among the most difficult open problems in science, right up there with the nature of consciousness and the existence of matter. All the definitions we have fall short. None help us understand how life originates or the full range of possibilities for what life on other planets might look like. In Life as No One Knows It, physicist and astrobiologist Sara Imari Walker argues that solving the origin of life requires radical new thinking and an experimentally testable theory for what life is.

Lt. Wayson Harris is one of thousands of clones born and bred to be the ultimate soldiers. But unlike the others, Harris is an outlawed model - one with independent thoughts and an addiction to violence. Presumed dead after his troops were massacred, Harris - who blames the U.A. for the slaughter - has gone AWOL as a bounty hunter. Still, it’s hard for a clone to overcome his conditioning, and Harris finds himself drawn back into the U.A.'s service by his mentor and creator, Fleet Admiral Bryce Klyber.

Captain Lee thought she had faced the most challenging trials the galaxy had to offer. She was wrong. Now she’s on the stunning planet of Krozalia, a world on the brink of chaos following the failed assassination attempt on the princess and the rising of a lethal rebellion. Alliances are crumbling, loyalties are shifting, and Leann has no intention of waiting for the results. Staying might cost her more than she’s willing to pay, but leaving is no longer as simple as jumping into space. So when the rebellion leaders make their move, Captain Lee finds herself in the thick of it all—and...

This Very Short Introduction uncovers the history of our understanding of sexual selection, from Darwin's key insights to the modern day. Considering the investment animals place on reproduction, variation in mating systems, sexual conflict, and the origin of sexual dimorphism, authors Marlene Zuk and Leigh Simmons discuss questions such as whether females can really choose between males on aesthetic grounds and how sexual conflict is resolved in different species.

My name is Rex. I am a good dog. Rex is also seven foot tall at the shoulder, bulletproof, bristling with heavy calibre weaponry and his voice resonates with subsonics especially designed to instil fear. With Dragon, Honey and Bees, he's part of a Multiform Assault Pack operating in the lawless anarchy of Campeche, Mexico. A genetically engineered Bioform, he's a deadly weapon in a dirty war. All he wants to be is a Good Dog. And to do that he must do exactly what Master says and Master says he's got to kill a lot of enemies.

Hella is a planet where everything is oversized. The trees are mile-high, the dinosaur herds are huge, and the weather is extreme - so extreme, the colonists have to migrate twice a year to escape the blistering heat of summer and the atmosphere-freezing cold of winter. Kyle is a neuro-atypical young man, emotionally challenged, but with an implant that gives him real-time access to the colony's computer network. When an overburdened starship arrives, he becomes the link between the established colonists and the refugees from a ravaged Earth.

In this stunning narrative spanning more than 200 million years, Steve Brusatte, a young American paleontologist who has emerged as one of the foremost stars of the field - discovering 10 new species and leading groundbreaking scientific studies and fieldwork - masterfully tells the complete, surprising, and new history of the dinosaurs, drawing on cutting-edge science to dramatically bring to life their lost world and illuminate their enigmatic origins, spectacular flourishing, astonishing diversity, cataclysmic extinction, and startling living legacy.

A trailblazing account of human history, challenging our most fundamental assumptions about social evolution—from the development of agriculture and cities to the emergence of "the state", political violence, and social inequality—and revealing new possibilities for human emancipation.

It may be a wonderful world, but as Dan Riskin explains, it's also a dangerous, disturbing, and disgusting one. At every turn, it seems, living things are trying to eat us, poison us, use our bodies as their homes, or have us spread their eggs. In Mother Nature Is Trying to Kill You, Riskin is our guide through the natural world at its most gloriously ruthless. Using the seven deadly sins as a road map, Riskin offers dozens of jaw-dropping examples that illuminate how brutal nature can truly be.

In this myth-busting book, Daniel Lieberman, professor of human evolutionary biology at Harvard University and a pioneering researcher on the evolution of human physical activity, tells the story of how we never evolved to exercise - to do voluntary physical activity for the sake of health. Using his own research and experiences throughout the world, Lieberman recounts without jargon how and why humans evolved to walk, run, dig, and do other necessary and rewarding physical activities while avoiding needless exertion.

