As recent articles about "the graying of America" suggest, a demographic revolution is well underway. The number of people living into extreme old age is increasing dramatically. By the year 2050 one in five of the world's population, including the developing countries, will be 65 or older, a fact which presages profound medical, biological, philosophical, and political changes in the coming century.

In Time of Our Lives, Tom Kirkwood unfolds some of the deepest mysteries of medical science while demolishing some of the most persistent misconceptions. He overturns the almost universally held belief that aging is either necessary or inevitable--it isn't--and debunks the idea that there exists a "death gene" that evolved to inhibit population growth. Instead, Kirkwood shows that we age because our genes, evolving at a time when life was "nasty, brutish, and short," placed little priority on the long-term maintenance of our bodies. With such knowledge, along with new insights from genome research, we can devise ways to target the root causes of aging and of age-related diseases such as Alzheimer's and osteoporosis. Expanding the thesis of the "disposable soma," developed over twenty years of research, Kirkwood makes sense of the evolution of aging, explains how aging occurs, and answers fundamental questions like why women live longer than men. He even considers the possibility that human beings will someday have greatly extended life spans or even be free from senescence altogether.

Beautifully written by one of the world's pioneering researchers into the science of aging, Time of Our Lives is a clear, original and, above all, inspiring investigation of a process all of us experience but few of us understand.

When you were a baby, you didn't have any teeth at all. Then as you grew, your teeth started to come in. First one, then two - and finally, twenty teeth in all!

But you won't keep these teeth forever. First one, then two, will wiggle loose. Maybe you've lost some of your first teeth already. When the little teeth come out and the big teeth come in, everyone can see - you're growing up.

Focusing on the roles of different segments of DNA, Statistics in Human Genetics and Molecular Biology provides a basic understanding of problems arising in the analysis of genetics and genomics. It presents statistical applications in genetic mapping, DNA/protein sequence alignment, and analyses of gene expression data from microarray experiments.

The text introduces a diverse set of problems and a number of approaches that have been used to address these problems. It discusses basic molecular biology and likelihood-based statistics, along with physical mapping, markers, linkage analysis, parametric and nonparametric linkage, sequence alignment, and feature recognition. The text illustrates the use of methods that are widespread among researchers who analyze genomic data, such as hidden Markov models and the extreme value distribution. It also covers differential gene expression detection as well as classification and cluster analysis using gene expression data sets.

Ideal for graduate students in statistics, biostatistics, computer science, and related fields in applied mathematics, this text presents various approaches to help students solve problems at the interface of these areas.

A "courageous, compassionate, and rigorous every-person's guide" (Christina Bethell, PhD, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health) that shows the link between Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) and diseases, and how to cope and heal from these emotional traumas. Your biography becomes your biology. The emotional trauma we suffer as children not only shapes our emotional lives as adults, but it also affects our physical health, longevity, and overall well-being. Scientists now know on a bio-chemical level exactly how parents' chronic fights, divorce, death in the family, being bullied or hazed, and growing up with a hypercritical, alcoholic, or mentally ill parent can leave permanent, physical "fingerprints" on our brains. When children encounter sudden or chronic adversity, stress hormones cause powerful changes in the body, altering the body's chemistry. The developing immune system and brain react to this chemical barrage by permanently resetting children's stress response to "high," which in turn can have a devastating impact on their mental and physical health as they grow up. Donna Jackson Nakazawa shares stories from people who have recognized and overcome their adverse experiences, shows why some children are more immune to stress than others, and explains why women are at particular risk. "Groundbreaking" (Tara Brach, PhD, author of Radical Acceptance) in its research, inspiring in its clarity, Childhood Disrupted explains how you can reset your biology-and help your loved ones find ways to heal. "A truly important gift of understanding-illuminates the heartbreaking costs of childhood trauma and like good medicine offers the promising science of healing and prevention" (Jack Kornfield, author of A Path With Heart).

