Jungle Laboratories

Download or read book Jungle Laboratories written by Gabriela Soto Laveaga and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2009-12-23 with total page 347 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the 1940s chemists discovered that barbasco, a wild yam indigenous to Mexico, could be used to mass-produce synthetic steroid hormones. Barbasco spurred the development of new drugs, including cortisone and the first viable oral contraceptives, and positioned Mexico as a major player in the global pharmaceutical industry. Yet few people today are aware of Mexico’s role in achieving these advances in modern medicine. In Jungle Laboratories, Gabriela Soto Laveaga reconstructs the story of how rural yam pickers, international pharmaceutical companies, and the Mexican state collaborated and collided over the barbasco. By so doing, she sheds important light on a crucial period in Mexican history and challenges us to reconsider who can produce science. Soto Laveaga traces the political, economic, and scientific development of the global barbasco industry from its emergence in the 1940s, through its appropriation by a populist Mexican state in 1970, to its obsolescence in the mid-1990s. She focuses primarily on the rural southern region of Tuxtepec, Oaxaca, where the yam grew most freely and where scientists relied on local, indigenous knowledge to cultivate and harvest the plant. Rural Mexicans, at first unaware of the pharmaceutical and financial value of barbasco, later acquired and deployed scientific knowledge to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies, lobby the Mexican government, and ultimately transform how urban Mexicans perceived them. By illuminating how the yam made its way from the jungles of Mexico, to domestic and foreign scientific laboratories where it was transformed into pills, to the medicine cabinets of millions of women across the globe, Jungle Laboratories urges us to recognize the ways that Mexican peasants attained social and political legitimacy in the twentieth century, and positions Latin America as a major producer of scientific knowledge.

Download or read book Grasshopper Jungle written by Andrew Smith and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2014-02-11 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A 2015 Michael L. Printz Honor Book Winner of the 2014 Boston Globe-Horn Book Award for Fiction "Raunchy, bizarre, smart and compelling." --Rolling Stone “Grasshopper Jungle is simultaneously creepy and hilarious. Reminds me of Kurt Vonnegut’s in “Slaughterhouse Five,” in the best sense.” --New York Times Book Review In the small town of Ealing, Iowa, Austin and his best friend, Robby, have accidentally unleashed an unstoppable army. An army of horny, hungry, six-foot-tall praying mantises that only want to do two things. This is the truth. This is history. It’s the end of the world. And nobody knows anything about it. You know what I mean. Funny, intense, complex, and brave, Grasshopper Jungle brilliantly weaves together everything from testicle-dissolving genetically modified corn to the struggles of recession-era, small-town America in this groundbreaking coming-of-age stunner.

Download or read book TheDadLab written by Sergei Urban and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2019-05-14 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The ultimate collection of DIY activities to do with your kids to teach STEM basics and beyond, from a wildly popular online dad. With more than 3 million fans, TheDadLab has become an online sensation, with weekly videos of fun and easy science experiments that parents can do with their kids. These simple projects use materials found around the house, making it easier than ever for busy moms and dads to not only spend more quality time with their children but also get them interested in science and technology. In this mind-blowing book, Sergei Urban takes the challenge off-screen with fifty step-by-step projects, including some that he has never shared online before. Each activity will go beyond the videos, featuring detailed explanations to simplify scientific concepts for parents and help answer the hows and whys of their curious children. Learn how to: explore new fun ways to paint; make slime with only two ingredients; defy gravity with a ping-pong ball; produce your own electricity, and more! With TheDadLab, parents everywhere will have an easy solution to the dreaded "I'm bored" complaint right at their fingertips!

Download or read book Skyways to a Jungle Laboratory written by Grace Crile and published by . This book was released on 1936 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Arthur written by Mikael Lindnord and published by Greystone Books Ltd. This book was released on 2017-09-09 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The uplifting true story of an extreme athlete, a stray dog, and how they found each other. “Heroic and heartwarming” (Forbes), this unbelievable adventure will make readers laugh, gasp, cry, and see rescue dogs with a whole new perspective. NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE STARRING MARK WAHLBERG—STREAMING ON STARZ When you're racing 435 miles through the jungles and mountains of South America, the last thing you need is a stray dog tagging along. But that's exactly what happened to Mikael Lindnord, captain of a Swedish adventure racing team, when he threw a scruffy but dignified mongrel a meatball one afternoon. When the team left the next day, the dog followed. Try as they might, they couldn't lose him—and soon Mikael realized that he didn't want to. Crossing rivers, battling illness and injury, and struggling through some of the toughest terrain on the planet, the team and the dog walked, kayaked, cycled, and climbed together toward the finish line, where Mikael decided he would save the dog, now named Arthur, and bring him back to his family in Sweden, whatever it took. Illustrated with candid photographs, Arthur provides a testament to the amazing bond between dogs and people.

Download or read book On The Line written by Erich Krauss and published by Citadel Press. This book was released on 2005-02 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the wake of 9/11, the mission of the Border Patrol has been redefined, with emphasis shifting from stopping the flow of drugs and illegal immigration to the critical mission of protecting our vast borders from terrorist infiltration. Agents guard some 8,000 miles of U.S. borderlands using helicopters, four-wheel-drive trucks, motorcycles, ATVs, and snowmobiles, as well as patrolling on horseback, on bicycle, and on foot. These men and women possess unique skills that combine the best qualities of peace officers, humanitarians, and range-riding cowboys. Their knowledge of immigration law rivals that of many attorneys. Their job is lonely, difficult, and dangerous. Book jacket.

Download or read book Emergent Strategy written by adrienne maree brown and published by AK Press. This book was released on 2017-03-20 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the tradition of Octavia Butler, here is radical self-help, society-help, and planet-help to shape the futures we want. Change is constant. The world, our bodies, and our minds are in a constant state of flux. They are a stream of ever-mutating, emergent patterns. Rather than steel ourselves against such change, Emergent Strategy teaches us to map and assess the swirling structures and to read them as they happen, all the better to shape that which ultimately shapes us, personally and politically. A resolutely materialist spirituality based equally on science and science fiction: a wild feminist and afro-futurist ride! adrienne maree brown, co-editor of Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction from Social Justice Movements, is a social justice facilitator, healer, and doula living in Detroit.