This book offers a thorough and up-to-date treatment of the use of morphometric procedures in a wide variety of contexts. As one of the most dynamic and popular fields on the contemporary biological scene, morphometrics is gaining notice among researchers and students as a necessary complement to molecular studies in the understanding and maintenance of biodiversity. This is the first reference to meet that growing need.

An account of the different ways in which things have become cognitive extensions of the human body, from prehistory to the present. An increasingly influential school of thought in cognitive science views the mind as embodied, extended, and distributed rather than brain-bound or “all in the head.” This shift in perspective raises important questions about the relationship between cognition and material culture, posing major challenges for philosophy, cognitive science, archaeology, and anthropology. In How Things Shape the Mind, Lambros Malafouris proposes a cross-disciplinary analytical framework for investigating the ways in which things have become cognitive extensions of the human body. Using a variety of examples and case studies, he considers how those ways might have changed from earliest prehistory to the present. Malafouris's Material Engagement Theory definitively adds materiality—the world of things, artifacts, and material signs—into the cognitive equation. His account not only questions conventional intuitions about the boundaries and location of the human mind but also suggests that we rethink classical archaeological assumptions about human cognitive evolution.

Since the Western world first became aware of the existence of Neanderthals, this Pleistocene human has been a regular focus of interest among specialists and also among the general public. In fact, we know far more about Neanderthals than we do about any other extinct human population. Furthermore, over the past 150 years no other palaeospecies has been such a constant source of discussion and fierce debate among palaeoanthropologists and archaeologists. This book presents the status of our knowledge as well as the methods and techniques used to study this extinct population and it suggests perspectives for future research.

One of the founders of modern human biology and physical anthropology, Gabriel W. Lasker holds a well-established place in the history of science. In a classic article published in Science in 1969, Lasker advanced the idea of plasticity, the process of human adaptation to stressful environments by a series of modifications to the body during the course of physical growth and development. This concept was a factor that led the scientific community to give up its reliance on the notion of genetically fixed racial types. As he documents the rapidly changing field of anthropology and some of its leading figures, Lasker gives his readers a peek inside the lives of people who have defined what it means to be human -- and one of those people is himself.

Los médicos tenemos conciencia de la verdadera revolución que se opera en la base científica de nuestra práctica, acompañada del acceso a nuevos recursos terapéuticos y de diagnóstico inimaginables poco tiempo atrás. Pero desde la mirada de los pacientes, la medicina se ha deshumanizado: los médicos escuchan poco, arrogantes de su saber o apurados por sus compromisos (algo muy lejos del modelo nostálgico del médico de la familia). El origen de ese malestar es complejo, y la posibilidad de saltar de la queja a una reflexión que nos permita avanzar hacia una medicina mejor parece muy difícil de lograr. Este libro intenta explorar algunos caminos de debate sobre el complicado panorama de la medicina del nuevo siglo, mediante capítulos agrupados en tres temas de interés: “La Medicina Basada en Evidencias”, “El encuentro entre pacientes y médicos”, y “Las nuevas miradas a la medicina del siglo XXI”.