Connect students in grades 6–8 with science using Life Science Quest for Middle Grades. This 96-page book helps students practice scientific techniques while studying cells, plants, animals, DNA, heredity, ecosystems, and biomes. The activities use common classroom materials and are perfect for individual, team, and whole-group projects. The book includes a glossary, standards lists, unit overviews, and enrichment suggestions. It is great as core curriculum or a supplement and supports National Science Education Standards.

In the past few decades, sources of inspiration in the multidisciplinary field of cognitive science have widened. In addition to ongoing vital work in cognitive and affective neuroscience, important new work is being conducted at the intersection of psychology and the biological sciences in general. This volume offers an overview of the cross-disciplinary integration of evolutionary and developmental approaches to cognition in light of these exciting new contributions from the life sciences. This research has explored many cognitive abilities in a wide range of organisms and developmental stages, and results have revealed the nature and origin of many instances of the cognitive life of organisms. Each section of this book deals with a key domain of cognition: spatial cognition; the relationships among attention, perception, and learning, representations of numbers and economic values; and social cognition. Contributors discuss each topic from the perspectives of psychology and neuroscience, brain theory and modeling, evolutionary theory, ecology, genetics, and developmental science.

It is widely recognized that the neural basis of brain function can be fully understood only by integrating many disciplines at many levels. Studies of synaptic organization are bringing about a quiet revolution in achieving this goal, as documented by this unique book over the past 30 years. In this fifth edition, the results of the mouse and human genome projects are incorporated for the first time. Molecular biologists interested in functional genomics and proteomics of the brain will find answers here to the critical questions: what are the cell and circuit functions of gene products? Also for the first time, the reader is oriented to supporting neuroscience databases. Among the new advances covered are 2-photon confocal laser microscopy of dendrites and dendritic spines, biochemical analyses, and dual patch and multielectrode recordings, applied together with an increasing range of behavioral and gene-targeting methods. Leading experts in the best understood brain regions bring together the molecular, anatomical, functional, and behavioral data in authoritative integrated accounts. The chapters are organized in the same format, covering the neural elements, synaptic connections, basic circuits, physiology, neurotransmitters, neuromodulators, membrane properties, dendritic properties, and with a final section on how the circuits mediate specific behaviors. The uniform framework for each chapter enables the authors to higlight the principles that are common to all regions, as well as the adaptations unique to each, thus serving as a model for understanding the neural basis of behavior.

Thorough and accessible, this book presents the design principles of biological systems, and highlights the recurring circuit elements that make up biological networks. It provides a simple mathematical framework which can be used to understand and even design biological circuits. The textavoids specialist terms, focusing instead on several well-studied biological systems that concisely demonstrate key principles. An Introduction to Systems Biology: Design Principles of Biological Circuits builds a solid foundation for the intuitive understanding of general principles. It encourages the reader to ask why a system is designed in a particular way and then proceeds to answer with simplified models.