(Part 2) Best biological science books according to redditors

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We found 4,941 Reddit comments discussing the best biological science books. We ranked the 2,011 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the products ranked 21-40. You can also go back to the previous section.

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Subcategories:

Botany books
Zoology books
Biology books
Anatomy books
Bioinformatics books
Life science taxonomies books
Bioelectricity science books

Top Reddit comments about Biological Sciences:

u/16807 · 110 pointsr/space

Voyager is nuclear, so no

EDIT: oh fine

Solar power isn't practical for use in the outer solar system. This is why Voyager was designed to use nuclear power, which places a hard constraint on its life at the expense of being able to operate longer in a time span we can appreciate. There are other reasons, of course - it's not automated to my understanding, its antenna is doubtlessly far too small to operate at those distances, and the time it would require for us to send instructions may be too long for us to bother doing it, barring all other impossibilities.

That being said, I find it rather profound Voyager would last long enough that it is possible to visit a star system, if only out of sheer probability. This book talks about it a bit, it's not my thought. It's an interstellar vacuum - there is nothing stopping this thing from enduring for millions or even billions of years. The pyramids will be buried, Mt. Rushmore will erode, continents will subduct our last earthly remnants, and random collisions may destroy our interplanetary artifacts. The sun itself will explode, possibly destroying the earth with it. All while this is going on, Voyager is just minding its own business. It (beside other interstellar probes) would be the longest lasting human artifact of all time.

u/Esmerelda-Weatherwax · 52 pointsr/Fantasy

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)

u/monkeyjay · 38 pointsr/science

It's never all or nothing! Check out Climbing Mount Improbable for an in-depth look at how these sorts of interconnected adaptations could come about through natural selection.

u/AllEternals · 30 pointsr/femalefashionadvice

If you haven’t already bought the bird book I would suggest another. The Audubon ones aren’t well laid out for beginners. I would suggest Sibley or Stokes instead. I’m a bird biologist and I love teaching beginning birders, and these two guides are the easiest.

u/weirds3xstuff · 28 pointsr/DebateReligion

I. Sure, some forms of theism are coherent (Christianity is not one of those forms, for what it's worth; the Problem of Natural Evil and Euthyphro's Dilemma being a couple of big problems), but not all coherent ideas are true representations of the world; any introductory course in logic will demonstrate that.

II. The cosmological argument is a deductive argument. Deductive arguments are only as strong as their premises. The premises of the cosmological argument are not known to be true. Therefore, the cosmological argument should not be considered true. If you think you know a specific formulation of the cosmological argument that has true premises, please present it. I'm fully confident I can explain how we know such premises are not true.

III. There is no doubt that the teleological argument has strong persuasive force, but that's a very different thing than "being real evidence" or "something that should have strong persuasive force." I explain apparent cosmological fine-tuning as an entirely anthropic effect: if the constants were different, we wouldn't be here to observe them, therefore we observe them as they are.

IV. This statement is just false on its face. Lawrence Krauss has a whole book about the potential ex nihilo mechanisms (plural!) for the creation of the universe that are entirely consistent with the known laws of physics. (Note that the idea of God is not consistent with the known laws of physics, since he, by definition, supersedes them.)

V. This is just a worse version of argument III. Naturalistic evolution has far, far more explanatory power than theism. To name my favorite examples: the human blind spot is inexplicable from the standpoint of top-down design, but it makes perfect sense in the context of evolution; likewise, the path of the mammalian nerves for the tongue traveling below the heart makes no sense from the standpoint of top-down design, but it makes perfect sense in the context of evolution. Evolution routinely makes predictions that are tested to be true, whether it means predicting where fossils with specific characteristics will be found or how fruit fly mating behavior changes after populations have been separated and exposed to different environments for 30+ generations. It's worth emphasizing that it is totally normal to look at the complexity of the world and assume that it must have a designer...but it's also totally normal to think that electrons aren't waves. Intuition isn't a reliable way to discern truth. We must not be seduced by comfortable patterns of thought. We must think more carefully. When we think more carefully, it turns out that evolution is true and evolution requires no god.

VI. There are two points here: 1) the universe follows rules, and 2) humans can understand those rules. Point (1) is easily answered with the anthropic argument: rules are required for complex organization, humans are an example of complex organization, therefore humans can only exist in a physical reality that is governed by rules. Point (2) might not even be true. Wigner's argument is fun and interesting, but it's actually wrong! Mathematics are not able to describe the fundamental behavior of the physical world. As far as we know, Quantum Field Theory is the best possible representation of the fundamental physical world, and it is known to be an approximation, because, mathematically, it leads to an infinite regress. For a more concrete example, there is no analytic solution for the orbital path of the earth around the sun! (This is because it is subject to the gravitational attraction of more than one other object; its solution is calculated numerically, i.e. by sophisticated guess-and-check.)

VII. This is just baldly false. I recommend Dan Dennett's "Consciousness Explained" and Stanislas Dehaene's "Consciousness and the Brain" for a coherent model of a materialist mind and a wealth of evidence in support of the materialist mind.

VIII. First of all, the idea that morality comes from god runs into the Problem of Natural Evil and Euthyphro's Dilemma pretty hard. And the convergence of all cultures to universal ideas of right and wrong (murder is bad, stealing is bad, etc.) are rather easily explained by anthropology and evolutionary psychology. Anthropology and evolutionary psychology also predict that there would be cultural divergence on more subtle moral questions (like the Trolley Problem, for example)...and there is! I think that makes those theories better explanations for moral sentiments than theism.

IX. I'm a secular Buddhist. Through meditation, I transcend the mundane even though I deny the existence of any deity. Also, given the diversity of religious experience, it's insane to suggest that religious experience argues for the existence of the God of Catholicism.

X. Oh, boy. I'm trying to think of the best way to persuade you of all the problems with your argument, here. So, here's an exercise for you: take the argument you have written in the linked posts and reformat them into a sequence of syllogisms. Having done that, highlight each premise that is not a conclusion of a previous syllogism. Notice the large number of highlighted premises and ask yourself for each, "What is the proof for this premise?" I am confident that you will find the answer is almost always, "There is no proof for this premise."

XI. "...three days after his death, and against every predisposition to the contrary, individuals and groups had experiences that completely convinced them that they had met a physically resurrected Jesus." There is literally no evidence for this at all (keeping in mind that Christian sacred texts are not evidence for the same reason that Hindu sacred texts are not evidence). Hell, Richard Carrier's "On the Historicity of Christ" even has a strong argument that Jesus didn't exist! (I don't agree with the conclusion of the argument, though I found his methods and the evidence he gathered along the way to be worthy of consideration.)

-----

I don't think that I can dissuade you of your belief. But, I do hope to explain to you why, even if you find your arguments intuitively appealing, they do not conclusively demonstrate that your belief is true.

u/anastas · 22 pointsr/askscience

My main hobby is reading textbooks, so I decided to go beyond the scope of the question posed. I took a look at what I have on my shelves in order to recommend particularly good or standard books that I think could characterize large portions of an undergraduate degree and perhaps the beginnings of a graduate degree in the main fields that interest me, plus some personal favorites.

Neuroscience: Theoretical Neuroscience is a good book for the field of that name, though it does require background knowledge in neuroscience (for which, as others mentioned, Kandel's text is excellent, not to mention that it alone can cover the majority of an undergraduate degree in neuroscience if corequisite classes such as biology and chemistry are momentarily ignored) and in differential equations. Neurobiology of Learning and Memory and Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuropsychology were used in my classes on cognition and learning/memory and I enjoyed both; though they tend to choose breadth over depth, all references are research papers and thus one can easily choose to go more in depth in any relevant topics by consulting these books' bibliographies.

General chemistry, organic chemistry/synthesis: I liked Linus Pauling's General Chemistry more than whatever my school gave us for general chemistry. I liked this undergraduate organic chemistry book, though I should say that I have little exposure to other organic chemistry books, and I found Protective Groups in Organic Synthesis to be very informative and useful. Unfortunately, I didn't have time to take instrumental/analytical/inorganic/physical chemistry and so have no idea what to recommend there.

Biochemistry: Lehninger is the standard text, though it's rather expensive. I have limited exposure here.

Mathematics: When I was younger (i.e. before having learned calculus), I found the four-volume The World of Mathematics great for introducing me to a lot of new concepts and branches of mathematics and for inspiring interest; I would strongly recommend this collection to anyone interested in mathematics and especially to people considering choosing to major in math as an undergrad. I found the trio of Spivak's Calculus (which Amazon says is now unfortunately out of print), Stewart's Calculus (standard text), and Kline's Calculus: An Intuitive and Physical Approach to be a good combination of rigor, practical application, and physical intuition, respectively, for calculus. My school used Marsden and Hoffman's Elementary Classical Analysis for introductory analysis (which is the field that develops and proves the calculus taught in high school), but I liked Rudin's Principles of Mathematical Analysis (nicknamed "Baby Rudin") better. I haven't worked my way though Munkres' Topology yet, but it's great so far and is often recommended as a standard beginning toplogy text. I haven't found books on differential equations or on linear algebra that I've really liked. I randomly came across Quine's Set Theory and its Logic, which I thought was an excellent introduction to set theory. Russell and Whitehead's Principia Mathematica is a very famous text, but I haven't gotten hold of a copy yet. Lang's Algebra is an excellent abstract algebra textbook, though it's rather sophisticated and I've gotten through only a small portion of it as I don't plan on getting a PhD in that subject.

Computer Science: For artificial intelligence and related areas, Russell and Norvig's Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach's text is a standard and good text, and I also liked Introduction to Information Retrieval (which is available online by chapter and entirely). For processor design, I found Computer Organization and Design to be a good introduction. I don't have any recommendations for specific programming languages as I find self-teaching to be most important there, nor do I know of any data structures books that I found to be memorable (not that I've really looked, given the wealth of information online). Knuth's The Art of Computer Programming is considered to be a gold standard text for algorithms, but I haven't secured a copy yet.

Physics: For basic undergraduate physics (mechanics, e&m, and a smattering of other subjects), I liked Fundamentals of Physics. I liked Rindler's Essential Relativity and Messiah's Quantum Mechanics much better than whatever books my school used. I appreciated the exposition and style of Rindler's text. I understand that some of the later chapters of Messiah's text are now obsolete, but the rest of the book is good enough for you to not need to reference many other books. I have little exposure to books on other areas of physics and am sure that there are many others in this subreddit that can give excellent recommendations.

Other: I liked Early Theories of the Universe to be good light historical reading. I also think that everyone should read Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.

u/BrowniePancake · 20 pointsr/Entomology

>What am I allowed to collect?


For the most part the vast majority of what you collect will not be treated or listed and you are totally allowed to collect them. Collections normally consist mostly of adult insects and since most insects have short lives so you are likely killing them after they have already reproduced and are near death anyways. It is all worth noting that insect population are also so large that when you are only take a small number for a collection you are not affecting the species very much at all. That being said there are only a few insects that are listed as endangered and you should avoid collecting. I assume you live in the US so you can look up endangered species here.


>Can I collect at a state park?


State parks are normally not ok to collect in but it depends where you are. A good rule of thumb is to collect on private property (your own or with permission), Bureau of Land Management land, and National Forests (not National Parks) link for more info and exceptions.


>Where's the best place to learn about preserving and mounting?


Short videos (scroll to the bottom of page for videos)
text
bugguide
more info on traps and advanced methods

I didn't notice this mentioned on the links but make sure to keep some sort of poison inside of the box you stope insects in. If you do not carpet beetles (dermestids) will eat your collection. My favorite method is to crush up a mothball (made with para-Dichlorobenzene not naphthalene) and sprinkle it in the box replacing when scent is gone. Also if you live someplace with high humidity consider putting in desiccant packs to keep things dry and help prevent mold.


>How's, uh, the odor of a mounting workbench?


I work on my collection in my bedroom and the smell is fine. Some big beetles can stink as they dry (insides rotting) and if you pin a stink bug or darkling beetle you will smell them but it isn't bad enough to warrant putting them in the garage and most things will have no smell at all. I would also encourage you not to store insects in the garage since it is best for pinned insects to stay dry and garages can be moist. The things that do smell, however, will be poison (ethyl acetate, acetone, and PDB) so store those in your garage.


>apparently a good starter's kit is ~120$


If you want to spend that much that's fine but you can really start a lot cheaper. You can start with only a few dollars by collecting things in jars then putting them in the freezer to die. I suggest that you buy directly from BioQuip, pretty much the only entomology supply company. I think this starter kit would be perfect for your needs and only costs $40. I believe you were looking at this which is nice and if you are wanting nicer quality things it works, I personally liked starting with the basic kit then upgrading piece by piece once I knew what I liked and wanted.

Identifying:

When IDing here are some good resources

  • bugguide.net

  • Peterson Guide for common families

  • the ultimate intro to entomology is Borrer and DeLong it has a lot of issues and some of the keys leave a lot to be desired but with it you can key out any North American insect or arachnid to family as well as get familiar with entomological terms and anatomy. The downside its it ranges from $200-$500

    If you can't ID something try:

  • /r/whatsthisbug
  • contact your local entomology museum or department
  • if you don't have a local one you can reach UC Davis' at [email protected] just attach a photo
  • or PM me :)

    Happy collecting!



u/TinyLongwing · 12 pointsr/whatsthisbird

Asking about ID guides on an ID subreddit seems valid to me!

I'm personally a big fan of the Sibley guides. I think the illustrations provide a lot of detail and clarity and really highlight field marks well. For your area, the Eastern guide is probably what you want, though if you travel frequently or just want a more complete book, there's also a version that covers all of North America.

I also want to mention Merlin, which is a free app from Cornell. It's comprehensive, really good at helping ID unknown birds, provides lists of birds most likely for your location and the time of year, and includes songs as well. It's fantastic and the sort of thing you'd normally expect to pay a good bit of money for.

u/Grolion_of_Almery · 11 pointsr/Biochemistry

Power Sex Suicide: Mitochondria and the meaning of life by Nick Lane is a good pick. It isn't entirely biochemistry, but does delve into the electron transport chain and metabolism. It is also packed with interesting stuff.

u/jpgray · 11 pointsr/science

Time-to-division isn't really the driver of genetic change in bacteria really. In bacteria it's more the case that individual bacteria are able to actively share DNA plasmid with one another which allows gene transfer and propagation to occurr at a phenomenally higher rate than in eukaryotes (it's also, funnily enough, a major reason why it's impossible for bacteria to evolve into multi-cellular organisms). Rapid adaptation in bacteria is mostly due to this gene transfer capability, and not due to somatic mutations (the primary driver of genetic drift in eukaryotes). See Part 3 of Power, Sex, Suicide: Mitochondria and the Meaning of Life by Nich Lane for a more in depth explanation.

Virus do not share DNA or RNA like bacteria, and arguably not living organisms as they are not capable of reproducing their own genetic material (viruses infect host cells and manipulate the cellular machinery of their target to replicate their genetic material).

u/schokn · 10 pointsr/programming

> statistics was the real killer.

Maybe it's because statistics is usually presented as a bunch of recipes with no unifying principles.

Try "Data Analysis: A Bayesian Tutorial" by Sivia:

http://www.amazon.com/Data-Analysis-Bayesian-Devinderjit-Sivia/dp/0198568320

Learning statistics without Bayes' theorem is like trying to learn mechanics without Newton's laws.

u/5heikki · 10 pointsr/bioinformatics

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

u/markth_wi · 10 pointsr/booksuggestions

I can think of a few

u/salamander_salad · 10 pointsr/biology

The Song of the Dodo

Great book. Easy read.

u/annoyingbeggar · 9 pointsr/AskAcademia

Give yourself time and find out what interests you. In high school and as an undergraduate you will have plenty of time to explore different options to see what fits you best and in the meantime read some popular science books on climate change to get an idea of what kind of research is being done, what is already known, and a feel for the general direction of the fields. Unless you are a prodigy, you're going to have around 6 years before you are able to even scratch the surface on research and a lot will change in that time. I'll post back in a bit with some book recommendations if you'd like.

Books
The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert
Field Notes from a Catastrophe by Elizabeth Kolbert
Climate Change: A Very Short Introduction by Mark Maslin

And as weird a suggestion as this may seem, one of the best lay books on some of the social aspects of climate change is probably Laudito Si by Pope Francis. Take or leave the religious aspects but his analysis of the social impacts is a good general summary of where most social scientists who study climate change stand.

u/maaarshall · 9 pointsr/Entomology

As far as I know, Borror & Delong's Introduction to the Study of Insects is the go-to ordinal key.
You'll need to seek out other resources to narrow it down further, though. There's a lot of bugs out there and they all look alike. Stephen Marshall's Insects is also an excellent one to have lying around. It's full of photos and that's a quick-n-dirty way to help you narrow your ID down (I'd advise against relying on its arachnids section, however).

u/skrenename4147 · 9 pointsr/GradSchool

CLRS for algorithms/CS.

Probability and random processes for statistics.

Biological Sequence Analysis by Richard Durbin for my subfield of bioinformatics.

u/Slotos · 8 pointsr/compsci

There is a book that argues almost exactly that - Consciousness and the brain

u/MsRenee · 8 pointsr/birdpics

Usually it happens when a few animals end up on an island with no predators. Flight takes a lot of energy and if nothing's chasing you, mutations that reduce your flight ability will not be selected against, especially if the reduction in flight ability also increases something useful, like fat reserves. If you're interested in the topic, read The Song of the Dodo. You can get it off Abebooks.com for a couple bucks or your library probably has it. It's a thick book, but pretty easy reading.

u/gofkyourselfthendie · 7 pointsr/antinatalism

Top is "The Sixth Extinction".

The fattest one in middle is Countdown.

u/Nantosuelta · 6 pointsr/Ornithology

I think the best way to learn about birds is to actually watch them, so I'd recommend finding your nearest nature sanctuary to see if they have birdwatching walks/classes. If you're in North America, the Audubon Society is a great organization that runs bird sanctuaries and teaches people about birds. There are similar organizations in other regions - you'll just need to do a little online searching. There are also loads of books to help you get started, like this one.

You can also learn a lot about birds online. Cornell University provides online ornithology courses, but they also provide tons of free info about North American birds and their nests, global bird sightings, and more.

