John Mingers' new volume, Self-Producing Systems: Implications and Ap plications of Autopoiesis, is a much-needed reference on autopoiesis, a subject penetrating many disciplines today. I can genuinely say that I enjoyed reading the book as it took me stage by stage through a clear and easy-to-grasp understanding of the concepts and ideas of auto poiesis and then, as the book's title suggests, on through their applica tions. I found the summary in Chapter 12 particularly useful, helping to crystalize the main points of each chapter. The book conveyed enthusi asm for the subject and stimulated my interest in it. At times the book is demanding, but only because of the breadth of the subject matter, the terms and concepts associated with its parts, and the challenge of keep ing hold of all this in the mind at once. This is an exceptional text. ROBERT L. FLOOD Hull, UK Preface In recent years Maturana's and Varela's concept of autopoiesis, origi nally a biological concept, has made a remarkable impact not just on a single area, but across widely differing disciplines such as sociology, policy science, psychotherapy, cognitive science, and law. Put very briefly, the term autopoiesis connotes the idea that certain types of sys tems exist in a particular manner-they are self-producing systems. In their operations they continuously produce their own constituents, their own components, which then participate in these same production pro cesses."

Reviving the Living: Meaning Making in Living Systems presents a novel perspective that relates to current biological knowledge and issues. Written by polymath Dr. Yair Neuman, the book challenges the dogmas that frame our understanding of living systems and presents a radical alternative approach to understanding the world around us, one that avoids the pitfalls of non-scientific perspectives such as Vitalism and Creationism. In this thought provoking and iconoclastic manuscript, Neuman follows the footsteps of Gregory Bateson, Mikhail Bakhtin, Michael Polanyi and others, to suggest that living systems are meaning making systems. The book delves into the unique processes of meaning making that characterize organisms as a unique category of nature, and offers new and fascinating insights into a variety of enigmatic biological phenomena from immune memory to hidden life (cryptobiosis). It consists of four parts divided into 18 chapters and covers topics ranging from reductionism and its pitfalls to genetics; why organisms are irreducible; immunology; meaning making in language and biology; meaning-bridging the gap between physics and semantics; context and memory; and the poetry of living. Core concepts and themes are illustrated using examples based in current science. This text would be of high interest to biologists, philosophers, cognitive scientists, psychologists, and semioticians, as well as to any reflective individual who is willing to examine the realm of the living from a novel and fascinating perspective.

Mathematical Biology has grown at an astonishing rate and has established itself as a distinct discipline. Mathematical modeling is now being applied in every major discipline in the biological sciences. Though the field has become increasingly large and specialized, this book remains important as a text that introduces some of the exciting problems which arise in the biological sciences and gives some indication of the wide spectrum of questions that modeling can address.

CGP's AQA A-Level Biology Revision Question Cards are a brilliant way of putting your knowledge to the test! There are 127 cards in the pack, covering every key topic. Each one starts off with quick questions to warm you up, followed by harder questions to get your brain into top gear. Flip the card over and you'll find full answers to each question, carefully written to help you understand everything you need to know. Along the way, we've packed in plenty of diagrams and expert revision tips, and there are even questions on Practical Skills. Amazing! Matching study notes for the whole course are available in our AQA A-Level Biology Complete Revision & Practice guide (9781789080261).

This book deals with the essential philosophical/ethical dimension that concerns the ends and goods entrusted to medicine. It shows that medicine cannot be reduced to its scientific and technical aspects and that the constitutive philosophical aspects of medicine presently are in a state of crisis.

Medicine, besides being a scientifically based art of diagnosing and curing infirmities of many kinds, also possesses an essential philosophical and ethical dimension. It turns into anti-medicine if it no longer stands in the service of those goods and ends that are entrusted to it. Their nature is in no way known by natural science but can be clarified by philosophy. Consequently, medicine suffers from philosophical diseases of different degrees of gravity if its theory and practice are based on errors about its proper ends. The cure from the life-threatening philosophical diseases of medicine lies in a critique of philosophical mistakes that influence the theory and practice of medicine and in an understanding and practical implementation of those ethically relevant goods that constitute its true ends. At a time when these goods are by no means universally recognized or embodied in laws of medicine, some basic philosophical understanding of them and of the foundations of medical ethics is urgently required. The purpose of this volume is to provide this largely neglected part of general and medical education.

