Entangled Life

Entangled Life
Author: Merlin Sheldrake
Publisher: Random House
Total Pages: 370
Release: 2020-05-12
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0525510338

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A “brilliant [and] entrancing” (The Guardian) journey into the hidden lives of fungi—the great connectors of the living world—and their astonishing and intimate roles in human life, with the power to heal our bodies, expand our minds, and help us address our most urgent environmental problems. “Grand and dizzying in how thoroughly it recalibrates our understanding of the natural world.”—Ed Yong, author of An Immense World ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR—Time, BBC Science Focus, The Daily Mail, Geographical, The Times, The Telegraph, New Statesman, London Evening Standard, Science Friday When we think of fungi, we likely think of mushrooms. But mushrooms are only fruiting bodies, analogous to apples on a tree. Most fungi live out of sight, yet make up a massively diverse kingdom of organisms that supports and sustains nearly all living systems. Fungi provide a key to understanding the planet on which we live, and the ways we think, feel, and behave. In the first edition of this mind-bending book, Sheldrake introduced us to this mysterious but massively diverse kingdom of life. This exquisitely designed volume, abridged from the original, features more than one hundred full-color images that bring the spectacular variety, strangeness, and beauty of fungi to life as never before. Fungi throw our concepts of individuality and even intelligence into question. They are metabolic masters, earth makers, and key players in most of life’s processes. They can change our minds, heal our bodies, and even help us remediate environmental disaster. By examining fungi on their own terms, Sheldrake reveals how these extraordinary organisms—and our relationships with them—are changing our understanding of how life works. Winner of the Wainwright Prize, the Royal Society Science Book Prize, and the Guild of Food Writers Award • Shortlisted for the British Book Award • Longlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize

Double Blind

Double Blind
Author: Edward St. Aubyn
Publisher: Picador USA
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2022-05-31
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1250849411

Double Blind follows three close friends and their circle through a year of extraordinary transformation. Set in London, Cap d'Antibes, Big Sur, and a rewilded corner of Sussex, this thrilling, ambitious novel is about the headlong pursuit of knowledge—for the purposes of pleasure, revelation, money, sanity, or survival—and the consequences of fleeing from what we know about others and ourselves. When Olivia meets a new lover just as she is welcoming her best friend, Lucy, back from New York, her dedicated academic life expands precipitously. Her connection to Francis, a committed naturalist living off the grid, is immediate and startling. Eager to involve Lucy in her joy, Olivia introduces the two—but Lucy has received shocking news of her own that binds the trio unusually close. Over the months that follow, Lucy’s boss, Hunter, Olivia’s psychoanalyst parents, and a young man named Sebastian are pulled into the friends’ orbit, and not one of them will emerge unchanged. Expansive, playful, and compassionate, Edward St. Aubyn's Double Blind investigates themes of inheritance, determinism, freedom, consciousness, and the stories we tell about ourselves. It is as compelling about ecology, psychoanalysis, genetics, and neuroscience as it is about love, fear, and courage. Most of all, it is a perfect expression of the interconnections it sets out to examine, and a moving evocation of an imagined world that is deeply intelligent, often tender, curious, and very much alive.

Unity 5.x Cookbook

Unity 5.x Cookbook
Author: Matt Smith
Publisher: Packt Publishing Ltd
Total Pages: 571
Release: 2015-10-05
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 1784391883