I started learning about birds by reading books, and there are plenty of great options. Visit your local library to see what they have. Books cover everything from identification to intelligence to falconry.

What kinds of birds are you particularly interested in? Is there any aspect of birds that you find most fascinating, like anatomy, flight, song, color...?

u/hearforthepuns · 6 pointsr/science

The World Without Us may interest you.

u/Raargh · 6 pointsr/Rabbits

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.

u/okrahtime · 6 pointsr/evolution

There are two books that I think would be good:

What Evolution Is

Why Evolution Is True

I liked both books. I am not sure how readable they are without a decent understanding of basic biology. Can you tell us how much background you have in biology? That may help with suggestions.

u/kmack360 · 5 pointsr/GradSchool

I recommend "Data Analysis: A Bayesian Tutorial". It's pretty short and easy to read and has examples and pseudocode for many of the discussed methods. Use whatever programming language you're most comfortable with (MATLAB does have nice built in functions for dealing with large matrices). Depending on the amount of data, I'd avoid excel and just load ASCII data files from your code if possible.

u/KarnickelEater · 5 pointsr/funny

mitochondria come close - maybe Lucas had just read something about them when he invented that name? The importance of mitochondria cannot be overstated, just saying they are the cell's "powerplant" is a huge understatement. They have their own DNA. Part of it, another part migrated to the cell nucleus, but in order to regulate their function quickly and independent from other mitochondria - a cell's nucleus could only regulate them from "remote" and all of them at once they kept their own.

Also: Mitochondrial DNA only passes down the maternal line! So men contribute less than have the genes. Read this book and your life will never be the same, unless you studied biology or something in which case I don't know why you read my comment all the way to the end...

u/xingdongrobotics · 5 pointsr/MachineLearning

For computational neuroscience, it is highly recommended for the classic textbook, Theoretical neuroscience by Peter Dayan and Larry Abbott

u/MagicArtist · 5 pointsr/pics

Here's an article speculating about what might happen if all of humanity suddenly disappeared. It's a little old now and it focuses mainly on New York City, but it's still a pretty interesting read.

Edit: After doing a little more digging, it turns out the guy who wrote that article (Alan Weisman) also wrote a book (The World Without Us) on the same subject.

A Duet of Edits: Someone else mentioned Life After People above, but I turned up another documentary called AFTERMATH : Population Zero that's supposed to be similar in nature. It's a 90 minute video, so you may want to pass on starting it if you don't have a nice block of time.

u/jeffAA · 5 pointsr/AskReddit

Here's a good read on the subject.

The World Without Us
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0312347294/ref=redir_mdp_mobile/191-5865283-2629253

u/niemasd · 5 pointsr/bioinformatics

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!
u/xcthulhu · 5 pointsr/math

Given your background, you could read Ken Binmore's Game Theory: A Very Short Introduction (2007). It's really short, but it assumes the reader is familiar with probability theory and a fair amount of mathematics. Binmore has another textbook Playing for Real (2007) which is goes much more in depth. It assumes the reader is familiar with linear algebra.

One of the central results of von Neumann and Morgenstern's Theory of Games and Economic Behavior (1928) is the minimax theorem. This was John von Neumann's favorite theorem from that book. John Nash generalized this in his PhD thesis in 1950. The minimax theorem establishes the existence of Nash equilibrium for zero-sum games with finite players and strategies. Nash's extended this and showed that any normal form game with finite players and strategies has an equilibrium. You might have seen the movie A Beautiful Mind which depicted John Nash working on this. If you are interested, you can read about Nash's proof in Luce and Raiffa's Games and Decisions: Introduction and Critical Survey (1957). The proof does assumes the reader is familiar with point set topology.

Outside of economics, game theory is also applied to evolutionary biology. One of the best books on evolutionary game theory is Martin Nowak's Evolutionary Dynamics: Exploring the Equations of Life (2006). You might also like John Maynard Smith's Evolution and the Theory of Games (1982). Maynard Smith assumes the reader is familiar with homogenous differential equations.

Hope this helps!

u/letdogsvote · 5 pointsr/Seattle

If you want something that will actually be thorough and help you out, this one right here is what you want. It's a serious reference with a ton of great information and not a pretty little coffee table book about wild berries.

u/Gffcom · 5 pointsr/climate

No. We are in the middle of a mass extinction. Endless species have become endangered or extinct in the last hundred years. I realize what the article says, my critique of the article is that it’s happening now. The author posits present reality as a possible future.

u/illythid15 · 4 pointsr/Bushcraft

I've read some books on medicinal plants, native herbology, and ethnobotany in the Pacific Northwest. There are references to a smoking mixture sometimes called kinnikinnik - but sometimes kinnikinnik refers to the bearberry plant.

A few books - (Amazon links):
Plants of the Pacific Northwest


Ethnobotany of Western Washington


Indian Herbology of North America


Some sources indicate the inner bark of the red dogwood tree is mixed with bearberry leaves - dried and crushed for smoking, smudging and ritual use. I have seen mullein and even devil's club mentioned in some references after a brief search.


I haven't looked specifically into smoking herbs or mixtures, but these are the books I'd start with.

u/epicmoe · 4 pointsr/microgrowery

this is the correct answer.

along with Robert C Clarkes book, that you already have, are the two most important books in cannabis.

​

Jeff Lowenfels also has "Teaming with Nutrients" and "Teaming with Fungi"

Robert c Clarke also has Marijuana Botany: An Advanced Study: The Propagation and Breeding of Distinctive Cannabis .

u/William_Harzia · 4 pointsr/preppers

Not useful at all. Identifying edibles and discerning them from indigestible or toxic plants requires a much more detailed plant guide. For my region I like this one

u/alexybeetle · 4 pointsr/Bayes

It's aimed at physicists, but [Sivia's book] (http://www.amazon.com/Data-Analysis-Bayesian-Devinderjit-Sivia/dp/0198568320) is extremely good.

Otherwise as actual papers http://bayes.wustl.edu/sivia/how.many.lines.pdf or (ahem) something of my own.

u/someawesomeusername · 4 pointsr/datascience

You do need statistics, but if you have a physics degree, you should be able to pick up the necessary statistics fairly quickly. I would recommend going through introductory statistics homework assignments to learn the very basics.

I'd also heavily recommend learning Bayesian statistics and understanding where the loss functions actually come from (ie why do we minimize the sum of squared errors in linear regression). The best book on introductory Bayesian statistics I've read was Data Analysis: A Bayesian tutorial.

u/drink_your_tea · 4 pointsr/birding

The new Sibley guide is my favorite, hands-down.

Some also like the Nat Geo guide (6th edition) - great range maps, broken down by subspecies where relevant! - but the artwork is less consistently good, in my opinion.

Sibley's illustrations are clean, easy to navigate, intelligently laid out for maximum ease of comparison, and (frankly) beautiful. The second edition (=new) also has added life history information for many species.

I own both, but whenever prompted to recommend only one, it will always be Sibley. The first edition played a huge role in me getting into birding. :)

Happy birding!

^(edit: fixed grammatical error)

u/JustZisGuy · 4 pointsr/ainbow

http://www.amazon.com/Biological-Exuberance-Homosexuality-Natural-Diversity/dp/0312192398/

Many, many animals engage in behavior that is divergent from "standard" heterosexual interactions.

u/lectrick · 4 pointsr/IAmA

I suppose we better start "conversion therapy" on the entire animal kingdom (768 pages of unnatural goodness).

Humans are pretty fucking dumb when it comes to shit they don't understand. More often than not they will simply try to kill it. Religion simply tends to reinforce this idiocy.

u/godlyfrog · 4 pointsr/Christianity

Yeah... thankfully, no one has done any studies on the subject since then.

Either way, Desmond Morris was a zoo director observing animals in captivity who then drew parallels to human social constructs. He was not observing animals in the wild, and his statement should be taken as someone reflecting the common belief at the time, not as an expert with hard data to back him up.

u/jottermeow · 4 pointsr/bioinformatics

Oh right. I slightly misunderstood what you were looking for.

This may or may not be helpful but here's another recommendation:

https://www.amazon.com/Biological-Sequence-Analysis-Probabilistic-Proteins/dp/0521629713

While this book is pretty old and does not cover newer technologies and algorithms, I found it extremely helpful in understanding biological principles related to genetics and molecular evolution.

In this genomics era, we know so much more than just genetics now of course. But I mostly learned about genomics by reading tons of review papers, not a textbook. Once you study a bit on basic biology, I think reading review papers is the way to go if you want to delve into a more specific topic.

u/nathan_w · 4 pointsr/biology

Song of the Dodo a book about island biogeography. Once you can understand that... you know whats up.

u/parapants · 3 pointsr/Entomology

The go to text for most entomology intro courses. It has a key to the orders, and in the chapter on each order, a key to the families of that order.

u/Priapulid · 3 pointsr/Entomology

Borror, Delong, Triplehornes Intro to the Study of Insects is the standard text for systematic entomology classes... it is not a "guide book" but a series of keys. It will get you to the family level, but you need to be comfortable with keys.

Edit: if you want specific guides to certain orders or families... you're best bet is searching google for posted keys (usually region specific) or searching academic sources for keys.

u/timshoaf · 3 pointsr/statistics

Frequentist statistics does use Bayes' theorem, all of the measure theoretic results are identical between the philosophies. It is the inclusion of a priori knowledge (or information attempting to express a lack thereof) that demarcates the primary modeling differences.

If you would like a solid background in bayesian statistics I would recommend BDA3 by Andrew Gelman and Machine Learning: A Probabilistic Perspective by Kevin Murphy

One can of course not forget Hastie et al.'s Elements of Statistical Learning as well.

If you would like a general introduction, however, I would recommend the following text by Sivia.

Probability theory itself is consistently axiomatized under the Komolgorov axioms. But the philosophy regarding how to perform inference is not.

There is not an obvious inconsistency in the mathematical formulations, but there are inconsistencies with how each of the philosophies treats various issues.

A brief overview of differences is here:
http://www.stat.ufl.edu/archived/casella/Talks/BayesRefresher.pdf

In short though, there is nothing mathematically wrong with the Frequentist approach--but I would personally argue there are things that are philosophically wrong with certain applications of those methods--not the least of which are issues where generating processes are non-stationary (though similar issues can be stated for Bayesians) or where simply the formulation tends to lead practitioners to drawing mistaken conclusions by mistake. You can make a Rube Goldberg machine of computation and still have it preserve all information and be mathematically consistent, but the likelihood of humans misinterpreting it is much higher than a simpler framework.

u/dadadada · 3 pointsr/science

If you're interested in mitochondria, maybe you would like this book. I found it a bit hard to read, but I also don't have any background in biology.

u/inquilinekea · 3 pointsr/neuroscience

Theoretical neuroscience. Check out this textbook: http://www.amazon.com/Theoretical-Neuroscience-Computational-Mathematical-Modeling/dp/0262541858

You should also look into the Redwood Center for Theoretical Neuroscience (at Berkeley) and at http://www.cns.nyu.edu/wanglab/ if you have the chance.

u/kevroy314 · 3 pointsr/compmathneuro

Depends on the level at which you are looking. Cellular stuff? Signal processing and calculus. Population dynamics? Linear algebra and calculus. Brain regions/networks/whole brain? Graph theory and linear algebra.

And for all of them, statistics will be the tool to understand what's happening within the mathematical formulations.

On side note: if you're looking at the level of behavior, many other discrete methods become much more important in my opinion. However, it is fairly uncommon for people to use a behavioral approach these days without linking it to some other measurement one of the levels I mentioned before.

See From Neuron to Cognition, Fundamentals of Computational Neuroscience, and Theoretical Neuroscience for some foundational understanding.

u/Double-Down · 3 pointsr/neuro

Information theory and neural coding - Borst A, Theunissen FE (1999)

Abstract:

> Information theory quantifies how much information a neural response carries about the stimulus. This can be compared to the information transferred in particular models of the stimulus−response function and to maximum possible information transfer. Such comparisons are crucial because they validate assumptions present in any neurophysiological analysis. Here we review information-theory basics before demonstrating its use in neural coding. We show how to use information theory to validate simple stimulus−response models of neural coding of dynamic stimuli. Because these models require specification of spike timing precision, they can reveal which time scales contain information in neural coding. This approach shows that dynamic stimuli can be encoded efficiently by single neurons and that each spike contributes to information transmission. We argue, however, that the data obtained so far do not suggest a temporal code, in which the placement of spikes relative to each other yields additional information.

See also: Theoretical Neuroscience, Ch.4 - Dayan P, Abbott F (2005)

u/JackTheStripper420 · 3 pointsr/birding

I would always reccommend an actual field guide over an app, they are just more useful, but apps can be a good complement. For field guides, Sibley just came out with his new guide, which is probably the best one you can get.

You could also try National Geographic or Peterson's Guides, they are good. Kaufman has a really good guide that is geared more towards beginners, but has as much info as a full-sized guide.

As for Apps, there is Sibley, National Geographic, Peterson's, and iBird PRO, all of which are decent and have bird songs on them, which is probably the best feature. Its mostly personal preference between these.

u/coltocol · 3 pointsr/Ohio

I got this book last year and it’s absolutely phenomenal. It shows both female and male colors, breeding and non-breeding seasons, as well as flight patterns for that bird and maps during the different seasons as well.

u/tellme_areyoufree · 3 pointsr/lgbt

http://www.amazon.com/Biological-Exuberance-Homosexuality-Natural-Diversity/dp/0312192398

Although I can find no source definitely documenting "homophobia" in humans alone (which would be difficult as -phobia indicates emotion/feeling, and we can't really evaluate the emotions and feelings of non-speaking animals)

u/drewinseries · 3 pointsr/bioinformatics

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

u/tikael · 3 pointsr/atheism

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.

u/MJtheProphet · 3 pointsr/atheism

If he's already familiar with atheism, and with evolution, but seems stuck on the issue of probability, I'd suggest referring him to Richard Dawkins' Climbing Mount Improbable. It is, of course, written for a popular audience rather than a purely scientific one, but I think it should get the point across.

u/simchaleigh · 3 pointsr/atheism

Evolution in no way suggests that "humans came from monkeys." That is a common and unfortunate misconception. Though the trail of human development is quite complicated, basically we share a common ancestor with primates (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_evolution for a good basic overview; for a more in-depth exploration, this book (http://www.amazon.com/What-Evolution-Ernst-Mayr/dp/0465044263/ref=cm_lmf_tit_2) is a really good read).

u/Felisitea · 3 pointsr/exchristian

I'd recommend "What Evolution Is" by Ernst Mayer- non-confrontational, detailed description of evolution. (Evolution was a big factor in my deconversion, personally, as my branch of christianity was super anti-evolution.) https://www.amazon.com/What-Evolution-Science-Masters-Ernst/dp/0465044263

u/PoulMadsen · 3 pointsr/MachineLearning

I don't work in genomics specically but we do a lot of next generation sequencing. I am a biologist with interests in machine learning so let me try to summarize where people in biology use it:

Microarrays: Cancer research in particular uses this, but basically every biology discipline has some applications of this. Basically what you get is thousand of signal intensities, each represeinting expression of a gene, per sample, and what you are interested in is finding genes that behave differently from sample to sample. This is an example of a high-dimensionality problem, where the number of features is much larger than the number of samples. If you want some idea of how much work has been done in this area take a look at this (list)[http://www.geneontology.org/GO.tools.microarray.shtml]. You can more or less find all kinds of statistical methods here. As a biologist i should probably mention that i believe micro-arrays have problems with reproducibility that no amount of data-analysis will solve.

Gene prediction: This is a typical genomics problem in which we are given a long DNA sequence and told to identify the genes in it. Genes have some telltale signs, but these can be located with slight differences to each other and might be completely absent. Also, genes in eukaryotes are interrupted by socalled introns that do not code for genes (this story is a lot longer in reality). Poisson statistics on dna words (k long subsequences of dna) is the classical way of finding overrepresented dna features. Newer techniques uses HMMs and conditional random fields, as machine learning oriented as it gets. (This)[http://www.amazon.com/Biological-Sequence-Analysis-Probabilistic-Proteins/dp/0521629713] is a modern classic in all things sequence related.

Phylogeny: This is another of bioinformatics major contributions to modern science. Given some model of how evolution changes the composition of a sequence, we are interested in figuring out how organisms/proteins/genes can be related and building trees that can show us these relation.

Next generation sequencing: We can now generate much more data than we can process, we need some way of filtering as the machines can be inaccurate. We also need methods to cluster sequences within specific thresholds.

Sequence searching: This is a major topic. The most cited paper in the history of science is the one that announced BLAST. Machine learning is not as used here yet, but it probably will be if something faster than the traditional alignment algorithms come up.

This was just a short and incomplete overview, if you have specific questions i would be happy to answer.

u/mutationalMeltdown · 3 pointsr/bioinformatics

If you want to browse widely used genomic/bioinformatic resources then look at NCBI, Ensembl, and UCSC.

If you want to try some bioinformatics problems, then see Rosalind.

If you want to learn biology, then buy textbooks on genetics/molecular biology. There are many, I recommend [this] (https://www.amazon.com/Human-Evolutionary-Genetics-Origins-Peoples/dp/0815341857) for human evolution.

If you want to learn about methods and sequence analysis, then [Biological Sequence Analysis] (https://www.amazon.com/Biological-Sequence-Analysis-Probabilistic-Proteins/dp/0521629713) is excellent.

If you want to explore widely used bioinformatics tools, then start with BLAST if you don't know it already.

u/yvesjmt · 3 pointsr/philosophy

We're not that far from understanding consciousness either. It appears to be simple, conceptually: see the global workbench theory. Consciousness is a process that receives input from other modules and generates its own output (decisions), except it's a serial thing. It processes one thing at a time and has access to of its own recent previous states.

Great book about the subject:
https://www.amazon.com/Consciousness-Brain-Deciphering-Codes-Thoughts/dp/0670025437

(Inaccuracies in the text above are probably my poor interpretation, not the book's fault)

u/Lilyo · 3 pointsr/RationalPsychonaut

Just wanted to clear something up here, but Hameroff's theory on microtubules is baseless of actual facts and the connection he is making between quantum mechanics (or whatever he interprets it as) and the AC measurements (the vibrations he's talking about) is purely pseudo-science and not grounded on any actual experiments or data, and it also ignores previous criticisms regarding quantum decoherence occurring much too fast to effect nerve impulses. The Orch OR model of "quantum mind" is disregarded by any serious neuroscientists and physicist today, and there's many papers outlining it's many flaws.