As well as examining successful biological control programmes this book analyses why the majority of attempts fail. Off-target and other negative effects of biological control are also dealt with. Chapters contributed by leading international researchers and practitioners in all areas of biological control afford the book a breadth of coverage and depth of analysis not possible with a single author volume. Combined with the use of other experts to review chapters and editorial oversight to ensure thematic integrity of the volume, this book provides the most authoritative analysis of biological control published.
Key aspects addressed include how success may be measured, how successful biological control has been to date and how may it be made more successful in the future. With extensive use of contemporary examples, photographs, figures and tables this book will be invaluable to advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students as well as being a must' for all involved in making biological control successful.

The rapid progress in clinical and experimental immunological research, in addition to the radical change in immunological concepts in recent years, has been accompanied by similar developments in the technical vocabulary, and, as a consequence, frequent widespread confusion. The fourth edition of The Dictionary of Immunology will satisfy the needs of any biologist, clinician or biochemist who requires easy reference to current immunological usage.
This well-established work has been completely revised and updated to include key terms arising from new discoveries in the fast-developing fields of molecular and cellular immunology. The Dictionary of Immunology contains brief descriptions of the most commonly used immunological techniques, as well as definitions, useful in clinical immunology, of immunodeficiency states and autoimmune diseases. Clear illustrations and tables have been added to complement the text, and extensive cross-referencing is used to inform an integrated view.
The Dictionary will serve equally as a handy reference, a companion to other reference texts, or a spelling and fact checker for students, research scientists and those engaged in ancillary activities such as science journalists, and the curious lay reader.
* Special Features:
* Radical revision, including addition of 30% new terms.

Mathematics in Medicine and the Life Sciences grew from lectures given by the authors at New York University, the University of Utah, and Michigan State University. The material is written for students who have had but one term of calculus, but it contains material that can be used in modeling courses in applied mathematics at all levels through early graduate courses. Numerous exercises are given as well, and solutions to selected exercises are included. Numerous illustrations depict physiological processes, population biology phenomena, models of them, and the results of computer simulations. Mathematical models and methods are becoming increasingly important in medicine and the life sciences. This book provides an introduction to a wide diversity of problems ranging from population phenomena to demographics, genetics, epidemics and dispersal; in physiological processes, including the circulation, gas exchange in the lungs, control of cell volume, the renal counter-current multiplier mechanism, and muscle mechanics; to mechanisms of neural control. Each chapter is graded in difficulty, so a reading of the first parts of each provides an elementary introduction to the processes and their models. Materials that deal with the same topics but in greater depth are included later. Finally, exercises and some solutions are given to test the reader on important parts of the material in teh text, or to lead the reader to the discovery of interesting extensions of that material.

Each volume in this series illustrates the adults of all species of Geometrid Moths in photographical color plates of the best quality. Sexual dimorphism as well as polymorphism is also illustrated, and all subspecies are illustrated when possible. Most species are shown in natural size, but larger groups of small species such as the genera Idaea and Eupithecia are shown enlarged. The following information is provided for each species: full name; original reference to all available nominal names (valid names and synonyms); diagnosis based on external features, including detail figures where necessary; male and female genitalia of all species with line drawings or photographs; and a summary of the European distribution and also of distribution outside the area treated; a map of the European distribution; phenology with detailed information about flight period or periods, with reference to various parts of the distribution area; information about how the species hibernates; biology including hostplant(s); habitat including the altitude of occurrence; and similar species with the differences clearly pointed out. The Geometrid Moths of Europe is intended for both professional and amateur entomologists. Among the European Geometrid Moths are a number of serious pest species, especially to forestry. Thus, the series will also be an important tool in future pest management.

The ease of use of the programs in the application to ever more complex cases of disease and pestilence. The lack of need on the part of the student or modelers of mathematics beyond algebra and the lack of need of any prior computer programming experience. The surprising insights that can be gained from initially simple systems models.

Determinism, holism and complexity: three epistemological attitudes that have easily identifiable historical origins and developments. Galileo believed that it was necessary to "prune the impediments" to extract the mathematical essence of physical phenomena, to identify the math ematical structures representing the underlying laws. This Galilean method was the key element in the development of Physics, with its extraordinary successes. Nevertheless the method was later criticized because it led to a view of nature as essentially "simple and orderly," and thus by choosing not to investigate several charac teristics considered as an "impediment," several essential aspects of the phenomenon under investigation might be left out. The Galilean point of view also contains an acknowledgement of the central role played by the causal nexus among phenomena. The mechanistic-deterministic de scription of reality - for instance, a la Laplace - although acknowledging that it is not possible to predict phenomena exactly owing to unavoid able measurement error, is based on the recognition of the their causal nature, even in an ontological sense. Consequently, deterministic predic tion became the methodological fulcrum of mathematical physics. But although mechanistic determinism has had and, in many cases, still has, considerable success in Physics, in other branches of science this situa tion is much less favourable."

