(Part 2) Reddit mentions: The best biology books

I'll just add here.

It seems intimidating at first. But it builds up just like math.

Personally, I really recommend Cambell's Biology as an introductory text. It is really great to start with. It explains things well, and maintains simplicity in explanations without sacrificing complexity at your level.

There is a big difference in how one studies biology vs mathematics. Mathematics is pretty much all problems, and thinking about those problems and concepts. Biology you generally don't have access to huge problem sets. You're lucky to find 30 multiple choice problems/chapter. It is mainly thinking about concepts in depth, over and over again critically, and memorizing details.

There are many ways of memorizing. The classic way many undergrads will do initially just memorize words. I think the best way is active learning. Ex: understanding exactly why things pass through the phospholipid bilayer and the various mechanisms they do(passive diffusion, primary and secondary active transport etc.) will allow you to predict whether things will pass through or not. I remember in my undergraduate cell biology class. My professor would mention an random molecule. Then we'd have to predict based on chemical structure if it would go through or not.

In biology things repeat themselves over and over again.

If you want to get into neuroscience texts. I'd recommend just getting through cambell's biology, and preferably a basic knowledge of chemistry as well. This will allow you to critically think about biology better. Truthfully, it is hard to truly understand why things happen unless you take organic chem and biochem. however you aren't trying to be a biologist or physician. So you can go as far as you feel you need to go.

If you need help I am a doctor and biomedical engineer. So I can certainly provide some assistance.

In biology, general study methods are...

Compare and Contrast Similar and Disimilar topics. You get a better conceptual understanding between hemidesmosomes, desomosomes, gap junctions, tight junctions and all of these cell-cell and cell-ECM interactions by comparing and contrast

Understand the chemistry behind why something happens. This may not make sense now, but if you know where ATP and ADP+Pi cycles occur in kinesins and dyneins, you will understand why each is attracted to opposinmg electrochemical polarities.

Learn words as images. When someone saids something like axon hillock, a picture should pop into your head. It makes it much easier to learn things if you visualize it in biology.

Biology is probably one of the few areas of science where things are ALWAYS changing. What we knew 5 years ago may not be the same today. So getting an up to date textbook is important. If it is older than like 3-4 years, it is probably not worth getting with some exceptions.
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Here are some texts I recommend

Basic Biology: https://www.amazon.com/Campbell-Biology-10th-Jane-Reece/dp/0321775651/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1484097281&sr=8-1&keywords=campbell+biology

Biophysics: https://www.amazon.com/Biological-Physics-New-David-Goodsell/dp/0716798972/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1484097568&sr=8-1&keywords=Biophysics

-I think this text is probably the best for you to start with since you have a mathematics background and the book takes a mathematics/physics approach to biology rather than a biology approach to physics/math. So you may enjoy this to start. Read the comments and evaluate yourself I suppose.

Cell Biology: https://www.amazon.com/Cell-Molecular-Approach-Seventh/dp/160535290X/ref=sr_1_11?
ie=UTF8&qid=1484097587&sr=8-11&keywords=Cell+Biology

-Everyone has different preferences for cell biology texts. It is such an up and coming field that there really is no best text. Personally this is one of my favorites. The images are beautiful, the explanations are as fantastic as they are going to be. This is a heavy duty text and is probably a sophomore/junior biology text. So don't go through this before Campbell. It also takes an experimental approach. Read them. Experiments in biology are like proofs in math. It's important to understand how we discovered something.

Neuroscience: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0071390111/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_nS_ttl?_encoding=UTF8&colid=3QI2HWYNLVU1I&coliid=I1OCX5XH50BMBO

This is my favorite. I have it on my shelf right now. Great reference for me as a physician if I need to review some neuro concept I have forgotten. A lot of my neurosurgery/neurology colleagues swear by it.

Neuroanatomy: https://www.amazon.com/Neuroanatomy-Illustrated-Colour-Text-5e/dp/0702054054/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1484098053&sr=8-4&keywords=Neuroanatomy

This is my favorite as a sole neuroanatomy text. however Netter's Anatomy is my absolute favorite anatomical text, the pictures are gorgeous especially neuroanatomy. however for someone like you, a dedicated neuroanatomy text may or may not be necessary. It is generally a text intended for clinicians, however anatomy is anatomy lol.

I hope I offered some resources to get you started!

Well this thread title drew me like a hunk of iron to the world's biggest magnet.

The short answer to the title question is "no, except maybe in some very trivial sense." The longer answer is, well, complicated. Before I ramble a little bit, let me say that we should distinguish between the rhetorical and (for lack of a better word) "metaphysical" interpretations of this question. In many cases, the language used to describe some theory, problem, proposal, or whatever is indeed unnecessarily complicated in a way that makes it difficult to communicate (some parts of the humanities and social sciences are particularly bad offenders here). That is indeed a problem, and we should strive to communicate our ideas in the simplest language that's appropriate for the audience we're talking to. I take your friend's thesis to be a bit more substantive than that, though: he's claiming something like "all big messy systems are really just lots of small simple systems, and we can learn everything we need to know about the world by looking at the small simple systems." That's the viewpoint that I think is mistaken.

I think it's really important to distinguish between complicated and complex, both in the context of this discussion and in general. Lots of things are complicated in the sense of being big, having lots of moving parts, difficult to understand, or exhibiting nuanced behavior. A box of air at thermodynamic equilibrium is complicated: it has lots of parts, and they're all moving around with respect to one another. Not all complicated systems are also complex systems, though, and understanding what "complex" means turns out to be really tricky.

Here are some comparisons that seem intuitively true: a dog’s brain is more complex than an ant’s brain, and a human’s brain is more complex still. The Earth’s ecosystem is complex, and rapidly became significantly more complex during and after the Cambrian explosion 550 million years ago. The Internet as it exists today is more complex than ARPANET—the Internet’s progenitor—was when it was first constructed. A Mozart violin concerto is more complex than a folk tune like “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.” The shape of Ireland’s coastline is more complex than the shape described by the equation x2 + y2 = 1. The economy of the United States in 2016 is more complex than the economy of pre-Industrial Europe. All these cases are relatively uncontroversial. What quantity is actually being tracked here, though? Is it the same quantity in all these cases? That is, is the sense in which a human brain is more complex than an ant brain the same sense in which a Mozart concerto is more complex than a folk tune?

These questions are extremely non-trivial to answer, and a very large number of whole books have been written on the subject already; so far, there's no universally accepted consensus of what makes complex systems special, or how to measure complexity in the natural world. There is, however, a growing consensus that P.W. Anderson was correct when he wrote in 1972 that "more is different": in many cases, systems consisting of a large number of relatively simple components interacting in relatively simple ways can display surprising, novel behavior. That's characteristic of complex systems: they behave in ways that we wouldn't expect them to (or even be able to deduce) based on an examination of their constituent parts in isolation from one another.

Complex systems often show interesting patterns of behavior that cut across scales of analysis, with their dynamics at one scale constraining the dynamics at other scales (and vice-versa). This sort of "multiscale variety" has been used to develop a mathematical theory of strong emergence, demonstrating how it can be the case that more is different. I've called this quality "dynamical complexity," and defined it as a measure of the "pattern richness" of a particular physical system: one system is more dynamically complex than another if (and only if) it occupies a point in configuration space that is at the intersection of regions of interest to more special sciences. For instance, a system for which the patterns of economics, psychology, biology, chemistry, and physics are predictively useful is more dynamically complex than one for which only the patterns of chemistry and physics are predictively useful.

The notion of dynamical complexity is supposed to correspond with (and give a physical interpretation for) the formalism of effective complexity, which is an information-theoretic concept developed by Murray Gell-Mann at the Santa Fe Institute. Effective complexity is grounded in the notion of algorithmic information content, and tracks the "amount of randomness" in a string, and how any non-randomness--information--was produced. A key feature of dynamical complexity is that the total "information content" of a physical system--the total number of interesting patterns in its behavior--may be perspectival, and thus depend on how we choose to individuate systems from their environment, and how we demarcate collections of microstates of the system into "relevantly similar" macrostates. Those choices are pragmatic, value-driven, and lack clear and uncontroversial "best answers" in many cases, contributing to the challenge of studying complex systems.

As an example, consider the task of predicting the future of the global climate. What are the criteria by which we divide the possible futures of the global climate into macrostates such that those macrostates are relevant for the kinds of decisions we need to make? That is, how might we individuate the global climate system so that we can notice the patterns that might help us predict the outcome of various climate policies? The answer to this question depends in part upon what we consider valuable; if we want to maximize long-term economic growth for human society, for instance, our set of macrostates will likely look very different than it would if we wanted to simply ensure that the average global temperature remained below a particular value. Both of those in turn may differ significantly from a set of macrostates informed by a desire to maximize available agricultural land. These different ways of carving possible future states up into distinctive macrostates do not involve changes to the underlying equations of motion describing how the system moves through its state space, nor does the microstructure of the system provide an obvious and uncontroversial answer to the question of which individuation we should choose. There is no clearly "best way" to go about answering this question.

Compare that project to modeling the box of gas I mentioned earlier and you can start to see why modeling complex systems is so difficult, and why complex systems are fundamentally different. In the case of the gas, there are a relatively small number of ways to individuate the system such that the state space we end up with is dynamically interesting (e.g. Newtonian air molecules, thermodynamic states, quantum mechanical fluctuations). In the case of the global climate, there are a tremendous number of potentially interesting individuations, each associated with its own collection of models. The difference between the two systems is not merely one of degree; they are difference in kind, and must be approached with that in mind.

In some cases, this may involve rather large changes in the way we think about the practice of science. As /u/Bonitatis notes below, many of the big unsolved problems in science are those which appear to "transcend" traditional disciplines; they involve drawing conclusions from our knowledge of economics, physics, psychology, political science, biology, and so on. This is because many of the big unsolved problems we're concerned with now involve the study of systems which are highly dynamically complex: things like the global economy, the climate, the brain, and so on. The view that we should (or even can) approach them as mere aggregates of simple systems is, I think, naive and deeply mistaken; moreover, it's likely to actually stymie scientific progress, since insisting on "tractability" or analytically closed models will often lead us to neglect important features of the natural world for the sake of defending those intuitive values.

Have you considered becoming a population geneticist? All of those questions are things that evolutionary/population geneticists are very interested in.

Let's break this into pieces. The first piece:

What is the eventual fate of a new mutation, and how does it depend on a) it's selection coefficient (a measure of how beneficial/deleterious it is), and b) the population size.

The selection coefficient (which we'll denote by s) is a measure of the "per generation percent fitness advantage" enjoyed by an individual who carries a particular mutation, relative to those who do not carry the mutation. To a first order approximation, the probability that a beneficial mutation that has just arisen (and thus resides only in a single individual) escapes loss from the population and eventually becomes "fixed" (i.e. present in every individual) does not depend on the population size, and is equal to about 2s, or two times the selection coefficient. In other words, if a particular mutation causes its carriers to leave approximately 1% more offspring to the next generation, relatively to non-carriers, then it has about a 2% chance of not being lost from the population. If it's not lost during those early generations, then it will eventually rise in frequency and become fixed.