Over 100 recipes exploring the new and exciting features of Unity 5 to spice up your Unity skillset About This Book Built on the solid foundation of the popular Unity 4.x Cookbook, the recipes in this edition have been completely updated for Unity 5 Features recipes for both 2D and 3D games Provides you with techniques for the new features of Unity 5, including the new UI system, 2D game development, new Standard Shaders, and the new Audio Mixer Who This Book Is For From beginners to advanced users, from artists to coders, this book is for you and everyone in your team! Programmers can explore multimedia features, and multimedia developers can try their hand at scripting. Basic knowledge and understanding of the Unity platform, game design principles, and programming knowledge in C# is essential. What You Will Learn Immerse players with great audio, utilizing Unity 5's audio features including the new Audio Mixer, ambient sound with Reverb Zones, dynamic soundtracks with Snapshots, and balanced audio via Ducking Create better materials with Unity's new, physically-based, Standard Shader Measure and control time, including pausing the game, displaying clocks and countdown timers, and even implementing “bullet time” effects Improve ambiance through the use of lights and effects such as reflection and light probes Create stylish user interfaces with the new UI system, including power-bars, clock displays, and an extensible inventory system Save and load text and media assets from local or remote sources, publish your game via Unity Cloud, and communicate with websites and their databases to create online scoreboards Discover advanced techniques, including the publisher-subscriber and state patterns, performance bottleneck identification, and methods to maximize game performance and frame rates Control 2D and 3D character movement, and use NavMeshAgents to write NPC and enemy behaviors such as seek, flee, flock, and waypoint path following In Detail Unity 5 is a flexible and intuitive multiplatform game engine that is becoming the industry's de facto standard. Learn to craft your own 2D and 3D computer games by working through core concepts such as animation, audio, shaders, GUI, lights, cameras, and scripting to create your own games with Unity 5. Completely re-written to cover the new features of Unity 5, this book is a great resource for all Unity game developers, from those who have recently started using Unity right up to Unity professionals. The first half of the book focuses on core concepts of 2D game design while the second half focuses on developing 3D game development skills. In the first half, you will discover the new GUI system, the new Audio Mixer, external files, and animating 2D characters in 2D game development. As you progress further, you will familiarize yourself with the new Standard Shaders, the Mecanim system, Cameras, and the new Lighting features to hone your skills towards building 3D games to perfection. Finally, you will learn non-player character control and explore Unity 5's extra features to enhance your 3D game development skills. Style and approach Each chapter first introduces the topic area and explains how the techniques covered can enhance your games. Every recipe provides step-by-step instructions, followed by an explanation of how it all works, and useful additional refinements or alternative approaches. Every required resource and C# script (fully commented) is available to download, enabling you to follow each recipe yourself.

The Chemical Dialogue Between Plants and Beneficial Microorganisms

The Chemical Dialogue Between Plants and Beneficial Microorganisms
Author: Vivek Sharma
Publisher: Elsevier
Total Pages: 336
Release: 2023-07-27
Genre: Science
ISBN: 032397211X

The Chemical Dialogue Between Plants and Beneficial Microorganisms provides foundational insights on plant beneficial microorganisms and their impact on the health and productivity of plants. Providing in-depth and recent updates about unexplored aspects of plant microbes interactions, the book includes the biological repertoire of arbuscular mycorrhizal association, molecular architecture of Rhizobium-plant symbiosis, and endophytes in transcriptional plasticity during host colonization by endophytes. The book also includes details about the mechanism of different plant beneficial microorganisms, how these differ, and their cross signaling. This book will be an important reference for researchers working on different plant beneficial microorganisms and their molecular arsenal. Includes coverage of oxylipins?and sterols in inducing systemic responses Explores the role of microbes in transcriptional plasticity of host plants Highlights the biology of vegetative cells, N2-fixing vesicles, and microbial volatiles in plant growth

Unity 2021 Cookbook

Unity 2021 Cookbook
Author: Matt Smith
Publisher: Packt Publishing Ltd
Total Pages: 820
Release: 2021-09-06
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 1839219270

