Download or read book Circadian Rhythms written by Russell G. Foster and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 169 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Very Short Introduction explains how organisms can 'know' the time and reveals what we now understand of the nature and operation of chronobiological processes. Covering variables such as light, the metabolism, human health, and the seasons, Foster and Kreitzman illustrate how jet lag and shift work can impact on human well-being.
Download or read book Circadian Rhythms A Very Short Introduction written by Russell Foster and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017-03-16 with total page 169 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The earth's daily rotation affects just about every living creature. From dawn through to dusk, there are changes in light, temperature, humidity, and rainfall. However, these changes are regular, rhythmic and, therefore, predictable. Thus, the near 24 hour circadian rhythm is innate: a genetically programmed clock that essentially ticks of its own accord. This Very Short Introduction explains how organisms can "know" the time and reveals what we now understand of the nature and operation of chronobiological processes. Covering variables such as light, the metabolism, human health, and the seasons, Foster and Kreitzman illustrate how jet lag and shift work can impact on human well-being, and consider circadian rhythms alongside a wide range of disorders, from schizophrenia to obesity. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.
Download or read book The Rhythms Of Life written by Leon Kreitzman and published by Profile Books. This book was released on 2011-09-30 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Popular science at its most exciting: the breaking new world of chronobiology - understanding the rhythm of life in humans and all plants and animals. The entire natural world is full of rhythms. The early bird catches the worm -and migrates to an internal calendar. Dormice hibernate away the winter. Plants open and close their flowers at the same hour each day. Bees search out nectar-rich flowers day after day. There are cicadas that can breed for only two weeks every 17 years. And in humans: why are people who work anti-social shifts more illness prone and die younger? What is jet-lag and can anything help? Why do teenagers refuse to get up in the morning, and are the rest of us really 'larks' or 'owls'? Why are most people born (and die) between 3am-5am? And should patients be given medicines (and operations) at set times of day, because the body reacts so differently in the morning, evening and at night? The answers lie in our biological clocks the mechanisms which give order to all living things. They impose a structure that enables us to change our behaviour in relation to the time of day, month or year. They are reset at sunrise and sunset each day to link astronomical time with an organism's internal time.
Download or read book Internal Time written by Till Roenneberg and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2012-04-30 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of a British Medical Association Book Award A Brain Pickings Best Science Book of the Year Early birds and night owls are born, not made. Sleep patterns may be the most obvious manifestation of the highly individualized biological clocks we inherit, but these clocks also regulate bodily functions from digestion to hormone levels to cognition. Living at odds with our internal timepieces, Till Roenneberg shows, can make us chronically sleep deprived and more likely to smoke, gain weight, feel depressed, fall ill, and fail geometry. By understanding and respecting our internal time, we can live better. “Internal Time is a cautionary tale—actually a series of 24 tales, not coincidentally. Roenneberg ranges widely from the inner workings of biological rhythms to their social implications, illuminating each scientific tutorial with an anecdote inspired by clinical research...Written with grace and good humor, Internal Time is a serious work of science incorporating the latest research in chronobiology...[A] compelling volume.” —A. Roger Ekirch, Wall Street Journal “This is a fascinating introduction to an important topic, which will appeal to anyone who wishes to delve deep into the world of chronobiology, or simply wonders why they struggle to get a good night’s sleep.” —Richard Wiseman, New Scientist
Download or read book Sleep A Very Short Introduction written by Steven W. Lockley and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2012-03-22 with total page 169 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores sleep disorders, describes breakthroughs in the study of sleep, and considers the impact of modern society on it.
Download or read book The Circadian Code written by Satchin Panda, PhD and published by Rodale Books. This book was released on 2018-06-12 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When we eat may be as important as what we eat. Like most people, you probably wake up, get hungry for meals and doze off in bed around the same time every day. If you’ve ever experienced jet lag or pulled an all-nighter, you know that this schedule can easily be thrown off kilter. But for some people, that imbalance—difficulty sleeping at night, hunger at odd times, or sudden fatigue at noon—is a constant. If you're one of those people, Dr. Satchin Panda, one of the leading researchers on circadian rhythms, has a plan to reset your body clock. Beginning with an in-depth explanation of the circadian clock—why it’s important, how it works, and how to know it isn’t working—The Circadian Code outlines lifestyle changes to make to get back on track. It's a concrete plan to enhance weight loss, improve sleep, optimize exercise, and manage technology so that it doesn’t interfere with your body’s natural rhythm. Dr. Panda’s life-changing methods show you how to prevent and reverse ailments like diabetes, cancer, and dementia, as well as microbiome conditions like acid reflux, heartburn, and irritable bowel disease.
