Biology Books

I have been a strong advocate of Elaine Morgan's Aquatic Ape Theory and Murray's Sea Energy. This book combines my favorite subjects, e.g., evolution, aquatic ape theory, the energy of the sea water and nutrition. It is the only one of its kind. Yet, it is out of print. I donot understand that. Evolutionist are either blind with their own theories or just getting old. I noticed that terrestrial evolutionists debunk the AAT, while the marine evolutionists tend to accept AAT. I wonder if they also recognize the influence of nutrition on evolution of homo sapiens.
Miguel Melgar

A species must have the proper nutrition to thrive, if nutrition changes the species must adapt. Better adapted mutations survive and the species is changed. For other challenges the nutritional support for the adapting mutation must be present. For instance, man must have developed his big brain while he had access to omega 3 fatty acids ---most likely near a lake or the ocean. Today,the IQ in UK is declining to lack of proper nutrition

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Peress's 'Dvorak to Duke Ellington' is necessary reading for any serious Duke Ellington fan or any student of the lineage of jazz.

Despite long passages spoken in highly technical musical terminology (which will be manna for composers out there), Peress brings so many interesting anecdotes to light, so many fresh insights into Ellington's working methods to composing, laypersons too will gain profound wisdom into the infrastructure that later brought BeBop, hardBop, Modern, R&B, Blues and Rock & Roll into reality.

For Duke lovers, it is heartening to see Peress discover (tearfully) what we already had known: his music is a gift to world history. Peress's nuanced details as to how Duke scored his sobering emotional analyses of Black Culture is particularly stunning, he having access to rare Ellington family archives and an insiders association with the Duke.

And Duke was a poet - literally. YES!

I was completely taken aback at how much is owed to Antonin Dvorak, the Czech emigree, for shaping the jazz juggernaut, or more specifically, the jazz orchestral juggernaut. I am not sure that the limber modern Jazz idiom as we know it, or the Gershwin orchestral phenomenon, would have garnered legitimacy without Dvorak's extra-ordinary cheerleading of our indigenous arts such as Ragtime, sharecropper tunes, and gospel songs. There is an argument intrinsically proffered in the book that Dvorak might have assisted in the abolition of minstrelsy itself.

Peress only missed a few related facts. For instance, he did not cover the Harlem Renaissance leadership and it's muscular shaping of the Jazz and Blues idioms. Those gentlemen (Dubois, et.al) also marketed the Duke heavily, and deserve a mention in this book. Peress also did not describe the original etymology of Jazz as being 'Jass,' a vulgar term coined by whites for early New Orleans jazz that meant something akin to Sexual Intercourse, which I believe should be defined in every sweeping analysis of this art.

Lastly, this book reveals the star-touched career of the author, Maurice Peress, as a composer. I look forward to collecting Peress's jazz re-conditionings, as well as Classical recordings, on CD and vinyl at the soonest opportunity.

Michael James Hawk
Seattle WA USA
July 3, 2007

Maurice Peress is an inspiring guide to the main roads and byways of American music. A conductor of distinction and a writer, scholar and thinker of substance, he offers a combination of personal reminiscences and exciting historical discoveries. He is a leading expert on Dvorak and his time, and offers fresh new insights into the material. His original research on Dvorak's American years has been quite influential in the development of this field more broadly and thus he may be considered the "Dean" of American Dvorak scholarship.

This is a splendid book to read straight through, or to browse and enjoy.

Kirkpatrick Sale has written a vision of the future that should be drilled into politicians' subconscious and taught in grade school. Sustainable, sane, ecologically minded bioregions. I was particularly struck by his definition of "querencia"--"a deep, quiet sense of inner well-being that comes from knowing a particular place of the earth, its diurnal and seasonal patterns, its fruits and scents, its history and its part in your history . . . where, whenever you return to it, your soul releases an inner sigh of recognition and relaxation." Sale is a wonderful writer, balanced in perspective, and able to distill complex problems into a form that the average mind can comprehend, despite all the arguments pro and con. Read it.

