Unit 1: Mr. Rittner's Top 5 Science Terms
Number 1: Serotiny
Serotiny is an ecological adaptation exhibited by some seed plants, in which seed release occurs in response to an environmental trigger, rather than spontaneously at seed maturation. The most common and best studied trigger is fire, and the term serotiny is often used to refer to this specific case. Some plants may respond to more than one of these triggers. For example, Pinus halepensis exhibits primarily fire-mediated serotiny, but responds weakly to drying atmospheric conditions. Similarly, Sierras sequoias and some Banksia species are strongly serotinous with respect to fire, but also release some seed in response to plant or branch death.
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Number 2: Antipodes
In geography, the antipode of any spot on Earth is the point on Earth's surface diametrically opposite to it; the antipodes of a region similarly represent the area opposite it. A pair of points antipodal to each other are situated such that a straight line connecting the two would pass through Earth's center. Such points are as far away from each other as possible, a great-circle distance of up to 40,075.017 kilometres (24,901.461 mi) on the equator.
In the Northern Hemisphere, "the Antipodes" may be used to refer to Australia and New Zealand, and Antipodeans to their inhabitants. Geographically, the antipodes of Britain and Ireland are in the Pacific Ocean, south of New Zealand. The antipodes of Australia are in the North Atlantic Ocean, while parts of Spain, Portugal, and Morocco are antipodal to New Zealand. |
Number 3: Coriolis Effect
In physics, the Coriolis force is an inertial or fictitious force that seems to act on objects that are in motion within a frame of reference that rotates with respect to an inertial frame. In a reference frame with clockwise rotation, the force acts to the left of the motion of the object. In one with anticlockwise (or counterclockwise) rotation, the force acts to the right. Deflection of an object due to the Coriolis force is called the Coriolis effect. Though recognized previously by others, the mathematical expression for the Coriolis force appeared in an 1835 paper by French scientist Gaspard-Gustave de Coriolis, in connection with the theory of water wheels. Early in the 20th century, the term Coriolis force began to be used in connection with meteorology.
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Number 4: Mychorrizae
A mycorrhiza is a symbiotic association between a fungus and a plant. The term mycorrhiza refers to the role of the fungus in the plant's rhizosphere, its root system. Mycorrhizae play important roles in plant nutrition, soil biology and soil chemistry.
In a mycorrhizal association, the fungus colonizes the host plant's root tissues, either intracellularly as in arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF or AM), or extracellularly as in ectomycorrhizal fungi. The association is sometimes mutualistic. In particular species or in particular circumstances mycorrhizae may have a parasitic association with host plants. |
Number 5: Keel
A keel in bird anatomy is an extension of the sternum (breastbone) which runs axially along the midline of the sternum and extends outward, perpendicular to the plane of the ribs. The keel provides an anchor to which a bird's wing muscles attach, thereby providing adequate leverage for flight. Keels do not exist on all birds; in particular, some flightless birds lack a keel structure.
Historically, the presence or absence of a pronounced keel structure was used as a broad classification of birds into two orders: Carinatae, having a pronounced keel; and ratites (from ratis, "raft" — referring to the flatness of the sternum), having a subtle keel structure or lacking one entirely. However, this classification has fallen into disuse as evolutionary studies have shown that many flightless birds have evolved from flighted birds. |
Unit 2: Mr. Rittner's Top 5 Organelles
Number 1: Mitochondria
The mitochondria is the organelle responsible for conducting cellular respiration in most eukaryotic cells. Specifically, the Krebs Cycle and electron transport chain occur within the mitochondrion, while glycolysis (the first step of cellular respiration) occurs in the cytoplasm and technically is not associated with the mitochondria. Mitochondria has a double membrane indicating it was once a free living cell billions of years ago as described by Endosymbiotic Theory. The presence of mitochondria drastically improves the metabolism of cells improving ATP production from a single glucose molecule from 2 to 38 ATP molecules.
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Number 2: Chloroplast
The chloroplast is the organelle responsible for conducting photosynthesis in photoautotrophic eukaryotic cells like those found in plants. Although technically not required to conduct photosynthesis (such as in photosynthetic cyanobacteria), the chloroplasts drastically improve organization and efficiency. Like the mitochondria, the chloroplast contains its own DNA (unique from the rest of the cell) and has a double membrane. As such, chloroplasts are believed to have once been free living cells according to Endosymbiotic Theory.
