Results by title
1445 books match the query 'Life Sciences' and 66 start with c
Cooperatives, Grassroots Development, and Social Change
Experiences from Rural Latin AmericaEdited by Marcela Vásquez-León, Brian J. Burke, and Timothy J. Finan
University of Arizona Press, 0
Cooperatives, Grassroots Development, and Social Change presents examples from Paraguay, Brazil, and Colombia, examining what is necessary for smallholder agricultural cooperatives to support holistic community-based development in peasant communities. Reporting on successes and failures of these cooperative efforts, the contributors offer analyses and strategies for supporting collective grassroots interests. Illustrating how poverty and inequality affect rural people, they reveal how cooperative organizations can support grassroots development strategies while negotiating local contexts of inequality amid the broader context of international markets and global competition.
The contributors explain the key desirable goals from cooperative efforts among smallholder producers. They are to provide access to more secure livelihoods, expand control over basic resources and commodity chains, improve quality of life in rural areas, support community infrastructure, and offer social spaces wherein small farmers can engage politically in transforming their own communities.
The stories in Cooperatives, Grassroots Development, and Social Change reveal immense opportunities and challenges. Although cooperatives have often been framed as alternatives to the global capitalist system, they are neither a panacea nor the hegemonic extension of neoliberal capitalism. Through one of the most thorough cross-country comparisons of cooperatives to date, this volume shows the unfiltered reality of cooperative development in highly stratified societies, with case studies selected specifically because they offer important lessons regarding struggles and strategies for adapting to a changing social, economic, and natural environment.
Contributors:
Luis Barros
Brian J. Burke
Charles Cox
Luis Alberto Cuéllar Gómez
Miguel Ricardo Dávila Ladrón de Guevara
Elisa Echagüe
Timothy J. Finan
Andrés González Aguilera
Sonia Carolina López Cerón
Joana Laura Marinho Nogueira
João Nicédio Alves Nogueira
Jessica Piekielek
María Isabel Ramírez Anaya
Rodrigo F. Rentería-Valencia
Lilliana Andrea Ruiz Marín
Marcela Vásquez-León
Costa Rican Ecosystems
Edited by Maarten Kappelle
University of Chicago Press, 2016
In Costa Rican Ecosystems, Maarten Kappelle brings together a collection of the world’s foremost experts on Costa Rican ecology—outstanding scientists such as Daniel H. Janzen, Jorge Cortés, Jorge A. Jiménez, Sally P. Horn, Robert O. Lawton, Quírico Jiménez M., Carlos Manuel Rodríguez, Catherine M. Pringle, and Eduardo Carrillo J., among others—to offer the first comprehensive account of the diversity, structure, function, uses, and conservation of Costa Rica’s ecosystems. Featuring a foreword and introductory remarks by two renowned leaders in biodiversity science and ecological conservation, Thomas E. Lovejoy and Rodrigo Gámez Lobo, in addition to chapters highlighting the geology, soils, and climate of Costa Rica, as well as the ecosystems of its terrestrial, freshwater, and marine habitats, and including previously unpublished information on Isla del Coco, this beautiful color-illustrated book will be an essential reference for academic scientists, students, natural history guides, conservationists, educators, park guards, and visitors alike.
Cougar
Ecology and ConservationEdited by Maurice Hornocker and Sharon Negri
University of Chicago Press, 2009
The cougar is one of the most beautiful, enigmatic, and majestic animals in the Americas. Eliciting reverence for its grace and independent nature, it also triggers fear when it comes into contact with people, pets, and livestock or competes for hunters’ game. Mystery, myth, and misunderstanding surround this remarkable creature.
The cougar’s range once extended from northern Canada to the tip of South America, and from the Pacific to the Atlantic, making it the most widespread animal in the western hemisphere. But overhunting and loss of habitat vastly reduced cougar numbers by the early twentieth century across much of its historical range, and today the cougar faces numerous threats as burgeoning human development encroaches on its remaining habitat.
