Quantum mechanics is traditionally associated with microscopic systems; however, quantum concepts have also been successfully applied to a diverse range of macroscopic systems both within and outside of physics. This book describes how complex systems from a variety of fields can be modelled using quantum mechanical principles; from biology and ecology, to sociology and decision-making. The mathematical basis of these models is covered in detail, furnishing a self-contained and consistent approach. This book provides unique insight into the dynamics of these macroscopic systems and opens new interdisciplinary research frontiers. It will be an essential resource for students and researchers in applied mathematics or theoretical physics who are interested in applying quantum mechanics to dynamical systems in the social, biological or ecological sciences.

Winner of the NCTE George Orwell Award for Distinguished Contribution to Honesty and Clarity in Public Language Although Roe v. Wade identified abortion as a constitutional right in1973, it still bears stigma-a proverbial scarlet A. Millions of Americans have participated in or benefited from an abortion, but few want to reveal that they have done so. Approximately one in five pregnancies in the US ends in abortion. Why is something so common, which has been legal so long, still a source of shame and secrecy? Why is it so regularly debated by politicians, and so seldom divulged from friend to friend? This book explores the personal stigma that prevents many from sharing their abortion experiences with friends and family in private conversation, and the structural stigma that keeps it that way. In public discussion, both proponents and opponents of abortion's legality tend to focus on extraordinary cases. This tendency keeps the national debate polarized and contentious, and keeps our focus on the cases that occur the least. Professor Katie Watson focuses instead on the cases that happen the most, which she calls "ordinary abortion." Scarlet A gives the reflective reader a more accurate impression of what the majority of American abortion practice really looks like. It explains how our silence around private experience has distorted public opinion, and how including both ordinary abortion and abortion ethics could make our public exchanges more fruitful. In Scarlet A, Watson wisely and respectfully navigates one of the most divisive topics in contemporary life. This book explains the law of abortion, challenges the toxic politics that make it a public football and private secret, offers tools for more productive private exchanges, and leads the way to a more robust public discussion of abortion ethics. Scarlet A combines storytelling and statistics to bring the story of ordinary abortion out of the shadows, painting a rich, rarely seen picture of how patients and doctors currently think and act, and ultimately inviting readers to tell their own stories and draw their own conclusions. The paperback edition includes a new preface by the author addressing recent cultural developments in abortion discourse and new legal threats to reproductive rights, and updated statistics throughout.

The most up-to-date and authoritative resource on the biology and evolution of solitary bees While social bees such as honey bees and bumble bees are familiar to most people, they comprise less than 10 percent of all bee species in the world. The vast majority of bees lead solitary lives, surviving without the help of a hive and using their own resources to fend off danger and protect their offspring. This book draws on new research to provide a comprehensive and authoritative overview of solitary bee biology, offering an unparalleled look at these remarkable insects. The Solitary Bees uses a modern phylogenetic framework to shed new light on the life histories and evolution of solitary bees. It explains the foraging behavior of solitary bees, their development, and competitive mating tactics. The book describes how they construct complex nests using an amazing variety of substrates and materials, and how solitary bees have co-opted beneficial mites, nematodes, and fungi to provide safe environments for their brood. It looks at how they have evolved intimate partnerships with flowering plants and examines their associations with predators, parasites, microbes, and other bees. This up-to-date synthesis of solitary bee biology is an essential resource for students and researchers, one that paves the way for future scholarship on the subject. Beautifully illustrated throughout, The Solitary Bees also documents the critical role solitary bees play as crop pollinators, and raises awareness of the dire threats they face, from habitat loss and climate change to pesticides, pathogens, parasites, and invasive species.