During the last couple of years, fractals have been shown to represent the common aspects of many complex processes occurring in an unusually diverse range of fields including biology, chemistry, earth sciences, physics and technology. Using fractal geometry as a language, it has become possible to get a deeper insight into previously intractable problems. Among many others, a better understanding of growth phenomena, turbulence, iteractive functions, colloidal aggregation, biological pattern formation and inhomogenous materials has emerged through the application of such concepts as scale invariance, self-affinity and multifractality.This volume contains a selection of high quality papers that discuss the latest developments in the research of fractals. It is divided into 5 sections and contains altogether 64 papers. Each paper is written by a well known author or authors in the field. Beginning each section is a short introduction, written by a prominent author, which gives a brief overview of the topics discussed in the respective sections.

This book, written by an international team of experts, introduces the reader to various aspects of complexity theory and its applications. It illustrates the latest trends in science to go beyond the mechanistic Newtonian view of the world by shifting the focus to self-organization, adaptation, and emergent phenomena. The authors discuss these properties of complex systems in biology, ecology and chemistry along with the structure and interconnectedness of the "layers" of complexity. The qualitative description is complemented by a discussion of methods for complexity quantification. Networks are covered in detail as a universal language of the complex world.

General readers, as well as undergraduate and graduate students and researchers in life sciences, chemistry, and nanotechnology will find this book to be of great interest.

This NATO Advanced Study Institute (co-sponsored by FEBS and INTAS) under the title "Chemical Probes in Biology" was designed to summarize and disseminate recent expert knowledge regarding a deeper understanding ofbiological phenomena on a molecular level. Such scientific activities -frequently termed Bio-organic Chemistry or Chemical Biology are constituting a highly interdisciplinary branch of chemistry beyond the traditional ways in which chemists and biologists have been working in the past. Thus, on this occasion we were bringing together senior experts from the disciplines of Chemistry and Biology in order to amalgamate their diverse yet basically common interests in this area. Ultimate goal was - next to an exchange of information between the two scientific cultures - the communication ofexciting possibilities in interdisciplinary research to the young scientists present. The meeting was held in the Anargyros and Korgialenios School on the Island ofSpeteses, Greece from 18-30 August 2002. The ASI was attended by a total of 91 scholars from 23 different countries. A group of 27 speakers presented a series of 34 highly stimulating, informative and educational lectures covering a broad range of topics relevant to the general theme ofthis meeting: Science at the InteifaceofChemistry, Biology and Medicine. The lectures were complemented by a total of 89 posters presented by the young scholars and a series of short lectures derived thereof This was clearly one ofthe highlites of the meeting creating a lively atmosphere of interaction and intellectual creativity - typical phenomena for the whole meeting."

An unprecedented step-by-step approach to the Bar/Bat Mitzvah Planning experience, this manual treats the ceremonies as Jewish religious occasions, wedding the ethical insights of religions to a meaningful and tasteful event. "Handsome and comprehensive".--Washington Post.

There has been a great upsurge in interest in light microscopy in recent years due to the advent of a number of significant advances in microscopy, one of the most important of which is confocal microscopy. Confocal microscopy has now become an important research tool, with a large number of new fluorescent dyes becoming available in the past few years, for probing your pet structure or molecule within fixed or living cell or tissue sampies. Many of the people interested in using confocal microscopy to further their research do not have a background in microscopy or even cell biology and so not only do they find considerable difficulty in obtaining satisfactory results with a confocal microscope, but they may be mislead by how data is being presented. This book is intended to teach you the basic concepts ofmicroscopy, fluorescence, digital imaging and the principles of confocal microscopy so that you may take full advantage ofthe excellent confocal microscopes now available. This book is also an excellent reference source for information related to confocal microscopy for both beginners and the more advanced users. For example, do you need to know the optimal pinhole size for a 63x 1. 4 NA lens? Do you need to know the fluorescence emission spectrum of Alexa 568? Access to the wealth of practical information in this book is made easier by using both the detailed index and the extensive glossary.