Books about Organism from Amazon.com

With spectacularly beautiful colour photographs and an easy understandable text The Buzz about Bees tells the story of honeybees in a new perspective Based on the latest data, notably from his own research group, Jürgen Tautz provides a wonderful insight into the realms of bees.

In contrast to the view of bee colonies as perfect societies of selfless individuals ruled by a queen, Tautz introduces them as a "superorganism", a self organizing and complex adaptive system based on a network of communication; a fascinating result of evolution – a mammal in several bodies.

The entire range of astonishing bee activities is described. Remarkable action photographs never shown before present bees busy with cell cleaning, caring for the brood, serving in the queen’s court, visiting flowers, receiving nectar, producing honey, comb building, entrance guarding, heating and cooling. Spotlights include bees grooming, swarming, fighting, telephoning, sleeping and communicating by high-toned beeping, scents and dances.

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Price: $32.60 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Keep up with today’s rapid advances in the biological sciences with ANIMAL PHYSIOLOGY: FROM GENES TO ORGANISMS with InfoTrac®! With coverage of animal species that will be relevant to your animal-related career, this biology text provides you with the tools you need to succeed. Boxes found throughout the text such as Molecular Biology and Genomics, Beyond the Basics, Challenges and Controversies, Unanswered Questions, and A Closer Look at Adaptation give you examples of cutting-edge research and help you see how what you are learning applies to the real world. Each chapter contains a list of Suggested Readings, a list of websites, and free articles through InfoTrac® College Edition..
Price: $74.44 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Continuing the journey begun in his acclaimed book The Cosmic Serpent, the noted anthropologist ventures firsthand into both traditional cultures and the most up-todate discoveries of contemporary science to determine nature's secret ways of knowing.

Anthropologist Jeremy Narby has altered how we understand the Shamanic cultures and traditions that have undergone a worldwide revival in recent years. Now, in one of his most extraordinary journeys, Narby travels the globe-from the Amazon Basin to the Far East-to probe what traditional healers and pioneering researchers understand about the intelligence present in all forms of life.

Intelligence in Nature presents overwhelming illustrative evidence that independent intelligence is not unique to humanity alone. Indeed, bacteria, plants, animals, and other forms of nonhuman life display an uncanny penchant for self-deterministic decisions, patterns, and actions.

Narby presents the first in-depth anthropological study of this concept in the West. He not only uncovers a mysterious thread of intelligent behavior within the natural world but also probes the question of what humanity can learn from nature's economy and knowingness in its own search for a saner and more sustainable way of life..
Price: $4.04 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Introductory Biomechanics is a new, integrated text written specifically for engineering students. It provides a broad overview of this important branch of the rapidly growing field of bioengineering. A wide selection of topics is presented, ranging from the mechanics of single cells to the dynamics of human movement. No prior biological knowledge is assumed and in each chapter, the relevant anatomy and physiology are first described. The biological system is then analyzed from a mechanical viewpoint by reducing it to its essential elements, using the laws of mechanics and then tying mechanical insights back to biological function. This integrated approach provides students with a deeper understanding of both the mechanics and the biology than from qualitative study alone. The text is supported by a wealth of illustrations, tables and examples, a large selection of suitable problems and hundreds of current references, making it an essential textbook for any biomechanics course. C. Ross Ethier is a professor of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, the Canada Research Chair in Computational Mechanics, and the Director of the Institute of Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering at the University of Toronto, with cross-appointment to the Department of Ophthalmology & Vision Sciences. His research focuses on biomechanical factors in glaucoma and blood flow and mass transfer in the large arteries. He has taught biomechanics for over ten years. Craig A. Simmons is the Canada Research Chair in Mechanobiology and an assistant professor of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering at the University of Toronto, with cross-appointments to the Institute of Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering and the Faculty of Dentistry. His research interests include cell and tissue biomechanics and cell mechanobiology, particularly as it relates to tissue engineering and heart valve disease..
Price: $23.99 [Notify me when price goes down.]

With its long-standing tradition as a model organism, many techniques using Drosophila melanogaster have been established and continue to be developed, while the recent invention of techniques allowing the knock-down of genes by RNA interference and gene replacement by homologous recombination demonstrates the ongoing efforts to broaden the technical repertoire. In Drosophila: Methods and Protocols, leading experts contribute a collection of protocols covering standard techniques as well as novel methods. As a volume in the highly successful Methods in Molecular Biology™ series, the chapters contain brief introductions to the subject matter, lists of the necessary materials and reagents, step-by-step, readily reproducible laboratory protocols, and tips on troubleshooting and avoiding known pitfalls.

