Evolution and Ecology of the Organism

Book Description

Discover important lessons learned about whole organism biology via microbial proteomics

This text provides an exhaustive analysis and presentation of current research in the field of microbial proteomics, with an emphasis on new developments and applications and future directions in research. The editors and authors show how and why the relative simplicity of microbes has made them attractive targets for extensive experimental manipulation in a quest for both improved disease prevention and treatment and an improved understanding of whole organism functional biology. In particular, the text demonstrates how microbial proteomic analyses can aid in drug discovery, including identification of new targets, novel diagnostic markers, and lead optimization.

Each chapter is written by one or more leading experts in the field and carefully edited to ensure a consistent and thorough approach throughout. Methods, technologies, and tools associated with the most promising approaches are stressed. Key topics covered include:

Microbial pathogenesis at the proteome level
Whole cell modeling
Structural proteomics and computational analysis
Biomolecular interactions
Physiological proteomics
Metabolic reconstruction using proteomics data

While presenting the practical utility of proteomics data, the text is also clear on the field's current limitations, pointing to areas where further investigation is needed.

Book Description

Fruit flies are "little people with wings" goes the saying in the scientific community, ever since the completion of the Human Genome Project and its revelations about the similarity amongst the genomes of different organisms. It is humbling that most signalling pathways which "define" humans are conserved in Drosophila, the common fruit fly.

Feed a fruit fly caffeine and it has trouble falling asleep; feed it antihistamines and it cannot stay awake. A C. elegans worm placed on the antidepressant flouxetine has increased serotonin levels in its tiny brain. Yeast treated with chemotherapeutics stop their cell division. Removal of a single gene from a mouse or zebrafish can cause the animals to develop Alzheimer’s disease or heart disease. These organisms are utilized as surrogates to investigate the function and design of complex human biological systems.

Advances in bioinformatics, proteomics, automation technologies and their application to model organism systems now occur on an industrial scale. The integration of model systems into the drug discovery process, the speed of the tools, and the in vivo validation data that these models can provide, will clearly help definition of disease biology and high-quality target validation. Enhanced target selection will lead to the more efficacious and less toxic therapeutic compounds of the future.

Leading experts in the field provide detailed accounts of model organism research that have impacted on specific therapeutic areas and they examine state-of-the-art applications of model systems, describing real life applications and their possible impact in the future.

This book will be of interest to geneticists, bioinformaticians, pharmacologists, molecular biologists and people working in the pharmaceutical industry, particularly genomics.

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Book Description

Keep up with today's rapid advances in the biological sciences with ANIMAL PHYSIOLOGY: FROM GENES TO ORGANISMS with InfoTrac®! With coverage of animal species that will be relevant to your animal-related career, this biology text provides you with the tools you need to succeed. Boxes found throughout the text such as Molecular Biology and Genomics, Beyond the Basics, Challenges and Controversies, Unanswered Questions, and A Closer Look at Adaptation give you examples of cutting-edge research and help you see how what you are learning applies to the real world. Each chapter contains a list of Suggested Readings, a list of websites, and free articles through InfoTrac® College Edition.

Process and Reality (Gifford Lectures Delivered in the University of Edinburgh During the Session 1927-28)

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The Timaeus and Process and Reality
Poor writing style
"The shock of a great philosopher."
The Brilliance of Hard Work and Imagination
uplifting but difficult....

Process and Reality (Gifford Lectures Delivered in the University of Edinburgh During the Session 1927-28)
Alfred North Whitehead
Manufacturer: Free Press
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ASIN: 0029345707

Customer Reviews:

The Timaeus and Process and Reality.......2006-12-11

If you can read closely, this is not as difficult as many would have you believe. It is a brilliant analysis of that which comes before any study of physics and how you can understand general and special relativity theory through meta(that which comes before)physics. A wonderfu exercise is to read it side by side with Plato's TIMAEUS. Doing so will blow your socks off.