>And in the case of those that believe that the brain makes consciousness, we don't have any empirical evidence to substantiate their belief. So it's still just a belief at present, but a very dogmatic one.. which is tantamount to religious conviction.

Where are you coming from with this? The entire field of biology and neurology is based around the fact that consciousness emerges in the brain. If you take a rock you won't find its consciousness because there is no biological space to store the data of any sensory interaction, nor any nervous system to have such sensory input. A rock is just a bunch of minerals/ mineraloid particles, and there's nothing more to "being a rock" than its immediate physical chemical bonds. On the other hand, consciousness can be observed in a myriad of organisms with a biological brain to store the data in and be able to interact with. Just to clear this up, the entirety of neurological evidence suggest that consciousness arises in the brain, as defined by neural correlates throughout hundreds of studies and experiments (Dehaene has a great book on this).

> It's quite clear that whatever consciousness is, it's not purely physical. Consider, do your thoughts and emotions possess physical attributes (mass, velocity, weight, shape, color, etc)? No.

This is simply wrong and a ridiculous claim. Your thoughts and emotions DO have physical attributes as they are physically constituted of neurons which are physical electrically excitable cells interacting across further physical synapses and other nervous system structures. The moment your brain activity is stopped, or certain key parts and functions impaired, your consciousness vanishes, and there is no evidence to support otherwise.

Furthermore, every single behavioral and cognitive attribute you posses is based on the interaction of the instinctual reptilian and mammalian complex and the more complex and abstract functions of the neocortex. In order to talk about consciousness you need to talk about its emergence along phylogenesis in evolution, and more importantly how brain development from species to species constitutes the development of brain functions. Acting overly perplexed and dumbfounded of scientific knowledge regarding consciousness is no different than invoking ideas of intelligent design based around assumptions such as the seeming complexity of eyeballs.

>Thus, when you look at the thoughts and emotions themselves..directly.. experientially, you find that they are distinct from physical objects which possess physical attributes. That's why contemplative neuroscience is a very interesting research field.. because they're looking at how the brain can be modulated by modulating consciousness directly.. subjectively.. and the effects that that has on the brain and biology (e.g., neuroplasticity, palcebo, epigenetics).

You're confused about what you're experiencing during a conscious state. Every single thought, emotion, perception, analysis, instinct, and state of consciousness you experience is manifested as such through the physical networking and cascading information in many different areas of the brain, each in charge of very different tasks that overall attribute a perceptually unified consciousness, which of course is not true at all. Hemispheric lateralization and split brain patient studies clearly demonstrate the division of cognitive perception along networks of individualized mechanisms that have direct psychological correlates. It is entirely possible, and well documented, that certain key functions of consciousness (awareness, memory, perception, self distinction, spatial recognition, internal evaluation, etc.) can be impaired or completely cut off, resulting in a vividly (or not so vivid depending on what function or specific physical network is impaired) different experience, yet still within a conscious perspective. Cut off the corpus callosum that connects the two hemispheres and you end up with two completely separate conscious states depending on which size you find yourself on. A stroke on the left hemisphere will impair language concepts and time perceptions and your perception shifts to the intrinsically broad spectrum of understanding of the right hemisphere which focuses on the present input of information.

>And let's not forget the quantum consciousness model, too, which is just as valid, if not more, than the neuronal theory, since the neuronal theory has no testable predictions, has no theoretical framework to explain how you get "awareness" or "subjectivity" out of matter, and not only that, but it lacks the afforementioned empirical data and cannot even explain "spooky" phenomena that have been consitently reported throughout human history.

Again, there is no real data or grounded study for any of the proposed quantum mind theories. You're literally disregarding the entirety of the very empirical evidence you yourself seem to think is missing, when in actuality neurological theories are entirely grounded, peer-reviewed, well established, highly studied, and rigorously experimented and tested, and there are many emerging studies that discuss consciousness as we should, that being in depth and without linguistic misinterpretations. The vagueness of the term is highly problematic when talking about these topics. A lot of recent studies suggest a global overview of brain activity to build the foundation of consciousness, meaning different aspects of cognition are really just different mechanisms of operation that when complementing each other's outputs allow for the structural emergence of a seemingly unified state of consciousness.

I'm sorry but you don't seem to have much basis and knowledge on this subject unfortunately, please don't act as if you understand these concepts and openly spread misinformation and further strengthen misconceptions if you haven't actually studied these topics extensively, which you obviously haven't as demonstrated by your lack of knowledge of neuroscience, it's bad manner to do so in this subreddit.

u/joke-away · 3 pointsr/DepthHub

If you enjoyed that paper, I'd recommend a book called Evolutionary Dynamics: Exploring the Equations of Life by Martin A. Nowak. It's a little dry, and I haven't finished it yet, but it's well presented and reads like a book rather than a textbook.

u/Anzat · 3 pointsr/environment

My undergraduate degree is in mathematics with a mathematical ecology concentration, and I love my current Ph.D. research. (I think it's hard to go wrong with a math major as an undergrad, if you're good at it -- you can use it for anything.) I'm planning to go into academia for a career, but depending on your specific interests there are all kinds of government or consulting jobs for good ecological modelers.

A few books on Amazon that may give you a taste for the field (any given person's specialty will more closely align with just one of them, but I'm trying to convey the broad options):

http://www.amazon.com/Game-Theory-Animal-Behavior-Dugatkin/dp/0195137906/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1260173721&sr=1-1

http://www.amazon.com/Individual-based-Modeling-Princeton-Theoretical-Computational/dp/069109666X/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1260173431&sr=8-3

http://www.amazon.com/Dynamic-Models-Biology-Stephen-Ellner/dp/0691125899/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1260173431&sr=8-1

http://www.amazon.com/Evolutionary-Dynamics-Exploring-Equations-Life/dp/0674023382/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_b

I'd recommend looking for some of these in your university library, then just browsing through everything next to them at the shelves and seeing if anything jumps out at you.

u/Ho66es · 3 pointsr/math

When I took Game Theory the professor used Evolutionary Games and Population Dynamics, which I really liked.

Evolutionary Dynamics is just amazing, but a bit on the biological side.

If you are studying on your own I would suggest Game Theory Evolving, which has a lot of exercises and examples to keep you going.

And for added bursts of motivation read The Art of Strategy, which is not really technical but explains the concepts incredibly well.

u/yik_yak_paddy_wack · 3 pointsr/MachineLearning

You may find "Evolutionary Dynamics: Exploring the Equations of Life" by Novak, especially chapter 13, to be an interesting/relevant read.

u/lafite · 3 pointsr/funny

I love David Quammen - [Song of the Dodo] (http://www.amazon.com/The-Song-Dodo-Biogeography-Extinction/dp/0684827123) is a ridiculously well-written and incredibly interesting book.

Even if Island Bio-geography is not your thing - isn't particularly mine - you'll be hard-pressed to put the book down as the writing and ideas are so compelling (almost like a travelogue with science thrown in);

Quammen would make a great dinner guest - certainly among top 10, somewhere between Castro and Mitterand.

u/the_gnarts · 3 pointsr/vim

> did you just make this up?

Not at all. Tenrecs figure prominently in the book that I’m currently
reading: The Song of the Dodo
by David Quammen. The little critters are kind of like the super heroes
of island biogeography.

u/ToOurEnd · 3 pointsr/uncensorednews

You're correct. This is pointless. That you'd refuse to even accept the reality of race and the facets of racial issues in this nation speaks volumes.

Nonetheless I may as well obliterate you by providing more scientific evidence of race existing.

https://archive.is/D9RFT

https://archive.is/dSwjD

https://archive.is/Hbjdb

https://www.amazon.com/Race-The-Reality-Human-Differences/dp/0813340861

https://archive.is/zX5p9

https://archive.is/yoVMj

https://archive.is/x7I7I

I can't convince a person to accept truth when they willingly deny it.

u/tyrannoAdjudica · 3 pointsr/whatsthisbug

I have a fondness for this one.



I don't have any sort of classroom education on entomology or biology for that matter, but it's like a veritable textbook.

It covers a fair bit of anatomy and I thought it did a pretty good job of discussing the evolution of insects.

u/BRAF-V600E · 3 pointsr/bioinformatics

You're already on the right track getting started with Python, it is the most popular language currently. I would also highly recommend getting experience working in a linux environment, so either macOS or Linux, and getting comfortable working through the terminal. To round off your computational skills, I think that R would be a very good second language to learn. I'm currently using R more than Python for my work, it's much better to use when performing statistical analysis.

You should also try and get a good understanding of the biology behind the data you'll be working with. I think that THIS BOOK does a very good job at covering most concepts you're like to encounter in the field. It's what much of the biology portion of my graduate program was based upon.

u/Kenley · 3 pointsr/whatsthisbug

If you live in eastern North America, I highly recommend Stephen Marshall's Insects: Their Natural History and Diversity. It has a brief written overview for each insect order, and is filled with tons of captioned color photos showcasing common or interesting species. It's basically a mega field guide, so don't expect a huge amount of written discussion, but I love my copy so much!

u/entgardener · 3 pointsr/microgrowery

I'm doing this same thing right now. I let my plants mature to 10 weeks. I just put the clones out yesterday. Keep your fingers crossed for me.

I normally let my plants mature to 12 weeks before they go into flower, this is on regular and feminized seeds. I read that sexual maturity is reached by week 12 on average. I'm hoping for early maturity with these plants.

I found that info in this book. Marijuana Botany

u/ourmenu · 3 pointsr/Entomology

Insects: Their Natural History and Diversity by Stephen Marshall is a rather large book that gives some information on each of the orders of insects. Following the write-ups there are many pictures detailing the various families among each order with descriptions about those families. Then, toward the end of the book there is a dichotomous key that can be used to ID insects to family.


That is what was recommended in my introductory entomology class for identification, but the bulk of what I learned was from lecture materials that aren't commercially available. Hopefully other folks here might have a good idea for other books/media!

u/lulimay · 3 pointsr/backpacking

Definitely depends on your location. Here in the PNW we love Pojar, and I'm betting there's a favored guide in your area :) For that matter I have an additional guidebook for the Olympics, so even relatively small areas can have a lot of diversity that can be difficult to fit into a single guide. What you'll need depends on where you roam.

u/DedTV · 3 pointsr/cannabisbreeding

Here's a very brief rundown of some basic breeding info. It's actually enough to get you started as at it's most basic, you simply have to use pollen from a male plant, apply it to a female plant's buds and you're breeding.

For more in-depth and advanced coverage though, The Cannabis Breeder's Bible and Marijuana Botany are both good books with tons of info to get you started.

u/Akujinnoninjin · 3 pointsr/SpaceBuckets

His 'secret' isn't what he knows so much as his entire attitude to learning.

What sets 'experts' apart is that at some level they question everything instead of taking it at face value. Questioning something forces you to really think about it: you have to turn the idea around a few times and examine it from all angles. You can't help but gain an understanding of the reasons for something - not just of the thing itself. Teaching others works in a similar way - being able to clearly explain an idea requires deep understanding.

It sounds condescending, but that really is what it comes down to - curiosity and critical thought.

Nothing we deal with requires more than a high school knowledge of science - for example, while you need to know that light levels and frequencies affect photosynthesis, you don't need to know the exact quantum/biochemical processes involved. You might be curious though, so it becomes a new avenue for you to research - and what you find out might change what you thought you knew, or might lead you on to new things.

Think about what you don't know that you wish you did - and then go try and find it out. Who knows what else you'll discover in the process?

Now, as for some specific learning sources - for the basics you're looking at things like Jorge Cervante's classic Indoor/Outdoor Medical Growers Bible. Beyond that, there's Reddit - eg SAG's own /r/HandsOnComplexity (googling everything you don't understand) - or some kind of introduction to Botany - the Botany For Dummies book is pretty good. College classes might also be an option.

There isn't a huge amount of current scientific research material - largely due to the War On Drugs making it less attractive. That said, if you go back a way it does exist and is now being reprinted - for example Michael Stark's Marijuana Chemistry and Robert Clarke's Marijuana Botany. Both were originally printed back in the 70s, but were fairly extensively researched. They are dated in places - but the scientific rigor was solid, and they both have wonderful bibliographies of research papers that I hadn't come across elsewhere. Newer papers can be found on Google Scholar. (As a general rule, trust scientific publications over books and books over unsourced websites.)

u/AfterbirthStew · 3 pointsr/Marijuana

Read. read. read. read. read. read

Dont waste money on good seeds right now. Use bagseed. It will give you the chance to learn the ropes and if you fuck up, you won't have wasted your good genetics.

I would seriously recommend setting up an account at ICmag. They are some of the most knowledgeable people on the web. It became the spot where most of the old OG members went after it got shut down. If you post a growlog there, read as much as you can, ask lots of questions, post pictures (carefully... just plants with nothing identifying in the background, etc.), you will learn a ton and grow some good weed.

As others have said. don't tell a soul. Loose lips sink ships. Check the legal forum and see how many people get in trouble because they got ratted out. That forum is a great place to learn from other people's mistakes. If you want to do this properly, you will likely have to change many aspects of your life that you may not be aware of.

Stay safe.

u/DrZoidburglar · 3 pointsr/Entomology

Personally I'm a big fan of Steve Marshall's book:
http://www.amazon.com/Insects-Natural-History-Diversity-Photographic/dp/1552979008

It's well written in plain english, with tons and tons of pictures. I found it extremely easy to read when I was first getting into entomology, yet very accurate and informative. Covers all the major families you're likely to run into, and works well as a field guide too (except it weighs a ton!).

Plus, since it's not technically a textbook, it's relatively cheap.

u/Chaseraph · 2 pointsr/oregon

This is a bit weird, but there's a fun book about edible plants in the Pacific NW: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1551055309/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_x_CuGiybADGAT2P

u/34567ertyu · 2 pointsr/forestry

https://www.amazon.ca/Plants-Pacific-Northwest-Coast-Washington/dp/1551055309

i keep this book in my cruiser vest. Trees are relatively easy to identify once you get into the swing of things.

I think that being familiar with its counterparts (shrubs, herbs, etc) are VERY important to understanding forest dynamics and as it follows, they're a little bit trickier to identify than our trees.

u/HKNHamm · 2 pointsr/IWantToLearn

HERE is a better one for the Pacific Northwest. Comes recommended from many people I've encountered out on trails.

Also, use smile.amazon.com and they'll donate a portion of your purchase to a non-profit :)

u/bendtowardsthesun · 2 pointsr/infp

That app sounds so cool! You might also like the app iNaturalist, it's helpful for learning what something is if you're not sure. Pojar is the absolute BEST guide if you want to learn more about PNW coastal plants before you explore! Also, sword fern spores are useful for soothing the pain if you accidentally walk into some stinging nettle. :)

u/WestinHemlock · 2 pointsr/Cascadia

This deserves a place on every Cascadian's bookshelf right next to the Cascadian classic Plants of the Pacific Northwest Coast.
http://www.amazon.com/Plants-The-Pacific-Northwest-Coast/dp/1551055309

u/bryancostanich · 2 pointsr/ClimateNews

seems to be missing another key point, however. Many planktons are calcium fixers; they "fix" calcium to themselves as a protected shell. however, the ocean is the world's largest carbon sink, and as it absorbs carbon, it acidifies, causing calcium fixing to become more expensive. as such, many calcium fixing organisms will likely go extinct as the ocean acidifies. The Sixth Extinction devotes an entire chapter to this phenomenon and is an excellent read.

u/Opset · 2 pointsr/spiders

Same here. I just used my old entomology textboook, Insects: Their Natural History and Diversity, which is one of the best textbooks I've ever bought. They have a limited section on non-insect arthropods and the Dimorphic Jumping Spider was the closest match I could find.

I also moved mobile homes a couple times out in Bedford as a summer job this year and saw a few of these guys. There were False Black Widows all over the place, but I had these spiders and Bold Jumpers crawling over me all day, too.

u/librariowan · 2 pointsr/suggestmeabook
u/PRbox · 2 pointsr/ChapoTrapHouse

Thanks for the recommendation. I've got a lot of "left-leaning" books (well, some of them) on my list now that all sound interesting, and Debt is definitely a high priority because people keep recommending it.

Have you read any of his other work? Bullshit Jobs sounds really interesting but a couple reviews said the original article he wrote on the topic pretty much sums the book up in a much lower word count.

A few of the books on my to-read list in case anyone sees this and is interested:

u/prairiebean · 2 pointsr/explainlikeimfive

A great book on this if you want more info, "The Sixth Extinctio: An Unnatural History" https://www.amazon.com/dp/1250062187/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awd_uEt.wbGAE8BQW. It covers the previous answers here in more detail, and goes into the history/discovery of the extinctions, and modern implications of human activity leading a sixth.

u/cnz4567890 · 2 pointsr/mentalhealth

> biologically pre-disposed (for lack of a better phrase) to be good candidates for therapies like cbt and dbt?

Basically, yes. It appears the majority of people it is very helpful. However, some people do not respond at all. There (currently) appears to be no rhyme or reason behind that. But we (more or less) know there is no physiological reason (fMRI or something can't tell us someone wont respond).

>Could you suggest an introductory text for someone with a basic understanding of the brain?

Honestly, not really. I don't pick the textbooks the undergrads/1st years read :P Lehninger Principles of Biochemistry is good for getting a firm footing for the biochemical pathways and such.
Basic Clinical Neuroscience is a good foundation textbook, but I can't remember how much biochem you need to understand it. Molecular Biology of the Cell is another good intro text to molecular biology, if that's what you're in to.
I've been a research assistant, not a teaching assistant for the past decade (oh my god, I'm old lol).

edit: Also if you didn't see it before, see also the edit in my previous post.

u/DrLOV · 2 pointsr/biology

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.

u/psykocrime · 2 pointsr/Biohackers

Google around, find websites for university degree programs in biology, biochemistry, genetics, etc., and mine the syllabi for textbooks that are used. That would probably give you a decent seed list.

