This volume is designed to explore evolutionary, cross-cultural, physiological, environmental, and pathological influences on variation in human biological ageing. With use of models traditionally unique to anthropological research, contributors to this edited volume approach human biological ageing as a heterogeneous and variable process. An explicit emphasis on evolutionary biology and human variation results in a renewed perspective on human biological ageing as the end result of a set of co-adapted genetic complexes that were associated with successful growth, development, reproduction, and parenting of offspring during our species' evolutionary history. However, while examining human life span and life history parameters as population level phenomena, the book also emphasizes human phenotypic plasticity as the key to understanding human biological ageing. This broad evolutionary perspective on human biological ageing and life history patterns is unique in biological gerontology, a field generally reductionist in method and theory in keeping with current trends in biomedicine.

Predicting water runoff in ungauged water catchment areas is vital to practical applications such as the design of drainage infrastructure and flooding defences, runoff forecasting, and for catchment management tasks such as water allocation and climate impact analysis. This full colour book offers an impressive synthesis of decades of international research, forming a holistic approach to catchment hydrology and providing a one-stop resource for hydrologists in both developed and developing countries. Topics include data for runoff regionalisation, the prediction of runoff hydrographs, flow duration curves, flow paths and residence times, annual and seasonal runoff, and floods. Illustrated with many case studies and including a final chapter on recommendations for researchers and practitioners, this book is written by expert authors involved in the prestigious IAHS PUB initiative. It is a key resource for academic researchers and professionals in the fields of hydrology, hydrogeology, ecology, geography, soil science, and environmental and civil engineering.

Combining anthropological, gerontological and biocultural evidence, this study explores how humans came to grow old as slowly as they do, and what impacts this has had on their health and lives. It is only comparatively recent that humans have developed late-life survival, but much of the research on senescence is based on isolated cells, worms, and fruit flies, which may be only of peripheral relevance to human aging.