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- Field Guides & Natural History
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- Artificial Sweeteners Affect Our Bodies and Environment
- This book by Rob Dunn will change the way you think about indoor environmental quality
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Dunn delves into the findings from his multi-continental citizen science project to explore shower gunk. Along the way, Dunn also supplies the history of bathing and how water gets into our homes. The origin of cholera was discovered by mapping the spread of disease in the 1800s. In modern day, maps along with studies on Amish bedrooms and Finnish backyards show the Absence as a Disease.
At first, I wasn't sure I wanted to read this book. A germ-o-phobe reading a book about all those creepy, crawly, microscopic things covering just about every surface on earth? A book like this would be sure to give me nightmares and make me even more terrified to touch every doorknob, ink pen, faucet, groceries in the store that I'd starve for being too afraid to pick up and take home.
Field Guides & Natural History
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A paean to biodiversity by a biologist who sees salvation in cultivating life’s infinite variety. Science Connected Magazine is an editorially independent, non-profit newsroom producing open-access science journalism and scientific fact-checking for the global public. We work to increase science literacy and public access to reliable information.
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While this book does tread a lot of familiar ground, the author does have some unique elements to his writing, introduces you to some new topics or puts an interesting twist on them, and you'll enjoy his writing style and easily digestible chapters. Dunn introduces readers to entire ecosystems that live within a few dozen feet of us at all times. It's complex and one of the many hidden mysteries to discover about the world.
Never Home Alone begins with a chapter-long anecdote of the journey and discoveries made by the father of microbiology, Anton Van Leuwenhoek. The account of Van Leuwenhoek’s discoveries help us see the wonder in the composition of simple things around us. Importantly, this wonder helps us to look past our fear of pathogens to see the importance of bacteria and other small animals. As a species, we have become preoccupied with sterilizing our homes, regulating their temperature, and using pesticides around them—seemingly with a vengeance—that we have created an entirely new playground for evolution. I said the words “wow, that is incredible” in my mind too many times to count while reading this book.
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From there started the movement to remove as much 'contamination' from our water. But this would involved also the elimination of harmless bacterial and other lifeforms, which outnumber the pathogens. It is only later, with studies by ecologists, that a pattern would be seen. Places where biodiversity has been reduced are also the places where chronic inflammation are also the highest.
Instead, he and his colleagues found a “floating, leaping, crawling circus of thousands of species,” perhaps as many as 200,000, many of them previously unknown to science. BookPage is a recommendation guide for readers, highlighting the best new books across all genres as chosen by our editors. Starred (★) titles indicate a book that is exceptional in its genre or category. BookPage is editorially independent; any publisher-sponsored content is clearly labeled as such.
It is actually a collection of accounts about scientist-author Dunn's research on a limited handful of species, some of which happen to live in our houses. Instead, you get a disjointed series of chapters about Dunn's various projects. I suppose loosely they do have to do with species that live in our homes, but there are also, for example, chapters that focus entirely on things that happen in hospitals, or the history of microscopy.
"Rob Dunn is a brilliant explorer of the strange, mostly uncharted biology of our homes and bodies. This must-read book is full of astonishing stories, skillfully told." Without veering into the questionable territory oaf hokey health claims or New Age gobbledygook, what Dunn advocates is common sense. Wash your hands, but also go outside and get them dirty. What is really needed, first and foremost, is a shift in our attitudes. Rather than disgust, we need to foster an appreciation of the tiny lifeforms that share our homes and bodies, and an understanding that our health depends on them.
They adjust to live in ecological niches which we can hardly even imagine and thus they are able to survive our chemical assaults against them and to evolve their way out of every trap we set for them. That is how we get pesticide-resistant German cockroaches and bedbugs as well as antibiotic-resistant bacteria. In fact, we have tipped the scales in favor of some of the bad guys.
Oh, and just in case you're wondering -- Mr. Dunn does NOT discuss the various microbes on that dollar bill which spent time in the stripper's ass. Sorry, but if you're wondering about that, you'll have to look in another book. I figured if there are good things to be known about bacteria, etc. it would probably also be in this book and maybe, just maybe, lessen my intense fear of microbes. The book is well-written and much of it is interesting, but I don't know how reliable the author's research and conclusions are. So far, I've come across two inaccuracies, one of which the author points out himself.
He traces the unexpected presence of one family of bacteria & uses it to educate on reading DNA. Very well done & in a perfect place since this is important throughout the book. Dunn careens through this story with infectious enthusiasm. Never Home Alone is a lively portrait of science at work, of the many collaborations involved, the hard and sometimes mind-numbingly repetitive work it requires, and the wonders of discovery.
It's interesting in its own way, and I suppose at least tangentially relevant to what is supposed to be the main theme, but the blurb and description definitely aren't accurate to the contents of the book, and that irritates me. These were among the many random and obnoxious tangents he went off on, clearly based on his own interests and not on wanting to tell a cohesive story to the reader. This book took awhile to finish partly because I misplaced it but also because it is non-fiction and somewhat scientific in nature so therefore by nature reads more slowly.
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