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Number 3: Ribosome
To be fair, ribosomes are technically not considered an organelle, but I like to lump them into that category along with cell walls, capsules, etc. The ribosome is responsible for conducting protein synthesis, converting genetic code into an amino acid sequence. Given the huge importance of proteins and the ubiquity of ribosomes, this organelle is considered to be one of the most ancient. Ribosomes are composed of rRNA and contain two subunits: a large and small portion. Each ribosome contains three sites used to help translate genetic code into the polypeptide: A, P and E site. Ribosomes can be found freely in the cytoplasm but are also found en mass on the rough ER where they produce large amounts of protein.
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Number 4: Capsule
Again, the capsule is technically not an organelle, but I like to lump it into that category for the sake of simplicity. The capsule is similar to a cell wall in that it is an extracellular layer of defense for the cell. Of course, unlike cell walls, the capsule is only found in some bacteria, usually to increase their virulence. The capsule itself is a polysaccharide matrix that is capable of blocking antibiotics from reaching the cell and increases the bacteria's size to make it more difficult for macrophages (white blood cells) to engulf and destroy the bacteria through phagocytosis.
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Number 5: Peroxisome
Peroxisomes are a part of the vesicle family of organelles. As such, they are composed of a phospholipid bilayer and contain special digestive enzymes. At first glance, the peroxisome sounds identical to its cousin the lysosome, but the two differ in their use. Lysosomes are used to break down old organelles and recycle them for use in new cellular projects. In contrast, peroxisomes contain enzymes meant to degrade toxins that could harm the cell. One such enzyme is catalase, which is used to break down harmful hydrogen peroxide into water and oxygen gas.
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Unit 3: Mr. Rittner's Top 5 Scientists
Number 1: Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein (14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist who developed the theory of relativity, one of the two pillars of modern physics (alongside quantum mechanics). His work is also known for its influence on the philosophy of science. He is best known to the general public for his mass–energy equivalence formula E = mc2, which has been dubbed "the world's most famous equation". He received the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics "for his services to theoretical physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect", a pivotal step in the development of quantum theory.
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Number 2: Alfred Wallace
Alfred Russel Wallace (8 January 1823 – 7 November 1913) was a British naturalist, explorer, geographer, anthropologist, and biologist. He is best known for independently conceiving the theory of evolution through natural selection; his paper on the subject was jointly published with some of Charles Darwin's writings in 1858. This prompted Darwin to publish his own ideas in On the Origin of Species. Wallace did extensive fieldwork, first in the Amazon River basin and then in the Malay Archipelago, where he identified the faunal divide now termed the Wallace Line, which separates the Indonesian archipelago into two distinct parts: a western portion in which the animals are largely of Asian origin, and an eastern portion where the fauna reflect Australasia.
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Number 3: Rosalind Franklin
Rosalind Elsie Franklin (25 July 1920 – 16 April 1958) was an English chemist and X-ray crystallographer whose work was central to the understanding of the molecular structures of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid), RNA (ribonucleic acid), viruses, coal, and graphite. Although her works on coal and viruses were appreciated in her lifetime, her contributions to the discovery of the structure of DNA were largely recognised posthumously. She became a research associate at King's College London in 1951 and worked on X-ray diffraction studies, which would eventually facilitate the double helix theory of the DNA. In 1953, after two years, owing to disagreement with her director John Randall and more so with her colleague Maurice Wilkins, she was compelled to move to Birkbeck College. At Birkbeck, John Desmond Bernal, chair of the physics department, offered her a separate research team. She died in 1958 at the age of 37 of ovarian cancer.
