In a Panamanian pond, male tungara frogs (Physalaemus pustulosus) gather in choruses, giving their "advertisement" call to the females that move among them. If a female chooses to make physical contact with a male, he will clasp her and eventually fertilize her eggs. But in vying for the females, the males whose calls are most attractive may also attract the interest of another creature: the fringe-lipped bat, a frog eater. In the Tungara Frog, the most detailed and informative single study available of frogs and their reproductive behavior, Michael J. Ryan demonstrates the interplay of sexual and natural selection. Using techniques from ethology, behavioral ecology, sensory physiology, physiological ecology, and theoretical population genetics in his research, Ryan shows that large males with low-frequency calls mate most successfully. He examines in detail a number of explanations for the females' preferences, and he considers possible evolutionary forces leading to the males' success. Though certain vocalizations allow males to obtain mates and thus should be favored by sexual selection, this study highlights two important costs of such sexual displays: the frogs expand considerable energy in their mating calls, and they advertise their whereabouts to predators. Ryan considers in detail how predators, especially the frige-lipped bat (Trachops cirrhosus), affect the evolution of the tungara frog's calls.

From one of the world's leading authorities on animal behavior, the astonishing story of how the female brain drives the evolution of beauty in animals and humans Darwin developed the theory of sexual selection to explain why the animal world abounds in stunning beauty, from the brilliant colors of butterflies and fishes to the songs of birds and frogs. He argued that animals have "a taste for the beautiful" that drives their potential mates to evolve features that make them more sexually attractive and reproductively successful. But if Darwin explained why sexual beauty evolved in animals, he struggled to understand how. In A Taste for the Beautiful, Michael Ryan, one of the world's leading authorities on animal behavior, tells the remarkable story of how he and other scientists have taken up where Darwin left off and transformed our understanding of sexual selection, shedding new light on human behavior in the process. Drawing on cutting-edge work in neuroscience and evolutionary biology, as well as his own important studies of the tiny Tungara frog deep in the jungles of Panama, Ryan explores the key questions: Why do animals perceive certain traits as beautiful and others not? Do animals have an inherent sexual aesthetic and, if so, where is it rooted? Ryan argues that the answers to these questions lie in the brain--particularly of females, who act as biological puppeteers, spurring the development of beautiful traits in males. This theory of how sexual beauty evolves explains its astonishing diversity and provides new insights about how much our own perception of beauty resembles that of other animals. Vividly written and filled with fascinating stories, A Taste for the Beautiful will change how you think about beauty and attraction.

From one of the world's leading authorities on animal behavior, the astonishing story of how the brain drives the evolution of beauty in animals and humans In A Taste for the Beautiful, Michael Ryan, one of the world's leading authorities on animal behavior, tells the remarkable story of how he and other scientists have taken up where Darwin left off, transforming our understanding of sexual selection and shedding new light on animal and human behavior. Drawing on cutting-edge science, Ryan explores key questions: Why do animals perceive certain traits as beautiful and others not? Do animals have an inherent sexual aesthetic and, if so, where is it rooted? Ryan argues that the answers lie in the brain-particularly of females, who act as biological puppeteers, spurring the development of beautiful traits in males. Vividly written and filled with fascinating stories, A Taste for the Beautiful will change how you think about beauty and attraction in the animal world and beyond.

¿Por qué los animales perciben unos rasgos como bellos y otros no? ¿Existe una “estética sexual” inherente a cada especie? ¿Y qué ocurre con nosotros, los humanos? Michael J. Ryan, una de las voces más autorizadas del mundo sobre comportamiento animal, retoma la senda iniciada por Darwin y nos descubre que la respuesta a estas preguntas debe buscarse en el cerebro –sobre todo, en el de las hembras-. A partir de los más recientes avances en neurociencia, Ryan despliega una teoría propia sobre la evolución de la belleza sexual y los motivos de su asombrosa diversidad, y nos muestra hasta qué punto nuestra percepción de lo bello se asemeja a la del resto de los animales. Una obra para entender mejor los mecanismos de la belleza y la atracción.

In the vast majority of patients, hypertension has no identifiable cause. Moreover, despite decades of discovery and therapeutic development, approximately only half of the hypertensive patients are achieving clinically recommended blood pressure control. For these reasons, there has been continued interest in studying the factors that underlie the pathogenesis of hypertension. One area of research that has garnered significant attention is the potential link between immune system activation and blood pressure. Several lines of evidence, dating back several decades, support the concept for this association. This monograph gives a history of the early studies linking immune system function with hypertension and an overview of the large number of studies published in the past decade. The major focus is on the components of the innate and adaptive immune systems for which there is considerable evidence of their contributions to blood pressure control. Table of Contents: Introduction / The Immune System: Key Players / Immune System Activation and Human Hypertension / Long-Term Blood Pressure Control: Role of the Kidneys / Early Animal Experiments on Immune Function and Hypertension in Animals / Cytokines and Inflammatory Mediators in Experimental Hypertension / Innate Immune Contributions to Hypertension / Adaptive Immune Contributions to Hypertension: Role of T Cells / Adaptive Immune Contributions to Hypertension: Autoimmunity / Mechanisms and Perspectives / References / Author Biography

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The focus of this cutting-edge book is on new, information-age technologies that promise to offer seamless integration of real-time data sharing, creating a single logical network architecture to facilitate the movement of data throughout the battlespace. Because the structure of this network is constrained by the fundamental trade-off between range, mobility and capacity that applies to all communications systems, this network is unlikely to be based on a single network technology. This book presents an architecture for this network, and shows how its subsystems can be integrated to form a single logical network.

In Venezuelan Stick Fighting: The Civilizing Process in Martial Arts, Michael J. Ryan examines the modern and historical role of the secretive tradition of stick fighting within rural Venezuela. Despite profound political and economic changes from the early twentieth century to the modern day, traditional values, practices, and social imaginaries associated with older forms of masculinity and sociality are still valued. Stick, knife, and machete fighting are understood as key means of instilling the values of fortitude and cunning in younger generations. Recommended for scholars of anthropology, social science, gender studies, and Latin American studies.