This volume is concerned with the enzymes of the nervous system. Cerebral enzymes form the basis of the functional brain. They are needed for the control of the energetics of the nervous system, whether it be their release or their direction; for the elaboration of transmitters and for their destruction; for the synthesis, transport, and breakdown of all metabolites of the nervous system. They are indispensable for the control of the multitude of factors that govern our thinking and our behavior. They make it possible for us to comprehend what is taking place around us and perhaps to understand what may be in store for us. Enzymes are the stuff of life, and no living cell can be without them. They are the results of many millions of years of evolution, from the time when biological membranes first came into being and were folded to produce the first cells within which the earliest enzymes were wrought. Countless changes have taken place within them, so that, now, only those enzymes exist that play specific roles in the functions of the living cells of today. Those in the nervous system possess a mUltiple role: in the creation, maintenance, and ultimate breakdown of the component cells and in enabling consciousness, perception, memory, and thought to become possible. But though life may go on forever, the enzymes that make life possible will undergo the many changes involved in the evolutionary process.

Erasmus Darwin (1731 1802) is remembered not only as the grandfather of Charles but as a pioneering scientist in his own right. A friend and correspondent of Josiah Wedgwood, Joseph Priestley and Matthew Boulton, he practised medicine in Lichfield, but also wrote prolifically on scientific subjects. He organised the translation of Linnaeus from Latin into English prose, coining many plant names in the process, and also wrote a version in verse, The Loves of Plants. The aim of his Zoonomia, published in two volumes (1794 6), is to 'reduce the facts belonging to animal life into classes, orders, genera, and species; and by comparing them with each other, to unravel the theory of diseases'. The first volume describes human physiology, especially importance of motion, both voluntary and involuntary; the second is a detailed description of the symptoms of, and the cures for, diseases, categorised according to his physiological classes.

1) Classic anatomical atlases 2) Detailed labeling of the earliest phases of prenatal neorological development 3) Appeals to neuroanatomists, developmental biologists and clinical practioners. 4) Persistent relevantce - brain development is not going to change.

'Intimate and thoughtful... Exciting... [A] sweeping evolutionary history.' Science The author of the bestselling Your Inner Fish gives us a brilliant, up-to-date account of the great transformations in the history of life on Earth. This is a story full of surprises. If you think that feathers arose to help animals fly, or lungs to help them walk on land, you'd be in good company. You'd also be entirely wrong. Neil Shubin delves deep into the mystery of life, the ongoing revolutions in our understanding of how we got here, and brings us closer to answering one of the great questions - was life on earth inevitable...or was it all an accident?

Misanthropology: Science, Pseudoscience, and the Study of Humanity introduces students to key concepts in critical thinking across the four core branches of anthropology: cultural, linguistic, biological, and archaeological. It combines a critical analysis of anthropology as a field with current concepts in scientific skepticism. By deconstructing a range of global case studies in which anthropological research runs aground, the book teaches students to distinguish between legitimate science and pseudoscience. It covers key concepts in critical thinking and rigorous research, such as cognitive biases and logical fallacies, data collection and consensus, probabilistic thinking, as well as political, nationalist, racist biases. Students learn not only how to apply these concepts to anthropological research and fieldwork, but also to their consumption of everyday information. This book will appeal to anthropology students and will be particularly useful for instructors of introductory anthropology courses, as well as instructors of courses across the humanities and social sciences focused on inculcating critical thinking skills.

1) Classic anatomical atlases 2) Detailed labelling of the earliest phases of prenatal neurological development without abbreviations 3) Appeals to neuroanatomists, developmental biologists and clinical practioners 4) Persistent relevance - brain development is not going to change, but this Atlas offers updated terminology for primordial neural structures.

This third of 15 short atlases reimagines the classic 5-volume Atlas of Human Central Nervous System Development. This volume presents serial sections from specimens between 15 mm and 18 mm with detailed annotations, together with 3D reconstructions. An introduction summarizes human CNS development by using high-resolution photos of methacrylate-embedded rat embryos at a similar stage of development as the human specimens in this volume. The accompanying Glossary gives definitions for all the terms used in this volume and all the others in the Atlas. Features Classic anatomical atlas Detailed labeling of structures in the developing brain offers updated terminology and the identification of unique developmental features, such as germinal matrices of specific neuronal populations and migratory streams of young neurons Appeals to neuroanatomists, developmental biologists, and clinical practitioners A valuable reference work on brain development that will be relevant for decades

