This volume contains selected papers presented at the Sendai International Sympo sium on Molecular and Cellular Mechanisms of Cardiovascular Regulation held from May 10-12, 1995, to honor the contributions ofProfessorNorio Taira, Chairman of the Department of Pharmacology (1972-1995), Tohoku University School of Medicine, Sendai, Japan. The Department of Pharmacology at Sendai has a long tradition of significant contribution to the development of drug therapy for cardiovascular diseases. The late Professor Koroku Hashimoto, the predecessor of Professor Norio Taira, first suggested the mode of action of calcium antagonists and their potential usefulness in therapy of ischemic heart disease and hypertension at an early stage of their development. The need for greater understanding of the pathophysiology of cardiovascular dis eases is more critical now than ever before because modern advances in basic and clinical sciences have prolonged the average life expectancy. Using a wide range of molecular and electrophysiological techniques, major advances are occurring frequently in the field of cardiovascular physiology and pharmacology. Such multifaceted approaches are preferred because human cardiovascular diseases are complex, requiring multiple interventions and an in-depth understanding of molecular mechanisms underlying the disease. The first section of this book focuses on molecular mechanisms of ion channel regulation. Eight of ten chapters in this section are devoted to the recent advances in molecular characterization and regulation of various types of potassium channels in cardiac, vascular, and neuronal tissues. A discussion of the structure and function of sodium and calcium channels is also included.

Itisonlyrecently thatthe naturaloccurrenceoffree radicalsin biological tissue has become widely accepted, and that the suspi- cion with which biologists previously viewed the free radicals of radiationchemistryhas beenplacedin a broaderperspective. Now, oxygen-derived free radicals are considered respectable biochemi- cal intermediates, given always the caveat that unwanted tissue damage may arise if these active species are produced in such abundance that they overwhelm the natural antioxidant and free- radical defense mechanisms, or if these systems have become hypoeffective. Many factors, including several dietary manipula- tions, can lead toelevatedproductionofsuperoxide and may result in free radical overload, whereas a deficiency of those micronutri- ents associated with the antioxidant defense mec.hanisms may re- sult in substantially diminished antioxidant capacity. By now, antioxidants have become a household word and al- most everyone is aware of their imponance in protecting the body against attack by active oxygen species. Indeed, it is a paradox of nature that oxygen, which is so essential to sustain aerobic life, ul- timately contributes to its destruction. Not surprisingly, recogni- tion ofthis dilemma has generated a spate ofantioxidant strategies intended to reduce the risk of tissue damage by rampant oxygen radicals, some sadly based less on science than on speculation.

One of the mysteries of mammalian reproduction is the physiologic process that determines the length of gestation. The proper timing of birth ensures that the young individual is sufficiently developed to survive and adapt in the extrauterine environment, and that the mother is capable to provide nutrition and protection to the newborn. This volume summarizes new knowledge obtained by many researchers seeking to unravel the compile mechanisms that contribute to the maintenance and termination of pregnancy. The most important common goal of these efforts is to reduce the incidence of preterm birth, which is the leading cause of perinatal morbidity and mortality in numerous countries.
Separate chapters are devoted to the best-studied animal models of parturition. In sheep, the fetus is in control of the timing of its own birth, while in avian species, oviposition is evidently determined by the female laying the feritlized egg. In humans and non-human primates, the roles of the fetus and the mother are more balanced, and involve a complicated and poorly understood interplay between the mother, the fetus, and the placenta. Some major aspects of these interactions, such as trophoblast function, myometrial contractility, and the endocrine-paracrine systems, are discussed in further chapters.

The body is a source of pleasure and of pain, at once hopelessly vulnerable and radiant with power. At a moment in which basic rights are once again imperilled, Olivia Laing conducts an ambitious investigation into the body and its discontents, using the life of the renegade psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich to chart a daring course through the long struggle for bodily freedom, from gay rights and sexual liberation to feminism and the civil rights movement.

Drawing on her own experiences in protest and alternative medicine, and travelling from Weimar Berlin to the prisons of McCarthy-era America, she grapples with some of the most significant and complicated figures of the past century, among them Nina Simone, Christopher Isherwood, Andrea Dworkin, Sigmund Freud, Susan Sontag and Malcolm X.