When Maurice Hornocker began the first long-term study of cougars in the Idaho wilderness in 1964, little was known about this large cat. Its secretive nature and rarity in the landscape made it difficult to study. But his groundbreaking research yielded major insights and was the prelude to further research on this controversial species.
The capstone to Hornocker’s long career studying big cats, Cougar is a powerful and practical resource for scientists, conservationists, and anyone with an interest in large carnivores. He and conservationist Sharon Negri bring together the diverse perspectives of twenty-two distinguished scientists to provide the fullest account of the cougar’s ecology, behavior, and genetics, its role as a top predator, and its conservation needs. This compilation of recent findings, stunning photographs, and firsthand accounts of field research unravels the mysteries of this magnificent animal and emphasizes its importance in healthy ecosystem processes and in our lives.
Cowbirds and Other Brood Parasites
Catherine P. Ortega
University of Arizona Press, 1998
In this timely book, Catherine Ortega summarizes and synthesizes a wealth of information on cowbirds from around the world that has appeared since the publication of Herbert Friedmann's classic 1929 monograph on these birds. Most of this information has appeared in the last quarter-century and reflects advances in our understanding of how brood parasitism influences, and is influenced by, host species. Ortega shows that in order to manage cowbirds without further damaging delicate balances in host-parasite relationships, it is necessary to understand such factors as behavior, reproduction, population dynamics, and response to landscape patterns. She examines and explains the origin, evolution, and costs of brood parasitism, and she discusses the philosophical and ecological considerations regarding the management of cowbirds—a controversial issue because of their perceived influence on threatened and endangered birds.
Because brood parasitism has evolved independently in various bird families, information on this adaptive strategy is of great ecological interest and considerable value to wildlife management. Cowbirds and Other Brood Parasites is an important reference on these creatures that enhances our understanding of both their behavior and their part in the natural world.
Crab Wars
A Tale of Horseshoe Crabs, Bioterrorism, and Human HealthWilliam Sargent
University Press of New England, 2006
Crab Wars
A Tale of Horseshoe Crabs, Ecology, and Human HealthWilliam Sargent
Brandeis University Press, 2021
Because every drug certified by the FDA must be tested using the horseshoe crab derivative known as Limulus lysate, a multimillion-dollar industry has emerged involving the license to bleed horseshoe crabs and the rights to their breeding grounds. William Sargent presents a thoroughly accessible insider’s guide to the discovery of the lysate test, the exploitation of the horseshoe crab at the hands of multinational pharmaceutical conglomerates, local fishing interests, and the legal and governmental wrangling over the creatures’ ultimate fate. In the end, the story of the horseshoe crab is a sobering reflection on the unintended consequences of scientific progress and the danger of self-regulated industries controlling a limited natural resource. This new edition brings the story up to date as companies race to manufacture alternatives to the horseshoe crab blood, which is now essential for testing vaccines such as those developed to counter COVID-19. However, horseshoe crab populations are still dwindling, with profound implications not only for the future of the crabs themselves but also for the ecosystems that depend on them.
Crafting Wounaan Landscapes
Identity, Art, and Environmental Governance in Panama's DariénJulie Velásquez Runk
University of Arizona Press, 2017
Panama’s Darién is a name many conservationists know. Renowned for its lowland tropical forests, its fame is more pronounced because a road that should be there is not: environmentalists have repeatedly, and remarkably, blocked all attempts to connect the Americas via the Pan American Highway. That lacuna, that absence of a road, also serves to occlude history in the region as its old-growth forests give the erroneous impression of a peopleless nature.
In Crafting Wounaan Landscapes, Julie Velásquez Runk upends long-standing assumptions about the people that call Darién home, and she demonstrates the agency of the Wounaan people to make their living and preserve and transform their way of life in the face of continuous and tremendous change. Velásquez Runk focuses on Wounaan crafting—how their ability to subtly effect change has granted them resilience in a dynamic and globalized era. She theorizes that unpredictable landscapes, political decisions, and cultural beliefs are responsible for environmental conservation problems, and she unpacks environmental governance efforts that illustrate what happens when conservation is confronted with people in a purportedly peopleless place.
