The Tangled Field
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The Tangled Field
Author: Nathaniel C. COMFORT
language: en
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Release Date: 2009-06-30
This biographical study illuminates the important yet misunderstood figure of Barbara McClintock, the Nobel Prize winning geneticist. Comfort replaces the myth with a new story, rich with new understandings of women in science.
At The Field's Edge
Adrian Bell was farming and writing during a period when the English countryside underwent its most significant transformation for hundreds of years. His work, spanning sixty years from 1920 to 1980, not only documents this agricultural revolution, but also warns of the effects it will have both for the environment and for society. As these consequences dominate the English countryside today, Bell's views have relevance and importance to its future management. At the Field's Edge appraises Bell's prescient but still timely observations about the ecology, economy and culture of the British countryside, and introduces his beautifully crafted prose to a new generation of readers. Though he has been largely neglected until now, Bell's voice is one we should listen to, not least because he is one of our greatest writers about farming and rural life. If we pause at the field's edge with him for a moment, we get a lesson not only in aesthetic appreciation, but also a message about what is disappearing from the countryside.
The Tangled Tree
In this New York Times bestseller and longlist nominee for the National Book Award, “our greatest living chronicler of the natural world” (The New York Times), David Quammen explains how recent discoveries in molecular biology affect our understanding of evolution and life’s history. In the mid-1970s, scientists began using DNA sequences to reexamine the history of all life. Perhaps the most startling discovery to come out of this new field—the study of life’s diversity and relatedness at the molecular level—is horizontal gene transfer (HGT), or the movement of genes across species lines. It turns out that HGT has been widespread and important; we now know that roughly eight percent of the human genome arrived sideways by viral infection—a type of HGT. In The Tangled Tree, “the grandest tale in biology….David Quammen presents the science—and the scientists involved—with patience, candor, and flair” (Nature). We learn about the major players, such as Carl Woese, the most important little-known biologist of the twentieth century; Lynn Margulis, the notorious maverick whose wild ideas about “mosaic” creatures proved to be true; and Tsutomu Wantanabe, who discovered that the scourge of antibiotic-resistant bacteria is a direct result of horizontal gene transfer, bringing the deep study of genome histories to bear on a global crisis in public health. “David Quammen proves to be an immensely well-informed guide to a complex story” (The Wall Street Journal). In The Tangled Tree, he explains how molecular studies of evolution have brought startling recognitions about the tangled tree of life—including where we humans fit upon it. Thanks to new technologies, we now have the ability to alter even our genetic composition—through sideways insertions, as nature has long been doing. “The Tangled Tree is a source of wonder….Quammen has written a deep and daring intellectual adventure” (The Boston Globe).