In the middle of the night, in a house on a quiet street in suburban Minneapolis, intruders silently murder Luke Ellis' parents and load him into a black SUV. The operation takes less than two minutes. Luke will wake up at The Institute, in a room that looks just like his own, except there's no window. And outside his door are other doors, behind which are other kids with special talents - telekinesis and telepathy - who got to this place the same way Luke did: Kalisha, Nick, George, Iris, and 10-year-old Avery Dixon.

She Has Her Mother's Laugh presents a profoundly original perspective on what we pass along from generation to generation. Charles Darwin played a crucial part in turning heredity into a scientific question, and yet he failed spectacularly to answer it. The birth of genetics in the early 1900s seemed to do precisely that. Gradually, people translated their old notions about heredity into a language of genes. We need a new definition of what heredity is and, through Carl Zimmer's lucid exposition and storytelling, this resounding tour de force delivers it.

Professor Jim Davies's fascinating and highly accessible book, Riveted, reveals the evolutionary underpinnings of why we find things compelling. Drawing on work from philosophy, anthropology, religious studies, psychology, economics, computer science, and biology, Davies offers a comprehensive explanation to show that in spite of the differences between the many things that we find compelling, they have similar effects on our minds and brains.

Nobody knew where it came from. Nobody knew why it came. When an eight-foot-tall man made of stone appears in the middle of a busy city center one July afternoon, two-bit (and antisocial) reporter Andy Pointer assumes it's just a publicity stunt. Indeed, so does everyone else...until the Stone Man begins to walk, heading silently through the wall of the nearest building, flattening it, and killing several people inside as a result.

In Other Minds, Peter Godfrey-Smith, a distinguished philosopher of science and a skilled scuba diver, tells a bold new story of how subjective experience crept into being—how nature became aware of itself. As Godfrey-Smith stresses, it is a story that largely occurs in the ocean, where animals first appeared.

In a forest wilderness, a dungeon reappears after surviving a nation ending war. The magical shock has devastated both the dungeon and its occupants, in more ways than one. Doc find himself alone in this new place, surrounded with unknown dangers. Claire, Doc's partner and guide, finds herself at facing the nightmares she wrought using Doc, having freed herself from her mother's control. The pressure mounts on both as the damage is made clear. Even then, the wilderness surrounding them is filled with all manner of danger and traps, everything ruled by the law of the strong.

The sun is bloated, diseased, dying perhaps. Beneath its baneful light, Shadrapar, last of all cities, harbours fewer than 100,000 human souls. Built on the ruins of countless civilisations, Shadrapar is a museum, a midden, an asylum, a prison on a world that is ever more alien to humanity. Bearing witness to the desperate struggle for existence between life old and new is Stefan Advani: rebel, outlaw, prisoner, survivor.

A catastrophic event renders the earth a ticking time bomb. In a feverish race against the inevitable, nations around the globe band together to devise an ambitious plan to ensure the survival of humanity far beyond our atmosphere, in outer space.

The secret location of the Vanguard Islands is no longer a secret … Tired from years of fighting, Xavier passes the crown to a younger Hell Diver, Kade Long, and then sets off on the Sea Wolf with Magnolia to find Michael and his family. But the journey will push them both to their limit. On the damaged airship Vanguard, Michael and crew are running out of water and must dive to a new location before attempting the perilous voyage across the Atlantic to a new home.

Andy McGee and Vicky Tomlinson participated in a drug experiment run by a veiled government agency known as The Shop. One year later, they marry. Two years later, their little girl, Charlie, sets her teddy bear on fire by simply staring at it. Now that Charlie is eight, she doesn't start fires anymore. Her parents have taught her to control her pyrokinesis, the ability to set anything - toys, clothes, even people - aflame. But The Shop knows about and wants this pigtailed "ultimate weapon".