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In ascension / by MacInnes, Martin,author.;
"An astonishing novel about a young microbiologist investigating an unfathomable deep vent in the ocean floor, leading her on a journey that will encompass the full trajectory of the cosmos and the passage of a single human life. Leigh grew up in Rotterdam, drawn to the waterfront as an escape from her unhappy home life and volatile father. Enchanted by the undersea world of her childhood, she excels in marine biology, traveling the globe to study ancient organisms. When a trench is discovered in the Atlantic Ocean, Leigh joins the exploration team, hoping to find evidence of Earth's first life forms--what she instead finds calls into question everything we know about our own beginnings. Her discovery leads Leigh to the Mojave Desert and an ambitious new space agency. Drawn deeper into the agency's work, she learns that the Atlantic trench is only one of several related phenomena from across the world, each piece linking up to suggest a pattern beyond human understanding. Leigh knows that to continue working with the agency will mean leaving behind her declining mother and her younger sister, and faces an impossible choice: to remain with her family, or to embark on a journey across the breadth of the cosmos. Exploring and celebrating the natural world with wonder and reverence, In Ascension is a compassionate, deeply inquisitive epic that reaches outward to confront the greatest questions of existence, looks inward to illuminate the smallest details of the human heart, and shows how--no matter how far away we might be and how much we have lost hope--we will always attempt to return to the people and places we call home"--
Subjects: Science fiction.; Novels.; Discoveries in science; Evolution (Biology); Life on other planets; Marine biologists; Women scientists;

The trial of the century / by Jarrett, Gregg,author.; Yaeger, Don,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."Nearly a century ago, famed liberal attorney Clarence Darrow defended schoolteacher John Scopes in a blockbuster legal proceeding that brought the attention of the entire country to the small town of Dayton, Tennessee. Darrow's seminal defense of freedom of speech helped form the legal bedrock on which our civil liberties depend today."--
Subjects: Bryan, William Jennings, 1860-1925.; Darrow, Clarence, 1857-1938.; Scopes, John Thomas; Evolution (Biology); Science teachers.;

The dog patrol : our canine companions and the kids who protect them / by Laidlaw, Rob.;
Includes Internet addresses and index.Examines dog biology, evolution, and behaviour, and explores the joys and responsibilities of dog guardianship.LSC
Subjects: Dogs; Human-animal relationships;

Monarchs in a changing world : biology and conservation of an iconic butterfly / by Oberhauser, Karen Suzanne,editor.; Nail, Kelly R.,editor.; Altizer, Sonia M.,editor.; Container of (work):Oberhauser, Karen Suzanne.Monarchs and people.;
Includes bibliographical references (pages 283-312) and index.
Subjects: Monarch butterfly.; Monarch butterfly;

How the zebra got its stripes : Darwinian stories told through evolutionary biology / by Grasset, Léo,author.; Mellor, Barbara,translator.;
Includes bibliographical references and index.Why do giraffes have such long necks? Why are zebras striped? Why are buffalo herds broadly democratic while elephants prefer dictatorships? What explains the architectural brilliance of the termite mound or the complications of the hyena's sex life? And why have honey-badgers evolved to be one of nature's most efficient agents of mass destruction? Deploying the latest scientific research and his own extensive observations on the African savannah, Léo Grasset offers some answers to these and many other intriguing questions.
Subjects: Evolution.; Savanna animals; Savanna animals; Savanna ecology;

The singularity is nearer : when we merge with Al / by Kurzweil, Ray,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."This successor volume to The Singularity Is Near explores how technology will refashion the human race in the decades to come. In this entirely new book, Ray Kurzweil brings a fresh perspective to advances in the singularity -- assessing the progress of many of his predictions and examining the novel advancements that, in the near future, will bring a revolution in knowledge and an expansion of human potential. Among the topics he discusses are rebuilding the world atom by atom with devices like nanobots; radical life extension beyond the current age limit of 120; reinventing intelligence by expanding biological capacity with nonbiological intelligence in the cloud; how life is improving with declines in poverty and violence; and the growth of technologies that can be applied to everything from clothes to building materials to growing human organs. He also considers the potential perils of biotechnology, nanotechnology, and artificial intelligence, including such topics as how AI will impact unemployment and the safety of autonomous cars, and "After Life" technology, which will reanimate people who have passed away through a combination of data and DNA"--
Subjects: Artificial intelligence; Brain; Genetics.; Human evolution.; Nanotechnology.; Robotics.; Technology;