Despite its many burdens, the body remains a source of power, even in an era as technologized and automated as our own. Everybody is an examination of the forces arranged against freedom and a celebration of how ordinary human bodies can resist oppression and reshape the world.

Do our genes determine our behavior? Do education and environment have any influence at all? Do humans occupy a unique position in evolution? To clarify these provoking questions, the author takes the reader on an ambitious and entertaining journey through a variety of scientific disciplines. In doing so, he creates an image of human evolution that says that our entire individual knowledge is determined - to the smallest detail - by phylogeny. " ... before shocked humanists discard such radical theses as mere nonsense, they should not completely close their minds to the explanations of a biologist who says that we still know very little about the genetic determination of human behavior and that the invariance of many forms of behavior present in all cultures nourish the suspicion that the determining role of genes is probably far more comprehensive than we have ever dreamed."Wolfgang Wieser, translated from his review in "Merkur" (Sept./Oct. 1999)

A proliferation of press headlines, social science texts and "ethical" concerns about the social implications of recent developments in human genetics and biomedicine have created a sense that, at least in European and American contexts, both the way we treat the human body and our attitudes towards it have changed. This volume asks what really happens to social relations in the face of new types of transaction - such as organ donation, forensic identification and other new medical and reproductive technologies - that involve the use of corporeal material. Drawing on comparative insights into how human biological material is treated, it aims to consider how far human bodies and their components are themselves inherently "social." The case studies - ranging from animal-human transformations in Amazonia to forensic reconstruction in post-conflict Serbia and the treatment of Native American specimens in English museums - all underline that, without social relations, there are no bodies but only "human remains." The volume gives us new and striking ethnographic insights into bodies as sociality, as well as a potentially powerful analytical reconsideration of notions of embodiment. It makes a novel contribution, too, to "science and society" debates.

With contributions from 70 experienced practitioners from around the world, this second edition of the authoritative Handbook of Forensic Archaeology and Anthropology provides a solid foundation in both the practical and ethical components of forensic work. The book weaves together the discipline's historical development; current field methods for analyzing crime, natural disasters, and human atrocities; an array of laboratory techniques; key case studies involving legal, professional, and ethical issues; and ideas about the future of forensic work--all from a global perspective. This fully revised second edition expands the geographic representation of the first edition by including chapters from practitioners in South Africa and Colombia, and adds exciting new chapters on the International Commission on Missing Persons and on forensic work being done to identify victims of the Battle of Fromelles during World War I. The Handbook of Forensic Anthropology and Archaeology provides an updated perspective of the disciplines of forensic archaeology and anthropology.

What if there were a pill for love? Or an anti-love drug, designed to help us break up? This controversial and timely new book argues that recent medical advances have brought chemical control of our romantic lives well within our grasp. Substances affecting love and relationships, whether prescribed by doctors or even illicitly administered, are not some far-off speculation - indeed our most intimate connections are already being influenced by pills we take for other purposes, such as antidepressants. Treatments involving certain psychoactive substances, including MDMA-the active ingredient in Ecstasy-might soon exist to encourage feelings of love and help ordinary couples work through relationship difficulties. Others may ease a breakup or soothe feelings of rejection. Such substances could have transformative implications for how we think about and experience love. This brilliant intervention into the debate builds a case for conducting further research into "love drugs" and "anti-love drugs" and explores their ethical implications for individuals and society. Rich in anecdotal evidence and case-studies, the book offers a highly readable insight into a cutting-edge field of medical research that could have profound effects on us all. Will relationships be the same in the future? Will we still marry? It may be up to you to decide whether you want a chemical romance. -- .

This examination of the emergence of nationalism in Lithuania, looks specifically at the Lithuanian national movement, known as Sajudis, and its approach towards the citizenship rights of national minorities. The study concentrates on the period between 1988 and 1993 when the national majority and minorities began forming and debating citizenship rights. The Lithuanian situation is analyzed not just according to the letter of the law but also, more importantly, with respect to how these laws were implemented and how the minorities responded to them.

