Plants are a fundamental part of the biosphere and their evolution has directly affected animal life, and the Earth's climate. This Very Short Introduction provides a concise account of the nature of plants, their variety, their evolution, and their importance and uses, stressing the importance of conservation for the future.

'Extraordinary' Leonard Susskind

'A rare event' Sean Carroll

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When leading theoretical physicist Professor Michael Dine was asked where you could find an accessible and authoritative book that would teach you about the Big Bang, Dark Matter, the Higgs boson and the cutting edge of physics now, he had nothing he could recommend.

So he wrote it himself.

In This Way to the Universe, Dine takes us on a fascinating tour through the history of modern physics - from Newtonian mechanics to quant...

Interdisciplinary perspectives on the capacity to perceive, appreciate, and make music. Research shows that all humans have a predisposition for music, just as they do for language. All of us can perceive and enjoy music, even if we can't carry a tune and consider ourselves unmusical. This volume offers interdisciplinary perspectives on the capacity to perceive, appreciate, and make music. Scholars from biology, musicology, neurology, genetics, computer science, anthropology, psychology, and ...

Introduces aspiring and practicing actuaries, engineers, computer scientists and others to the practical aspects of constructing computerized simulation studies to analyze and interpret real phenomena. This title presents the statistics needed to analyze simulated data as well as that needed for validating the simulation model.

Comprehensive Biomaterials II, Second Edition, Seven Volume Set brings together the myriad facets of biomaterials into one expertly-written series of edited volumes. Articles address the current status of nearly all biomaterials in the field, their strengths and weaknesses, their future prospects, appropriate analytical methods and testing, device applications and performance, emerging candidate materials as competitors and disruptive technologies, research and development, regulatory managem...

The latest edition of a highly successful textbook, Mass Spectrometry, Third Edition provides students with a complete overview of the principles, theories and key applications of modern mass spectrometry. All instrumental aspects of mass spectrometry are clearly and concisely described: sources, analysers and detectors. Tandem mass spectrometry is introduced early on and then developed in more detail in a later chapter.

Emphasis is placed throughout the text on optimal utilisation conditions...

Advances in data collection and data storage techniques have enabled marketing researchers to study the individual characteristics of a large range of transactions and purchases, in particular the effects of household-specific characteristics. This 2001 book presents important and practically relevant quantitative models for marketing research. Each model is presented in detail with a self-contained discussion, which includes: a demonstration of the mechanics of the model, empirical analysis,...