"Lianyungang, a booming port city, has China's most extreme gender ratio for children under four: 163 boys for every 100 girls. These numbers don't seem terribly grim, but in ten years, the skewed sex ratio will pose a colossal challenge. By the time those children reach adulthood, their generation will have twenty-four million more men than women. The prognosis for China's neighbors is no less bleak: Asia now has 163 million females "missing" from its population. Gender imbalance reaches far beyond Asia, affecting Georgia, Eastern Europe, and cities in the U.S. where there are significant immigrant populations. The world, therefore, is becoming increasingly male, and this mismatch is likely to create profound social upheaval. Historically, eras in which there have been an excess of men have produced periods of violent conflict and instability. Mara Hvistendahl has written a stunning, impeccably-researched book that does not flinch from examining not only the consequences of the misbegotten policies of sex selection but Western complicity with them"--

A lavishly illustrated look at how evolution plays out in selective breeding Unnatural Selection is a stunningly illustrated book about selective breeding--the ongoing transformation of animals at the hand of man. More important, it's a book about selective breeding on a far, far grander scale—a scale that encompasses all life on Earth. We'd call it evolution. A unique fusion of art, science, and history, this book celebrates the 150th anniversary of Charles Darwin's monumental work The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication, and is intended as a tribute to what Darwin might have achieved had he possessed that elusive missing piece to the evolutionary puzzle—the knowledge of how individual traits are passed from one generation to the next. With the benefit of a century and a half of hindsight, Katrina van Grouw explains evolution by building on the analogy that Darwin himself used—comparing the selective breeding process with natural selection in the wild, and, like Darwin, featuring a multitude of fascinating examples. This is more than just a book about pets and livestock, however. The revelation of Unnatural Selection is that identical traits can occur in all animals, wild and domesticated, and both are governed by the same evolutionary principles. As van Grouw shows, animals are plastic things, constantly changing. In wild animals the changes are usually too slow to see—species appear to stay the same. When it comes to domesticated animals, however, change happens fast, making them the perfect model of evolution in action. Suitable for the lay reader and student, as well as the more seasoned biologist, and featuring more than four hundred breathtaking illustrations of living animals, skeletons, and historical specimens, Unnatural Selection will be enjoyed by anyone with an interest in natural history and the history of evolutionary thinking.

With ever-advancing scientific understanding and technological capabilities, humanity stands on the brink of the potential next stage of evolution: evolution engineered by us. Nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology and cognitive science offer the possibility to enhance human performance, lengthen life-span and reshape our inherited physical, cognitive and emotional identities. But with this promise come huge risks, complex choices and fundamental ethical questions: about evolution; about what it is to be human; and about control over, and the distribution of benefits from, new technology. Written by a range of experts in science, technology, bioethics and social science, Unnatural Selection examines the range of technological innovations offering lives that purport to be longer, stronger, smarter and happier, and asks whether their introduction is likely to lead to more fulfilled individuals and a fairer world. The breadth of approaches and perspectives make important reading for anyone who cares about the implications of humanity engineering its own evolution.

In every village, town and city, in every country throughout the world people are dying for no apparent reason; fine one second, dead the next, young and old, rich and poor and the numbers are accelerating by the hour. The popular dailies call it 'The Blight' but what is 'The Blight' and can it be stopped? Airplanesdrop out of the sky raining death and destruction on the hapless cities belowas their pilots suddenly die at the controls and thedriving ofautomobileshas to bebanned worldwideas countless fatalcrashes claim the lives of millions in towns and cities on every continent,as driversfall victimto'The Blight'. The UN say the deaths are as a result of a mutant virus that has escaped from a Moscow laboratory but Dr Eve James a Micro Biologist from the US Center for Disease Controlknows differently. The finest scientific and medical minds at The Pasteur Institute, Oxford University and Duke University are brought together to find the answers but time is fast running out as governments collapse throughout the world and civilisation teeters on the brink of madness.....and then the terrifying answer. Dennis Wheatley's novel is a spellbinder, taking the reader on a white-knuckle ride into a world bright with terror as humankind faces its ultimate battle - the survival of the species.

What You Gonna Do When You Get There? is a story of teenage angst, or, as the old folks say, "growing pains." It is a tale of five friends sitting in an airport laughing about all the drama they went through from Elementary School until now, leaving home for "There." "There.." is graduation from high school and thusly, the gateway to the freedom of adulthood - away from the rule of parents. Bradford is your typical suburban city, divided by class and color somewhat, however, united in their quest to raise a generation that respects the diversity that makes many, one. Thurgood Marshall High School is the epicenter wielding the force that binds the spoiled princess, the sidekick, the cliques, the geeks, the underclassmen and of course, the jocks. If you are already "there", you will be reminded of "back in the day...", when you weren't. You will probably laugh aloud, nod your head, say Amen and thank God you made it. If you cry, let that tear be reflective of times shared with a best friend or family member who helped to mold you into the person you are now. Now, for you, the youth of today, this book will help you to understand that parents do understand. As you read this book, may you draw from the relationships of these characters, the appreciation of self, friends and family. Know that you are not alone in the challenges life throws at you. In the "Old School" we had 'Ace Boons' - in the New School you have BFF's. Remember Psalms 23 and may God Bless... David Vencil