"Arguably, Vieda Skultans is the most prominent contemporary Latvian social anthropologist...One of the best assets of this book is its introduction. In its 15 lucid and condensed pages, Skultans summarizes her intellectual journey and contextualizes the articles presented in the collection, thus providing readers with a highly efficient guide to the themes that hold the book together." . Journal of Baltic Studies

"If anthropologists want to attend to wider audiences and adjoining disciplinary perspectives, this book is an inspiring example of how anthropology can be both challenged and enriched by such dialogue. Few have managed this with Skultans's dexterity or determination." . JRAI

"This volume brings together for the first time many of Skultans's important, even ground-breaking essays on psychiatry, religion and culture. It is a gift for those of us working in the field." . Tanya Luhrmann, University of Chicago

For more than three decades the author has been concerned with issues to do with emotion, suffering and healing. This volume presents ethnographic studies of South Wales, Maharashtra and post-Soviet Latvia connected by a theoretical interest in healing, emotion and subjectivity. Exploring the uses of narrative in the shaping of memory, autobiography and illness and its connections with the master narratives of history and culture, it focuses on the post-Soviet clinic as an arena in which the contradictions of a liberal economy are translated into a medical language."

Anthropologist Donald Joralemon asks whether America is really, as many scholars claim, a death-denying culture that prefers to quarantine the sick in hospitals and the elderly in nursing homes. His answer is a reasoned "no." In his view, Americans are merely struggling to find cultural scripts for the exceptional conditions of dying that our social world and medical technologies have thrust upon us. The book: is written in the first-person for a broad audience by a senior anthropologist, making it an authoritative yet accessible textbook for courses on death and dying and American culture; includes contemporary debates about highly visible cases, the definition of death, the status of human remains, aging, and the medicalization of grief; demonstrates persuasively that arguments over death and dying are in fact arguments about what it means to be human in modern America.

Contemporary migration involves a dramatic paradox. Although much of what is considered international or transnational migration today transforms people of a wide range of social standings in the emigration countries into laborers at the bottom social and economic ranks of the immigration countries, millions of individuals worldwide seek to migrate internationally. International Migration, Social Demotion, and Imagined Advancement argues that this paradox cannot be explained for as long as common preconceptions about immigrants? economic betterment thwart even questioning why individuals who are not threatened by famine or war willingly pursue their demotion abroad. Recognizing immigrants? decline as such, this book proposes viewing contemporary migration as socioglobal mobility. Revolving around an ethnographic study of the Albanian emigration in Greece, International Migration, Social Demotion, and Imagined Advancement finds that imaginaries of the world as a social hierarchy might lie at the roots of much of the contemporary international migration. As would-be emigrants perceive different countries in terms of distinct social stations in a global order, they resolve to put up with numerous social and material deprivations in the hope of advancing internationally. Immigrants are typically thought of as aliens in their de facto home societies, however, and that makes genuine advancement all but impossible. Erind Pajo is Assistant Researcher in Anthropology and Lecturer in Social Sciences at the University of California, Irvine.

Plants have cultural histories, as their applications change over time and with place. Some plant species have affected human cultures in profound ways, such as the stimulants tea and coffee from the Old World, or coca and quinine from South America. Even though medicinal plants have always attracted considerable attention, there is surprisingly little research on the interface of ethnobotany and medical anthropology. This volume, which brings together (ethno-)botanists, medical anthropologists and a clinician, makes an important contribution towards filling this gap. It emphasises that plant knowledge arises situationally as an intrinsic part of social relationships, that herbs need to be enticed if not seduced by the healers who work with them, that herbal remedies are cultural artefacts, and that bioprospecting and medicinal plant discovery can be viewed as the epitome of a long history of borrowing, stealing and exchanging plants.

Elisabeth Hsu is Reader in Social Anthropology at the University of Oxford, where she has convened its master's courses in medical anthropology since 2001. Based on her earlier studies in biology (botany), linguistics and sinology, she has published widely on the history and anthropology of Chinese medicine.

Stephen Harris was awarded a Ph.D. in plant systematics from the University of St. Andrews in 1990. He has been the Druce Curator of Oxford University Herbaria since 1995 and has published over 50 peer-reviewed papers on genetics and systematics associated with the evolutionary consequences of plant-human interactions.