Download or read book Nutrition A Very Short Introduction written by David Bender and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2014-06-26 with total page 129 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nutrition is a topic of wide interest and importance. In spite of growing understanding of the underlying biochemistry, and health campaigns such as 'five-a-day', increasing obesity and reported food allergies and eating disorders, as well as the widely advertised 'supposed' benefits of food supplements mean that a clear explanation of the basic principles of a healthy diet are vital. In this Very Short Introduction, David Bender explains the basic elements of food, the balance between energy intake and exercise, the problems of over- and under-nutrition, and raises the question of safety of nutritional supplements. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.
Download or read book Seasons of Life written by Leon Kreitzman and published by Profile Books. This book was released on 2010-08-26 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The natural world is full of rhythms. How do birds know when to return to their nesting grounds? What effect do the seasons have on our wellbeing, and how does the season in which we are born affect our subsequent life chances? How did humans get the idea that there were seasons 50,000 years ago? Seasons of Life explains why the seasons occur, the impact of seasonal change and how organisms have evolved to anticipate these changes. For although we mask the effects of seasonal changes by warming our homes, lighting our nights, preserving foods and storing water, we cannot hide from them.
Download or read book Biological Rhythms and Exercise written by Thomas Reilly and published by . This book was released on 1997 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book will provide a concise introduction to the subject of biological rhythms, and will consider systematically the impact that rhythms of various cycle lengths have for sport and exercise practitioners. The authors combine expertise in sports science, chronobiology, and physiology, and the text offers scientific research with clinical practice.
Download or read book The Circadian Clock written by Urs Albrecht and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2010-01-23 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With the invitation to edit this volume, I wanted to take the opportunity to assemble reviews on different aspects of circadian clocks and rhythms. Although most c- tributions in this volume focus on mammalian circadian clocks, the historical int- duction and comparative clocks section illustrate the importance of various other organisms in deciphering the mechanisms and principles of circadian biology. Circadian rhythms have been studied for centuries, but only recently, a mole- lar understanding of this process has emerged. This has taken research on circadian clocks from mystic phenomenology to a mechanistic level; chains of molecular events can describe phenomena with remarkable accuracy. Nevertheless, current models of the functioning of circadian clocks are still rudimentary. This is not due to the faultiness of discovered mechanisms, but due to the lack of undiscovered processes involved in contributing to circadian rhythmicity. We know for example, that the general circadian mechanism is not regulated equally in all tissues of m- mals. Hence, a lot still needs to be discovered to get a full understanding of cir- dian rhythms at the systems level. In this respect, technology has advanced at high speed in the last years and provided us with data illustrating the sheer complexity of regulation of physiological processes in organisms. To handle this information, computer aided integration of the results is of utmost importance in order to d- cover novel concepts that ultimately need to be tested experimentally.
Download or read book Teeth A Very Short Introduction written by Peter S. Ungar and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2014-03 with total page 153 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Teeth are a vital component of vertebrate anatomy and a fundamental part of the fossil record. It was the evolution of teeth, associated with predation, that drove the evolution of the wide array of fish, amphibians, reptiles, and then mammals. Peter S. Ungar looks at how, without teeth, none of these developments could have occurred.
Download or read book The Circadian System of Man written by R.A. Wever and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-03-07 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Biological rhythmicity has been a subject of scientific research for a relatively short time. In the special case of daily, or circadian rhythms, it is only during the past twenty years that rapidly increasing efforts have been undertaken in evaluat ing properties and mechanisms. As a consequence of these efforts, the study of biological and, in particular, circadian rhythmicity is no longer a somewhat dubious occupation but rather a serious branch of science which combines the interdisciplinary efforts of numerous researchers around the world. The general result of these efforts is that many features of circadian rhythms of many different species of living beings are well known today. In addition to studies with lower organisms, the evaluation of human circadian rhythms was originally more or less a compulsory exercise done in order to extend the "catalogue of species"; of course, the work was of unusual impor tance due to the special position of man in biology. In the course of the very first experimental series, it became clear that humans possess an "internal clock" as had been established in various organisms, protists, plants, and animals, and that human circadian rhythms fit the general regularities of biological rhythms known at that time. However, it soon became apparent that circadian rhythmicity of man shows, additionally, particularities of great general interest, for practical and theoretical reasons.