Poor writing style.......2005-03-23

"Whitehead" doesn't refer to something on the face. Although, like puss spewing therefrom, the book is a morass of grotesque prose. What is Whitehead getting at that so many scholars seem to ignore completely? At the core of Whitehead's philosophy is "bifurcation of nature." From this, Ph.D's have waxed eloquent and stated, "Aha, Whitehead is a panentheist," meaning, the universe contains a god like a spirit in the body. Hmmmm. Modern democrats espouse an unusually similar theory that cannot be coincidence. Nevertheless, everyone has missed the point. First and foremost, to his credit, Whitehead had great command over mathematics and modern ideas in science. More noteworthy is the fact that quantum mechanics (micro physics) and relativity theory (macro physics) cannot be reconciled (unless we use Hermann Weyl's guage theory, which implements methods from group theory, which is nothing but mathematical formalism and reconstruction with no physical meaning). The theories are irreconcilable since relativity predicts via E=mc squared that an electron, which approaches the speed of light, must approach infinity. Yet, the physical fact is that an electron is of finite weight (although, I think a clue to this problem is in nuclear fission, aka the fact of the atom bomb). Whitehead resolved to accept that both quantum mechanics and relativity theory are both true, or rather, complete unto themselves for the domain of physical phenomena they addressed, and resolved to accept they cannot be reconciled. This resolution is formulated in his fundamental hypothesis about the bifurcation of reality. Case closed.

"The shock of a great philosopher.".......2001-08-26

I approached this book as an influence to Ken Wilber. In his book, SEX, ECOLOGY, SPIRITUALITY, he recognizes Whitehead "as one of the first great philosophers of vision-logic" (p. 191). As Editor Donald Sherburne acknowledges in the Preface to this edition, PROCESS AND REALITY "is highly technical and far from easy to understand" (p. v). In fact, Whitehead (1861-1947) makes reading Ken Wilber seem easy.

First published as a series of lectures in 1929, PROCESS AND REALITY sets forth Whitehead's philosophy of speculatve metaphysics. "Speculative Philosophy," he writes, "is the endeavor to frame a coherent, logical, necessary system of general ideas in terms of which every element of our experience can be interpreted" (p. 3). Whitehead integrates the the works of Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Locke, Hume, and Kant (p. 39), as he looks into the nature of all things as an ongoing process. (About Plato, Whitehead says, "the safest general characterization of the whole Western philosophic tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.")

I do not profess to fully understand Whitehead, but his basic premise appears to be that reality is in an organic process of becoming, and is never complete. That is, he asserts the many become one and are then increased by one. So, too, God is a process of becoming. Whitehead's philosophy is revolutionary. "Philosophy never reverts to its old position after the shock of a great philosopher" (p. 11), he writes. I have given this book a four-star rating only because Whitehead's writing style is difficult and at times impenetrable, which detracts from his five-star content.

G. Merritt

The Brilliance of Hard Work and Imagination.......2000-12-18

Early in this century American philosophy made a 'linguistic' turn that determined the direction it would take all the way to the present day. In the spirit of the times, language made its way to the forefront of philosophy, the end result being (among other things) Positivism and a scientistic approach to the Geisteswissenschaften. It is a turn many of us, looking back, wish it had never made. Because of this turn, certain philosophers and ways of doing philosophy all but stopped being considered. Among these philosophers were Dewey and James. These thinkers have in recent decades been resurrected by contemporary neopragmatists, most notably Richard Rorty, who look back at the arid desert of mid-twentieth century philosophy and wonder how far we have come after all. To quote Rorty (who is certainly no Whiteheadian), American philosophical thought 'began taking its cue from Frege rather than Locke.' Broadly considered, this meant that language rather than experience, mind rather than body, was taken to be the most serious matter for philosophy.

Whitehead stayed with Locke. Whitehead wanted to critique most Modern philosophy with what he termed the 'philosophy of organism;' that is, Whitehead insisted that experience or 'feeling' rather than disembodied thinking was the hallmark of human existence, and that all experience was subjective. Now, this does not sound like Locke. Anyone writing this side of modernity knows that Locke was the quintessential modern philosopher, with all the baggage that entails. But when Whitehead wrote in the preface to Process and Reality that `the writer who most fully anticipated the main positions of the philosophy of organism is John Locke,' he was stressing the fact that Locke discarded metaphysics, seeking rather to look at what was actually happening, as far as he could tell.