Life after death : surviving suicide / by Brockman, Richard,author.;
Includes bibliographical references."When Richard Brockman found his mother's body, the simple narrative of his childhood ended. Life After Death tells the story of a boy who died and of a man who survived when the boy and the man are one and the same. It tells a very personal--yet tragically common--story of irredeemable loss. It tells the story of story itself. How story forms. How it grows. How it changes. How it can be broken. And finally, how sometimes it can be repaired. Now an expert in genetics, epigenetics, and the biology of attachment, Brockman chronicles his evolution from a child overwhelmed by trauma to a man who has struggled to reclaim his past. He lays bare the core of one who is both victim and healer. By weaving together childhood despair and clinical knowledge, Brockman shows how the shattered pieces of the self--though never the same and not without scars--can sometimes be put back together again."--
Subjects: Biographies.; Autobiographies.; Personal narratives.; Brockman, Richard.; Psychiatrists; Mothers; Death; Grief; Suicide victims;

How we grow up : understanding adolescence / by Richtel, Matt,author.;
"The transition from childhood to adulthood is a natural, evolution-honed cycle that now faces radical change and challenge. The adolescent brain, sculpted for this transition over eons of evolution, confronts a modern world that creates so much social pressure as to regularly exceed the capacities of the evolving mind. The problem comes as a bombardment of screen-based information pelts the brain just as adolescence is undergoing a second key change: puberty is hitting earlier. The result is a neurological mismatch between an ultra-potent environment and a still-maturing brain that can lead to anxiety, depression, and other mental health challenges. It is a crisis that is part of modern life but can only be truly grasped through a broad, grounded lens of the biology of adolescence itself. Through this lens, Richtel shows us how adolescents can understand themselves, and parents and educators can better help"--
Subjects: Adolescence.; Adolescent psychology.;

Some assembly required : decoding four billion years of life, from ancient fossils to DNA / by Shubin, Neil,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."The author of the best-selling Your Inner Fish, now gives us a lively and accessible account of the great transformations in the history of life, that enable us to further understand whether our presence on this planet is an accident or inevitable. The great transformations in the history of life brought about whole scale shifts in how animals live and how their bodies are organized: the evolution of fish to land-living creature, the origin of birds, the beginnings of bodies in single-celled creatures. Shubin describes how over the last half-century, scientists have been able to explore how genetic recipes build bodies during embryological development--how these inventions and adaptations occur in a nonprogressive manner in different contexts, at different speeds. Paleontology has been transformed over the last 50 years by tools and techniques of molecular biology--and it is that revolution in our understanding of the evolution of life that Shubin traces here. Each of us is a mosaic of precursors that came about at different times and places, with deep rooted connections across species that Darwin, for all he understood, could never even have imagined"--
Subjects: Life; Paleontology.; Human evolution.;

Every living thing : the great and deadly race to know all life / by Roberts, Jason(President of Panmedia Corporation),author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."From the bestselling author of A Sense of the World comes this dramatic, globe-spanning and meticulously-researched story of two scientific rivals and their race to survey all life on Earth. In the 18th century, two men dedicated their lives to the same daunting task: identifying and describing all life on Earth. Their approaches could not have been more different. Carl Linnaeus, a pious Swedish doctor with a huckster's flair, believed that life belonged in tidy, static categories. Georges-Louis de Buffon, an aristocratic polymath and keeper of France's royal garden, viewed life as a dynamic swirl of complexities. Both began believing their work to be difficult, but not impossible--how could the planet possibly hold more than a few thousand species? Stunned by life's diversity, both fell far short of their goal. But in the process they articulated starkly divergent views on nature, on humanity's role in shaping the fate of our planet and on humanity itself. The rivalry between these two unique, driven individuals created reverberations that still echo today. Linnaeus, with the help of acolyte explorers he called "apostles" (only half of whom returned alive), gave the world such concepts as mammal, primate and homo sapiens--but he also denied species change and promulgated racist pseudo-science. Buffon coined the term reproduction, formulated early prototypes of evolution and genetics, and argued passionately against prejudice. It was a clash that, during their lifetimes, Buffon seemed to be winning. But their posthumous fates would take a very different turn. With elegant, propulsive prose grounded in more than a decade of research, featuring appearances by Voltaire, Benjamin Franklin and Charles Darwin, bestselling author Jason Roberts tells an unforgettable true-life tale of intertwined lives and enduring legacies, tracing an arc of insight and discovery that extends across three centuries into the present day"--
Subjects: Biographies.; Buffon, Georges Louis Leclerc, comte de, 1707-1788.; Linné, Carl von, 1707-1778.; Biology; Life (Biology); Natural history; Naturalists; Naturalists;

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