Read popular books for lay-people on biohacking and related topics, like Biopunk, Frankenstein's Cat, Regenesis, Life at the Speed of Light, A Crack in Creation, etc., and then use Google / Wikipedia to drill down on the topics you find discussed there.

One other book that has been recommended to me by actual experts from our local biohacking group is Molecular Biology of the Cell

Also.. It's fully possible for humans to create a mix that stops aging in whatever age someone is in? In theory?

I don't think anybody knows the answer to that yet.

u/dx_dt · 2 pointsr/aiclass

i can recommend this book:

http://www.amazon.com/Data-Analysis-Bayesian-Devinderjit-Sivia/dp/0198568320/ref=pd_sim_b_4

it doesn't cover bayes networks, but it explains the bayes theorem and shows how it can be used.

u/ipu0014 · 2 pointsr/statistics

This one is a quite good book: Sivia, Skilling - Data Analysis: A Bayesian Tutorial

It's quite pragmatical, as opposed to the forementioned Jaynes for instance.

u/PhaethonPrime · 2 pointsr/statistics

Another book is D.S. Sivia's Data Analysis: A Bayesian Tutorial. It's more expensive than when I first got it, though (sorry I don't have a free reference). The examples in the beginning of the book are easily done in PyMC, as well!

u/glutamate · 2 pointsr/statistics

Data analysis: a Bayesian tutorial is really nice. It starts off with continuous parameter estimation and then moves on to model selection. Unlike Peter Lee's book it feels like a clean break from classical stats.

u/thetokster · 2 pointsr/Biochemistry

'power sex and suicide' by Nick Lane. Great book on the importance of mitochondria.

u/Atavisionary · 2 pointsr/askscience

I hadn't seen this answer yet, so I will throw it out there. Like most of the other ideas here this is a hypothesis. Life has made various evolutionary innovations over history and one idea is that woody bark/stems were first evolved sometime immediately proceeding the carboniferous. Woody stems are stronger and more resilient because there are protein cross links between cellulose strands. Cellulose being a long strand of linked sugars. Woody stems are very difficult to digest, which is why pretty much nothing eats it. When it first evolved, literally nothing ate it because it was so new and no organism had the tools to break it down. So, during the carboniferous trees and plants with woody stems proliferated because they had few or no natural predators, and probably also because they could grow taller than their competitors thanks to the strong stems and thus had better access to sunlight. They did still die of old age however, and that woody material would just sit there without decaying. Eventually it would be buried and millions of years later we would dig it out of the ground as coal or oil.

Well, the process plants use to grow is they take CO2 out of the atmosphere to build cellulose and other structural molecules and release oxygen. So what was happening in the carboniferous was that this was a very one way process. The carbon was being fixated and nothing was breaking it down to re-release it.

That all changed when fungi, think mushrooms and molds, eventually evolved the enzymatic equipment to break down woody stems. Sometime at the end of the carboniferous presumably. With this second innovation, the woody part of plants didn't just sit around waiting to be buried, it was broken down the fixated CO2 was released back into the atmosphere. Obviously this added a new variable to the equation and the oxygen level in the atmosphere struck a new and lower balance.


I suggest "Oxygen" and "power, sex, suicide" by nick lane if you are really interested in this subject.

https://www.amazon.com/Power-Sex-Suicide-Mitochondria-Meaning/dp/0199205647

https://www.amazon.com/Oxygen-Molecule-World-Popular-Science/dp/0198607830

u/CharlesOSmith · 2 pointsr/askscience

There is a great book titled "Power Sex and Suicide: Mitochondria and the Meaning of Life" by Nick Lane. it opens with a history of the discovery of the mitochondria, and the steps taken to understand what it does and how.

In general, for most things we discovered about biology before the advent of modern genetics or even an understanding of what a gene was there were a few common attributes that made something microscopic easier to study.

First, is there a lot of it in a tissue? We have really good purification techniques now, not to mention the ability to take pretty much any genetically encoded protein and convert a yeast or bacteria cell into a little factory to make grams of our protein, but in the early days of discovery, you needed a natural source with lots of your protein of interest (like hemoglobin in blood).

Second does your protein/molecule/organelle have a color? when you get right down to the cellular level, so much of what there is to study is transparent. Even chemical purification techniques that were available typically resulted in a white or yellowish powder. But for some things, and this is especially true for mitochondria and chloroplasts, there is a very distinct color. Mitochondria are packed with molecules called cytochromes which give them a very distinctive orange/red/brown color.

For most scientist all it takes is an observation of something interesting, a tiny thread that they can start tugging on. After that its incremental test after incremental test, gathering information one step at a time until the puzzle is solved...or as solved as possible

u/pushbak · 2 pointsr/neuro

I got a specialty in neuroengineering coursewise as a masters (it was still biomedical engineering). I took an Applied Electrophysiology class that I thought was very good. Most of our neuroscience classes and engineering classes lended from this Principles of Neural Science book.
The applied electrophys class also used an Applied Bioelectricity text.

We also has a pretty comprehensive Computational Neuroengineering course that relied on this Theoretical Neuroscience text.

As far as teaching these topics goes, it's pretty specific. You might want to look into related neuroscience labs to apply some of these theories.

u/Stupidgreatness · 2 pointsr/florida

That's awesome that you're getting into birding! Some great resources are Merlin Bird ID, eBird, and Audubon's Bird app. A goood paper resource is Sibley's. Good luck and patience is a virtue!

u/DiogenesKuon · 2 pointsr/whatsthisbird

You might also want to try out the Merlin Bird ID app from Cornell for iOS/Android. It asks you 5 fairly simple questions (location, date, size of bird, color of bird, behavior of bird) and then gives you a list of possible birds based on ebird activity in that area during that time. It's very helpful when you first start out and you don't even know broadly what type of bird you are looking at.

As you become more knowledgable then a good field guide becomes invaluable, and I'll second pallum's suggestion of Sibley's Guide to Birds, Second Edition.

u/MisanthropicScott · 2 pointsr/birding

Hmm... If you're thinking globally, this is going to be hard. A simple checklist of all the bird species of the world is large enough to be a book, literally.

And, it's outdated at the time it's printed.

The Sibley Guide to Bird Life and Behavior might be what you're looking for, if North America is enough of the world. Embarrassingly, I own this and almost never look at it.

The Sibley Guide to the Birds of North America is a good desk reference field guide that has more information than most field guides (and is too big to carry around other than as an app on my cell phone, IMHO). I do own it both ways. The book is better, of course. But, I don't carry it as my field guide.

For more than that, you may want to pick a book narrowed down to a particular family of birds, if she has any favorites like raptors or woodpeckers.

Hope you find what you're looking for.

u/CBR85 · 2 pointsr/whatsthisbird

I would get her This book. IMO its the essential book to have on birds.

u/bellomi · 2 pointsr/atheism

There is actually a book documenting all kinds of same sex relationships in the animal kingdom.

Bam

u/IAmNotAPerson6 · 2 pointsr/atheism
u/electricfoxx · 2 pointsr/lgbt

First, Judeo-Christian people like to throw out the trump card. "God created the universe with a plan." (Though the plan doesn't really fit with what I see in nature. And I don't subscribe to your religion.)

Biological Exuberance

>animals with urges.

Humans are animals ... with urges. We can hold back on urges, like violence, but sometimes even the "bad" urges are good. Self-defense can be violent. There is no such thing as lust-less reproduction. You have to succumb to the urge of lust in even a procreative heterosexual marriage to reproduce.

>an act of protest

Some people are attention whores, but others choose suicide because of pain. But, we MUST treat each suicide case as serious.

u/DrWallyHayes · 2 pointsr/AskReddit

This book does a thorough job of answering your first and third questions.

u/myconundrum · 2 pointsr/askscience

There is actually a book (and a television series) about this...it goes into deep detail on exactly your question... Below is the amazon link. Its a good read.

book!

u/MRItopMD · 2 pointsr/math

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.
___
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!

u/c0ffee2 · 2 pointsr/APStudents

No it has a dandelion

10th edition

u/munchler · 2 pointsr/todayilearned

> It's like you and me have to race up this mountain side

Mountain climbing is actually a good metaphor for evolution, and natural selection is very good at climbing mountains. I recommend Richard Dawkins' book "Climbing Mount Improbable" if you'd like to understand how natural selection drives adaptation of species to their environment. You can also find a good overview of how natural selection climbs mountains here on Wikipedia.

u/kzielinski · 2 pointsr/atheism

Pretty much yes. Really he is argueing that some things are so irreducibly complex that they had to be designed. Except that they are not. Eye evolution has been understood for a very long time. And we have even found organisms with all sorts of eyes, at all sorts of stages. Dawkin's Climbing Mount Imporbable Address this argument in some detail.

But really this ends up being a race. Every so often ID proponents go and find a new something and aay "Ha this is irreducibly complex". Then biologists come along and show that it is reducable, and the process repeats with ever increasingly obsure examples being proposed and falsified. Meanwhile less informed apoligsts just keep refering to the eye or the Bacterial Flegelum and pretend that its evolution is still not understood, because they don't understand it.

u/AlSweigart · 2 pointsr/atheism

"The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins. Dawkins doesn't really go into anything new or original, but the strength of the book is that is a great, concise summary of all the beginning arguments for atheism.

http://www.amazon.com/God-Delusion-Richard-Dawkins/dp/0618680004

I'd follow it with Daniel Dennett's "Breaking the Spell", also a good recommendation. Same goes for Carl Sagan's "A Demon Haunted World"

http://www.amazon.com/Breaking-Spell-Religion-Natural-Phenomenon/dp/0143038338

http://www.amazon.com/Demon-Haunted-World-Science-Candle-Dark/dp/0345409469/

Christopher Hitchens is a bit vitriolic for some, but "God is not Great" has some nuggets in it.

http://www.amazon.com/God-Not-Great-Religion-Everything/dp/0446579807/

I personally didn't like Sam Harris' "End of Faith" but I did like his "Letter to a Christian Nation".

http://www.amazon.com/Letter-Christian-Nation-Vintage-Harris/dp/0307278778/

For the topic of evolution, Talk Origins is great (and free) http://toarchive.org/
Dawkin's "The Selfish Gene" is also a good read (and short). Not so short but also good are Dawkins' "Blind Watchmaker", "Climbing Mount Improbable" and "Unweaving the Rainbow"

http://www.amazon.com/Selfish-Gene-Anniversary-Introduction/dp/0199291152/

http://www.amazon.com/Blind-Watchmaker-Evidence-Evolution-Universe/dp/0393315703/

http://www.amazon.com/Climbing-Mount-Improbable-Richard-Dawkins/dp/0393316823/

http://www.amazon.com/Unweaving-Rainbow-Science-Delusion-Appetite/dp/0618056734/

u/omg_IAMA_girl · 2 pointsr/wheredoibegin

Some of the criticisms of "What Evolution Is" by Mayr is that it doesn't go deep enough into the subject, which to me, is a good book as an introduction.
Or pick up a used Intro to Anthropology text book and note the sources they are citing and go that way.

u/rangorok · 2 pointsr/biology

What evolution is by Ernst Mayr.

u/tolos · 2 pointsr/philosophy

I am not a biologist.

The Counter-Creationism Handbook might be something like what you're looking for, though it does branch into non-evolutionary topics. It is a compilation of questions/arguments from talk.origins (usenet) that are discussed for a paragraph or two with lots of sources cited. Check out the reviews on Amazon. Really recommend this one.

What Evolution Is was a good introduction to evolution. I've read several, and I feel that this was the best. He also talks in passing about what evolution is not. Standard kind of non-fiction book.

Evolution is supposedly the reference textbook of atheists. There is a newer edition out, or you can pick up this one for about $15 (USD).

u/kzsummers · 2 pointsr/atheism

(This is the rest of my answer, cut off for being too long).
3) I'm beginning to think that we need to skip ahead and talk about evolution, because if you don't understand how DNA could have evolved, you've really never read a single book on evolution. (I'm not criticizing you; you're in good company there). So let's combine your third and fourth points, and allow me to clarify what evolution is, why it explains DNA, and why your micro/macro distinction is, frankly, bullshit.

First principle behind evolution: If something can make copies of itself, there will soon be more of it. It there are lots of competing things that can make copies of themselves, the ones that can do so most efficiently will end up having the most copies.

If that statement strikes you as true, there we go. Evolution.

The first proto-organisms were basically strings of RNA. Under certain conditions, a nucleotide strand would attach complementary bases, and you would have two strands of RNA. Then environmental conditions change and the two strands separate, and both of them can attach to more complementary bases.

Second principle behind evolution: If copies aren't exactly the same as the original, then some changes will increase efficiency. Other changes will decrease efficiency. After enough generations, your population will contain lots of copies of efficient replicators and very few copies of inefficient replicators.

So some of the RNA sequences happen to misplace an adenine instead of a cytosine, and that means that a replication enzyme bonds more tightly to the strand, and this mutant makes more copies of itself than its neighbors do.

And eventually, a nucleotide ends up with a deoxyribose sugar instead of a ribose sugar, and this configuration turns out to be WAY more stable - it can form into a double helix that is less likley to spontaneously collapse, and which can replicate with fewer errors. And this mutant makes more copies of itself than its neighbors do.

And these sequences of DNA/RNA aren't just random collections of letters. Well, some of them are, but others can be interpreted to build proteins that facilitate copying - and the ones with these helpful sequences can make more copies of themselves.

Let this process happen for a couple billion years.

But, you're saying, the probability is so small! You mean all those coincidences just happen to occur? Convenient mutations just happen to come along? If you multpily together the odds of all those things happening, it's tiny!

Well, of course it is. When you have a trillion early replicators hanging around, improbable things happen ALL. THE. TIME. And multiplying together the odds of each mutation is the completely wrong way to look at the problem - it's like looking at all the possible combinations of your parents' sperm and eggs that could have existed and declaring triumphantly that the probability of you existing is one in a gazillion. Of course it is! The question is what the probability of some complex life developing, under the given optimization pressures, and it should be obvious that it's reasonably high. Of those trillions of worlds we talked about earlier, maybe only a couple billion of them got to complex life.

Obviously, this is the grossly oversimplified version. For the whole story, you need to read this or this or this or this or... any of these, actually. But I hope you understand why most atheists feel that the distinction between macro- and micro-evolution is silly. Evolution is just the change in gene pools over time. This change has been observed to lead to one species splitting off into multiple species which can no longer reproduce (the biological definition of speciation). At what point is this process called "macro" evolution? How many genes need to change before you insist that the process "doesn't exist"? Why would evolution push two separate populations to the brink of speciation and then suddenly stop working by the rules we've repeatedly observed? Saying "micro but not macro" is like saying you believe gravity works on people but not on planets. There's just no reason to draw the distinction!

Using techniques called molecular systematics, we can trace the evolutionary relationships between species by mapping the differences in noncoding DNA. And, of course, I'm neglecting the single biggest piece of supporting evidence for evolution: the fossil record. You've probably been fed the lie that we don't have the transitional fossils. Well, we do have the transitional fossils. Overwhelmingly..

Now, ethics. The God of the Bible, if he existed, is a monstrous, selfish, egomaniacal, power-hungry terrifying sociopath. I don't mean to cause offense (though I probably will) but I read the Bible and it nearly made me ill. God tortures everyone who doesn't worship him for all eternity. He had 42 children mauled to death by bears for laughing at a bald man.(II Kings 2:23-24). He murders all the inhabitants of an entire city for being "sinful" (Genesis 19:1-26). He orders his people to commit genocide, over and over again. (Deuteronomy 13:13-16, Numbers 31:12-18, I Chronicles 21:9-14).
He's okay with rape (often, he explicitly orders his followers to commit rape) and treats women as property(Deuteronomy 22:28-29, Deuteronomy 22:23-24, Exodus 21:7-11). He's pro-slavery (I Timothy 6:1-2, Exodus 21:20.) He even claims in Isaiah 45:7 to have created all evil. In short, if we're getting our morals from that guy, we're seriously screwed. This isn't the wise and loving father whose children can't understand his dictates: it's the abusive alcoholic father whose son runs away when he realizes that rape, murder, and incest aren't okay just because Dad says so.

You're about to protest that most of those are Old Testament. But Jesus explicitly endorses the Old Testament and says that he has not come to change the old laws (Matthew 5:17). He endorses what God did in Sodom and Gomorrah and threatens to do even worse to three more cities because their inhabitants were unimpressed with him.(Matthew 11:21-24). He says that any child who curses his parents should be killed as according to Old Testament Law. (Mark 7:10)

I don't think a world where everyone follows their individual conscience could possibly be worse than a world rules by that God. And, in fact, countries that are nonreligious have lower rates of crime, higher standards of living, and higher self-reported happiness.

Interesting debate, thanks!

u/Homeothermus · 2 pointsr/bioinformatics

You can try this one:

https://www.amazon.com/Biological-Sequence-Analysis-Probabilistic-Proteins/dp/0521629713

It introduces one of the key problems in bioinformatics and should be fairly readable for someone of your background. It primarily adresses your first bullet, and does not go into many details about implementations,

u/giror · 2 pointsr/biology

Courses:

Take population genetics and computational biology. Population genetics focuses on dynamics of allele frequencies in different populations. Computational biology is anything from simulating networks of biochemical reactions to identifying patterns in DNA using hidden markov models.


Books:

http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Systems-Biology-Mathematical-Computational/dp/1584886420/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1299531700&sr=8-1

http://www.amazon.com/Biological-Sequence-Analysis-Probabilistic-Proteins/dp/0521629713/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1299531747&sr=1-1

u/44Orange · 2 pointsr/biology
u/ebenezer_caesar · 2 pointsr/genetics

Durbin's book, Biological Sequence Analysis is very good.

Some books on stochastic processes are useful.

Some HMM material

Also, a few journals that I read: Genetics, PLoS Biology/Genetics, MBE, GBE, and Theoretical Population Biology. If access is a problem, look to PLos, arxiv, bioRxiv.

u/panamafloyd · 2 pointsr/atheism

>There is no evidence that consciousness is directly link to any particular piece of brain matter.