In many ways, and though they wrote at the same time but in complete isolation from each other's thought, Whitehead and Heidegger were searching for the same thing, the thing both philosophers thought that Plato and Aristotle had known, but that had been forgotten in the intervening centuries: what it actually meant to experience something, or, as Cooper puts it, how `to make intelligible our immediate experience so that we can discover how it is possible to have any experience of the actual world.' Rather than reading Whitehead as an elaborate and old-school metaphysician, one ought to read him as a phenomenological empiricist, if such a beast exists, and thus find an answer to the people who dismiss Whitehead as `behind the times,' people who simply don't bother to actually read Whitehead.

It is true that thinkers still committed to a reductionist/linguistic approach to philosophy will not see Whitehead's importance as a critic of closed systems (Whitehead's is expressly open and revisable, one reason it has endured as long as it has without being widely read in philosophy departments). It is also true that American philosophy left Whitehead behind. However, the blind alleys linguistic analysis and positivism lead us into should cause us to wonder if we were led in the right directions, or if we should have left in the first place. Leaving something behind certainly does not necessarily mean progressing beyond it. Whitehead's goal was expressly NOT the goal of philosophy in America after his time, though Whitehead's goal had been an important part of James's `Radical Empiricism,' ironically. Whitehead looked back to James and Dewey, and Bergson on the continent, hoping `to rescue their type of thought from the charge of anti-intellectualism, which rightly or wrongly has been associated with it.' Present-day neopragmatism, noting how vapid and unsatisfying most rationalist and linguistic philosophy has become in American thought, also looks back to Dewey and James, but to the pragmatism rather than to the empiricism of these two masters. It has become axiomatic that the only way to read James and Dewey is as pragmatists, after all.

However, the axiom is not true. A `rediscovery' of Whitehead by contemporary American philosophy might lead to another and equally valid reading of James and Dewey. James, Dewey, and Whitehead were thinkers of the same ilk. If you like any two, you should at least consider reading the third. Similarly, the relations between Heidegger and Whitehead have only recently been resurfacing, and deserve closer scrutiny. Analytic philosophy never took seriously the questions raised by Heidegger because they weren't precise enough for logical analysis. When a grandfather of the analytic movement, Wittgenstein, began distancing himself from his earlier work, his own disciples balked because, they said, he seemed to be retreating into metaphysics! It is much more likely, however, that Wittgenstein realized that life cannot be reduced to propositions and truth tables. This was also Whitehead's view. Whitehead was also not precise enough for the analytic philosophers (I always wonder who is). Whether or not the fact that he did not measure up to their standards (and still does not) should be seen as an indictment or a complement remains to be seen.

Whitehead is an immensely difficult writer. Hosinski's Stubborn Fact and Creative Advance (1993) is a brilliant introductory work, and I highly recommend it, especially if you have to read Whitehead for a class Sherburne's Key is also very helpful, though you get a lot of Sherburne, too. At issue is usually Whitehead's neologisms. To draw another analogy between Heidegger and Whitehead, however, both men were notorious for creating new words because what they wanted to explain was both so uncanny and yet so obvious that the old words didn't work. Don't let the language scare you away. Whitehead rewards hard work, and you will likely never forget what you learn from him. The ideas that we are beginning to take much more seriously these days about holistic thinking, interconnectedness, interdisciplinarity, non-dualism, commensurability between science and religion, and creativity were all covered by him seventy years ago. Don't let your professors tell you that Whitehead is an outmoded metaphysician. His `philosophy of organism' is as inherently open-ended, properly understood, as anything passing today as postmodernism. Read Whitehead.

uplifting but difficult...........2000-06-02

Whitehead carries on the tradition of turgidity inaugurated by Hegel and even buys into the philosophy-as-system game; on the plus side, however, his key concepts make sense, especially his emphasis creativity and on reality as process. If you're new to Whitehead, read someone else's stuff about him before attempting this book.

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Insufficient as a stand-alone textbook
SCHAUM'S OUTLINES MOLECULAR AND CELL BIOLOGY

Outline of Molecular and Cell Biology
William Stansfield
Manufacturer: McGraw-Hill
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Schaum's Easy Outline Molecular and Cell Biology

ASIN: 0070608989

Book Description

Ever since James Watson and Francis Crick proposed their double-helical structure of DNA in 1953, biology has been in the throes of a revolution in knowledge at the molecular level. This Schaum's Outline was written to help bring order and understanding to this rapidly expanding field. As a succinct overview of the subject, it will supplement any molecular biology course or provide the foundation needed for advanced courses. The text material is presented in a question and answer format; each concept is explained as an answer to a specific question. At the end of each chapter are objective questions of several kinds; multiple choice, true-false, fill-ins, and matching. These objective questions can be used to evaluate the extent to which the text material has been mastered, while also preparing the student for this kind of examination format.

