How Singular? How singular is the Singularity? Will it happen in an instant? Lets consider again the derivation of the word. In mathematics a singularity is a value that is beyond any limit - in essence, infinity. The Singularity as we have discussed it in this book, does not achieve infinite levels of computation, memory, as any other other measurable attribute. But it certainly achieves vast levels of all these qualities, including intelligence. With the reverse engineering of the human brain we will be able to apply the parallel, self-organizing, chaotic, algorithms of human intelligence to enormously powerful computational substrates. This intelligence will then be in a position to improve its own design, both hardware and software, in a rapidly accelerating iterative process.

"As it absorbs data, gains agency, and intermediates between humans and reality, AI (artificial intelligence) will help us to address enormous crises, from climate change to geopolitical conflicts to income inequality. It might well solve some of the greatest mysteries of our universe and elevate the human spirit to unimaginable heights. But it will also pose challenges on a scale and of an intensity that we have never seen--usurping our power of independent judgment and action, testing our relationship with the divine, and perhaps even spurring a new phase in human evolution. The last book of elder statesman Henry Kissinger, written with technologists Craig Mundie and Eric Schmidt, 'Genesis' charts a course between blind faith and unjustified fear as it outlines an effective strategy for navigating the age of AI."--

Worms, protozoa, and other terrifying parasites, capable even of mind control. Author calls them the real drivers of evolution.

Human sexuality seems normal to us, but is bizarre by the standards of most other animals. This book argues that our strange sex lives were as crucial to our rise to human status as were our large brains. A variety of aspects of human sexuality which we take for granted are re-examined.

This all-new and long-awaited sequel to Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan's international bestseller Cosmos takes readers to worlds only now emerging with the advent of new technologies. With lucid prose that recalls the best-selling and beloved Cosmos, Ann Druyan takes readers on an extraordinary journey through the vast and unexplored realms of Earth and space, past and future, fact and imagination. Written and published in coordination with the sensational international television debut of a second season of National Geographic's Cosmos, Cosmos: Possible Worlds travels through more than 14 billion years of cosmic evolution and into an astonishing future where probes travel by light beams to distant stars, helping us solve enduring mysteries of our origins and dream of an unimaginable time ahead. Along the way, we meet the colorful characters who push beyond the boundaries of knowledge—both the little-known but monumental visionaries of the past and the scientists whose work is shaping our future. Color photographs, art, and diagrams based on graphics created for the television series—plus a foreword by Neil deGrasse Tyson, best-selling author, wildly popular science commentator, and host of Cosmos on the National Geographic Channel—complete this highly anticipated package.

Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize From the man who Oliver Sacks hailed as “one of the best scientist/writers of our time,” a collection of sharply observed, uproariously funny essays on the biology of human culture and behavior. In the tradition of Stephen Jay Gould and Oliver Sacks, Robert Sapolsky offers a sparkling and erudite collection of essays about science, the world, and our relation to both. “The Trouble with Testosterone” explores the influence of that notorious hormone on male aggression. “Curious George’s Pharmacy” reexamines recent exciting claims that wild primates know how to medicate themselves with forest plants. “Junk Food Monkeys” relates the adventures of a troop of baboons who stumble upon a tourist garbage dump. And “Circling the Blanket for God” examines the neurobiological roots underlying religious belief. Drawing on his career as an evolutionary biologist and neurobiologist, Robert Sapolsky writes about the natural world vividly and insightfully. With candor, humor, and rich observations, these essays marry cutting-edge science with humanity, illuminating the interconnectedness of the world’s inhabitants with skill and flair.