Discover the latest features of Unity 2021 and dive deeper into the nuances of professional game development with Unity Key FeaturesDiscover the latest features of Unity 2021 including coverage of AR/VR developmentFollow practical recipes for better 2D and 2D character development with Unity GameKitsLearn powerful techniques and expert best practices in building 3D objects, textures, and materialsBook Description If you are a Unity developer looking to explore the newest features of Unity 2021 and recipes for advanced challenges, then this fourth edition of Unity Cookbook is here to help you. With this cookbook, you'll work through a wide variety of recipes that will help you use the essential features of the Unity game engine to their fullest potential. You familiarize yourself with shaders and Shader Graph before exploring animation features to enhance your skills in building games. As you progress, you will gain insights into Unity's latest editor, which will help you in laying out scenes, tweaking existing apps, and building custom tools for augmented reality and virtual reality (AR/VR) experiences. The book will also guide you through many Unity C# gameplay scripting techniques, teaching you how to communicate with database-driven websites and process XML and JSON data files. By the end of this Unity book, you will have gained a comprehensive understanding of Unity game development and built your development skills. The easy-to-follow recipes will earn a permanent place on your bookshelf for reference and help you build better games that stay true to your vision. What you will learnDiscover how to add core game features to your projects with C# scriptingCreate powerful and stylish UI with Unity's UI system, including power bars, radars, and button-driven scene changesWork with essential audio features, including background music and sound effectsDiscover Cinemachine in Unity to intelligently control camera movementsAdd visual effects such as smoke and explosions by creating and customizing particle systemsUnderstand how to build your own Shaders with the Shader Graph toolWho this book is for If you're a Unity developer looking for better ways to resolve common recurring problems with recipes, then this book is for you. Programmers dipping their toes into multimedia features for the first time will also find this book useful. Before you get started with this Unity engine book, you'll need a solid understanding of Unity's functionality and experience with programming in C#.

The Fungus

The Fungus
Author: Harry Adam Knight
Publisher:
Total Pages: 192
Release: 2018-10-02
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9781948405164

When a brilliant scientist seeking to solve the problem of world hunger tries to create giant mushrooms through genetic manipulation, what could possibly go wrong? The mutated spores escape the lab and spread across all of England. Toadstools grow to twenty feet tall, and a case of athlete's foot can mean a grisly and horrible death. But those who die quickly are the lucky ones. Those who survive infection by the fungus will be transformed into something unthinkably monstrous ... With a perfect mix of nightmarish horror and black humor, Harry Adam Knight's cult classic The Fungus (1985) will grow on you. This edition features a foreword by the author. "A spectacularly gruesome nasty, written with inventiveness, grisly wit, and considerably more intelligence than almost any of its competitors." - Ramsey Campbell "Loud, scary, silly, sick fun ... you will never again go near mushroom soup." - Kirkus Reviews "A first-rate and vivid thriller." - Publishers Weekly

Unity 2018 Cookbook

Unity 2018 Cookbook
Author: Matt Smith
Publisher: Packt Publishing Ltd
Total Pages: 784
Release: 2018-08-31
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 1788477286

Develop quality game components and solve common gameplay problems with various game design patterns Key Features Become proficient at traditional 2D and 3D game development Build amazing interactive interfaces with Unity's UI system Develop professional games with realistic animation and graphics, materials and cameras, and AI with Unity 2018 Book Description With the help of the Unity 2018 Cookbook, you’ll discover how to make the most of the UI system and understand how to animate both 2D and 3D characters and game scene objects using Unity's Mecanim animation toolsets. Once you’ve got to grips with the basics, you will familiarize yourself with shaders and Shader Graphs, followed by understanding the animation features to enhance your skills in building fantastic games. In addition to this, you will discover AI and navigation techniques for nonplayer character control and later explore Unity 2018’s newly added features to improve your 2D and 3D game development skills. This book provides many Unity C# gameplay scripting techniques. By the end of this book, you'll have gained comprehensive knowledge in game development with Unity 2018. What you will learn Get creative with Unity’s shaders and learn to build your own shaders with the new Shader Graph tool Create a text and image character dialog with the free Fungus Unity plugin Explore new features integrated into Unity 2018, including TextMesh Pro and ProBuilder Master Unity audio, including ducking, reverbing, and matching pitch to animation speeds Work with the new Cinemachine and timeline to intelligently control camera movements Improve ambiance through the use of lights and effects, including reflection and light probes Create stylish user interfaces with the UI system, including power bars and clock displays Who this book is for Unity 2018 Cookbook is for you if you want to explore a wide range of Unity scripting and multimedia features and find ready-to-use solutions for many game features. This book also helps programmers explore multimedia features. It is assumed that you already know basics of Unity and have some programming knowledge of C#.