This book explores the socio-political implications of human heredity from the second half of the nineteenth century to the present postgenomic moment. It addresses three main phases in the politicization of heredity: the peak of radical eugenics (1900-1945), characterized by an aggressive ethos of supporting the transformation of human society via biological knowledge; the repositioning, after 1945, of biological thinking into a liberal-democratic, human rights framework; and the present postgenomic crisis in which the genome can no longer be understood as insulated from environmental signals. In Political Biology, Maurizio Meloni argues that thanks to the ascendancy of epigenetics we may be witnessing a return to soft heredity - the idea that these signals can cause changes in biology that are themselves transferable to succeeding generations. This book will be of great interest to scholars across science and technology studies, the philosophy and history of science, and political and social theory.

This volume illustrates the extent to which the traditional distinction between biochemical and physiological processes is being obliterated by molecular biology. It can hardly be doubted that the revolution in cell and molecular biology is leading to core knowledge that provides an outline of the integrative and reductionist approach. We view this as the beginning of a new era, that of the integration of learning.
As in the preceding volumes, the choice of topics has been deliberate not only because of the need to keep the volume within reasonable bounds but also because of the need to avoid information over-load. Several relevant topics are dealt with in other modules; for example, the role of G proteins in transmembrane signalling is covered in the Membranes and Cell Signalling module (i.e., Volume 7). Omissions are of course inevitable but they are minor. A case in point is the subject of phosphatases, the treatment of which does not take into account calcineurin. One of the key functions of this Ca2+ -activated protein phosphatase that is also regulated by calmodulin is to desphosphorylate voltage-dependent Ca2+ channels. The mere recognition of such omissions before or after consulting textbooks and journals should be a spur to a more complete discussion by the student of the subject in a small group teaching setting.

When it was published in 1996 Bioarchaeology of Southeast Asia was the first book to examine the biology and lives of the prehistoric people of this region. Bringing together the most active researchers in late Pleistocene/Holocene Southeast Asian human osteology, the book deals with major approaches to studying human skeletal remains. Using analysis of the physical appearance of the region's past peoples, the first section explores issues such as the first inhabitants of the region, the evidence for subsequent migratory patterns (particularly between Southeast and Northeast Asia) and counter arguments centering on in situ microevolutionary change. This second section reconstructs the health of these people, in the context of major economic and demographic changes over time, including those caused by the adoption or intensification of agriculture. Written for archaeologists, bioarchaeologists and biological anthropologists, it is a fascinating insight into the bioarchaeology of this important region.

Lots of brilliantly funny illustrations, help to explain how the body works inside and out! Kids will go bonkers about this book. It's a first guide to the human body with all the gross and disgusting bits! There's plenty of cool illustrations and easy bite-size text, that kids will find both hilarious and informative! Discover all about our powerful brains, it's mission control ! Muscles, the hardest worker is our heart it's constantly on the go!! The nervous system sends and receives messages in super-fast time .What happens when we sleep...apart from snoring? It's hilarious but what makes our bottoms burp? Bright, comic-style illustrations and fun (sometimes disgusting) facts are set out in an engaging question and answer format. It's just the perfect way for kids to take their first peek at the science of the human body.

The Human Genome Diversity Project (HGDP) was launched in 1991 by a group of population geneticists whose aim was to map genetic diversity in hundreds of human populations by tracing the similarities and differences between them. It quickly became controversial and was accused of racism and 'bad science' because of the special interest paid to sampling cell material from isolated and indigenous populations. The author spent a year carrying out participant observation in two of the laboratories involved and provides fascinating insights into daily routines and technologies used in those laboratories and also into issues of normativity, standardization and naturalisation. Drawing on debates and theoretical perspectives from across the social sciences, M'charek explores the relationship between the tools used to produce knowledge and the knowledge thus produced in a way that illuminates the HGDP but also contributes to our broader understanding of the contemporary life sciences and their social implications.

Describes essential redox biology reactions and concepts in exercise physiology. Defines and critiques how to assess and manipulate key redox parameters in an in vivo human exercise context. Summarizes underlying mechanisms. Provides examples of translationally important research relating to many disease states. Includes an international team of leading experts

A New York Times bestseller and a Book of the Year for the Evening Standard and The Times.

Is getting a little less comfortable the key to living a happier, healthier life?