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Number 4: Nikola Tesla
Nikola Tesla (10 July 1856 – 7 January 1943) was a Serbian-American inventor, electrical engineer, mechanical engineer, and futurist who is best known for his contributions to the design of the modern alternating current (AC) electricity supply system. Born and raised in the Austrian Empire, Tesla received an advanced education in engineering and physics in the 1870s and gained practical experience in the early 1880s working in telephony and at Continental Edison in the new electric power industry. He emigrated in 1884 to the United States, where he would become a naturalized citizen. He worked for a short time at the Edison Machine Works in New York City before he struck out on his own. With the help of partners to finance and market his ideas, Tesla set up laboratories and companies in New York to develop a range of electrical and mechanical devices. His alternating current (AC) induction motor and related polyphase AC patents, licensed by Westinghouse Electric in 1888, earned him a considerable amount of money and became the cornerstone of the polyphase system which that company would eventually market.
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Number 5: Marie Currie
Marie Skłodowska Curie (7 November 1867 – 4 July 1934) was a Polish and naturalized-French physicist and chemist who conducted pioneering research on radioactivity. She was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, the first person and only woman to win the Nobel prize twice, and the only person to win the Nobel Prize in two different scientific fields. She was part of the Curie family legacy of five Nobel Prizes. She was also the first woman to become a professor at the University of Paris, and in 1995 became the first woman to be entombed on her own merits in the Panthéon in Paris.
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Unit 4: Mr. Rittner's Top 5 Celestial Bodies
Number 1: Quasar
A quasar is an extremely luminous active galactic nucleus (AGN). It has been theorized that most large galaxies contain a supermassive central black hole with mass ranging from millions to billions of times the mass of the Sun. In quasars and other types of AGN, the black hole is surrounded by a gaseous accretion disk. As gas falls towards the black hole, energy is released in the form of electromagnetic radiation, which can be observed across the electromagnetic spectrum. The power radiated by quasars is enormous: the most powerful quasars have luminosities thousands of times greater than a galaxy such as the Milky Way.
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Number 2: Blackhole
A black hole is a region of spacetime exhibiting gravitational acceleration so strong that nothing—no particles or even electromagnetic radiation such as light—can escape from it. The theory of general relativity predicts that a sufficiently compact mass can deform spacetime to form a black hole. The boundary of the region from which no escape is possible is called the event horizon. Although the event horizon has an enormous effect on the fate and circumstances of an object crossing it, no locally detectable features appear to be observed. In many ways, a black hole acts like an ideal black body, as it reflects no light. Moreover, quantum field theory in curved spacetime predicts that event horizons emit Hawking radiation, with the same spectrum as a black body of a temperature inversely proportional to its mass. This temperature is on the order of billionths of a kelvin for black holes of stellar mass, making it essentially impossible to observe.
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Number 3: Neutron Star
A neutron star is the collapsed core of a giant star which before collapse had a total mass of between 10 and 29 solar masses. Neutron stars are the smallest and densest stars, not counting black holes, hypothetical white holes, quark stars and strange stars. Neutron stars have a radius on the order of 10 kilometres (6.2 mi) and a mass lower than 2.16 solar masses. They result from the supernova explosion of a massive star, combined with gravitational collapse, that compresses the core past white dwarf star density to that of atomic nuclei.
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Number 4: Binary System
A binary system is a system of two astronomical bodies which are close enough that their gravitational attraction causes them to orbit each other around a barycenter. More restrictive definitions require that this common center of mass is not located within the interior of either object, in order to exclude the typical planet–satellite systems and planetary systems. The most common binary systems are binary stars and binary asteroid, but brown dwarfs, planets, neutron stars, black holes and galaxies can also form binaries.A multiple system is like a binary system but consists of three or more objects such as for trinary stars and trinary asteroids.
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Number 5: Brown Dwarf
A brown dwarf is a type of substellar object occupying the mass range between the heaviest gas giant planets and the lightest stars, having a mass between approximately 13 to 75–80 times that of Jupiter (MJ), or approximately 2.5×1028 kg to about 1.5×1029 kg. Below this range are the sub-brown dwarfs (sometimes referred to as rogue planets), and above it are the lightest red dwarfs. Brown dwarfs may be fully convective, with no layers or chemical differentiation by depth.
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Unit 5: Mr. Rittner's Top 5 Enzymes
Number 1: ATP Synthase
The number 1 slot has to go to enzymatic superstar ATP synthase. Why you ask? ATP synthase is simply amazing: able to harness the kinetic energy of protons moving through its proton channel during chemiosmosis, ATP synthase functions to generate ATP from ADP and a free phosphate during photosynthesis and aerobic cellular respiration. It is an amazing molecule, functioning as both a protein channel and enzyme simultaneously.