From the bestselling author of The Clockwork Universe and The Writing of the Gods , an “utterly delightful…hugely entertaining” ( Air Mail ) book about the eccentric Victorians who discovered dinosaur bones, leading to a whole new understanding of human history. In the early 1800s the natural world was a safe and cozy place, or so people believed. But then a twelve-year-old farm boy in Massachusetts stumbled on a row of fossilized three-toed footprints the size of dinner plates—the first dinosaur tracks ever found. Soon, in England, scientists unearthed enormous bones that reached as high as a man’s head. Outside of myths and fairy tales, no one had even imagined that creatures like three-toed giants had once lumbered across the land—nor dreamed that they could all have vanished, hundreds of millions years ago. In Dinosaurs at the Dinner Party , celebrated storyteller and historian Edward Dolnick leads us through a compelling true adventure as the paleontologists of the early 19th century puzzled their way through the fossil record to create the story of dinosaurs we know today. The tale begins with Mary Anning, a poor, uneducated woman who had a sixth sense for finding fossils buried deep inside cliffs; moves to William Buckland, an eccentric geologist who filled his home with specimens and famously pieced together a prehistoric scene from the fossil record inside a cave; and then on to the controversial Richard Owen, the era’s best-known scientist, and the one who coined the term “dinosaur.” “Exuberant” ( Kirkus Reviews ), entertaining, erudite, and featuring an unconventional cast of characters, Dinosaurs at the Dinner Party tells the story of how the accidental discovery of prehistoric creatures upended humanity’s understanding of the world and its own place within it.

Inspired by the wonder of his own parental experiences, former psychoanalyst and New York Times best-selling author Jeffrey Masson offers a remarkable look at one of the most fulfilling roles in the animal world: fatherhood. In The Evolution of Fatherhood , he explores the extraordinary dedication and behavior of nature's most outstanding dads. Discover the male emperor penguin incubating his egg through Antarctic blizzards, prairie dog dads teaching their pups vital life skills through play, and the South American tamarin monkey who actively "coaches" his mate through labor. Learn why wolves make devoted fathers, while their close relatives, dogs, often don't display the same level of paternal care. With captivating writing and impeccable research, Masson celebrates the unique and often surprising role males play in the lives of their young. He contrasts these heroes with nature's less involved fathers--like lions, langurs, and bears--and challenges the notion that paternal care is purely biological. Masson passionately demonstrates that for many animals, fatherhood is a profound, all-encompassing emotional experience. Compelling and inspirational, The Evolution of Fatherhood is a book that will forever change how you perceive parenthood, family bonds, and the rich emotional lives of the animals who share our world.

This book focuses on the personalities in the history of medicine.

Aliens are big in America. Whether they've arrived via rocket, flying saucer, or plain old teleportation, they've been invading, infiltrating, or inspiring us for decades, and they've fascinated moviegoers and television watchers for more than fifty years. About half of us believe that aliens really exist, and millions are convinced they've visited Earth. For twenty-five years, SETI has been looking for the proof, and as the program's senior astronomer, Seth Shostak explains in this engrossing book, it's entirely possible that before long conclusive evidence will be found. His informative, entertaining report offers an insider's view of what we might realistically expect to discover light-years away among the stars. Neither humanoids nor monsters, says Shostak; in fact, biological intelligence is probably just a precursor to machine beings, enormously advanced artificial sentients whose capabilities and accomplishments may have developed over billions of years and far exceed our own. As he explores what, if anything, they would tell us and what their existence would portend for humankind and the cosmos, he introduces a colorful cast of characters and provides a vivid, state-of-the-art account of the past, present, and future of our search for extraterrestrial intelligence.

"Many of the great legislative achievements of the past sixty years stem from FDR's 1944 State of the Union address. This book that argues for a new vision of FDR and of constitutional history"-- Provided by publisher.

How do we understand the world? While some look to the heavens for intelligent design, others argue that it is determined by information encoded in DNA. Science serves as an important activity for uncovering the processes and operations of nature, but it is also immersed in a social context where ideology influences the questions we ask and how we approach the material world. Biology Under the Influence: Dialectical Essays on the Coevolution of Nature and Society breaks from the confirms of determinism, offering a dialectical analysis for comprehending a dynamic social and natural world. In Biology Under the Influence , Richard Lewontin and Richard Levins provide a devastating critique of genetic determinism and reductionism within science while exploring a broad range of issues including the nature of science, biology, evolution, the environment, pubic health, and dialectics, They dismantle the ideology that attempts to naturalize social inequalities, unveil the alienation of science and nature, and illustrate how a dialectical position serves as a basis for grappling with historical developments and a world characterized by change. Biology Under the Influence brings together the illuminating essays of two prominent scientists who work to demystify and empower the public's understanding of science and nature.

