Academic literature on the topic 'Fields of Research – 270000 Biological Sciences'

Just a few decades ago, chemical oscillations were thought to be exotic reactions of only theoretical interest. Now known to govern an array of physical and biological processes, including the regulation of the heart, these oscillations are being studied by a diverse group across the sciences. This book is the first introduction to nonlinear chemical dynamics written specifically for chemists. It covers oscillating reactions, chaos, and chemical pattern formation, and includes numerous practical suggestions on reactor design, data analysis, and computer simulations. Assuming only an undergradu

Abstract Selenium contamination of air, aquatic environments, soils and sediments is a serious environmental concern of increasing importance. Selenium has a paradoxical feature in bringing about health benefits under the prescribed level, but only a few fold increase in its concentration causes deleterious effects to flora and fauna, humans and the environment. This book Environmental Technologies to Treat Selenium Pollution: Principles and Engineering: presents the fundamentals of the biogeochemical selenium cycle and which imbalances in this cycle result in pollution.overviews chemical and

This Handbook provides the reader with access to core areas in the philosophy of science and to new directions in the discipline. Part I contains broad overviews of the main lines of research and the state of established knowledge in six principal areas of the discipline, including computational, physical, biological, psychological, and social sciences, as well as general philosophy of science. Part II covers what are considered to be the traditional topics in the philosophy of science such as causation, probability, models, ethics and values, and explanation. Part III identifies new areas of

Metabolomics is an emerging and rapidly evolving technology tool, which involves quantitative and qualitative metabolite assessments science. It offers tremendous promise for different applications in various fields such as medical, environmental, nutrition, and agricultural sciences. Metabolomic approach is based on global identification of a high number of metabolites present in a biological fluid. This allows to characterize the metabolic profile of a given condition and to identify which metabolites or metabolite patterns may be useful in the discrimination between different groups. The use of one mass spectrometry (MS) platform from targeted quantification to untargeted metabolomics will make more efficient workflows in many fields and should allow projects to be more easily undertaken and realized. Metabolomics can be divided into non-targeted and targeted. The first one can analyze metabolites derived from the organisms comprehensively and systematically, so it is an unbiased metabolomics analysis that can discover new biomarkers. Targeted metabolomics, on the other hand, is the study and analysis of specific metabolites. Both have their own advantages and disadvantages, and are often used in combination for discovery and accurate weight determination of differential metabolites, and allow in-depth research and analysis of subsequent metabolic molecular markers. Targeted and non-targeted metabolomics are involved in food identification, disease research, animal model verification, biomarker discovery, disease diagnosis, drug development, drug screening, drug evaluation, clinical plant metabolism and microbial metabolism research. The aim of this chapter is to highlight the versatility of metabolomic analysis due to both the enormous variety of samples and the no strict barriers between quantitative and qualitative analysis. For this purpose, two examples from our group will be considered. Using non-targeted metabolomics in opposite Antarctic cryptoendolytic communities exposed to the sun, we revealed specific adaptations. Instead, through the targeted metabolomics applied to the urine during childbirth, we identified a different distribution of specific metabolites and the metabolic differences allowed us to discriminate between the two phases of labor, highlighting the metabolites most involved in the discrimination. The choice of these two approaches is to highlight that metabolomic analysis can be applied to any sample, even physiologically and metabolomically very distant, as can be microorganisms living on Antarctic rocks and biological fluids such as urine.

As one of the most important social problems in the world, poverty has been studied by various disciplines. Although poverty is a basic subject of economics, it has also become one of the prominent research fields of social sciences in recent years. Poverty also relates to many psychological processes and mechanisms just as in the other social problems in the world. It is assumed that the social-psychological approach to poverty may contribute to establishing different road maps in combating poverty. Therefore this study aims at contributing to poverty reduction efforts from the social-psychological point of view by providing an integrative review of the social psychological correlates of poverty based on the empirical findings. Also, by including arguments such as social identity, migration, ideology and social context in poverty studies to be conducted with a social psychological perspective, a contribution can be made to poverty reduction with multidimensional research methods.