Number 2: Rubisco
Another incredible enzyme, rubisco is the most abundant protein on Earth. It functions in photosynthesis, specifically the Calvin Cycle, fixing inorganic carbon dioxide to RuBP and ultimately helping to generate organic sugars. Rubisco loses out to ATP synthase only because of its lack of specificity: rubisco can fix either carbon dioxide or oxygen gas depending on which one is more prevalent in the cell. When oxygen is more abundant, rubisco ignores carbon dioxide, effectively halting photosynthesis and causing the cell to perform photorespiration instead. Unfortunately for the plant, photorespiration does not help to produce sugar molecules and ultimately wastes energy. Plants have developed strategies to deal with this problem such as the use of C4 and CAM metabolisms.
Number 3: DNA Polymerase
As the name suggests, DNA polymerase is the enzyme responsible for the synthesis of DNA molecules during DNA replication in the S phase of the cell cycle. What makes this enzyme stand out from its competitors is its proofreading ability. DNA polymerase (which actually refers to an entire class of enzymes. The one I am focusing on here is DNA polymerase III) adds DNA nucleotides using a template stand and complementary base pairing to ensure the correct order. However, on occasion, DNA polymerase will make a mistake once every 1 million base pairs. Lucky for us, DNA polymerase can usually detect these errors and correct them, avoiding unnecessary errors during the DNA synthesis reaction. In fact, DNA polymerase's proofreading ability lowers the euro rate from 1 in 1 million to just 1 in 100 million!
Number 4: Reverse Transcriptase
Reverse transcriptase is an enzyme found in retroviruses. These types of viruses use RNA as their genetic material, which presents a problem when they try to highjack a cell. The viruses' RNA must be converted into DNA before it can be integrated into the host's genome for replication. This is where reverse transcriptase comes in, it reads the RNA sequence and builds a corresponding DNA molecule via complementary base pairing. This enzyme has enabled many viruses like HIV and influenza to infect our cells.
Number 5: Telomerase
At the end of each of our chromosomes there exists a region known as the telomere. The telomeres do not code for anything, but still serve an important function, protecting the coding region of DNA. During the DNA replication process, the end of the chromosomes cannot be replicated and thus the chromosome shrinks a little with each generation. The telomeres serve as a buffer to stave off the loss of important DNA. Once the telomere erodes completely, the cell's DNA begins to degrade and the cell will eventually die off. Here enters telomerase, an enzyme capable to rebuilding telomeres and therefore extending the life of the cell. Telomerase is found in stem cells and also in tortoises, enabling them to live up to 150 years!
Unit 6: Mr. Rittner's Top 5 Animals
Number 1: Orca Whale (Orcinus orca)
Orcas, or killer whales, are the largest of the dolphins and one of the world's most powerful predators. They feast on marine mammals such as seals, sea lions, and even whales, employing teeth that can be four inches long. Orcas hunt in deadly pods, family groups of up to 40 individuals. There appear to be both resident and transient pod populations of orcas. These different groups may prey on different animals and use different techniques to catch them. Resident pods tend to prefer fish, while transient pods target marine mammals. All pods use effective, cooperative hunting techniques.
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Number 2: Cassowary (Casuarius casuarius)
The cassowary is a large, flightless bird most closely related to the emu. The cassowary is rightfully considered the most dangerous bird in the world! Each 3-toed foot has a dagger-like claw on the inner toe that is up to 4 inches (10 centimeters) long! The cassowary can slice open any predator or potential threat with a single swift kick. Powerful legs help the cassowary run up to 31 miles per hour (50 kilometers per hour) through the dense forest underbrush. A cassowary can also jump nearly 7 feet (2 meters) straight up into the air and swim like a champ, so the bird is quite good at fending off threats or escaping danger! That long claw also comes in handy when digging for fallen fruit in the leaf litter.
