Biology and Life Sciences

Congress requested that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) produce a site-specific biosafety and biosecurity risk assessment (SSRA) of the proposed National Bio- and Agro-Defense Facility (NBAF) in Manhattan, Kansas. The laboratory would study dangerous foreign animal diseases -- ...

The Human Condition is a collection of papers by leading evolutionary biologists and philosophers of science that reflect on the Darwinian Revolution as it relates to the human condition at levels ranging from the molecular to the theological. The book ...

Recent decades have witnessed an ever-increasing range and volume of digital data. All elements of the pillars of science--whether observation, experiment, or theory and modeling--are being transformed by the continuous cycle of generation, dissemination, and use of factual information. This ...

Synthetic biology is an innovative and growing field that unites engineering and biology. It builds on the powerful research that came about as a result of a recombinant DNA technology and genome sequencing. By definition, synthetic biology is an interdisciplinary ...

Two Centuries of Darwin is the outgrowth of an Arthur M. Sackler Colloquium, sponsored by the National Academy of Sciences on January 16-17, 2009. In the chapters of this book, leading evolutionary biologists and science historians reflect on and commemorate ...

The National Academies Keck Futures Initiative was launched in 2003 to stimulate new modes of scientific inquiry and break down the conceptual and institutional barriers to interdisciplinary research.  At the Conference on Complex Systems, participants were divided into twelve interdisciplinary ...

Although its importance is not always recognized, theory is an integral part of all biological research. Biologists' theoretical and conceptual frameworks inform every step of their research, affecting what experiments they do, what techniques and technologies they develop and use, ...

In December 2006, the National Academy of Sciences sponsored a colloquium (featured as part of the Arthur M. Sackler Colloquia series) on "Adaptation and Complex Design" to synthesize recent empirical findings and conceptual approaches toward understanding the evolutionary origins and ...

Although we can't usually see them, microbes are essential for every part of human life -- indeed all life on Earth. The emerging field of metagenomics offers a new way of exploring the microbial world that will transform modern microbiology ...