Egg and Sperm Race

Egg and Sperm Race
Author: Matthew Cobb
Publisher:
Total Pages: 362
Release: 2006
Genre: History
ISBN:

Where do we come from? Where do animals come from? For thousands of years we really had no clue how living things were created -- great thinkers like Aristotle and Plato had attempted to explain what became known as the problem of 'generation', but neither really had the tools or the insight to solve the mystery. The result was a wealth of weird and wonderful ideas about the components necessary to create new life -- blood, 'vapours', strange pulses in the air. Nor did people make intuitive leaps that now seem self-evident: it was widely accepted that animals could breed different species, for example; the notion that two sheep can only make another sheep is a surprisingly modern idea.But all this confusion changed in a flurry of discovery in the mid-seventeenth century. In just a decade, a group of young scientists in Europe, all known to each other and in competition with each other, established the existence first of the human egg and then of the human sperm. At last, the building blocks were in place -- although, in one of the great ironies of science, it would be another 150 years before someone worked out how fertilisation actually took place.Focusing on the personalities and rivalries of this extraordinary period, Matthew Cobb has shed new light not just on an under-reported story of science but on our very nature -- what makes us, and how little we still know about one of the greatest miracles of Nature.

The Egg and Sperm Race

The Egg and Sperm Race
Author: Frances R. Balkwill
Publisher: HarperCollins
Total Pages: 127
Release: 1996-11
Genre: Body, Human
ISBN: 9780001965164

This comprehensive guide to the body combines recent cell and molecular biology in a story that begins with the first life on earth. With a simple text and illustrations, it aims to make science fun.

The Egg and Sperm Race

The Egg and Sperm Race
Author: Frances R. Balkwill
Publisher:
Total Pages: 127
Release: 1994
Genre: Body, Human
ISBN: 9780001965171

This comprehensive guide to the body combines recent cell and molecular biology in a story that begins with the first life on earth. With a simple text and illustrations, it aims to make science fun.

Freezing Fertility

Freezing Fertility
Author: Lucy van de Wiel
Publisher: NYU Press
Total Pages: 378
Release: 2020-12-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1479803626

Welcomed as liberation and dismissed as exploitation, egg freezing (oocyte cryopreservation) has rapidly become one of the most widely-discussed and influential new reproductive technologies of this century. In Freezing Fertility, Lucy van de Wiel takes us inside the world of fertility preservation—with its egg freezing parties, contested age limits, proactive anticipations and equity investments—and shows how the popularization of egg freezing has profound consequences for the way in which female fertility and reproductive aging are understood, commercialized and politicized. Beyond an individual reproductive choice for people who may want to have children later in life, Freezing Fertility explores how the rise of egg freezing also reveals broader cultural, political and economic negotiations about reproductive politics, gender inequities, age normativities and the financialization of healthcare. Van de Wiel investigates these issues by analyzing a wide range of sources—varying from sparkly online platforms to heart-breaking court cases and intimate autobiographical accounts—that are emblematic of each stage of the egg freezing procedure. By following the egg’s journey, Freezing Fertility examines how contemporary egg freezing practices both reflect broader social, regulatory and economic power asymmetries and repoliticize fertility and aging in ways that affect the public at large. In doing so, the book explores how the possibility of egg freezing shifts our relation to the beginning and end of life.

Sperm Wars

Sperm Wars
Author: Robin Baker
Publisher: Basic Books
Total Pages: 401
Release: 2006-01-03
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 0465012965

This classic work on the rules of sex -- updated for a new generation -- is still as provocative as the day it was published, providing simple explanations for any and all questions about what happens in the bedroom. Sex isn't as complicated as we make it. In Sperm Wars, evolutionary biologist Robin Baker argues that every question about human sexuality can be explained by one simple thing: sperm warfare. In the interest of promoting competition between sperm to fertilize the same egg, evolution has built men to conquer and monopolize women while women are built to seek the best genetic input on offer from potential sexual partners. Baker reveals, through a series of provocative fictional scene, the far-reaching implications of sperm competition. 10% of children are not fathered by their "fathers;" over 99% of a man's sperm exists simply to fight off all other men's sperm; and a woman is far more likely to conceive through a casual fling than through sex with her regular partner. From infidelity, to homosexuality, to the female orgasm, Sperm Wars turns on every light in the bedroom. Now with new material reflecting the latest research on sperm warfare, this milestone of popular science will still surprise, entertain, and even shock.

Where Willy Went

Where Willy Went
Author: Nicholas Allan
Publisher: Knopf Books for Young Readers
Total Pages: 83
Release: 2011-11-30
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 0375983805

Never before have the facts of life been presented in such an accessible—or novel—way. Our hero is Willy, a little sperm who lives inside Mr. Browne with 300 million friends. Every day Willy practices for the Great Swimming Race. And when the day arrives, he swims faster than his 300 million friends to win the prize—a marvelous egg. Then something wonderful happens, and eventually Mr. and Mrs. Browne have a baby girl who has the same winning smile as Willy and who grows up to be a great swimmer. Hilariously funny, warm, and endearing, this is a picture book that appeals on different levels to both children and grown-ups. “Fresh, original, and imaginative. . . . Allan’s achievement is in couching fascinating facts within the construct of a gentle, direct narrative. A little knowledge is a wonderful thing, and as the rest of the facts of life fall into place, Allan’s readers will look back on this book with a mixture of fondness and wry amusement.” —The Guardian (UK)

Sex Cells

Sex Cells
Author: Rene Almeling
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 240
Release: 2011-09-20
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0520270967

“What happens when sex cells sell? Do human bodies become degraded objects of commerce? Challenging simplistic accounts of commodification, Almeling offers a compelling analysis of contemporary markets for eggs and sperm. A superb contribution to 21st century economic sociology.” -Viviana A. Zelizer, author of Economic Lives: How Culture Shapes the Economy “This is a highly informative book. Almeling provides a balanced approach to this highly controversial subject. Although you might be conflicted by the ethical issues, you will definitely be extremely well-informed when you finish this book.” -Alan H. DeCherney, MD, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development “Almeling offers a wonderfully thoughtful analysis and an innovative cultural lens for viewing the gendered lives of sex cells and their commodification in the contemporary USA.” -Rayna Rapp, author of Testing Women, Testing the Fetus: The Impact of Amniocentesis in America

It's So Amazing!

It's So Amazing!
Author: Robie H. Harris
Publisher: Candlewick Press
Total Pages: 90
Release: 2014-09-09
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 0763669989

“An outstanding book. . . . Meets the needs of those in-between or curious kids who are not ready, developmentally or emotionally, for It’s Perfectly Normal.” —Booklist (starred review) How does a baby begin? What makes a baby male or female? How is a baby born? Children have plenty of questions about reproduction and babies—and about sex and sexuality, too. It’s So Amazing! provides the answers—with fun, accurate, comic-book-style artwork and a clear, lively text that reflects the interests of children age seven and up in how things work, while giving them a healthy understanding of their bodies. Created by the author and illustrator of It’s Perfectly Normal, this forthright and funny book has been newly updated for its fifteenth anniversary.