Birds are of high public interest and of great value as indicators of thestate of the environment. Some 11,000 species are a number relatively well tohandle. From a scientific point of view, it is not easily answerable what a speciesis, since speciation and extinction are ongoing evolutionary processes and differen-tiation among species works on various traits. Contemporary systematics attempts…
This open access book offers the first comprehensive account of the pan-genome concept and its manifold implications. The realization that the genetic repertoire of a biological species always encompasses more than the genome of each individual is one of the earliest examples of big data in biology that opened biology to the unbounded. The study of genetic variation observed within a species ch…
The family Iridoviridae currently contains fi ve genera, two of which infect invertebrates ( Iridovirus and Chloriridovirus ) and three that infect only ectother-mic vertebrates ( Lymphocystivirus , Megalocytivirus , and Ranavirus ; Jancovich et al. 2015a ). Lymphocy stiviruses and megalocytiviruses only infect fi sh, whereas, as indicated above, r…
As well as protecting water resources, forests also conserve biodiversity. National commitments to the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity are being fulfilled through measures to safeguard water and establish “protected” and “protective” forests, as well as many kinds of forests certified for sustainability. Forests also provide carbon fixation and several other environmen…
A growing earth population and the increasing demand for food is placing unprec-edented pressure on agriculture and natural resources. Today’s food systems do not provide sufficient nutritious food in an environmentally sustainable way to the world’s population (Wu et al. 2018). Around 821 million are undernourished while 1.2 billion are overweight or obese. At the same time, foo…
This book has been written to help you to do well in your Cambridge International Examinations IGCSE Biology examination. We hope that you enjoy using it. The book can also be used with the Cambridge O level Biology syllabus. There are quite a lot of definitions in the IGCSE syllabus that you need to learn by heart. These are all in this book, at appropriate points in each chapter, inside boxes…
n , climate-related overseas development assistance totaled US. billion globally, up from US. billion in . In order for countries and NGOs to access this funding, climate change adaptation or mitigation must be a princi-pal or signicant goal of development interventions (Donor Tracker ). e Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) ranks Bangladesh as one of the mo…
hen Cymene and I wrote the proposal to the National Science Founda-tion for the grant that would eventually fund the main period of our field research, we more or less took for granted the significance of human politi-cal power in addressing climate change. We said we wished to investigate the “political culture” of wind power development in southern Mexic…
Behavior is a key concept in numerous fields of study: psychology, ethology, but also in the biology of organisms. It does not cause much surprise that dolphins, chimpanzees or rats display rational behavior – after all, they are not so different from us. But what about the organisms we deem “simpler”? Or even brainless organisms like plants? Do t…
Since its first invention by Minsky in the 1950s [Min61], confocal microscopyhas become one of the most important advances of light microscopy in the pastdecades [Wil09]. Confocal microscopes have the advantages over conventionalwide-field microscopes in resolution and contrast, making them widely usedin biomedical imaging and industrial metrology.The setup of a typical reflected-light scanning…
Disasters happen with appalling frequency in our world, resulting in death, injury, destruction, disruption and economic loss that can set back the development efforts of affected countries by decades. Disasters from natural hazards are growing at a rapid rate for several reasons. Population growth, migration and urbanisation are all leading to the poorest, most vulnerable, people …
The Diffusion Hydrodynamic Model (DHM), as presented in the 1987 USGS publication, was one of the first computational fluid dynamics computational programs based on the groundwater program MODFLOW, which evolved into the control volume modeling approach. Over the following decades, others developed similar computational programs that either used the methodology and approaches presented in the D…
Sustainable management of wadiflashflood (WFF) risks is desperatelyneeded to secure development in wadi systems. Due to rapidflow generation withsudden highflood peaks, spatiotemporal variability of rainfall occurrence, andpoorly sited rapid development, most Middle East and North Africa (MENA)region have no comprehensive proper protection from WFFs. In arid regions, singlemitigation measures, …
Le rosa in fila è dedicato alla storia della rosa orticola e prende come punto di riferimento la collezione dell’Orto botanico “Giardino dei Semplici” del Museo di Storia Naturale dell’Università di Firenze. Qui, fino a qualche an-no fa, la collezione non aveva un preciso criterio ostensivo, ma era costituita da un semplice insieme di rose acquisite nei decenni precedenti. Si è quind…
