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The first book to show how the concept of bodily organs emerged and how ancient tools influenced conceptualizations of human anatomy and its operations. Medicine is itself a type of technology, involving therapeutic tools and substances, and so one can write the history of medicine as the application of different technologies to the human body. In Tools and the Organism, Colin Webster argues that, throughout antiquity, these tools were crucial to broader theoretical shifts. Notions changed about what type of object a body is, what substances constitute its essential nature, and how its parts interact. By following these changes and taking the question of technology into the heart of Greek and Roman medicine, Webster reveals how the body was first conceptualized as an “organism”—a functional object whose inner parts were tools, or organa, that each completed certain vital tasks. He also shows how different medical tools created different bodies. Webster’s approach provides both an overarching survey of the ways that technologies impacted notions of corporeality and corporeal behaviors and, at the same time, stays attentive to the specific material details of ancient tools and how they informed assumptions about somatic structures, substances, and inner processes. For example, by turning to developments in water-delivery technologies and pneumatic tools, we see how these changing material realities altered theories of the vascular system and respiration across Classical antiquity. Tools and the Organism makes the compelling case for why telling the history of ancient Greco-Roman medical theories, from the Hippocratics to Galen, should pay close attention to the question of technology.
When published in 1980, Benjamin B. Beck’s Animal Tool Behavior was the first volume to catalog and analyze the complete literature on tool use and manufacture in non-human animals. Beck showed that animals—from insects to primates—employed different types of tools to solve numerous problems. His work inspired and energized legions of researchers to study the use of tools by a wide variety of species. In this revised and updated edition of the landmark publication, Robert W. Shumaker and Kristina R. Walkup join Beck to reveal the current state of knowledge regarding animal tool behavior. Through a comprehensive synthesis of the studies produced through 2010, the authors provide an updated and exact definition of tool use, identify new modes of use that have emerged in the literature, examine all forms of tool manufacture, and address common myths about non-human tool use. Specific examples involving invertebrates, birds, fish, and mammals describe the differing levels of sophistication of tool use exhibited by animals.
Written and edited by experts in the field, this book brings together the current state of the art in phenotypic and rational, target-based approaches to drug discovery against pathogenic protozoa. The chapters focus particularly on virtual compounds and high throughput screening, natural products, computer-assisted drug design, structure-based drug design, mechanism of action identification, and pathway modelling. Furthermore, state-of the art "omics" technologies are described and currently studied enzymatic drug targets are discussed. Mathematical, systems biology-based approaches are introduced as new methodologies for dissecting complex aspects of pathogen survival mechanisms and for target identification. In addition, recently developed anti-parasitic agents targeting particular pathways, which serve as lead compounds for further drug development, are presented.
The Synthetic Biology Handbook explains the major goals of the field of synthetic biology and presents the technical details of the latest advances made in achieving those goals. Offering a comprehensive overview of the current areas of focus in synthetic biology, this handbook:Explores the standardisation of classic molecular bioscience approaches
Synthetic biology is becoming one of the most dynamic new fields of biology, with the potential to revolutionize the way we do biotechnology today. By applying the toolbox of engineering disciplines to biology, a whole set of potential applications become possible ranging very widely across scientific and engineering disciplines. Some of the potential benefits of synthetic biology, such as the development of low-cost drugs or the production of chemicals and energy by engineered bacteria are enormous. There are, however, also potential and perceived risks due to deliberate or accidental damage. Also, ethical issues of synthetic biology just start being explored, with hardly any ethicists specifically focusing on the area of synthetic biology. This book will be the first of its kind focusing particularly on the safety, security and ethical concerns and other relevant societal aspects of this new emerging field. The foreseen impact of this book will be to stimulate a debate on these societal issues at an early stage. Past experiences, especially in the field of GM-crops and stem cells, have shown the importance of an early societal debate. The community and informed stakeholders recognize this need, but up to now discussions are fragmentary. This book will be the first comprehensive overview on relevant societal issues of synthetic biology, setting the scene for further important discussions within the scientific community and with civil society.
Systems biology is changing the way biological systems are studied by allowing us to examine the cell and organism as a whole. Systems biotechnology allows optimal design and development of upstream to downstream bioprocesses by taking a systems-approach. E. coli has been a model organism for almost all biological and biotechnological studies. This book brings together for the first time the state-of-the-art reviews by the world-leading experts on systems biology and biotechnological applications of E. coli. The topics covered include genomics and functional genomics, resources for systems biology, network analysis, genome-scale metabolic reconstruction, modelling and simulation, dynamic modelling and simulation, systems-level analysis of evolution, plasmids and expression systems, protein synthesis, production and export, engineering the central metabolism, synthetic biology, and systems metabolic engineering of E. coli. This book provides readers with guidance on how a complex biological system can be studied using E. coli as a model organism. It also presents how to perform synthetic biology and systems metabolic engineering studies on E. coli with successful examples, the approaches of which can be extended to other organisms. This book will be a complete resource for anyone interested in systems biology and biotechnology.
The central insight of Darwin's Origin of Species is that evolution is an ecological phenomenon, arising from the activities of organisms in the 'struggle for life'. By contrast, the Modern Synthesis theory of evolution, which rose to prominence in the twentieth century, presents evolution as a fundamentally molecular phenomenon, occurring in populations of sub-organismal entities - genes. After nearly a century of success, the Modern Synthesis theory is now being challenged by empirical advances in the study of organismal development and inheritance. In this important study, D. M. Walsh shows that the principal defect of the Modern Synthesis resides in its rejection of Darwin's organismal perspective, and argues for 'situated Darwinism': an alternative, organism-centred conception of evolution that prioritises organisms as adaptive agents. His book will be of interest to scholars and advanced students of evolutionary biology and the philosophy of biology.
Systems Biology is an interdisciplinary approach to the study of life made possible through the explosion of molecular data made available through the genome revolution and the simultaneous development of computational technologies that allow us to interpret these large data sets. Systems Biology has changed the way biological science views and studies life and has been implemented in research efforts across the biological sciences. Systems Biology and Livestock Science will be the first book to review the latest advances using this research methodology in efforts to improve the efficiency, health, and quality of livestock production. Systems Biology and Livestock Science opens with useful introductory chapters explaining key systems biology principles. The chapters then progress to look at specific advances in fields across livestock science. Coverage includes, but is not limited to, chapters on systems biology approaches to animal nutrition, reproduction, health and disease, and animal physiology. Written by leading researchers in the field, Systems Biology and Livestock Science, will be an invaluable resource to researchers, professionals, and advance students working in this rapidly developing discipline.
Philosophy of Experimental Biology explores some central philosophical issues concerning scientific research in experimental biology, including genetics, biochemistry, molecular biology, developmental biology, neurobiology, and microbiology. It seeks to make sense of the explanatory strategies, concepts, ways of reasoning, approaches to discovery and problem solving, tools, models and experimental systems deployed by scientific life science researchers and also integrates developments in historical scholarship, in particular the New Experimentalism. It concludes that historical explanations of scientific change that are based on local laboratory practice need to be supplemented with an account of the epistemic norms and standards that are operative in science. This book should be of interest to philosophers and historians of science as well as to scientists.