Cutting-edge and essential, Drosophila: Methods and Protocols allows novices and experts alike to tap into the power of one hundred years of expertise involving this vital model system.

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Price: $79.12 [Notify me when price goes down.]

There is the Richard Lewontin nonbiologists know, the author of acerbic, thoughtful, witty, unhesitatingly leftist books such as Not in Our Genes and the essays from The New York Review of Books collected in It Ain't Necessarily So. This is the other Lewontin, the hardcore scientist, one of the most insightful evolutionary biologists going.

The Triple Helix is a manifesto for the life sciences: "The time has come when further progress in our understanding of nature requires that we reconsider the relationship between the outside and the inside, between organism and environment." Lewontin is not arguing for what he calls "obscurationist holism," but for a more complex interaction between gene, organism, and environment, in which they construct each other:

.... It is the biology, indeed the genes, of an organism that determines its effective environment, by establishing the way in which external physical signals become incorporated into its reactions.... Whatever the autonomous processes of the outer world may be, they cannot be perceived by the organism. Its life is determined by the shadows on the wall, passed through a transforming medium of its own creation.

Lewontin argues for a life science that faces up to reality, that tackles the problems of studying subtle processes in complex systems where three-dimensional shape is crucial. The journal Nature "cannot recommend [the book] too highly for the many commentators and headline writers who think that DNA is the blueprint for the organism"--or for their readers. --Mary Ellen Curtin.
Price: $7.20 [Notify me when price goes down.]

State-of-the-art handbook of community water supplies

The leading source of information on water quality, water treatment, and quality control for 60 years is now available in an up-to-the-minute new edition. The American Water Works Association's Water Quality & Treatment, Fifth Edition fully covers the field, bringing you the expertise of 20 distinguished specialists who provide the latest information on everything from aeration and coagulation processes, to chemical oxidation and water plant waste management. At least 90% of the material in this new edition has been revised and updated. Among the areas of special concern covered are:

*Cutting-edge membrane processes
*U.S. regulatory changes, including new rulings on disinfection by-products
*Current concerns with preventing cryptosporidium and e. coli outbreaks
*Enhanced removal of total organic carbon
*Much, much more.
Price: $94.88 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Barbara McClintock was one of the premier investigators in cytology and classical genetics, but her work was pushed out of the mainstream by the revolution in molecular biology in the middle of this century. Thirty years later, the simple truths sought by research scientists whose training was closer to physics than biology continued to prove elusive, and the discovery of transposons in bacteria marked the beginning of a revival of interest in her work. Keller's analysis of McClintock's difficulty in finding a place to work and her relations with other investigators is insightful and thought-provoking, not only about women in science, but about the role of dissent in the scientific community..
Price: $1.50 [Notify me when price goes down.]

American Bison combines the latest scientific information and one man's personal experience in an homage to one of the most magnificent animals to have roamed America's vast, vanished grasslands. Dale F. Lott, a distinguished behavioral ecologist who was born on the National Bison Range and has studied the buffalo for many years, relates what is known about this iconic animal's life in the wild and its troubled history with humans. Written with unusual grace and verve, American Bison takes us on a journey into the bison's past and shares a compelling vision for its future, offering along the way a valuable introduction to North American prairie ecology.
We become Lott's companions in the field as he acquaints us with the social life and physiology of the bison, sharing stories about its impressive physical prowess and fascinating relationships. Describing the entire grassland community in which the bison live, he writes about the wolves, pronghorn, prairie dogs, grizzly bears, and other animals and plants, detailing the interdependent relationships among these inhabitants of a lost landscape. Lott also traces the long and dramatic relationship between the bison and Native Americans, and gives a surprising look at the history of the hide hunts that delivered the coup de grâce to the already dwindling bison population in a few short years.
This book gives us a peek at the rich and unique ways of life that evolved in the heart of America. Lott also dismantles many of the myths we have created about these ways of life, and about the bison in particular, to reveal the animal itself: ruminating, reproducing, and rutting in its full glory. His portrait of the bison ultimately becomes a plea to conserve its wildness and an eloquent meditation on the importance of the wild in our lives..
Price: $16.16 [Notify me when price goes down.]