Ghostly Muscles Wrinkled Brains Heresies And Hobbits

The Leverhulme Trust (UK) required Charles Oxnard to present a series of public lectures during his tenure of a Leverhulme Professorship at University College, London. The lectures had to be understandable not only to undergraduate and graduate students and colleagues, but also to the interested lay public. Furthermore, they were expected to meet and venture beyond present-day thought in the subject. This near-impossible task is reproduced in this unique volume.

As medical schools struggle to fit ever more material into a fixed amount of time, students need to approach the study of anatomy through a succinct, integrative overview. Rather than setting forth an overwhelming list of facts to be memorized, this book engages readers with a fascinating account of the connections between human anatomy and a wide array of scientific disciplines, weaving in the latest advances in developmental and evolutionary biology, comparative morphology, and biological engineering. Logically organized around a few key concepts, The Scientific Bases of Human Anatomy presents them in clear, memorable prose, concise tabular material, and a host of striking photographs and original diagrams.

Regarded by many as a dead or simply dull subject, Change and Challenge in Human Structure — Sixty Years On shatters this prejudice with a series of studies that go beyond dissection and measurement and covers novel approaches to anatomical form. Award-winning anatomist Charles Oxnard takes us on an exhilarating ride: beginning with rudimentary dissections and the fascinating observation of 'missing muscles', we are led on naturally to statistical analysis of bone measurements and how they may give information about bone function. Engineering methods and pattern recognition are introduced next, as a means of studying the external shape and internal structure of bones, respectively, and their relation to mechanical function. The application of landmark analysis to anatomy, also known as geometric morphometrics, is given a full chapter treatment. Finally, Oxnard uses modelling techniques to skilfully lay out an argument for the uniqueness of human brains and new possibilities in human evolutionary theories, both past and future. This book offers nothing less than a paradigm shift in our understanding of one of the oldest fields of science, and leads us into new views of the functional, developmental, behavioural, genetic and evolutionary implications of anatomical studies.

A biographic reference to notable people in Australia. Entrants are drawn from all areas of Australian life, including the arts, politics, education, medicine, defence, business, diplomatic service, and recipients of honours and awards.

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."

The #1 New York Times bestselling (mostly true) memoir from the hilarious author of Furiously Happy. “Gaspingly funny and wonderfully inappropriate.”—O, The Oprah Magazine When Jenny Lawson was little, all she ever wanted was to fit in. That dream was cut short by her fantastically unbalanced father and a morbidly eccentric childhood. It did, however, open up an opportunity for Lawson to find the humor in the strange shame-spiral that is her life, and we are all the better for it. In the irreverent Let’s Pretend This Never Happened, Lawson’s long-suffering husband and sweet daughter help her uncover the surprising discovery that the most terribly human moments—the ones we want to pretend never happened—are the very same moments that make us the people we are today. For every intellectual misfit who thought they were the only ones to think the things that Lawson dares to say out loud, this is a poignant and hysterical look at the dark, disturbing, yet wonderful moments of our lives. Readers Guide Inside

Mythic Imagination Today is an illustrated guide to the interpenetration of mythology and science throughout the ages. This monograph brings alive our collective need for story as a guide to the rules, roles, and relationships of everyday life.