The Biology Of Human Survival

Author : Claude A. Piantadosi
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 280 pages
File Size : 48,7 Mb
Release : 2003-09-11
Category : Medical
ISBN : 9780190290023

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The Biology of Human Survival by Claude A. Piantadosi Pdf

The range of environments in which people can survive is extensive, yet most of the natural world cannot support human life. The Biology of Human Survival identifies the key determinants of life or death in extreme environments from a physiologist's perspective, integrating modern concepts of stress, tolerance, and adaptation into explanations of life under Nature's most austere conditions. The book examines how individuals survive when faced with extremes of immersion, heat, cold or altitude, emphasizing the body's recognition of stress and the brain's role in optimizing physiological function in order to provide time to escape or to adapt. In illustrating how human biology adapts to extremes, the book also explains how we learn to cope by blending behavior and biology, first by trial and error, then by rigorous scientific observation, and finally by technological innovation. The book describes life-support technology and how it enables humans to enter once unendurable realm, from the depths of the ocean to the upper reaches of the atmosphere and beyond. Finally, it explores the role that advanced technology might play in special environments of the future, such as long journeys into space.

Author : Claude A. Piantadosi
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 280 pages
File Size : 52,7 Mb
Release : 2003-09-11
Category : Science
ISBN : 0199748071

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The Biology of Human Survival by Claude A. Piantadosi Pdf

The range of environments in which people can survive is extensive, yet most of the natural world cannot support human life. The Biology of Human Survival identifies the key determinants of life or death in extreme environments from a physiologist's perspective, integrating modern concepts of stress, tolerance, and adaptation into explanations of life under Nature's most austere conditions. The book examines how individuals survive when faced with extremes of immersion, heat, cold or altitude, emphasizing the body's recognition of stress and the brain's role in optimizing physiological function in order to provide time to escape or to adapt. In illustrating how human biology adapts to extremes, the book also explains how we learn to cope by blending behavior and biology, first by trial and error, then by rigorous scientific observation, and finally by technological innovation. The book describes life-support technology and how it enables humans to enter once unendurable realm, from the depths of the ocean to the upper reaches of the atmosphere and beyond. Finally, it explores the role that advanced technology might play in special environments of the future, such as long journeys into space.

Author : Caleb E. Finch
Publisher : Elsevier
Page : 640 pages
File Size : 48,9 Mb
Release : 2010-07-28
Category : Medical
ISBN : 0080545947

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The Biology of Human Longevity by Caleb E. Finch Pdf

Written by Caleb Finch, one of the leading scientists of our time, The Biology of Human Longevity: Inflammation, Nutrition, and Aging in the Evolution of Lifespans synthesizes several decades of top research on the topic of human aging and longevity particularly on the recent theories of inflammation and its effects on human health. The book expands a number of existing major theories, including the Barker theory of fetal origins of adult disease to consider the role of inflammation and Harmon's free radical theory of aging to include inflammatory damage. Future increases in lifespan are challenged by the obesity epidemic and spreading global infections which may reverse the gains made in lowering inflammatory exposure. This timely and topical book will be of interest to anyone studying aging from any scientific angle. Author Caleb Finch is a highly influential and respected scientist, ranked in the top half of the 1% most cited scientists Provides a novel synthesis of existing ideas about the biology of longevity and aging Incorporates important research findings from several disciplines, including Gerontology, Genomics, Neuroscience, Immunology, Nutrition

Author : David P. Barash
Publisher : Macmillan
Page : 328 pages
File Size : 44,9 Mb
Release : 2004-09
Category : Mathematics
ISBN : 0805076999

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The Survival Game by David P. Barash Pdf

Barash synthesizes the newest ideas from psychology, economics, and biology to explore the roots of human strategy. Drawing on game theory -- the study of how individuals make decisions -- he delves into the give-and-take of scheduling plans with a spouse and the maneuvers of an arms race alongside the strategies of "less rational" animals. He explains the classice Hawk-Dove stand-off, where people opt to be aggressive or yielding, and draws analogies to the territorial battles of speckled wood butterfiles. The Prisoner's Dilemma, the Game of Chicken, and Follow the Leader turn up in examples as disparate as investor's picks in a market bubble and the mating antics of the yellow dung fly. Barash ultimately sheds light on what makes our decisions human, and what we can glean from game theory and the natural world as we negotiate and compete with others in our daily lives. - BOOK JACKET.