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Number 3: Alligator Snapping Turtle (Marcochelys temminckii)
The prehistoric-looking alligator snapping turtle is the largest freshwater turtle in North America and among the largest in the world. With its spiked shell, beaklike jaws, and thick, scaled tail, this species is often referred to as the "dinosaur of the turtle world." Alligator snappers spend most of their lives in water, the exception being when females trudge about 160 feet inland to nest. They can stay submerged for 40 to 50 minutes before surfacing for air.
The alligator snapper employs a unique natural lure in its hunting technique. Its tongue sports a bright-red, worm-shaped piece of flesh that, when displayed by a motionless turtle on a river bottom, draws curious fish or frogs close enough to be snatched. |
Number 4: Peacock Mantis Shrimp (Odontodactylus scyllarus)
Peacock mantis shrimp are known to have extremely complex eyes, and can see in more wavelengths of color than even mammals. Under special lights/cameras, scientists have demonstrated that the already colorful exoskeletons of this species are actually even more elaborate when viewed by each other. Peacock mantis shrimp dig U-shaped burrows in the sand near the reef’s edge from which they venture out to hunt and to attract mates. They reproduce via internal fertilization, and after laying the eggs, the females carry them around on their front appendages until they hatch, protecting them and keeping them clean. Some peacock mantis shrimp may form monogamous pair bonds.
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Number 5: Blue Dragon (Glaucus atlanticus)
Also known as the blue dragon, sea swallow or blue angel, the blue glaucus is a species of brightly colored sea slug (nudibranch), and can be found throughout the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans in temperate and tropical waters. Like most nudibranchs, this species incorporates toxic chemicals or stinging cells from its prey into its own skin. This ability provides the blue glaucus with a defense mechanism against predation.
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Unit 7: Mr. Rittner's Top 5 Plants
Number 1: The Sensitive Plant (Mimosa Pudica)
Sensitive plant, (Mimosa pudica), also called humble plant, plant in the pea family (Fabaceae) that responds to touch and other stimulation by rapidly closing its leaves and drooping. The plant’s unusually quick response to touch is due to rapid water release from specialized cells located at the bases of leaflet and leaf stalks. The leaves reopen in several minutes, and it is thought that this adaptation is a defense against browsing herbivores who may be startled by the movement. In addition to its response to physical stimuli, the leaves also droop in response to darkness and reopen with daylight, a phenomenon known as nyctinastic movement.
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Number 2: Southern Beech Tree (Nothofagus antarctica)
About 40 species of superficially similar trees, known as false beech or southern beech (Nothofagus; family Nothofagaceae), are native to cooler regions of the Southern Hemisphere. The wavy-leaved Antarctic beech, or nire (Nothofagus antarctica), and the roble beech (N. obliqua), both 30-metre (98-foot) trees native to Chile and Argentina, differ from other species of false beech in being deciduous; they are planted as ornamentals on other continents. Nothofagus antarctica is a deciduous and monoecious. It grows as a tree in Tierra del Fuego but often becomes a stunted shrub towards the northern regions, and in zones of transition. Its leaves are usually one to three centimetres long, broadly ovate to somewhat triangular, heart-shaped or truncate at the base.
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Number 3: Redwood (Sequoiadendron giganteum)
Sequoiadendron giganteum, known as giant sequoia, has the most massive size of any tree in the world. It is an erect, single-trunk (often buttressed at the base), needled evergreen conifer that is native to groves scattered through montane coniferous forests along the western slope of the Sierra Nevada Mountains (4500-8000 feet in elevation) in central California. In its native California habitat, mature trees will often grow to 200-275’ tall, produce trunk diameters ranging from 15-20’ and weigh 200 or more tons. Trees may live 2000-3000 years. Young trees have a pyramidal-oval shape. As trees mature, they begin to lose branches from the lower part of the trunk. Trees generally feature attractive dark cinnamon-brown bark (with deep furrows and ridges), small, scale-like, appressed, blue green needles and fruiting cones to 2.5” long. Trees may be planted in the eastern U.S., but typically will grow to only 40-60’ tall.