I disagree.

http://www.amazon.com/Consciousness-Brain-Deciphering-Codes-Thoughts/dp/0670025437

>There is growing evidence that consciousness is an emergent property...possibly just a pattern; that existence is infinite, and time just another dimension to move around in.

Cite? Even one to a disputed book or study would help.

>It's not woo, but it does require a bit of hope that the science is pointing us to something less depressing than nothingness.

I'm curious..why do you find "nothingness" depressing?

u/Laughing_Chipmunk · 2 pointsr/neuroscience

Currently reading a book titled Consciousness and the Brain: Deciphering How the Brain Codes Our Thoughts, I would highly recommend it if you're interested in the science of consciousness.

In terms of going back to uni to do an undergraduate in neuroscience, i don't think it's worth it. I'm about to start an honours in visual neuroscience, but before finding my project I was talking to a prof about honours projects and he said he had a computer science graduate doing a project with him on alzheimer's. A lot of neuroscience these days involves programming so you have a huge one up there (i'll be learning programming for my project). In terms of how to get into the field, you could probably go straight into post grad if you have good marks with your current undergrad degree. Honours or Masters degrees, or as ciaoshescu mentioned you may be able to do an internship, i'm not to sure how that would work though.

Good luck on your journey!

u/Dcab · 2 pointsr/neuroscience

Consciousness and the Brain: Deciphering How the Brain Codes Our Thoughts https://www.amazon.com/dp/0670025437/ref=cm_sw_r_awd_Q6Qzub003NK0X

Comprehensive, current, a generally pleasant read/listen.

u/notsointelligent · 2 pointsr/Futurology

I've read a few. My interest is AI. Of them all I'll recommend two:

  • Consciousness and the Brain
  • On Intelligence


    edit - sigh I am now unable to reply to people who have replied to me. Would love to talk about neuroscience and consciousness and Ai but I guess well meet on another sub
u/c00yt825 · 2 pointsr/artificial

That book has now been added to my library, thank you. Link for anyone interested.

As far as the "It's only a really convincing simulation" goes:

If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck...
If a simulation is so convincing of faking his consciousness that there's nothing we could do (except maybe open up the soft- and hardware) to differentiate it from something we would consider conscious, then by all means it is conscious. I know I'm conscious, because I have my own thoughts to prove it to myself. But everyone else in the world might just be a clever robot. But it's senseless to assume this because it's not functional.

I think this argument ultimately comes down to "there's something special about us" rather than accepting consciousness too is 'just' a product of complex mechanics. As I mentioned somewhere else, the problem is we don't have a clear definition of what is conscious and can therefore not test for it.

u/Singular_Thought · 2 pointsr/singularity

Sometimes I ponder the same idea. Ultimately we won't know until consciousness is better understood. The research is moving forward.

A great book on the matter is:

Consciousness and the Brain: Deciphering How the Brain Codes Our Thoughts
by Stanislas Dehaene (Author)


http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0670025437/

u/c_zeit_run · 2 pointsr/biology

http://www.amazon.com/Evolutionary-Dynamics-Exploring-Equations-Life/dp/0674023382

That'll answer all your questions about predictive models. All systems can be described by math, though chaotic systems--like, you know, life--are a lot harder to do that with. We can barely predict the weather.

For more math in biology, look at most papers by the theorists like Hamilton. Or maybe anything that has to do with bioinformatics.

Now that I think of it, the simplest and most concrete examples of prediction come from genetics. Make a quick Punnett square and you'll see.

u/econ_learner · 2 pointsr/badeconomics
u/unkz · 2 pointsr/atheism

>George W. Bush

Went to Yale and Harvard and isn't as stupid as he looks. And while he's the figurehead, the reins of power are shared among everyone in the government, all of whom went to university and studied the Greeks and Romans.

>I bet there are a bunch of undiscovered civilizations and we are living just fine without their discovery. Archaelogy only purpose is to satisfied our curiosity, it has zero impact in today world, is just a really interesting hobby.

That's like saying (100 years ago) that there are lots of scientific ideas that we are living fine without. Or to put it more generally, what we don't know doesn't matter.

> This guy discovered by accident.

From your very source, "The significance of the discovery, first published in 1871, was not at first apparent"

Without evolutionary theory, DNA is practically irrelevant. Without DNA combined with the theory of common ancestry, genetic science simply doesn't exist or doesn't make any sense. Without genetic science, our understanding of the nature of a large fraction of disease and heredity would be nonexistent.

> I´m not saying "if we dropped the scientific method", i´m saying if we dropped those three sciences 100 years ago the world would be pretty much the same, this doesn´t mean there are not interesting fields only that they give us a look into the past but nothing to the future.

> Please tell me i really want to know.

I spend a lot of time working on resource optimization problems utilizing computational genetic optimization tools based on the foundation of evolutionary theory -- surivival of the fittest, random mutation, and hereditary descent. These tools and methodologies are a direct outgrowth of evolutionary theory.

I have friends who work in cytogenetics (in disease diagnosis) and in evodevo (fiddling with nematodes). None of what they do makes any sense without first understanding the evolutionary heritage of the diseases involved or the developmental patterns that preceded them.

What you have to understand is that without evolutionary theory linking together all of the various forms of life, they would be mysterious black boxes, each with obvious commonalities with no obvious explanation. We'd have big lists of different creatures with surprisingly similar features and no cogent story to place them in. The tree of life (phylogenetic tree, not to be confused with metaphysical mumbojumbo also referred to as the tree of life) that we all see in biology class is the result of evolutionary theory and gives us that context in which to talk about the interrelatedness of the world around us. That was the state of biology before the integration that evolution gave us.

Yes, before evolutionary theory there was a sort of tree of life that people had in their minds, generally variations on the "great chain of being" that God laid out in the beginning. The great difference between that limited perspective and what evolutionary theory gives us is the ability to make predictions. It allows us to take in observations and use them to generate new hypotheses that lead us to great discoveries. A pre-evolutionary perspective is a distinctly passive passenger in the quest for knowledge.

If you're interested in getting some specifics on exactly how evolutionary theory reaches out into the world that you live in, try this:

http://www.amazon.ca/Evolutionary-Dynamics-Exploring-Equations-Life/dp/0674023382

u/fungoid_sorceror · 2 pointsr/askscience

I'd imagine that there's selective pressure applied, though I doubt "wariness" is the defining trait.

Our highway system definitely increases the potential for speciation, though, as it creates several discrete isolated populations from what was once one large genetic pool. Effectively we're turning a single large land mass into sporadically connected islands, which creates its own set of dangers. This book does a great job explaining and discussing it.

u/HotKarl_Marx · 2 pointsr/exmormon

One of my favorite books that is tangentially on this subject is Song of the Dodo by David Quammen.

u/reggietheporpoise · 2 pointsr/labrats

the song of the dodo by david quammen. one of my favorite science books. i wish there was an audiobook available, i’d love to experience it again on my commute to work.

u/honilee · 2 pointsr/Random_Acts_Of_Amazon

This is my kinda contest! My Favorite Book! changes with my mood, but my current favorite would be Kushiel's Dart, which looks like a cheap romance novel judging by its cover, but is actually a story of political intrigue set in an alternate history of Europe (most of the action takes place in an alternate-medieval France whose inhabitants have the blood of literal angels running through their veins).

It's the first of a trilogy (and there's more books after that, but you can stop at the first trilogy), but if I recall correctly one can probably stop at the first book, but I know I couldn't. Carey has done a fabulous job building a world that feels real--she intermixes her story's religion, history, and politics into the main narrative in such a way that it doesn't feel clunky at all.

Fair warning: the beginning has quite a bit of exposition, but you need it all to understand anything. It's a long read; I think the print book has 799 pages; the Kindle version has 929 pages. Also: there are sex scenes, so if you don't like to read that kind of content, you probably want to give this book a pass.

If I should win the raffle, I'd love The Song of the Dodo: Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinction!

u/GodEmperorPePethe2nd · 2 pointsr/savedyouaclick

Race-a human population partially isolated reproductively from other populations, whose members share a greater degree of physical and genetic similarity with one another than with other humans. The commonest being the Caucasian, Mongoloid, and Negro, characterized by supposedly distinctive and universal physical characteristics--Oxford Medical

Race (human categorization)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_(human_categorization)

Race is the classification of humans into groups based on physical traits, ancestry, genetics or social relations, or the relations between them.[1][2][3][4][5] First used to refer to speakers of a common language and then to denote national affiliations, by the 17th century race began to refer to physical (i.e. phenotypical) traits. The term was often used in a general biological taxonomic sense,[6] starting from the 19th century, to denote genetically differentiated human populations defined by phenotype.[7][8]

Minorities crying were instrumental in turning the scientific consensus against the validity of race in the 1960s

"Increasingly women and younger persons
entered the discipline. In the 1960s,
during their graduate training, they were
exposed to and some participated in the
social movements concerned with civil
rights, gender equality, and opposition to
the war in Viet Nam37. Defenders of the
race concept may prefer to portray the rejection
of race as being a politically correct
response. Instead, it is proposed that
their social experiences of discrimination
and awareness of the use of racism to excuse
the slaughter of millions in the Holocaust
and in the massacres of World War
II stimulated their sensitivity to the new
natural science data and concepts and enabled
them to reject the concept of race."

"One was based on clinal variations
noted above. In the second the differences
between human societies were
conceived as cultural ethnic groups in
which one or more populations were identified
on the basis of »behavior, customs,
or genealogy (descent)«26. This is a cultural
distinction that avoids explaining differences
between groups on the basis of
race or genetic determinism, although regrettably,
some use ethnicity to refer to
biological races as in The Bell Curve38."

http://collegium.hrvatsko-antropolosko-drustvo.hr/_doc/Coll.Antropol.28%282004%292_907-921.pdf#page=6

This is most likely the reason the IQ level for retarded was lowered, as the standard deviation meant the overwhelming majority of the black population was considered mentally retarded

As you can see, it has nothing to do with science as it way it was overturned as a definition, but feels

Humans can be genetically categorized into five racial groups, corresponding to traditional races

http://pritchardlab.stanford.edu/publications/pdfs/RosenbergEtAl02.pdf

Genetic analysis “supports the traditional racial groups classification

http://psychology.uwo.ca/faculty/rushtonpdfs/PPPL1.pdf

“Human genetic variation is geographically structured” and corresponds with race

http://www.nature.com/ng/journal/v36/n11s/full/ng1435.html

Race can be determined via genetics with certainty for >99.8% of individuals

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15625622

Oral bacteria can be used to determine race

http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-10-oral-bacteria-fingerprint-mouth.html"

There was minimal gene flow between archaic Europeans and Asians

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/20/science/20adapt.html

97% of Whites have no Black ancestry whatsoever

http://www.unz.com/isteve/nyt-white-Black-a-murky-distinction-grows-still-murkier/

Common-sense racial categories have biological meaning

http://www.ln.edu.hk/philoso/staff/sesardic/Race2.pdf

It is inaccurate to state that race is biologically meaningless

http://www.nature.com/ng/journal/v36/n11s/full/ng1435.html

Races are human subspecies

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19695787

The “social constructionist account of race lacks biological reality”

http://stx.sagepub.com/content/30/2/67.abstract

The concept of race existed in ancient Greece, Rome, Egypt, China, India, and Arabia

http://www.amazon.com/Race-The-Reality-Human-Differences/dp/0813340861

Racial classification has genetic significance

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bies.10315/abstract

So feel free to 'enjoy' all that actual science i just dropped on your ass, feel free to let me know when your PH.D in biology is done. No amount of social justice fuckery is going to overcome reality

u/neverislupus · 1 pointr/Entomology

I recommend you purchase this book, read it, start a collection, and identify all of your specimens using the keys inside the book.

http://www.amazon.com/Borror-DeLongs-Introduction-Study-Insects/dp/0030968356

u/koinobiont · 1 pointr/Entomology

Leptoglossus looks pretty close. It seems the standard introductory text that everyone uses is this book. I would recommend trying to find it used.

u/EZE_it_is_42 · 1 pointr/Entomology

Go and pick up "Borror and DeLongs Introduction to the Study of Insects" (https://www.amazon.com/Borror-DeLongs-Introduction-Study-Insects/dp/0030968356)

It is where all entomologist begin and this book is essential in the field (i.e. you will always use this book, need this book). Stay away from field guides at the beginning if you're serious about becoming an entomologist, they have pretty pictures and are good for outreach but honestly, kind of useless unless you only want to identify the charismatic taxa that you'll likely already know. Eventually you'll figure out that a field guide leads to more misidentification than accurate identification.

First thing you'll want to learn is the structure of taxonomy and the Insect Orders, that'll put you on the path to learning Latin. Get to a point that you can identify any insect to order almost immediately. Once there pick an order to focus on learning families, pick something you like. If you want a challenge go for Diptera.

So, get the book and learn the orders, go out and look at bugs and practice identifying to Order. Honestly you probably won't have any luck volunteering at a museum or research laboratory. It's just not worth a researchers time to train a volunteer, sorry but it's the truth.
Good luck!

u/albopictus · 1 pointr/Entomology
u/Thernn · 1 pointr/Entomology

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0030968356?pc_redir=1411850440&robot_redir=1

Borrer and Delong might have larval keys to family but it has been so long since I looked at the book that I can't remember.

Why is your Prof requiring family identification for larvae. That is a bit cruel for a general ento class.

u/horse_architect · 1 pointr/Physics

Get serious about statistics, it's a huge part of astrophysics. This is tricky, because stats / probability is often taught from a terrible, unintuitive, seemingly non-rigorous approach where you learn various prescriptions for different scenarios, like a cookbook.

I've found this text to be perhaps the most broadly useful thing when it comes to really understanding data analysis: http://www.amazon.com/Data-Analysis-A-Bayesian-Tutorial/dp/0198568320

u/Sinpathy · 1 pointr/Physics

Feigelson & Babu is a great read, with lots of applications using R.

If you're looking for something a bit more "cookbook" style then this book is good. The authors also have the solutions to all the problems on their website.

For general statistics and data analysis (without a focus on astrophysics) Sivia & Skilling is also good.

u/ajsdklf9df · 1 pointr/Futurology

Well, this is aimed at senior undergraduates and research students in science and engineering: http://www.amazon.com/Data-Analysis-A-Bayesian-Tutorial/dp/0198568320

But really everything you learn should result in you realizing what else you want to learn related to it. The same is true for statistics. Learn some, and that should let you think... oh I wonder if I can find any publications on....

u/redmeansTGA · 1 pointr/evolution

Ernst Mayer, Jerry Coyne and Richard Dawkins have written some decent books broadly covering the evidence for evolution. Donald Prothero's Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why It Matters fits into that general category, and does a good job of outlining the evidence for evolution as well, in particular from a paleontological perspective.




Astrobiologist / Paleontologist Peter Ward has written a ton of fantastic books. I'd start with Rare Earth, which outlines the Rare Earth hypothesis, ie complex life is likely rare in the universe. If you read Rare Earth, you'll come away with a better understanding of the abiotic factors which influence the evolution of life on Earth. If you end up enjoying Rare Earth, I'd highly recommend Ward's other books.




Terra, by paleontologist Michael Novacek describes the evolution of the modern biosphere, in particular from the Cretaceous onwards, and then discusses environmental change on a geological scale to modern environmental challenges facing humanity. It's one of those books which will change the way you think about the modern biosphere, and the evolution in the context ecosystems, as opposed to individual species.




Another book by a paleontologist is When Life Nearly Died: The Greatest Mass Extinction of All Time, looking at the Permian mass extinction, which was the most catastrophic mass extinction of the Phanerozoic wiping out 95%+ of all species. More focused on the geology than the other books I mentioned, so if you're not into geology you probably wont enjoy it so much.



Biochemist Nick Lane has written some great books. Life ascending would be a good one to start off with. Power, Sex, Suicide: Mitochondria and the Meaning of Life is really excellent as well.




The Origins of Life and the Universe is written by molecular biologist Paul Lurquin. It mostly focuses on the origin of life. It's pretty accessible for what it covers.




Another couple of books I would recommend to people looking for something more advanced are: Michael Lynch's Origins of Genome Architecture, which covers similar stuff to much of his research, although takes a much broader perspective. Genes in conflict is a pretty comprehensive treatment of selfish genetic elements. Fascinating read, although probably a bit heavy for most laypeople.


u/adhrpr · 1 pointr/askscience

Almost all sexually reproducing organisms have two sexes and a rigorous method for maintaining them. There are some interesting hypotheses that this has something to do with the inheritance of organelles. I read about it in Nick Lane's book.
http://www.amazon.com/Power-Sex-Suicide-Mitochondria-Meaning/dp/0199205647

There are a lot of mechanisms for making (and keeping) the two sexes different. I find it really interesting that there's so much variation here.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex-determination_system

u/technically_art · 1 pointr/neuroscience

I'll try to address your questions first and give general advice at the end.

> many of these expressions have a summation of delta functions over index k. One major problem I have is that I do not know how far back my window should go when considering previous spikes. Should it just be my time increment dt=0.1ms? Or more?

This is often up to the modeler, but Dayan & Abbott's textbook has a section comparing the pros and cons of computing for single spikes vs. sliding windows vs. full history. One reasonable first approach would be to find out how long it takes for a single spike event to decay to the point of being neglible (say, 1/100th of total depolarization) and use that as your window size.

>Another issue I'm having is that I'm confused by what they mean by w+ and w- when talking about Hebbian learning. Are these fixed values?

I think w^+ is the upper bound on weights, w^- is the lower bound. They're using a non-normalized scheme where w^+ or w^- is compared against 1 to determine synapse strength - w < 1 means depression, w > 1 means potentiation.

> Also, why does the expression for I_GABA not have any dependence on w_j? Shouldn't there be some reliance on synaptic connectivity between presynaptic and postsynaptic neurons?

I'm not sure how the weights are being folded into the input current equations, but it's possible that I_GABA isn't affected by synaptic strength - they could compute each input current individually and scale them based on weights, for example.

---------------------


This definitely isn't a beginner-friendly model or paper. Are you recreating as part of a class project, or for a lab? Don't be shy to ask colleagues for help, or even your PI (just make sure you know exactly what you're going to ask and why.) If there isn't a harsh time constraint, I'd recommend checking out a textbook or some other modeling papers from the same lab, and/or citations from this paper.