Now, this is a rough approximations, and with a better approximation, we find that the population size does matter somewhat. This is because when the population size gets small, the chance events of genetic drift become more impactful, and it becomes harder for selection to overcome them. This is basically exactly the example you gave, but in reverse. Basically, even if a mutation has a fitness advantage, if it's present in only 10 out of 100 individuals in a population, it can happen to be lost by chance if it has a couple bad years in a row. In a population of 1 million, however, a mutation that's at 10% frequency would take a lot of bad years in a row, in order to be lost, which is very unlikely, so natural selection will eventually win out and push the mutation to fixation.

However, it is true that mutations change frequency faster in populations of smaller size (pretty much for the reason you surmise). If we condition on (i.e. assume that) the mutation eventually becomes fixed, then it is more likely to have done so quickly if the population size was small than if it was larger. The time it takes for a beneficial mutation to become fixed, assuming it does become fixed, is proportional to log(N), the logarithm of the population size. So if you increase the population size by a factor of 10, it takes twice as long for a beneficial mutation to transit through the population. By a factor of 100: three times as long.

However, there's one last factor we should consider, which is how the population size interacts with the mutation rate. Consider a population that exists in some environment in which it has an "adaptive need". In other words, the environmental conditions are such that if a certain mutation (or class of mutations, if we consider that mutations at multiple different base pairs might be able to solve the same problem) would be beneficial, were it to arise, then we can ask how long until we expect the population to adapt. If we say that the per individual rate at which beneficial alleles are created is given by µ, and there are N individuals in the population, then to a first order approximation in each generation there is a 2Nµ probability that a beneficial mutation arises somewhere in the population (there's a 2 because we're thinking about diploids). Then, using the simple 2s approximation from above (which is good enough for this point), the probability that a mutation both arises somewhere in the population and manages to escape being lost in those early generations is 4Nµs.

Using the properties of the geometric distribution, this means that we expect it to take about (4Nµs)^(-1) generations until the mutation that will eventually come to dominate the population arises. Then, it will take of order log(N) generations for the mutation to sweep through the population.

So when this effect is factored in, an increase in population size of 10-fold means you wait roughly one tenth as long for a beneficial mutation to arise, but only twice as long for it to fix. A 100-fold increase in population size means you wait roughly 1/100 as long for the mutation to arise, but then only 3 times as long for it to sweep through the population, meaning that in general, larger populations should adapt faster than smaller populations. However, if we're thinking about populations that are already so large that beneficial mutations occur somewhere in the population almost every generations (like bacteria, for example), then a different set of mathematics takes over, and this is still an active area of research (see here for a recent review).

These calculations all rely on what are pretty much "standard" results in population genetics, so any good population genetics text book should work as a decent reference. If you're interested in these kind of questions, a good place to start might be John Gillespie's "Population Genetics: A Concise Guide"

1. The Bible: Eh. I can sort of get behind this, but not for the reason he gives. The Bible's just really culturally important. I also wouldn't bother reading all of it. When I reread the Bible it's normally just Genesis, Exodus, the Gospels, and Eccelesiastes. A lot of it (especially Leviticus) is just tedious. The prophets are fun but I wouldn't call them essential.
   
   
2. The System of the World: Newton intentionally wrote the Principia to make it inaccessible to layman and dabblers. I really don't think you should be recommending a book like this to people who aren't specialists. Sagan's A Demon Haunted World will probably fulfill the stated purpose Tyson sets out better.
   
   
3. On the Origin of Species: A good book that's held up remarkably well, but a more recent book of evolution might be better. The Extended Phenotype or The Selfish Gene would both probably do a better job.
   
   
4. Gulliver's Travels: This is a great book. I support this recommendation.
   
   
5. Age of Reason: Haven't read it. I like Paine otherwise though. No comment.
   
   
6. The Wealth of Nations: Similar to On the Origin of Species. It's still a great read that's held up really well and offers an interesting historical perspective. That said, economic theory has made some pretty important advancements in two centuries (the Marginal Revolution, Keynes, etc). Still, if you want to stick to the time you'll probably get more out of reading Ricardo's Principles of Political Economy.
   
   
7. The Art of War: Very good book. I have nothing to add.
   
   
8. The Prince: Same as the above. Fantastic book.

There is a decent wikipedia article on Eye contact. It goes over some social implications, but doesn't really delve into the meat of the issue. Fortunately, there does seem to be a good amount of research on the issue. This study postulates that, since eyes are a good feedback indicator, eye contact is linked to affiliative motivation (an unconscious desire to maintain relationships). This study investigates the importance of eye contact during infancy. It seems that eye contact plays an important role in developing many relationships, including flirting. Another study, thrillingly entitled Breaking the Ice in Human-Agent Communication: Eye-Gaze Based Initiation of Contact with an Embodied Conversational Agent tackles that beast, but arrives to the unsatisfying conclusion that it's good to be attractive, but eye contact certainly doesn't hurt when flirting.

But why you ask? What really causes that connection? This is where it gets tricky, and where some speculation comes in. David Sloan Wilson wrote a wonderful book entitled Evolution for Everyone, and in it he tackles a few topics of human evolution. He describes how important (and overlooked) human social structure has been on human evolution. A good part of this (along with why rock throwing is important) is devoted to our body language and how we communicate our feelings in a way that we can't control. This helped prohibit individuals trying to take advantage of others; their real intentions were displayed with out them knowing. Now, to speculate, eye contact could be some sort of challenge. Initiating eye contact shows a desire to know what that person is thinking and what their intent is. Also, by initiating eye contact, you are opening yourself up to them for investigation, putting your intentions on display. I feel like this study, which documents how people felt that individuals avoiding eye contact were being deceptive, vindicates that speculation.

Edit: forgot a word.

Overviews of the evidence:

The greatest show on earth

Why evolution is true

Books on advanced evolution:

The selfish gene

The extended phenotype

Climbing mount improbable

The ancestors tale

It is hard to find a better author than Dawkins to explain evolutionary biology. Many other popular science books either don't cover the details or don't focus entirely on evolution.

I will hit one point though.

>I have a hard time simply jumping from natural adaption or mutation or addition of information to the genome, etc. to an entirely different species.

For this you should understand two very important concepts in evolution. The first is a reproductive barrier. Basically as two populations of a species remain apart from each other (in technical terms we say there is no gene flow between them) then repoductive barriers becomes established. These range in type. There are behavioral barriers, such as certain species of insects mating at different times of the day from other closely related species. If they both still mated at the same time then they could still produce viable offspring. Other examples of behavior would be songs in birds (females will only mate with males who sing a certain way). There can also be physical barriers to reproduction, such as producing infertile offspring (like a donkey and a horse do) or simply being unable to mate (many bees or flies have different arrangements of their genitalia which makes it difficult or impossible to mate with other closely related species. Once these barriers exist then the two populations are considered two different species. These two species can now further diverge from each other.

The second thing to understand is the locking in of important genes. Evolution does not really take place on the level of the individual as most first year biology courses will tell you. It makes far more sense to say that it takes place on the level of the gene (read the selfish gene and the extended phenotype for a better overview of this). Any given gene can have a mutation that is either positive, negative, of neutral. Most mutations are neutral or negative. Let's say that a certain gene has a 85% chance of having a negative mutation, a 10% chance of a neutral mutation, and a 5% chance of a positive mutation. This gene is doing pretty good, from it's viewpoint it has an 85% chance of 'surviving' a mutation. What is meant by this is that even though one of it's offspring may have mutated there is an 85% chance that the mutated gene will perform worse than it and so the mutation will not replace it in the gene pool. If a neutral mutation happens then this is trouble for the original gene, because now there is a gene that does just as good a job as it in the gene pool. At this point random fluctuations of gene frequency called genetic drift take over the fate of the mutated gene (I won't go into genetic drift here but you should understand it if you want to understand evolution).

The last type of mutation, a positive mutation is what natural selection acts on. This type of mutation would also change the negative/neutral/positive mutation possibilities. so the newly positively mutated gene might have frequencies of 90/7/3 Already it has much better odds than the original gene. OK, one more point before I explain how this all ties together. Once a gene has reached the 100/0/0 point it does not mean that gene wins forever, there can still be mutations in other genes that affect it. A gene making an ant really good at flying doesn't matter much when the ant lives in tunnels and bites off its own wings, so that gene now has altered percentages in ants. It is this very complex web that makes up the very basics of mutations and how they impact evolution (if you are wondering how common mutations are I believe they happen about once every billion base pairs, so every human at conception has on average 4 mutations that were not present in either parent)

This all ties back together by understanding that body plan genes (called hox genes) lock species into their current body plans, by reducing the number of possible positive or neutral mutations they become crucial to the organisms survival. As evolutionary time progresses these genes become more and more locked in, meaning that the body plans of individuals become more and more locked in. So it is no wonder that coming in so late to the game as we are we see such diversity in life and we never see large scale form mutations. Those type of mutations became less likely as the hox genes became locked in their comfy spots on the unimpeachable end of the mutation probability pool. That is why it is hard to imagine one species evolving into another, and why a creationist saying that they will believe evolution when a monkey gives birth to a human is so wrong.

Hopefully I explained that well, it is kind of a dense subject and I had to skip some things I would rather have covered.

I've been reading Relics of Eden. It's written by a religious geneticist and it provides evidence and explains genetic mutations in a very clear way. (You do need a certain basis of knowledge.)

More sciency tomes such as the Greatest Show on Earth by Dawkins are a bit dryer. I quite like the religious basis of the book (even though I am an Atheist) because it starts off at the basics and slowly builds a case on examples. It's not about religion, but it offers a thinking path from the strict (and factually untrue) religious hypothesis of creation to genes, gene mutations/drift to a final overview of evolution.

It's clear, well written, not too easy and absolutely scholarly, but with clear figures (graphical) and good concentric expansion of knowledge.

It will absolutely help you grasp the intricacies and quirks of evolution. It broadens your base knowledge, which allows you to delve deeper. Evolution is pretty strange, but just incredibly logical once it's explained well. At just shy of 300 pages I read it through in one go. I really recommend it.

Enjoy your exploration of this amazing science. It broadens your view. Take your time. I also think it's awesome you asked your question. There are no stupid questions and I'm glad you've received many great answers.

Have a nice day. You're already a gentleman, but on your way to be a fine scholar. Don't ever stop asking questions.

If you want a textbook, I would recommend one of two books:

Biological Physics by Philip Nelson is a pretty good starting point. The author tried to write a book that is both as accessible as possible and introduces only the most important topics. He covers a lot of interesting, but important material like random walks and molecular machines assuming that the reader does not have a very strong background in either biology or physics. The advantage to this is that he covers only the most important ideas, and in a way that someone with only introductory physics and calculus can understand. The downside is that some of the results are not general, focussing on one dimension instead of three for example, and for the experienced his introductions can be a little redundant. Nelson tries to get around this by having an optional “Track 2” that goes into greater detail and looks are tough problems and original papers.

Physical Biology of the Cell by Rob Phillips is also very good. This book is much longer than the Nelson book and goes into greater detail on a lot of the material. Where Nelson was trying to include only the most important topics, Phillips tries to include everything. The upside is that this book covers more examples and often includes more general results, but it makes for a long read at over a thousand pages. A fairly strong background in some higher level physics, like knowing how to set up and use a partition function, makes reading this book much easier.