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Number 4: Venus Fly Trap (Dionaea muscipula)
The steel trap of Dionaea is hardly as powerful as the ones set by trappers for wolves, beavers or bears, but it is just as effective at catching its own small prey. Its growth in the wild is restricted to the bogs in the central southeastern coastal plain of the United States. Near the crease where the two leaf "jaws" join there is a series of tiny hairs. If an unwary insect walks across these hairs, touching two or more of them in succession, the leaf will close quickly enough to prevent its escape. Unable to escape between the hair-like teeth at the edge of the leaf (Figure 3), the helpless insect is slowly digested and absorbed by the leaf. Glands on the leaf surface secrete several digestive enzymes that help to decompose the insect. Once the insect has been digested sufficiently, the leaf re-opens for another victim.
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Number 5: Strangler Fig (Ficus)
Strangler fig, also called strangler, many species of tropical figs (genus Ficus) named for their pattern of growth upon host trees, which often results in the host’s death. Strangler figs and other strangler species are common in tropical forests throughout the world. Of the 150 or so species of New World figs, most are stranglers, including F. obtusifolia and F. nymphaeifolia. Beginning life as a sticky seed left on a high tree branch by an animal such as a bird, bat, or monkey, the young strangler lives on the tree’s surface (see epiphyte). As it grows, long roots develop and descend along the trunk of the host tree, eventually reaching the ground and entering the soil. Several roots usually do this, and they become grafted together, enclosing their host’s trunk in a strangling latticework, ultimately creating a nearly complete sheath around the trunk.
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Unit 8: Mr. Rittner's Top 5 Science Books
Number 1: The Sixth Extinction
The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History is a 2014 non-fiction book written by Elizabeth Kolbert and published by Henry Holt and Company. The book argues that the Earth is in the midst of a modern, man-made, sixth extinction. In the book, Kolbert chronicles previous mass extinction events, and compares them to the accelerated, widespread extinctions during our present time. She also describes specific species extinguished by humans, as well as the ecologies surrounding prehistoric and near-present extinction events. The author received the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction for the book in 2015.
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The target audience is the general reader, and scientific descriptions are rendered in understandable prose. The writing blends explanations of her treks to remote areas with interviews of scientists, researchers, and guides, without advocating a position, in pursuit of objectivity. Hence, the sixth mass extinction theme is applied to flora and fauna existing in diverse habitats, such as the Panamanian rainforest, the Great Barrier Reef, the Andes, Bikini Atoll, city zoos, and the author's own backyard. The book also applies this theme to a number of other habitats and organisms throughout the world. After researching the current mainstream view of the relevant peer reviewed science, Kolbert estimates flora and fauna loss by the end of the 21st century to be between 20 to 50 percent "of all living species on earth".
Number 2: Factfulness
Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World – and Why Things Are Better Than You Think is a 2018 book by Hans Rosling. In his book, Rosling suggests the vast majority of human beings are wrong about the state of the world. He shows that his test subjects think the world is poorer, less healthy, and more dangerous than it is. Rosling recommends thinking about the world as divided into four levels based on income brackets. He suggests ten instincts that prevent us from seeing real progress in the world. These are listed as Gap, Negativity, Straight Line, Fear, Size, Generalization, Destiny, Single, Blame, and Urgency.
Bill Gates highlighted the book as one of his suggested 5 books worth reading for summer 2018. A Business Insider review notes that although Rosling argues that the future will be better than expected because birth rates are stabilizing, life expectancy around the world is increasing, the gender gap is nearly closed, and the extremely impoverished population is shrinking, others point out that populations are still expanding (with many still under-nourished), life expectancy in the US is decreasing, the gender gap is only nearly closed in education and not in employment, and extreme wealth has become more extreme.
Bill Gates highlighted the book as one of his suggested 5 books worth reading for summer 2018. A Business Insider review notes that although Rosling argues that the future will be better than expected because birth rates are stabilizing, life expectancy around the world is increasing, the gender gap is nearly closed, and the extremely impoverished population is shrinking, others point out that populations are still expanding (with many still under-nourished), life expectancy in the US is decreasing, the gender gap is only nearly closed in education and not in employment, and extreme wealth has become more extreme.