One thing that experimentalists often have trouble with when trying to reproduce a model is that modelling is not an exact science. You're allowed to mess around with equations, parameters, thresholds and windows to make it work. For every clean equation in the paper, there are 3 or 4 very ugly equations or hacks making the graphs look pretty...it's not ideal, but that's the way the field is and has been for a long time. The point being - keep trying different things until it works. If you're close to the original model, great. If not, find out what new feature in your model makes it work, and see if you can find where the original model addressed that problem.

Good luck!

u/pratchett2 · 1 pointr/neuroscience

First, on your broader point, you may want to look for programs that stress first-year rotations. I had a BME background, and now do neuroscience related research for my PhD, and joining a department that didn't force me to immediately join a lab was key. I second neuro_exo, it's hard to imagine a top university that won't have multiple people studying the areas you're interested in.

On your more specific question, what sort of math you should review depends on the sort of neuroscience you're talking about.

If you're referring to theoretical neuroscience/modeling, Dayan and Abbott is a standard reference. It includes the broader neuroscientific context as well as the math, so it's quite rewarding to read.

If you're talking about motor neuroscience/learning, a lot of the ideas derive from linear algebra and controls. Watch a few machine learning lectures, review those topics and you should be set.

A lot of the new ideas/excitement has recently focused on techniques to handle high dimensional datasets (see some of the discussion behind the BRAIN initiative). This gets into some rather complex math pretty quickly, so there's not too much I'd directly recommend, except that you check out recent papers in the field to see what you'd need (there's typically a lot of dynamical systems work here).

Most of the rest of neuroscience does use a fair amount of math, but they what it uses tends to be very vague/operational. You'll do a lot of signal processing, a lot of digital filtering/averaging, and noise reduction will be a major focus. Review your EE class notes to get set for this.

Edit: This was coincident with neuro-exo's response. I agree with everything he/she said.

u/RobotSpaceBrain · 1 pointr/artificial

I have heard good things about this book, I've only read the 1st chapter, but I think it's good for Theoretical Neuroscience:

http://www.amazon.com/Theoretical-Neuroscience-Computational-Mathematical-Modeling/dp/0262541858

u/atomichumbucker · 1 pointr/neurology

hmm, Im confused... For one, it seems like people in this forum do agree with me. Additionally, I think there are enough people here with some background understanding of basic neurology... heck, anyone who has ever read any Oliver Sacks can be interested.

Im not asking that we have a technical discussion of the benefits of a 3 hour versus 4.5 hour window of tPA administration... no, I just want to have a conversation about actual neurological topics.

I am also not say we need to focus on textbook/well-established science. There is a great deal of new evidence and interesting case reports that call into question currently held beliefs. Even anecdotal data that is just interesting for its presentation's sake.


I do not think we are interested in isolating neurology from the basic and behavioural sciences. But I do think we need to at the very least present actual science and not baseless personal theories.

  • However more importantly I think the confusion here can best be summed up by a fundamental lack of understanding about neural physiology on your behalf. You keep mentioning processing power as a function of metabolism and energy as a function of... Well Im guessing you mean ionic potentials). This is simply wrong. A neuron that fires more frequently is not processing it is just firing. Just as a wire that is at a high voltage is not a computer. It is the connections (and aberrant connections) that determine processing capability. A neuron that is more frequently being acted upon will have an increased metabolic demand to maintain its ionic potentials, but this is an effect rather than a cause. Similar to how a computer processor ( a network of micro capacitors) gets hot when being actively used.

  • Speculating on neural computational power is a very active field known as Computational neuroscience. I strongly recommend Dayon and Abbot's "Theoretical Neuroscience" as a guide into this field. Mind you, its heavy in linear algebra and not by any means a beach read. While it is not necessarily neurology, it does become important for neurologists to have an understanding of this and so obviously topics in this field are more than welcome here as well. An example of how this is important is in the development of new prosthesis and the brain/machine interaction. This is also interesting to think about from the pathophysiological stand point in epilepsy and traumatic brain injury.

  • It appears you attend a DO school. I am certain that the MCAT requires at least some basic physiology, and medical schools also require coursework in physiology, cell biology, and neuroscience in their pre-clinical years. I am concerned because some of what you have said in this forum represented a severe misunderstanding of how the nervous system operates. This will come up on your boards, and more importantly, in your future patients.
u/WatchOutRadioactiveM · 1 pointr/gifs

I'm into Ornithology and go birding on a regular basis. I don't know what book I read it in, but rear neck feathers are riiight next to the feathers on it's head, so I wouldn't be surprised if that's what the wiki article is referring to. If I had to guess, I would say Birds Do It, Too, though it may have been mentioned off-hand in The Sibley Guide to Birds.

u/sethben · 1 pointr/animalid

For a general bird guide, I like the Sibley guide (you can use the Sibley East field guide, or the larger Sibley guide for all of North America). There are also those who swear by the National Geographic guide and insist that it is superior.

That should be good to get you started – eventually if you get more into birdwatching, then there are more detailed guides for specific groups.

For insects, I love this massive photographic guide. For a smaller book you can take into the field, the best one I know of is Kaufman. There is also a Kaufman guide for butterflies, specifically.

I'm afraid I don't have any recommendations for mammals, reptiles, or amphibians for your area.

u/hesperaloe · 1 pointr/birding

Is this the edition that includes both the Eastern and Western books?
The Sibley Guide to Birds, 2nd Edition https://www.amazon.com/dp/030795790X/ref=cm_sw_r_other_awd_OM1FwbF8J92QN

u/LGBTerrific · 1 pointr/lgbt

In addition to what LordSariel mentions, there are books and sites you can use to back up your claim. An example of one book that covers animal same-sex behavior is "Biological Exuberance", by Bruce Bagemihl. Also see Wikipedia's article on Homosexual behavior in animals for more references.

Word of caution about this: See NARTH's response for potential refutes to the argument.

u/Legal_Disclaimer · 1 pointr/dayz

Realistically yes.

I read an awesome book which talks about this, though it's covers the broader hypothetical of what would happen if all humans disappeared from the planet tomorrow.

The World Without Us.

u/serenne · 1 pointr/AskReddit

The World Without Us by Alan Weisman painted a pretty interesting picture of what would happen if humanity were to disappear. Our longest lasting achievements were pretty much all the nuclear accidents that would occur without us to maintain them- many things will last a very long time (like bridges), but nature quickly envelopes them all.

u/drunkbynoon · 1 pointr/books

A little off-topic, since this one doesn't speculate on society (its premise is that humanity has suddenly disappeared), but it still gives a good idea of what the world would look like should a catastrophic event wipe out civilization:

The World Without Us

u/pingjoi · 1 pointr/DebateReligion

> 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

u/ethanvolcano21 · 1 pointr/atheism

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.



u/Demigod787 · 1 pointr/jailbreak

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.

u/i_invented_the_ipod · 1 pointr/askscience

I think you mean Climbing Mount Improbable

In any case, yes - the theory of evolution has evolved over time. Darwin didn't have the knowledge of biology (and especially biochemistry) that modern biologists do.

The basic concepts of Darwinian evolution - random variation in populations, natural selection, and speciation over time - are still the same, though.

u/brash · 1 pointr/Documentaries

This was beautifully described and explained by Richard Dawkins in the last chapter of his book Climbing Mount Improbable

u/ses1 · 1 pointr/AskAChristian

What do you mean by Darwinian Evolution?

Most people are sold on evolution based gradual model; where things like the human eye - which are very complex - can evolve if there are many, many tiny steps over millions and millions of years. . Not just tiny improvements all the time, but twists, turns, dead-ends and etc. Richard Dawkins book Climbing Mount Improbable Gives a great overview of this how the seemingly design of living things really isn't.

And it was only those "Crazy Christian Creationists" talked about gaps in the fossil record. They didn't know what they were talking about.....until 1972.

That's when Niles Eldridge and Stephen J Gould were tracing the evolution of trilobites and lands snails; most of the fossil record showed no change through millions of years of strata. That's right, most species are stable for millions of years and then change so rapidly that we rarely if ever see it in the fossil record. see Punctuated Equilibrium

What happens in Punctuated Equilibrium, you see, is that a small sub-population of a species will evolve; gain such an advantage they will take over, the main population dies, and is fossilized thus making it appear that there was no transitions. But.... there is no fossil evidence for it as the theory admits.

So which Darwinian Evolutionary theory are you speaking about when you ask about having secular scientific arguments against them?

Gradualistic evolution isn't supported by the fossil record and neither is Punctuated Equilibrium.











u/stormgasm7 · 1 pointr/INTP

Well, I'm currently reading What Evolution Is by Ernst Mayr. I picked it up for some light reading and because I love the subject. It basically goes into detail about what evolution is (hence the title) and how it has shaped our thoughts as a society.

u/caffeine_buzz · 1 pointr/explainlikeimfive

If you're looking for something that is really easy to read, then I would recommend What evolution is by
Ernst Mayr.

Edit: link

u/informedlate · 1 pointr/atheism
u/Openworldgamer47 · 1 pointr/AskMen

What evolution is by Ernst Mayr.

Even though I forgot almost everything because I have brain damage. Extremely important book that everyone should read. If you've ever been like "Why do I exist" well this is actually the answer to that question.

u/rogersmith25 · 1 pointr/askscience

Sexual Dimorphism is common among many species.

You refer to "gender roles" as the cause, though I don't think that is correct. Gender is a societal construct - it is not societal laws that made women smaller and weaker as sexual dimorphism predates modern society. (It's interesting that some early feminist literature hypothesized that by now women would be physically equal to men, since they too attributed sexual dimorphism to gender roles.) Sexual dimorphism is rooted in biology - it was sexual dimorphism that caused gender roles, not the other way around.

Sexual dimorphism is evolutionarily adaptive. "What Evolution Is" has an interesting chapter on sexual dimorphism as it relates to "harem size". Typically animals that display sexual dimorphism have an uneven mating ratio - the larger the male relative the the female, the more mates he will have in his harem.

Given this evidence, your forth speculation makes sense - that the gap between females and males will diminish with time. But I do not believe it will disappear entirely since much of the female deficit in physical ability can be attributed to sacrifices made in favor of the ability to carry and raise children.

u/Silent_Inquisitor · 1 pointr/atheism

I'd prefer a serious scientific book, tbh, not popular literature.

I would read Darwin but he wrote what he wrote a very long time ago and I'd prefer a modern account. How about this: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0465044263/

?

u/smarmyknowitall · 1 pointr/askscience

My one line advice: take an introductory molecular biology course or genetics course.

If you have a summer, do this:

Read "The 8th Day of Creation" if you want to learn the whole of molecular biology's roots in one book. It is written on the college-educated "lay" reader level and details the history vividly.

Then check out and admire some websites:

genome.ucsc.edu

wormbase.org

flybase.org

start messing around with it and get a feel for the scope of it. Others can add more.

Then, there are some textbooks. I know people who like this one

u/Zamboniman · 1 pointr/DebateAnAtheist

> You haven't explained what's wrong with defining the term this way.

Sure I have. It's an attempt to define something into existence (in a roundabout way). All our evidence shows that what we generally refer to as consciousness is instead an emergent property from the processes in our brains.

I'm sure you must be familiar with some of the work in this area? In any case, here's a couple of quite interesting articles and books on the subject in case not:

https://www.amazon.com/Consciousness-Brain-Deciphering-Codes-Thoughts/dp/0670025437


https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22329762-700-consciousness-on-off-switch-discovered-deep-in-brain/


https://www.researchgate.net/publication/254735485_Consciousness_as_the_Emergent_Property_of_the_Interaction_Between_Brain_Body_and_Environment







(Note the third research article begins with "according to the assumption that consciousness is the emergent property of the interaction between brain, body, and environment," however there is some interesting references and further reading from here as to why that is a reasonable assumption given the evidence.)

Indeed, the concept doesn't even make any sense without this, as it would constitute an unevidenced exception to every analogous circumstance in any context, and wouldn't be explained or have any supporting framework. This is treading dangerously close to special pleading, if not outright crossing the line.

>Face saved by the bell, eh?

Heh. :) Not at all, it's just that these discussions are of more use to those following along but never participating (the vast majority according to most data on IP accesses to forums such as these) and while often interesting are of less utility when limited to just the two of us.

Take care.


Edit: my links disappeared! I'll re-add them, sorry.

u/ynmidk · 1 pointr/MachineLearning

Stanislas Dehaene - Consciousness and the brain - profoundly interesting book that explores the history of, and latest developments in neuroscience & psychology for the purpose of understanding consciousness.

u/Systemo · 1 pointr/biology

The actual title is a little longer, here it is on amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/Evolutionary-Dynamics-Exploring-Equations-Life/dp/0674023382

u/jballanc · 1 pointr/evolution

If you like game theory, you will absolutely love Evolutionary Dynamics: Exploring the Equations of Life. This is a groundbreaking work by Martin Nowak, arguably the leading researcher in Evolutionary Theory today.

u/nana_nana_batman · 1 pointr/Entomology

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.

u/TheBB · 1 pointr/AskReddit
u/alt_curious · 1 pointr/forwardsfromgrandma

Lol.

"Look at all the sources of information that I haven't read or even bothered to cite any of their relevance!"

Naming the title of a book or journal doesn't indicate that its contents support your argument. I'll actually give you things you can read, AND tell you what they're about and how they relate to my point.

Enjoy. Dunce.

Humans can be genetically categorized into five racial groups, corresponding to traditional races. Source: http://pritchardlab.stanford.edu/publications/pdfs/RosenbergEtAl02.pdf
Genetic analysis “supports the traditional racial groups classification.” Source: http://psychology.uwo.ca/faculty/rushtonpdfs/PPPL1.pdf
“Human genetic variation is geographically structured” and corresponds with race. Source: http://www.nature.com/ng/journal/v36/n11s/full/ng1435.html
Race can be determined via genetics with certainty for >99.8% of individuals. Source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15625622
Oral bacteria can be used to determine race. Source: http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-10-oral-bacteria-fingerprint-mouth.html
Race can be determined via brain scans. Source: http://www.cell.com/current-biology/abstract/S0960-9822%2815%2900671-5
96-97% of Whites have no African ancestry. Source: http://www.theroot.com/articles/history/2013/02/how_mixed_are_african_americans.3.html
97% of Whites have no Black ancestry whatsoever. Source: http://www.unz.com/isteve/nyt-white-Black-a-murky-distinction-grows-still-murkier/
There was minimal gene flow between archaic Europeans and Asians. Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/20/science/20adapt.html
Common-sense racial categories have biological meaning. Source: http://www.ln.edu.hk/philoso/staff/sesardic/Race2.pdf
A substantial amount of the human genome has been subjected to natural selection since the races diverged. Source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1317879/
With 160 short gene sequences, race can be determined with 100% accuracy for Whites, Asians, and Africans. Source: http://www.cell.com/ajhg/abstract/S0002-9297%2807%2960574-6
Principal continent of origin (race) can be determined with 87% accuracy even for highly mixed populations. Source: http://www.cell.com/ajhg/abstract/S0002-9297%2807%2960574-6
“It is inaccurate to state that race is biologically meaningless.” Source: http://www.nature.com/ng/journal/v36/n11s/full/ng1435.html
Race is biologically real and represents “genetic clusters” of variation. Source: http://stx.sagepub.com/content/30/2/67.abstract
“Empirical structure within human genetic variation … resembles continentally based racial classifications”. Source: http://stx.sagepub.com/content/30/2/67.abstract
“Recent research in genetics demonstrates that certain racial, and also ethnic, categories have a biological basis in statistically discernible clusters of alleles.” Source: http://stx.sagepub.com/content/30/2/67.abstract
“Numerous human population genetic studies have come to the identical conclusion that genetic differentiation is greatest when defined on a continental basis.” Source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC139378/
Genetic analysis of race corresponds with self-identification more than 99% of the time. Source: http://stx.sagepub.com/content/30/2/67.abstract
Races are human subspecies. Source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19695787
The “social constructionist account of race lacks biological reality”. Source: http://stx.sagepub.com/content/30/2/67.abstract
Race can be determined from fingerprints. Source: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ajpa.22869/full
For 99.86% of individuals, genetic analysis of race matches self-identification. Source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1196372/
Predefined ethnic/racial labels are “highly informative” about genetic identity. Source: https://web.stanford.edu/group/rosenberglab/papers/popstruct.pdf
Over 2000 genes have been subject to recent (post out-of-Africa) evolution. Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/20/science/20adapt.html
The concept of race existed in ancient Greece, Rome, Egypt, China, India, and Arabia. Source: http://www.amazon.com/Race-The-Reality-Human-Differences/dp/0813340861
Racial classification has genetic significance. Source: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bies.10315/abstract
Racial identity is real and is hidden in correlations between different traits. Source: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bies.10315/abstract
With enough data points, an individual will never be closer related to someone of another race than someone of their own race. Source: http://www.genetics.org/content/176/1/351
An individual’s geographic origin can be determined from their genes “with remarkable accuracy”. Source: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v368/n6470/abs/368455a0.html

u/tobleromay · 1 pointr/HumansBeingBros

>End of the day both both sides of the argument have evidence.