Customer Reviews:

Insufficient as a stand-alone textbook.......2007-09-07

This book is ok just for revision purposes, not for a thorough review of the text

SCHAUM'S OUTLINES MOLECULAR AND CELL BIOLOGY.......2000-04-23

I consider molecular and cell biology an excellent review book for people who want an introduction of the field. Also it can help readers who want to refresh their knowledge. It is well organized, in fourteen different chapters, with multilple review questions and answers in each of them. I found the coverage of each chapter comprehensive. Objective questions at the end of each chapter helped to assess your level of understanding. I certainly recommend this book to people who study biological related sciences.

Desert Arthropods: Life History Variations (Adaptations of Desert Organisms)

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Desert Arthropods: Life History Variations (Adaptations of Desert Organisms)
Fred Punzo
Manufacturer: Springer
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 3540660410

Book Description

This book is a basic account of the life cycles and life history strategies of the major groups of desert arthropods. It covers a wide variety of topics including an overview of major adaptations in desert arthropods, characteristic features of deserts, a comprehensive review of life history theory, and a detailed description of embryonic and postembryonic development. The book also provides an in-depth discussion of the life history traits in these animals including development time, growth rates and patterns, age and size at maturity, size and number of offspring, sex ratios, costs associated with reproduction and longevity, and explains how these traits are inextricably connected by various trade-offs including those between current reproduction and survival, current and future reproduction, and between number, size and sex of offspring. Finally, the relationship between behavioral ecology and life history traits is discussed.

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Fascinating as far as it goes
Thought Provoking
The intelligence: a valuated tool within the evolution!
Intelligence in nature- Narby
Intelligence in Nature

Intelligence in Nature
Jeremy Narby
Manufacturer: Tarcher
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Binding: Hardcover

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DMT: The Spirit Molecule: A Doctor's Revolutionary Research into the Biology of Near-Death and Mystical Experiences

ASIN: 1585423998

Book Description

Anthropologist Jeremy Narby has altered how we understand the shamanic cultures and traditions that have undergone a worldwide revival in recent years. Now, in one of his most extraordinary journeys, Narby travels around the globe-from the Amazon basin to the Far East-to probe what traditional healers and pioneering researchers perceive about the intelligence present in all forms of life.

Intelligence in Nature offers overwhelming illustrative evidence that independent intelligence is not unique to humanity. Indeed, bacteria, plants, animals, and other forms of nonhuman life display an uncanny proclivity for self-deterministic decisions, patterns, and actions. The Japanese possess a word for this universal knowing: chi-sei. For the first time, Narby presents an in-depth anthropological study of this concept in the West. He not only uncovers a mysterious thread of intelligent behavior within the natural world but also probes the question of what humanity can learn from nature's economy and knowingness in its own search for a saner and more sustainable way of life.

Customer Reviews:

Fascinating as far as it goes.......2007-06-24

This book opens up some fascinating non-theological questions about the nature of life and how it evolves. The point of view is of an anthropologist who has studied shamanism in the Amazon and who seeks to find parallels in scientific inquiry. In doing so, he is moving from a subjective, experiential point of view of the shaman, who claims to communicate with animal spirits, to an objective observer's view of one working under the discipline of the scientific method. The first few chapters concern field trips he has taken to the Amazon basin, and the remainder deals mainly with discussions with scientists in different parts of the world who are pursuing studies that are directly concerned with intelligence in nature.

The main part of the book ponders the question of how certain brainless organisms apprehend their environments in a way that suggests that they know or can compute efficient ways to adapt. How does a slime mold solve a maze? How does ground ivy know not to sink its roots in non-nutritous ground? In order to survive and extend itself, all of life cannot afford to make poor choices on how to use its energy. But how does life, especially the simplest forms without brains, make the correct decisions? Somehow, they know how to proceed in an efficient manner despite complexity. A Japanese scientist, Toshiyuki Nakagaki, notes that most information processing in humans takes place in the unconscious, as in calculating balance in riding a bicycle.