I personally like the Phillips book more than the Nelson book, but it depends on where you are at in your major. If you have just taken introductory physics, the Nelson book might be better, if you have taken some higher level courses (especially thermodynamics/statistical mechanics) the Phillips book would be better. Either way I recommend checking them out from the library before you buy them.

Edit: How could I forget this little gem: Can a Biologist Fix a Radio? by Lazebnik. If you want a nice introduction into the philosophy of biophysics, I strongly recommend this well written article.

>methodically state the case for why creation is most likely and/or why evolution is unlikely.

You will find lots and lots of the latter. Very little of the former.

>I'd also be happy to read GOOD anti-creation books as well, provided they meet the above criterion of not being mocking.

Those would just be science books based on the academic literature, wouldn't they?

Here is my reading list form the past few months. These would be pro-evolution (a.k.a science). Creationism is mentioned in a few of them, but almost in passing because Creationism is simply not a factor in legitimate scientific research, so it gets pretty much no consideration.

Knock yourself out. ;)

• Your Inner Fish by Neil Shubin - Also, watch the three part series that aired on PBS hosted by Neil Shubin.
  
  
• Endless Forms Most Beautiful by Sean B. Carroll - An in depth look into developmental evolution.
  
  
• The Universe Within: Discovering the Common History of Rocks, Planets, and People by Neil Shubin
  
  
• The Link by Colin Tudge and Josh Young
  
  
• Before the Dawn by Nicholas Wade
  
  
• Relics of Eden: The Powerful Evidence of Evolution in Human DNA by Daniel J. Fairbanks - This and the other Fairbanks book listed below are the only books on this list with the intent to refute what creationists contend. He does this not by presenting the creationist argument and then trying to refute. He does it by simply presenting the evidence that science has born out regarding human evolution and genetics.
  
  
• The Story of Earth by Robert Hazen - this is a cool book about the history of the Earth and life and how geology and biology worked in tandem with other factors to produce life from the point of view of a protein biologist.
  
  
• Life: A Natural History of the First Four Billion Years of Life on Earth by Richard Fortey - Good general overview of evolutionary and geologic history.
  
  
• The Cambrian Explosion: The Construction of Animal Biodiversity by Edwin Douglas - This is the most academic book in this list and, as such, is the most difficult to read. It is a concise look at what we know about the Cambrian Explosion from the scientific literature.
  
  
• Life's Ratchet by Peter Hoffmann - Very good book about how the chaos wrought inside cells by thermal motion at the molecular level leads to the ordered functioning of the machinery of life.
  
  
• What is Life? How Chemistry Becomes Biology by Addy Pross - Super interesting take on the question, "What is Life?" He comes to a very interesting conclusion which might have implications for abiogenesis research.
  
  
• The Machinery of Life by David S. Goodsell - A neat little book that gets you acquainted with what it's really like inside of cells. A good companion book to read with Life's Ratchet as they highlight different aspects of the same topic.
  
  
• Evolving by Daniel J. Fairbanks
  
  
• Neanderthal Man: In Search of Lost Genomes by Svante Paabo - Very interesting book about the drama, blood, sweat and tears, Dr. Paabo shed to develop the techniques to sequence ancient DNA. You simply won't find books like this and Your Inner Fish above amongst Creationist literature because they simply don't do what these scientists do out in the field and in the lab.

Here are some books, articles, websites and YouTube Videos that helped me on my journey from a hardcore creationist to a High School Biology teacher.

BOOKS

The Language of God - By Francis Collins ~ A defense of Evolution by the head of the Human Genome Project (Who also happens to be Christian)

Only a Theory - By Ken Miller ~ Another Christian biologist who accepts and vigorously defends the theory of evolution

Your Inner Fish - by Neil Shubin ~ The wonderful story of how Tiktaalik was found

Why Evolution is True - By Jerry Coyne ~ A simple and thorough treatment of evolution written for the mainstream

The Greatest Show on Earth - By Richard Dawkins ~ A wonderful and beautifully written celebration of evolution

The Panda's Thumb - By Stephen Jay Gould ~ A collection of eloquent and intelligent essays written by SJG. Any of his collections would do but this one is my favorite.

ARTICLES

Crossing the Divide - By Jennifer Couzin ~ an article about an ex-creationist and his difficult journey into enlightenment.

15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense - John Rennie ~ a nice rundown of the major objections to evolution.

WEBSITE

An index of Creationist Claims - Via the TalkOrigins archive ~ an impressive index of the major problems creationists have with evolution, as well as good, evidence based rebuttals.

YOUTUBE VIDEOS/PLAYLISTS

Why do People Laugh at Creationsts? - Via Thunderf00t ~ a scathing review of outrageous sins of logic committed by creationists. Thunderf00t's style isn't for everyone, since he can come off as smug and superior

How Evolution Works - Via DonExodus2 ~ a nice and thorough overview of how evolution works

The Theory of Evolution Made Easy - Via Potholer54

Evolution - Via Qualia Soup ~ short (10 minutes), simple and well made, this is one of my go-to videos to help logically explain how evolution happens.

Most mutations are indeed deleterious/bad, but there are also beneficial/good mutations. A good example is the ability to metabolize lactose as adults - since we've domesticated cows/goats/etc. and milk is a good source of nutrition, there is positive selection on this trait being maintained on a population. That's why this mutation, or trait, is very common among European and African populations.

It's helpful to think of selection as a "force" that pushes a trait to become more or less common in a population. If selection against a trait is strong enough, it will die out (go to 0% incidence in a population), and if it is strong enough, it will "fix" (go to 100%).

In addition to selection, there is genetic "drift." Because of how people pair off to mate and how traits get passed on, there is a degree of randomness that causes the percentage incidence of a trait in a population to fluctuate - like a random walk in physics.

Just from these factors alone, with the introduction of new traits (mostly bad, but some good), there is always going to be diversity within a population. But because we have two copies of each chromosome and each gene, one from mom and one from dad, you can also have interesting situations where having one mutation has a very different outcome than none or two. In some of these cases, you can get a stable percentage of a trait in a population at a value between 0% and 100%. A good example is the mutation that causes sickle cell anemia if you have two copies, but may protect against malaria if you have one copy.

If you want to learn more, Population Genetics by Gillespe is an accessible (and cheap) book on this subject. I think a little bit of calculus helps for the math.

http://www.amazon.com/Population-Genetics-A-Concise-Guide/dp/0801880092/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1408234938&sr=8-1&keywords=population+genetics

I mostly learned from a variety of sources, as there's not an ideal single text on this avenue of research, IMO.

I found general small-angle scattering references for free here and here, the latter being a PDF document from the EMBL small-angle scattering group. For NSE experiments on these sorts of systems, it's pretty much expected you've already done characterization of your samples via small-angle x-ray and/or neutron scattering

I'd also recommend the NIST Summer School course materials as a good and inexpensive way to get started on the neutron spectroscopy side of things. Most of what I'd seen in terms of texts tended to be fairly pricey monographs when starting out, so I'd either borrow stuff from coworkers or my institutional library. There are advanced undergrad/starting grad student texts on x-ray & neutron scattering - e.g., 1 and 2 - but I didn't find out about them until a bit further into my studies.

As might be obvious, there's definitely inspiration and foundational work to be found in the polymer science literature. I went running to Doi and Edwards, for example, when I realized that I needed more background reading in this area, but I'm sure others have their particular favorites in this and related areas.

Insofar as the bio-side of things, well, I've been doing biophysically oriented research since I was an undergrad. I'd suggest a popular biophysics text as well (either Nelson's Biological Physics or Physical Biology of the Cell ) as a starting point/reference. These are aimed towards advanced undergraduates or new grad students as well, mostly due to the interdisciplinary nature of the topics. Speaking of PBoC, one of the authors maintains a publications page where you can check out the PDFs of his group's work.

I think I'll end there, as I think that should be enough pleasure reading for a little while, at least.

My observation and perception is that this natural harmony is fundamentally what causes intelligence and consciousness. It is fractal, and it is spontaneous. In simple terms, our brains are giant musical instruments, like thousands or even millions of orchestras in our head, and our thoughts are songs that play along with stimulus from our environment. There are many songs playing in our brains at any given time. The most coherent songs get other orchestras to play along, until one is the most coherent in our mind and becomes the main song for a bit.

The fractal nature of this on the larger scale can be seen in social interactions where there is a public consciousness -- the collective intelligence. The collective intelligence that we see in society might exactly mirror how our individual intelligence works. The fractal nature on a smaller scale can be seen when for instance we notice a sound, such as a wind chime, and it stimulates a larger thought. This happened to me a few years ago when my neighbor's wind "flute" played a certain note according to which way and how intense the wind was blowing. There I was, unloading groceries from the car when it occurred to me that that's exactly how our brains work, albeit on a far more complex scale. We are more or less blowing around in the winds of existence, receiving stimuli from many sources at once, and our brains spontaneously oscillate in response, just like my neighbor's wind flute.

There is an interesting book on this subject called "Sync: How Order Emerges from Chaos in the Universe, Nature, and Daily Life". These natural harmonics are how order spontaneously appears in the universe, and it therefore appears to me that our brains and our intelligence are the opposite of disorder.

I had once watched an interview with a lady who was describing a DMT trip. She felt that our brains are "spiritual antennas". That may not be far from the truth when you think about it, since, as I am proposing, our brains naturally oscillate in harmony with stimuli from our environment. What happens when we are asleep, or under the influence of substances such as DMT, is somewhat more of a mystery than being sober and awake. Is some part of our brain sensitive to unseen quantum harmonics perhaps?

I've posted this elsewhere but here ya go...

> Avoid the Audubon guide. The Audubon guide is pretty terribad (bad photos, pithy descriptions, not user-friendly.)

> There are much better nationwide guides out there (like the Falcon Guide), but quite honestly you're better off with a regional guide.

> My recs for regional field guides:

> Alaska

> - Common Interior Alaska Cryptogams

> Western US

> - All The Rain Promises and More

• Mushrooms of the Pacific Northwest
  
  >Midwestern US
  >
  
• Mushrooms of the Midwest
  
• Edible Wild Mushrooms of Illinois and Surrounding States
  
• Mushrooms of the Upper Midwest
  
  >Southern US
  >
  
• Texas Mushrooms: A Field Guide
  >
  Eastern US
  >
  
• Mushrooms of West Virginia and the Cental Appalachians
  
• Mushrooms of Northeast North America
  
• Macrofungi Associated with Oaks of Eastern North America
  
  > As an aside, books like Mushrooms Demystified, Lichens of North America, Mushrooms of Northeastern North America, and Mushrooms of the Southeastern United States are too large and cumbersome to take out in the field, but are all excellent references to have at home for ID after a foray.

I would not recommend the Audubon guide it is very out of date (this can range from outdated taxonomy all the way to toxicology that has changed over the years). It is useful because it lists species other guides lacks but you'll learn to hate it.

Buy a location specific guide. It depends on where you live. If you get really into field hunting buy some specific guides that give you a more in depth understanding and help you not to die. Joining a local mycological society is also an extremely valuable resource in understanding mycology.

Here's a bit of everything

Regional guides

Alaska

Common Interior Alaska Cryptogams

Western US

All The Rain Promises and More
Mushrooms of the Pacific Northwest

Mushrooms Demystified This is an old book, while still useful it definitely needs updating.