The everyday dangers of environmental governance without local crafting include logging, land grabbing, and loss of carbon in a new era of carbon governance in the face of climate change. Crafting Wounaan Landscapes provides recognition of local ways of knowing and being in the world that may be key to the future of conservation practice.
Crayfishes of Alabama
Guenter A. Schuster, Christopher A. Taylor, and Stuart W. McGregor
University of Alabama Press, 2022
A comprehensive assessment of the 99 known species of crayfishes inhabiting the state of Alabama
Crayfishes are common organisms in many freshwater habitats. They are usually the largest invertebrates and often represent the greatest amount of invertebrate biomass in their environments. Identified as a keystone species in many ecological communities, aquatic biologists are fond of saying “they eat everything, and everything eats them.”
Crayfishes—sometimes called crawfishes, crawdads, mudbugs, ditchbugs, yabbies, and flusskrebs—are taxonomically and ecologically a diverse group of aquatic crustaceans. There are more than 600 known species worldwide and North America alone is home to more than 400. As home to 99 documented species, Alabama is a global hotspot for crayfish diversity.
Crayfishes of Alabama is the first comprehensive reference work on the subject and provides the most up-to-date information on the vast range of crayfishes known to reside in Alabama. The authors have collected specimens and data from the state’s major and minor waterways and lakes, as well as specialized habitats such as burrows, caves, roadside ditches, marshes, swamps, and temporary autumnal ponds. This volume represents the most in-depth treatment of crayfishes found in the southeastern United States and offers detailed species accounts including descriptions of morphological characters, color, maximum size, comparative species, distribution and habitat, biology, crayfish associates, and conservation status. The species accounts are accentuated with color photographs, photographic morphological plates, and dot maps showing state and national distributions. A photographic key is provided to guide the identification of all 99 species.
Creating a Physical Biology
The Three-Man Paper and Early Molecular BiologyEdited by Phillip R. Sloan and Brandon Fogel
University of Chicago Press, 2011
Crime and Pangolins
A Mammalian Murder MysteryTimothy C. Bonebrake
Hong Kong University Press, 2026
In 2018, authorities in Hong Kong seized a shipment from smugglers that contained 88 dead pangolins. Where did these animals come from, and why were they killed? Where were they going? Who was responsible? In classic true crime fashion, Crime and Pangolins examines evidence, suspects, and legal perspectives related to this specific case and, through it, the plight of pangolins globally.
The chapters detail the lives and natural history of pangolins across Africa and Asia while exploring clues that may reveal who is responsible for the endangerment of the species. The book also explores speculation surrounding the possible role of pangolins in the emergence of COVID-19 and, more broadly, the relationship between wildlife trade and zoonotic disease. The resulting tale is one of conservation researchers, public health experts, and global organizations across Asia, Africa, North America, and Europe fighting to create a world in which pangolins can thrive again.
Critical Terms for Animal Studies
Edited by Lori Gruen
University of Chicago Press, 2018
Animal Studies is a rapidly growing interdisciplinary field devoted to examining, understanding, and critically evaluating the complex relationships between humans and
other animals. Scholarship in Animal Studies draws on a variety of methodologies to explore these multi-faceted relationships in order to help us understand the ways in which other animals figure in our lives and we in theirs.
Bringing together the work of a group of internationally distinguished scholars, the contribution in Critical Terms for Animal Studies offers distinct voices and diverse perspectives, exploring significant concepts and asking important questions. How do we take non-human animals seriously, not simply as metaphors for human endeavors, but as subjects themselves? What do we mean by anthropocentrism, captivity, empathy, sanctuary, and vulnerability, and what work do these and other critical terms do in Animal Studies?
