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A Nobel Prize-winning biologist tells the riveting story of his race to discover the inner workings of biology's most important molecule "Ramakrishnan's writing is so honest, lucid and engaging that I could not put this book down until I had read to the very end." -- Siddhartha Mukherjee, author of The Emperor of All Maladies and The Gene Everyone has heard of DNA. But by itself, DNA is just an inert blueprint for life. It is the ribosome -- an enormous molecular machine made up of a million atoms -- that makes DNA come to life, turning our genetic code into proteins and therefore into us. Gene Machine is an insider account of the race for the structure of the ribosome, a fundamental discovery that both advances our knowledge of all life and could lead to the development of better antibiotics against life-threatening diseases. But this is also a human story of Ramakrishnan's unlikely journey, from his first fumbling experiments in a biology lab to being the dark horse in a fierce competition with some of the world's best scientists. In the end, Gene Machine is a frank insider's account of the pursuit of high-stakes science.
The first major examination of the New Atheism as a literary phenomenon.
“Full of fascinating insights drawn from an impressive range of disciplines, The Ascent of Information casts the familiar and the foreign in a dramatic new light.” —Brian Greene, author of The Elegant Universe Your information has a life of its own, and it’s using you to get what it wants. One of the most peculiar and possibly unique features of humans is the vast amount of information we carry outside our biological selves. But in our rush to build the infrastructure for the 20 quintillion bits we create every day, we’ve failed to ask exactly why we’re expending ever-increasing amounts of energy, resources, and human effort to maintain all this data. Drawing on deep ideas and frontier thinking in evolutionary biology, computer science, information theory, and astrobiology, Caleb Scharf argues that information is, in a very real sense, alive. All the data we create—all of our emails, tweets, selfies, A.I.-generated text and funny cat videos—amounts to an aggregate lifeform. It has goals and needs. It can control our behavior and influence our well-being. And it’s an organism that has evolved right alongside us. This symbiotic relationship with information offers a startling new lens for looking at the world. Data isn’t just something we produce; it’s the reason we exist. This powerful idea has the potential to upend the way we think about our technology, our role as humans, and the fundamental nature of life. The Ascent of Information offers a humbling vision of a universe built of and for information. Scharf explores how our relationship with data will affect our ongoing evolution as a species. Understanding this relationship will be crucial to preventing our data from becoming more of a burden than an asset, and to preserving the possibility of a human future.
Science need not be dull and bogged down by jargon, as Richard Dawkins proves in this entertaining look at evolution. The themes he takes up are the concepts of altruistic and selfish behaviour; the genetical definition of selfish interest; the evolution of aggressive behaviour; kinshiptheory; sex ratio theory; reciprocal altruism; deceit; and the natural selection of sex differences. 'Should be read, can be read by almost anyone. It describes with great skill a new face of the theory of evolution.' W.D. Hamilton, Science
The traditional role of evolutionary theory in the social sciences has been to explain the existence of an object in terms of the survival of the fittest. In economics this approach has acted as a justification for hypotheses such as profit maximisation, or the existence of institutions in terms of their overall efficiency. This volume challenges that view and argues that one of the first tasks of economic theory should be to explain the enormous diversity of institutional arrangements that has characterised human societies.
Watson's win on Jeopardy came as no surprise to those who had read Deus ex Machina sapiens. It was written largely during the 1990s, around the time that another IBM supercomputer--Deep Blue--was trouncing world chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov. The book has since been updated on a few points of detail but its primary message remains intact: the Machine is rapidly evolving as Man's rival if not replacement for the job of Steward of the Earth. Building upon the work of some of the world's greatest scientists, philosophers, and religious thinkers, and drawing particularly from developments in the computing and cognitive sciences--particularly, the field of artificial intelligence, or AI--the book reveals the evolutionary emergence of a machine that is not just intelligent but also self-conscious, emotional, and free-willed. In the 1980s and '90s you used to hear grandiose claims about AI. Machines would soon surpass humans in intelligence, it was claimed by some. The Japanese government spent a billion dollars on one project to make it happen. Well, it didn't happen, but that didn't stop the development of intelligence in machines. AI research simply went underground, and has ever since been quietly incorporated into the "ordinary" programs we use every day, without fanfare, without hype. There is still no machine that rivals Homo sapiens in overall intelligence, but today there are machines that far exceed human intellectual capacity in specific domains, from games to engineering to art, and the number of domains is growing exponentially big and exponentially fast. The disappearance of AI from front stage was good insofar as it allowed machines to develop in the right way; that is, through an evolutionary process, which is the only way for something of such complexity to develop. But it was bad insofar as we lost sight of the development of the intelligent machine. Deus brings Machina sapiens back to front stage, where it belongs. After describing the evolutionary development of intelligence in machines it goes on to describe the emotional, intellectual, and ethical attributes of what is no less than an emergent new life form. It asks the Big Question that can only be asked if you accept the very possibility of the new life form: Will it be serpent or savior? The question is answered in the book's title, which is intended to mean "God Emerging From the Intelligent Machine." The author confesses to having never studied Latin and to have concocted the title from two known Latin phrases: "Deus ex Machina" and "Homo sapiens." The concoction could be grammatically incorrect. The author would be pleased to be corrected.
This book reviews a wide-range of genetically modified (GM) crops to understand how they are produced, the impacts on the agricultural industry, and their potential for improving food security. The production of GM crops has now become an invaluable asset in the agricultural toolbox. With a significant portion of the world suffering from hunger and poverty, this book examines how food security can be achieved through GM crops. A wide variety of crops are examined, from the earliest developments of GM tomatoes and potatoes to recent interest in the development of low-cost, high yielding biofuels, such as microalgae. Chapters also discuss the role of GM crops in pest management and the consequential reduction in the use of insecticides. Overall, this book provides an important synthesis of GM crops from their commercial value to the agricultural industry, as well as their potential for improving food security. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of agricultural engineering, crop science, food biotechology, food security, and those interested in food and agriculture and sustainable development more broadly.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Once in a great while, a book comes along that changes our view of the world. This magnificent novel from the Nobel laureate and author of Never Let Me Go is “an intriguing take on how artificial intelligence might play a role in our futures ... a poignant meditation on love and loneliness” (The Associated Press). • A GOOD MORNING AMERICA Book Club Pick! Here is the story of Klara, an Artificial Friend with outstanding observational qualities, who, from her place in the store, watches carefully the behavior of those who come in to browse, and of those who pass on the street outside. She remains hopeful that a customer will soon choose her. Klara and the Sun is a thrilling book that offers a look at our changing world through the eyes of an unforgettable narrator, and one that explores the fundamental question: what does it mean to love?