Author : Robert M. Sapolsky
Publisher : Penguin
Page : 802 pages
File Size : 44,7 Mb
Release : 2017-05-02
Category : Science
ISBN : 9780735222786

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Behave by Robert M. Sapolsky Pdf

Why do we do the things we do? Over a decade in the making, this game-changing book is Robert Sapolsky's genre-shattering attempt to answer that question as fully as perhaps only he could, looking at it from every angle. Sapolsky's storytelling concept is delightful but it also has a powerful intrinsic logic: he starts by looking at the factors that bear on a person's reaction in the precise moment a behavior occurs, and then hops back in time from there, in stages, ultimately ending up at the deep history of our species and its genetic inheritance. And so the first category of explanation is the neurobiological one. What goes on in a person's brain a second before the behavior happens? Then he pulls out to a slightly larger field of vision, a little earlier in time: What sight, sound, or smell triggers the nervous system to produce that behavior? And then, what hormones act hours to days earlier to change how responsive that individual is to the stimuli which trigger the nervous system? By now, he has increased our field of vision so that we are thinking about neurobiology and the sensory world of our environment and endocrinology in trying to explain what happened. Sapolsky keeps going--next to what features of the environment affected that person's brain, and then back to the childhood of the individual, and then to their genetic makeup. Finally, he expands the view to encompass factors larger than that one individual. How culture has shaped that individual's group, what ecological factors helped shape that culture, and on and on, back to evolutionary factors thousands and even millions of years old. The result is one of the most dazzling tours de horizon of the science of human behavior ever attempted, a majestic synthesis that harvests cutting-edge research across a range of disciplines to provide a subtle and nuanced perspective on why we ultimately do the things we do...for good and for ill. Sapolsky builds on this understanding to wrestle with some of our deepest and thorniest questions relating to tribalism and xenophobia, hierarchy and competition, morality and free will, and war and peace. Wise, humane, often very funny, Behave is a towering achievement, powerfully humanizing, and downright heroic in its own right.

Author : Valerius Geist
Publisher : Springer
Page : 495 pages
File Size : 43,7 Mb
Release : 2011-10-09
Category : Science
ISBN : 1461263271

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Life Strategies, Human Evolution, Environmental Design by Valerius Geist Pdf

Consider that you were asked how to ensure human survival. Where would you begin? Conservation of resources jumps to mind. We need to conserve resources in order that economic activities may continue. Alas, this is a false start. Resources are always defined by a given economic system, and only it determines what is and what is not a resource. Therefore, conserving resources implies only the perpetua tion of the appropriate economic system. Conservation of resources as we know them has nothing to do with the survival of mankind, but it has very much to do with the survival of the industrial system and society we live in today. We have to start, therefore, at a more basic level. This level, some may argue, is addressed by ensuring for human beings "clean genes. " Again, this is a mistaken beginning. It is thoroughly mistaken-for reasons of science. It is a false start because malfunctioning organs and morphological structures are not only due to deleterious hereditary factors but particularly due to unfavorable environments during early growth and development. Moreover, eugenics is not acceptable to any but a small fraction of society. Eugenics may not be irrelevant to our future, but is premature and should be of little concern until we understand how human genes and environment interact.

Author : Jonathan H. Turner
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 234 pages
File Size : 50,5 Mb
Release : 2020-11-24
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781000213751

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On Human Nature by Jonathan H. Turner Pdf

In this book, Jonathan H. Turner combines sociology, evolutionary biology, cladistic analysis from biology, and comparative neuroanatomy to examine human nature as inherited from common ancestors shared by humans and present-day great apes. Selection pressures altered this inherited legacy for the ancestors of humans—termed hominins for being bipedal—and forced greater organization than extant great apes when the hominins moved into open-country terrestrial habitats. The effects of these selection pressures increased hominin ancestors’ emotional capacities through greater social and group orientation. This shift, in turn, enabled further selection for a larger brain, articulated speech, and culture along the human line. Turner elaborates human nature as a series of overlapping complexes that are the outcome of the inherited legacy of great apes being fed through the transforming effects of a larger brain, speech, and culture. These complexes, he shows, can be understood as the cognitive complex, the psychological complex, the emotions complex, the interaction complex, and the community complex.

Author : Richard Heinberg
Publisher : New Society Publishers
Page : 322 pages
File Size : 44,8 Mb
Release : 2021-09-14
Category : Science
ISBN : 9781771423571

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Power by Richard Heinberg Pdf

Impeccably researched and masterfully written, this book explains how and why humanity is driving itself off the cliff. — Dahr Jamail, author, The End of Ice Weaving together findings from a wide range of disciplines, Power traces how four key elements developed to give humans extraordinary power: tool making ability, language, social complexity, and the ability to harness energy sources ― most significantly, fossil fuels. It asks whether we have, at this point, overpowered natural and social systems, and if we have, what we can do about it. Has Homo sapiens — one species among millions — become powerful enough to threaten a mass extinction and disrupt the Earth's climate? Why have we developed so many ways of oppressing one another? Can we change our relationship with power to avert ecological catastrophe, reduce social inequality, and stave off collapse? These questions — and their answers — will determine our fate.

