The authors trace the formation and breakup of the planets,asteroids, and comets where meteorites originated, their longjourney through space, their fall to Earth, their recovery, andwhat scientists are learning from them. The book contains a greatdeal of material about the “84001 Martian meteorite,” which hasraised provocative new questions about life on the red planet.Looking forward, the authors chart the exciting new era ofplanetary, asteroidal, and cometary exploration planned for thiscentury.

Rosemary and Peter Grant and those assisting them have spendtwenty years on Daphne Major, an island in the Galapagos studyingnatural selection. They recognize each individual bird on theisland, when there are four hundred at the time of the author'svisit, or when there are over a thousand. They have observed abouttwenty generations of finches -- continuously. Jonathan Weiner follows these scientists as they watch Darwin'sfinches and come up with a new understanding of life itself.

Anthrax. Smallpox. Incurable and horrifying Ebola-relatedfevers. For two decades, while a fearful world prepared for nuclearwinter, an elite team of Russian bioweaponeers began to till a newkilling field: a bleak tract sown with powerful seeds of massdestruction--by doctors who had committed themselves to creating abiological Armageddon. Biohazard is the never-before-told story ofRussia's darkest, deadliest, and most closely guarded Cold Warsecret. No one knows more about Russia's astounding experiments withbiowarfare than Ken Alibek. Now the mastermind behind Russia's germwarfare effort reveals two decades of shocking breakthroughs...howMoscow's leading scientists actually reengineered hazardousmicrobes to make them even more virulent...the secrets behind thediscovery of an invisible, untraceable new class of biologicalagents just right for use in political assassinations...thestartling story behind Russia's attempt to turn a sample of theAIDS virus into the ultimate bioweapon. And in a chilling

A riveting tale of the battle over genetically engineeredfoods, and an inside look at a biotech food empire. Ultimately astory of idealism, and conflicting dreams about the shape of abetter world. Softcover.

In this fascinating volume, today’s foremost scientistsdiscuss their own versions and visions of Einstein: how he hasinfluenced their worldviews, their ideas, their science, and theirprofessional and personal lives. These twenty-four essays are atestament to the power of scientific legacy and are essentialreading for scientist and layperson alike. Contributors include: Roger Highfield on the Einstein myth John Archibald Wheeler on his meetings with Einstein Gino C. Segrè, Lee Smolin, and Anton Zeilinger on Einstein’sdifficulties with quantum theory Leon M. Lederman on the special theory of relativity Frank J. Tipler on why Einstein should be seen as a scientificreactionary rather than a scientific revolutionary

This rigourous and self-contained book describes mathematicaland, in particular, stochastic methods to assess the performance ofnetworked systems. It consists of three parts. The first part is areview on probability theory. Part two covers the classical theoryof stochastic processes (Poisson, renewal, Markov and queuingtheory), which are considered to be the basic building blocks forperformance evaluation studies. Part three focuses on therelatively new field of the physics of networks. This part dealswith the recently obtained insights that many very different largecomplex networks - such as the Internet, World Wide Web, proteins,utility infrastructures, social networks - evolve and behaveaccording to more general common scaling laws. This understandingis useful when assessing the end-to-end quality of communicationsservices, for example, in Internet telephony, real-time video andinteracting games. Containing problems and solutions, this book isideal for graduate students taking courses in performanceanalys

From Publishers Weekly In this lively volume, Cambridge physicist Barrow (The Book ofNothing) considers the natural constants-the handful of seeminglyeternal numerical values, such as the speed of light, the weight ofthe proton, Planck's constant or the four dimensions of space andtime-that constitute the "bedrock" of physical reality. Theseconstants quantify some of the simplest statements that sciencemakes about the world, but as this fascinating work of popularscience demonstrates, they have profound implications for the fateof the universe and our place within it. And, Barrow hints, theymight not be truly constant. He traces scientists' evolvingunderstanding of the natural constants as they grew to assume acentral role in modern relativity theory and quantum mechanics, andoutlines ongoing attempts to determine whether they are justinexplicable facts of nature or the logical consequence of somefundamental Theory of Everything. He also raises importantphilosophical and even religious questions. The n

Evolutionary science lies at the heart of a modernunderstanding of the natural world. Darwin’s theory has withstood150 years of scientific scrutiny, and today it not only explainsthe origin and design of living things, but highlights theimportance of a scientific understanding in our culture and in ourlives. Recently the movement known as “Intelligent Design” has attractedthe attention of journalists, educators, and legislators. Thescientific community is puzzled and saddened by this trend–not onlybecause it distorts modern biology, but also because it divertspeople from the truly fascinating ideas emerging from the realscience of evolution. Here, join fifteen of our preeminent thinkerswhose clear, accessible, and passionate essays reveal the fact andpower of Darwin’s theory, and the beauty of the scientific quest tounderstand our world.

The ecological literature on marsupials is dominated byde*ive natural history, and there has hitherto been littleattempt at either synthesis or evolutionary interpretation. Thisbook attempts to provide such a synthesis, by drawing on both thede*ive data base and predictions from the burgeoningliterature on behavioural and evolutionary ecology. It documentsthe excellent potential the study of marsupials provides forresolution of theoretical questions of general importance inbiology. It does this in three ways. First, by describing theimpressive diversity of marsupial life history strategies andtrophic roles. Second, by careful comparison with the eutherians,the scope of the marsupial radiation is used to analyse the role ofdevelopmental constraints and adaptive radiation in determining thediversification of higher taxa. Lastly, it is suggested that theaccessibility of marsupial young during their obligatory pouch lifefacilitates measurement, manipulation and assessment of kinship notpossible in other mammalia

Tile dynamics underlying tile major problems of ourtime--,cancer,crime, pollution, nuclear powej', inflation, theenergy shortage are alltile same. We have reach~d.a time ofdramatic and potentiallydangerous change, a turning point for theplanet as a whole. We need a new vision of reality, one that allowstile forces transforming our world to flow together as a positivemovement for social change. Now (listinguished scientist FritjofCapra gives us that vision, a holisticpara(ligm of science andspirit.