Truly high altitude aquatic ecosystems are found primarily at lower latitudes: vast regions in the tropical part of the Andes, the Himalayas and Tibet, considerable areas in East Africa, and minor zones of Oceania. However, despite their abundance in these regions, their biology and ecology has never been summarized in detail. A current synthesis of the topic is therefore timely. High altitude waters are ideal systems with which to address a broad range of key and topical themes in ecology, both at the regional and global scales. From specific functional adaptations of aquatic species to harsh environmental conditions through to global diversity patterns along altitudinal gradients and extinction risks of mountain populations due to vanishing glaciers, ecological patterns and processes found in high altitude waters are both diverse and singular. Although poorly considered in classical textbooks of ecology and limnology, high altitude waters have much to offer existing (aquatic) ecological theories and applications. These often threatened and exploited habitats are also ideal for studying the intimate interactions between social and ecological systems that characterize the majority of ecosystems in the Anthropocene.

Stem cells and the emerging field of regenerative medicine are at the frontiers of modern medicine. These areas of scientific inquiry suggest that in the future, damaged tissue and organs might be repaired through personalized cell therapy as easily as the body repairs itself, revolutionizing the treatment of numerous diseases. Yet the use of stem cells is fraught with ethical and public policy dilemmas that challenge scientists, clinicians, the public health community, and people of good will everywhere. How shall we deal with these amazing biomedical advances, and how can we talk about potential breakthroughs with both moral and scientific intelligence? This book provides an innovative look at these vexing issues through a series of innovative Socratic dialogues that elucidate key scientific and ethical points in an approachable manner. Addressing the cultural and value issues underlying stem cell research while also educating readers about stem cells' biological function and medical applications, Stem Cell Dialogues features fictional characters engaging in compelling inquiry and debate. Participants investigate the scientific, political, and socioethical dimensions of stem cell science using actual language, analysis, and arguments taken from scientific, philosophical, and popular literature. Each dialogue centers on a specific, recognizable topic, such as the policies implemented by the George W. Bush administration restricting the use of embryonic stem cells; the potential role of stem cells in personalized medicine; the ethics of cloning; and the sale of eggs and embryos. Additionally, speakers debate the use of stem cells to treat paralysis, diabetes, stroke effects, macular degeneration, and cancer. Educational, entertaining, and rigorously researched (with 300 references to scientific literature), Stem Cell Dialogues should be included in any effort to help the public understand the science, ethics, and policy concerns of this promising field.

The book analyses the relationship between ecosystem services, green and blue infrastructures (GBI) and spatial planning in Italy. It provides insights on the opportunities and challenges in the adoption of an ecosystem services (ES)-based approach for Spatial Planning exploring methods and techniques for the design of GBI strategies. Nowadays, there is an advance in ES knowledge and a recognition of the benefits of GBI for the quality of human life and biodiversity conservation. The main challenge remains how this knowledge could be integrated into the planning process and how it could guide the decision-making process towards sustainable development for contemporary cities. The book collects innovative Italian experiences providing important considerations for operationalizing the ES concept and highlighting different disciplinary attitudes and methodological approaches with the common goal to enhance human well-being.

Tailoring of biomolecules using protein engineering technology, and host cells culture techniques are among the most sophisticated and elegant achievements of modern applied life sciences in which the basic fundamentals biotechnology are applicable for the development and manufacturing of biologics and other related bio-molecules for a hurdle free life with good health. A majority of biologics derived from genetically modified host cells in the current market are bio-formulation such as antibodies, nucleic acid products and vaccines. Such bio-formulations are developed mainly in two steps i.e. upstream process and downstream process. The first volume of this series begins with the latest information on how the classical stepwise host cells culture (mammals, animals, plants, and bacteria) methodology has been changed to fully continuous or partially continuous host cells culture process in order to economise the biopharmaceutical products manufacturing process. In addition this volume narrates a brief history on conceptual development of new thoughts in designing biotechnology industries for commercial production of variety of therapeutic proteins with structural modification on the basis of clinical requirements. The readers will feel exited by going through the latest discovery and development in applied life sciences for designing innovative biomolecules for health care with utmost safe. The most interesting part of this volume is newly developed concept on bioprinting. It explains how to design and fabricate animate objects by fusing or depositing material of interest in the form of powders, solid dusts, metal, liquid or even living cells or tissues by layers to produce 3D objectives. The first volume ends with the latest information on the current trend in biologics market, market dynamic, drives, and opportunities with challenges.