Author : Alvaro Macieira-Coelho
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
Page : 198 pages
File Size : 54,7 Mb
Release : 2012-12-06
Category : Medical
ISBN : 9783642189944

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Biology of Aging by Alvaro Macieira-Coelho Pdf

The survival of the human species has improved significantly in modern times. During the last century, the mean survival of human populations in developed countries has increased more than during the preceding 5000 years. This improvement in survival was accompanied by an increase in the number of active years. In other words, the increase in mean life span was accompanied by an increase in health span. This is now accentuated by progress in medicine reducing the impact of physiologic events such as menopause and of patho logical processes such as atherosclerosis. Up to now,research on aging, whether theoretical or experimental, has not contributed to improvement in human survival. Actually, there is a striking contrast between these significant modifications in survival and the present knowledge of the mechanisms of human aging. Revealed by this state of affairs are the profound disagreements between gerontologists in regard to the way oflooking at the aging process. The definition of aging itself is difficult to begin with because of the variability of how it occurs in different organisms.

Author : Allan Chase
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 424 pages
File Size : 53,9 Mb
Release : 1971
Category : Medical
ISBN : WISC:89043226182

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The Biological Imperatives: Health, Politics, and Human Survival by Allan Chase Pdf

Author : Stephen C. Cunnane
Publisher : World Scientific
Page : 363 pages
File Size : 46,7 Mb
Release : 2005
Category : Science
ISBN : 9789812567703

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Survival of the Fattest by Stephen C. Cunnane Pdf

How did humans evolve larger and more sophisticated brains? In general, evolution depends on a special combination of circumstances: part genetics, part time, and part environment. In the case of human brain evolution, the main environmental influence was adaptation to a OCyshore-basedOCO diet, which provided the worldOCOs richest source of nutrition, as well as a sedentary lifestyle that promoted fat deposition. Such a diet included shellfish, fish, marsh plants, frogs, birdOCOs eggs, etc. Humans and, and more importantly, hominid babies started to get fat, a crucial distinction that led to the development of larger brains and to the evolution of modern humans. A larger brain is expensive to maintain and this increasing demand for energy results in, succinctly, survival of the fattest."

Author : Brian Hare,Vanessa Woods
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 305 pages
File Size : 52,6 Mb
Release : 2020
Category : Psychology
ISBN : 9780399590665

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Survival of the Friendliest by Brian Hare,Vanessa Woods Pdf

A powerful, counterintuitive new theory of human nature arguing that our evolutionary success depends on our ability to be friendly--from a pair of trailblazing scientists and New York Times bestselling authors. For most of the approximately 200,000 years that our species has existed, we shared the planet with at least four other types of humans. They were smart, they were strong, and they were inventive. Neanderthals even had the capacity for spoken language. But, one by one, our hominid relatives went extinct. Why did we thrive? In delightfully conversational prose and based on years of his own original research, Brian Hare, professor in the department of evolutionary anthropology and the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at Duke University, and his wife Vanessa Woods, a research scientist and award-winning journalist, offer a powerful, elegant new theory called "self-domestication" which suggests that we have succeeded not because we were the smartest or strongest but because we are the friendliest. This explanation flies in the face of conventional wisdom. Since Charles Darwin wrote about "evolutionary fitness," scientists have confused fitness with strength, tactical brilliance, and aggression. But what helped us innovate where other primates did not is our knack for coordinating with and listening to others. We can find common cause and identity with both neighbors and strangers if we see them as "one of us." This ability makes us geniuses at cooperation and innovation and is responsible for all the glories of culture and technology in human history. But this gift for friendliness comes at cost. If we perceive that someone is not "one of us," we are capable of unplugging them from our mental network. Where there would have been empathy and compassion, there is nothing, making us both the most tolerant and the most merciless species on the planet. To counteract the rise of tribalism in all aspects of modern life, Hare and Woods argue, we need to expand our empathy and friendliness to include people who aren't obviously like ourselves. Brian Hare's groundbreaking research was developed in close collaboration with Richard Wrangham and Michael Tomasello, giants in the field of cognitive evolution. Survival of the Friendliest explains both our evolutionary success and our potential for cruelty in one stroke and sheds new light onto everything from genocide and structural inequality to art and innovation.