The New Savory Wild Mushroom Also dated but made for the PNW

Midwestern US

Mushrooms of the Midwest

Edible Wild Mushrooms of Illinois and Surrounding States

Mushrooms of the Upper Midwest

Southern US

Texas Mushrooms: A Field Guide

Mushrooms of the Southeastern United States

Common Mushrooms of Florida

A Field Guide to Southern Mushrooms It's old so you'll need to learn new names.

Eastern US

Mushrooms of West Virginia and the Central Appalachians

Mushrooms of Northeast North America (This was out of print for awhile but it's they're supposed to be reprinting so the price will be normal again)

Mushrooms of Northeastern North America

Macrofungi Associated with Oaks of Eastern North America(Macrofungi Associated with Oaks of Eastern North America)

Mushrooms of Cape Cod and the National Seashore

More specific (Advanced) guides

Psilocybin Mushrooms of the World

North American Boletes

Tricholomas of North America

Milk Mushrooms of North America

Waxcap Mushrooms of North America

Ascomycete of North America

Ascomycete in colour

Fungi of Switzerland: Vol. 1 Ascomycetes A series of 6 books.

Fungi Europaei A collection of 14 books.

PDFs and online Guides

For Pholiota

For Chlorophyllum

American species of Crepidotus

Guide to Australian Fungi If this is useful consider donating to this excellent set of guides.

Websites that aren't in the sidebar

For Amanita

For coprinoids

For Ascos

MycoQuebec: they have a kickass app but it's In French

Messiah college this has a lot of weird species for polypores and other things

For Hypomyces

Cultivation

The Mushroom Cultivator: A Practical Guide to Growing Mushrooms at Home (If your home is a 50,000 sq ft warehouse)

Organic Mushroom Farming and Mycoremediation: Simple to Advanced and Experimental Techniques for Indoor and Outdoor Cultivation

Growing Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms

Mycology

The fifth kingdom beginner book, I would recommend this. It goes over fungal taxonomy Oomycota, Zygomycota and Eumycota. It also has ecology and fungi as food.

The kingdom fungi coffee table book it has general taxonomy of the kingdom but also very nice pictures.

Introduction to fungi Depends on your definition of beginner, this is bio and orgo heavy. Remember the fungi you see pop out of the ground (ascos and basidios) are only a tiny fraction of the kingdom.

NAMA affiliated clubs

You're very welcome. And, yes, you do have to do the double sum, over all possible n_B, good catch!

Why Poisson? There are some biological reasons that it's reasonable (that are currently eluding me) but also because an individual can't have 1.532 offspring. A discrete outcome needs a discrete probability distribution. The poisson happens to be discrete and unbounded, so it fits the bill. A negative binomial or geometric could also work, if you just want to plug in a distribution. It is not, however, inordinately hard to simulate a Poisson RV given the ability to simulate a uniform(0,1) RV.

I wouldn't say that the example is unfair by merit of using the same survival probabilities. There are two ways for an allele/genotype to have a higher fitness than other alleles/genotypes: higher survival and/or higher fecundity. By merit of the way you set up the problem A is already fitter than B. If you want to assign s_A and s_B you can do so as well, the binomial distributions used to calculate the probabilities of n_A and n_B simply change. In general (or at least in a lot of classical population genetics), people abstract away from survival vs fecundity effects and simply talk in terms of relative or absolute fitnesses (the product of survival and fecundity).

Last note: if you're interested in population genetics, it has a very rich theoretical foundation, and you should do some reading on the subject if you're curious. I think you'll find that most problems under the sun have been discussed somewhere at some point. As starting points, Felsenstein has a free and surprisingly comprehensive book available online. Gillespie has a not free and surprisingly concise book. Both are excellent.

There are some really good suggestions here, but a couple of books that were good entry points for me haven't been mentioned yet:

Sync by Steven Strogatz.

How The Universe Got Its Spots by Janna Levin.

Both of these books are rather specific interest type books, but they're both written so well that they are easy entry points into more reading later.

Edit: Ooh ooh I forgot about Plagues and Peoples. A great read that really makes you rethink global history, along the lines of (and drastically predating) another great book about cultural history Guns, Germs and Steel. Both of these books are kind of a mix of history, sociology and science, so it might not be what you're looking for though.

For people interested in the genetic origins of our sexual behaviors, read in that order:

• Dawkins' The Selfish Gene: the original book on seeing evolution from the correct point of view: the gene's eye view. A bit raw though, as Dawkins probably hurried up writing a book before someone else did. Not much data available to confirm the theory at the time so it's full with speculations, which prompted many corrections and footnotes in the second edition.
  
  
• Dawkins' The extended phenotype: the actual good book on the topic. After Dawkins secured his position as the inventor with his previous book, he had more time to refine the theory. Along with new data, there is less speculation in this one. If you only read one of these two, I advise this one.
  
  
• A book on evolutionary psychology, such as Robert Wright's The Moral Animal: applying the above principles to understand human behavior.
  
  
• Matt Ridley's The Red Queen: applying above principles to animals (and humans) sexual behavior.
  
  
• Rollo's The Rational Male. A lot of the books above are infused with bias from the authors' blue pill indoctrination. The consequences of evo psych to explain the nature of women's sexual behavior are too damning for the man born and raised in a society bent to the Feminine Imperative. As a result, one needs to read the relevant parts of Rollo's work to truly appreciate how evolutionary psychology explain women's behaviors.
  
  EDIT: anyone with other suggestions on the topic?
  
  If you know your theory on mating systems, you know that animal sexual pairing comes in basically two different flavors.
  
  In the right corner we have polygamy, characterized by strong male competition (violence) for exclusive sexual access to all females of the group, little parental investment, strong sexual dimorphism (e.g. elephant seals, gorilla, lions, etc.). Only the strongest get to mate with all females. There are no betas, just one alpha per group (or a few, in special cases such as lions). Other males don't provide. They just masturbate if they can, or die challenging the alpha or trying to poach one of his females.
  
  In the left corner we have monogamy, characterized by strong parental investment, little sexual dimorphism, high female infidelity (e.g. bonobos, most birds). Estrus is hidden to facilitate female infidelity. There are no alphas, only betas, only providers. Females are out trying to cheat on their partner with males with higher-quality genetic material (but these are not alpha males in the previous polygamous sense) while their beta partner desperately display strong mate-guarding behavior.
  
  Humans are in between, we display traits of both types. We probably started as a polygamous species slowly shifting into monogamy. In this context, what sexual strategy do we choose in order to reproduce and pass on our genetic material?
  
  My view is that there are no set Alpha men and Beta men. They are just sets of behavior traits. I believe every man has the capacity to be Alpha or Beta, depending on his environment. I see it as two different "psychological modules". And which one is activated depends on the environment, which is: sexual options.
  
  A man can have many sexual options thanks to his good genetics, being born tall, strong and handsome. Or born wealthy or high value in a hierarchical society (e.g. the chief's son). Or a man might have early luck with women in his life, building abundance mentality as default in his teenage psyche. Preselection provides a feedback loop that maintain constant sexual options. Or maybe he has the luck of being surrounded by mostly women, due to a war decimating the male population. The high sexual options activates the "alpha module" in his psychology: high self-esteem, strong will to compete, refusal to commit, etc.
  
  Everyone else who has little sexual options gets the "beta module" activated. In order to reproduce, he must find ONE female and propose the deal of sacrificing his time and resources to her and her only in exchange for her bearing HIS progeny. Heavy insecurity, mate-guarding behavior, ONE-itis come with the beta module. Or to put a more positive spin on it: the desire to be loved, dedication, chivalry, the desire to be a father and attend to your kids.
  
  I think the Alpha and Beta modules and their activation predate feminism. Cultures prior to the '50s show the pussywhipped man, the cuckolded man, the poet, the white knight, the dedicated husband and father.. and alternatively the king and his courtesans, the harems, Don Juan, the Marquis de Sade... Just as hypergamy is a feature of all human females, the alpha/beta dual strategy is a feature of all human males: selecting the best strategy to pass on your genes given the environment (sexual options). If the environment changes, the active psychological module switches. e.g. the man who wins lottery and suddenly gets the attention of women is likely to all of a sudden lose his ONE-itis for his nagging wife, rationalize why all of a sudden he doesn't feel like "doing the right thing" is actually the right thing to do, despite having defended his opinion for so long, etc. All in all, our psychology automatically activates the most appropriate module for passing on our genes, given the environmental conditions. As OP suggests, beta strategy is adopted by low SMV males but this is simply because they don't have the options to do otherwise.
  
  No module is intrinsically good or bad. On a genetic level of course, alpha strategy makes more sense as it will get more copies of your genes in the next generation, but only IF your offspring can survive to adulthood (i.e. personal wealth, or wealthy society). Beta strategy is probably a good bet otherwise such as in times of famine, crisis. On a personal happiness level however, there is no contest. Both strategies have downsides for sure. Alpha strategy implies the lack of nurturing, lack of spouse support, constant competition with other men, constant need to maintain SMV... But beta strategy implies possible cuckoldry, possible abandonment and the loss of your investment. Even if successful, mate guarding means constant anxiety. All in all a pit of sadness that makes it the short end of the stick. And then add to it the current context (unchecked hypergamy, modern divorce laws). Strive to switch your environment to be alpha.
  

OH YEAH. He is one of my favorite authors, ever. The Diversity of Life won him a Pulitzer if I recall correctly, and is a must read for anyone who loves non-fiction and biology. Consilience is a heady read and well worth the time. The Future of Life is a call to arms in defense of the environment, and as well written and straightfoward as anyone could ask. Kind of like An Inconvenient Truth, if it was written by one of the most brilliant and silver-tongued biologists of our time instead of the inventor of the internet.

Personally, I have had more success focusing on what the arms should be doing rather than focusing on what the elbow shouldn't be doing. You want to "reach over the barrel" and put your forearm and hand in a position where they can act as a paddle, pulling straight back. When your elbow drops, you are pushing down on the water as much as pulling back.

Different visualizations,cues, and drills click for different people. By far my favorite resource on developing a strong pull (which centers around a high elbow catch) is this book:

http://www.amazon.com/Swim-Speed-Secrets-Swimmers-Triathletes/dp/1934030880/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1369332046&sr=8-3&keywords=sheila+taormina

I would recommend looking up "high elbow catch" on youtube. There are many excellent instructional videos out there. I'd also recommend looking at videos of elite swimmers, like this guy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvM3JYC--hM

Or any of the swimmers here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G52cmjq7wsc

You are right that limited flexibility can hinder the correct pulling position. You will get more flexible just by swimming, but you can also do stretches out of the pool to improve flexibility quicker. The book I linked to mentions some of these stretches. This is also a good protocol:

http://www.usaswimming.org/ViewMiscArticle.aspx?TabId=1939&mid=9757&ItemId=5179

Reading through some of your comments, it sounds a bit like your biology class did what most HS bio classes do. Teach the bare minimum and then side step and downplay anything remotely controversial in order to avoid angering religious parents.

The side effect is that you get cheated and if/when you attend college you have this large learning curve of information to work through that should have been taught to you to begin with. The misunderstanding of the word theory and kids not being taught any natural selection makes teaching college bio students difficult.
You're probably having your history and literature classes watered down, too.

