Biology How Life Works

Biology: How Life Works was written in response to recent and exciting changes in biology, education, and technology with the goal of helping students to think like biologists. The text, visual program, and assessments were developed together to provide students with the best resources to gain an understanding of modern biology. Content is selected carefully, is integrated to illustrate the connections between concepts, and follows six themes that are crucial to biology: the scientific method, chemical and physical principles, cells, evolution, ecological systems, and human impact. The second edition continues this approach, but includes expanded coverage of ecology, new in-class activities to assist instructors in active teaching, new pedagogical support for visual synthesis maps, and expanded and improved assessment.

Connected resources to help students connect How Life Works Biology: How Life Works has been a revolutionary force for both instructors and students in the majors biology course. It was the first truly comprehensive set of integrated tools for introductory biology, seamlessly incorporating powerful text, media, and assessment to create the best pedagogical experience for students. The already impressive visual program has been greatly improved and expanded. The powerful Visual Synthesis tools have been reimagined, allowing for more flexibility for both students and instructors. A new Tour Mode allows for learning objective-driven tours of the material and deep linking from the eText allow the student to jump straight from the text into a rich visual representation of the content. Instructors can also create customized tours to use for engaging in-class presentations. And finally, new animations have been added to the library, including a new 3D animation to support the animal physiology content. Achieve is the new online companion to How Life Works that includes a comprehensive set of interconnected teaching and assessment tools. It incorporates the most effective elements from Macmillan’s market-leading solutions – including Sapling, LaunchPad, iClicker and others - in a single, easy to use platform.

Concepts of Biology is designed for the single-semester introduction to biology course for non-science majors, which for many students is their only college-level science course. As such, this course represents an important opportunity for students to develop the necessary knowledge, tools, and skills to make informed decisions as they continue with their lives. Rather than being mired down with facts and vocabulary, the typical non-science major student needs information presented in a way that is easy to read and understand. Even more importantly, the content should be meaningful. Students do much better when they understand why biology is relevant to their everyday lives. For these reasons, Concepts of Biology is grounded on an evolutionary basis and includes exciting features that highlight careers in the biological sciences and everyday applications of the concepts at hand.We also strive to show the interconnectedness of topics within this extremely broad discipline. In order to meet the needs of today's instructors and students, we maintain the overall organization and coverage found in most syllabi for this course. A strength of Concepts of Biology is that instructors can customize the book, adapting it to the approach that works best in their classroom. Concepts of Biology also includes an innovative art program that incorporates critical thinking and clicker questions to help students understand--and apply--key concepts.

Now the subject of a feature film that the New York Times calls "spellbinding" How does life work? How does nature produce the right numbers of zebras and lions on the African savanna, or fish in the ocean? How do our bodies produce the right numbers of cells in our organs and bloodstream? In The Serengeti Rules, award-winning biologist and author Sean Carroll tells the stories of the pioneering scientists who sought the answers to such simple yet profoundly important questions, and shows how their discoveries matter for our health and the health of the planet we depend upon. One of the most important revelations about the natural world is that everything is regulated—there are rules that regulate the amount of every molecule in our bodies and rules that govern the numbers of every animal and plant in the wild. And the most surprising revelation about the rules that regulate life at such different scales is that they are remarkably similar—there is a common underlying logic of life. Carroll recounts how our deep knowledge of the rules and logic of the human body has spurred the advent of revolutionary life-saving medicines, and makes the compelling case that it is now time to use the Serengeti Rules to heal our ailing planet. A bold and inspiring synthesis by one of our most accomplished biologists and gifted storytellers, The Serengeti Rules is the first book to illuminate how life works at vastly different scales. Read it and you will never look at the world the same way again.

