Neuroscience is an interdisciplinary field that strives to understand the functioning of neural systems at levels ranging from biomolecules and cells to behaviour and higher brain functions (perception, memory, cognition). Neurophysics has flourished over the past three decades, becoming an indelible part of neuroscience, and has arguably entered its maturity. It encompasses a vast array of approaches stemming from theoretical physics, computer science, and applied mathematics. This book p...

A fun and fascinating look at great scientific paradoxes.Throughout history, scientists have come up with theories and ideas that just don't seem to make sense. These we call paradoxes. The paradoxes Al-Khalili offers are drawn chiefly from physics and astronomy and represent those that have stumped some of the finest minds. For example, how can a cat be both dead and alive at the same time? Why will Achilles never beat a tortoise in a race, no matter how fast he r...

Evolutionary biomechanics is the study of evolution through the analysis of biomechanical systems. Its unique advantage is the precision with which physical constraints and performance can be predicted from first principles. Instead of reviewing the entire breadth of the biomechanical literature, a few key examples are explored in depth as vehicles for discussing fundamental concepts, analytical techniques, and evolutionary theory. Each chapter develops a conceptual theme, developing the u...

2009 Winner of the Benjamin Franklin Award for Best Biography/Memoir, Me and the Biospheres is the definitive autobiography of John P. Allen, inventor of the largest laboratory for global ecology ever built and one of the most luminous minds of our time. Contained within a magnificently designed air-tight glass-and-steel-framed setting, Biosphere 2 covered three acres of Arizona desert and included models of seven biomes: an ocean with coral reef, marsh, rainforest, savannah, desert, farm ...

An understanding of the senses - vision, hearing, touch, chemical and other non-human senses - is important not only for many fields of biology but also in applied areas such as human-computer interaction, robotics and computer games. Using information theory as a unifying framework, this is a wide-ranging survey of sensory systems, covering all known senses. The book draws on three unifying principles to examine senses: the Nyquist sampling theorem, Shannon's information theory, and the c...

Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) are rapidly developing into a mainstream, worldwide research endeavor. With so many new groups and projects, it can be difficult to identify the best ones. This book summarizes ten leading projects from around the world. About 60 submissions were received in 2011 for the highly competitive BCI Research Award, and an international jury selected the top ten. This Brief gives a concise but carefully illustrated and fully up-to-date description of each of these...

This textbook describes the biomechanics of bone, cartilage, tendons and ligaments. It is rigorous in its approach to the mechanical properties of the skeleton yet it does not neglect the biological properties of skeletal tissue or require mathematics beyond calculus. Time is taken to introduce basic mechanical and biological concepts, and the approaches used for some of the engineering analyses are purposefully limited. The book is an effective bridge between engineering, veterinary, biol...

Themonographisdevotedtothetheoreticalstudiesofradiationeffectsonmammals. It summarizes the results obtained by the author over the past 30 years, most of them being of high priority. In the course of these studies, a single approach to the modeling of radiation effects on mammals has been elaborated. Speci?cally, in the framework of the developed deterministic mathematical models, the effects of both acute and chronic irradiation in a wide range of doses and dose rates on vital body system...

Biomechanics of the Female Pelvic Floor, Second Edition, is the first book to specifically focus on this key part of women's health, combining engineering and clinical expertise. This edited collection will help readers understand the risk factors for pelvic floor dysfunction, the mechanisms of childbirth related injury, and how to design intrapartum preventative strategies, optimal repair techniques, and prostheses. The authors have combined their expertise to create a thorough, comprehen...

The past two decades have witnessed an unprecedented growth in the field ofneuroendocrinology. The conjoint research contributions by clinicians and basic scientists have promulgated revolutionary concepts at a breakneck speed. This first volume in Clinical Surveys in Endocrinology, The Pituitary Gland, has been written with but one purpose in mind: to integrate the current knowledge in this dynamic field with the existing body of information already available to the clinician. The chapter...

This book highlights important techniques for cellular imaging and covers the basics and applications of electron tomography and related techniques. In addition, it considers practical aspects and broadens the technological focus by incorporating techniques that are only now becoming accessible (e.g. block face imaging).The first part of the book describes the electron microscopy 3D technique available to scientists around the world, allowing them to characterize organelles, cells ...

This comprehensive textbook presents a self-contained guide to bioinformatics, defined in its broadest sense as the application of information science to biology. Thoroughly updated and greatly expanded, this third edition now includes material on the growing array of “-omics”; covering metagenomics, toxicogenomics, glycomics, lipidomics, microbiomics and phenomics. New chapters have also been added on ecosystems management and the nervous system. Emphasis is placed on providing both a fir...