This book presents a selection of the best papers submitted to the International Ecocity World Summit held in Vancouver, October 7-11, 2019. The objective is to accelerate knowledge dissemination about the development of ecocities through attention to what constitutes an ecocity, what cities around the world are doing, what Vancouver as an emerging ecocity is doing, and how education can play a role in preparing the next generation of ecocity practitioners. The book uses the Summit's overarching theme and sub-themes as an organizing framework and aligns with the International Ecocity Standards that serve as a diagnostic tool to help cities assess their progress on the path to becoming ecocities. The Ecocity Standards are also proving useful to communities in developing locally relevant pathways to achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals. The book is presented in four parts that align with the Summit overarching theme of i) building a bridge to socially just and ecologically sustainable cities, supported by sub-themes of ii) climate action, iii) circular economy, and iv) informal solutions for sustainable development. Chapters comprising each part in the book are introduced by a brief precis that orients the reader to the relevant Ecocity Standards that are being addressed and other important contextual considerations that open the potential application of the chapters to an international audience. Arguments presented in the selected papers provide an orientation to the importance of engaging people, where they live, in ecocity transformations as well as emerging opportunities for affordable and accessible technologies that help cities build capacity for implementation of ecocity initiatives.

The book serves as an amalgamation of knowledge and principles used in the area of systems and synthetic biology, and targets inter-disciplinary research groups. The readers from diversified areas would be benefited by the valuable resources and information available in one book. Microbiome projects with efficient data handling can fuel progress in the area of microbial synthetic biology by providing a ready to use plug and play chassis. Advances in gene editing technology such as the use of tailor made synthetic transcription factors will further enhance the availability of synthetic devices to be applied in the fields of environment, agriculture and health. The different chapters of the book reviews a broad range of topics, including food microbiome in ecology, use of microbiome in personalized medicine, machine learning in biomedicine. The book also describes ways to harness and exploit the incredible amounts of genomic data. The book is not only limited to medicine but also caters to the needs of environmentalists, biochemical engineers etc. It will be of interest to advanced students and researchers in life sciences, computational biology, microbiology and other inter-disciplinary areas.

This book presents methods for investigating the effects of aquatic environmental changes on organisms and the mechanisms involved. It focuses mainly on photosynthetic organisms, but also provides methods for virus, zooplankton and other animal studies. Also including a comprehensive overview of the current methods in the fields of aquatic physiology, ecology, biochemistry and molecular approaches, including the advantages and disadvantages of each method, the book is a valuable guide for young researchers in marine or aquatic sciences studying the physiological processes associated with chemical and physical environmental changes.

Measuring the abundance of individuals and the diversity of species are core components of most ecological research projects and conservation monitoring. This book brings together in one place, for the first time, the methods used to estimate the abundance of individuals in nature. The statistical basis of each method is detailed along with practical considerations for survey design and data collection. Methods are illustrated using data ranging from Alaskan shrubs to Yellowstone grizzly bears, not forgetting Costa Rican ants and Prince Edward Island lobsters. Where necessary, example code for use with the open source software R is supplied. When appropriate, reference is made to other widely used programs. After opening with a brief synopsis of relevant statistical methods, the first section deals with the abundance of stationary items such as trees, shrubs, coral, etc. Following a discussion of the use of quadrats and transects in the contexts of forestry sampling and the assessment of plant cover, there are chapters addressing line-intercept sampling, the use of nearest-neighbour distances, and variable sized plots. The second section deals with individuals that move, such as birds, mammals, reptiles, fish, etc. Approaches discussed include double-observer sampling, removal sampling, capture-recapture methods and distance sampling. The final section deals with the measurement of species richness; species diversity; species-abundance distributions; and other aspects of diversity such as evenness, similarity, turnover and rarity. This is an essential reference for anyone involved in advanced undergraduate or postgraduate ecological research and teaching, or those planning and carrying out data analysis as part of conservation survey and monitoring programmes.