An indispensable reference for the field, Critical Terms for Animal Studies not only provides a framework for thinking about animals as subjects of their own experiences, but also serves as a touchstone to help us think differently about our conceptions of what it means to be human, and the impact human activities have on the more than human world.
Crossing the Boundaries of Life
Günter Blobel and the Origins of Molecular Cell BiologyKarl S. Matlin
University of Chicago Press, 2022
The difficulty of reconciling chemical mechanisms with the functions of whole living systems has plagued biologists since the development of cell theory in the nineteenth century. As Karl S. Matlin argues in Crossing the Boundaries of Life, it is no coincidence that this longstanding knot of scientific inquiry was loosened most meaningfully by the work of a cell biologist, the Nobel laureate Günter Blobel. In 1975, using an experimental setup that did not contain any cells at all, Blobel was able to target newly made proteins to cell membrane vesicles, enabling him to theorize how proteins in the cell distribute spatially, an idea he called the signal hypothesis. Over the next twenty years, Blobel and other scientists were able to dissect this mechanism into its precise molecular details. For elaborating his signal concept into a process he termed membrane topogenesis—the idea that each protein in the cell is synthesized with an "address" that directs the protein to its correct destination within the cell—Blobel was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1999.
Matlin argues that Blobel’s investigative strategy and its subsequent application addressed a fundamental unresolved dilemma that had bedeviled biology from its very beginning—the relationship between structure and function—allowing biology to achieve mechanistic molecular explanations of biological phenomena. Crossing the Boundaries of Life thus uses Blobel’s research and life story to shed light on the importance of cell biology for twentieth-century science, illustrating how it propelled the development of adjacent disciplines like biochemistry and molecular biology.
Cultural Forests of the Amazon
A Historical Ecology of People and Their LandscapesWilliam Balee
University of Alabama Press, 2013
Cultural Forests of the Amazon is a comprehensive and diverse account of how indigenous people transformed landscapes and managed resources in the most extensive region of tropical forests in the world.
Culture and the Course of Human Evolution
Gary Tomlinson
University of Chicago Press, 2018
Tomlinson offers a new model for understanding this period in our emergence, one based on analysis of advancing human cultures in an evolution that was simultaneously cultural and biological—a biocultural evolution. He places front and center the emergence of culture and the human capacities to create it, in a fashion that expands the conceptual framework of recent evolutionary theory. His wide-ranging vision encompasses arguments on the development of music, modern technology, and metaphysics. At the heart of these developments, he shows, are transformations in our species’ particular knack for signmaking. With its innovative synthesis of humanistic and scientific ideas, this book will be an essential text.
Culture and the Evolutionary Process
Robert Boyd and Peter J. Richerson
University of Chicago Press, 1985
Cyperaceae
SedgesRobert H. Mohlenbrock
Southern Illinois University Press, 2005
The first in a series of four illustrated guides to identifying aquatic and standing water plants in the central Midwest, this convenient reference volume covers the 183 species of Cyperaceae. Robert H. Mohlenbrock includes three types of plants: submergents, those that spend their entire lives with their vegetative parts either completely submerged or at least floating on the water’s surface; emergents, which are typically rooted underwater with their vegetative parts standing out of water; and a third category of plants that live most of their lives out of water, but which may live in water at least three months a year.
Mohlenbrock provides descriptions, illustrations, and ways to identify any plant in the sedge family (Cyperaceae) in the states of Kentucky (except for the Cumberland region), Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, and Nebraska. With taxa arranged alphabetically, the volume is well organized and easy to use. In addition, basic synonymy, description, distribution, comments, and line drawings that show the habits and distinguishing features for each plant. Habitat and nomenclatural notes are also listed, as are the official wetland designations given by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Cyperaceae is a useful standard reference for state and federal employees who deal with aquatic and wetland plants and environmental conservation and mitigation issues and an essential guide for students and instructors in college and university courses where the identification of aquatic and wetland plants is emphasized.