Life sciences: general issues Books

Coastal East and Southeast Asia are characterized by wet growing seasons, and species-rich forest ecosystems develop throughout the latitudinal and altitudinal gradients. In this region, the Global Change Impacts on Terrestrial...

Bacteria change the surface of the Earth. All kinds of bacteria reside in the biosphere, and although sometimes they may cause damage, they also help in cleaning the surface of the Earth and in the circulation of various...

The great variety in structure and function of arthropod sensory organs is due to the huge number of species living in spatially and temporally different environments and to great variation in behavioral patterns. This atlas...

Developments in cognitive science indicate that human and nonhuman primates share a range of behavioral and physiological characteristics that speak to the issue of language origins. This volume has three major themes, woven...

In recent years nobody could have failed to notice the frequent and often sensati- alist media headlines warning of the latest global disease threat to humankind. But behind all the hyperbole lie real challenges related to...

Riparian forests along streams and rivers are diverse in species, structure, and regeneration processes, and have important ecological functions in maintaining landscape and biodiversity. This book discusses riparian forests...

With the development of neural science, knowledge of the molecules and neurons that comprise the brain has increased exponentially in the past two decades. In this book, leading neuroscientists from Japan and Taiwan describe...

Understanding brain functions, especially the neural mechanisms of higher cognitive processes such as thinking, reasoning, judging, and decision making, are the subjects covered by the chapters of this book. They describe...

In this volume, which is based on the proceedings of the international symposium "Functional Linkages Between the Cerebral Cortex and Basal Ganglia in the Control of Voluntary Movement", held December 1993 in Osaka, Japan, the...

Brain resuscitation is the therapeutic intervention for critically ill patients with severe brain damage, particularly the types caused by ischemia and hypoxia. The The objective of the International Symposium on Brain...

This first volume in a projected series contains the proceedings of the first of the Keio University International Symposia for Life Sciences and Medicine under the sponsorship of the Keio University Medical Science Fund. As...

Interest in this unique plant has grown dramatically over the last 10 years, and this book provides an overview and recent findings concerning cell biology, biochemistry, development, morphology, phylogeny, paleobotany, as well...

Cerebral hypoxia/ischemia is a common cause of neurologic dysfunction following cardiopulmonary resuscitation. With the advent of aggressive resuscitatiQ,il ;m.ethods to treat cardiopulmonary arrest, more patients are surviving...

The globalization of trade, monetary and fiscal policies, capital markets, and investment patterns is reshaping the world economy and is leading to new financial, commercial, and marketing structures as well as unprecedented...

The studies in the Ogawa Forest Reserve (OPR) were initiated by a group of plant ecologists and gradually expanded into a comprehensive project covering various aspects of biology, soil science, and silviculture. The project...

Japan's traditional and fragile satoyama landscape system was developed over centuries of human life on mountainous island terrain in a monsoon climate. The carefully managed coppice woodlands on the hillsides, the villages...

On the threshold of the twenty-first century, the ordinary Japanese citizen has become acutely aware that various environmental hazards pose a serious threat to daily life; such hazards include the problems of waste disposal,...

As a food resource in both Eastern and Western countries, the eel is an important fish. Over the years, remarkable progress has been achieved in understanding the mysterious life cycle of eels that has fascinated scientists...

The regulation of the organism has traditionally been ascribed to two distinct systems-the nervous and the endocrine. Though coordination between the two systems has been acknowledged, researchers and authors have tended to...

Since the late 1960s the Indonesian state of East Kalimantan has witnessed a marked increase in the impact of human activities chiefly commercial logging and agricultural exploitation. Located on the island of Borneo, East...

This book discusses Nature and Human Communities in the historical and social background of Asia. Part 1 deals with the problems of coexistence among human beings. Part 2 explores coexistence between human beings and nature...

It is an honor and pleasure for me to write the foreword of this book comprising the of Forest Resources for proceedings of the Fourth Symposium on the Improvement Recyclable Forest Products. The symposium was organized by Dr...

The Pasoh Forest Reserve (pasoh FR) has been a leading center for international field research in the Asian tropical forest since the 1970s, when a joint research project was carried out by Japanese, British and Malaysian...

New research reveals that plants actively acquire nutrients; the acquisition process is not a passive one in which plants simply wait for dissolved nutrients to come closer to their roots. In fact plants play a far more active...

East Asia, with its large, fast-growing population and rapid industrialization, is an important area for global environmental problems, both in terms of the generation of greenhouse gases and the effects of any change in crop...

This book tackles the challenging issues raised by the growth of large megacities from diverse perspectives and approaches. The central question raised by the growth of megacities is what effect their growth will have on the ability of the global...

This book presents a detailed analysis of current understanding of breathing. Chapters on neuroprotection examine the functional significance of the blood - brain barrier; other chapters examine health and disease in relation to the hypothalamic and...

This book highlights various designs for urban green spaces and their functions. It provides an interesting meeting point between Asian, European and North America specialists (researchers, planners, landscape architects) studying urban biodiversity;...

This book sheds new light on neurodegenerative disorders as systemic diseases. Classically, neuronal cell death was a hallmark of such disorders. However, it has become evident that neural dysfunction is more important in the pathophysiology of...

In 1961, neurobiologists found that the conduction velocity of the nerve impulse in the giant nerve fiber of the Penaeus shrimp abdominal nerve cord was over 200 m/s, the highest speed of information transmission ever observed in the animal kingdom. The...

This book deals with methods of measurement and evaluation of environmental noise based on an auditory neural and brain-oriented model. The model consists of the autocorrelation function (ACF) and the interaural cross-correlation function (IACF)...

This volume focuses on new trends in monitoring biodiversity in the Asia-Pacific region, one of the most rapidly changing areas in the world. It provides reviews of the challenges in studying the spatial variability of...

This book presents an overview of current knowledge about social-ecological systems (SESs), a productive new field dedicated to understanding the relationships between human society and nature. To make the reader aware of how...

This book presents recent topics on the development, differentiation, and myelination of Schwann cells, as well as pathological mechanisms and therapeutic approaches for peripheral neuropathies, such as Charcot-Marie-Tooth...

As Earth faces the greatest mass extinction in 65 million years, the present is a moment of tremendous foment and emergence in ecological science. With leaps in advances in ecological research and the technical tools available, scientists face the...

Loss of biodiversity on tropical and subtropical oceanic islands is one of the most pressing conservation issues. These oceanic islands are well known for their unique fauna and ? ora, which evolved over long periods in isolation from external...

The Arctic, the Antarctic, and the Hindu Kush-Himalayas form a trio of terrains sometimes called "the three poles". Mainly composed of rock, snow, and ice, these precious regions, which are home to many unique species such as the polar bear, the emperor...

Foraminiferal cultures now serve as tools for researching biological, environmental, and geological topics. However, the biological backgrounds, in particular the natural histories of foraminifera, largely remain unclear. It is...

Biodiversity is decreasing at the fastest rate in the history of the earth. The sustainable use of ecosystems allowing maintenance of biological diversity is an urgent problem that must be solved. The work featured in this book presents the results...