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Author: Thomas T. Samaras Publisher: Nova Publishers ISBN: 9781600214080 Category : Biometry Languages : en Pages : 398
Book Description
Several books have been published on scaling in biology and its ramifications in the animal kingdom. However, none has specifically examined the multifaceted effects of how changes in human height create disproportionately larger changes in weight, surface area, strength and other physiological parameters. Yet, the impact of these non-linear effects on individual humans as well as our world's environment is enormous. Since increasing human body size has widespread ramifications, this book presents findings on the human species and its ecological niche. its community and how the species interacts with its environment. Thus, a few chapters provide an ecological overview of how increasing human body size relates to human evolution, fitness, health, survival and the environment. This book provides a unique purview of the laws of scaling on human performance, health, longevity and the environment. Numerous examples from various research disciplines are used to illustrate the impact of increasing body size on many aspects of human enterprises, including work output, athletics and intellectual performance.
Author: Thomas T. Samaras Publisher: Nova Publishers ISBN: 9781600214080 Category : Biometry Languages : en Pages : 398
Book Description
Several books have been published on scaling in biology and its ramifications in the animal kingdom. However, none has specifically examined the multifaceted effects of how changes in human height create disproportionately larger changes in weight, surface area, strength and other physiological parameters. Yet, the impact of these non-linear effects on individual humans as well as our world's environment is enormous. Since increasing human body size has widespread ramifications, this book presents findings on the human species and its ecological niche. its community and how the species interacts with its environment. Thus, a few chapters provide an ecological overview of how increasing human body size relates to human evolution, fitness, health, survival and the environment. This book provides a unique purview of the laws of scaling on human performance, health, longevity and the environment. Numerous examples from various research disciplines are used to illustrate the impact of increasing body size on many aspects of human enterprises, including work output, athletics and intellectual performance.
Author: Geoffrey West Publisher: Penguin ISBN: 1101621508 Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 496
Book Description
"This is science writing as wonder and as inspiration." —The Wall Street Journal Wall Street Journal From one of the most influential scientists of our time, a dazzling exploration of the hidden laws that govern the life cycle of everything from plants and animals to the cities we live in. Visionary physicist Geoffrey West is a pioneer in the field of complexity science, the science of emergent systems and networks. The term “complexity” can be misleading, however, because what makes West’s discoveries so beautiful is that he has found an underlying simplicity that unites the seemingly complex and diverse phenomena of living systems, including our bodies, our cities and our businesses. Fascinated by aging and mortality, West applied the rigor of a physicist to the biological question of why we live as long as we do and no longer. The result was astonishing, and changed science: West found that despite the riotous diversity in mammals, they are all, to a large degree, scaled versions of each other. If you know the size of a mammal, you can use scaling laws to learn everything from how much food it eats per day, what its heart-rate is, how long it will take to mature, its lifespan, and so on. Furthermore, the efficiency of the mammal’s circulatory systems scales up precisely based on weight: if you compare a mouse, a human and an elephant on a logarithmic graph, you find with every doubling of average weight, a species gets 25% more efficient—and lives 25% longer. Fundamentally, he has proven, the issue has to do with the fractal geometry of the networks that supply energy and remove waste from the organism’s body. West’s work has been game-changing for biologists, but then he made the even bolder move of exploring his work’s applicability. Cities, too, are constellations of networks and laws of scalability relate with eerie precision to them. Recently, West has applied his revolutionary work to the business world. This investigation has led to powerful insights into why some companies thrive while others fail. The implications of these discoveries are far-reaching, and are just beginning to be explored. Scale is a thrilling scientific adventure story about the elemental natural laws that bind us together in simple but profound ways. Through the brilliant mind of Geoffrey West, we can envision how cities, companies and biological life alike are dancing to the same simple, powerful tune.
Author: Knut Schmidt-Nielsen Publisher: Cambridge University Press ISBN: 9780521319874 Category : Medical Languages : en Pages : 260
Book Description
This book is about the importance of animal size. We tend to think of animal function in chemical terms and talk of water, salts, proteins, enzymes, oxygen, energy, and so on. We should not forget, however, that physical laws are equally important, for they determine rates of diffusion and heat transfer, transfer of force and momentum, the strength of structures, the dynamics of locomotion, and other aspects of the functioning of animal bodies. Physical laws provide possibilities and opportunities for an organism, yet they also impose constraints, setting limits to what is physically possible. This book aims to give an understanding of these rules because of their profound implications when we deal with animals of widely different size and scale. The reader will find that the book raises many questions. Remarkable and puzzling information makes it read a little like a detective story, but the last chapter, instead of giving the final solution, neither answers all questions nor provides one great unifying principle.
Author: Andrea Belgrano Publisher: Academic Press ISBN: 0123864755 Category : Nature Languages : en Pages : 349
Book Description
This thematic volume represents an important and exciting benchmark in the study of integrative ecology, synthesizing and showcasing current research and highlighting future directions for the development of the field.