I have not yet read the author's first book THE COSMIC SERPENT. So, perhaps I am missing something; but I thought the author left the trail he was following a bit too abruptly and lost some momentum in the last two chapters, which were mainly a recapitulation. I was looking forward to more examples from science or perhaps more about shamanism. But clearly the author is on to something here, and I enjoyed the clear, conversational writing style.

Thought Provoking.......2006-12-26

In "Intelligence in Nature" Jeremy Narby shares his journeys as he attempts to answer the question regarding whether or not there is truly intelligence in nature - Do animals have intelligence, or do they act purly on instincts alone? How about plant life, is there intelligence there?

Mr. Narby travels all over the world, to places like the Amazon, Japan, Tokyo, Great Britain, etc..., speaking with scientists & shamans alike - learning about, and sharing with us, the evidence & experiences related to this question about intelligence. What he finds is truly amazing! In the last decade or so, it appears that science is beginning to find out what shamans have said all along - that naure is intelligent, including animals, insects, plant life, and even uni-cellular organisms.

The author also discusses the benefits of science & shamanism coming together to learn from one another, as well as some of the problems encountered when attempting to answer questions dealing with intelligence, including the problem with using the word "intelligence", as it has become a "loaded word" in many countries, and the current scientific view that all things not human must by machine-like (although he also shows that this view is starting to change, with the abundance of research being contrary to this mechanistic view of nature).

Overall, I found this to be a thought provoking, interesting read. As such, I would highly recommend it to anyone interested in the possibilities concerning intelligence in nature.

The intelligence: a valuated tool within the evolution! .......2006-07-09

It sounds quite pretentious to believe we are the only owners of this prodigious gift, as the intelligence is, just because we are the are the most advanced link of the chain or we have the faculty to articulate words, ideas and thoughts and to be conscious about the idea of our own death. The intelligence is a most extensive and dynamic concept.

Moreover, if you pay special attention around the paradigmatic essence of many invents, you will realize the human being has simply conveyed the paradigmatic model into the process of investigation and eventual development.

The inner mechanism of the bats and the radar; the magic of the flight of birds and the future airplanes, the nocturnal vision and the improved visual devices for troops at night. As a matter of fact, the camouflage in chameleons and other species, not only agrees with Darwin's theory but it props and affiances with major strength this statement.

On the other hand, the intelligence in the nature is just a matter of surviving, preservation and evolution of the specie; so under this perspective to deny forehand the existence of a primordial intelligence in many animal species, as soon to understand the different levels of development according the case, is just a sample of lack of perception and supine intellectual arrogance.

This book is a pleasant reading around this interesting issue, that recreates without those formal hindrances, relevant examples about this fact.

Intelligence in nature- Narby.......2006-06-05

highly recommended. this is an easy read which makes several striking points. It is quite different than his previous book, the Cosmic Serpent which is a little more academic. But Narby captures the same essence here with objective examples from the most recent research on a variety of topics. very good, the only reason it is not a 5 is because it is fairly brief. I found the footnotes to be a regirgitation of the text. I was eager to read this book because his previous one was great. But Intelligence in Nature is more of a one-two punch than a 10 round bout. But it is a potent one-two, I'd say Tyson just a little bit after his prime.

Intelligence in Nature.......2006-04-01

Readers of Jeremy Narby's first book, The Cosmic Serpent, might wonder as I did, after reading Intelligence in Nature, why he wrote this latest book. They might also wonder what happened to the spirit of personal discovery that was so present in his previous work. Where Cosmic Serpent fairly rings with the kind of unbridled enthusiasm that comes with uncovering splendid mysteries, Intelligence in Nature reads more like a transcription from the Discovery channel.

Narby's search for intelligence in nature takes us into the biology labs of a select group of scientists around the world who are trying to identify humanlike intelligence within the plant and animal life of the natural world. From the Peruvian Amazon to Japan, we meet scientists whose investigations are undoubtedly fascinating. But Narby's inquiry begins and ends with large questions hanging in the air. We learn interesting things about how slime mold, for example, appears to make decisions, or how certain tropical birds ingest clay to prevent disease in much the same way that we use antibiotics. But then what? Why is intelligence in nature such a puzzling question to science when it seems so obvious to anyone who regularly walks in the woods with a curious and observant eye? And why should it be left to mainstream science to decree the existence of something for which scientists themselves can reach no defining consensus?