Download or read book Waves A Very Short Introduction written by Mike Goldsmith and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-11-15 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We live in a world of waves. The Earth shakes to its foundations, the seas and oceans tremble incessantly, sounds reverberate through land, sea, and air. Beneath the skin, our brains and bodies are awash with waves of their own, and the Universe is filled by a vast spectrum of electromagnetic radiation, of which visible light is the narrowest sliver. Casting the net even wider, there are mechanical waves, quantum wave phenomena, and the now clearly detected gravitational waves. Look closer and deeper and more kinds of waves appear, down to the most fundamental level of reality. This Very Short Introduction looks at all the main kinds of wave, their sources, effects, and uses. Mike Goldsmith discusses how wave motion results in a range of phenomena, from reflection, diffraction, interference, and polarization in the case of light waves to beats and echoes for sound. All waves, however different, share many of the same features, and, as Goldsmith shows, for all their complexities many of their behaviours are fundamentally simple. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.
Download or read book Food A Very Short Introduction written by John Krebs and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013-09-26 with total page 145 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A brief examination of the history and science of food chronicles four great transitions including those of cooking, agriculture, processing and preservation to consider the sources of culinary preferences, the disparity between malnutrition and overconsumption and the issues associated with obesity, sustainable agriculture and genetic modification. Original.
Download or read book Chronobiology written by Jay C. Dunlap and published by Sinauer Associates Incorporated. This book was released on 2004 with total page 406 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The study of how solar- and lunar- related rhythms are governed by living pacemakers within organisms constitutes the scientific discipline of chronobiology. Few fields encompass the breadth of science that is associated with this subject, which is at the cutting edge of fields ranging from microbial genetics to ethology to treatment of human psychiatric illnesses. In order to recognise that no individual could do justice to the field in writing a comprehensive text, a group of experienced editors and contributors have collaborated to produce Chronobiology. Written in a clear style and fully illustrated to elucidate difficult points, the book assumes no previous background in neuroscience or maths and reduces technical terminology to a minimum. Examples from the real world and from current and classic research are included.
Download or read book The Eye A Very Short Introduction written by Michael F. Land and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2014-05-29 with total page 129 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The eye is one of the most remarkable achievements of evolution, and has evolved up to 40 times in different parts of the animal kingdom. In humans, vision is the most important sense, and much of the brain is given over to the processing of visual information. In this Very Short Introduction, Michael Land describes the evolution of vision and the variety of eyes found in both humans and animals. He explores the evolution of colour vision in primates and the workings of the human eye, to consider how that contributes to our visual ability. He explains how we see in three dimensions and the basic principles of visual perception, including our impressive capacity for pattern recognition and the ability of vision to guide action. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.
Download or read book Biological Clocks Rhythms and Oscillations written by Daniel B. Forger and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2024-08-06 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An introduction to the mathematical, computational, and analytical techniques used for modeling biological rhythms, presenting tools from many disciplines and example applications. All areas of biology and medicine contain rhythms, and these behaviors are best understood through mathematical tools and techniques. This book offers a survey of mathematical, computational, and analytical techniques used for modeling biological rhythms, gathering these methods for the first time in one volume. Drawing on material from such disciplines as mathematical biology, nonlinear dynamics, physics, statistics, and engineering, it presents practical advice and techniques for studying biological rhythms, with a common language. The chapters proceed with increasing mathematical abstraction. Part I, on models, highlights the implicit assumptions and common pitfalls of modeling, and is accessible to readers with basic knowledge of differential equations and linear algebra. Part II, on behaviors, focuses on simpler models, describing common properties of biological rhythms that range from the firing properties of squid giant axon to human circadian rhythms. Part III, on mathematical techniques, guides readers who have specific models or goals in mind. Sections on “frontiers” present the latest research; “theory” sections present interesting mathematical results using more accessible approaches than can be found elsewhere. Each chapter offers exercises. Commented MATLAB code is provided to help readers get practical experience. The book, by an expert in the field, can be used as a textbook for undergraduate courses in mathematical biology or graduate courses in modeling biological rhythms and as a reference for researchers.