Author : Rolf W. Frohlich
Publisher : Xlibris Corporation
Page : 441 pages
File Size : 51,6 Mb
Release : 2004-04-27
Category : Psychology
ISBN : 1465328254

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Evolutionary Intelligence by Rolf W. Frohlich Pdf

Human nature holds the intelligence of life. It provides a psychology that is much stronger, more effective and more reliable than the psychology society teaches us. This psychology taps into the evolutionary survival experience of our species, which occupied most of human history. It was the period when the species evolved and our ancestor survived as a hunter and gatherer. More than 99% of human history is encoded in the DNA of our genes and lastingly etched into the human psyche. Our natural psychology, the human psyche, is the result of evolutionary adaptation. The psyche provides the genetic capacity for behavioral, mental and spiritual adaptation. It supports the gratification of our needs. And it contains the blueprint of human life. The book is about human nature and human survival. Human nature, that is, the human psyche, has survival value. The book introduces a metapsychology that refers to the Jungian archetypes and the survival capabilities inherent in the psyche. Like all living organisms and forms of life, we possess an innate capacity for survival. By awakening this evolutionary intelligence, we gain access to the primordial power and wisdom of the archetypal psyche. This innate psychology transcends the cultural conditioning that has shaped us all and erects an entirely different reference system making us look at life in a new way. We live in a world that reflects human nature and we are well equipped to survive in it. Beyond that, there is also something in us that resonates with a larger context. Our psychological constitution relates us to the outer realities of nature and cosmos. It is in this sense that we partake in the evolution of life on this planet and in the larger design of a cosmic universe. This primary psyche is shared by all humanity as part of a common biological and psychological history.

Author : Dr. Sharon Moalem,Jonathan Prince
Publisher : Harper Collins
Page : 304 pages
File Size : 52,6 Mb
Release : 2009-10-13
Category : Medical
ISBN : 9780061842245

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Survival of the Sickest by Dr. Sharon Moalem,Jonathan Prince Pdf

Joining the ranks of modern myth busters, Dr. Sharon Moalem turns our current understanding of illness on its head and challenges us to fundamentally change the way we think about our bodies, our health, and our relationship to just about every other living thing on earth, from plants and animals to insects and bacteria. So why does disease exist? Moalem proposes that most common ailments—diabetes, hemochromatosis, cystic fibrosis, sickle cell anemia—came into existence for very good reasons. At some point they helped our ancestors survive some grand challenge to their existence. Examining the evolution of man, Moalem reveals the role genetic and cultural differences have played in the health and well-being of various races, including their susceptibility to disease. With mesmerizing insight, Moalem offers groundbreaking insight into : • How diabetes may be a biproduct of a mechanism that helped humans survive the Ice Age • Why African Americans living in the north might suffer from vitamin D deficiencies, • Why Asians can’t drink as much alcohol as Europeans Revelatory, utterly engaging, and timely—Moalem ponders strongN1, the emerging Avian Flu virus—Why Redheads Feel More Pain and Asians Can’t Drink will irrevocably change the way we think about our bodies and ourselves.

Author : Ellis E. McDowell-Loudan
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 130 pages
File Size : 53,9 Mb
Release : 2013-01-03
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 1516551265

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Human Evolution and Survival by Ellis E. McDowell-Loudan Pdf

What does it mean to be human? What is evolution? How should we define "survival"? These questions are at the heart of the anthology Human Evolution and Survival, which introduces students to important concepts in anthropology. The opening chapter shares student-generated definitions of human, evolution, and survival. These definitions set the tone for the rest of the book and establish boundaries for exploring concepts that touch on both science and philosophy. Subsequent chapters explore a variety of topics including: How scientific method is used to question, test, and re-test data What to do when confronted with scientific error--even one's own Nature vs. Nurture/Genetics vs. Culture Pre-hominids and controversies surrounding them The material is examined from several viewpoints. What is the role of genetics, and is our humanity inherent in our very cell structure? How does history shape our understanding of our humanity? Are we that different from our closest relatives--the Great Apes? How do we interpret the fossil record? Human Evolution and Survival teaches students to question, think critically, and debate who we are, how we got that way, and how we will survive into the future. The text includes worksheets for studying genetic traits, discussion questions, and dermatoglyphics (fingerprinting) and PTC-tasting laboratories. Chapters also include links to related websites, allowing for further study. Human Evolution and Survival can be used in courses on Human Evolution, Physical Anthropology, and Biological Anthropology. It is also appropriate for courses on Genetics and Diversity.