The Portuguese explorer Francisco Newton was one of thefirst naturalists todedicate almost one decade to the study of the outstanding diversity of the Gulf ofGuinea oceanic islands. The collections he made, in what was largely unexploredterritory for science, allowed the description of dozens of new species and began toreveal intriguing biogeographic patterns. Gazing at the species he was colle…
What is the state of our forests and forest soils today? How have they changed overthe past 20 years? What actions have had an effect on their status and how? What arethe risks that continue to play a role or become relevant in the future? The presentreport based on the National Forest Soils Inventory (NFSI) as well as on case studiesfrom Intensive Forest Monitoring sites in Germany (see below)…
The first level (LV1) is those transformation-related theories for designing cloak-ing, concentrating, rotating, etc. Since the theory of transformation thermotics wasproposed for controlling steady and passive heat conduction in 2008 [1,2], extendedtransformation theories have been developed successively from steady and passiveto transient and active heat conduction [3]. Then, temperature-depe…
Analytical Heat Transfer explains how to analyze and solve conduction, convection, and radiation heat transfer problems. It enables students to tackle complex engineering heat transfer problems prevalent in practice. Covering heat transfer in high-speed flows and unsteady highly turbulent flows, the book also discusses enhanced heat transfer in channels, heat transfer in rotating channels, nume…
With increased political and academic concerns, the term “water governance” hasbeen debated that it responds to challenges of sustainable development [42]. TheOrganization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) defines watergovernance as a “range of political, institutional and administrative rules, practicesand processes (formal and informal) through which decisions are taken a…
2022 is a landmark year for BirdLife and conservation. One hundred years ago, in 1922, a group of visionary conservationists concerned about the plight of the world’s birds and wider biodiversity came together to found one of the world’s first international conservation organisations – the International Committee for Bird Protection (ICBP). This network has steadily grown over the last ce…
In this book, we have attempted to break new ground. Our study is unique in several respects: not only does it produce a set of maps for a remote and poorly known area of Australia, but also the distributional point data of each species are integrated and compared with the spatial distribution of their larval food plants. The geographic range of each …
South Africa is rich in floral biodiversity as well as cultural diversity. The Cape region1 of South Africa has veldt types, with one of the richest compositions of indigenous aromatic plant species in the country. One such aromatic plant is the genus Agathosma. There are about 150 different species within this genus, which derives from a greater fa…
t present, as estimated by FAO, the world produces more or less sufficient food to meet the needs of world population and maintains sufficient food stock to cover nearly 25% of estimated annual utilization. Despite the positive situation on the sup-ply side, FAO’s estimation in 2014–2016 indicated that, globally, 795 million peo-ple were unable to meet their dietary energy requ…
Anthropogenic activity has resulted in the deposition of a complex combination ofmaterials in lake sediments, including synthetic polymers (plastics) that differgreatly from the Holocene signatures. Accordingly, plastics are considered oneindicator of the Anthropocene [1]. Plastic has for some time been known to be amajor component of riverine pollution [2–6], and plastic degradation products…
Artificial intelligence (AI) is the core driver for the fourth technological revolution,following the revolutions in steam technology, electricity technology, and computersand information technology. Since its emergence in the 1950s, AI has fully improvedproductivity, affected and changed the production structure and production relations.UnderstandingthehistoryofAIplaysanindispensableroleinthes…
My ultimate goal in writing this book is to better position environmental edu-cators to contribute to environmental quality, sustainability, and resilience. To accomplish this goal, I have summarized research-based information on the myriad pathways by which environmental education can contribute to the health of the environment, the community, and individuals. Lik…
Rock salt constitutive models are used to simulate the evolution of mines, boreholes, storage caverns for gases and liquids, and nuclear waste repositories in rock salt formations. A wide variety of thermo-mechanical constitutive models have been proposed for rock salt, yet even the damage-free (micro-crack-free) thermoviscoplastic behavior remains difficult to capture. The Munson-Dawson model …
The world in which we live is fragile; a small layer of organismic activity covers the planet like a microbial film on top of a large boulder. Nonetheless, humans treat the Earth as if anthropogenic impacts on this delicate biological layer may be absorbed by unfailing natural buffers. Yet, convergent and overwhelming evidence from all over the world underlines that mankind has al…
Unifying Physics of Accelerators, Lasers and Plasma introduces the physics of accelerators, lasers and plasma in tandem with the industrial methodology of inventiveness, a technique that teaches that similar problems and solutions appear again and again in seemingly dissimilar disciplines. This unique approach builds bridges and enhances connection.