Hellboy, a bloodred, cloven-hoofed demon raised by the United States government, is a top field agent for the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense. He questions the unknown -- then beats it into submission. A dragon is seen perching on the statue of Christ the Redeemer overlooking Rio de Janeiro . . . A werewolf stalks the streets of Baltimore . . . A griffin slaughters a herd of horses in Madrid . . . Weird sightings of cryptozoological and mythological creatures abound around the globe. Sometimes the creatures simply appear and then vanish again, content merely to put in an appearance. Other times they make themselves known to entire cities, and leave their mark. Damaged buildings. Scars on the landscape. The occasional death. Then suddenly, the death toll escalates. One by one Hellboy and his friends at the BPRD are dispatched to avert disaster. Hellboy encounters a dragon in Brazil. Abe Sapien tackles a giant alligator in Venice. Liz Sherman faces off against a phoenix in the Mediterranean. But in dawning horror they realize it's all a distraction -- heralding nothing so much as an event of apocalyptic proportions . . .

No one alive can remember seeing the sun, the sky or the stars. For centuries they've been hidden by an oily blanket of cloud that never breaks or disperses. This is the city of Luxor. When the oceans flooded and fossil fuels ran out, Luxor rose out of the chaos, becoming the most powerful city in the world - thanks to its industries, fuelled by the fat of animals. As the fumes from burning tallow spread outward, so did Luxor's influence ... Loki Blake has lived his whole life in Luxor and he knows nothing else. But now he's going to a place beyond the clouds -- a place where the sunshine will dazzle his eyes and the stars will scramble his brain. He's traveling to the faraway colony of Trasmundo to search for exotic and perhaps mythical animals, trying to save them from extinction before the smoke of Luxor's industry spreads further. But there are people who badly want Loki to fail, and they're prepared to kill to make sure he does. Before he knows it, Loki is on the run in the cloudforests and marshes of Gondwana, his survival dependent on Mera Ness, his frustrating and elusive guide. He doesn't know who to trust or whether he'll make it home: all he knows is that he hasn't been told the full story ...

In 2018, the first genetically modified children were born. Now we have the tools to reshape the future of our species. With a pair of genetic scissors known as CRISPR, we can select the traits of our children, avoid ageing, or cure disease. With that ability comes new risks, forcing us to face hard ethical questions. Torill Kornfeldt has travelled the world to meet the people driving this research forward. She has visited fertility clinics in South Korea, oncologists in China who are experimenting on sick patients, and biohackers in the US who want to make the new technology available to everyone. In The Unnatural Selection of Our Species, she asks: How can we handle these new tools that could change our genetic material? 'Well written, knowledgeable, and engaging – exactly how really good popular science is supposed to be' Gustav Källstrand, Nobel Centre Torill Kornfeldt is a Swedish science journalist with a background in biology. She has worked in the science department of Sweden's leading morning newspaper Dagens Nyheter and at the science branch of the Swedish public radio. There she created the successful radio show Tekniksafari (Tech Safari) on new technology changing society. Her main focus is on how emerging bioengineering and technology will shape our future.

Gonorrhea. Bed bugs. Weeds. Salamanders. People. All are evolving, some surprisingly rapidly, in response to our chemical age. In Unnatural Selection, Emily Monosson shows how our drugs, pesticides, and pollution are exerting intense selection pressure on all manner of species. And we humans might not like the result. Monosson reveals that the very code of life is more fluid than once imagined. When our powerful chemicals put the pressure on to evolve or die, beneficial traits can sweep rapidly through a population. Species with explosive population growth--the bugs, bacteria, and weeds--tend to thrive, while bigger, slower-to-reproduce creatures, like ourselves, are more likely to succumb. Unnatural Selection is eye-opening and more than a little disquieting. But it also suggests how we might lessen our impact: manage pests without creating super bugs; protect individuals from disease without inviting epidemics; and benefit from technology without threatening the health of our children.

Unnatural Selection is the first book to examine the rise of the "technocentric being"—or geek—who personifies a distinct new phase in human evolution. People considered geeks often have behavioral or genetic traits that were previously considered detrimental. But the new environment of the Anthropocene period—the Age of Man—has created a kind of digital greenhouse that actually favors their traits, enabling many non-neurotypical people to bloom. They resonate with the technological Zeitgeist in a way that turns their weaknesses into strengths. Think of Mark Zuckerberg versus the towering, Olympics-bound Winklevoss twins in the movie Social Network. Roeder suggests that the rise of the geek is not so much the product of Darwinian "natural selection" as of man-made—or unnatural—selection. He explains why geeks have become so phenomenally successful in such a short time and why the process will further accelerate, driven by breakthroughs in genetic engineering, neuropharmacology, and artificial intelligence. His book offers a fascinating synthesis of the latest trends in these fields and predicts a twenty-first century "cognitive arms race" in which new technology will enable everyone to become more intelligent and "geek-like."