Lehrbuch

This enticing collection is as devoted to the profound power of figures of speech as any oration of old Hellas. Metaphor reigns as we encounter the identification of our Earth as a Single, integrative organism, a tale told in image and passion. The discoveries and conjectures upon which this grand view rest are here as well. I have enjoyed these two dozen pieces hugely. No family tree of animal life but must somewhere disclose a cousinly infolding. We are compact of life past, and the looped handing down is more complex than the Mendel-Morgan dance of chromosomes and genes. That dance is essential, certainly, but it is the vital editing of an epic and many-rooted work, a book more like the Bible than like one great artists Remembrance of Things Past. We follow a few old shelves of bound DNA, not just a single book. Our major biochemical package for oxidative metabolism was de scribed in a small DNA manual, somehow engulfed to become an or ganelle within a lucky ancient ancestral anaerobe, and passed ever since viii FOREWORD from mother to offspring outside of the chromosome shuffie. The sperm do carry half the compact genetic message of the human DNA, but they are too small to transfer this equally essential symbiotic one that comes down from the mothers, within roomy egg after roomy egg.

The Advances in Cancer Research series provides invaluable information on the exciting and fast-moving field of cancer research. This volume presents outstanding and original reviews on a variety of topics.

""How many creatures walking on this earth / Have their first being in another form?" the Roman poet Ovid asked two thousand years ago. He could not have known the full extent of the truth: Today, biologists estimate a stunning three-quarters of all animal species on earth undergo some form of metamorphosis. But why do tadpoles transform into frogs, caterpillars into butterflies, elvers into eels, immortal jellyfish from sea sprigs to medusae and back again, growing younger and younger in frigid ocean depths? Why must creatures go through massive destruction and remodeling to become who they are? Tracing a path from Aristotle--who rejected the possibility of metamorphosis--to Darwin to today, historian of science Oren Harman explores that central mystery. Metamorphosis, however, isn't just a biological puzzle: It takes us to the very heart of questions of being and identity, whatever kind of change we may undergo. Metamorphosis is a new classic of natural history: a book that, by unveiling a mystery of nature, causes us to relearn ourselves"--Publisher's description.

A Nobel Laureate who is committed to scientific literacy, Glashow brings his intelligence and vast understanding of the subject to a text geared to liberal arts students. Combining fascinating literary and historical references with a vigorous, whimsical, and often humorous writing style, Glashow traces the evolution of physics and chemistry from ancient to modern times and explains not only what we know about matter and the universe, but how we came to know it, and why it is important.

Two world-renowned scientists present an audacious new vision of the cosmos that “steals the thunder from the Big Bang theory.” — Wall Street JournalThe Big Bang theory—widely regarded as the leading explanation for the origin of the universe—posits that space and time sprang into being about 14 billion years ago in a hot, expanding fireball of nearly infinite density. Over the last three decades the theory has been repeatedly revised to address such issues as how galaxies and stars first formed and why the expansion of the universe is speeding up today. Furthermore, an explanation has yet to be found for what caused the Big Bang in the first place.In Endless Universe , Paul J. Steinhardt and Neil Turok, both distinguished theoretical physicists, present a bold new cosmology. Steinhardt and Turok “contend that what we think of as the moment of creation was simply part of an infinite cycle of titanic collisions between our universe and a parallel world” ( Discover ). They recount the remarkable developments in astronomy, particle physics, and superstring theory that form the basis for their groundbreaking “Cyclic Universe” theory. According to this theory, the Big Bang was not the beginning of time but the bridge to a past filled with endlessly repeating cycles of evolution, each accompanied by the creation of new matter and the formation of new galaxies, stars, and planets.Endless Universe provides answers to longstanding problems with the Big Bang model, while offering a provocative new view of both the past and the future of the cosmos. It is a “theory that could solve the cosmic mystery” ( USA Today ).