Seek this information yourself. If your parents don't mind, and they shouldn't, get some introductory college textbooks off of Amazon. Older editions of used books can be purchased for <$1 to $10 with $3.99 shipping. Campbell and Reece Biology are a good go-to bio text that is used in many colleges. It's big, semi-complex, but book layout is similar to HS books with all words defined and question/review sections. This could provide you with a primer for anything more complex discussed about natural selection, genetics, and even a tad bit of chemistry. You may also be able to find 6th-8th editions at thrift stores if there is a college anywhere near where you live. Book+internet+ time = learning some of what you were cheated out of in class.

Also, for fun, if you decide what interests you career wise and should you want to seek higher education for it - there are HS internship opportunities that may be open to you at your local college. Find a professor that has time for you, show sincere interest, and they will treat you like an adult (something HS teachers often lack the ability to do).

So natural selection may be now taking place. But the over-arching hypothesis is that after the Dust Bowl in the 30s we built shelter belts all across the prairies to prevent winds from eroding soils like that again. These trees in places where there weren't naturally trees gave a corridor for Barred Owls (an east coast species) could use those to extend its range until it made it west and started taking over Spotted Owl habitat. At that point the larger, more aggressive and more generalist Barred Owl had a competitive advantage. So, you can say it's natural selection now, but it seems to be caused by us. So now that becomes a question of responsibility - should we do something to save a species when we have been at the heart of its decline.

As far as "keeping everything alive for our won amusement": that's just a gross misinterpretation of conservation. I suggest this book to give you a better background.

One thing about design, at least assuming an all-perfect, all-knowing, all-powerful designer, it should be perfect.

So, imperfections in design either point to a mediocre designer or natural processes. I know of no one arguing that God is merely mediocre in his job.

Steven Jay Gould wrote an essay called "The Panda's Thumb" and published it and many of his others in a book of that title. The panda needed a thumb to strip the leaves from bamboo. But, like other members of the family, all 5 digits were fused together. It would be easy to un-fuse the thumb and allow for stripping of bamboo. Instead, they evolved an elongated wrist bone called the radial sesamoid bone. It works. But, it's a kluge. It's not good design.

Similarly, when humans evolved to stand upright, we got a spine with lots of curves in it. This is structurally less sound than a straight spine. Now, 80% of people experience back pain at some point in our lives. Our knees have similar issues.

There are numerous such examples throughout the biological world in which we live. Evolution produces quite good results and some pretty impressive kluges. But, it does not produce the perfection one should expect from an all-knowing designer. And, good enough rather than perfection is what we see.

Now let's look wider afield. Some argue that the universe is fine-tuned for life. But, is it? If we teleported to a random place in the universe, by far the vast majority of places would kill us in about 30 seconds. Most of the universe is what we refer to as "empty space", not truly empty, but not an atmosphere and not much for us to breath.

But, earth, clearly earth is fine-tuned for life. Well is it? First, there are about 10^22 planets. So, it's not that surprising that one or even many would support life as we know it just by chance. But, looking at our supposedly designed planet we see that more than 99% of all species that have ever lived are extinct. So, while there's still life here now, that doesn't hint at a perfectly designed planet for life, but rather one that is good enough.

So, while I personally do not see anything that I'd call evidence of design, I see a lot of evidence of natural processes.

I prepare for my medical classes using those books:

Campbell Biology (10th Edition), truly an amazing piece of work would really encourage reading it, clear explination of concepts that people seem to forget when they progress further into the subjects

Chemistry: The Central Science (13th Edition), perfect referal in case you forget vital concepts of chemistry, works out well but fails in the orgainc chemisty

And for further reference we need to also buy even though some of the fact are outdated Organic Chemistry with Mastering Chemistry and Solution Manual (8th Edition), I found that this has a really sturdy and "enjoyable" methods(yes I enjoy what I study), and this is just half of it.

Now personally I have a "side job" that is paying me off really well and I couldn't even complain about it, but for most students they need even more books for "reference", education should be for free, I personally will not lie and straight out tell you that I upload these books on several websites, some in my session rely on much older books to study. I do support the fact that people should be rewarded for their efforts, yet not take it out on people, I really think the governments should fund & pay them instead.

I haven't seen anything where he suggests he is an academic scientist? AntsCanada actually released a video where he visited academic scientists: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCIG3EwpU5w&ab_channel=AntsCanada and I've noticed a lot of them congregate on the forums. I prefer the term myrmecophily for myself. But I'd also love to get a formal "doctorate in myrmecological studies" title some day.

I think the definition of what it takes to be called a "myrmcologist" really depends on your stance toward citizen science. Do you need to have a fancy degree and lab experience to bring value to the world with scientific rigor? Certainly, calling oneself a 'doctor' or giving an MD/PHd title would be questionable, but I don't think any academic institution has a monopoly on the term myrmcologist itself.

Interestingly, E.O. Wilson actually wrote a book on that strange dichotomy.

As for ant poop, the "ant sorting algorithm" is a well known phenomena, even being used as inspiration for distributed robotics. As for journal published research on bathroom etiquette, there's some work being done in that area. that is quite interesting. There's also some great work being done on how ants measure and count things like this at a behavioral level at the intersecting of computer science and biology sciences.

I really think it will help. The tower26 episodes on alignment really helped me.

Also, I found this book to be helpful: https://www.amazon.com/Swim-Speed-Secrets-Swimmers-Triathletes/dp/1934030880

And finally, check out swimsmooth.com. the have some good posts.

I'm 42 and learned to swim 3 years ago when I wanted to try triathlon. I still have improvements to make but I'm swimming a 1:55/100m pace and finally achieved a couple 500m swims under 10 minutes! And getting close to a sub-20 1k. Again, I'm not super fast, but I feel good about it and mention this to give you encouragement.

Oh! And one last thing - frequency is key. Get in the pool 3-4 times a week, even if a couple of those are 500m of drills. Just get in the pool. Best of luck to you - if this 40-something uncoordinated lady can do it, I know you can!!

• Alcock's Animal Behavior: an evolutionary approach is a classic and very renowned textbook. It satisfies both your needs and it is relatively updated to the latest knowledge of animal behavior. Although exhaustive, it is a gigantic text. https://www.amazon.com/Animal-Behavior-Evolutionary-John-Alcock/dp/0878939660
  
• It's not a book, but MIT's Open Courseware on Animal Behavior should satisfy your curiosity: https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/brain-and-cognitive-sciences/9-20-animal-behavior-fall-2013/index.htm
  
• Manning and Dawkin's Introduction to Animal Behavior is also awesome and a really good read and much more approachable than Alcock's https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Animal-Behaviour-Aubrey-Manning/dp/0521165148
  
• Lastly, Broom and Fraser's Domestic Animal Behaviour and Welfare is excellent read if you are more into cats dogs, etc. https://www.amazon.com/Domestic-Animal-Behaviour-Welfare-Donald-M/dp/1780645635

Same-sex behavior is frequent in many animal species but an evolutionary benefit may not be immediately obvious. For example, you share about the same amount of genes with each parent, your siblings and your children. Therefore, if the cost of raising your own children was too high you'd have a higher chance of spreading at least some of your alleles by investing your resources in supporting your family instead (the theory behind this is called kin selection). What I'm trying to say is, sexual reproduction isn't the only possible way for you to spread your alleles in a population.

Also, sexual orientation (among many other traits, like general intelligence) is thought to be influenced by both genetic and environmental factors so saying that children can be rewired willy-nilly is just plain wrong.

source: molecular biology and psychology double major, parents are medical doctors.

edit: in case you're interested in evolutionary biology check out Evolutionary Analysis (or Human Evolutionary Genetics for humans in particular).

edit 2: How Children Develop is a nice book on Developmental Psychology and might be worth a look, too. However, I only read a translated version so your experience may differ.

I would recommend The diversity of Life by E.O. Wilson.

"Wilson, internationally regarded as the dean of biodiversity studies, conducts us on a tour through time, traces the processes that create new species in bursts of adaptive radiation, and points out the cataclysmic events that have disrupted evolution and diminished global diversity over the past 600 million years. The five enormous natural blows to the planet (such as meteorite strikes and climatic changes) required 10 to 100 million years of evolutionary repair. The sixth great spasm of extinction on earth--caused this time entirely by humans--may be the one that breaks the crucible of life. Wilson identifies this crisis in countless ecosystems around the globe: coral reefs, grasslands, rain forests, and other natural habitats. Drawing on a variety of examples such as the decline of bird populations in the United States, the extinction of many species of freshwater fish in Africa and Asia, and the rapid disappearance of flora and fauna as the rain forests are cut down, he poignantly describes the death throes of the living world's diversity--projected to decline as much as 20 percent by the year 2020."

Here are a couple of main reasons why it is good to try and conserve species and prevent them from going extinct:

1. They are a keystone species, which basically are the glue which hold the whole ecosystem together. Without them the ecosystem falls apart. "is a species that has a disproportionately large effect on its environment relative to its abundance. Such species are described as playing a critical role in maintaining the structure of an ecological community, affecting many other organisms in an ecosystem and helping to determine the types and numbers of various other species in the community." The most famous example are sea otters, which were nearly hunted to extinction because of their soft thick pelts. Once they were removed sea urchin population exploded (whose predator is the sea otter). Sea urchins eat sea weed which in the area was quickly all eaten. Sea weed in this area grows in big gardens, like a forest. Basically the urchins deforested the ocean and any other animals that used the forest were negatively affected - spawning ground for fish, protection from predators, refuge from bad climate etc.
   
   
2. Umbrella species: These are typically very charismatic species like Pandas or Tigers which are able to get a lot of support from the public. These species often require a lot of land to survive and so by protecting them and their habitat you also end up protecting other species which may be less charismatic but perhaps more ecologically significant.
   
   
3. Ecosystems sometimes work like a jenga tower. You remove one and the stable is still very structurally sound, remove two and everything still looks ok. But by the 10th or maybe 15th brick things are starting to look pretty shaky. And the 16th may be the one that causes the whole thing to collapse. The problem here is we don't know which bricks we are removing sometimes (keystone species?), we don't know how many were removing and we don't really know how fast. So we are just taking out bricks without thinking about the tower. If you remove the keystone species first, the tower collapses right away (as if the tower were built on a single brick platform).
   
   
4. Healthy ecosystems provide you with many services including: clean water, clean air, clean soil, food, shelter and medicine. When we begin to have ecosystems collapsing they no longer provide us these free services which we then must provide ourselves which are usually less efficient and more costly.
   
   
5. Finally, nature is in itself worthy. This is known as deep ecology which may sound like hippy bullshit, but questions regarding environmental ethics are very important to discuss as we are not removed from the environment but rely on it for our very existence and survival. Contemporary ecological philosophy distinguished by its advocacy of the inherent worth of living beings regardless of their instrumental utility to human needs. Deep ecology argues that the natural world is a subtle balance of complex inter-relationships in which the existence of organisms is dependent on the existence of others within ecosystems. Human interference with or destruction of the natural world poses a threat therefore not only to humans but to all organisms constituting the natural order."

I know you asked for online sources, and you've been given some good ones, but if you can take this book I'd recommend it. Really easy to follow, lots of pictures, and comprehensive. Good luck in your exams!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!!!!

I suggest Kraken: The Curious, Exciting, and Slightly Disturbing Science of Squid since it is an amazingly informative book about how squid have been used in numerous studies to help humans. It also generally entails how awesome they are.