When journalist Scott Carney came across a picture of a man in his fifties sitting on a glacier in just his underwear, he assumed it must be a hoax. Dutch guru Wim Hof claimed he could control his body temperature using his mind and teach others to do the same. Sceptical, Carney signed up to Hof’s one-week course, not realising that it would be the start of a four-year journey to unlock his own evolutionary potential.

From hyperventilating in a Polish farmhouse to underwater weight training in California, and eventually climbing Mt Kilimanjaro wearing just shorts and running shoes, Carney travelled the world testing out unorthodox methods of body transformation and discovering the science behind them.

In What Doesn’t Kill Us he explains how getting a little less comfortable can help us to unlock our lost evolutionary strength.

Critical to the accurate diagnosis of human illness is the need to distinguish clinical features that fall within the normal range from those that do not. That distinction is often challenging and not infrequently requires considerable experience at the bedside. It is not surprising that accurate cytogenetic diagnosis is also often a challenge, especially when chromosome study reveals morphologic findings that raise the question of normality. Given the realization that modern human cytogenetics is just over five decades old, it is noteworthy that thorough documentation of normal chromosome var- tion has not yet been accomplished. One key diagnostic consequence of the inability to distinguish a "normal" variation in chromosome structure from a pathologic change is a missed or inaccurate diagnosis. Clinical cytogeneticists have not, however, been idle. Rather, progressive biotechnological advances coupled with virtual completion of the human genome project have yielded increasingly better microscopic resolution of chromosome structure. Witness the progress from the early short condensed chromosomes to the later visualization of chromosomes through banding techniques, hi- resolution analysis in prophase, and more recently to analysis by fluorescent in situ hybridization (FISH).

Can we give Grandma a Viking funeral? Why don't animals dig up all the graves? Will my hair keep growing in my coffin after I'm buried? Every day, funeral director Caitlin Doughty receives dozens of questions about death. Here she offers her factual, hilarious and candid answers to thirty-five of the most interesting, sharing the lore and science of what happens to, and inside, our bodies after we die. Why do corpses groan? What causes bodies to turn strange colours during decomposition? and why do hair and nails appear longer after death? The answers are all within . . .

In Curvology, Cambridge Veterinary Anatomist David Bainbridge applies the science of evolutionary biology to women's bodies, to explain why the human female is the only female animal to have curves and how these curves rule our lives, by influencing not only sexual selection but also social hierarchy and self-image. Written in lucid and engaging prose, Bainbridge's unique brand of popular science also draws on illuminating references from zoology, art history, contemporary media culture, and a range of first-person interviews with some actual human women. Offering a level-headed and fresh perspective on a contentious issue, Curvology is a fascinating, controversial, and highly newsworthy read.

This book describes how archival data inform anthropological questions about human biology and health. The authors present a diverse array of human biological evidence from a variety of sources including the archaeological record, medical collections, church records, contemporary health and growth data, and genetic information from the descendants of historical populations. The contributions demonstrate how the analysis of historical documents expands the horizons of research in human biology, extends the longitudinal analysis of microevolutionary and social processes into the present, and enhances the understanding of the human condition.

This is the first of a 4-volume module that is an introduction to the study of cell chemistry and physiology. It is not intended to be encyclopedic in nature but rather a general survey of the subject with an emphasis on those topics that are central to an understanding of cell biology and those that are certain to become of increasing importance in the teaching of modern medicine.
We have followed what appeared to as to be the logical divisions of the subject beginning with proteins. Allewell and her colleagues stress the point that proteins fold spontaneously to form complex three-dimensional structures and that some of them unfold with the help of proteins called chaperones. Michaelis-Menten kinetics are shown by Nelsestuen to describe the behaviour of enzymes in the test tube. The formalism is particularly useful in the search for agents of therapeutic value, as exemplified by methotrexate. Uptake by mammalian cells of substrates and their metabolic conversions are discussed by van der Vusse and Reneman. However, both Welch and Savageau expound the view that the cell is not simply a bagful of enzymes. The biologist is urged by Savageau to abandon Michaelis-Menten formalism and apply the Power Law. The biologist is also told that the approach to arriving at a theory of metabolic control would have to be one of successive approximations requiring the use of the computer. Information gained from comparative biochemistry is shown by Storey and Brooks to have shed new light on mechanisms of metabolic rate depression and freeze tolerance, and to be applicable to organ transplantation technology. We are reminded that enzyme adaptation is partly the result of the presence of a hydrating shell of vicinal water that stabilises conformation of the enzyme. Vicinal water, according to Drost-Hausen and Singleton, lies adjacent to most solids and protein interfaces. The kinks or breaks observed in the slope of the Arrhenius plot are attributed to structural changes in vicinal water. Regulation of cell volume is shown by Hempling to involve regulation of cell water. It could be that the osmo-receptor or volume detection system is a protein that links the cytoskeleton to specific K and C1 channels. Additionally, it is interesting that aquaporins, which are water channel-forming membrane proteins, are now known to exist in both renal and extra-renal tissues. One of the renal porins is affected by vasopressin.
We then pass on to protein synthesis (Rattan) and other important topics including protein glycosylation (Hounsell), methylation (Clarke), ADP-ribosylation (Pearson) and prenylation (Gelb). Among the four types of lipids attached to membrane proteins are the prenyl groups. Ford and Gross in their chapter on lipobiology drive home the point that there is an accumulation of acyl carnitine and lysophospholipids during myocardial infarction.

