Encouraging advances in biology delineated through accessible, inviting writing.
A survey of the new field of synthetic biology, “the science of building simple organisms or ‘biological apps’ to make manufacturing greener, energy production more sustainable, agriculture more robust and medicine more powerful and precise.”
In this energetic and optimistic book, Poznansky, former CEO of the Ontario Genomics Institute, shows how synthetic biology can be used to contend with major issues involving health, food, and the environment. This combination of engineering and molecular biology serves to design and build synthetic gene circuits and biomolecular components to reprogram organisms. The products are new life-forms, whether completely novel or partly modified. Examples include viruses that target specific diseased cells, genetically modified cells that remove heavy metals from lakes and rivers, and bacterium that take carbon out of the atmosphere. In layman’s terms, Poznansky explains this new world of unnatural selection and nonrandom mutation, evolution by human design. Although he is profoundly enthusiastic about the prospects of genomics technologies and engineering, he recognizes that we are at the beginning of a process that requires the safest and most appropriate approaches: genetic manipulation incorporating safety switches to ensure containment, further understanding of gene editing, insertion, and expression, and the avoidance of the new gene being identified as a foreign substance. With sensible language and peer-reviewed research, the author explores the present and coming needs regarding global health care, food security, and pollution and examines the history of genetically modified organisms. Of special concern are the roles of ethics and regulation regarding safety, public interest, risk vs. reward, and the potential detrimental interference of political skulduggery, special-interest groups, and large corporations. Poznansky also takes to task anti-vaxxers and those that doubt the severity of climate change, while lauding the grassroots efforts—“the democratization of science”—that have already shown some promising results.
Encouraging advances in biology delineated through accessible, inviting writing.Pub Date: Sept. 22, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-77041-535-5
Page Count: 300
Publisher: ECW Press
Review Posted Online: June 11, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2020
The lessons to draw are obvious: Smoke more dope, eat less meat. Like-minded readers will dig it.
The chef, rapper, and TV host serves up a blustery memoir with lashings of self-help.
“I’ve always had a sick confidence,” writes Bronson, ne Ariyan Arslani. The confidence, he adds, comes from numerous sources: being a New Yorker, and more specifically a New Yorker from Queens; being “short and fucking husky” and still game for a standoff on the basketball court; having strength, stamina, and seemingly no fear. All these things serve him well in the rough-and-tumble youth he describes, all stickball and steroids. Yet another confidence-builder: In the big city, you’ve got to sink or swim. “No one is just accepted—you have to fucking show that you’re able to roll,” he writes. In a narrative steeped in language that would make Lenny Bruce blush, Bronson recounts his sentimental education, schooled by immigrant Italian and Albanian family members and the mean streets, building habits good and bad. The virtue of those habits will depend on your take on modern mores. Bronson writes, for example, of “getting my dick pierced” down in the West Village, then grabbing a pizza and smoking weed. “I always smoke weed freely, always have and always will,” he writes. “I’ll just light a blunt anywhere.” Though he’s gone through the classic experiences of the latter-day stoner, flunking out and getting arrested numerous times, Bronson is a hard charger who’s not afraid to face nearly any challenge—especially, given his physique and genes, the necessity of losing weight: “If you’re husky, you’re always dieting in your mind,” he writes. Though vulgar and boastful, Bronson serves up a model that has plenty of good points, including his growing interest in nature, creativity, and the desire to “leave a legacy for everybody.”
The lessons to draw are obvious: Smoke more dope, eat less meat. Like-minded readers will dig it.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-4197-4478-5
Page Count: 184
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2021
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.
A study of swimming as sport, survival method, basis for community, and route to physical and mental well-being.
For Bay Area writer Tsui (American Chinatown: A People's History of Five Neighborhoods, 2009), swimming is in her blood. As she recounts, her parents met in a Hong Kong swimming pool, and she often visited the beach as a child and competed on a swim team in high school. Midway through the engaging narrative, the author explains how she rejoined the team at age 40, just as her 6-year-old was signing up for the first time. Chronicling her interviews with scientists and swimmers alike, Tsui notes the many health benefits of swimming, some of which are mental. Swimmers often achieve the “flow” state and get their best ideas while in the water. Her travels took her from the California coast, where she dove for abalone and swam from Alcatraz back to San Francisco, to Tokyo, where she heard about the “samurai swimming” martial arts tradition. In Iceland, she met Guðlaugur Friðþórsson, a local celebrity who, in 1984, survived six hours in a winter sea after his fishing vessel capsized, earning him the nickname “the human seal.” Although humans are generally adapted to life on land, the author discovered that some have extra advantages in the water. The Bajau people of Indonesia, for instance, can do 10-minute free dives while hunting because their spleens are 50% larger than average. For most, though, it’s simply a matter of practice. Tsui discussed swimming with Dara Torres, who became the oldest Olympic swimmer at age 41, and swam with Kim Chambers, one of the few people to complete the daunting Oceans Seven marathon swim challenge. Drawing on personal experience, history, biology, and social science, the author conveys the appeal of “an unflinching giving-over to an element” and makes a convincing case for broader access to swimming education (372,000 people still drown annually).
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-61620-786-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
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