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Books in Life sciences

  • Biomedical Signal Processing

    • 1st Edition
    • December 2, 2012
    • Metin Akay
    • English
    Sophisticated techniques for signal processing are now available to the biomedical specialist! Written in an easy-to-read, straightforward style, Biomedical Signal Processing presents techniques to eliminate background noise, enhance signal detection, and analyze computer data, making results easy to comprehend and apply. In addition to examining techniques for electrical signal analysis, filtering, and transforms, the author supplies an extensive appendix with several computer programs that demonstrate techniques presented in the text.
  • Olfaction and taste V

    • 1st Edition
    • December 2, 2012
    • Derek Denton
    • English
    Olfaction and Taste V contains the proceedings of the Fifth International Symposium on Olfaction and Taste, held at the Howard Florey Institute of Experimental Physiology & Medicine, University of Melbourne, Australia, in October 1974. Contributors discuss the knowledge about olfaction and taste, including the anatomy of receptors and their ultrastructure, innervation of receptor fields, and the processes of receptor ""turnover"". Themes ranging from taste modifiers and receptor proteins to afferent coding; how the sensory code for taste and olfaction are processed and sharpened; and conditioned taste aversions and other taste learning effects in food and fluid intake are discussed. This book is organized into 14 sections encompassing 73 chapters and begins with an introduction to the phylogenetic origins of sweet taste. The discussion then shifts to behavior and the evolutionary emergence of the chemoreceptor systems. This book provides an overview of the basic modalities of taste throughout the vertebrate phylum, along with the powerful selection pressures that operate to contrive phylogenetic emergence of these modalities with attendant survival advantage. It also looks at each modality within the sensory organization of the species set against environmental circumstances during evolution that might be postulated as favoring its emergence and refinement, for example, the emergence of bitter in relation to poisoning. The ontogenesis of taste and some special instances such as chemoreception in aquatic animals are also examined. This book is aimed at students and scientists interested in the fascinating and important problems of chemoreception.
  • Basic Mechanisms in Hearing

    • 1st Edition
    • December 2, 2012
    • Aage Moller
    • English
    Basic Mechanisms in Hearing is a collection of papers that discusses the function of the auditory system covering its ultrastructure, physiology, and the mechanism's connection with experimental psychology. Papers review the mechanics, morphology, and physiology of the cochlear, including the physiology of individual hair cells and their synapses. One paper examines the combined physiological and anatomical studies of stimulus coding in the mammalian auditory nervous system. The results of these studies pertain to the latency, frequency selectivity, and time pattern of responses to short tone bursts. Other research compare the cochlear nerve, behavioral, and psychophysical frequency selectivity which show that frequency selectivity of the auditory system occurs at the level of the cochlear nerve, becoming downgraded in end-organ deafness. Other papers discuss neural coding at higher levels such as the feature extraction in the auditory system of bats. Some papers also analyze the specialized hearing mechanisms in animals, for example, the echolocation of bats and in some insects, the function of the swimbladder in fish hearing, as well as the "invertebrate frequency analyzer" in the locust ear. Physiologists, neurophysiologists, neurobiologists, general medical practioners, and EENT specialists will find this collection valuable.
  • Liquid Scintillation Counting Recent Applications and Development

    Sample Preparation And Applications
    • 1st Edition
    • December 2, 2012
    • Chin-Tzu Peng
    • English
    Liquid Scintillation Counting: Recent Applications and Development, Volume II. Sample Preparation and Applications documents the proceedings of the International Conference on Liquid Scintillation Counting, Recent Applications and Development, held on August 21-24, 1979 at the University of California, San Francisco. The conference brought together 180 scientists from 15 countries who share a common interest in promoting a better understanding of liquid scintillation science and technology. Liquid scintillation counting is one branch of nuclear metrology that many scientists of various disciplines use in tracing and quantification in their investigatory studies. The proceedings, consisting of 14 sections, include 76 of the 77 invited and contributed papers presented at the conference. The first volume contains 37 papers mainly dealing with the physical aspects of liquid scintillation science and technology. The present volume contains papers that cover sample preparation, flow counting, and emulsion (solgel) counting. It also includes studies on applications of liquid scintillation counting, such as chemiluminescence and bioluminescence, environmental monitoring, and biomedical and radioimmunoassays.
  • Metabolic Maps of Pesticides

