William Bains - Böcker

This book provides a clear, practical and illuminating guide to the ideas and terminology of Biotechnology. Biotechnology is one of the fastest growing, most exciting, and most controversial areas of science and technology in the 21st Century, an industry worth billions and a political topic that has shaken governments. It has already produced scientific achievements, from cloning to sequencing the genome, which would have seemed miraculous 20 years ago, and an industry with thousands of companies spanning the world. But this is based on a set of scientific disciplines with their own jargon, ideas and limitations. This book describes those ideas and terms, and what they really mean for science, industry and society. In 300 entries from ADEPT through cloning, genomes, patents, and viruses to zoonosis, A to Z provides over 300 concise entries describing what the science is, what it does, and the reality of how it has been used, and could be applied. It can be read cover to cover, or dipped into for a quick understanding of a topic.

A comparative examination of financial institutions in the interwar period focusing on the UK, the US, Germany, France, and Japan. In this latest addition to the prestigious Fuji Business History series, the contributors to the volume analyse the ways in which different institutions coped with the financial crises at this time, and how they competed with each other. They also ask how this affected the financial climates of the countries in question. The discussion is divided into three parts: commercial banking, universal banking, and insurance and securities.

Are humans a galactic oddity, or will complex life with human abilities develop on planets with environments that remain habitable for long enough? In a clear, jargon-free style, two leading researchers in the burgeoning field of astrobiology critically examine the major evolutionary steps that led us from the distant origins of life to the technologically advanced species we are today.Are the key events that took life from simple cells to astronauts unique occurrences that would be unlikely to occur on other planets? By focusing on what life does - it's functional abilities - rather than specific biochemistry or anatomy, the authors provide plausible answers to this question. Systematically exploring the various pathways that led to the complex biosphere we experience on planet Earth, they show that most of the steps along that path are likely to occur on any world hosting life, with only two exceptions: One is the origin of life itself – if this is a highly improbable event,then we live in a rather “empty universe”. However, if this isn’t the case, we inevitably live in a universe containing a myriad of planets hosting complex as well as microbial life - a “cosmic zoo”. The other unknown is the rise of technologically advanced beings, as exemplified on Earth by humans. Only one technological species has emerged in the roughly 4 billion years life has existed on Earth, and we don’t know of any other technological species elsewhere. If technological intelligence is a rare, almost unique feature of Earth's history, then there can be no visitors to the cosmic zoo other than ourselves.Schulze-Makuch and Bains take the reader through the history of life on Earth, laying out a consistent and straightforward framework for understanding why we should think that advanced, complex life exists on planets other than Earth. They provide a unique perspective on the question that puzzled the human species for centuries: are we alone?