Provides an accessible introduction to urban ecology, using established ecological theory to identify generalities in the complexity of urban environments. * Examines the bio-physical processes of urbanization and how these influence the dynamics of urban populations, communities and ecosystems * Explores the ecology of humans in cities * Discusses practical strategies for conserving biodiversity and maintaining ecosystem services in urban environments * Includes case studies with questions to improve retention and understanding

We are in the midst of a revolution. It is a scientific revolution built upon the tools of molecular biology, with which we probe and prod the living world in ways unimaginable a few decades ago. Need to track a bacterium at the root of a hospital outbreak? No problem: the offending germ's complete genetic profile can be obtained in 24 hours. We insert human DNA into E. coli bacteria to produce our insulin. It is natural to look at biotechnology in the 21st century with a mix of wonder and fear. But biotechnology is not as 'unnatural' as one might think. All living organisms use the same molecular processes to replicate their genetic material and the same basic code to 'read' their genes. The similarities can be seen in their DNA. Here, John Archibald shows how evolution has been 'plugging-and-playing' with the subcellular components of life from the very beginning and continues to do so today. For evidence, we need look no further than the inner workings of our own cells. Molecular biology has allowed us to gaze back more than three billion years, revealing the microbial mergers and acquisitions that underpin the development of complex life. One Plus One Equals One tells the story of how we have come to this realization and its implications.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2018 BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION 'Elegantly written, wittily constructed . . . My science book of the year.' Robin McKie, Observer, 'Best Books of 2018' She Has Her Mother's Laugh presents a profoundly original perspective on what we pass along from generation to generation. Charles Darwin played a crucial part in turning heredity into a scientific question, and yet he failed spectacularly to answer it. The birth of genetics in the early 1900s seemed to do precisely that. Gradually, people translated their old notions about heredity into a language of genes. As the technology for studying genes became cheaper, millions of people ordered genetic tests to link themselves to missing parents, to distant ancestors, to ethnic identities . . . But, Zimmer argues, heredity isn't just about genes that pass from parent to child. Heredity continues within our own bodies, as a single cell gives rise to trillions of cells that make up our bodies. We say we inherit genes from our ancestors - using a word that once referred to kingdoms and estates - but we inherit other things that matter as much or more to our lives, from microbes to technologies we use to make life more comfortable. We need a new definition of what heredity is and, through Carl Zimmer's lucid exposition and storytelling, this resounding tour de force delivers it. Weaving together historical and current scientific research, his own experience with his two daughters, and the kind of original reporting expected of one of the world's best science journalists, Zimmer ultimately unpacks urgent bioethical quandaries arising from new biomedical technologies, but also long-standing presumptions about who we really are and what we can pass on to future generations.

In this groundbreaking book, New York Times-bestselling author Steven Kotler draws on cutting edge research and first-hand reporting as he explores what makes super performers tick and what we can learn from them. Why are business moguls going to Burning Man? Why are c-suite level executives going on more meditation retreats now than in the 1970s? How is MDMA being used to treat trauma patients? Altered states, it turns out, can sharper our decision making capabilities, unleash creativity, fuel creative collaboration, and accelerate our ability to solve problems. Building a bridge between the extreme and the mainstream, Stealing Fire explains how Navy SEALS, Googlers, and Silicon Valley billionaires are using altered states (most are non-drug induced) to radically accelerate performance and fuel happiness. At its core, this is a book about profound possibility; about what is actually possible for our species; about where-if anywhere-our limits lie.

Our abilities to learn and remember are at the core of consciousness, cognition, and identity, and are based on the fundamental brain capacity to encode and store perceptual experience in abiding neural structures. These neural structures are the mechanisms by which we know, think about, create beliefs about, and understand the world in which we live. This includes the social world in which we experience conflict with others; our conflicts are largely about differences in what we know, think, believe, and understand. A number of characteristics of the neural encoding function are at the root of and help to explain conflict in our social relations and why some conflicts are difficult to prevent and resolve. Embodied Conflict presents the neural encoding function in layman's terms, outlining seven key characteristics and exploring their implications for communication, relationship, and conflict resolution. In doing so, Embodied Conflict situates the field of conflict resolution within the long arc of human history and asks whether and how conflict resolution practice can take another step forward by considering the neural experience of parties in conflict. The book includes many case examples and offers some suggestions for how conflict resolution practitioner training might be expanded to include this theoretical framework and its implications for practice.