This bold and controversial book takes a hard look at an old subject-race relations in the Western world. Using history as a backdrop, the author illustrates how racism and ethnic chauvinism are, sadly, common. The author warns against the harm of colorthink-an excessive obsession with race and racism-and explores the impact of such thinking on race relations today. He gives no comfort to either racists or more fashionable contemporaries obsessed with the supposedly unique evils of the Western past. Racial issues, and misconceptions about race and race relations, are among the most divisive and confusing features of contemporary society. Race Relations Within Western Expansion is designed to provide an overall account of the development of the issues involved, relating them to global history and putting them squarely within the framework of the expansion of the Western world, an expansion that began much earlier than is generally realized, far back in the Middle Ages. Levine analyzes the reasons for that expansion and how it took different forms and brought many different peoples into several different sorts of contact with the West, and how these contacts, and conceptions about other peoples, changed, or remained fixed over time. He also shows the impact within Europe of pseudo-scientific racial ideologies, and criticizes contemporary misconceptions about the history of relations between European settlers and native peoples, slavery, and the age of imperial rule in Asia and Africa. It stresses the complexity and variety of those relationships rather than attempting, as is currently fashionable, to pigeonhole more and more data into fewer and fewer ideological categories. This is a necessarily controversial book, one that collides with many cherished beliefs, both traditional and contemporary, and exposes how bizarre they really are. It acidly exposes both traditional racist myths, and more recently fashionable postures that often prove little more factually based.

Research on health involves evaluating the disparities that are systematically associated with the experience of risk, including genetic and physiological variation, environmental exposure to poor nutrition and disease, and social marginalization. This volume provides a unique perspective - a comparative approach to the analysis of health disparities and human adaptability - and specifically focuses on the pathways that lead to unequal health outcomes. From an explicitly anthropological perspective situated in the practice and theory of biosocial studies, this book combines theoretical rigor with more applied and practice-oriented approaches and critically examines infectious and chronic diseases, reproduction, and nutrition.

All cultures are concerned with the business of childbirth, so much so that it can never be described as a purely physiological or even psychological event. This volume draws together work from a range of anthropologists and midwives who have found anthropological approaches useful in their work. Using case studies from a variety of cultural settings, the writers explore the centrality of the way time is conceptualized, marked and measured to the ways of perceiving and managing childbirth: how women, midwives and other birth attendants are affected by issues of power and control, but also actively attempt to change established forms of thinking and practice. The stories are engaging as well as critical and invite the reader to think afresh about time, and about reproduction.

The modern world is saturated with images. Scientific knowledge of the human body (in all its variety) is highly dependent on the technological generation of visual data - brain and body scans, x-rays, diagrams, graphs and charts. New technologies afford scientists and medical experts new possibilities for probing and revealing previously invisible and inaccessible areas of the body. The existing literature has been successful in mapping the impact and implications of new medical technologies and in marrying the visual and the body but thus far has focused only narrowly on particular kinds of technology or taken only a purely textual/visual (cultural studies) approach to images of the body. Combining approaches from three of the most dynamic and popular fields of contemporary social anthropology - the study of the visual, the study of the technological and the study of the human body - this volume draws these together and interrogates their intersection using insights from ethnographic approaches. Offering a fascinating and wide range of perspectives, the chapters in this volume bring an innovative focus that reflects the authors' shared interest in 'the body' and visualising technologies.

Jeanette Edwards is Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Manchester. She is author of Born and Bred: Idioms of Kinship and New Reproductive Technologies in England (2000); co-author of Technologies of Procreation: Kinship in the Age of Assisted Conception (2nd edition, 1999); co-editor of European Kinship in the Age of Biotechnology (2009); and coeditor, with Harvey and Wade, of Anthropology and Science (2007).

Penelope Harvey is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Manchester and co-Director of CRESC (ESRC Centre for Research on Socio- Cultural Change). She has done ethnographic research in Peru, Spain and the UK, and published on engineering practice, state formation, information technologies and the politics of communication.

Peter Wade is Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Manchester. His publications include Race and Ethnicity in Latin America (1997); Music, Race and Nation (2000); Race, Nature and Culture (2002); and Race and Sex in Latin America (2009).