As for a bucket list... I would have to say travel. Find a cheap flight somewhere or even pick a place you can drive to and go. If there are any music events or festivals you are interested in in another state maybe plane a trip around that!

Firstly, I LOVE theater! I was in the annual musical every year at my high-school. Thespian-five

Second, I haven't seen Jurassic Park. I first learned about Paleontology by talking to some friends of my grandfather (who was a geologist) when I was about five, and later constant museum visits kept me interested.

Finally, I too suck at math. Most of the math requirements were during my bachelor work. For the graduate degree you learn a lot more about what you'll actually be doing in the field. My favorite class was probably biology, just because I love looking at the evolution of organisms throughout history.

I strongly recommend Evolution for Everyone.

Some excellent starting books for the above subjects is as follows:

Pre-Calculus by Cynthia Y. Young:

https://www.amazon.com/Precalculus-Cynthia-Y-Young/dp/0471756849

Provides an excellent summary of elementary Algebra up to starting concepts of calculus, such as the difference quotient, etc.

Campbell Biology (10th edition):

https://www.amazon.com/Campbell-Biology-10th-Jane-Reece/dp/0321775651/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1483427728&sr=1-4&keywords=Biology

Covers pretty much every form of Biology you'll cover throughout your middle school/high school days, up to freshman year of university.

Chemistry 9th Edition: by Steven S. Zumdahl (Author), Susan A. Zumdahl (Author):

https://www.amazon.com/Chemistry-Steven-S-Zumdahl/dp/1133611095/ref=sr_1_12?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1483427816&sr=1-12&keywords=Chemistry

A bit more complex, however once you've gained a grasp of Biology/Algebra, this is a fine novel illustrating all the workings of chemistry you'll cover throughout high-school-freshman year university.

That's all I can really recommend as of now. I'm inclined to believe you're 1-2 grades ahead of your peers, and it shouldn't be too long until you finish up basic arithmetic, and starting learning higher maths. If you intend to develop a higher understanding of these fields, seriously try these books out.

Despite their expense, if you can find a way to rent, study, and complete them, you're basically set til' college.

Also know that these books are the most recent editions of their respective categories: These books are used in a multitude of schools/universities, not just random textbooks delving into irrelevant subjects: Nearly everything encapsulated within them is pertinent.

I'll stick to recommending science communication books (those that don't require a deep background on biological concepts):

• On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection - Charles Darwin, bonus points if you can get a 1st edition reprint (before his colleagues made him change a lot of important things); it is a must-read but it might need quite some time to truly understand it, it is a heavy read.
  
  
• A lot of people recommend the Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins but that one is one of his most controversial books and if you decide to read it, you should take everything with a pinch of salt; for Dawkins I prefer to recommend the Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution and the Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design. Just beware of Dawkins, he's a little dogmatic in his approach.
  
  
• The Dialectical Biologist - Richard Levins & Richard Lewontin.
  
  
• The Structure of Scientific Revolutions - Thomas Kuhn, this one will change forever your conception of science as a whole.
  
  
• The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature - Matt Ridley.
  
  
• Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History, and the Panda's Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History - Stephen J. Gould.
  
  
• The Ghosts of Evolution: Non-sensical Fruit, Missing Partners, and Other Ecological Anachronisms - Connie Barlow.
  
  
• Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? - Frans de Waal, this one is about animal cognition but has an incredible underline of all the deficiencies and prejudges on science.
  
  
• Microbe Hunters - Paul de Kruif.
  
  
• Symbiotic Planet: A New Look at Evolution, and What is Life? - Lynn Margulis.
  
  
• The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark - Carl Sagan & Ann Druyan.
  
  
• A Short Story of Nearly Everything - Bill Bryson.
  
  ---
  
  For books that everyone studying biology ends up reading, my candidate would be Lehninger's Principles of Biochemistry, by Nelson & Cox but that's a textbook.

If you've not read anything else by him, I say that is a great start. I think his writings on biology are way better than his writings on religion.

He's very "tangential" though, so I sometimes feel like I'm trying to keep up with his train of thought.

When you're done, assuming you haven't read it already, you should read The Extended Phenotype. I believe it's his greatest book.

Happy reading!

I would start with a basic biology book like Campbell's Biology. It will hit the basic level for most topics in biology, give a base knowledge of the biochemistry and metabolism as well as an overview. For systems, depending on what specifically you're interested in, I would start with The Molecular Biology of the Cell by Alberts and Johnson. It will give you a really good overview of cell biology and cell signaling. I know a lot of systems people are working on cell signaling and pathway modeling. Is there something specifically that you're interested in? I may be able to recommend more specific books for you.

With regard to textbooks, these are the ones I used during my undergraduate career (UCSD Bioinformatics major):

• General Biology: Campbell Biology
  
  
• Genetics: Essentials of Genetics
  
  
• Molecular Biology: Molecular Cell Biology
  
  
• Cell Biology: Same book as Molecular Biology (Molecular Cell Biology)
  
  
• Biochemistry: Lehninger Principles of Biochemistry
  
  I think out of these, the key ones for Bioinformatics are the genetics and molecular biology portions of the General Biology book, then the Genetics book, then the Molecular Biology book. Cell Biology can be useful for understanding the downstream pathways certain "big-name" genes are involved in, but it's information that's very easily google-able. Biochemistry isn't too relevant unless you specifically want to go into metabolomics or something
  
  EDIT: And with regard to reviews, I'm not too sure what "good sources" are; I usually read the Nature Review Journals, but hopefully someone else can chime in!

Just graduated in may with my BS in Biology. I used Essential Cell Biology by Alberts for my cell bio class. I'll be honest in saying across my 4 years in the major this was the best book. The illustrations and diagrams are incredible and the book is clear. The reviews speak for itself, as someone said below you can probably get it for free from a torrent.

http://www.amazon.com/Essential-Cell-Biology-Bruce-Alberts/dp/0815341296

This book is great for technique and has some good swim workouts. 60 feet is a bit short but fine to get started. You're actually better off not pushing off the wall as far and really trying to get some good long strokes in. http://www.amazon.com/Swim-Speed-Secrets-Swimmers-Triathletes/dp/1934030880/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1377476163&sr=8-5&keywords=swim+training

E O Wilson's book, 'The Diversity of Life,' is an interesting and thoughtful read about the ecologically rich landscapes of earth. Much of it delves into how important diversity is and why it's invaluable and much be preserved. I think it's worth taking a look at if you are interested in that sort of thing.

better to learn both poisonous and edible.

Eastern US

Mushrooms of the Northeastern United States and Eastern Canada The most recently published for the NE

Mushrooms of the Northeast by Walt Sturgeon An excellent pocket guide, Walt does a good job mentioning the lesser known look alikes.

Mushrooms of Northeast North America A great guide for beginners, with many pictorial and dichotomous guides to ID fungi.

Mushrooms of Northeastern North America Has the most species listed for the NE.

I used This One when I went to Italy last year. It uses illustrations and not pictures, but it’s an excellent book. If you scroll to the bottom of the listing some people posted pictures of the inside of the book.

Here is another that looks great but I don’t own it personally

If you're still interested in cephalopods, I highly recommend this book. It was so fun to read! More about squid than octopus and cuttlefish, but definitely wonderful.

I've read quite some books in this area, including The Brain's Way of Healing: Remarkable Discoveries and Recoveries from the Frontiers of Neuroplasticity. I've also read quite a bit about synaptic plasticity, brain changes, adult neurogenesis etc. in Dale Purves his textbook on Neuroscience.

It seems clear to me that certain brain circuits have been reinforced over time, which lead to his current state of a very fixed mindset. For instance, the brain region very much involved in emotions is the amygdala. Which has projections to the vmPFC which seems to play a role in the inhibition of emotional responses, and in the process of decision making and self control. It seems like there's something in this area which might be relevant to this particular case.

What do you think?

1. yep, you seem to have it right.
   
   Freeman and Herron's "Evolutionary Analysis" is a good textbook, with a section on measuring selection in this way. It is much heftier than we need for this course. You should be able to find a copy at the library.
   
   John Gillespie's "Population genetics : a concise guide" is good, too. I found a pdf online for it here. He talks about the model of selection we are using starting on page 52. This is a much more technical treatment of selection, and Gillespie's writing is dense. There is much much more detail here than you need for our purposes. But feel free to take a look.

Dale Purves et al, Neuroscience, 6th edition. This is a good overview of neuro. I've seen it used in grad courses but it was also was a mainstay of undergrad.

After that, the latest edition of Principles of Neural Science, Eric Kandel et al. This is more involved and is often used as a reference for labs and grad students. Some might say this is a grad level book; however, I personally needed it for both undergrad and grad.

You might want to get both of them at the same time, so Kandel can be used if needed for further information whilst reading Purves. Both of these books can likely be found as pdfs on libgen.io.

Neuroanatomy: I used a book called The Human Brain in Photographs and Diagrams by John Nolte but there are many resources out there. She might want to get some free software to examine the brain in 3d. The Allen institute comes to mind.

I imagine this program is not research based, but she should still get used to reading papers, and also keep an eye on current neuro news. Science Daily, Neuroscience News, and New Scientist are good places to start. That said, reading papers can be hard if you don't have the background (neuro, stats, lab techniques).

I'm not sure how much time she has, so realistically speaking I would focus on reading Purves front to back and use everything else I've listed as supplementary first, and then dig deeper into them if she has the time.

Alcock's Animal Behavior is a great textbook that ties behavior to evolutionary processes. I just started a PhD where one component is ethology, which I haven't had a course in. This was the book my advisor recommended.

As far as ecology goes, the only general ecology book I've used was my undergrad text, which is pretty approachable if you don't have background- Smith and Smith - Elements of Ecology. I took aquatic ecology and terrestrial ecology, was underwhelmed with both texts.

Yes absolutely. Evolution is a highly mathematic science with a long history of mathematical theory describing how populations change over time. RA Fisher and Sewell Wright were some of the first and many many have followed.

For future reference, only populations can evolve, not individual organisms. Unfortunately most introductory material on evolution doesn't get into the math. I'd recommend this book as a good introduction to the math of evolution, but it assumes some pretty basic knowledge of the concepts of evolution already.

One of the standard general bio textbooks is Campbell Biology. Any edition is fine, but I think the 8th edition is the sweet spot for a balance between age and cost. I wasn't a very big fan of the genetics textbook that my university used, but I do remember the cell biology textbook being pretty approachable (Essential Cell Biology, $10 used).

For AP Biology, I liked Barron's and this book: https://www.amazon.com/Preparing-Biology-School-Pearson-Education/dp/0133458148/
The second book is basically an outlined version of the Campbell Textbook. I found it really helpful and easier to read.

Seven Life Lessons of Chaos

Though it positions itself somewhat as a self-help book, it's really not -- it touches on many interesting things about nature and humanity. It's short (and maybe enlightening too).

I also enjoyed Sync ... though I'm not sure if some of the findings here have been updated (it's a bit old now).

You might also look at some EO Wilson books.

Hello there!

You can pick up an older copy of the Raven/Johnson Biology book used from Amazon pretty cheaply: http://www.amazon.com/Biology-Peter-Raven/dp/0077350022/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1404482342&sr=8-2&keywords=raven+johnson+biology

Same goes for the Campbell/Reece: http://www.amazon.com/Biology-8th-Edition-Neil-Campbell/dp/0805368442/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1404482401&sr=8-2&keywords=campbell+reece+biology

Hope this helps!