Veterinary Mycology

Veterinary Mycology
Author: Indranil Samanta
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 265
Release: 2015-03-03
Genre: Science
ISBN: 8132222806

This book is a comprehensive overview of the fungi that are clinically relevant for animals and humans. It is divided in three major parts: the first part comprises the history of veterinary and medical mycology, general aspects of morphology, growth, nutrition, reproduction and classification of fungi. In the second part, the etiologic agents of cutaneous, subcutaneous and systemic mycoses are described in detail with special emphasis on emerging and uncommon pathogenic fungi. Each chapter consists of a brief history and the morphology, classification, reproduction, susceptibility to disinfectants, natural habitat, distribution, genome, isolation, growth and colony characteristics, antigenic characteristics, virulence factors. The major diseases and their routes of transmission, pathogenesis, immunity, diagnosis and treatment are also covered. The third part focuses on laboratory diagnosis including clinical sample collection, their processing for fungal isolation, special stains for microscopic visualization, culture media composition and a relevant glossary. Each chapter includes color photographs, schematic diagrams and tables for better understanding.

Talking about Fungus

Talking about Fungus
Author: T. J. Baer
Publisher: CreateSpace
Total Pages: 126
Release: 2013-06-11
Genre:
ISBN: 9781490416892

Jamie knows by now that breaking up with a guy is not the end of the world. After taking a few deep breaths and giving a pair of his ex's underwear to the cat to shred, he's prepared to forget all about ole What's-His-Name and get his life back in order. But then his little sister barges in for a visit, his homophobic dad shows up after two years of stony silence, and to make matters worse, his best friend seems to be falling in love with him. Just when Jamie's fantasizing about running off to a monastery and joining up, he meets Mr. Right in a hospital waiting room thanks to the matchmaking powers of the Great Bard. Abe is unlike anyone Jamie's ever met, let alone dated, and things finally seem to be looking up. A phone call changes all that, though, and Jamie finds himself flying home with his sister and his best friend for a bedside vigil. Will Jamie make peace with his family before it's too late? Will Abe forgive him for missing their second date without even a phone call? PRAISE FOR TALKING ABOUT FUNGUS: "This story is like a breath of fresh air. Modern and quick-witted, it moves along at a fast pace and displays a sense of humor atypical for the genre. The characters' voices are unique, the dialogue utterly realistic. The relationships between the characters ring true; they can be strained without being horrific, fun without reading like a comedy. Despite the sometimes-serious subject matter, this story is filled with hope, and its conclusion is no exception. Jamie's too nice a guy not to end up with a happily ever after -- who he ends up with, though, isn't as simple as one might think. Charming, entertaining, and contemporary. Not to be missed." --Alexa Snow, author of Clear Cut and Sleeping Stone

Spiral

Spiral
Author: Paul Mceuen
Publisher: Hachette UK
Total Pages: 242
Release: 2011-03-17
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0755374657

The first bio-tech thriller from acclaimed Cornell professor, Paul McEuen, the new Michael Crichton.Pacific Ocean 1946: Liam Connor of the British Army, a global expert on germ warfare, is sent to help the US Navy foil an attempt by a Japanese submarine to unleash the world's first biological super-weapon. Code-name: Uzumaki. Translation: Spiral. The devastating decision is made to annihilate Spiral by releasing the world's fourth atomic bomb, obliterating the weapon before it can release its catastrophic payload.New York, present day: Connor, now a world-renowned Nobel prize-winner working on the cutting edge of nano-science technology, prayed that the spectre of Spiral would never return. But now it is back and the stakes are exponentially higher. Spiral would be virtually unstoppable with current technological advances and only Connor holds the key to its cure. Those who seek Spiral will stop at nothing to obtain Connor's knowledge, even if it means his death and that of everyone he holds dear. As the race begins for Spiral, will the world survive the Doomsday scenario about to unfold?