By Philip Hoare
From his youth fascination with the large typical background Museum version of a blue whale to his grownup encounters with the residing animals within the Atlantic Ocean, the acclaimed author Philip Hoare has been passionate about whales. traveling via human and usual historical past, The Whale is the results of his voyage of discovery into the center of this obsession and the e-book that encouraged it: Herman Melville's Moby-Dick.
Taking us deep into their area, Hoare exhibits us those mysterious creatures as they've got by no means been noticeable prior to. Following in Ishmael's footsteps, he explores the afflicted background of guy and whale; visits the historical whaling locales of latest Bedford, Nantucket, and the Azores; and strains the whale's cultural heritage from Jonah to Free Willy. Winner of the celebrated BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction, The Whale is an unforgettable and sometimes relocating try to clarify why those unusual and gorgeous animals nonetheless exert this kind of strong carry on our mind's eye.
Read or Download The Whale: In Search of the Giants of the Sea PDF
Best nature books
A number one determine within the rising box of extinction experiences, Thom van Dooren places philosophy into dialog with the common sciences and his personal ethnographic encounters to vivify the cultural and moral value of modern day extinctions. not like different meditations at the topic, Flight methods contains the particularities of genuine animals and their worlds, drawing philosophers, normal scientists, and common readers into the event of dwelling between and wasting biodiversity.
Even though the time period "poaching" has now come to consult hunters and anglers who intentionally flout video game laws, famed outdoorsman John Watson makes use of those words in a broader, much less pejorative experience during this assortment, which brings jointly a chain of looking articles he released in a number of periodicals in the course of the process his profession.
The Big Marsh: The Story of a Lost Landscape
A rural group is modified without end whilst moneyed pursuits conspire to remodel a valuable wetland.
Information and the Nature of Reality
Many scientists regard mass and effort because the fundamental forex of nature. lately, notwithstanding, the concept that of data has received significance. Why? during this publication, eminent scientists, philosophers and theologians chart a variety of points of knowledge, from quantum info to organic and electronic details, that allows you to know the way nature works.
- On Extinction: How We Became Estranged from Nature
- Nature (Vol. 439, No. 7074, January 2006)
- Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness
- Chemistry Of Spices
- Flamingo
- Blue Meridian: The Search for the Great White Shark (Penguin Nature Classics)
Additional info for The Whale: In Search of the Giants of the Sea
Example text
DSB has also shown promise in treating certain kinds of depression. Neural prostheses Paralysis from spinal cord and brain injuries has been almost impossible to treat because the motor neurons that would activate the muscles were either all killed in the original injury or degenerate from lack of use afterward. A long-time rehabilitation dream has been to intercept brain signals commanding movements, relay them past the interruption, and drive muscles directly with electrical stimulation. Another type of neural prosthesis is for sensory replacement.
The major sensory inputs from the skin (touch, temperature, and pain receptors) relay through the thalamus to the gyrus just posterior to the central fissure, where a map of the skin exists. This map is distorted so that areas of the skin with high sensitivity, such as the face and fingertips, are disproportionately larger than areas with low sensitivity, such as the back. If this reminds you of something going on in the primary motor areas, just on the other side of the central sulcus, you’re right.
This area processes visual input that is sent to the brain from the retinas. The retinas project in an orderly, spatiotopic way onto the posterior pole of the occipital lobe, called V1 (for visual area one), so that activity in different areas of V1 is related to whatever is in the image around your current point of gaze. In other words, V1 is another map. The occipital lobe has many other visual maps derived from V1 (V2, V3, V4, and so on), all almost entirely devoted to processing vision. Other subareas beyond V1 specialize in visual tasks such as color detection, depth perception, and motion detection.