    • 1st Edition
    • December 2, 2012
    • Hiroyasu Aizawa
    • English
    Metabolic Maps of Pesticides provides a summary of investigations and drawings of the metabolic patterns on pesticides that were collected with the aid of Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS) for the years 1970-1979. Some maps were taken from the original reports, some were slightly modified for clarity, and some were tentatively drawn from descriptions in the original articles. The pesticides are classified based on their chemical structures as functional groups or based on common chemical nomenclature. The chemical classifications highlight the properties of the mother pesticides and the impact of their degenerative metabolites on the environment. Metabolic maps are provided for the following: acid amides, amidines and guanidines, anilines and nitrobenzenes, biphenyl ethers, DDT and its analogs, dithio- and thiolcarbamates, five- and six-membered heterocyclic compounds, imides, organochlorine compounds, oxime carbamates, phenoxyacetic acids, pheny ring fused five-membered heterocyclic compounds, phenyl(aryl) carbamates, phenylureas and related compounds, phosphonothiolates and phosphonothioates, phosphonates, phosphorothioamides, phosphates, phosphorothiolates, pyrethroids, pyridines, triazines, and substituted benzenes and miscellaneous compounds.
  • Two-Dimensional Gel Electrophoresis of Proteins

    Methods and Applications
    • 1st Edition
    • December 2, 2012
    • Julio Celis
    • English
    Two-Dimensional Gel Electrophoresis of Proteins: Methods and Applications reviews current methods and clinical applications of two-dimensional gel electrophoresis of proteins, including the QUEST system, silver staining, and peptide mapping. Two-dimensional gel electrophoresis are applied to the study of diseases ranging from inborn errors of metabolism to human germ-line mutation rates, cancer, and mistranslation in animal and bacterial cells. This volume is organized into three sections encompassing 14 chapters and begins with an overview of the methodology of two-dimensional gel electrophoresis, followed by a discussion of computerized two-dimensional gel electrophoresis, silver staining, immunoblotting, and one- and two-dimensional peptide mapping. In most cases, a step-by-step guide to the techniques is given so that procedures may be easily repeated. A catalog of mouse fibroblast proteins is also given. The chapters that follow focus mainly on applications of two-dimensional gel electrophoresis in areas such as clinical and cancer research, human genetics, protein biosynthesis, and gene expression in plants. The final section presents current protein catalogs of Escherichia coli and human HeLa cells. This book is suitable for young researchers as well as for senior scientists working with a wide variety of problems in molecular and cell biology, basic biochemistry, genetics, and clinical research.
  • Plant Virology

    • 3rd Edition
    • December 2, 2012
    • R C Matthews
    • English
    Major developments have taken shape in the ten years since the publication of Plant Virology, Second Edition. This Third Edition of the leading comprehensive text and reference for the field contains more than sixty percent new material, including applications and results of gene manipulation techniques. As with the first and second editions, this volume covers all aspects of plant virology, from molecular to ecological. Plant Virology, Third Edition, is intended for graduate students, researchers, and teachers in plant virology, plant pathology, general virology, and microbiology, and scientists in related areas of molecular biology, biochemistry, plant physiology, and entomology.
  • Subjective Equilibrium Theory of the Farm Household