No they don't. One side has one crappy study from 1972. Here's a list of sources supporting the other side:

Humans can be genetically categorized into five racial groups, corresponding to traditional races. Source: http://pritchardlab.stanford.edu/publications/pdfs/RosenbergEtAl02.pdf

Genetic analysis “supports the traditional racial groups classification.” Source: http://psychology.uwo.ca/faculty/rushtonpdfs/PPPL1.pdf

“Human genetic variation is geographically structured” and corresponds with race. Source: http://www.nature.com/ng/journal/v36/n11s/full/ng1435.html

Race can be determined via genetics with certainty for >99.8% of individuals. Source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15625622

Oral bacteria can be used to determine race. Source: http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-10-oral-bacteria-fingerprint-mouth.html

Race can be determined via brain scans. Source: http://www.cell.com/current-biology/abstract/S0960-9822%2815%2900671-5

96-97% of Whites have no African ancestry. Source: http://www.theroot.com/articles/history/2013/02/how_mixed_are_african_americans.3.html

97% of Whites have no Black ancestry whatsoever. Source: http://www.unz.com/isteve/nyt-white-Black-a-murky-distinction-grows-still-murkier/

There was minimal gene flow between archaic Europeans and Asians. Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/20/science/20adapt.html

Common-sense racial categories have biological meaning. Source: http://www.ln.edu.hk/philoso/staff/sesardic/Race2.pdf

A substantial amount of the human genome has been subjected to natural selection since the races diverged. Source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1317879/

With 160 short gene sequences, race can be determined with 100% accuracy for Whites, Asians, and Africans. Source: http://www.cell.com/ajhg/abstract/S0002-9297%2807%2960574-6

Principal continent of origin (race) can be determined with 87% accuracy even for highly mixed populations. Source: http://www.cell.com/ajhg/abstract/S0002-9297%2807%2960574-6

“It is inaccurate to state that race is biologically meaningless.” Source: http://www.nature.com/ng/journal/v36/n11s/full/ng1435.html

Race is biologically real and represents “genetic clusters” of variation. Source: http://stx.sagepub.com/content/30/2/67.abstract

“Empirical structure within human genetic variation … resembles continentally based racial classifications”. Source: http://stx.sagepub.com/content/30/2/67.abstract

“Recent research in genetics demonstrates that certain racial, and also ethnic, categories have a biological basis in statistically discernible clusters of alleles.” Source: http://stx.sagepub.com/content/30/2/67.abstract

“Numerous human population genetic studies have come to the identical conclusion that genetic differentiation is greatest when defined on a continental basis.” Source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC139378/

Genetic analysis of race corresponds with self-identification more than 99% of the time. Source: http://stx.sagepub.com/content/30/2/67.abstract

The “social constructionist account of race lacks biological reality”. Source: http://stx.sagepub.com/content/30/2/67.abstract

Race can be determined from fingerprints. Source: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ajpa.22869/full

For 99.86% of individuals, genetic analysis of race matches self-identification. Source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1196372/

Predefined ethnic/racial labels are “highly informative” about genetic identity. Source: https://web.stanford.edu/group/rosenberglab/papers/popstruct.pdf

Over 2000 genes have been subject to recent (post out-of-Africa) evolution. Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/20/science/20adapt.html

The concept of race existed in ancient Greece, Rome, Egypt, China, India, and Arabia. Source: http://www.amazon.com/Race-The-Reality-Human-Differences/dp/0813340861

Racial classification has genetic significance. Source: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bies.10315/abstract

Racial identity is real and is hidden in correlations between different traits. Source: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bies.10315/abstract

With enough data points, an individual will never be closer related to someone of another race than someone of their own race. Source: http://www.genetics.org/content/176/1/351

An individual’s geographic origin can be determined from their genes “with remarkable accuracy”. Source: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v368/n6470/abs/368455a0.html

>So you believe which research makes you happy, and I’ll believe the research that makes me happy.

Your "research" gets minorities killed.

u/WrathOfAnon · 1 pointr/TheRightCantMeme

> Racism is a totally irrational position entirely unsupported by facts. Biologists, anthropologists, and sociologists all agree that race is more or less a cultural construct

Absolute lie of colossal proportions. Racial self-identification can even be predicted with 99% accuracy in a country as mixed as the US with access to the genetic analysis of the subject in question. Different racial group have as much in common with each other as totally different breeds of dog or bird. The fact that racial categories that have been settled upon are "socially constructed" is irrelevant; most concepts in science are also and, like race, they are still accurately predictive of human behaviour

Humans can be genetically categorized into five racial groups, corresponding to traditional races. Source:http://pritchardlab.stanford.edu/publications/pdfs/RosenbergEtAl02.pdf

Genetic analysis “supports the traditional racial groups classification.” Source:http://psychology.uwo.ca/faculty/rushtonpdfs/PPPL1.pdf
“Human genetic variation is geographically structured” and corresponds with race. Source:http://www.nature.com/ng/journal/v36/n11s/full/ng1435.html

Race can be determined via genetics with certainty for >99.8% of individuals. Source:http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15625622

Oral bacteria can be used to determine race. Source:http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-10-oral-bacteria-fingerprint-mouth.html

Race can be determined via brain scans. Source:http://www.cell.com/current-biology/abstract/S0960-9822%2815%2900671-5

96-97% of Whites have no African ancestry. Source:http://www.theroot.com/articles/history/2013/02/how_mixed_are_african_americans.3.html

97% of Whites have no Black ancestry whatsoever. Source:http://www.unz.com/isteve/nyt-white-Black-a-murky-distinction-grows-still-murkier/

There was minimal gene flow between archaic Europeans and Asians. Source:http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/20/science/20adapt.html

Common-sense racial categories have biological meaning. Source:http://www.ln.edu.hk/philoso/staff/sesardic/Race2.pdf

A substantial amount of the human genome has been subjected to natural selection since the races diverged. Source:http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1317879/

With 160 short gene sequences, race can be determined with 100% accuracy for Whites, Asians, and Africans. Source:http://www.cell.com/ajhg/abstract/S0002-9297%2807%2960574-6

Principal continent of origin (race) can be determined with 87% accuracy even for highly mixed populations. Source:http://www.cell.com/ajhg/abstract/S0002-9297%2807%2960574-6

“It is inaccurate to state that race is biologically meaningless.” Source:http://www.nature.com/ng/journal/v36/n11s/full/ng1435.html

Race is biologically real and represents “genetic clusters” of variation. Source:http://stx.sagepub.com/content/30/2/67.abstract

“Empirical structure within human genetic variation … resembles continentally based racial classifications”. Source:http://stx.sagepub.com/content/30/2/67.abstract

“Recent research in genetics demonstrates that certain racial, and also ethnic, categories have a biological basis in statistically discernible clusters of alleles.” Source:http://stx.sagepub.com/content/30/2/67.abstract

“Numerous human population genetic studies have come to the identical conclusion that genetic differentiation is greatest when defined on a continental basis.” Source:http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC139378/

Genetic analysis of race corresponds with self-identification more than 99% of the time. Source:http://stx.sagepub.com/content/30/2/67.abstract

Races are human subspecies. Source:http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19695787

The “social constructionist account of race lacks biological reality”. Source: http://stx.sagepub.com/content/30/2/67.abstract

Race can be determined from fingerprints. Source:http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ajpa.22869/full

For 99.86% of individuals, genetic analysis of race matches self-identification. Source:http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1196372/

Predefined ethnic/racial labels are “highly informative” about genetic identity. Source:https://web.stanford.edu/group/rosenberglab/papers/popstruct.pdf

Over 2000 genes have been subject to recent (post out-of-Africa) evolution. Source:http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/20/science/20adapt.html

The concept of race existed in ancient Greece, Rome, Egypt, China, India, and Arabia. Source: http://www.amazon.com/Race-The-Reality-Human-Differences/dp/0813340861

Racial classification has genetic significance. Source:http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bies.10315/abstract

Racial identity is real and is hidden in correlations between different traits. Source:http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bies.10315/abstract

With enough data points, an individual will never be closer related to someone of another race than someone of their own race. Source: http://www.genetics.org/content/176/1/351

An individual’s geographic origin can be determined from their genes “with remarkable accuracy”. Source:http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v368/n6470/abs/368455a0.html

> some minor exceptions which tend to disappear after a couple generations of intermarriage.

This is laughably irrelevant and shows that you do not have any third level education in anything remotely scientific. Just because interbreeding is possible, doesn't mean that the breeds themselves don't exist. I've had to beat down a number of clueless retards like you on this topic before, but this takes the cake as by far the stupidest take I've ever heard

You lose

u/SpermathecaeSmoothie · 1 pointr/Entomology

The best thing you can do is become familiar with the terminology. This book was useful for looking up various nomenclatures on certain body parts or regions, like which veins are which on wings. Otherwise This book had some good keys in it, but it's primarily description based, and many other keys I've used beyond it are this way as well. For the book, it was convenient that it had many pictures to reference in earlier chapters if you wanted some visual confirmation you were on the right path in the key. Otherwise, I'd suggest getting with the professor and asking for sources they might suggest to become better with the terminology.

The keys I've used with as many pictures as descriptions were constrained to species-level ID of one insect. There might be some sources you can find with some internet searches, though those aren't so easy to find all the time.
Bugguide.net might be a resource you can consider, though it doesn't act as a key, and is more useful if you are already familiar with the different types of insects and their classifications.

u/biologicus99 · 1 pointr/ApplyingToCollege



Biology is nothing without chemistry so you need to know the basics of chemistry as well. My favourite book is the Color Atlas of Biochemistry by Jan Koolman, K. Rohm.

Another very useful book is Biochemistry (Lippincott Illustrated Reviews Series) by R. Harvey.

Many past participants recommend the Lehninger Principles of Biochemistry, however, this book may be too detailed for olympiads.

GENETICS TEXTBOOKS|


Genetics: Analysis and Principles (WCB Cell & Molecular Biology) by Brooker presents an experimental approach to understanding genetics and what I like most is that there are plenty of problems with explanations and answers. Another good textbook for genetics is Genetics: From Genes to Genomes, 5th edition by Hartwell. Genetics: From Genes to Genomes is a cutting-edge, introductory genetics text authored by an unparalleled author team, including Nobel Prize winner, Leland Hartwell.

GENERAL BIOLOGY TEXTBOOKS|


It is not a secret that the Bible of Biology is Campbell Biology (11th Edition). It is a good book and it covers all fundamental biology topics, nevertheless, some topics are discussed only concisely so some good books in addition to Campbell’s could come in handy.

HUMAN ANATOMY |TEXTBOOKS


For human body anatomy and physiology great books are Human Physiology: An Integrated Approach (7th Edition) by Dee Unglaub Silverthorn or  Vander’s Human Physiology

MOLECULAR AND CELL BIOLOGY|TEXTBOOKS


My top choice for molecular biology is Molecular Biology of the Cell by Bruce Alberts, et al. This is book is a big one, a hard one, an interesting one, a useful one. From my point of view, current and upcoming IBOs are focusing on molecular and cell biology because these fields are developing so rapidly and thus these branches of biology are perfect source for olympiad problems. So try to read it and understand it. If you want something cheaper than Alberts but equally useful, try Molecular Biology of the Cell, Fifth Edition: The Problems Book

PLANT BIOLOGY|TEXTBOOKS


Many past biology olympiad questions contain quite a lot of problems about plant anatomy and physiology. Thus, I suggest to read Stern’s Introductory Plant Biology.  Another amazing book for plant biology is Biology of Plants by Peter H. Raven, Ray F. Evert, Susan E. Eichhorn.

​

TEXTBOOKS FOR AND PROBLEM SOLVING|TECHNIQUES


Science competitions test a student’s level of knowledge, power of scientific reasoning, and analytical thinking outside of the regular school curriculum. A systematic approach and smart study regimen are both required to get good results in science competitions. This is where my book How To Prepare for the Biology Olympiad And Science Competitions by Martyna Petrulyte comes into the picture.

u/Alchisme · 1 pointr/Entomology

I'd like to add that you should definitely get a field guide to insects that is relevant to your area. Being able to ID what you catch at least to order or family will make the whole thing more enjoyable and will help you learn what you are catching. If you can afford it this is a FANTASTIC book with a ton of photos that is appropriate to your area.

u/Alantha · 1 pointr/AskScienceDiscussion

Here are a few to get you started, some maybe be textbooks or textbook like, but they're incredibly informative:

Insects:

u/awesome_hats · 1 pointr/genomics

For which one? CRISPR? Well you won't be able to understand the details until you have a good grasp of molecular biology. But molecular biology itself is a huge area. I would like to give you recommendations but it's really hard with your interests so broad.

It is like asking for book recommendations on Linear Algebra: there are tons and some focus on numerical methods, others on eigenvalues, others on decomposition methods like SVD, others on applications in machine learning, etc.

Maybe start with something like this:

https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/0815344325/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_dp_ss_1/187-9306447-5023949?pf_rd_m=A3DWYIK6Y9EEQB&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe&pf_rd_r=0A3FAK9C4CRAFZQTEQ4H&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_p=1977604502&pf_rd_i=0815341059

or this

https://www.amazon.com/Molecular-Biology-Robert-Weaver/dp/0073525324/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1479421339&sr=8-2&keywords=Molecular+Biology%3A+Robert+Weaver

for molecular biology.

For introductory genetics, pretty much any undergraduate level biology or biochemistry textbook will help you understand the basics of transcription, translation, genes, heredity, etc. Once you have a thorough understanding of what a gene is, what a regulatory region is, what epigenetics is, what types of mutations occur etc. then you'll have a good idea of which specific questions to ask to explore a certain topic in more detail.

I would also spend time on the wikipedia pages and other sources reading about the different sequencing methods that are central to genetics. Look up Sanger sequencing and explore some of the next-generation-sequencing (NGS) techniques now available. Fully understanding these will also require knowledge of biochemistry, such as phosphodiester bonds, and basic biology techniques and physics such as electrophoresis and fluorescence.

Understanding and diving into CRISPR, genetic engineering, synthetic biology, etc. will require a thorough understanding of the above, and then more detailed knowledge on gene expression, how it is manipulated, about things like plasmids, retroviruses and their molecular machinery, etc.

Then there are people who develop algorithms for bioinformatics that probably know little to none of the above and don't need to for their day to day work; the answer is in general "it depends".

u/GlorifiedPlumber · 1 pointr/AskEngineers

I kept them (the engineering ones at least). At great personal cost though.

Every now and then I hit one or two of the key upper level books specially within heat transfer, fluids, thermo, and process design. I even had to break out a math book once or twice. But, I work a design job where such references will pop up. If I was running a process or running a plant I doubt I would have had the need.

Also, your text books aren't worth NEARLY what you think they are... new editions pop up all the times, and even a year or two will render their value on the market to "pretty low" despite the content of course being super useful.

Anyways... I kept mine, and my wife made me build a large built in bookshelf to house them and then put me on a book in/book out diet because I have so many god damn books. I actually have two degrees (Biochemistry too) and I had all my biochem books. Even though I have ZERO need for them, getting rid of MOST of them was REALLY hard, despite the information not even being accurate anymore (degree was in 2003).

Now my Lehninger's Biochemistry book (https://www.amazon.com/Lehninger-Principles-Biochemistry-David-Nelson/dp/1464126119/) and Albert's The Cell (https://www.amazon.com/Molecular-Biology-Sixth-Bruce-Alberts/dp/0815344325/) are used as "rug flatteners" for our area rugs because they are so heavy.

She's a vet... and one of the first things she did was part with all her vet books except for a few.

u/e-l-r · 1 pointr/labrats
u/SickSalamander · 1 pointr/botany

The Flora of the Pacific Northwest is the book you want. It has full keys. Picture guides specifically related to the northwest (like this and this) can be used to supplement this, but FPN is the best authority for most of that region.

"Wildflowers of North America" and Newcomb's Guide and things like that are not going to help you at all. They mostly cover Eastern species and there is rather little botanical overlap between there and the Pacific Northwest.

u/215patient420 · 1 pointr/Marijuana

From R.C. Clarkes Marijuana Botany: Propagation and Breeding of Distintive Cannabis
"Seeds are allowed to dry completely and all vegetable debris is removed before storage. This prevents spoilage caused by molds and other fungi. Seeds preserved for future germination are thoroughly air dried in paper envelopes or cloth sacks and stored in air-tight containers in a cool, dark, dry place. Freezing may also dry out seeds and cause them to crack. If seeds are carefully stored, they remain viable for a number of years. As a batch of seeds ages, fewer and fewer of them will germinate, but even after 5 to 6 years a small percentage of the seeds usually still germinate. Old batches of seeds also tend to germinate slowly (up to 5 weeks). This means that a batch of seeds for cultivation might be stored for a longer time if the initial sample is large enough to provide sufficient seeds for another generation. If a strain is to be preserved, it is necessary to grow and reproduce it every three years, so that enough viable seeds are always available."

This being said, virtually ALL seedbanks use a fridge/freezer for long-term storage. Humidity is the big evil in a fridge... After they are well dried, pack them into the smallest opaque/airtight container that will hold them. If you are going to put them in the fridge/freezer, add a silica packet or rice as a dessicant inside each sealed container.

sidenote: Hermaphrodites tendencies are passed through genetics, but often show after the plant is stressed. Receiving light during the dark cycle and heat are the 2 most common causes. though some will start kicking the male flowers out late into flowering to try and ensure survival of the species. Starting with seeds from a hermi will mean all future plants have a higher than normal chance of developing this trait. If you're just learning, probably not a bad place to start... If you were wanting to make $$$ or a career out of this I would buy/obtain better genetics it will save you a million headaches.

RC Clarkes Hemp diseases and pests is another great book

u/Dvout_agnostic · 1 pointr/Futurology

I don't know. Read the Sixth Extinction - humans have been driving animal species to extinction since long before capitalism or even written history. Capitalism probably just accelerated what we were already doing.
https://www.amazon.com/Sixth-Extinction-Unnatural-History/dp/1250062187/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1541174001&sr=8-1&keywords=the+sixth+extinction

u/Goosebaby · 1 pointr/investing

I don't understand what is nutty about questioning if the US will continue to grow over the next several decades.

The US is facing serious long term problems with demographics, debt, deflation, and income inequality. There's a robust case to be made for pessimism, even though people in this sub don't want to hear it.

EDIT: Even more serious than what I mentioned above is global warming, which I think will present serious geopolitical instability over the coming decades. Plus, our legacy as the human race is to be the cause of the sixth mass extinction on the planet. As plants and animals around the world go extinct, who knows what the impact will be on ecosystems, cropland, forests, fish, etc. This is bad, and it's happening.

u/bombchron · 0 pointsr/COents

That being said, this is the best book ever written in regards to the cultivation of cannabis.

http://www.amazon.com/Marijuana-Botany-Advanced-Propagation-Distinctive/dp/091417178X

u/myvegandaily · 0 pointsr/climateskeptics

Thanks for sharing and our consumption has to do with it too. Eating animal products is a form of consumption. Like consuming plastic, or a new Iphone every year. It all affects the balance of nature which is about to tip over. Check out this book. There are a lot more like this. I am studying this in one of my classes for my masters degree.
https://www.amazon.com/Sixth-Extinction-Unnatural-History/dp/1250062187/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1487629182&sr=8-1&keywords=6th+extinction

u/Emby · 0 pointsr/AskReddit

It's a misinterpretation to think that the only purpose of sex is child production. Sexuality is a form of communication for many animals, including humans--and from what we see elsewhere in the animal kingdom, heterosexuality is not necessarily the default. Many other species exhibit bisexuality and homosexuality, and while such individuals may not go on to reproduce, they will continue to benefit their social groups and rear their offspring.