In 1960, the United States put its first Earth-observing environmental satellite into orbit around the planet. Over the decades, these satellites have provided invaluable information, and the vantage point of space has provided new perspectives on Earth. This book celebrates Earth’s aesthetic beauty in the patterns, shapes, colors, and textures of the land, oceans, ice, and atmosphere. The bo…
Science promised to society to contribute to the grand challenges of the United Nations, WHO, the EU agenda and national agendas for change and improvement of our life. It will be discussed how this social contract between science and society has developed since 1945. The first phase from 1945 till 1960 was characterized by autonomy, building on the successes of the natural …
Over the last two decades, new cell and molecular biology toolshave become available, allowing the exploration of a broader rangeof metazoan regenerative mechanisms and prompting a (re)-expansion of the field of regenerative biology [3, 4]. A unifyingtheory of regeneration is nevertheless still lacking. Why do not allspecies regenerate? Does regeneration have a single or multiple(evolutionary) …
The data from Hibakusha relate to an instantaneous external exposure to high-dose-rate radiation, but cannot speak to long-term internal exposure at low-dose-rate (LDR). Thorotrast is an angiographic contrast medium composed of a colloidal solution of thorium dioxide, which is a natural ?-particle emitter. It was adminis-tered to wounded soldiers during World War II, and more…
Currently, the origins ofin vitrocell lines are highly biased towards humans.Around 75% of the total number of established cell lines are from Hominidae origin(96,862/128,799) and over 97% are of mammalian origin (126,033/128,799) (Bairoch2018) (Figure 1). However, mammals represent only 0.4% (1.3% when excluding theInsecta taxon) of the extant identified metazoan evolution (Zhang 2013; Wilson …
NASA initiated GeneLab—a multiyear, multiphase project—on the premise that mining of omics data from spaceflight experiments offers an immense opportunity to understand the effects of spaceflight on biological systems. That progress can best be accomplished by ensuring access to these data to as many researchers as possible. GeneLab captures vast amounts of data from spaceflight and gro…
Advances made during decades of spaceflight experimentation have identified critical gaps in our understanding of the role of gravity and the spaceflight environment on plant biology at the cellular, tissue, whole plant, and community levels. The International Space Station is a unique platform where reduced gravity can be used to probe and dissect biological mechanisms in plants for underst…
Dark Botany activates the material and sensorial wonder of plants—their energy, their mysterious allure, their capacities and skills, their independent might. In this Wunderkammer of critical plant studies essays and plant+artworks, the herbarium emerges as a site of multiple materialities and reflexive forms of counter-narrative. Herbaria specimens come alive as assemblages, telling truths a…
G. Tyler Miller's worldwide bestsellers have evolved right along with the changing needs of your diverse student population. Focused specifically on energizing and engaging all your students, Miller and new coauthor Scott Spoolman have been at work scrutinizing every lineenhancing, clarifying, and streamlining to reduce word density as well as updating with the very latest environmental news an…
It was Richard Feynman's outrageous and scintillating method of teaching that earned him legendary status among students and professors of physics. From 1961 to 1963, Feynman delivered a series of lectures at the California Institute of Technology that revolutionized the teaching of physics around the world. Six Easy Pieces, taken from these famous Lectures on Physics, represent the most access…
The aim of this book is to explain, carefully but not technically, the differences between advanced, research-level mathematics, and the sort of mathematics we learn at school. The most fundamental differences are philosophical, and readers of this book will emerge with a clearer understanding of paradoxical-sounding concepts such as infinity, curved space, and imaginary numbers. The first few …
The oceans are our planet's most distinctive and imposing natural habitat. They cover 71 percent of its surface; support a remarkably diverse and exquisitely adapted array of life forms, from microscopic viruses, bacteria, and plankton to the largest existing animals; and possess many of Earth's most significant, intriguing, and inaccessible ecosystems. In an era in which humans are significant…
ith more than twenty million copies sold in forty languages in ninety countries worldwide, DK Eyewitness been the most trusted young adult nonfiction book series for more than thirty years. Visually engaging, informative, and lively, the one-hundred-plus titles in the Eyewitness series focus on subjects that complement students' personal interests and areas of study to make learning simple and …
Looks at the history of astronomy, identifies important astronomers, and summarizes what is known about the Sun, Moon, planets, and stars.
Get a bird's eye view of the amazing world of raptors--from the majestic falcon, hawk and eagle to the stealthy owl and the formidable vulture. This fascinating overview examines the development, anatomy, mating, and nesting habits of birds of prey as well as their techniques for stalking, catching, and killing their quarry. Also discussed is the importance of the protection raptors in todays …
The laws of thermodynamics drive everything that happens in the universe. From the sudden expansion of a cloud of gas to the cooling of hot metal--everything is moved or restrained by four simple laws. Written by Peter Atkins, one of the world's leading authorities on thermodynamics, this powerful and compact introduction explains what these four laws are and how they work, using accessible lan…
Here is the extraordinary story of the unfolding of life on Earth, told by Michael J. Benton, a world-renowned authority on biodiversity. Ranging over four billion years, Benton weaves together the latest findings on fossils, earth history, evolutionary biology, and many other fields to highlight the great leaps that enabled life to evolve from microbe to human--big breakthroughs that made whol…
Dinosaurs are fascinating creatures and their popularity seems never ending, fueled by films such as Jurassic Park and documentaries such as Walking with Dinosaurs. Yet dinosaurs (or more precisely non-avian dinosaurs) last trod the Earth 65 million years ago. All we know of them today are their fossilized bones, the tracks and traces that they left behind and, in very rare instances, some of t…
In this Very Short Introduction, Prof Lord John Krebs provides a brief history of human food, from our remote ancestors 3 million years ago to the present day. By looking at the four great transitions in human food - cooking, agriculture, processing, and preservation - he considers a variety of questions, including why people like some kinds of foods and not others; how your senses contribute t…
Games are everywhere: Drivers maneuvering in heavy traffic are playing a driving game. Bargain hunters bidding on eBay are playing an auctioning game. The supermarket's price for corn flakes is decided by playing an economic game. This Very Short Introduction offers a succinct tour of the fascinating world of game theory, a ground-breaking field that analyzes how to play games in a rational way…