検索キーワード： 生物学

私たちはなぜ眠り、起きるのか？長い間、生物は「脳を休めるために眠る」と考えられてきた。それは本当なのだろうか。新発見！脳をもたない生物ヒドラも眠る――。

最初から、心なんてものは存在しない！？Q、悲しいから泣くのか、泣くから悲しいのか？日常生活を送っていると、「わたしであってわたしでない判断、行動をしている自分」を感じるときがあるかもしれません。

昆虫界を震撼させた伝説の名著、復刊。身近な自然を舞台に、奇怪な人間が奇怪な虫の謎を解く。異常なまでに虫を愛する姿から「裏山の奇人」と綽名される著者。長野の裏山で13年間、誰も気に留めないような小虫を観察・研究し、数々の新発見を成し遂げた。

★進化思考──それは、生物の進化のように二つのプロセス(変異と適応)を繰り返すことで、本来だれの中にもある創造性を発揮する思考法。

人気の「知識ゼロ」シリーズ第７弾! オールカラー＆イラスト図解で、知識ゼロから楽しく人体のしくみがわかります。

『土　地球最後のナゾ』で河合隼雄賞受賞を受賞した著者による、書下ろし最新作！〔前書きより〕「土とは何なのか？」「なぜ生命や土を作ることができないのか？」という本質的な問いをあいまいなままにしておくことはできない。

First published more than 50 years ago, this award-winning classic brings Rachel Carson's unique vision to a new generation of listeners. The Sense of Wonder is Carson's intimate account of adventures with her young nephew, Roger, as they enjoy walks along the rocky coast of Maine and through dense forests and open fields, observing wildlife, strange plants, moonlight, and storm clouds, and listening to the "living music" of insects in the underbrush.

Brought to you by Penguin. Nature wants to heal, and we can help. We know that when Earth's ecosystems fall out of harmony, the damage can spiral out of control. But what if we could help nature to regain its balance? As a leading ecologist, Professor Thomas Crowther studies not just how species...

Sea turtles are the ancient mariners of our planet. Long before human sailors braved the open seas, these gentle reptiles were already navigating the vast blue expanse with a precision that continues to astound scientists today. For more than 100 million years, sea turtles have survived continental shifts, ice ages, and mass extinctions. They are living fossils whose epic migrations link the distant past with our uncertain present, journeys written in sand, salt, and instinct.

人はまちがえる。それは、どんなにがんばっても、脳がまちがいを生み出すような情報処理を行っているから。

Challenging what you know and think about your own body and how it defends you against all sorts of maladies and how it might also eventually be your own downfall, Immune is a vital and remarkably fun crash course in what is arguably, and increasingly, the most important system in the body.

In the best-selling, prize-winning A Short History of Nearly Everything Bill Bryson achieved the seemingly impossible by making the science of our world both understandable and entertaining to millions of people around the globe. Now he turns his attention inwards to explore the human body, how it functions and its remarkable ability to heal itself. Full of extraordinary facts and astonishing stories, The Body: A Guide for Occupants is a brilliant, often very funny attempt to understand the miracle of our physical and neurological makeup.

Symbiosis, the sustained and intimate associations between unrelated life forms, is now recognized as a ubiquitous phenomenon, one that has shaped evolution since the origin of life and that continues to affect all species. This overview of symbiosis starts with a quick history of relevant early discoveries and researchers, and considers why symbiosis was so long neglected as a respectable topic of biological research and why it was a controversial topic. Today, symbiosis is widely appreciated as being everywhere in nature and as a pervasive influence on ecological communities.

Under the Sea Wind is a classic wilderness adventure to which all nature writing is compared. The hero of Under the Sea Wind is soon seen to be life itself, that quicksilver prize granted, for a brief time only, to the clever and the fortunate.

Look at the green organism across the room or through the window: the potted plant, or the grass, or a tree. Think how a life spent constantly growing yet rooted in a single spot comes with tremendous challenges. To meet them, plants have come up with some of the most creative methods for surviving of any living thing, us included. Many are so ingenious that they seem nearly impossible. There is no doubt that plants are important: plants, or their green precursors the blue-green algae and algae themselves, have produced all the oxygen in the Earth’s atmosphere, allowing animals to evolve.

Diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder at the age of eight, Dr Camilla Pang struggled to understand the world around her. Desperate for a solution, Camilla asked her mother if there was an instruction manual for humans that she could consult. But, without the blueprint to life she was hoping for, Camilla began to create her own. Now armed with a PhD in biochemistry, Camilla dismantles our obscure social customs and identifies what it really means to be human using her unique expertise and a language she knows best: science.

Like Solomon with his magic ring, famed Austrian ethologist Konrad Lorenz was a gifted student of the animal world. King Solomon's Ring, which brought him worldwide recognition, is a delightful collection of observations and insights into the lives of our furry and feathered friends, from our familiar furry companions to water shrews and jackdaws. A must listen for any animal lover.

Teeming with unsuspected life, an extraordinary, interconnected ecosystem deep below the waves has a huge effect on our daily lives, influencing climate and weather systems, with the potential for much more—good or bad, depending on how it is exploited. Currently, the fantastic creatures that live in the deep—many of them incandescent in a world without light—and its formations capture and trap vast quantities of carbon that would otherwise poison our atmosphere, and novel bacteria as yet undiscovered hold the promise of potent new medicines.

The Earth teems with life: in its oceans, forests, skies, and cities. Yet there's a black hole at the heart of biology. We do not know why complex life is the way it is, or, for that matter, how life first began. In The Vital Question, award-winning author and biochemist Nick Lane radically reframes evolutionary history, putting forward a solution to conundrums that have puzzled generations of scientists.

In this fascinating and thought-provoking book, author Nick Lane brings together the latest research findings in the exciting field of mitochondria research to reveal how our growing understanding of mitochondria is shedding light on how complex life evolved, why sex arose (why don't we just bud?), and why we age and die. This understanding is of fundamental importance, both in understanding how we and all other complex life came to be, but also in order to be able to control our own illnesses, and delay our degeneration and death.