This open access book offers a timely and comprehensive review of the field of neurotronics. Gathering cutting-edge contributions from neuroscientists, biologists, psychologists, as well as physicists, microelectronics engineers and information scientists, it gives extensive information on fundamental information pathways in selected nervous systems. It also highlights their relevance as buildi…
Stories of long-lived animal species—from thousand-year-old tubeworms to 400-year-old sharks—and what they might teach us about human health and longevity. Opossums in the wild don't make it to the age of three; our pet cats can live for a decade and a half; cicadas live for seventeen years (spending most of them underground). Whales, however, can live for two centuries and tubeworms for s…
An argument that health is optimal responsiveness and is often best treated at the system level. Medical education centers on the venerable “no-fault” concept of homeostasis, whereby local mechanisms impose constancy by correcting errors, and the brain serves mainly for emergencies. Yet, it turns out that most parameters are not constant; moreover, despite the importance of local mechanism…
How the meaningless process of natural selection produces purposeful beings who find meaning in the world. In From Darwin to Derrida, evolutionary biologist David Haig explains how a physical world of matter in motion gave rise to a living world of purpose and meaning. Natural selection, a process without purpose, gives rise to purposeful beings who find meaning in the world. The key to this…
A solutions-oriented examination of the connections between environmental degradation and human health.Life Support brings together the best medical information available on the implications for human health of the global environmental crisis. Written by prominent physicians and public health experts who see environmental degradation as a serious threat to public health, it provides essential i…
Functional genomics--the deconstruction of the genome to determine the biological function of genes and gene interactions--is one of the most fruitful new areas of biology. The growing use of DNA microarrays allows researchers to assess the expression of tens of thousands of genes at a time. This quantitative change has led to qualitative progress in our ability to understand regulatory process…
A new theory about the origins of consciousness that finds learning to be the driving force in the evolutionary transition to basic consciousness. What marked the evolutionary transition from organisms that lacked consciousness to those with consciousness—to minimal subjective experiencing, or, as Aristotle described it, “the sensitive soul”? In this book, Simona Ginsburg and Eva Jablo…
An argument that technology accelerates biological discovery, with case studies ranging from chromosome discovery with early microscopes to how DNA replicates using radioisotope labels. Engineering has been an essential collaborator in biological research and breakthroughs in biology are often enabled by technological advances. Decoding the double helix structure of DNA, for example, only be…
Sasan Adibi (BS’95, MS’99, MS’05, PhD’10, SMIEEE’11) has a PhD degree in Communication and Information Systems from University of Waterloo, Canada and the recipient of the best PhD thesis award from the IEEE Society. He is currently involved in the research, design, implementation, and application Electronic Health (eHealth) and Mobile Health (mHealth). Sasan’s research publication …
An accessible, concise primer on the neurological trait of synesthesia—vividly felt sensory couplings—by a founder of the field. One in twenty-three people carry the genes for the synesthesia. Not a disorder but a neurological trait—like perfect pitch—synesthesia creates vividly felt cross-sensory couplings. A synesthete might hear a voice and at the same time see it as a color or sh…