Number 3: Eager The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter
In Eager, environmental journalist Ben Goldfarb reveals that our modern idea of what a healthy landscape looks like and how it functions is wrong, distorted by the fur trade that once trapped out millions of beavers from North America’s lakes and rivers. The consequences of losing beavers were profound: streams eroded, wetlands dried up, and species from salmon to swans lost vital habitat. Today, a growing coalition of “Beaver Believers”—including scientists, ranchers, and passionate citizens—recognizes that ecosystems with beavers are far healthier, for humans and non-humans alike, than those without them. From the Nevada deserts to the Scottish highlands, Believers are now hard at work restoring these industrious rodents to their former haunts. Eager is a powerful story about one of the world’s most influential species, how North America was colonized, how our landscapes have changed over the centuries, and how beavers can help us fight drought, flooding, wildfire, extinction, and the ravages of climate change. Ultimately, it’s about how we can learn to coexist, harmoniously and even beneficially, with our fellow travelers on this planet.
Number 4: Darwin Comes to Town
Menno Schilthuizen is one of a growing number of “urban ecologists” studying how our manmade environments are accelerating and changing the evolution of the animals and plants around us. In Darwin Comes to Town, he takes us around the world for an up-close look at just how stunningly flexible and swift-moving natural selection can be.
With human populations growing, we’re having an increasing impact on global ecosystems, and nowhere do these impacts overlap as much as they do in cities. The urban environment is about as extreme as it gets, and the wild animals and plants that live side-by-side with us need to adapt to a whole suite of challenging conditions: they must manage in the city’s hotter climate (the “urban heat island”); they need to be able to live either in the semidesert of the tall, rocky, and cavernous structures we call buildings or in the pocket-like oases of city parks (which pose their own dangers, including smog and free-rangingdogs and cats); traffic causes continuous noise, a mist of fine dust particles, and barriers to movement for any animal that cannot fly or burrow; food sources are mainly human-derived. And yet, as Schilthuizen shows, the wildlife sharing these spaces with us is not just surviving, but evolving ways of thriving.
Darwin Comes toTown draws on eye-popping examples of adaptation to share a stunning vision of urban evolution in which humans and wildlife co-exist in a unique harmony. It reveals that evolution can happen far more rapidly than Darwin dreamed, while providing a glimmer of hope that our race toward over population might not take the rest of nature down with us.
With human populations growing, we’re having an increasing impact on global ecosystems, and nowhere do these impacts overlap as much as they do in cities. The urban environment is about as extreme as it gets, and the wild animals and plants that live side-by-side with us need to adapt to a whole suite of challenging conditions: they must manage in the city’s hotter climate (the “urban heat island”); they need to be able to live either in the semidesert of the tall, rocky, and cavernous structures we call buildings or in the pocket-like oases of city parks (which pose their own dangers, including smog and free-rangingdogs and cats); traffic causes continuous noise, a mist of fine dust particles, and barriers to movement for any animal that cannot fly or burrow; food sources are mainly human-derived. And yet, as Schilthuizen shows, the wildlife sharing these spaces with us is not just surviving, but evolving ways of thriving.
Darwin Comes toTown draws on eye-popping examples of adaptation to share a stunning vision of urban evolution in which humans and wildlife co-exist in a unique harmony. It reveals that evolution can happen far more rapidly than Darwin dreamed, while providing a glimmer of hope that our race toward over population might not take the rest of nature down with us.
Number 5: The Omnivore's Dilemma
The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals is a nonfiction book written by American author Michael Pollan published in 2006. In the book, Pollan asks the seemingly straightforward question of what we should have for dinner. As omnivores, the most unselective eaters, humans are faced with a wide variety of food choices, resulting in a dilemma. Pollan suggests that, prior to modern food preservation and transportation technologies, this particular dilemma was resolved primarily through cultural influences.
Technologies have recreated the dilemma by making available foods that were previously seasonal or regional. The relationship between food and society, once moderated by culture, now finds itself confused. To learn more about those choices, Pollan follows each of the food chains that sustain us; industrial food, organic food, and food we forage ourselves; from the source to a final meal, and in the process writes a critique of the American way of eating.
Technologies have recreated the dilemma by making available foods that were previously seasonal or regional. The relationship between food and society, once moderated by culture, now finds itself confused. To learn more about those choices, Pollan follows each of the food chains that sustain us; industrial food, organic food, and food we forage ourselves; from the source to a final meal, and in the process writes a critique of the American way of eating.