I feel bad suggesting this one because I actually haven't read it yet. It's sitting on my shelf to be read, but The Extreme Life of the Sea

Kraken is one that I have read and enjoyed. It deals specifically with squid. I felt that the subtitle on this one was a little misleading. There really isn't any new information on the science of squid in it. Also, it felt more like "how science is benefiting from squid" rather than" the science behind squid". It was still interesting.

If it's maladaptive and variation exists in the population, selection can act on individuals to change the frequency of the behavior in a population. These behaviors as responses to stimuli are coded in DNA, that's how they become fixed (in the hardy-weinberg sense) in a population. Do you think snakes are so smart they are self aware of their own behavior and the behavior of others in the population? We're so far out of what the literature shows at this point I don't think that I can continue this conversation. In each response, you're moving the goal posts. There are some really good resources out there to help, things like http://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/animal-behavior-13228230 and https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0878939660

This one is regarded as the best book for general bird identification in europe http://www.amazon.com/Birds-Europe-Second-Edition-Princeton/dp/0691143927

and this one is more specific and takes on the Sylvia-warbler familiy like Subalpine Warbler, Sardinian Warbler Ruepells Warbler and such http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sylvia-Warblers-Identification-Taxonomy-Phylogeny/dp/0713639849

Also regarding #2 picture, a Blackcap would show a much more distinct brown-coloured cap and would be more bulky. This show an Blackcap 1cy http://www.netfugl.dk/pictures.php?id=showpicture&picture_id=56273&language=uk, http://www.netfugl.dk/pictures.php?id=showpicture&picture_id=23434, http://www.netfugl.dk/pictures.php?id=showpicture&picture_id=35937

I used the most underrated but best reviewbook ever (Pearson) + Barron's
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0133458148/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o04_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1

If anything, get the first one's newest edition (if there is one) because the authors of this book specifically pulled out main ideas from the campbell book that the test will test

Campbell Biology 8th edition. Get is used, it's only a few bucks.

Neuroscience; exploring the brain is also a great book that goes far more in-depth. The first part of the book is devoted to the very basics of biology and cell structure following the same foundation as any other biology book.

This book was absolutely fantastic. I highly recommend it. http://www.amazon.com/Kraken-Curious-Exciting-Slightly-Disturbing/dp/0810984652

...if you like squid. I'm a squid scientist so I'm a bit biased.

I just finished reading Swim Speed Secrets, which talks a lot about the pull phase of swimming as being the part where most of your speed is coming from. I have been doing tris for a couple years now and wanted to start to focus in on my swimming technique more. I liked the book for this and I am already seeing some improvement.

I know some people don't like this book because it leaves out some of the other parts of the stroke, but I think as long as you are aware of that it is a good read.

http://www.amazon.com/Swim-Speed-Secrets-Swimmers-Triathletes/dp/1934030880/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1463164698&sr=8-1&keywords=swim+speed+secrets

With regards to the blog post:

Your point was to create a distinction between students and working social scientists, which is unfounded given the highlighted segment of the post.

With regards to using personal experience as evidence:

I brought it up once, to meet you half on your emphasis on personal experiences. It was not intended as evidence or proof or anything of that sort.

I am not so foolish as to think my own experiences are inherently generalizable.

With regards to having no sources:

At the moment I have three, and to counter I have "No, I've seen different".

But alright, if you wish more:

http://www.amazon.ca/Third-Culture-Beyond-Scientific-Revolution/dp/0684823446

https://www.dukeupress.edu/Science-Wars/index-viewby=author&lastname=Aronowitz&firstname=Stanley&middlename=&sort=newest&aID=1472866.html

http://www.amazon.com/Consilience-Knowledge-Edward-Osborne-Wilson/dp/067976867X

Anyway, this discussion has clearly become pointless. You refuse to acknowledge any evidence that doesn't fit into your personal narrative and keep attempting to assert what I'm saying is ridiculous to dismiss my point.

But on the plus side, your argumentation has fully convinced me you're a social scientist.

Sure, I'd start with Neuroscience for an overview, some more cognitive related computational systems are described in Cognitive Neuroscience, more advanced ones in Vision and Finally Rhythms of the Brain, you can then branch out further into language and memory.

​

https://www.amazon.com/Neuroscience-Dale-Purves/dp/1605353809/ref=sr_1_6?keywords=neuroscience&qid=1563645060&s=gateway&sr=8-6

https://www.amazon.com/Cognitive-Neuroscience-Biology-Mind-Fifth/dp/0393603172/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=cognitive+neuroscience&qid=1563645142&s=gateway&sr=8-2

https://www.amazon.com/Rhythms-Brain-Gyorgy-Buzsaki/dp/0199828237/ref=sr_1_1?crid=813HTOI3332A&keywords=rhythms+of+the+brain&qid=1563645094&s=gateway&sprefix=rhythms+of+the+%2Caps%2C199&sr=8-1

https://www.amazon.com/Vision-Computational-Investigation-Representation-Information/dp/0262514621/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=vision+neuroscience&qid=1563645008&s=gateway&sr=8-1

The methodology and approach here reminds me of E.O. Wilson's concept (and book), called "Consilience" - which concerns the unity of disparate forms of knowledge (e.g. science and religion). Also: The wiki for Consilience. Speaking of book signing, I actually got my copy of Consilience signed by Wilson and he inscribed a cute little ant as his signature (he is an entomologist). Edit: I forwarded Rick the link to this thread. Would be great if he stopped by.

There's Birds of Europe from Princeton, which is pretty good.

I'll also add the booking I'm reading now as a reference. It talks in length about chromosomal similarities and differences between humans and other apes, how those differences likely came about, and how they present strong evidence for evolution: Relics of Eden: The Powerful Evidence of Evolution in Human DNA

I recommend getting this review book:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0133458148/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_NN.-zbQBBNHT3

It's kinda pricey but it's a really good outline of the Campbell textbook with practice questions.

Ive really enjoyed David Quamman's Song of the DoDo and E.O. Wilson's The Diversity of Life They both follow similar themes of Island Biogeography, extinction, and biodiversity. They also explain a lot of fundamental concepts in Ecology really well. E.O. is obviously an Entomologist so most of the large concepts he goes over are explained using insect models.

The Pearson-Holtzclaw review book that accompanies the Campbell textbook is hands down the best review book for AP Bio. Here's a link to it on Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/Preparing-Biology-School-Pearson-Education/dp/0133458148

Thanks!

>I think the coolest thing I’ve found is the evolutionary reason why people reject evolution. I haven’t published it yet but, when it comes out, its probably going to cause a minor shit storm.

Please post to reddit when it's published.

In case anyone wants to check out the above mentioned books:

Chimpanzee Politics by Frans de Waal

The Paleolithic Prescription by Boyd and Eaton

Exiles from Eden by Glantz and Pearce

Primates in the Classroom by Gary Bernhard

Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters by Miller and Kanzawa

Evolution for Everyone by David Sloan

Campbells: BIOLOGY 6.9lbs

https://www.amazon.com/Campbell-Biology-10th-Jane-Reece/dp/0321775651/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1485783159&sr=1-1&keywords=biology+textbook

Atlas of the Universe 5.8 lbs

https://www.amazon.com/Illustrated-Atlas-Universe-Tirion-Garlick/dp/1740893778/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1485782836&sr=8-3&keywords=Atlas+of+the+universe

Universe 5.1lbs

https://www.amazon.com/Universe-Robert-Dinwiddie/dp/0756698413/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1485782970&sr=8-1&keywords=Universe+book

The World of Ice and Fire 4 lbs

https://www.amazon.com/World-Ice-Fire-History-Westeros/dp/0553805444/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1485782797&sr=8-1&keywords=World+of+Ice+and+Fire

Elements of Ecology 3.2lbs

https://www.amazon.com/Elements-Ecology-6th-Thomas-Smith/dp/0805348301/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1485784000&sr=1-1&keywords=elements+of+ecology+6th+edition

Last Words of Notable People 3.2 lbs

https://www.amazon.com/Last-Words-Notable-People-Noteworthy/dp/0976532581/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1485782704&sr=8-1&keywords=last+words+of+notable+people

Illustrated Edition of Game of Thrones 3 lbs

https://www.amazon.com/Game-Thrones-Illustrated-Song-Fire/dp/0553808044/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1485782765&sr=8-1&keywords=illustrated+edition+game+of+thrones

These are the heaviest books off the top of my head, I'm not home so I can't look at my collection.

Moving my collection of books was not fun when we bought a house. I almost sold them all, but I'm glad I didn't. (I have like, over 1000)

I think that is "more than the high school version that gets a little more in depth" :)
http://www.amazon.com/Evolutionary-Analysis-5th-Edition-Herron/dp/0321616677
you can find previous editions' pdf file easily when you google.

This is the best book for AP Biology hands down. Questions are very similar to test and give lots of need to know information and practice.

https://www.amazon.com/Preparing-Biology-School-Pearson-Education/dp/0133458148/ref=pd_sim_14_7?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=0133458148&pd_rd_r=a939490d-36cd-11e9-a692-13b9b4e07a01&pd_rd_w=lXCcT&pd_rd_wg=ci0aF&pf_rd_p=90485860-83e9-4fd9-b838-b28a9b7fda30&pf_rd_r=GJD161GBEJMXXBPCJZD6&psc=1&refRID=GJD161GBEJMXXBPCJZD6

If you find that interesting I highly recommend reading the book Sync by Brian Strogatz. Nature is full of this stuff, from sleep cycles to quantum effects to the behaviour of fireflies.

Hi /u/murphalicious55, I'm not sure if I am in any position to give advice, since I've been swimming for a small period of time.

These are the things that I did:

1.- Swim more. I go to the pool 4 times a week, and I average around 2500yd per session.

2.- No lollygagging in the pool. I use to swim with a team of Triathletes, but I found that I tend to socialize more when other people are around, and I would take very long breaks at the wall. When I'm alone, I just keep on doing my own thing.

3.- I bought a book. I bought this book and it's companion workout book. Really good information.

4.- I have a friend that has been a swimmer since he was a kid, he is a very competitive Age Grouper in Ironman 70.3 races, he's usually 1st or 2nd out of the water. About 2 times a month he comes to the pool with me and shows me some drills, and also takes a look at my stroke and tries to correct it.

I'm planning a 3 month swimming block that will begin in October, and I will concentrate on the swim and see if I can reach my goal of swimming 25min for the 1500m swim in an Olympic Tri. That's a 1:31/100yd pace (1:40/100m).

If you prefer something in print, I highly recommend Campbell's Biology. You can get a used copy for less than $10.

It's readable, engaging, and accurate. It was my AP Bio textbook in high school, and then I bought myself a copy after graduating from college with a biology degree.

Strogatz is my favorite author for complex syst. and non-linear dynamics: http://www.amazon.com/Sync-Order-Emerges-Universe-Nature/dp/0786887214

Watch his TED talk: http://www.ted.com/talks/steven_strogatz_on_sync.html

CONSILIENCE - Edward O. Wilson IS the answer to your question.

After reading the other comments, there is nothing that is BETTER at explaining social AND scientific history in combination with each other than this book alone. PLEASE do check it out, it is one of my absolute favorites and I have gifted it many times to both social and scientific students and employees.