This chapter discusses human bones and teeth, which are the primary databank for biological anthropologists. The topic has aroused little interest among historians of antiquity. The beginnings of an explanation of this disparity are to be sought in the fact that human skeletal remains have no obvious relevance as a source of information for politics, political institutions, political thought, government, law, religion, warfare: in brief, for the traditional concerns of ancient historians. A second consideration is that biological anthropology is rooted in prehistory; its practitioners are characteristically involved in the exploration of the origins of humanity. Fortunately, some anthropologists have allowed themselves to stray into historical periods, including the classical world of Greece and Rome. In the meantime, historians of antiquity are showing increased interest in social, economic, and cultural history, and are displaying a new willingness to expose themselves to other disciplines, including the natural and social sciences. Thus, the time seems ripe for fruitful communication between historians and anthropologists. Specifically, health and demography (mortality, fertility, and mobility) hold promise as fields for constructive dialogue and collaborative research.

This chapter examines the ways that McCulloch’s new research culture at MIT’s Research Laboratory of Electronics shaped the evolution of his scientific identity into that of an engineer. This was an open, fluid, multidisciplinary culture that allowed McCulloch to shift his focus more squarely onto understanding the brain from the perspective of theoretical modelling, and to promote the cybernetic vision to diverse audiences. McCulloch’s practices, performed with a new set of student-collaborators, involved modeling the neurophysiology of perception, understanding reliability in biological systems, and pursuing knowledge of the reticular formation of the brain. The chapter provides a nuanced account of the relations between McCulloch’s work and the emerging fields of artificial intelligence and the cognitive sciences. It also highlights McCulloch’s identities as sage-collaborator and polymath, two roles that in part were the result of his students’ observations and in part products of his own self-fashioning.

Search for the term resilience and one finds definitions that vary widely between fields as diverse as ecology, disaster management, developmental psychology, neuroscience, engineering, and economics. Each definition emphasizes a shift in focus from breakdown and disorder to systemic recovery, adaptation, or systemwide transformation during and after exposure to adversity. Seldom, however, have researchers in the natural and human sciences explored the link between the resilience of one system and the resilience of mutually dependent, co-occurring supraordinate and subordinate systems. In this chapter, the author presents a comprehensive theory of resilience that draws together the research done by a range of disciplines where the term resilience has been used as an organizing concept. Using this diverse body of work, this chapter (a) starts with a discussion of definitions that both distinguish fields of resilience research from one another and suggests concurrence in how resilience is understood; (b) presents a model that accounts for the complex reciprocal relationships that enhance the resilience of co-occurring biological, psychological, social, built, and natural systems; (c) reviews seven principles that explain the processes of recovery, adaptation, and transformation of systems under stress; and (4) discusses the implications of a systemic understanding of resilience to the design of interventions that promote change to preferred patterns of functioning when systems are under stress.

A new discipline has been introduced into today’s multicultural scientific context — Biodesign. Behind the main philosophical concept of Biodesign is the human body; considered a psycho-biological unicum. Research activities aim at developing artificial devices which can be fully integrated into the human body, or rather into the prosthetic human being. During the last decade, the interest of design research and the study of solutions specifically focused on the human being gave rise to a number of disciplines characterized by the prefix “bio”, which comes from the Greek word for life. This pr

For the last three summers Lehigh University has sponsored a Research Experience for Undergraduates with support from the National Science Foundation, Department of Defense and Pennsylvania Infrastructure and Technology Alliance. Each year 10–12 rising sophomores were recruited from throughout the US to work with 4–5 graduate students and 2 professors from biological sciences and mechanical engineering. The project’s goal is to create a chemical sensing, mobile robot using a carbon based electronic nose developed by the California Institute of Technology for NASA and principles obtained from o

Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS) technologies have been very attractive and demonstrate the potential for many applications in the field of tissue engineering, regenerative medicine, and life sciences. These fields bring together the multidisciplinary field of engineering and integrated sciences to fabricate three-dimensional models that aides the exploration, generation or regeneration of organic tissues and organs. Presently, monolayer cell cultures are frequently used to investigate potential anti-cancer agents. The issues at hand are that these models give very little in terms of fe