Science fiction: nine lab-life novels for your holiday reading

Constrained by limited energy and resources, organisms must compromise between offspring quantity and parental investment. This trade-off is represented by two primary reproductive strategies; K-strategists produce few offspring but provide substantial parental support, whereas r-strategists produce much progeny that receives little care. These strategies are related to an organism’s survival likelihood across its lifespan, which is represented by a survivorship curve. Three general types of...

Overview

The scientific method is a detailed, empirical problem-solving process used by biologists and other scientists. This iterative approach involves formulating a question based on observation, developing a testable potential explanation for the observation (called a hypothesis), making and testing predictions based on the hypothesis, and using the findings to create new hypotheses and predictions.Generally, predictions are tested using carefully-designed experiments. Based on the outcome of these...

Biology is a natural science that studies life and living organisms, including their structure, function, development, interactions, evolution, distribution, and taxonomy. The field's scope is extensive and divided into several specialized disciplines, such as anatomy, physiology, ethology, genetics, and many more. All living things share a few key traits, including cellular organization, heritable genetic material and the ability to adapt/evolve, metabolism to regulate energy needs, the...

An important concept in studying metabolism and energy is that of chemical equilibrium. Most chemical reactions are reversible. They can proceed in both directions, releasing energy into their environment in one direction, and absorbing it from the environment in the other direction. The same is true for the chemical reactions involved in cell metabolism, such as the breaking down and building up of proteins into and from individual amino acids, respectively. Reactants within a closed system...

The energy required to carry out photosynthesis is light— typically electromagnetic radiation from the sun. The range of all possible wavelengths is known as the electromagnetic spectrum.
Photons
A photon is a discrete electromagnetic particle or bundle of energy. Photons are characterized by their frequency, wavelength, and amplitude, similar to the properties of a wave. Waves with higher frequencies transmit more energy and have shorter wavelengths than longer wavelengths that transmit less...