Honestly, the field changes so fast that it'd be hard to have a "comprehensive" text book stay relevant. Most of the time we're reading and discussing academic papers from the past ~5 years, occasionally referencing significant results from further back.

http://www.amazon.com/Population-Genetics-A-Concise-Guide/dp/0801880092 is a good book to start with though to build up a good foundational understanding of how people are thinking about and studying evolution (or at least the people I'm working with), assuming you already have some basic familiarity with population genetic principles.

edit: When starting grad school several years ago, this is the textbook we used for the molecular biology courses we had to take. The degree program I'm in is Computational and Molecular Biology (where students are either in Comp or Mol bio, but there's some overlap in the first semester. I'm in Comp, so most of my coursework is in math/cs/stats), so I can't say what graduate level Evolutionary Biology courses require.

If you go to Myanmar or Thailand, you can see them flash in sync. There's a great book that's not really about the phenomenon as much as it's about spontaneous generation of order from chaos. The author was on a fascinating episode of Radiolab that talks about the firefly thing though.

I like the Princeton Guide (L. Svensson + others). I'll admit, it's the only guide I've used in Europe, but it's worked well for me.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0691143927/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awdb_t1_aYe7AbW5XFWCK

If you like life sciences/evolution books I recommend Evolution for everyone. Link. I'm not too far into it but so far I love it.

As far as the original topic goes, one of the things that I find most frustrating that I haven't really seen people really touch on is that, so many guys are so dumbfounded at the prospect of boobs that they will give compliment girls for things that they wouldn't for guys. I guess girls also do this for attractive males which also frustrates me being that I'm not in either groups.

As Stephen Jay Gould said, "We are glorious accidents of an unpredictable process with no drive to complexity, not the expected results of evolutionary principles that yearn to produce a creature capable of understanding the mode of its own necessary construction."

I'd recommend you put Evolutionary Analysis and The Counter Creationism Handbook on your reading lists. You really should do that before you start trying to get into these debates at all.

Campell Biology is generally the number one go to for intro bio. My AP class, and intro class in college used it.

https://www.amazon.com/Campbell-Biology-10th-Jane-Reece/dp/0321775651

For more molecular stuff, molecular biology of the cell is fairly popular:

https://www.amazon.com/Molecular-Biology-Cell-Bruce-Alberts/dp/0815344325/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_14_t_0?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=D9ZRY4BKB4ECZ2PMQRRJ

If you really want a deeper look at it, I'd recommend Richard Dawkins; The Extended Phenotype

Why have you deleted the post you did on r/neuroscience 18hrs ago?

There was literally a full discussion with people saying “we’re not doing your homework for you”

And

“The study doesn’t show if there is any correlation between the meds the people are already taking and the psychosis may therefore be defined by a chemical make up and induced by that rather than societal differences”

So, I’m not sure why:

1. You’ve deleted the post that you posted at the same time as this one in r/neuroscience
   
2. You’re getting so aggressive when I was directing someone who said they were interested to a place they could find a bit more discussion since this is nothing to do with neurology in the first place.
   
3. I now think this is actually your homework and you may need to do it yourself.
   
4. May I recommend this book: (Neuroscience - Purves et al, 2019)
   
5. Please stop commenting on my comments that have no reference to this.

A couple of years ago, in a talk, Aubrey waved two big books when the topic came up about how to get started. The books were:

• Essential Cell Biology
  
• Molecular Biology of the Cell
  
  (and SENS would most likely also recommend keeping Ending Aging handy).

Though large for a field guide, I really like "Mushrooms of Northeastern North America"

literally the cover of Alan Bessette's Mushrooms of Northeastern North America

I agree with Hygrocybe sp.

It looks like a lot more people here need to read: http://www.amazon.com/Consilience-Knowledge-Edward-Osborne-Wilson/dp/067976867X/

For a really interesting description of the underlying principles at work here I'd highly recommend checking out Sync: How Order Emerges From Chaos In the Universe, Nature, and Daily Life by Steven Strogatz.

Both of these explanations are very good and spot on. If you want more reading material on this subject I recommend the book Evolution for Everyone by David Sloan Wilson. (In the last part of the book he gets on a bit of a soapbox and I don't agree with all the things he says, but the first 2/3rds of the book are excellent.)

The links already given here are good reads. If you want something more in depth and you have some familiarity with biology, check out "Relics of Eden" by Daniel Fairbanks. http://www.amazon.com/Relics-Eden-Powerful-Evidence-Evolution/dp/1591025648

For a quick and dirty version of some of the genetic evidence, check out CDK007's evidence for evolution stuff: http://www.youtube.com/user/cdk007#p/u/45/TUxLR9hdorI

You might want to read this:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0321775651/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1491928915&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_FMwebp_QL65

Read up on 'consilience of evidence', so that you can understand that a consensus has been reached, about the primary cause of recent warning being attributable to the increase of atmospheric CO2, from the burning of fossil fuels.

'Consilience' is a bit of a technical term, and it was coined by the famed biologist, Edward Wilson, who wrote a whole book about it. If you disagree with the consensus, then I'd recommend that you read that book http://www.amazon.com/Consilience-Knowledge-Edward-Osborne-Wilson/dp/067976867X

You're thinking of the Extended Phenotype, the topic of one of Richard Dawkins' books.

The construction of wetlands via beaver dams and peat bogs would be two examples of organisms (beavers and peat moss) dramatically affecting their own ecosystem.

Some more info here: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/01/090119081333.htm
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2658563/

Hey man, I'm just summarizing my textbook.

You'll have to take it up with them.

I was thinking The Panda's Thumb

Read this

Things to Buy
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Political
Iraq Research

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http://www.ontheissues.org/Drugs.htm#Barack_Obama

Congress Related

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Health & Exercise
Green Tea

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Preparing for the Biology AP* Exam (School Edition) (Pearson Education Test Prep) https://www.amazon.com/dp/0133458148/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_4weRBb3J6VSDV

Due to non-existent biology background, you could start by reading Campbell Biology and Alberts Molecular Biology of the Cell.

Absolutely this. Relevant and highly recommended

https://www.amazon.com/Preparing-Biology-School-Pearson-Education/dp/0133458148/ref=pd_cp_14_1?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=0133458148&pd_rd_r=5PD225KY0Q6VEGMWB8E2&pd_rd_w=oTcbg&pd_rd_wg=4T6DA&psc=1&refRID=5PD225KY0Q6VEGMWB8E2 this one?

https://www.amazon.com/Neuroscience-Dale-Purves/dp/1605353809/ref=mp_s_a_1_2?keywords=neuroscience+purves+6th+edition&qid=1574056105&sprefix=Neuroscience+pur&sr=8-2

My wife uses this book to teach intro to neuro. I've read every edition since the 4th. Unless you got master's level questions it's in here.

Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge by E.O. Wilson

Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge

Here is the mobile version of your link

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0133458148/ref=dp_ob_neva_mobile

I bought this one

> what is a good source of reference to understand what we know today?

Not that The Origin of Species isn't insightful in any way by itself, but it isn't what you want here. If you actually want to be educated in these subjects you should do what other people do to get educated in these topics, namely read textbooks and/or watch lectures on the subjects.

If you want to learn about evolution, pick up some textbooks on evolutionary biology and/or human evolution. Here are two textbooks that I happen to know are very good:

• Understanding Humans: An Introduction to Physical Anthropology and Archaeology
  
  
• Evolutionary Analysis (5th Edition)
  
  Here's a textbook on astronomy that I know is good:
  
  
• Astronomy Today (8th Edition)
  
  You could probably find online versions of these textbooks and other textbooks like them and there are online lectures from actual universities out there on these topics too.
  
  > I really would like to have an educated response to the religious apologist argument about evolution and big bang only being "theory".
  
  If someone describes evolution and the big bang as "just a theory" it's because (among other reasons) they do not understand evolution and the big bang. If you want to have an "educated response" to them you will need to understand (and not just accept) evolution and the big bang yourself.
  
  If you just want to tell them why they're wrong then you can get away with having a very basic understanding of these topics, but by no means would this constitute an "educated response" to them. It would just be your way of "winning" the argument. An "educated response" would be one where you actually teach these people something that they had no idea they didn't know based on an understanding of where they've gone wrong.

No it has a dandelion

10th edition

I feel your pain. The book on the right is an older edition of this beastie, to give you some idea of the sheer horror I experienced when I walked in and saw the carnage.

Buying this book.
http://www.amazon.com/Swim-Speed-Secrets-Swimmers-Triathletes/dp/1934030880

it made me realize i was simply lazy in the pool and it helped me get my ass into shape.

As far as abiogenesis is concerned, I really enjoyed books such as The Emergence Of Everything, Beginnings Of Cellular Life, Origins Of Life, Genesis, What Is Life?, and Microcosms.

I'm an avid reader of all things abiogenesis, if you hadn't noticed. Considering it and finding ways to simulate it on a computer is one of my hobbies.

Also, Abiogenesis is really part of a larger study of emergence, chaos and order, and how simple things come together to perform complex dances. So on that note, I have a few more books worth reading:

Sync: How Order Emerges From Chaos In the Universe, Nature, and Daily Life, Emergence: From Chaos to Order, and Creation: Life and How to Make it

> I did and still do believe that an ordered universe that allows science to predict anything at all is evidence of a creator, even if it isn't the one I believe in. I've heard others claim that the universe is chaotic, but I don't agree.

The modern view, backed by evidence, is that order and chaos are not dichotomous as was traditionally believed, but rather they both emerge from each other.

Here are some good links with decent, well produced approaches to teaching this concept while providing concrete examples:

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xv1j0n

https://www.amazon.com/Sync-Order-Emerges-Universe-Nature/dp/0786887214

I'll also note that neither of the above even approach the question of whether 'a creator' exists, as it is outside of the scope of the presentation and, I think, irrelevant to the overall point. None of this demonstrates definitively that there is no creator. What it does demonstrate, I believe, is that if you are truly seeking fruitful paths to find evidence or arguments for the existence of a creator, order and chaos is not where you should be looking.

That area of the map has been explored, by hundreds of people undoubtedly more clever and observant than you or me, and we've found no gods there. Or, to use another metaphor, I don't think there's any more meat on that bone.

> the majority of mutations that appear good, come from a loss of info, so selection would promote loss of info in that case.

Now that's a bold claim which needs to be backed up thoroughly. As a general claim it is most likely wrong.

>Additionally, selection may "root out" the very bad mutations, but many of the deleterious mutations may not affect survivability at first and can still spread to the entire species.

If they won't affect fitness at first, they still might do so in an altered set of genes. But calling them bad before is wrong. They were neutral at worst, and of course they might spread through the enitre species as such. However if they actually are bad, they won't. They can't.

>In fact I've heard arguements that those spead faster than benefitial mutations simply because there are more of them.

Why would that be the case? This is again wrong.

Generally, you have to remember how genes and mutations spread, through reproduction. This means a gene that is disadvantageous will lead to less offspring, and over generations to a very very low rate within the population.

I give up for now, because it just feels like you don't really want to know. Sure you say you do, but I don't believe it.

In any case I highly recommend these standard biology textbooks, which have everything you could possibly want to know in them.

The campbell

Freeman&Herron