Taivo Lints Blog

New photo gallery with pics from my April 2008 trip in some European countries: http://taivo.net/galleries/euro08

A book originally from 1998, updated in 2001, about microorganisms that live in extreme environments.

The topics include:

• The main things an (Earth) organism needs (energy, liquid water, etc.).
• An overview of Earth's extreme inabited environments (hot springs, cold places, deep seas, deep terrestrial subsurface, deserts, very salty waters, places of extreme pH, oil).
• The main molecular mechanisms to cope with stressful (extreme) conditions.
• Practical usage of knowledge derived from extremophiles in biotechnology and medicine.
• Relevance of extremophile studies to the hypotheses of what is the correct (real) family tree of life.
• Gaia hypothesis.
• Possibility of, and search for, the life elsewhere in the Universe.

It is an easy & pleasant to read popular science book that still retains some of the harder scientific contents (especially the most relevant parts of molecular biochemistry), which I think is a good approach (um, after reading comments at Amazon, I would rephrase that as "easy & pleasant for scientifically minded persons who have already encountered a few biochemistry texts earlier in their life" :D ). The author Michael Gross, though currently a full time science writer, has been an active scientist in the field of extremophilic microbiology.

More info at Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/dp/0738204455/

A fake travel guide, from 2003.

I picked it up in a bookstore in Stansted airport, London, in 2005. It was 5 a.m., and I had been up since the previous morning, but this book still managed to make me laugh, so there wasn't much hesitation left about whether to buy it or not.

"...Despite being one of the smallest countries in Europe, the Republic of Molvania has much to offer the discerning tourist. Panoramic scenery, magnificent neoclassical architecture and centuries of devotion to fine culture are, admittedly, all in short supply. But the intrepid traveler will still find plenty to enjoy within this unique, landlocked nation state -- from the capital Lutenblag, with its delightful gas-powered tram network, to the heavily forested Postenwalj Mountains in the south, where visitors can share a glass of locally brewed zeerstum (garlic brandy)..."

"...Dzrebo was first discovered in AD 6 by the Roman centurion Callus who, while leading an expedition through the region, became bogged on the flat, swampy plains. After several fruitless weeks attempting to extricate himself from the mosquito-plagued, leech-infested, stagnant wetlands, Callus is said to have declared 'this would make an ideal place for a village'. Whilst historians have subsequently conjectured that he may have been speaking sarcastically, his comments were soon acted upon and a small town sprang up..."

"...After the war Molvania found itself under Soviet control and endured many years of hardship and authoritarian rule. The turning point came in 1982 when the famous Lutenblag Wall collapsed, not due so much to democratic reform, but just shoddy construction..."

If you appreciate irony, creative humor and a good laugh, then this travel guide is highly recommended. For the rest of the crowd it is not recommended, as they might be offended (see those 1 star comments in Amazon).

More info at Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/dp/1843542323/

An updated 2004 year version of the book originally published in 1986.

It's a 576 page book filled with practical information about "how to survive in the wild, in any climate, on land or at sea". Topics include: the will to live; survival kit; knives; acquiring water and food (including how to test unknown plants for edibility, and how to catch animals, birds, fish without proper equipment); car and plane accidents; survival strategies in polar regions, mountains, seashores, islands, arid regions and tropical regions; campcraft; navigation and weather signs; traveling on foot and on rafts; first aid and medical treatment; survival at sea; rescue operation basics (for the one being rescued, not for the one conducting the operation); strategies for surviving in natural and man-made disasters.

Highly recommended for everybody, especially for travelers.

More info at Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/dp/0060578793/

A book by Ricard V. Solé and Brian C. Goodwin, originally from year 2000.

The cover gives an impression that the book is a discussion about what life is, but this is not the case. Instead, it is a good and relatively easy to read overview of a large number of tools and approaches that are often referred to as complexity science. There are deterministic chaos, emergence, criticality, self-organization, patterns in excitable media, entropy, Ising model, information theory, renormalization, self-similarity, sand-pile model, metabolic networks, genetic networks, cell differentiation, reaction-diffusion systems, biological clocks, neural nets, phase transitions, ant colonies, nest building in social insects, biodiversity, ecological stability, viral quasispecies, catalytic chemical networks, evolution and extinction, stock market fluctuations, urban growth, traffic models, etc.

As the page count is around 300, the book obviously doesn't go into great details of every concept, neither does it always have all terminology explained, neither is there a coherent overarching story. Thus I don't know if it would be a good reading for somebody who has never heard most of the presented ideas before, but for me it is a good collection of notes that can be used for sparking inspiration and for quickly remembering the key concepts, the details of which should then be looked up from other sources. So, in general I like it.

More information at Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/dp/0465019285/

and if you have access to Wiley InterScience, then: http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/abstract/97519452/