A biology professor's illuminating tour of the physical imperfections--from faulty knees to junk DNA--that make us human. "A funny, fascinating catalog of our collective shortcomings that's tough to put down."--Discover We humans like to think of ourselves as highly evolved creatures. But if we are supposedly evolution's greatest creation, why do we have such bad knees? Why do we catch head colds so often--two hundred times more often than a dog does? How come our wrists have so many useless bones? Why is the vast majority of our genetic code pointless? And are we really supposed to swallow and breathe through the same narrow tube? Surely there's been some kind of mistake? As professor of biology Nathan H. Lents explains in Human Errors, our evolutionary history is indeed nothing if not a litany of mistakes, each more entertaining and enlightening than the last. The human body is one big pile of compromises. But that is also a testament to our greatness: as Lents shows, humans have so many design flaws precisely because we are very, very good at getting around them. A rollicking, deeply informative tour of humans' four-billion-year-and-counting evolutionary saga, Human Errors both celebrates our imperfections and offers an unconventional accounting of the cost of our success.

Parasites have been infecting humans throughout our evolution. When complex societies developed, the greater population density provided new opportunities for parasites to spread. In this interdisciplinary volume, the author brings his expertise in medicine, archaeology and history to explore the contribution of parasites in causing flourishing past civilizations to falter and decline. By using cutting edge methods, Mitchell presents the evidence for parasites that infected the peoples of key ancient civilizations across the world in order to understand their impact upon those populations. This new understanding of the archaeological and historical evidence for intestinal worms, ectoparasites, and protozoa shows how different cultures were burdened by contrasting types of diseases depending upon their geographical location, endemic insects, food preferences and cultural beliefs.

Why do diets fail? Is it because of genetic disposition? A sluggish metabolism? An underactive thyroid?

A behavioural psychologist reveals the truth about dieting, including how she lost over 100lb in one year.

After years of failed diets Dr Nadja Hermann weighed over 23 stone at the age of 30. All her life, she had heard and read about hundreds of reasons why diets wouldn't work for her. But when her weight started to seriously affect her health, she took a hard look at the science and realised that most of what she believed about dieting was a myth. What was more, those very myths were preventing her from losing weight.

Forget clean eating, paleo, or fasting ― it was conquering these elements of ‘Fat Logic’ that finally led to Hermann achieving a healthy weight. One and a half years later, she weighed 10 stone, and has maintained that weight to this day. Now, using humour, the insight she’s acquired, and a dose of science, Hermann debunks widespread lies about weight loss, and shows how it is possible to attain a healthy weight.

"Fascinating and exhilarating-Sean B. Carroll at his very best."-Bill Bryson, author of The Body: A Guide for Occupants From acclaimed writer and biologist Sean B. Carroll, a rollicking, awe-inspiring story of the surprising power of chance in our lives and the world Why is the world the way it is? How did we get here? Does everything happen for a reason or are some things left to chance? Philosophers and theologians have pondered these questions for millennia, but startling scientific discoveries over the past half century are revealing that we live in a world driven by chance. A Series of Fortunate Events tells the story of the awesome power of chance and how it is the surprising source of all the beauty and diversity in the living world. Like every other species, we humans are here by accident. But it is shocking just how many things-any of which might never have occurred-had to happen in certain ways for any of us to exist. From an extremely improbable asteroid impact, to the wild gyrations of the Ice Age, to invisible accidents in our parents' gonads, we are all here through an astonishing series of fortunate events. And chance continues to reign every day over the razor-thin line between our life and death. This is a relatively small book about a really big idea. It is also a spirited tale. Drawing inspiration from Monty Python, Kurt Vonnegut, and other great thinkers, and crafted by one of today's most accomplished science storytellers, A Series of Fortunate Events is an irresistibly entertaining and thought-provoking account of one of the most important but least appreciated facts of life.

Race, while drawn from the visual cues of human diversity, is an idea with a measurable past, an identifiable present, and an uncertain future. The concept of race has been at the center of both triumphs and tragedies in American history and has had a profound effect on the human experience. "Race Unmasked" revisits the origins of commonly held beliefs about the scientific nature of racial differences, examines the roots of the modern idea of race, and explains why race continues to generate controversy as a tool of classification even in our genomic age.

Through rigorous historical research, "Race Unmasked" reveals how genetics and related biological disciplines formed and preserved ideas of race and, at times, racism throughout the twentieth century. Surveying the work of some of the twentieth century's most notable scientists, the book tests and then proves the limitations of a racial worldview. This new work is a gripping history of science and scientists that throws the contours of our current and evolving understanding of human diversity into sharp relief.

