Working capacity is the physiological key to understanding man's ability, in technically less advanced communities, to exploit his environment, and hence to understanding his role in the ecological balance. In this volume the knowledge of working capacity in tropical populations is reviewed in a series of illustrative papers. Topics cover the measurement of working capacity in populations: the functional consequences of malnutrition; growth, size and muscular efficiency; ethnic differences in working capacity; energy; expenditure and endemic disease; and energy flow in tropical ecosystems. These papers and their ensuing discussions lead to a series of recommendations on studies to be incorporated in the Decade of the Tropics research programme of the International Union of Biological Sciences.

The processes that control senescence have been the subject of more then a century of serious biological research. Two institutions closely involved in this programme, the Society for the Study of Human Biology and the British Society for Research in Ageing, held a joint symposium in 1984 to consider human ageing and longevity from an interdisciplinary point of view. The resulting book has four main sections: the evolution and genetics of ageing, biological age assessment, demographic and social aspects, and the nutritional and physiological aspects of ageing and longevity. The fundamental nature of the subject will generate interest across a wide range of biological and medical disciplines.

Working capacity is the physiological key to understanding man's ability, in technically less advanced communities, to exploit his environment, and hence to understanding his role in the ecological balance. In this volume the present state of knowledge of working capacity in tropical populations is reviewed in a series of illustrative papers. Topics cover the measurement of working capacity in populations: the functional consequences of malnutrition; growth, size and muscular efficiency; ethnic differences in working capacity; energy; expenditure and endemic disease; and energy flow in tropical ecosystems. These papers and their ensuing discussions lead to a series of recommendations on studies to be incorporated in the Decade of the Tropics research programme of the International Union of Biological Sciences.