Dynamics Of Development Experiments And Inferences

Dynamics of Development: Experiments and Inferences provides an understanding of the dynamic order of living systems. This book presents a methodical approach to the unrestricted exploration of all the aspects that a living system offers, which is evaluated logically through experiment and inference. Organized into five parts encompassing 24 chapters, this book begins with an overview of the adaptive features of the nervous system. This text then examines the molecular control of cellular activity. Other chapters focus on resolving the fragments of the chemical endowment of the cell. This book discusses as well the mechanisms of respiration and photosynthesis, which have been connected with arrays of macromolecular complexes in definite sequential order. The final chapter deals with the fundamental principle of neural intercommunication. This book is a valuable resource for biochemists, biologists, zoologists, neurophysiologists, and scientists. Students and research workers interested in the dynamic order of living systems will also find this book useful.

This volume describes features of autonomy and integrates them into the recent discussion of factors in evolution. In recent years ideas about major transitions in evolution are undergoing a revolutionary change. They include questions about the origin of evolutionary innovation, their genetic and epigenetic background, the role of the phenotype and of changes in ontogenetic pathways. In the present book, it is argued that it is likewise necessary to question the properties of these innovations and what was qualitatively generated during the macroevolutionary transitions. The author states that a recurring central aspect of macroevolutionary innovations is an increase in individual organismal autonomy whereby it is emancipated from the environment with changes in its capacity for flexibility, self-regulation and self-control of behavior. The first chapters define the concept of autonomy and examine its history and its epistemological context. Later chapters demonstrate how changes in autonomy took place during the major evolutionary transitions and investigate the generation of organs and physiological systems. They synthesize material from various disciplines including zoology, comparative physiology, morphology, molecular biology, neurobiology and ethology. It is argued that the concept is also relevant for understanding the relation of the biological evolution of man to his cultural abilities. Finally the relation of autonomy to adaptation, niche construction, phenotypic plasticity and other factors and patterns in evolution is discussed. The text has a clear perspective from the context of systems biology, arguing that the generation of biological autonomy must be interpreted within an integrative systems approach.

To commemorate properly the 70th birthday of a man who, by his very nature, is too busy to pause for any kind of ceremonial event unless it has a concomitant functional output was a difficult problem for the Staff and Associates of the Neurosciences Research Program. Frank (F. O. S. ) has always dreaded the prospect that sometime it might be appropriate for his colleagues to present him a Fest schrift. In fact, "Fest me no Schriften" became his battle cry, expressing his feeling that the idea of testimonials clustered into a book was anathema. So the "break through" idea for the planners was to organize a symposium around the theme of discovery in neuroscience that would be valuable scientifically and, in its demon stration of interdisciplinary interaction, would support that emphasis in Frank's career. After much planning a program was developed, beginning with a birthday party the evening before, followed by the two-day symposium, and closing with the first F. O. Schmitt Lecture in Neuroscience. We hope that publication of the scientific proceedings in this volume will be of interest not only to the neuroscience community, but also to a broad general readership interested in discovery, under standing, and the creative processes in scientific work. An organizing committee, chaired by Fred Worden, collected advice and guidance leading to the selection of speakers whose scientific careers have played an important part in the recent history of modern neuroscience.

An anthology of 13 original essays clustering around two notions: that scientific experience is laden with an emotive content of the beautiful that is manifest both in the conceptualization and presentation of specific data and in the broader theoretical formulations that bind details into unitary wholes; and that science and aesthetics may share a deep philosophical foundation, but if so it has become increasingly difficult to discern in the 20th century. The topics include the aesthetic construction of Darwin's theory, form and function in the molecularization of biology, Kant's aesthetic-expressive vision of mathematics, and the art of displaying science in museum exhibitions. No subject index. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Biographic Memoirs: Volume 72 contains the biographies of deceased members of the National Academy of Sciences and bibliographies of their published works. Each biographical essay was written by a member of the Academy familiar with the professional career of the deceased. For historical and bibliographical purposes, these volumes are worth returning to time and again.