Folk, alternative and complementary health care practices in contemporary Western society are currently experiencing a renaissance, albeit with features that are unique to this historical moment. At the same time biomedicine is under scrutiny, experiencing a number of distinct and multifaceted crises. In this volume the authors draw together cutting edge cross-cultural, interdisciplinary research in Britain and Ireland, focusing on exploring the role and significance of healing practices in diverse local contexts, such as the use of crystals, herbs, cures and charms, potions and lotions.

Ronnie Moore currently Lectures in Medical Anthropology and Sociology in the Departments of Sociology and Public Health Medicine and Epidemiology at University College Dublin. Ronnie's research interests include health disparities; health, conflict and ethnic identity; and conflict theory.

Stuart McClean is a Senior Lecturer at the University of the West of England, Bristol. Stuart's research interests include the resurgence of alternative medicine and healing practices in Western societies, the role of creative arts in health, and the global dimensions surrounding health.

Complex patterns of acculturation are revealed in the most comprehensive ethnographic study of contemporary French immigrants in the United States. Written by a French-born American anthropologist who has insider status among French Americans, "The French in the United States" offers a fresh look at the histories and experiences of French immigrants. In the foreign-born generation, a high degree of social integration into American society co-exists with the maintenance of a French identity which manifests itself in the areas of language, culture, and perceptions. The French heritage does not usually endure past the second generation, however, because its maintenance within the family is not adequately supported by collective efforts, due to a lack of cohesiveness among French-born individuals who have become permanent immigrants.

A number of factors account for the foregoing: the small number of French natives in the United States, their scattered geographical distribution, the absence of spatially defined communities populated by direct immigrants from France, and a very high rate of intermarriage. Another important factor is the primarily individual nature of migration from France to this country since the last half of the 20th century, and a highly developed sense of self-direction in those who stay permanently. Their French identity must be regarded as cultural rather than ethnic: it is tied to a distant homeland, rather than to a group with territorial, institutional, and organizational identity in the United States. Lindenfeld delves into the makings of this French identity and distinguishes French immigrants from other Americans.

For courses in non-majors biology. Helps students learn the concepts and applications of human biology using relevant topics and realistic scenarios Known for its unique "Special Topic" chapters and emphasis on everyday health concerns, the 6th Edition of Biology of Humans: Concepts, Applications, and Issues continues to personalize the study of human biology using a conversational writing style, vibrant, easy-to-follow illustrations, abundant applications, and a new emphasis on using everyday science literacy skills. The authors provide a practical, friendly introduction to the study of the human body, preparing readers to navigate today's rapidly expanding and shifting world of health information. Each chapter now features brand-new "Consider This Case" exercises and "Finding and Evaluating Information" activities that challenge readers to think critically and apply their knowledge to solve real-world cases. Along with scientific updates and content improvements throughout the text, the 6th Edition also includes a new "Special Topic" chapter on the Obesity Epidemic. Note: You are purchasing a standalone product; Mastering Biology does not come packaged with this content. Students, if interested in purchasing this title with Mastering Biology, ask your instructor for the correct package ISBN and Course ID. Instructors, contact your Pearson representative for more information. If you would like to purchase both the physical text and Mastering Biology, search for: 0134056671 / 9780134056678 Biology of Humans: Concepts, Applications, and Issues Plus Mastering Biology with eText -- Access Card Package, 6/e Package consists of: 0134045440 / 9780134045443 Biology of Humans: Concepts, Applications, and Issues, 6/e 0134254910 / 9780134254913 Mastering Biology with Pearson eText -- ValuePack Access Card -- for Biology of Humans: Concepts, Applications, and Issues, 6/e Biology of Humans: Concepts, Applications, and Issues, 6th Edition is also available via Pearson eText, a simple-to-use, mobile, personalized reading experience that lets instructors connect with and motivate students - right in their eTextbook. Learn more.

