How our once-helpful instincts got hijacked by our garish modern world. Have you ever wondered why some men choose pornography over actual women? Why so many people watch Friends instead of going out with their own buddies? Why a person would “feed” a plastic Pocket Pet while shirking real duties? Why both sides of every war see the other as the aggressor against whom their “Department of Defense” must respond? Harvard evolutionary psychologist Deirdre Barrett explains how human instincts—for food, sex, or territorial protection—developed for life on the savannah ten thousand years ago, not for today’s world of densely populated cities, technological innovations, and pollution. Evolution, quite simply, has been unable to keep pace with the rapid changes of modern life. We now have access to a glut of larger-than-life objects—from candy to pornography to atomic bombs—that gratify outmoded but persistent drives with dangerous results. In the 1930s Dutch Nobel laureate Niko Tinbergen found that birds that lay small, pale-blue eggs speckled with gray preferred to sit on giant, bright-blue, plaster dummies with black polka dots. He coined the term “supernormal stimuli” to describe these imitations that appeal to primitive instincts and, oddly, exert a stronger attraction than real things. Obviously these hard-wired preferences pose a danger to a species’ survival. Barrett’s singular insight is to apply this phenomenon for the first time to the alarming disconnect between human instinct and our created environment. Her book adroitly demonstrates how supernormal stimuli are a driving force in many of today’s most pressing problems, including obesity, our addiction to television and video games, and the past century’s extraordinarily violent wars. Man-made imitations, it turns out, have wreaked havoc on how we nurture our children, what food we put into our bodies, how we make love and war, and even how we understand ourselves. Barrett does more than pull the fire alarm to show how these unfettered instincts fuel dangerous excesses. There is a hopeful message here as well. Once we recognize how supernormal stimuli operate, we can craft new approaches to modern predicaments. Humans have one stupendous advantage over Tinbergen’s birds: a giant brain. The message of this book is that this gives us the unique ability to exercise self-control, override instincts that lead us astray, and save ourselves from civilization’s gaudy traps.

Covers the scientific principles, developments and recent technological advances of stimuli responsive materials for those new to and active in the field.

Adopting a broad approach, this volume provides the scientific community with a much-needed overview of developments and scientific findings in stimuli-responsive materials. Its primary focus is on the designing, synthesizing, formulating, and processing of materials that lead to an understanding of the scientific principles governing response driven functions leading to future technologies. The highly experienced and internationally renowned editor has assembled a team of leading scientists from the interdisciplinary areas of: * polymers * biopolymers * biochemistry * biophysics * biomaterials * bioengineering * materials engineering * biotechnology * chemistry * physics * ceramics * metals * and materials science. A combination that guarantees a unique and high-quality handbook.

For use with the Test of Integrated Language and Literacy Skills(TM) (TILLS(TM)), other assessments, or on its own, the TILLS Student Language Scale is a simple, cost-effective way to screen for language and literacy disorders, including dyslexia. This quick and easy 12-question screener is filled out by parents, teachers, and students to show each party's perspective on how the student is performing on academic tasks as compared to their same-age peers. The SLS helps you: Screen for language/literacy disorders such as dyslexia by gathering teachers' and parents' ratings of students. When teachers or parents rate more than two areas on items 1-8 less than 5, SLS results indicate the student is at risk and needs further assessment with TILLS. (Sensitivity and specificity are strong: sensitivity is .92 for teachers and .85 for parents, and specificity is .90 for teachers and .83 for parents.) Gather input about a struggling student's strengths and needs from multiple sources--a key requirement of IDEA Enhance home-school communication by gaining new insight into student performance, whether or not there are concerns Sold in a pack of 50, the Student Language Scale (forms only) is also included in the TILLS Examiner's Kit. It can also be used as a standalone tool to gather valuable information about a student, or used with other assessments of student performance and potential. To learn more about the SLS, watch this free webinar, Quickly and Reliably Screen Students for Language/Literacy Disordersâ "Including Dyslexia.

The investigation of what people understand and remember from rapidlypresented sequences of visual stimuli began in the late 1960s. In this book, prominent researchers approach the topic from psychological, neuropsychological, and electrophysiological perspectives. The investigation of what people understand and remember from rapidly presented sequences of visual stimuli began in the late 1960s. In this book prominent researchers approach the topic from psychological, neuropsychological, and electrophysiological perspectives. Specific issues include RSVP (rapid serial visual presentation), attentional blink, repetition blindness, and scene perception. The contributors review recent research on our ability to comprehend and remember pictures of objects and scenes, written words, and sentences when the visual stimuli are presented sequentially at rates of up to ten items per second. In short, the book is about our remarkably developed abilities to understand and remember the contents of very briefly presented material.ContributorsDaphne Bavelier, Veronika Coltheart, Helene Intraub, Nancy Kanwisher, Steven J. Luck, Nadine Martin, Mary C. Potter, Eleanor M. Saffran, Kimron L. Shapiro, Ewa Wojciulik, Jeremy M. Wolfe, Carol Yin

This book presents an extensive treatment of the introduction of modern physical concepts into biology. In particular, the concept of coherence finds wide applications and yields novel results in context with multiple problems as they arise in biology: these include long range resonant cellular effects and resonant interactions of biological tissues with low intensity electro-magnetic radiation. Extensive experimental support of the theoretical concept is presented.

Drug Targeting and Stimuli Sensitive Drug Delivery Systems covers recent advances in the area of stimuli sensitive drug delivery systems, providing an up-to-date overview of the physical, chemical, biological and multistimuli-responsive nanosystems. In addition, the book presents an analysis of clinical status for different types of nanoplatforms. Written by an internationally diverse group of researchers, it is an important reference resource for both biomaterials scientists and those working in the pharmaceutical industry who are looking to help create more effective drug delivery systems. - Shows how the use of nanomaterials can help target a drug to specific tissues and cells - Explores the development of stimuli-responsive drug delivery systems - Includes case studies to showcase how stimuli responsive nanosystems are used in a variety of therapies, including camptothecin delivery, diabetes and cancer therapy