Consider bonobos, one of our closest relatives on the evolutionary tree, and a species which engages regularly in bisexual orgies as a means of social discourse. In comparison, our strict monogamous heterosexual ideals may be the more "unnatural" of the two lifestyles.

Suggested reading, if you're still curious: Sex at Dawn and Biological Exuberance.

u/willies_hat · 0 pointsr/AskReddit
u/JamesCole · 0 pointsr/philosophy

IMO, if you're interested in philosophy, your first port of call should be to get an understanding of evolution. It's surprisingly relevant to so many topics in philosophy, and I think so many misunderstandings that occur in philosophy come from not really appreciating an evolutionary viewpoint. There's sure to be quite a few people who'd disagree with me on this.

I'd recommend these books, all of which are quite readable and have a somewhat philosophic bent:

Climbing Mount Improbable or The Blind Watchmaker
by Richard Dawkins

Darwin's Dangerous Idea by Daniel C. Dennett

u/tarmigantus · -1 pointsr/politics

race is deeper than skin:

Genetic analysis “supports the traditional racial groups classification.” Source: http://psychology.uwo.ca/faculty/rushtonpdfs/PPPL1.pdf
“Human genetic variation is geographically structured” and corresponds with race. Source: http://www.nature.com/ng/journal/v36/n11s/full/ng1435.html
Race can be determined via genetics with certainty for >99.8% of individuals. Source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15625622
Oral bacteria can be used to determine race. Source: http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-10-oral-bacteria-fingerprint-mouth.html
Race can be determined via brain scans. Source: http://www.cell.com/current-biology/abstract/S0960-9822%2815%2900671-5
96-97% of Whites have no African ancestry. Source: http://www.theroot.com/articles/history/2013/02/how_mixed_are_african_americans.3.html
97% of Whites have no Black ancestry whatsoever. Source: http://www.unz.com/isteve/nyt-white-Black-a-murky-distinction-grows-still-murkier/
There was minimal gene flow between archaic Europeans and Asians. Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/20/science/20adapt.html
Common-sense racial categories have biological meaning. Source: http://www.ln.edu.hk/philoso/staff/sesardic/Race2.pdf
A substantial amount of the human genome has been subjected to natural selection since the races diverged. Source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1317879/
With 160 short gene sequences, race can be determined with 100% accuracy for Whites, Asians, and Africans. Source: http://www.cell.com/ajhg/abstract/S0002-9297%2807%2960574-6
Principal continent of origin (race) can be determined with 87% accuracy even for highly mixed populations. Source: http://www.cell.com/ajhg/abstract/S0002-9297%2807%2960574-6
“It is inaccurate to state that race is biologically meaningless.” Source: http://www.nature.com/ng/journal/v36/n11s/full/ng1435.html
Race is biologically real and represents “genetic clusters” of variation. Source: http://stx.sagepub.com/content/30/2/67.abstract
“Empirical structure within human genetic variation … resembles continentally based racial classifications”. Source: http://stx.sagepub.com/content/30/2/67.abstract
“Recent research in genetics demonstrates that certain racial, and also ethnic, categories have a biological basis in statistically discernible clusters of alleles.” Source: http://stx.sagepub.com/content/30/2/67.abstract
“Numerous human population genetic studies have come to the identical conclusion that genetic differentiation is greatest when defined on a continental basis.” Source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC139378/
Genetic analysis of race corresponds with self-identification more than 99% of the time. Source: http://stx.sagepub.com/content/30/2/67.abstract
Races are human subspecies. Source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19695787
The “social constructionist account of race lacks biological reality”. Source: http://stx.sagepub.com/content/30/2/67.abstract
Race can be determined from fingerprints. Source: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ajpa.22869/full
For 99.86% of individuals, genetic analysis of race matches self-identification. Source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1196372/
Predefined ethnic/racial labels are “highly informative” about genetic identity. Source: https://web.stanford.edu/group/rosenberglab/papers/popstruct.pdf
Over 2000 genes have been subject to recent (post out-of-Africa) evolution. Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/20/science/20adapt.html
The concept of race existed in ancient Greece, Rome, Egypt, China, India, and Arabia. Source: http://www.amazon.com/Race-The-Reality-Human-Differences/dp/0813340861
Racial classification has genetic significance. Source: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bies.10315/abstract
Racial identity is real and is hidden in correlations between different traits. Source: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bies.10315/abstract
With enough data points, an individual will never be closer related to someone of another race than someone of their own race. Source: http://www.genetics.org/content/176/1/351
An individual’s geographic origin can be determined from their genes “with remarkable accuracy”. Source: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v368/n6470/abs/368455a0.html

u/ViIsMyWaifu · -2 pointsr/treedibles

Once you've read https://www.amazon.com/Marijuana-Botany-Advanced-Propagation-Distinctive/dp/091417178X and Hashish you can talk out of your ass.

u/bifflewall · -3 pointsr/INTP

More diverse neighborhoods have lower social cohesion. Source: http://www.citylab.com/housing/2013/11/paradox-diverse-communities/7614/

Diversity increases psychotic experiences. Source: http://bjp.rcpsych.org/content/201/4/282.full

Diversity increases social adversity. Source: http://bjp.rcpsych.org/content/201/4/282.full

A 10% increase in diversity doubles the chance of psychotic episodes. Source: http://bjp.rcpsych.org/content/201/4/282.full

Diversity reduces voter registration, political efficacy, charity, and number of friendships. Source: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9477.2007.00176.x/abstract

Ethnic diversity reduces happiness and quality of life. Source: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9477.2007.00176.x/abstract

Diversity reduces trust, civic participation, and civic health. Source: http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2007/08/05/the_downside_of_diversity/?page=full

Ethnic diversity harms health for Hispanics and Blacks. Source: https://academic.oup.com/jpubhealth/article/38/3/441/2239811

Diversity primarily hurts the dominant ethnic group. Source: http://www.theindependentaustralian.com.au/node/57

Ethnic diversity reduces concern for the environment. Source: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10640-012-9619-6

Ethnic diversity within 80 meters of a person reduces social trust. Source: http://curis.ku.dk/ws/files/130251172/Dinesen_S_nderskov_Ethnic_Diversity_and_Social_Trust_Forthcoming_ASR.pdf#page=2

Ethnic diversity directly reduces strong communities. Source: https://www.msu.edu/~zpneal/publications/neal-diversitysoc.pdf

Ethnically homogeneous neighborhoods are beneficial for health. Source: https://www.mailman.columbia.edu/public-health-now/news/living-ethnically-homogenous-area-boosts-health-minority-seniors

In America, more diverse cities have more segregation. Source: http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-most-diverse-cities-are-often-the-most-segregated/

Homogeneous polities have less crime, less civil war, and more altruism. Source: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10464-013-9608-0

States with little diversity have more democracy, less corruption, and less inequality. Source: http://www.theindependentaustralian.com.au/node/57

There is extensive evidence people prefer others who are genetically similar. Source: http://psychology.uwo.ca/faculty/rushtonpdfs/n&n%202005-1.pdf

Borders, not multiculturalism, reduce intergroup violence. Source: http://arxiv.org/abs/1110.1409

Diversity reduces charity and volunteering. Source: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9477.2007.00176.x/abstract

People who live in diverse communities rather than homogenous ones are poorer and less educated. Source: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9477.2007.00176.x/abstract

Black people trust their neighbors less than do White people. Source: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9477.2007.00176.x/abstract

Spanish speakers trust their neighbors less than do English speakers. Source: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9477.2007.00176.x/abstract

Asians trust their neighbors less than do White people. Source: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9477.2007.00176.x/abstract

Ethnically diverse workplaces have lower cohesion, lower satisfaction and higher turnover. Source: http://jom.sagepub.com/content/23/3/239.short?rss=1&ssource=mfc

Ethnic diversity reduces social trust. Source: http://www.nber.org/papers/w5677

Ethnic diversity among members of the same race reduces infrastructure quality, charity, and loan repayment. Source: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9477.2007.00176.x/abstract

Diversity of any sort makes people more likely to defect in game theoretic scenarios. Source: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9477.2007.00176.x/abstract

Homogeneous military units have less desertion than diverse units. Source: http://www.nber.org/papers/w8627

Diversity correlates with low GDP. Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/05/16/a-revealing-map-of-the-worlds-most-and-least-ethnically-diverse-countries/

Ethnic homogeneity correlates with strong democracy. Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/05/16/a-revealing-map-of-the-worlds-most-and-least-ethnically-diverse-countries/

Genetic diversity causes societal conflict. Source: https://www.nber.org/papers/w21079

Ethnic diversity causally decreases social cohesion. Source: http://esr.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2015/08/20/esr.jcv081.full

On race:

Humans can be genetically categorized into five racial groups, corresponding to traditional races. Source: http://pritchardlab.stanford.edu/publications/pdfs/RosenbergEtAl02.pdf

Genetic analysis “supports the traditional racial groups classification.” Source: http://psychology.uwo.ca/faculty/rushtonpdfs/PPPL1.pdf

“Human genetic variation is geographically structured” and corresponds with race. Source: http://www.nature.com/ng/journal/v36/n11s/full/ng1435.html

Race can be determined via genetics with certainty for >99.8% of individuals. Source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15625622

Oral bacteria can be used to determine race. Source: http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-10-oral-bacteria-fingerprint-mouth.html

Race can be determined via brain scans. Source: http://www.cell.com/current-biology/abstract/S0960-9822%2815%2900671-5

96-97% of Whites have no African ancestry. Source: http://www.theroot.com/articles/history/2013/02/how_mixed_are_african_americans.3.html

97% of Whites have no Black ancestry whatsoever. Source: http://www.unz.com/isteve/nyt-white-Black-a-murky-distinction-grows-still-murkier/

There was minimal gene flow between archaic Europeans and Asians. Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/20/science/20adapt.html

Common-sense racial categories have biological meaning. Source: http://www.ln.edu.hk/philoso/staff/sesardic/Race2.pdf

A substantial amount of the human genome has been subjected to natural selection since the races diverged. Source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1317879/

With 160 short gene sequences, race can be determined with 100% accuracy for Whites, Asians, and Africans. Source: http://www.cell.com/ajhg/abstract/S0002-9297%2807%2960574-6

Principal continent of origin (race) can be determined with 87% accuracy even for highly mixed populations. Source: http://www.cell.com/ajhg/abstract/S0002-9297%2807%2960574-6

“It is inaccurate to state that race is biologically meaningless.” Source: http://www.nature.com/ng/journal/v36/n11s/full/ng1435.html

Race is biologically real and represents “genetic clusters” of variation. Source: http://stx.sagepub.com/content/30/2/67.abstract

“Empirical structure within human genetic variation … resembles continentally based racial classifications”. Source: http://stx.sagepub.com/content/30/2/67.abstract

“Recent research in genetics demonstrates that certain racial, and also ethnic, categories have a biological basis in statistically discernible clusters of alleles.” Source: http://stx.sagepub.com/content/30/2/67.abstract

“Numerous human population genetic studies have come to the identical conclusion that genetic differentiation is greatest when defined on a continental basis.” Source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC139378/

Genetic analysis of race corresponds with self-identification more than 99% of the time. Source: http://stx.sagepub.com/content/30/2/67.abstract

Races are human subspecies. Source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19695787
The “social constructionist account of race lacks biological reality”. Source: http://stx.sagepub.com/content/30/2/67.abstract

Race can be determined from fingerprints. Source: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ajpa.22869/full

For 99.86% of individuals, genetic analysis of race matches self-identification. Source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1196372/

Predefined ethnic/racial labels are “highly informative” about genetic identity. Source: https://web.stanford.edu/group/rosenberglab/papers/popstruct.pdf

Over 2000 genes have been subject to recent (post out-of-Africa) evolution. Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/20/science/20adapt.html

Racial classification has genetic significance. Source: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bies.10315/abstract

Racial identity is real and is hidden in correlations between different traits. Source: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bies.10315/abstract

With enough data points, an individual will never be closer related to someone of another race than someone of their own race. Source: http://www.genetics.org/content/176/1/351

An individual’s geographic origin can be determined from their genes “with remarkable accuracy”. Source: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v368/n6470/abs/368455a0.html

100% (324/324) of Chinese researchers believe race is biologically real. Source: http://collegium.hrvatsko-antropolosko-drustvo.hr/_doc/Coll.Antropol.28%282004%292_907-921.pdf

The concept of race existed in ancient Greece, Rome, Egypt, China, India, and Arabia. Source: http://www.amazonE.com/Race-The-Reality-Human-Differences/dp/0813340861

u/typesinaesthetic · -4 pointsr/ComedyCemetery

I have family of my own in medicine and forensics and they will confide that race is a reality, though the Zeitgeist of our age wishes much that it wasn't so.

Perhaps this admittedly-spammy trove of evidence will convince you...

BOATLOAD OF LINKS CONCERNING VERACITY OF RACE CONCEPT ALERT 🔔:

Genetic analysis “supports the traditional racial groups classification.” Source: http://psychology.uwo.ca/faculty/rushtonpdfs/PPPL1.pdf
“Human genetic variation is geographically structured” and corresponds with race. Source: http://www.nature.com/ng/journal/v36/n11s/full/ng1435.html
Race can be determined via genetics with certainty for >99.8% of individuals. Source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15625622
Oral bacteria can be used to determine race. Source: http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-10-oral-bacteria-fingerprint-mouth.html
Race can be determined via brain scans. Source: http://www.cell.com/current-biology/abstract/S0960-9822%2815%2900671-5
96-97% of Whites have no African ancestry. Source: http://www.theroot.com/articles/history/2013/02/how_mixed_are_african_americans.3.html
97% of Whites have no Black ancestry whatsoever. Source: http://www.unz.com/isteve/nyt-white-Black-a-murky-distinction-grows-still-murkier/
There was minimal gene flow between archaic Europeans and Asians. Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/20/science/20adapt.html
Common-sense racial categories have biological meaning. Source: http://www.ln.edu.hk/philoso/staff/sesardic/Race2.pdf
A substantial amount of the human genome has been subjected to natural selection since the races diverged. Source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1317879/
With 160 short gene sequences, race can be determined with 100% accuracy for Whites, Asians, and Africans. Source: http://www.cell.com/ajhg/abstract/S0002-9297%2807%2960574-6
Principal continent of origin (race) can be determined with 87% accuracy even for highly mixed populations. Source: http://www.cell.com/ajhg/abstract/S0002-9297%2807%2960574-6
“It is inaccurate to state that race is biologically meaningless.” Source: http://www.nature.com/ng/journal/v36/n11s/full/ng1435.html
Race is biologically real and represents “genetic clusters” of variation. Source: http://stx.sagepub.com/content/30/2/67.abstract
“Empirical structure within human genetic variation … resembles continentally based racial classifications”. Source: http://stx.sagepub.com/content/30/2/67.abstract
“Recent research in genetics demonstrates that certain racial, and also ethnic, categories have a biological basis in statistically discernible clusters of alleles.” Source: http://stx.sagepub.com/content/30/2/67.abstract
“Numerous human population genetic studies have come to the identical conclusion that genetic differentiation is greatest when defined on a continental basis.” Source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC139378/
Genetic analysis of race corresponds with self-identification more than 99% of the time. Source: http://stx.sagepub.com/content/30/2/67.abstract
Races are human subspecies. Source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19695787
The “social constructionist account of race lacks biological reality”. Source: http://stx.sagepub.com/content/30/2/67.abstract
Race can be determined from fingerprints. Source: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ajpa.22869/full
For 99.86% of individuals, genetic analysis of race matches self-identification. Source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1196372/
Predefined ethnic/racial labels are “highly informative” about genetic identity. Source: https://web.stanford.edu/group/rosenberglab/papers/popstruct.pdf
Over 2000 genes have been subject to recent (post out-of-Africa) evolution. Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/20/science/20adapt.html
The concept of race existed in ancient Greece, Rome, Egypt, China, India, and Arabia. Source: http://www.amazon.com/Race-The-Reality-Human-Differences/dp/0813340861
Racial classification has genetic significance. Source: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bies.10315/abstract
Racial identity is real and is hidden in correlations between different traits. Source: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bies.10315/abstract
With enough data points, an individual will never be closer related to someone of another race than someone of their own race. Source: http://www.genetics.org/content/176/1/351
An individual’s geographic origin can be determined from their genes “with remarkable accuracy”. Source: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v368/n6470/abs/368455a0.html

u/BuboTitan · -17 pointsr/badscience

You are moving the goalposts, you didn't ask for peer reviewed sources. Scholarly articles aren't as readily available as simply links that I can post on Reddit. And the last time I checked, the NYT was hardly an alt-right publication.
.

But if you insist, here are quite a few for you, although only the abstracts are generally available:

The Biological Reification of Race

http://bjps.oxfordjournals.org/content/55/2/323.abstract

Race: The Reality of Human Differences

https://www.amazon.com/Race-Reality-Differences-Vincent-Sarich/dp/0813340861

How race becomes biology: Embodiment of social inequality

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ajpa.20983/full

Race Reconciled? How Biological Anthropologists view human variation

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ajpa.20995/full

Understanding race and human variation: Why forensic anthropologists are good at identifying race

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ajpa.21006/full

Biohistorical approaches to “race” in the United States: Biological distances among African Americans, European Americans, and their ancestors

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ajpa.20961/full

Now - most of the anthro articles don't endorse the "folk" or popular view of race and so they might seem like a debunking of race, but in fact, they recognize there are measurable variations, they just think there is more variation than what people popularly observe. And the usefulness in forensic DNA in indentifying victims or suspects has been invaluable. See the landmark Dr. Frudakis case.

EDIT - wow, so I include a ton of peer reviewed articles and already I am downvoted in the first 30 seconds, not even enough time for anyone to have skimmed those links. Classy.