In November 12, 2002, Dr. John Chambers of the NASA Ames Research Center gave a seminar to the Astrobiology Group at the University of Washington. The audience of about 100 listened with rapt attention as Chambers described results from a computer study of how planetary systems form. The goal of his research was to answer a deceptively simple question: How often would newly forming planetary systems produce Earth-like planets, given a star the size of our own sun? By “Earth-like” Chambers ...

By looking backward at the course of great extinctions, a paleontologist sees what the future holds.More than 200 million years ago, a cataclysmic event known as the Permian extinction destroyed more than 90 percent of all species and nearly 97 percent of all living things. Its origins have long been a puzzle for paleontologists. During the 1990s and the early part of this century, a great battle was fought between those who thought that death had come from above and those who thou...

Sea level rise will happen no matter what we do. Even if we stopped all carbon dioxide emissions today, the seas would rise one meter by 2050 and three meters by 2100. This -- not drought, species extinction, or excessive heat waves -- will be the most catastrophic effect of global warming. And it won't simply redraw our coastlines -- agriculture, electrical and fiber optic systems, and shipping will be changed forever. As icebound regions melt, new sources of oil, gas, minerals, and arabl...

I n modem times, science has brought the past-and so many of its creatures-back to life via intellectual inquiry, application of the scientific method, and some extraordinary technology that has recently been devel oped. The wonder of the process is that such a rich and vivid understanding of the deep past has been generated from such scanty evidence: broken bones, lithified shells, fossil leaves, and even simple layered rocks. The sci entists who have contributed to this work have woven r...

A comprehensive series of essays exploring Peter C. Phan’s groundbreaking work to widen Christian theology beyond the Western worldPeter C. Phan’s wide-ranging contributions to theology and his pioneering work on religious pluralism, migration, and Christian identity have made a global impact on the field.The essays in Theology without Borders offer a variety of perspectives across Phan’s fundamental work in eschatology, world christianity, interre...

An engrossing and revelatory first look at the search for alien life-on Earth and beyondFor the past twenty years, Peter Ward has been at the forefront of popular science writing, with books such as the influential and controversial Rare Earth. In Life as We Do Not Know It, Ward, with his signature blend of eloquence, humor, and learned insight, vividly details the latest scientific findings, cutting-edge research, and intrepid new theories on the...

A riveting explanation of epigenetics, offering startling insights into our inheritable traits.In the 1700s, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck first described epigenetics to explain the inheritance of acquired characteristics; however, his theory was supplanted in the 1800s by Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection through heritable genetic mutations. But natural selection could not adequately explain how rapidly species re-diversified and repopula...

How often did our ancestors bathe? How often did they wash their clothes and change them? What did they understand cleanliness to be? Why have our hygienic habits changed so dramatically over time? In short, how have we come to be so clean?The Clean Body explores one of the most fundamental and pervasive cultural changes in Western history since the seventeenth century: the personal hygiene revolution. In the age of Louis XIV bathing was rare and hygiene was mainly a matte...

In the tradition of Jon Ronson and Tim Wu, an absorbing and revelatory journey into the American Way of Defying Death . . .As longevity medicine revolutionizes the lives of many older people, the quest to take the next step—to live as long as we choose—has spurred a scientific arms race in search of the elixir of life, funded by Big Tech and Silicon Valley.Once the stuff of Mesopotamian mythology and episodes of Star Trek, the effort to make humans immortal...

An absorbing and revelatory journey into the American Way of defying deathAs longevity medicine revolutionizes the lives of many older people, the quest to take the next step—to live as long as we choose—has spurred a scientific arms race in search of the elixir of life, funded by Big Tech and Silicon Valley.Once the stuff of Mesopotamian mythology and episodes of Star Trek, the effort to make humans immortal is becoming increasingly credible as th...

"A lucid, bright and essential work of reporting, analysis and genuine care. Peter Ward has given us a new way to think about private endeavors in space. Superb."⁠—Rivka Galchen, author of Little LaborsThis in-depth work of reportage dares to ask what’s at stake in privatizing outer spaceEarth is in trouble—so dramatically that we’re now scrambling to explore space for valuable resources and a home for permanent colonization. With ...

When it was originally published in 1986, this was the first book to deal simultaneously with several aspects of social welfare provision in a developing country. The unique contribution of the book is based on the analysis of 3 substantive welfare areas – land (for self-help housing), urban infrastructure and health – which are examined in terms of the nature, motivation and effectiveness of government intervention. The book covers 3 administrations between 1970 and the mid-1980s and sets...