If you've come to suspect that most of the world's problems--pollution, warfare, crime, transnational piracy, mental illness--are inherent in a civilization in decline, you might like this vision of small, face-to-face communities living in respectful accord with the natural world.

The author makes the same point as ecopsychologists and the great whale researcher Roger Payne: built by millions of years of evolution to live in close contact with the wilderness, we who have penned ourselves behind fences and buildings carry with us a ten-thousand-year-old wound....a self-inflicted wound of aching alienation (hence our tendency to alienate--to marginalize--other people).

Read this book, then tour the decidedly un-zoolike San Diego Wild Animal Park while seeing how you feel there. For some this might offer a glimpse of a sanity so centering that you can feel it throughout your body.

I find that Dover's books are simply excellent and this text is no exception. The order of the material in the book is logical: starting with the basics of autocorrelation to how Maxwell's equations lead to intensity of scattered radiation. Then, that crucial leap from the theory of scattering to how radiation is measured by different detectors is made and what they lead to in terms of correlation functions. The book expands on the basics of ideal, non-interacting isotropic scatters to more complex situations. Many references are provided. Since DLS has applications in protein dynamics, I used this text as background.

Dynamic Light Scattering is a classic text, that presents a comprehensive and in-depth overview of the underlying physics and principles of DLS. The description is developed with the associated mathematics of fluctuations and time correlation functions, as well as various physical aspects of Brownian Motion. Examples drawn from physics, chemistry and biology are used to illustrate the usefullness of DLS in studying a diverse range of problems including cell motility, macromolecular dynamics, dynamics of anisotropics objects (rod-like particles, viruses), electrolytic solutions, etc. The book is ESSENTIAL for everyone with interest in 1) dynamics of complex fluids 2) Brownian Motion of particles and 3) Single Molecule Imaging!

The text is a beautifully written treatise on various applications of DLS, with a very insightful commentary on how various dynamics is detected by light, how underlying structure and relaxations translate to observable, how observables can be deduced by mathematical principles based on statistical mechanics (including non-equilibrium thermodynamics). This is a fairly advanced text, so I would advise someone to get a soft introduction to his/her topic of choice (polymers, gels, rods, colloids, cells, polyelectrolytes, etc.) and basic statistical mechanics before picking this text. Being a Dover publication, the book is priced cheaper than it ought to be:), and hence must make its way to the shelf of people who have any lasting interest in DLS. The book by Wyn Brown is a useful supplementary text (and includes more modern references, but comes at a high price). This book is an exercise in the mathematics of correlation functions, and associated hydrodynamics equations, and definitely requires concerted effort to become beneficial to the reader.

This is a laboratory manual aimed at people who work on Xenopus development in, well, laboratories. If you are a herpetologist or general frog enthusiast this book is not for you. As far as adult frogs go, Xenopus are actually quite ugly. However, if you work with their beautiful embryos and need to know how to do wholemount in situ hybridization, mark dorsal blastopore lips, dejelly embryos, or dozens of other technical processes- this book is exactly what you need. The experts who designed and optimized these various protocols give step by step instructions on how to perform procedures in your own lab, list reagents and suppliers, provide chemical safety information, and more.

Hardly a week goes by without us referring to this book in my lab.

Certainly a specialised book that would only appeal to herpetologists interested in developmental aspects of anuran larvae. Comprehensive nonetheless, and fascinating for the interested anuran biologist.

As a college professor, I have always tried to memorize important benchmarks in my field. One set of benchmarks that is critical in teaching geology are dates such as the dinosaurs died out 65 million years ago. I soon discovered that this task was going to be far more difficult then I first expected because for many dates, such as the age of the universe, many different estimates exist (in this case from around 5 to 25 billion years). It soon became apparent the many of the dates in geology are estimates at best and more often gestimates. Whitcomb in this excellent work does a much needed job critiquing many of the modern dating methods used in science today. He shows why many are not as accurate as commonly believed. Now when I teach geology or earth science I always stress that no one in science knows, for example, how old the earth or universe is, and therefore when providing dates one must not say that something is so many years old, but must say "according to carbon 14 or another dating method, some animal is estimated to have died 5730 years ago, and this date is based on the many assumptions of this method." Unfortunately, most texts and sources often dogmatically state that something is so many millions of years old when this cannot be known to be the case. This must read book will go a long way toward reducing the dogmatism now very common in geological dating and will help the dating process to be more scientific and less dogmatic. In short The Early Earth is an antidote to dogmatism

This expanded and revised edition of "The Early Earth," by Dr. John C. Whitcomb, Biblical professor of Old Testament for 38 years at Grace Theological Seminary, Winona Lake, Indiana, startles the reader with an excellent in-depth examination of the earth as created rather than evolved.