"We have come to expect that an emergent disease, once the initial hysteria it sparks has died down, will either be eradicated by money and medicine, or it will settle into the prosaic landscape of ordinary maladies with attendant routines, inconveniences, and bureaucratic exasperations. In Africa, AIDS has not followed either pathway. This outstanding collection of essays takes explicit aim at the tensions that this 'non-resolution' has generated in the world region that has felt the greatest impact of the disease: eastern and southern Africa. In these papers, we see vividly how the potential death warrant that AIDS presents to couples, households, children, has institutionalized new forms of social stigma and, at the same time, new levels of collective resilience and courage." . Caroline Bledsoe, Northwestern University

"This volume brings together some of the best, most thoughtful scholarship on AIDS in Africa. The essays are grounded in the troubling economic realities and intimate moral politics of daily life amid widespread existential angst. Together they offer novel insights into contemporary African social processes and experiences. Paying careful attention to the ways people create and tend to local moral worlds, Dilger and Luig have made a compelling, important book." . Julie Livingston, Rutgers University

" This book offers] a set of reports on how a whole range of issues in daily social life in Africa have been shaped by the presence of AIDS. Even more powerfully, these chapters about experience in the age of AIDS tell us about how ordinary people have re-created their social and cultural worlds under the threat of a new disease, and also in the face of extremely challenging economic conditions...an extremely valuable book." . Steven Feierman, University of Pennsylvania

The HIV/AIDS epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa has been addressed and perceived predominantly through the broad perspectives of social and economic theories as well as public health and development discourses. This volume however, focuses on the micro-politics of illness, treatment and death in order to offer innovative insights into the complex processes that shape individual and community responses to AIDS. The contributions describe the dilemmas that families, communities and health professionals face and shed new light on the transformation of social and moral orders in African societies, which have been increasingly marginalised in the context of global modernity.

Hansjorg Dilger is Junior Professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the Freie Universitat Berlin. Between 1995 and 2003, he carried out long-term fieldwork on AIDS and social relationships in rural and urban Tanzania. He is the author of Living with Aids. Illness, Death and Social Relationships in Africa. An Ethnography (Campus, 2005 in German). His recent research has focused on histories of social and religious inequality and the growing presence of Christian and Muslim schools in Dar es Salaam.

Ute Luig Ute Luig is Professor of Social Anthropology at the Freie Universitat Berlin. She has conducted long-term field work in Uganda, Ivory Coast and Zambia on gender, AIDS, religion and modernity. She is co-editor of Spirit Possession, Modernity and Power in Africa (University of Wisconsin Press, 1999). At present she is involved in a project analysing the role of Buddhism in the reconciliation process in Cambodia after the civil war."

The idea of editing this book was born in the winter of 1988/1989. Christian Endler was organizing the workshop 'Wasser und Information' (water and information) in Austria [1], and Jurgen Schulte was working on a publication of his results on atomic cluster stabilities and long-range electromagnetic interaction in atomic clusters. It was Franz Moser from the Technical University of Graz who brought these two together. After a talk that Moser had given in Bremen, Schulte explained to hirn his ideas about clusters and long range interaction, and his concern about reliable theories and experiments in research on ultra high dilutions (UHD) and homoeopathy. He was suggested to be a speaker at the Austrian workshop. Reviewing the contributions of this workshop and the current literature on UHD and homoeopathy, especially the PhD thesis by Giesela King [2] and the excellent survey by Marco Righetti [3], we decided to work on a book in order to critically encou rage more scientists to work and publish in this field with a high scientific standard. What we had in mind was a useful contribution to the goal to lift research on UHD and homoeo pathy to an internationally acceptable scientific standard, to encourage international scien tists to work in this area and to establish UHD and homoeopathy in academic science. Delayed by our individual academic careers in our specific fields, and delayed by lack of funds it took us about four years to finish this book.

Anthropologist Donald Joralemon asks whether America is really, as many scholars claim, a death-denying culture that prefers to quarantine the sick in hospitals and the elderly in nursing homes. His answer is a reasoned "no." In his view, Americans are merely struggling to find cultural scripts for the exceptional conditions of dying that our social world and medical technologies have thrust upon us. The book: is written in the first-person for a broad audience by a senior anthropologist, making it an authoritative yet accessible textbook for courses on death and dying and American culture; includes contemporary debates about highly visible cases, the definition of death, the status of human remains, aging, and the medicalization of grief; demonstrates persuasively that arguments over death and dying are in fact arguments about what it means to be human in modern America.