This volume is part of the definitive edition of letters written by and to Charles Darwin, the most celebrated naturalist of the nineteenth century. Notes and appendixes put these fascinating and wide-ranging letters in context, making the letters accessible to both scholars and general readers. Darwin depended on correspondence to collect data from all over the world, and to discuss his emerging ideas with scientific colleagues, many of whom he never met in person. The letters are published chronologically: Volume 23 includes letters from 1875, the year in which Darwin wrote and published Insectivorous plants, a botanical work that was a great success with the reading public, and started writing Cross and self fertilisation in the vegetable kingdom. The volume contains an appendix on the 1875 anti-vivisection debates, with which Darwin was closely involved, giving evidence before a Royal Commission on the subject.

Brain and behaviour are intrinsically linked. Animals demonstrate a huge and complex repertoire of behaviours, so how can specific behaviours be mapped onto the complicated neural circuits of the brain? Highlighting the extraordinary advances that have been made in the field of behavioural neuroscience over recent decades, this book examines how behaviours can be understood in terms of their neural mechanisms. Each chapter outlines the components of a particular behaviour, discussing laboratory techniques, the key brain structures involved, and the underpinning cellular and molecular mechanisms. Commins covers a range of topics including learning in a simple invertebrate, fear conditioning, taste aversion, sound localization, and echolocation in bats, as well as more complex behaviours, such as language development, spatial navigation and circadian rhythms. Demonstrating key processes through clear, step-by-step explanations and numerous illustrations, this will be valuable reading for students of zoology, animal behaviour, psychology, and neuroscience.

The most up-to-date book on invertebrates, providing a new framework for understanding their place in the tree of life In The Invertebrate Tree of Life, Gonzalo Giribet and Gregory Edgecombe, leading authorities on invertebrate biology and paleontology, utilize phylogenetics to trace the evolution of animals from their origins in the Proterozoic to today. Phylogenetic relationships between and within the major animal groups are based on the latest molecular analyses, which are increasingly genomic in scale and draw on the soundest methods of tree reconstruction. Giribet and Edgecombe evaluate the evolution of animal organ systems, exploring how current debates about phylogenetic relationships affect the ways in which aspects of invertebrate nervous systems, reproductive biology, and other key features are inferred to have developed. The authors review the systematics, natural history, anatomy, development, and fossil records of all major animal groups, employing seminal historical works and cutting-edge research in evolutionary developmental biology, genomics, and advanced imaging techniques. Overall, they provide a synthetic treatment of all animal phyla and discuss their relationships via an integrative approach to invertebrate systematics, anatomy, paleontology, and genomics. With numerous detailed illustrations and phylogenetic trees, The Invertebrate Tree of Life is a must-have reference for biologists and anyone interested in invertebrates, and will be an ideal text for courses in invertebrate biology. A must-have and up-to-date book on invertebrate biology Ideal as both a textbook and reference Suitable for courses in invertebrate biology Richly illustrated with black-and-white and color images and abundant tree diagrams Written by authorities on invertebrate evolution and phylogeny Factors in the latest understanding of animal genomics and original fossil material

Recent interest in new diseases, such as HIV/AIDS and Ebola, and the resurgence of older diseases like tuberculosis has fostered questions about the history of human infectious diseases. How did they evolve? Where did they originate? What natural factors have stalled the progression of diseases or made them possible? How does a microorganism become a pathogen? How have infectious diseases changed through time? What can we do to control their occurrence?

Ethne Barnes offers answers to these questions, using information from history and medicine as well as from anthropology. She focuses on changes in the patterns of human behavior through cultural evolution and how they have affected the development of human diseases.

Writing in a clear, lively style, Barnes offers general overviews of every variety of disease and their carriers, from insects and worms through rodent vectors to household pets and farm animals. She devotes whole chapters to major infectious diseases such as leprosy, syphilis, smallpox, and influenza. Other chapters concentrate on categories of diseases ("gut bugs," for example, including cholera, typhus, and salmonella). The final chapters cover diseases that have made headlines in recent years, among them mad cow disease, West Nile virus, and Lyme disease.

