The year is 2167, and Simon Shadow is nearly killed by a crazed co-worker's explosive suicide. Leaving Earth behind, Simon embarks on a quest for freedom-to Reetar, a distant planet recently colonized. Upon arrival, he finds a city bristling with rival religions. Within days, Simon offends the Unholy Mass, a powerful and sadistic religion. His life threatened, he realizes the only way to save himself is to become a rival faith-Shimmerism. On the far side of the planet, meanwhile, a lone starship crash-lands. The survivors begin their own quest, searching for a fabled city of spirituality; and above them all, in orbit, a powerful military force keeps watch, laying waste to anyone foolish enough to threaten the balance of the Great Experiment-the ruling philosophy that governs humanity's colonization of new worlds. The Rise and Fall of Shimmerism casts a speculative eye on a vast human population whose profiteering fringe blazes its way across the next great frontier, caught in a violent cycle of soulless spirituality. An epic future-history replete with phantasmagoric drugs, strange music, and savage ironies, the book ultimately touches on the evolution of human awareness-and the first confused glimpses of a malevolent new reality.

The New York Times and Globe & Mail-bestselling author of The Imperfectionists returns with an intricately woven novel about a bookseller who travels the world to make sense of her puzzling past. Tooly Zylberberg tells a story: as a child, she was stolen from home, stashed at a den of thieves, then adopted by crooks there, who ended up raising her and even using the little girl in capers around the globe. But Tooly understands only fragments of what happened in Thailand, Italy, New York and beyond. Then, a desperate message reaches her musty bookshop in Wales, and she is lured into a journey that will reveal the secret of her childhood. Celebrated for his ingenious plotting, humanity and humor, Tom Rachman has written a novel that will amplify his reputation as one of the most exciting young writers today.

Piggy goes to Uni is the story of a precocious young pig, and his rise to the forefront of the Anti-Piggest socialist Justice Movement. When he leaves his rural community for Central State University, he learns of the terrible legacy of Pig-Imperialism, and that words and ideas can be just as violent as actual acts of genocide. With the help of his comrades, Piggy elects to become a hero of the oppressed, and to ban anyone from saying anything that might hurt someone's feelings. And yet, in creating a world of absolute kindness, he soon finds himself at the mercy of his own extremist rhetoric.

The year is 2167, and Simon Shadow is nearly killed by a crazed co-worker's explosive suicide. Leaving Earth behind, Simon embarks on a quest for freedom-to Reetar, a distant planet recently colonized. Upon arrival, he finds a city bristling with rival religions. Within days, Simon offends the Unholy Mass, a powerful and sadistic religion. His life threatened, he realizes the only way to save himself is to become a rival faith-Shimmerism. On the far side of the planet, meanwhile, a lone starship crash-lands. The survivors begin their own quest, searching for a fabled city of spirituality; and above them all, in orbit, a powerful military force keeps watch, laying waste to anyone foolish enough to threaten the balance of the Great Experiment-the ruling philosophy that governs humanity's colonization of new worlds. The Rise and Fall of Shimmerism casts a speculative eye on a vast human population whose profiteering fringe blazes its way across the next great frontier, caught in a violent cycle of soulless spirituality. An epic future-history replete with phantasmagoric drugs, strange music, and savage ironies, the book ultimately touches on the evolution of human awareness-and the first confused glimpses of a malevolent new reality.

Survey of literature on mutation in potato; Production of a diphoid potato clone with genetic markers; Formation of adventitious roots and shoots from potato leaves, leaf parts and stems in vitro; Literature on organization, post-irradiation behaviour and histogenic effects in shoot apices; Radiation-induced-damage and recovery of potato tuber eyers.

As the major task of sequencing the human genome is near completion and full complement of human genes are catalogued, attention will be focused on the ultimate goal: to understand the normal biological functions of these genes, and how alterations lead to disease states. In this task there is a severe limitation in working with human material, but the mouse has been adopted as the favored animal model because of the available genetic resources and the highly conserved gene conservation linkage organization. In just of ten years since the first gene-targeting experiments were p- formed in embryonic stem (ES) cells and mutations transmitted through the mouse germline, more than a thousand mouse strains have been created. These achievements have been made possible by pioneering work that showed that ES cells derived from preimplantation mouse embryos could be cultured for prolonged periods without differentiation in culture, and that homologous rec- bination between targeting constructs and endogenous DNA occurred at a f- quency sufficient for recombinants to be isolated. In the next few years the mouse genome will be systematically altered, and the techniques for achi- ing manipulations are constantly being streamlined and improved.

This book, which was originally published in 1986, introduces the reader to the main steps in the analysis of chimeras, explains their structural and developmental basis, and the ways of classifying and manipulating them. The twelve chapters separate types of chimeras according to their origin - by grafting or polyploidy; their structure - sectorial or periclinal; or according to the varied parts of the plant most affected - tubers, leaves, flowers or fruit. Throughout the book care is taken to distinguish between the activity of the growing-point in determining chimera structure, and the role of gene expression in determining appearance. Examples of the experimental uses of chimeras are given and of the valuable role they can play in studying fundamental questions of anatomical development; the disadvantages of chimeras in mutation breeding are discussed too.

The next time you get sick, consider this before picking up the aspirin: your body may be doing exactly what it's supposed to. In this ground-breaking book, two pioneers of the science of Darwinian medicine argue that illness as well as the factors that predispose us toward it are subject to the same laws of natural selection that otherwise make our bodies such miracles of design. Among the concerns they raise: When may a fever be beneficial? Why do pregnant women get morning sickness? How do certain viruses "manipulate" their hosts into infecting others? What evolutionary factors may be responsible for depression and panic disorder? Deftly summarizing research on disorders ranging from allergies to Alzheimer's, and form cancer to Huntington's chorea, Why We Get Sick, answers these questions and more. The result is a book that will revolutionize our attitudes toward illness and will intrigue and instruct lay person and medical practitioners alike.