Professor Roy Burdon has written this book to explain to the lay person what science now knows about how our genes are adversely affected by the modern environment in which we live. The irony is that these environmental adversities are mainly the result of the unintended consequences of the very industrial revolution and modern technologies which have transformed our lives in so many positive ways."--BOOK JACKET.
Roy Burdon discusses how our genes work, how they are adversely effected by a huge range of factors - toxic industrial and agricultural chemicals, excessive sunlight, nuclear radiation from power plants and the military, other forms of radiation, food contaminants, and atmospheric pollutants - and how they may be affected by genetic engineering. Burdon explains how the body defends itself from external attack, what happens when these defences are overwhelmed, and what humanity needs to do to develop a much more careful approach to new technologies, industrial processes, and food production.
Cancer kills one man out of every two, and one woman out of three, in the industrialized countries today. And its incidence, despite all efforts to the contrary, is increasing at one per cent a year. The fact is that some 80 per cent of cancers are likely to be due to environmental factors that could be reduced or even eradicated. This book explains how our genes work, and how they are adversely affected by the modern environment in which we live, whether in the North or the South. The factors include toxic industrial and agricultural chemicals, excessive sunlight ( a result of the hole in the ozone layer), nuclear radiation from power plants and the military, other forms of radiation (mobile phones, electricity transmission systems), food contaminants, atmospheric pollutants (tobacco smoke, car exhaust fumes), and the potential impact of genetic engineering. It explains how the body defends itself from external attack, what happens when these defences are overwhelmed, and the need for much more careful development of new technologies, industrial processes, products and foodstuffs.
Genes and the Environment is concerned with genes and how their structures and activities can be influenced by current relevant environmental adversitises. The book aims to provide a brief, integrated coverage at a biochemical and molecular biological level of the various effects that environmental factors can have on our genes, and those of other organisms, together with the likely consequences.
In the late nineteenth century, the British Empire commanded the seas and possessed a vast Indian Empire, as well as other extensive dominions in South East Asia, Australasia, America and Africa.??To secure the trade route to the glittering riches of the orient, the port of Berbera in Somaliland was taken from the feeble grasp of an Egyptian monarch, and to secure that port, treaties were concluded with the fierce and warlike nomad tribes who roamed the inhospitable wastes of the hinterland, unequivocally granting them 'the gracious favour and protection of the Queen'. But there arose in that wilderness a man of deep and unalterable convictions; the Sayyid, the 'Mad Mullah', who utilised his great poetic and oratorical gifts with merciless and unrelenting fury to convince his fellow nomads to follow him in an anti- Christian and anti-colonial crusade. At great expense, four Imperial expeditions were sent to crush him and to support his terrified opponents; four times the military genius of the Sayyid eluded them.??It was at this point that the rising voice of Winston Churchill convinced his Liberal colleagues to abandon the expensive contest and retreat to the coast. By this betrayal, one third of the British 'protected' population perished.??It wasn't until after the Great War that Churchill, now Minister for both War and Air, as well as a major influence in the rise of Air Power, was able to redeem this betrayal. The part he played in the destruction of the Sayyid's temporal power at this point was substantial, and the preservation of the Royal Air Force was also secured. By unleashing Sir Hugh Trenchard and giving his blessing to a lightning campaign, his original betrayal was considered to be redeemed in part and his honour belatedly and inexpensively restored.??In this enthralling volume, Roy Irons brings to life this period of dynamic unrest, drawing together a number of historical accounts of the time as well as an evocative selection of illustrative materials, including maps and portraits of the main players at the forefront of the action. Personalities such as Carton de Wiart, Lord Ismay, and the much decorated Sir John 'Johnny' Gough, VC, KCB, CHG feature, as do the vaunted Camel Corps, in this eminently well-researched narrative account of this eventful and controversial episode of world history.??As featured in Essence Magazine.
Gathers caricatures and portraits depicting royalty, politicians, artists, lawyers, journalists, and sportsmen of Victorian England and includes notes on each subject's life
During the past few decades we have witnessed an era of remarkable growth in the field of molecular biology. In 1950 very little was known of the chemical constitution of biological systems, the manner in which in formation was transmitted from one organism to another, or the extent to which the chemical basis of life is unified. The picture today is dramati cally different. We have an almost bewildering variety of information detailing many different aspects of life at the molecular level. These great advances have brought with them some breath-taking insights into the molecular mechanisms used by nature for replicating, distributing and modifying biological information. We have learned a great deal about the chemical and physical nature of the macromolecular nucleic acids and proteins, and the manner in which carbohydrates, lipids and smaller mole cules work together to provide the molecular setting of living systems. It might be said that these few decades have replaced a near vacuum of information with a very large surplus. It is in the context of this flood of information that this series of mono graphs on molecular biology has been organized. The idea is to bring together in one place, between the covers of one book, a concise assess ment of the state of the subject in a well-defined field.
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