Gives an account of the morphologies of vertebrate respiratory organs and attempts to explicate the basis of the common and different structural and functional designs and stratagems that have evolved for acquisition of molecular oxygen. The book has been written with a broad readership in mind: students of biology as well as experts in the discipl
Gives an account of the morphologies of vertebrate respiratory organs and attempts to explicate the basis of the common and different structural and functional designs and stratagems that have evolved for acquisition of molecular oxygen. The book has been written with a broad readership in mind: students of biology as well as experts in the disciplines of zoology, physiology, morphology, biological microscopy, biomedical engineering, and ecology and those that work or may contemplate working on materials and aspects concerning respiration in whole organisms will find it useful. Scientists in earth sciences with particular interest on the outcomes of past interactions between environmental factors (the physical domain) and evolution and adaptation (the biological domain), mechanisms that have set the composition, patterning, and anatomies of extant animal life, will find the book of interest.
The works and thoughts of Santiago Ramn y Cajal in a faithful rendition of the original Spanish version, with additional facts contained in the French translation, both of which are currently quoted around 200 times each year in the scientific literature. This is the only authorized English translation and makes use of uniform nomenclature according to contemporary scientific English. Most of the illustrations are reproductions of Cajal's original art work, with cross references to the figure numbers of the Spanish and French versions, while the taxonomic glossary uses current scientific names, and their colloquial English counterparts.
The synchronized flashing of fireflies at night. The spiraling patterns of an aggregating slime mold. The anastomosing network of army-ant trails. The coordinated movements of a school of fish. Researchers are finding in such patterns--phenomena that have fascinated naturalists for centuries--a fertile new approach to understanding biological systems: the study of self-organization. This book, a primer on self-organization in biological systems for students and other enthusiasts, introduces readers to the basic concepts and tools for studying self-organization and then examines numerous examples of self-organization in the natural world. Self-organization refers to diverse pattern formation processes in the physical and biological world, from sand grains assembling into rippled dunes to cells combining to create highly structured tissues to individual insects working to create sophisticated societies. What these diverse systems hold in common is the proximate means by which they acquire order and structure. In self-organizing systems, pattern at the global level emerges solely from interactions among lower-level components. Remarkably, even very complex structures result from the iteration of surprisingly simple behaviors performed by individuals relying on only local information. This striking conclusion suggests important lines of inquiry: To what degree is environmental rather than individual complexity responsible for group complexity? To what extent have widely differing organisms adopted similar, convergent strategies of pattern formation? How, specifically, has natural selection determined the rules governing interactions within biological systems? Broad in scope, thorough yet accessible, this book is a self-contained introduction to self-organization and complexity in biology--a field of study at the forefront of life sciences research.
This book examines the effects of spaceflight at cellular and organism levels. Research on the effects of gravity - or its absence - and ionizing radiation on the evolution, development, and function of living organisms is presented in layman's terms. The book describes the benefits of space biology for basic and applied research to support human space exploration and the advantages of space as a laboratory for scientific, technological, and commercial research.
Modeling is fast becoming fundamental to understanding the processes that define biological systems. High-throughput technologies are producing increasing quantities of data that require an ever-expanding toolset for their effective analysis and interpretation. Analysis of high-throughput data in the context of a molecular interaction network is particularly informative as it has the potential to reveal the most relevant network modules with respect to a phenotype or biological process of interest.Analysis of Biological Systems collects classical material on analysis, modeling and simulation, thereby acting as a unique point of reference. The joint application of statistical techniques to extract knowledge from big data and map it into mechanistic models is a current challenge of the field, and the reader will learn how to build and use models even if they have no computing or math background. An in-depth analysis of the currently available technologies, and a comparison between them, is also included. Unlike other reference books, this in-depth analysis is extended even to the field of language-based modeling. The overall result is an indispensable, self-contained and systematic approach to a rapidly expanding field of science.