"When you first view Rose-Lynn Fisher's photographs, you might think you're looking down at the world from an airplane, at dunes, skyscrapers or shorelines. In fact, you're looking at her tears. . . . [There's] poetry in the idea that our emotional terrain bears visual resemblance to the physical world; that our tears can look like the vistas we see out an airplane window. Fisher's images are the only remaining trace of these places, which exist during a moment of intense feeling-and then vanish." -NPR "[A] delicate, intimate book. . . . In The Topography of Tears photographer Rose-Lynn Fisher shows us a place where language strains to express grief, longing, pride, frustration, joy, the confrontation with something beautiful, the confrontation with an onion." -Boston Globe Does a tear shed while chopping onions look different from a tear of happiness? In this powerful collection of images, an award-winning photographer trains her optical microscope and camera on her own tears and those of men, women, and children, released in moments of grief, pain, gratitude, and joy, and captured upon glass slides. These duotone photographs reveal the beauty of recurring patterns in nature and present evocative, crystalline imagery for contemplation. Underscored by poetic captions, they translate the mysterious act of crying into an atlas mapping the structure and magnificence of our interior lives. Rose-Lynn Fisher is an artist and author of the International Photography Award-winning studies Bee and The Topography of Tears. Her photographs are exhibited in galleries, festivals, and museums across the world and have been featured by the Dr. Oz Show, NPR, Smithsonian, Harper's, New Yorker, Time, Wired, Reader's Digest, Discover, Brain Pickings, and elsewhere. She received her BFA from Otis Art Institute and lives in Los Angeles.

Very Short Introductions: Brilliant, Sharp, Inspiring Physiology is the science of life, and sets out to understand how living things work and what makes them distinct from the non-living. It considers how our bodies are supplied with energy, how they maintain their internal parameters, the ways in which we gather and process information, the ways we take action, and the creation of new generations. This Very Short Introduction explores the field of human physiology, considering how the body works, senses, reacts, and defends itself. As Jamie A. Davies shows, human life (and indeed, all life) is sustained by the interplay of a wide variety of physiological mechanisms and principles. He discusses the physiological experiments and research undertaken to understand these processes, and analyses the ethical issues involved. He also considers the evolution of the scientific field itself, showing how enhanced understandings of physiological knowledge can help inform medical research and care. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

With 2003 being the 100th anniversary of modern aviation, Passenger Behaviour was published at a milestone for the aviation industry. Remarkable achievements in engineering have made air travel highly accessible within the span of a single lifetime. However, when evolutionary barriers are exceeded various penalties are exacted. The most common experienced by air passengers include motion sickness, jetlag and increased arousal and stress at different stages of flight. Air travel also brings us into closer contact with strangers, making our examination and understanding of the social psychology of behaviour within groups (among passengers) especially relevant. This book examines a wide range of topics that help the reader to acquire a psychological understanding of how air travel impacts on human relationships; behaviour as well as physiological functions. Written by leading authorities in their areas, it is intended primarily for those with an interest in passenger behaviour and those who work professionally in commercial aviation. This includes pilots, cabin crew, ground staff, airline and airport managers, aviation psychologists, human factors specialists, aerospace medical/nursing personnel and aircraft designers and manufacturers. As air travel being an integral part of most people's lives, this book will also be of interest to anyone who travels either on a frequent or infrequent basis.

Bio-Architecture studies the natural principles of animal and human constructions from several different perspectives, and presents a great part of the knowledge that gives origin and shape to built form.
Organic architecture offers a design approach arising from natural principles, bringing us back to local history, tradition, and cultural roots to give us built forms which are in harmony with nature. It also shows how architects can take advantage of the resources that contemporary technology has placed within our grasp.
Bio-Architecture is a unique book that studies the natural principles of animal and human constructions from several different perspectives and looks at what gives origin and shape to built form. The text gives an informative, inspiring overview of the drive toward organically informed design both intrinsically and aesthetically using a wide variety of international examples.
Javier Senosiain is an architect and an historian. He has pursued his interest in Organic Architecture across the globe drawing parallels between Buckminster Fuller's Geodesic dome and the spider's web; between Santiago Calatrava's Cathedral of St John in NY and the roots of a tree. Where nature has inspired form, Senosiain has made a career of analyzing and applying the principles he sees in some very creative writing and architecture.
* Beautiful book inspires readers to design with the environment in mind
* Comparative study of the engineering principles in nature and built structures outlines the fundamentals of architectural design
* International examples show how architects use different locations and climates to inform specific biological forms and techniques