Author: Axel G. Rossberg Publisher: John Wiley & Sons ISBN: 1118502175 Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 400
Book Description
Food webs have now been addressed in empirical and theoretical research for more than 50 years. Yet, even elementary foundational issues are still hotly debated. One difficulty is that a multitude of processes need to be taken into account to understand the patterns found empirically in the structure of food webs and communities. Food Webs and Biodiversity develops a fresh, comprehensive perspective on food webs. Mechanistic explanations for several known macroecological patterns are derived from a few fundamental concepts, which are quantitatively linked to field-observables. An argument is developed that food webs will often be the key to understanding patterns of biodiversity at community level. Key Features: Predicts generic characteristics of ecological communities in invasion-extirpation equilibrium. Generalizes the theory of competition to food webs with arbitrary topologies. Presents a new, testable quantitative theory for the mechanisms determining species richness in food webs, and other new results. Written by an internationally respected expert in the field. With global warming and other pressures on ecosystems rising, understanding and protecting biodiversity is a cause of international concern. This highly topical book will be of interest to a wide ranging audience, including not only graduate students and practitioners in community and conservation ecology but also the complex-systems research community as well as mathematicians and physicists interested in the theory of networks. "This is a comprehensive work outlining a large array of very novel and potentially game-changing ideas in food web ecology." —Ken Haste Andersen, Technical University of Denmark "I believe that this will be a landmark book in community ecology … it presents a well-established and consistent mathematical theory of food-webs. It is testable in many ways and the author finds remarkable agreements between predictions and reality." —Géza Meszéna, Eötvös University, Budapest
Author: Marko B. Popovic Publisher: Academic Press ISBN: 0128130415 Category : Technology & Engineering Languages : en Pages : 668
Book Description
Biomechatronics is rapidly becoming one of the most influential and innovative research directions defining the 21st century. Biomechatronics will provide a complete and up-to-date account of this advanced subject at the university textbook level. Each chapter in this book will be co-authored by top industry experts in the corresponding subfield, and will be led by Professor Marko B. Popovic, researcher and educator at the forefront of advances in the biomechatronics field. Beginning with an introduction to the field and its historical background, this book will delve into the most groundbreaking and recent developments in biomechatronics, such as artificial organs and tissues, prosthetic limbs, orthotic systems, wearable systems for physical augmentation, physical therapy and rehabilitation, robotic surgery, and natural and synthetic sensors. The only biomechatronics textbook written especially for students at a university level Ideal for undergraduate and graduate students and researchers in the biomechatronics, biomechanics, robotics, and biomedical engineering fields Provides an overview of state-of-the-art science and technology of modern day biomechatronics, introduced by the leading experts in this fascinating field
Author: David J. Chivers Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media ISBN: 147575244X Category : Technology & Engineering Languages : en Pages : 575
Book Description
This book results from a two-day symposium and three-day workshop held in Cambridge between March 22nd and March 26th 1982 and sponsored by the Primate Society of Great Britain and the Anatomical Society of Great Britain and Ireland. More than 100 primatologists attended the symposium and some 35 were invited to participate in the workshop. Speakers from Prance, Germany, the Netherlands, South Africa and the U. S. A. , as weIl as the U. K. , were invited to contribute. In recent years feeling had strengthened that primatologists in Europe did not gather together sufficiently often. Distinctive tradit ions in primatology have developed in Germany, France, the Netherlands, Italy and the U. K. in particular, and it was feIt that attempts to blend them could only benefit primatology. Furthermore, studies of primate ecology, behaviour, anatomy, physiology and evolution have reached the points where further advances depend on inter-disciplinary collaboration. It was resolved to arrange a regular series of round table discussions on primate biology in Europe at the biennial meeting of the German Society for Anthropology and Human Genetics in Heidel berg in September 1979, where Holger Preuschoft organised sessions on primate ecology and anatomy. In June 1980 Michel Sakka convened a most effective working group in Paris to discuss cranial morphology and evolution. In 1982 it was the turn of the U. K.
Author: James W. Haefner Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media ISBN: 1461541190 Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 486
Book Description
This book is intended as a text for a first course on creating and analyzing computer simulation models of biological systems. The expected audience for this book are students wishing to use dynamic models to interpret real data mueh as they would use standard statistical techniques. It is meant to provide both the essential principles as well as the details and equa tions applicable to a few particular systems and subdisciplines. Biological systems, however, encompass a vast, diverse array of topics and problems. This book discusses only a select number of these that I have found to be useful and interesting to biologists just beginning their appreciation of computer simulation. The examples chosen span classical mathematical models of well-studied systems to state-of-the-art topics such as cellular automata and artificial life. I have stressed the relationship between the models and the biology over mathematical analysis in order to give the reader a sense that mathematical models really are useful to biologists. In this light, I have sought examples that address fundamental and, I think, interesting biological questions. Almost all of the models are directly COIIl pared to quantitative data to provide at least a partial demonstration that some biological models can accurately predict.
Author: James H. Brown Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA ISBN: 0195131428 Category : Language Arts & Disciplines Languages : en Pages : 368
Book Description
Scaling relationships have been a persistent theme in biology at least since the time of Leonardo da Vinci and Galileo. While there have been many excellent empirical and theoretical investigations, there has been little attempt to synthesize this diverse but interrelated area of biology. In an effort to fill this void, Scaling in Biology, the first general treatment of scaling in biology in over 15 years, covers a broad spectrum of the most relevant topics in a series of chapters written by experts in the field. Some of those topics discussed include allometry and fractal structure, branching of vascular systems of mammals and plants, biomechanical and life history of plants, invertebrates and vertebrates, and species-area patterns of biological diversity.
Author: Thomas T. Samaras
Author: Thomas T. Samaras
Author: Thomas T. Samaras
Author: Geoffrey West
Author: Knut Schmidt-Nielsen
Author: Andrea Belgrano
Author: Axel G. Rossberg
Author: Marko B. Popovic
Author: David J. Chivers
Author: James W. Haefner
Author: James H. Brown