A staid but intellectually stimulating excursion across one of modern biology’s most promising, and controversial, frontiers.
“Extinction is essentially a one-way street. Or is it?”
Though the closest scientists have come so far to bringing back an extinct species is a newborn bucardo—a kind of mountain goat—that lived for just 10 minutes, Hirsch offers strong evidence that it’s only a matter of time before we could be sharing the planet with passenger pigeons, Tasmanian tigers, and even mammoths (but not, probably, dinosaurs) once again. Although she stirs in accounts of extinctions both ancient and modern, along with stories of success and of failure in saving critically endangered species, her descriptions of how genetic material is preserved, reconstructed from scattered fragments, edited, and transferred to create clones, genetically modified organisms, and new creatures comes out as a dry if relentlessly informative mix. Frequent photos and diagrams add visual enhancements to this overview; arguments from some conservationists that “de-extinction” is a waste of resources that could be more worthily spent in saving endangered species add ethical balance; and weighty quantities of source notes and leads to further information at the end add considerable research value.
A staid but intellectually stimulating excursion across one of modern biology’s most promising, and controversial, frontiers. (glossary, index) (Nonfiction. 11-15)Pub Date: April 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4677-9490-9
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Twenty-First Century/Lerner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 20, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2017
Necessary for every library, personal or otherwise.
As fresh and funny as ever, a classic compendium of physics in action gets a light but needed makeover.
Most of the “Things” here are still working the way they did back in 1988, 1998, and 2004, when the original and the revised editions dropped—but along with sporting new and spruced-up colors, some of the content, notably the section dubbed “The Digital Domain,” has been brought into the 21st century. Thus, the space shuttle and the VCR are no more, the workings of the telephone have been replaced by those of smartphones and telephone networks, and the jump jet has given way to the quadcopter and other types of drones. But the details that made the earlier editions delightful as well as edifying remain. In the illustrations, flights of tiny angels move the “first whoopee cushion” into place, discombobulated woolly mammoths get caught up in silly side business while helping to demonstrate scientific principles, and best of all, Macaulay’s brilliantly designed, engagingly informal diagrams and cutaways bring within the grasp of even casual viewers a greater understanding of the technological wonders of both past and present.
Necessary for every library, personal or otherwise. (index) (Reference. 11-15)Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-544-82438-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: HMH Books
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2016
A serviceable introduction both to this CSI-related field and to the relevant human anatomy.
How does science work to identify corpses of the unknown?
Murray’s compact, textbook look at the basics of forensic anthropology provides comprehensible introductions to individually unique anatomical and physiological characteristics and to the timetable for the decay or decomposition of each. Eight “case files” are presented to provide a story to illustrate the techniques of post-mortem identification in practical contexts and to provide human interest to accompany the straightforward text. Unsurprisingly gruesome, each involves the discovery of a body (or in one, the separate limbs and severed head of a young woman) of an unknown person whose identification is challenged by decomposition. Three main chapters look at current forensic technology from the outside in—the first describes skin, hair, scars, tattoos, fingerprints and their reconstruction, while the second provides a look at how bones, teeth and implants provide structural identification. Murray describes the gold standard of identification—nuclear DNA profiling—in the last chapter with satisfyingly clear instruction in the essential features of forensic DNA. About 20 percent of the text is printed in white on a dark background, including all of the case-file narratives. File photos are used throughout to illustrate the points being made.
A serviceable introduction both to this CSI-related field and to the relevant human anatomy. (index, bibliography, sources for more information) (Nonfiction. 11-14)Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-7613-6696-6
Page Count: 72
Publisher: Twenty-First Century/Lerner
Review Posted Online: Aug. 21, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
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