Can we can use the patterns and processes of convergent evolution to make inferences about universal laws of life, on Earth and elsewhere? In this book, Russell Powell investigates whether we can use the patterns and processes of convergent evolution to make inferences about universal laws of life, on Earth and elsewhere. Weaving together disparate philosophical and empirical threads, Powell…
The history of an unnatural disaster—drug overdose—and the emergence of naloxone as a social and technological solution. For years, drug overdose was unmentionable in polite society. OD was understood to be something that took place in dark alleys—an ugly death awaiting social deviants—neither scientifically nor clinically interesting. But over the last several years, overdose preven…
A leading cancer specialist tells the compelling stories of three adult leukemia patients and their treatments, the disease itself, and the drugs developed to treat it. When you are told that you have leukemia, your world stops. Your brain can't function. You are asked to make decisions about treatment almost immediately, when you are not in your right mind. And yet you pull yourself together …
The main focus of this monograph on whistled speech is the result of a worldwide inquiry primarily based on the author’s unprecedented fieldwork and laboratory experience. The different questions raised by the origin and the evolution of whistled forms of languages are also explored, including the role of environmental constraints in the emergence of whistled speech, their phonetic and phonol…
Exploring several of the evolutionary branches of the mathematical notion of genus, this book traces the idea from its prehistory in problems of integration, through algebraic curves and their associated Riemann surfaces, into algebraic surfaces, and finally into higher dimensions. Its importance in analysis, algebraic geometry, number theory and topology is emphasized through many theorems. Al…
Scientific philosophers examine the nature and significance of levels of organization, a core structural principle in the biological sciences. This volume examines the idea of levels of organization as a distinct object of investigation, considering its merits as a core organizational principle for the scientific image of the natural world. It approaches levels of organization—roughly, the…
An analysis of how findings in behavioral economics challenge fundamental assumptions of medical ethics, integrating the latest research in both fields. Bioethicists have long argued for rational persuasion to help patients with medical decisions. But the findings of behavioral economics—popularized in Thaler and Sunstein's Nudge and other books—show that arguments depending on rational …
Cannabis consumption, commerce, and control in global history, from the nineteenth century to the present day. This book gathers together authors from the new wave of cannabis histories that has emerged in recent decades. It offers case studies from Africa, Asia, the Americas, Europe, and the Middle East. It does so to trace a global history of the plant and its preparations, arguing that We…
An examination of the daily grind of living with pollution in rural China and of the varying forms of activism that develop in response. Residents of rapidly industrializing rural areas in China live with pollution every day. Villagers drink obviously tainted water and breathe visibly dirty air, afflicted by a variety of ailments—from arthritis to nosebleeds—that they ascribe to the effe…
Leading scientists argue for a new paradigm for cancer research, proposing a complex systems view of cancer supported by empirical evidence. Current consensus in cancer research explains cancer as a disease caused by specific mutations in certain genes. Thanks to dramatic advances in genome sequencing, never before have we known so much about the individual cancer cell—and yet it is still …