This fascinating, multi-disciplinary volume weaves together the fields of biology, archaeology, anthropology and history to produce a stimulating and wide-ranging analysis of the biological history of past human populations. Research methods, theoretical approaches and the outcomes of research are all fully explored, and contributions to the book are made by an eminent mix of experts in the afore-mentioned fields.
Comprehensive in its coverage of the subject, chapters include discussions on adaptation and the English demographic regime; British polygyny, warfare and population structure; and a human ecological approach to the interface of history and biology.
A unique interlacing of human biology and history, this book will encourage further reflection and debate and presents a fresh perspective to the subject for students and professionals across all levels in biology, archaeology, anthroplogy and social history.

eBook available with sample pages: 0203217594

The genome's been mapped.
But what does it mean?

Arguably the most significant scientific discovery of the new century, the mapping of the twenty-three pairs of chromosomes that make up the human genome raises almost as many questions as it answers. Questions that will profoundly impact the way we think about disease, about longevity, and about free will. Questions that will affect the rest of your life.

"Genome" offers extraordinary insight into the ramifications of this incredible breakthrough. By picking one newly discovered gene from each pair of chromosomes and telling its story, Matt Ridley recounts the history of our species and its ancestors from the dawn of life to the brink of future medicine. From Huntington's disease to cancer, from the applications of gene therapy to the horrors of eugenics, Matt Ridley probes the scientific, philosophical, and moral issues arising as a result of the mapping of the genome. It will help you understand what this scientific milestone means for you, for your children, and for humankind.

Evolutionary science is critical to an understanding of integrated human biology and is increasingly recognised as a core discipline by medical and public health professionals. Advances in the field of genomics, epigenetics, developmental biology, and epidemiology have led to the growing realisation that incorporating evolutionary thinking is essential for medicine to achieve its full potential. This revised and updated second edition of the first comprehensive textbook of evolutionary medicine explains the principles of evolutionary biology from a medical perspective and focuses on how medicine and public health might utilise evolutionary thinking. It is written to be accessible to a broad range of readers, whether or not they have had formal exposure to evolutionary science. The general structure of the second edition remains unchanged, with the initial six chapters providing a summary of the evolutionary theory relevant to understanding human health and disease, using examples specifically relevant to medicine. The second part of the book describes the application of evolutionary principles to understanding particular aspects of human medicine: in addition to updated chapters on reproduction, metabolism, and behaviour, there is an expanded chapter on our coexistence with micro-organisms and an entirely new chapter on cancer. The two parts are bridged by a chapter that details pathways by which evolutionary processes affect disease risk and symptoms, and how hypotheses in evolutionary medicine can be tested. The final two chapters of the volume are considerably expanded; they illustrate the application of evolutionary biology to medicine and public health, and consider the ethical and societal issues of an evolutionary perspective. A number of new clinical examples and historical illustrations are included. This second edition of a novel and popular textbook provides an updated resource for doctors and other health professionals, medical students and biomedical scientists, as well as anthropologists interested in human health, to gain a better understanding of the evolutionary processes underlying human health and disease.

The diversity of contemporary investigative approaches included in this volume provides an exciting account of our current understanding of brain mechanisms responsible for sensory and perceptual experience in the areas of touch, kinesthesia, and pain.
Postgraduate research students in sensory physiology, neurology, psychology and anatomy, and researchers themselves will find that this volume addresses many of the key issues in our attempts to understand the neural mechanisms that mediate sensory experience arising from the body as a whole, the so-called somatic senses, in particular for touch and pain. The volume provides a record of the occasion of the St Petersburg IUPS symposium, chaired by the editors of this volume, and includes some added recent contributions from other leading international figures in the field. Brought together under the sponsoring banner of the IUPS Commission for Somatosensory Physiology and Pain, these scientists with their different experimental approaches seek collectively to understand the brain mechanisms that underlie our own nature and experience.