In Cosmic Biology, Louis Irwin and Dirk Schulze-Makuch guide readers through the range of planetary habitats found in our Solar System and those likely to be found throughout the universe. Based on our current knowledge of chemistry, energy, and evolutionary tendencies, the authors envision a variety of possible life forms. These range from the familiar species found on Earth to increasingly exotic examples possible under the different conditions of other planets and their satellites. Discussions of the great variety of life forms that could evolve in these diverse environments have become particularly relevant in recent years with the discovery of around 300 exoplanets in orbit around other stars and the possibilities for the existence of life in these planetary systems. The book also posits a taxonomic classification of the various forms of life that might be found, including speculation on the relative abundance of different forms and the generic fate of living systems. The fate and future of life on Earth will also be considered. The closing passages address the Fermi Paradox, and conclude with philosophical reflections on the possible place of Homo sapiens in the potentially vast stream of life across the galaxies.

Why is life the way it is? Bacteria evolved into complex life just once in four billion years of life on earth-and all complex life shares many strange properties, from sex to ageing and death. If life evolved on other planets, would it be the same or completely different? In The Vital Question, Nick Lane radically reframes evolutionary history, putting forward a cogent solution to conundrums that have troubled scientists for decades. The answer, he argues, lies in energy: how all life on Earth lives off a voltage with the strength of a bolt of lightning. In unravelling these scientific enigmas, making sense of life's quirks, Lane's explanation provides a solution to life's vital questions: why are we as we are, and why are we here at all? This is ground-breaking science in an accessible form, in the tradition of Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species, Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene, and Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel.

The ultimate guide to understanding biology Have you ever wondered how the food you eat becomes the energy your body needs to keep going? The theory of evolution says that humans and chimps descended from a common ancestor, but does it tell us how and why? We humans are insatiably curious creatures who can't help wondering how things work—starting with our own bodies. Wouldn't it be great to have a single source of quick answers to all our questions about how living things work? Now there is. From molecules to animals, cells to ecosystems, Biology For Dummies answers all your questions about how living things work. Written in plain English and packed with dozens of enlightening illustrations, this reference guide covers the most recent developments and discoveries in evolutionary, reproductive, and ecological biology. It's also complemented with lots of practical, up-to-date examples to bring the information to life. Discover how living things work Think like a biologist and use scientific methods Understand lifecycle processes Whether you're enrolled in a biology class or just want to know more about this fascinating and ever-evolving field of study, Biology For Dummies will help you unlock the mysteries of how life works.

FINALIST FOR THE PEN/E.O. WILSON LITERARY SCIENCE WRITING AWARD***A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2021***A SCIENCE NEWS FAVORITE BOOK OF 2021***A SMITHSONIAN TOP TEN SCIENCE BOOK OF 2021 “Stories that both dazzle and edify… This book is not just about life, but about discovery itself.” —Siddhartha Mukherjee, New York Times Book Review We all assume we know what life is, but the more scientists learn about the living world—from protocells to brains, from zygotes to pandemic viruses—the harder they find it is to locate life’s edge. Carl Zimmer investigates one of the biggest questions of all: What is life? The answer seems obvious until you try to seriously answer it. Is the apple sitting on your kitchen counter alive, or is only the apple tree it came from deserving of the word? If we can’t answer that question here on earth, how will we know when and if we discover alien life on other worlds? The question hangs over some of society’s most charged conflicts—whether a fertilized egg is a living person, for example, and when we ought to declare a person legally dead. Life's Edge is an utterly fascinating investigation that no one but one of the most celebrated science writers of our generation could craft. Zimmer journeys through the strange experiments that have attempted to re-create life. Literally hundreds of definitions of what that should look like now exist, but none has yet emerged as an obvious winner. Lists of what living things have in common do not add up to a theory of life. It's never clear why some items on the list are essential and others not. Coronaviruses have altered the course of history, and yet many scientists maintain they are not alive. Chemists are creating droplets that can swarm, sense their environment, and multiply. Have they made life in the lab? Whether he is handling pythons in Alabama or searching for hibernating bats in the Adirondacks, Zimmer revels in astounding examples of life at its most bizarre. He tries his own hand at evolving life in a test tube with unnerving results. Charting the obsession with Dr. Frankenstein's monster and how the world briefly believed radium was the source of all life, Zimmer leads us all the way into the labs and minds of researchers engineering life from scratch.