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Books in Bio and phyto remediation

  • Soil Remediation and Plants

    Prospects and Challenges
    • 1st Edition
    • Khalid Hakeem + 3 more
    • English
    The soil is being contaminated continuously by a large number of pollutants. Among them, heavy metals are an exclusive group of toxicants because they are stable and difficult to disseminate into non-toxic forms. The ever-increasing concentrations of such pollutants in the soil are considered serious threats toward everyone’s health and the environment. Many techniques are used to clean, eliminate, obliterate or sequester these hazardous pollutants from the soil. However, these techniques can be costly, labor intensive, and often disquieting. Phytoremediation is a simple, cost effective, environmental friendly and fast-emerging new technology for eliminating toxic heavy metals and other related soil pollutants. Soil Remediation and Plants provides a common platform for biologists, agricultural engineers, environmental scientists, and chemists, working with a common aim of finding sustainable solutions to various environmental issues. The book provides an overview of ecosystem approaches and phytotechnologies and their cumulative significance in relation to solving various environmental problems.

  • Reproductive Endocrinology and Biology

    • 1st Edition
    • Volume 12
    • Edward Bittar
    • English
    We have now reached the mid-point of our editorial task of putting together the compendium, Principles of Medical Biology, which is supposed to be composed of twenty-five modules. The present single-volume module on reproductive endocrinology and biology is in more than one respect a continuation of Module 10 (in two volumes) dealing with molecular and cellular endocrinology. In addition, it intersects, as it should, with various parts of obstetrics and gynaecology, both of which are abetted by technology. One has only to recall that the practical benefits of ultrasound in perinatal medicine and in vitro fertilisation are the outcome of the technological revolution in biomedicine. Whether we are approaching a new era in reproductive biology following the invention of animal cloning is still hard to tell. For some people, it remains an article of faith that cloning of the human being is highly probable. For others, asexual reproduction is anathema. It should surely be obvious to us all that somatic cell nuclear transfer technology (SCNTT) is going to be at its strongest in dealing with husbandry. Whether this and several social forces will alter our modern outlook, there can be little doubt.As in diverse clinical and basic research, so in obstetrics, animals are used as a model. The data thus obtained is extrapolated, if valid, to the mother and foetus. The success of this approach is exemplified in studies carried out on sheep as a model. On the whole, it is also quite apparent that progress in the field of reproductive biology is to a large extent ascribable to the discovery in other disciplines of new hormones, as well as the introduction of new tools and recent improvements in laboratory methods including measurement of hormones.

  • Advances in Space Biology and Medicine

    • 1st Edition
    • Volume 5
    • S.L. Bonting
    • English
    The fifth volume in this series, Space Biology and Medicine, is another special volume, this time dedicated entirely to the results of the second European study of the effects of long-term confinement and isolation, called EXEMSI. This projects was also sponsored by the European Space Agency's Long-Term Programme Office, Directorate of Space Station and Microgravity, in preparation for its long-term manned space missions, in particular its planned participation in the International Space Station through the Columbus program.The aim was to come closer to a space station situation that in the ISEMSI mission. This was achieved by five measures: (1) crew selection was performed by the European Astronauts Centre (EAC), (2) duration was extended to 60 days, (3) mixed crew of three males and one female was employed, (4) isolation facility resembled a space station in size and in having separate habitat, laboratory and storage modules, and (5) communication between crew and outside world was like that between a space station and a ground control center.The primary purpose of EXEMSI was to achieve a better understanding of the physiological, psychological, and sociological effects of long-term isolation and confinement of a small crew group under conditions similar to those that may be expected to exist for a space station crew. The secondary purpose was to acquire experience in the operational aspects of a future space station mission. Included were also items like verification of the test criteria for European astronaut selection, and study of the nutritional requirements of space station crews.The workload of the crew consisted of an extensive battery of psychological and physiological experiments, of housekeeping duties, and of additional space-related experiments. The nature and the results of these activities are described in this volume. The list of contents indicates the wide range of topics studied: physiological aspects as body weight and body composition, hormonal and water balance, nutritional status, immune function, cardiovascular and respiratory function, brain electrical activity; psychological aspects as group dynamics and crew interaction, communication, spatial behaviour, work capability, mental performance and attention, and cognitive fatigue. Additional experiments cover important topics like telemedical diagnosis and treatment, telescience, and operation of an algal bioregeneration system. The volume is concluded by two chapters in which the lessons learned are critically considered.This material should offer the reader a rather comprehensive view of the psychophysiological aspects of the confinement and isolation inherent in long-term space mission, missions which may be expected to become commonplace in the next decades. The results of this study and further studies of this nature should not only benefit future astronauts and assist those who are organizing long-term manned space missions, but should also be useful to investigators who are planning crew-operated experiments to be carried out during such missions.

  • Advances in Space Biology and Medicine

    • 1st Edition
    • Volume 1
    • S.L. Bonting
    • English
    This first volume has contributions from the United States (4), the USSR (2), Europe (2), and Japan (1). They include studies of a fundamental biological problem aided by some space experiments, investigations of biological problems encountered in spaceflight, use of microgravity for a biotechnological purpose, and technical facilities developed for animal and cell research in space. Topics include: the effects of long-term space missions on the human body (Grigoriev, USSR); skeletal responses to microgravity (Morey-Holton an Arnaud, United States); gravity effects on animal reproduction, developments, and ageing (Miquel and Souza, Spain/United States); neurovestibular physiology in fish (Watanabe, Takabayashi, Tanaka, and Yanagihara, Japan); gravity perception and circulation in plants (Brown, United States); development of higher plants under altered gravitational conditions (Merkys and Laurniavcius, Lithunaia, USSR); gravity effects on single cells (Cogoli and Gmunder, Switzerland); protein crystal growth in space (Bonting, Kishiyama, and Arno, United States).