Narby asks good questions in this book but he doesn't go very far with them. His tentativeness in the company of scientists is curious given the open-minded enthusiasm he brought to his experiences with shamans in the Peruvian Amazon, which he first wrote about in The Cosmic Serpent. There, far from his academic and cultural roots, he eagerly pushed the edge of conventional knowledge. Describing his experience with ayahuasca, the hallucinogenic healing plant of the Amazonian basin, Narby made a symbolic connection between the double-helix imagery of DNA and what the shamans described as the "language twisting-twisting" experience of ritualistically altered consciousness. Through their profound knowledge of the natural world, the shamans revealed a larger intelligence governing all life. Narby's experience and subsequent description of this revelation was truly inspiring.

But it's possible that The Cosmic Serpent was more than Western science could handle, which may be one reason why Intelligence in Nature is so tentative and inconclusive. Once bitten, twice shy, perhaps. In 1997, following publication of The Cosmic Serpent, Harvard biophysicist Jacques Dubochet roundly criticized Narby for insufficiently testing his hypothesis about DNA and universal intelligence. Accusing Narby of "blindly charging down the wrong path," Dubochet made it clear that in his opinion Narby had succumbed to the least responsible path of science.

But it was never meant to be a formal scientific inquiry. Jeremy Narby is an anthropologist, not a scientist, and his intent clearly was to use his own experience to inspire us to think more deeply about our intelligence and what our potential could be. Subjective experience is not admissible to established scientific methodology, which is fine for science. But for the rest of us, personal experience is the only real knowledge there is. That's where Jeremy Narby is strongest, and where he can be an inspiration for all of us. He's done it once, he can do it again.

- Swami Gopalananda
ascent magazine, Issue 27

Dispersal Biology of Desert Plants (Adaptations of Desert Organisms)

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Dispersal Biology of Desert Plants (Adaptations of Desert Organisms)
Karen van Rheede van Oudtshoorn , and Margaretha W. van Rooyen
Manufacturer: Springer
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 3540648860

Book Description

Dispersal processes have important effects on plant distribution and abundance. Although adaptations to long range dispersal (telechory) are by no means rare in desert plants, many desert plant species do not possess any features to promote dispersal (atelechory), while others have structures that hamper dispersal (antitelechory). The high frequency with which atelechorous and antitelechorous mechanisms are present in plants inhabiting arid areas indicates the importance of these adaptations. Among the benefits derived from these adaptations are the spreading of germination over time, the provision of suitable conditions for germination and subsequent seedling establishment, and the maintenance of a reservoir of available seeds (seed bank). This book describes the ways and means - anatomical, morphological and ecological - by which dispersal in desert plants has evolved to ensure the survival of these species in their harsh and unpredictable environment.

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An excellent Atlas Identification

Wastewater Organisms A Color Atlas
Sharon G. Berk , and John H. Gunderson
Manufacturer: CRC
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Spiral-bound

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Manual on the Causes and Control of Activated Sludge Bulking, Foaming, and Other Solids Separations Problems, Third Edit

ASIN: 087371623X

Book Description

Wastewater Organisms contains 210 high-quality full-color micrographs to help you identify organisms found in sewage and sludge. These photos provide the maximum level of detail and will help you better understand the form and dimension of the organisms. Subjects depicted in the micrographs include bacteria, eggs, amoeba, parasitic protozoa, tardigrada (water bears), rotifers, ciliates, parasitic helminths, pollen grain, free-living nematodes, algae, flagellates, and more. There is a chapter on enumeration which provides literature and techniques for fixing and staining, techniques often required for identification to the species level. The book also contains a valuable glossary and index to make the book even easier to use. Wastewater Organisms is an indispensable reference for wastewater managers and supervisors, wastewater operators, environmental consultants, practicing engineers, regulatory agency personnel at all levels of government, and libraries.

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An excellent Atlas Identification.......2000-07-19

Este atlas en una excelente guia de identificación para hidrobiologos que se dedican a la evaluación de los sistemas de tratamiento de aguas residuales a través de la presencia de ciertas comunidades de plankton.

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