The Sudden Disappearance of the Worker Bees


Book Description

On vacation with her husband in an idyllic Italian valley, Police Inspector Simona Tavianello stops at the local beekeeper’s shop to buy some honey, where she finds a body lying in the entrance. Simona tries to avoid involvement—she is, after all, off-duty. But when she realizes that the murder weapon is her own gun, what can she do but take charge? The victim was an engineer at the controversial agricultural research center for Sacropiano, a biotechnology company accused of developing pesticides that are making the bees in the region disappear. At the same time Simona found the body, the local beekeepers were nearby organizing a militant sit-in to protest the company’s practices. And found on the floor near the corpse was a tract entitled, “The Bee Revolution.” Simona Tavianello’s investigation gets her caught between the radical environmentalists and the powerful industrialists who are allied with the police. That would be complication enough, but she also needs to deal with the wounded ego of Cacabonda, the local police officer, who is officially in charge of the investigation. With her sharp humor and spot-on observations of current events in Italy, can Tavianello not only solve the murder, but also discover the intriguing reason behind the disappearance of the bees?







Language is a complex adaptive system: Explorations and evidence


Book Description

The ASLAN labex - Advanced studies on language complexity - brings together a unique set of expertise and varied points of view on language. In this volume, we employ three main sections showcasing diverse empirical work to illustrate how language within human interaction is a complex and adaptive system. The first section – epistemological views on complexity – pleads for epistemological plurality, an end to dichotomies, and proposes different ways to connect and translate between frameworks. The second section – complexity, pragmatics and discourse – focuses on discourse practices at different levels of description. Other semiotic systems, in addition to language are mobilized, but also interlocutors’ perception, memory and understanding of culture. The third section – complexity, interaction, and multimodality – employs different disciplinary frameworks to weave between micro, meso, and macro levels of analyses. Our specific contributions include adding elements to and extending the field of application of the models proposed by others through new examples of emergence, interplay of heterogeneous elements, intrinsic diversity, feedback, novelty, self-organization, adaptation, multi-dimensionality, indeterminism, and collective control with distributed emergence. Finally, we argue for a change in vantage point regarding the search for linguistic universals.




Parasitology


Book Description

Produced amidst the still rippling effects of a pandemic and as the world experiences the increasing burden of global warming and a rapidly changing biosphere, the second edition of Parasitology: A Conceptual Approach offers a timely overview of the eukaryotic parasites affecting human health and the health of domestic and wild animals and plants. The book offers a broadly encompassing, integrative view of the phenomenon of parasitism and of the remarkable diversity of the world’s parasites. This second edition has been thoroughly updated on all aspects of parasitism, including expanded sections on parasite biodiversity, parasite genomes, the interface between parasitology and disease ecology, and applications of new techniques like CRISPR and gene drives for parasite control. Key selling features: Emphasis on a distinctive integrative and conceptual approach rather than the taxon-by-taxon approach used in most parasitology books A concise, handy Rogues Gallery section that summarizes the basic biology for the most important eukaryotic parasites of humans and domestic animals, one a reader is repeatedly directed to throughout the chapters Outstanding full-color illustrations and photographs to reinforce key points The use of text boxes to set apart important topics or ideas that deserve special emphasis Provision of end-of-chapter summaries, questions to test understanding and key references for those wishing to seek further information Reference to particular URLs to highlight recent developments that often pose new and distinctive problems awaiting solution Parasitology: A Conceptual Approach is designed for an upper-level undergraduate audience, but its readability and careful explanation of underlying scientific concepts and terminology makes it appropriate for anyone seeking a broader understanding of the impact of infectious organisms on our well-being and the changes underway in the modern world.




Keeping Bees


Book Description

Bees are an integral part of our environment, and by keeping your own you can contribute to their survival as well as ensuring a constant supply of tasty, nutritious honey. Packed with practical and professional advice, this book is an invaluable companion for anyone wanting to try their hand at keeping bees. It tells you all you need to know about this richly rewarding hobby, from choosing a breed and positioning your hive, to extracting honey and keeping disease at bay. Topics include: - Understanding bees - Beekeeping equipment - Getting your bees - Pests and diseases - Harvesting honey ABOUT THE SERIES: Arcturus Hobby Editions bring together beautiful hardback guides introducing a variety of hobbies with full-colour illustrations and images.




