A survey of recent research and thinking on genes.
What are genes, asks science writer Arney, and what do they do? “Genes are the things in your DNA that make your eyes blue, your belly bulge or your hair curl….Genetic knowledge has the power to save us,” she writes at the beginning of the book. Of course, it’s not nearly that simple, but by the end of the book, Arney has arrived at a simplified definition of a gene: “an inherited thing that does a thing.” In between, the author delivers an alluring tale of science at its most humble and probing, at least as practiced by the company of skeptics and scientific investigators. Genes are strings of DNA with instructions telling the cells to make various molecules—a string of building blocks to make a protein, for instance—that enable us to grow from a single cell into a baby. But the more we learn about genetic behavior, the murkier becomes our understanding. We know that genes can be switched on and off, but we also know the activator can be seriously distant from the genes producing a protein to endow a cell with individual characteristics. How do they communicate? There are 6 feet of DNA in every cell, jammed into the nucleus, “constantly on the move, writhing and wriggling like a nest of snakes.” If evolution is genetics and time, then this is natural selection at its most immediate and intimate. Arney delves into the importance of nature and nurture, as well as the epigenetic “impact of the environment on how this genetic information gets used.” Then come the bedeviling stochastic chemical interactions, the matters of chance “that the right things will come together at the right time.” With all the moving parts, she writes, genetics is “a statistical event rather than a guaranteed one.”
A robust, bouncy, pellucid introduction to DNA and genetics.Pub Date: March 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4729-1004-2
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Bloomsbury Sigma
Review Posted Online: Dec. 23, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2016
Categories: SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
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Bryson (I'm a Stranger Here Myself, 1999, etc.), a man who knows how to track down an explanation and make it confess, asks the hard questions of science—e.g., how did things get to be the way they are?—and, when possible, provides answers.
As he once went about making English intelligible, Bryson now attempts the same with the great moments of science, both the ideas themselves and their genesis, to resounding success. Piqued by his own ignorance on these matters, he’s egged on even more so by the people who’ve figured out—or think they’ve figured out—such things as what is in the center of the Earth. So he goes exploring, in the library and in company with scientists at work today, to get a grip on a range of topics from subatomic particles to cosmology. The aim is to deliver reports on these subjects in terms anyone can understand, and for the most part, it works. The most difficult is the nonintuitive material—time as part of space, say, or proteins inventing themselves spontaneously, without direction—and the quantum leaps unusual minds have made: as J.B.S. Haldane once put it, “The universe is not only queerer than we suppose; it is queerer than we can suppose.” Mostly, though, Bryson renders clear the evolution of continental drift, atomic structure, singularity, the extinction of the dinosaur, and a mighty host of other subjects in self-contained chapters that can be taken at a bite, rather than read wholesale. He delivers the human-interest angle on the scientists, and he keeps the reader laughing and willing to forge ahead, even over their heads: the human body, for instance, harboring enough energy “to explode with the force of thirty very large hydrogen bombs, assuming you knew how to liberate it and really wished to make a point.”
Loads of good explaining, with reminders, time and again, of how much remains unknown, neatly putting the death of science into perspective.Pub Date: May 6, 2003
ISBN: 0-7679-0817-1
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Broadway
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
Categories: SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
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A tiny book, not much bigger than a pamphlet, with huge potential impact.
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A collection of articulate, forceful speeches made from September 2018 to September 2019 by the Swedish climate activist who was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize.
Speaking in such venues as the European and British Parliaments, the French National Assembly, the Austrian World Summit, and the U.N. General Assembly, Thunberg has always been refreshingly—and necessarily—blunt in her demands for action from world leaders who refuse to address climate change. With clarity and unbridled passion, she presents her message that climate change is an emergency that must be addressed immediately, and she fills her speeches with punchy sound bites delivered in her characteristic pull-no-punches style: “I don’t want you to be hopeful. I want you to panic. I want you to feel the fear I feel every day. And then I want you to act.” In speech after speech, to persuade her listeners, she cites uncomfortable, even alarming statistics about global temperature rise and carbon dioxide emissions. Although this inevitably makes the text rather repetitive, the repetition itself has an impact, driving home her point so that no one can fail to understand its importance. Thunberg varies her style for different audiences. Sometimes it is the rousing “our house is on fire” approach; other times she speaks more quietly about herself and her hopes and her dreams. When addressing the U.S. Congress, she knowingly calls to mind the words and deeds of Martin Luther King Jr. and John F. Kennedy. The last speech in the book ends on a note that is both challenging and upbeat: “We are the change and change is coming.” The edition published in Britain earlier this year contained 11 speeches; this updated edition has 16, all worth reading.
A tiny book, not much bigger than a pamphlet, with huge potential impact.Pub Date: Nov. 26, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-14-313356-8
Page Count: 112
Publisher: Penguin
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2019
Categories: GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | NATURE | SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
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