Bracing his position with the first and second laws of Thermodynamics, Dr. Whitcomb thus handily develops his stance for Biblical Creationism while dismantling many of the foundational suppositions of evolutionary conjecture.

In addition, he establishes the suddenness of creation as scientifically supported by many such as Dr. Carl Baugh, Creation Evidence Museum, while proving the instantaneity of earth's beginning over the provably unscientific spontaneity professed by evolutionists.

Written as a scholarly textbook, yet formed in lucid prose, Dr. Whitcomb's work is an excellent primer for any seeking an introduction to the main questions demanded of earth's beginnings.

Perhaps the only surprise is the wonder remaining at the end of the book as to why any would continue to pursue the theory of evolution when even the laws of thermodynamics obliterate all reason for valuing Darwin's hypothesis.

Genesis thus excelled clearly enhances the Psalmist's prophetic utterance, "The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament shows His handiwork." {Psalm 19:1, The New King James}

A hearty 'Amen' must be added to the exhortation that 'The Early Earth' is indeed a "must read."

TL Farley,
Author,
When Now Becomes Too Late,
Distant Reaches

When Now Becomes Too Late
{ Prophecy : The Rapture in Brief : Inside The Twinkle ! }

Distant Reaches
{ True Life Adventure in Ireland, Boston and on the North Atlantic }

This is an excellent book for the studying ecologist or field biologist, a professional would certainly want more, such as Techniques for Wildlife Investigation and Management by the Wildlife Society. This handbook is just that and it offers the basics for just about any survey. For undergraduates interested in independent studies or grad students just getting started, this is your book. It will guide you through everything from sampling techniques based on specific classes (ie fishes, amphibians, etc.) to statistical analysis and common errors.

This book is useful and unbiased. It covers both animal and plant censuing. I found it very useful and informational.

Krebs' text is a thorough and outstanding reference for any ecologist. This is is the ideal balance of technical background and practical application of methods commonly used in ecology. Ive found other sources either too cursory or far too involved with derivations of formulae, etc. Krebs hits the major points for the methods he discusses, describes the strengths and weaknesses, and gives the original citations (for most) so the reader can seek more information if necessary.

This is a wonderful book. As a graduating senior in Ecology, I can say that there is no way I could have completed my research without this book. Krebs is cited in journal articles constantly, and there is a reason - this reference work is thorough, well written and gives many examples to follow. I also recommend the EcoMeth software mentioned in the text, it is well worth the cost. Just browsing through the book will give you ideas on how to analyze your data. It even provides wonderful advice for those just in the process of setting up their experiments. All in all, it's top notch!

I have read the book and heard Jora speak -- they are both incredibly inspiring. Sustainability is one of those terms that is often used in ecological circles -- Ted and Jora give concrete examples of its application in our society, and from those examples flow hope. I bought this book thinking that I would read two scientists' view of ecology. When I finished I realized that I had not only learned some science, I had also been persuaded by the authors appreciation of the spiritual basis of ecology. Wanted: Reformers not of others, but of self.

This wonderful book gives us hope -- if we are willing to pitch in and work with others. It gives examples of how people in very different communities have come together to overcome difficulties and make significant improvements to their environments. Menominee Indians are maintaining a sustainable timber forest in the midst of land that have been devastated by loggers, and suburban Chicagoans are restoring nearby prairie lands to their original condition. Based on the authors' experiences gained while visiting these groups, the last chapter provides very helpful practical suggestions of how people can effectively be organized to bring about positive change. This book, if taken seriously by enough people, can turn us in the right direction