Nature's Chemicals


Book Description

This is the first monograph to describe Natural Products (NPs) as a group in an evolutionary context. It synthesizes a widely dispersed literature and provides a general picture of natural products encompassing evolution, history, ecology, and environmental issues, along with some deeper theory relevant to biochemistry.




The Nature of the Chemical Concept


Book Description

This book offers a step-by-step analysis and discussion of just why some students find chemistry difficult, by examining the nature of chemistry concepts, and how they are communicated and learnt.




Organic Chemicals in Natural Waters


Book Description

This series is dedicated to serving the growing community of scholars and practitioners concerned with the principles and applications of environ mental management. Each volume is a thorough treatment of a specific topic of importance for proper management practices. A fundamental objective of these books is to help the reader discern and implement man's stewardship of our environment and the world's renewable re sources. For we must strive to understand the relationship between man and nature, act to bring harmony to it, and nurture an environment that is both stable and productive. These objectives have often eluded us because the pursuit of other individual and societal goals has diverted us from a course of living in balance with the environment. At times, therefore, the environmental manager may have to exert restrictive control, which is usually best applied to man, not nature. Attempts to alter or harness nature have often failed or backfired, as exemplified by the results of imprudent use of herbicides, fertilizers, water, and other agents. Each book in this series will shed light on the fundamental and applied aspects of environmental management. It is hoped that each will help solve a practical and serious environmental problem.




Harmful Natural Chemicals And Radiation In The Environment: Stories, History And What You Need To Know


Book Description

This unique volume provides in layman's terms, without sacrificing scientific facts, the health hazards and potential dangers of naturally occurring substances that are around us everyday. The comprehensive coverage includes compounds (e.g. arsenic, lead), gases (e.g. hydrogen sulphide, ozone) and all forms of natural radiations (e.g. heat, radon). Readers will find this book both informative and entertaining because facts and important data are introduced and interpreted in the form of history, stories and scientific summaries. Each chapter concludes with a practical guide that readers will find useful.Harmful Naturally Occurring Substance and Radiation, which is fully referenced with up-to-date articles, may be used as a textbook for undergraduates and as an introductory textbook for post-graduates in biochemistry, environmental science, toxicology, medical science, and health care. People interested in personal and public health and earth issues will find this book a thought-provoking and revealing read. The book may also be a source of information for policy makers, public health officials, city planners and environmental engineers.




War and Nature


Book Description

This 2001 book shows the intersection of chemical warfare and pest control in the twentieth century.




Synthetic Worlds


Book Description

This revealing study considers the remarkable alliance between chemistry and art from the late eighteenth century to the period immediately following the Second World War. Synthetic Worlds offers fascinating new insights into the place of the material object and the significance of the natural, the organic, and the inorganic in Western aesthetics. Esther Leslie considers how radical innovations in chemistry confounded earlier alchemical and Romantic philosophies of science and nature while profoundly influencing the theories that developed in their wake. She also explores how advances in chemical engineering provided visual artists with new colors, surfaces, coatings, and textures, thus dramatically recasting the way painters approached their work. Ranging from Goethe to Hegel, Blake to the Bauhaus, Synthetic Worlds ultimately considers the astonishing affinities between chemistry and aesthetics more generally. As in science, progress in the arts is always assured, because the impulse to discover is as immutable and timeless as the drive to create.




Nature's Colorways


Book Description




Human Natures


Book Description

Why do we behave the way we do? Biologist Paul Ehrlich suggests that although people share a common genetic code, these genes "do not shout commands at us...at the very most, they whisper suggestions." He argues that human nature is not so much result of genetic coding; rather, it is heavily influenced by cultural conditioning and environmental factors. With personal anecdotes, a well-written narrative, and clear examples, Human Natures is a major work of synthesis and scholarship as well as a valuable primer on genetics and evolution that makes complex scientific concepts accessible to lay readers.




Roald Hoffmann on the Philosophy, Art, and Science of Chemistry


Book Description

Nobel laureate Roald Hoffmann's contributions to chemistry are well known. Less well known, however, is that over a career that spans nearly fifty years, Hoffmann has thought and written extensively about a wide variety of other topics, such as chemistry's relationship to philosophy, literature, and the arts, including the nature of chemical reasoning, the role of symbolism and writing in science, and the relationship between art and craft and science. In Roald Hoffmann on the Philosophy, Art, and Science of Chemistry, Jeffrey Kovac and Michael Weisberg bring together twenty-eight of Hoffmann's most important essays. Gathered here are Hoffmann's most philosophically significant and interesting essays and lectures, many of which are not widely accessible. In essays such as "Why Buy That Theory," "Nearly Circular Reasoning," "How Should Chemists Think," "The Metaphor, Unchained," "Art in Science," and "Molecular Beauty," we find the mature reflections of one of America's leading scientists. Organized under the general headings of Chemical Reasoning and Explanation, Writing and Communicating, Art and Science, Education, and Ethics, these stimulating essays provide invaluable insight into the teaching and practice of science.




The Singularity of Nature


Book Description

Understanding how simple molecules have given rise to the complex biochemical systems and processes of contemporary biology is widely regarded as one of chemistry’s great unsolved questions. There are numerous theories as to the origins of life, the majority of which draw on the idea that DNA and nucleic acids are the central dogma of biology. The Singularity of Nature: A Convergence of Biology, Chemistry and Physics takes a systems-based approach to the origin and evolution of complex life. Readers will gain a novel understanding of physiologic evolution and the limits to our current understanding: why biology remains descriptive and non-predictive, as well as offering new opportunities for understanding relationships between physics and biology in the origins of biological life at the cellular-molecular level.