Why does Evolution Matter? The Importance of Understanding Evolution


Book Description

Evolution is not merely a chapter in biology textbooks; rather, it is the mesh that embraces and connects every biological phenomenon; indeed, as Dobzhansky pointed out, nothing in biology could be understood without the evolutionary logic. The contents of this book highlight the importance of evolution in applied biological sciences such as agricultural, medical, environmental and the social sciences. Evolutionary science provides renewed ideas which can result in practical applications and tools that deal with current problems concerning humanity, such as disease, food production, and environmental destruction. Most of the topics in this book were discussed during the III Summit on Evolution which took place in the Galapagos Islands in June 2013, hosted by the Galapagos Institute for the Arts and Sciences and the Galapagos Science Institute, Universidad San Francisco de Quito.




Growing Food in a Hotter, Drier Land


Book Description

How to harvest water and nutrients, select drought-tolerant plants, and create natural diversity Because climatic uncertainty has now become "the new normal," many farmers, gardeners and orchard-keepers in North America are desperately seeking ways to adapt their food production to become more resilient in the face of such "global weirding." This book draws upon the wisdom and technical knowledge from desert farming traditions all around the world to offer time-tried strategies for: Building greater moisture-holding capacity and nutrients in soils Protecting fields from damaging winds, drought, and floods Harvesting water from uplands to use in rain gardens and terraces filled with perennial crops Delecting fruits, nuts, succulents, and herbaceous perennials that are best suited to warmer, drier climates Gary Paul Nabhan is one of the world's experts on the agricultural traditions of arid lands. For this book he has visited indigenous and traditional farmers in the Gobi Desert, the Arabian Peninsula, the Sahara Desert, and Andalusia, as well as the Sonoran, Chihuahuan, and Painted deserts of North America, to learn firsthand their techniques and designs aimed at reducing heat and drought stress on orchards, fields, and dooryard gardens. This practical book also includes colorful "parables from the field" that exemplify how desert farmers think about increasing the carrying capacity and resilience of the lands and waters they steward. It is replete with detailed descriptions and diagrams of how to implement these desert-adapted practices in your own backyard, orchard, or farm. This unique book is useful not only for farmers and permaculturists in the arid reaches of the Southwest or other desert regions. Its techniques and prophetic vision for achieving food security in the face of climate change may well need to be implemented across most of North America over the next half-century, and are already applicable in most of the semiarid West, Great Plains, and the U.S. Southwest and adjacent regions of Mexico.




A Practical Manual Of Beekeeping


Book Description

A fascinating hobby; a remunerative business; or a globetrotting career? Which type of beekeeper do you want to be? It is entirely up to you: beekeeping can provide it all.Beekeeping can provide anyone with an interesting and useful hobby or a lucrative and rewarding business. It is recognised as a vital agricultural industry and can therefore also offer you a globe trotting career. The whole subject is, however, often shrouded in mystery and loaded with jargon, leaving many people unaware of its true potential or how to start. This book strips away all the mystery and explains step by step how - from day one - you can start beekeeping as a hobby; how you can progress to running a beekeeping business; or how you can start a career as a beekeeper which can quite easily take you all over the world. No other guide explains in such detail the true potential and accessibility of beekeeping or of being a beekeeper.




Score Higher on the UKCAT


Book Description

One test stands between you and a place at the medical school of your dreams: the UKCAT exam. Unlike any other exam candidates have faced before, the UK Clinical Aptitude Test is incredibly challenging - but we are here to help with a resource to build your confidence and make sure you achieve a high score. Score Higher on the UKCAT, Second Edition, offers complete expert preparation written by teachers and doctors who have helped thousands of students to prepare for the exam. With a greater range and number of practice questions and mock tests than any other text, this book offers invaluable tips on to how interpret the questions correctly and strategies to manage your time within the exam. The authors have fully updated this book in light of developments in the exam from 2013 onwards, and this book now includes a section on a new component in the UKCAT: the Situational Judgement Test. Following an introduction to the exam itself, readers can undertake a diagnostic test at the start of the book to get a flavour for the exam and where they may need extra help. Chapters dedicated to each section of the UKCAT exam guide candidates through examples, exercises and timed practice sessions so that you can master questions in: - Verbal Reasoning - Quantitative Reasoning - Abstract Reasoning - Decision Analysis - Situational Judgement With over 800 questions and a mock online test, Score Higher on the UKCAT, second edition, is everything you need to ace the UKCAT.




The Mice Who Sing For Sex


Book Description

Lliana Bird and Dr Jack Lewis tackle the strange and surreal phenomena from the depths of the oceans to the limits of the far flung universe; the dark corners of your laundry basket to the forgotten compartments of your fridge. Packed with unusual facts and stories of the absurd each of the fascinating insights is told with the Geek Chic team's inimitable humour and wit. An hilarious exploration all things bizarre from the world of science, The Mice Who Sing for Sex takes on weighty issues including heavy metal loving sharks, life-threatening skinny jeans, our impending jellyfish apocalypse and of course, the singing mice of the title.