    • 1st Edition
    • Volume 3
    • December 2, 2012
    • C. Nakajima
    • English
    It is obvious that most of the agricultural production in the world is under the control of farm households (or family farms). This book aims to translate the characteristics of the farm household as an economic entity, into an economic theory. The book was originally written in Japanese, but various modifications have been made and new information added to the English version. The author defines the farm household as an economic entity which is a complex of the farm firm, the labourer's household and the consumer's household, and whose behavioural principle is utility maximization. The main purpose of the book is to construct a theoretical model of the decision-making behaviour of the farm household. For this purpose the method of subjective equilibrium analysis, which was used by J.R. Hicks for the consumer's household and the firm in Value and Capital, has been applied to the farm household. The major motif of the book may therefore be called ``Hicksian motif''. In analyzing the subjective equilibrium of the farm household, this book extends the Marshallian concepts of consumer's surplus and producer's surplus, by developing the three new concepts of labourer's surplus, self-employed producer's surplus and consumer's surplus. The analyses using the five concepts of economic surplus are the minor motif of the present book, which the author calls ``Marshallian motif''.Another important characteristic of this book lies in the presentation of newly developed theories of land rent. The author has tried to integrate the theory of leasehold tenancy (i.e. fixed rent tenancy) and that of share tenancy with subjective equilibrium theory of the farm household. In his foreword, John W. Longworth of the International Association of Agricultural Economists says ``From time-to-time an academic treatise appears which is truly different. This is one such book. It presents a self-contained normative theory of the farm household which is much more than just an elegant development of Hicksian and Marshallian ideas. Professor Nakajima introduces new concepts and develops a simple model of the farm household. He then extends this model in various ways to examine the subjective equilibrium of farm households under a wide range of economic circumstances. The exposition is clear and logic with each step in the argument explained in detail using both rigorous mathematical notation and easy to follow diagrams... With this book Nakajima is making his Life's Work available to non-Japanese Agricultural Economists. The international profession of Agricultural Economics will be richer for it.''
  • Aflatoxin

    Scientific Background, Control, and Implications
    • 1st Edition
    • December 2, 2012
    • Leo Goldblatt
    • English
    Aflatoxin: Scientific Background, Control, and Implications discusses general problems posed by mycotoxin contamination in foods and feeds. This book is divided into 15 chapters that summarize the discovery, elaboration, chemistry and assay, effects and metabolic fate, processing to ensure their removal or inactivation, and regulatory aspects of aflatoxins. The introductory chapters cover the discovery, formation by Aspergillus flavus, and the chemistry and structure of aflatoxins. The subsequent chapters describe the physicochemical and biological assays for aflatoxin measurement, detection, and analysis. A chapter also describes the metabolic fate and the biochemical alterations associated with aflatoxin administration to animals and other biological test systems. Discussions on the acute toxicity and carcinogenic activity of aflatoxins in laboratory and farm animals are also provided, with emphasis on the recognition of aflatoxicosis, a disease condition caused by the action of the aflatoxin poison. The book goes on examining the role of spoilage molds in destroying stored crops and the tremendous capacity for toxin production of aflatoxins. It also describes successful efforts of food and feed industries to ensure a wholesome food supply, including the utilization of various detoxification processes. The last chapters deal with the regulatory provisions for aflatoxin contamination control and tolerances and the implications of fungal toxins to human health. The book is intended for scientists and manufacturers concerned with the production and processing of foods and feeds, the nutrition, and the animal and public health.
  • Biology and Geology of Coral Reefs V3

    Biology 2
    • 1st Edition
    • December 2, 2012
    • O.A. Jones
    • English
    Biology and Geology of Coral Reefs, Volume III: Biology 2 covers the major advances made in the biological aspects of coral reef problems. This book discusses the ecology, animal associates, and toxicity of coral reefs. Composed of 11 chapters, the book initially describes the diversity of animals permanently or temporarily associated with living corals despite the formidable nematocyst batteries possessed by corals. The text goes on discussing some specializations of some shrimps and prawns permanently associated with living corals, thus, augmenting the number of biological niches available for colonization. The subsequent chapters deal with the appearance and distribution of coral reefs echinoderms and their biogeography; the role of fishes in the energetic of the coral reef system; the high incidence of toxic fishes in coral reef waters; and the origin, transmission, detection, pharmacology, and chemistry of ciguatoxin. The book also discusses natural and man-induced destruction of coral reef communities and the rate, manner, and extent of recovery of such destruction. It also describes the types of vegetation that grow on the limestone substratum provided by coral islands. Another chapter provides distributional data on the birds of the Great Barrier Reef region and the behavior and evolution of island populations of sea birds. The concluding chapters present the general biology of sea turtles and the factors that influence the number and types of organisms found on coral islands. This book will acquaint readers with some of the exciting developments in coral reef biology and will provide information that will enable them to assess the status of research in different fields.