This volume dealing with the male body in the iconography of fascism reflects an ambition rather than an achievement. The supremacy of the global fascist superman never became a reality but was certainly an intention. This work explores the use of the image of the male body for this purpose in European, American and Asian fascism of varying degrees and various interpretations, and the differences and similarities involved. Among the similarities isthe fact that sport in all the cases in this volume was at the centre of the induction of the male body (and mind) into martial self-sacrifice. Sport was an important part of fascist socialization. The reasons are not hard to find. Sport develops muscle and muscle is equated with power - literally and metaphorically. War, the essence of fascism, demands physical fitness and sport helps promote this fitness. Competitive sport can help develop attitudes of aggression and aggression is essential in war.

This volume dealing with the male body in the iconography of fascism reflects an ambition rather than an achievement. The supremacy of the global fascist superman never became a reality but was certainly an intention. This work explores the use of the image of the male body for this purpose in European, American and Asian fascism of varying degrees and various interpretations, and the differences and similarities involved. Among the similarities isthe fact that sport in all the cases in this volume was at the centre of the induction of the male body (and mind) into martial self-sacrifice. Sport was an important part of fascist socialization. The reasons are not hard to find. Sport develops muscle and muscle is equated with power - literally and metaphorically. War, the essence of fascism, demands physical fitness and sport helps promote this fitness. Competitive sport can help develop attitudes of aggression and aggression is essential in war.

This text begins with an in-depth overview into the human organism at the molecular, cellular, tissue and organ levels, and develops into a discussion of the objectives and features of organ systems of the evolved human. The book also covers the relationship between the human body and the environment in which it exists including other organisms that co-habitate the environment. Discussions of the nature of other organisms such as various animals, plants, and micro-organisms makes later information about food science, nutrient density in various food sources, and nutraceuticals easier to comprehend.
Advanced Human Nutrition examines human nutrient requirements, the basis for RDA and other recommendations; human nutrition, digestion, and absorption with relation to organs, exocrine and endocrine functions, histology, and absorptive activities; macronutrients and micronutrients; eicosanoid chemistry and function, and more.
The present and future of nutrition research is examined, including everything from the HANES studies to electron microscopy and molecular biology.

Features
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Jerry Stannard assembled a legendary collection of materials on the history of botany from Homer to Linnaeus, and his mastery of the field was acknowledged as incomparable. However, his work was sadly cut short by his death, and so did not result in the ultimate synthesis he envisioned; the present volume, and its companion, Herbs and Herbalism in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, bring together his important output in articles and studies. In this selection of papers on pharmacy and medical botany, from the classical period to 1500, Stannard combined philological expertise with the scientific perspective of modern pharmacology to measure the descriptive accuracy and therapeutic efficacy of Materia Medica from Hippocrates to the Renaissance. His sources included not only the obvious technical treatises but also works of literature and the traditions of folklore especially in Italy. Three studies of the scholastic botany of Albertus Magnus form the centrepiece of the collection, and the detailed indexes cover both common and scientific names of plants.

Our Human Story is a guide to our fossil relatives, from what may be the earliest hominins such as Sahelanthropus, dating back six to seven million years, through to our own species, Homo sapiens. Over the past 25 years there has been an explosion of species' names in the story of human evolution, due both to new discoveries and to a growing understanding of the diversity that existed in the past. Drawing on this new information, as well as their own considerable expertise and practical experience, Louise Humphrey and Chris Stringer explain in clear and accessible terms what each of the key species represents and how it contributes to our knowledge of human evolution.

It is said that the skull is the only human body part that is as powerful dead as it was when living. Skulls takes the reader on an eerie journey through history seen through the hollow eye sockets of this crown jewel of the human skeleton. The book is made up of a series of short illustrated stories laced with fascinating facts, historical and medical references and compelling anecdotes. The testimonials of thirty-plus skull collectors reveal what is known of - or speculated about - the often gruesome history of the skulls, as well as how they were acquired and what makes them so highly prized.