Zsuzsa Berend presents a methodologically innovative ethnography of SurroMomsOnline.com, the largest surrogacy support website in the United States. Surrogates' views emerge from the stories, debates, and discussions that unfold online. The Online World of Surrogacy documents these collective meaning-making practices and explores their practical, emotional, and moral implications. In doing so, the book works through themes of interest across the social sciences, including definitions of parenthood, the symbolic role of money, reproductive loss, altruism, and the moral valuation of relationships.

Environmental pollution is an emerging global public health problem of both developing and developed nations. Such pollution is a major risk factor for many illnesses, including nervous system disorders. This book combines the highlights the effects of environmental pollution on brain biology. It will be a thorough overview of the pathophysiological and oxidative stress mechanisms and how environmental pollution affects the brain biology. The author discusses environmental pollution and brain development, memory, autism, hearing and vision loss and brain cancer. Several chapters address controversial topics such as the effect of Electromagnetic Field Radiation (RF-EMFR).

This book addresses central questions in the evolution of language: where it came from; how and why it evolved; how it came to be culturally transmitted; and how languages diversified. It does so from the perspective of the latest work in linguistics, neuroscience, psychology, and computer science, and deploys the latest methods and theories to probe into the origins and subsequent development of the only species that has languages.

Many complex traits define the human condition, including encephalization and bipedalism. The specific molecular signals and cellular processes producing these traits are the result of dramatic evolutionary change. At the same time, conservation of many of these developmental programs underlie both structure and function. Novel methodologies and techniques allow analysis of the collective behavior of cells, cell shapes, tissues, and organs. This volume demonstrates the essential role of cellular mechanisms in the evolutionary increase in the size and complexity of the primate brain. In addition, and concordant with encephalization, this book documents changes in the muscles and bones associated with the appearance of bipedalism. Genetic changes are the basis of these evolutionary changes, but transformation of genetic information into phenotypic outcomes occurs at the level of the cell, and this is the focus of the book. The goal is to encourage others to adopt evolutionary cell biology as a novel and necessary approach to the genotype-phenotype map of the diversification of primates, human variation, and human evolution. The contributors to this book utilize advances in genetic analysis, visualization of cells and tissues, and the merging of evolutionary developmental biology with evolutionary cell biology to address questions central to understanding the human and primate evolution. Key Features Explores mechanisms underlying trait distribution, dispersal, variation, and evolution through the direct testing of hypotheses especially with respect to patterns of encephalization, certain sensory modalities, and growth and life history specializations. Documents the advantages for anthropologists to work at the level of cells focusing on how genes provide instructions for cells to make structure and how environmental influences affect the behavior of cells. Illustrates the role cell biology plays with respect to encephalization, neocortical expansion, variation in facial morphology, locomotion, and dexterity. Describes novel methodologies and techniques allowing analysis of how the collective behavior of cells shapes tissues and organs. Related Titles Ripamonti, U., ed. Induction of Bone Formation in Primates: The Transforming Growth Factor-beta 3 (ISBN 978-0-3673-7740-3). Gordon, M. S., et al., eds. Animal Locomotion: Physical Principles and Adaptations (ISBN 978-0-3676-5795-6) Bianchi, L. Developmental Neurobiology (ISBN 978-0-8153-4482-7)