In the tradition of Berton Rouech, Hans Zinsser, and Sherwin Nuland, Ethne Barnes answers questions you never knew you had about the germs that have threatened us throughout human history.

More than 2000 years ago Greek philosophers were pondering the puzzling dichotomy between our physical bodies and our seemingly non-physical minds. Yet even today, it remains puzzling how our mind controls our body, and vice versa, how our body shapes our mind. How is it that we can think highly abstract thoughts, seemingly fully detached from the actual, physical reality? This book offers an interdisciplinary introduction to embodied cognitive science, addressing the question of how the mind comes into being while actively interacting with and learning from the environment by means of the own body. By pursuing a functional and computational perspective, concrete answers are provided about the fundamental mechanisms and developing structures that must bring the mind about, taking into account insights from biology, neuroscience, psychology, and philosophy as well as from computer science, machine learning, and artificial intelligence. The book provides introductions to the most important challenges and available computational approaches on how the mind comes into being. The book includes exercises, helping the reader to grasp the material and understand it in a broader context. References to further studies, methodological details, and current developments support more advanced studies beyond the covered material. While the book is written in advanced textbook style with the primary target group being undergraduates in cognitive science and related disciplines, readers with a basic scientific background and a strong interest in how the mind works will find this book intriguing and revealing.

Members of the fungal kingdom-the decomposers, the fermenters, the pathogens, the symbiotes-play critical roles in the ecology of our planet and have provided both benefits and hazards to humans for millennia. Pathogenic fungi are responsible for ca. 1.5 million deaths each year, yet other members of the Kingdom Fungi provide foods, medicines, industrial products, and more: a window for researchers into the workings of all eukaryotes. In The Fungal Kingdom, an international team of experts has assembled reviews by more than 170 mycologists, cell biologists, systems biologists, mathematicians, geneticists, and genomicists that cover the latest research and knowledge about all aspects of the Eumycota. The Fungal Kingdom is a rich collection of articles on all things fungi. These reviews present the latest fungal research and the impacts of fungi on agriculture, ecology, human health, and industrial applications as well as what lies ahead.

An instant bestseller in 1859, few books have had such a revolutionary impact and left such a lasting impression as On the Origin of Species. Possibly the most important and challenging scientific book ever published, Darwin's language remains surprisingly modern and direct and is presented here in a faithful facsimile edition. The text is taken from the second edition (1860), which is the same as the first except for some minor corrections and so is the purest distillation of Darwin's original vision. It includes a new foreword by David Williams, Researcher at the Natural History Museum,and the introductory appendix, An Historical Sketch of the Recent Progress of Opinion on the Origin, which first appeared in the third edition (1861). As such it is an ideal scholarly resource as well an attractive and excellent value edition for the general reader.

With more than two hundred species distributed across most of mainland Mexico, Central and South America, and islands in the Caribbean Sea, the Phyllostomidae bat family (American leaf-nosed bats) is one of the world's most diverse mammalian families in terms of its trophic, or feeding, diversity. From an insectivorous ancestry, extant species have evolved into several dietary classes, including blood-feeding, vertebrate carnivory, and the consumption of nectar, pollen, and fruit, in a period of about 30 million years. Phyllostomidae's plant-visiting species are responsible for pollinating more than five hundred species of neotropical shrubs, trees, vines, and epiphytes--many of which are economically and ecologically important--and they also disperse the seeds of at least another five-hundred plant species. Fruit-eating and seed-dispersing members of this family thus play a crucial role in the regeneration of neotropical forests, and the fruit eaters are among the most abundant mammals in these habitats. Coauthored by leading experts in the field and synthesizing the latest advances in molecular biology and ecological methods, Phyllostomid Bats is the first overview in more than forty years of the evolution of the many morphological, behavioral, physiological, and ecological adaptations in this family. Featuring abundant illustrations as well as details on the current conservation status of phyllostomid species, it is both a comprehensive reference for these ecologically vital creatures and a fascinating exploration of the evolutionary process of adaptive radiation.