"A must read for anyone interested in the ecology of whales, this timely and creative volume is sure to stimulate new research for years to come."—Annalisa Berta, San Diego State University

Describes the physical characteristics, habits, and natural environment of many species of jellyfish, through simple text and photographs.

Hugo and Shirley Jackson award-winning Peter Watts stands on the cutting edge of hard SF with his acclaimed novel, Blindsight Two months since the stars fell... Two months of silence, while a world held its breath. Now some half-derelict space probe, sparking fitfully past Neptune's orbit, hears a whisper from the edge of the solar system: a faint signal sweeping the cosmos like a lighthouse beam. Whatever's out there isn't talking to us. It's talking to some distant star, perhaps. Or perhaps to something closer, something en route. So who do you send to force introductions with unknown and unknowable alien intellect that doesn't wish to be met? You send a linguist with multiple personalities, her brain surgically partitioned into separate, sentient processing cores. You send a biologist so radically interfaced with machinery that he sees x-rays and tastes ultrasound. You send a pacifist warrior in the faint hope she won't be needed. You send a monster to command them all, an extinct hominid predator once called vampire, recalled from the grave with the voodoo of recombinant genetics and the blood of sociopaths. And you send a synthesist—an informational topologist with half his mind gone—as an interface between here and there. Pray they can be trusted with the fate of a world. They may be more alien than the thing they've been sent to find. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

A sequence of elaborate close-up photographs of a diverse range of plankton organisms displays their phosphorescent beauty and translucent colors against contrasting black backgrounds while offering historical and scientific discussions for each depicted species. --Publisher's description.

Gregory Bateson was a philosopher, anthropologist, photographer, naturalist, and poet, as well as the husband and collaborator of Margaret Mead. This classic anthology of his major work includes a new Foreword by his daughter, Mary Katherine Bateson. 5 line drawings.

It is clear that a new type of human approach to marine ecosystems is needed to confront phenomena such as jellyfish blooms. This document provides an updated overview of this phenomenon in the Mediterranean and Black Sea and illustrates how the problem is affecting societies. It reviews current knowledge on gelatinous plankton in the affected region, providing a framework for its inclusion into fisheries science and the management of human activities such as tourism and coastal development. Fact sheets on the most important gelatinous plankters of the Mediterranean and Black Seas are included as an appendix.

The paleontologist and professor of anatomy who co-discovered Tiktaalik, the “fish with hands,” tells a “compelling scientific adventure story that will change forever how you understand what it means to be human” (Oliver Sacks). By examining fossils and DNA, he shows us that our hands actually resemble fish fins, our heads are organized like long-extinct jawless fish, and major parts of our genomes look and function like those of worms and bacteria. Your Inner Fish makes us look at ourselves and our world in an illuminating new light. This is science writing at its finest—enlightening, accessible and told with irresistible enthusiasm.