From Ecology to Cancer Biology and Back Again

From Ecology to Cancer Biology and Back Again PDF Author: Frederick R. Adler
Publisher: Frontiers Media SA
ISBN: 2889746151
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 259

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From Ecology to Cancer Biology and Back Again

From Ecology to Cancer Biology and Back Again PDF Author: Frederick R. Adler
Publisher: Frontiers Media SA
ISBN: 2889746151
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 259

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Book Description


The Cheating Cell

The Cheating Cell PDF Author: Athena Aktipis
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691163847
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
A fundamental and groundbreaking reassessment of how we view and manage cancer When we think of the forces driving cancer, we don’t necessarily think of evolution. But evolution and cancer are closely linked because the historical processes that created life also created cancer. The Cheating Cell delves into this extraordinary relationship, and shows that by understanding cancer’s evolutionary origins, researchers can come up with more effective, revolutionary treatments. Athena Aktipis goes back billions of years to explore when unicellular forms became multicellular organisms. Within these bodies of cooperating cells, cheating ones arose, overusing resources and replicating out of control, giving rise to cancer. Aktipis illustrates how evolution has paved the way for cancer’s ubiquity, and why it will exist as long as multicellular life does. Even so, she argues, this doesn’t mean we should give up on treating cancer—in fact, evolutionary approaches offer new and promising options for the disease’s prevention and treatments that aim at long-term management rather than simple eradication. Looking across species—from sponges and cacti to dogs and elephants—we are discovering new mechanisms of tumor suppression and the many ways that multicellular life-forms have evolved to keep cancer under control. By accepting that cancer is a part of our biological past, present, and future—and that we cannot win a war against evolution—treatments can become smarter, more strategic, and more humane. Unifying the latest research from biology, ecology, medicine, and social science, The Cheating Cell challenges us to rethink cancer’s fundamental nature and our relationship to it.

The Emperor of All Maladies

The Emperor of All Maladies PDF Author: Siddhartha Mukherjee
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439170916
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 624

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Book Description
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and a documentary from Ken Burns on PBS, this New York Times bestseller is “an extraordinary achievement” (The New Yorker)—a magnificent, profoundly humane “biography” of cancer—from its first documented appearances thousands of years ago through the epic battles in the twentieth century to cure, control, and conquer it to a radical new understanding of its essence. Physician, researcher, and award-winning science writer, Siddhartha Mukherjee examines cancer with a cellular biologist’s precision, a historian’s perspective, and a biographer’s passion. The result is an astonishingly lucid and eloquent chronicle of a disease humans have lived with—and perished from—for more than five thousand years. The story of cancer is a story of human ingenuity, resilience, and perseverance, but also of hubris, paternalism, and misperception. Mukherjee recounts centuries of discoveries, setbacks, victories, and deaths, told through the eyes of his predecessors and peers, training their wits against an infinitely resourceful adversary that, just three decades ago, was thought to be easily vanquished in an all-out “war against cancer.” The book reads like a literary thriller with cancer as the protagonist. Riveting, urgent, and surprising, The Emperor of All Maladies provides a fascinating glimpse into the future of cancer treatments. It is an illuminating book that provides hope and clarity to those seeking to demystify cancer.

Why Birds Matter

Why Birds Matter PDF Author: Çagan H. Sekercioglu
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022638277X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 398

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Book Description
For over one hundred years, ornithologists and amateur birders have jointly campaigned for the conservation of bird species, documenting not only birds’ beauty and extraordinary diversity, but also their importance to ecosystems worldwide. But while these avian enthusiasts have noted that birds eat fruit, carrion, and pests; spread seed and fertilizer; and pollinate plants, among other services, they have rarely asked what birds are worth in economic terms. In Why Birds Matter, an international collection of ornithologists, botanists, ecologists, conservation biologists, and environmental economists seeks to quantify avian ecosystem services—the myriad benefits that birds provide to humans. The first book to approach ecosystem services from an ornithological perspective, Why Birds Matter asks what economic value we can ascribe to those services, if any, and how this value should inform conservation. Chapters explore the role of birds in such important ecological dynamics as scavenging, nutrient cycling, food chains, and plant-animal interactions—all seen through the lens of human well-being—to show that quantifying avian ecosystem services is crucial when formulating contemporary conservation strategies. Both elucidating challenges and providing examples of specific ecosystem valuations and guidance for calculation, the contributors propose that in order to advance avian conservation, we need to appeal not only to hearts and minds, but also to wallets.

Ecology and Evolution of Cancer

Ecology and Evolution of Cancer PDF Author: Beata Ujvari
Publisher: Academic Press
ISBN: 0128043806
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
Ecology and Evolution of Cancer is a timely work outlining ideas that not only represent a substantial and original contribution to the fields of evolution, ecology, and cancer, but also goes beyond by connecting the interfaces of these disciplines. This work engages the expertise of a multidisciplinary research team to collate and review the latest knowledge and developments in this exciting research field. The evolutionary perspective of cancer has gained significant international recognition and interest, which is fully understandable given that somatic cellular selection and evolution are elegant explanations for carcinogenesis. Cancer is now generally accepted to be an evolutionary and ecological process with complex interactions between tumor cells and their environment sharing many similarities with organismal evolution. As a critical contribution to this field of research the book is important and relevant for the applications of evolutionary biology to understand the origin of cancers, to control neoplastic progression, and to prevent therapeutic failures. - Covers all aspects of the evolution of cancer, appealing to researchers seeking to understand its origins and effects of treatments on its progression, as well as to lecturers in evolutionary medicine - Functions as both an introduction to cancer and evolution and a review of the current research on this burgeoning, exciting field, presented by an international group of leading editors and contributors - Improves understanding of the origin and the evolution of cancer, aiding efforts to determine how this disease interferes with biotic interactions that govern ecosystems - Highlights research that intends to apply evolutionary principles to help predict emergence and metastatic progression with the aim of improving therapies

The Ecological Theater and the Evolutionary Play

The Ecological Theater and the Evolutionary Play PDF Author: George Evelyn Hutchinson
Publisher: New Haven : Yale University Press
ISBN: 9780300005868
Category : Biology
Languages : en
Pages : 139

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Book Description
In this delightful collection of essays, the author of The Enchanted Voyage and The Itinerant Ivory Tower turns his attention to the influence of environment on evolution. His discussion of the nature of the terrestrial environment we know leads to an account of possible ecological conditions on other bodies in the universe. Mr. Hutchinson also deals specifically with some influences on man's evolution, emphasizing the extremely recondite nature of these forces. One of the other pieces looks at the relationship of natural beauty to works of art, particularly in the context of comparisons between natural history museums and art galleries. The final essay, "The Cream in the Gooseberry Fool," is an entertaining account of an English country clergyman's work with the European magpie moth, which resulted in one of the most significant early discoveries in genetics. The treatment throughout requires no technical learning, though the most important and modern theoretical results are cited in the footnotes.

Living Downstream

Living Downstream PDF Author: Sandra Steingraber
Publisher: Virago Press
ISBN: 9781860495359
Category : Cancer
Languages : en
Pages : 357

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Book Description
Published more than three decades after Rachel Carson's Silent Spring warned of the impact of chemicals on the environment, this book offers a critique of current thinking on cancer and its causes. It argues that the evidence has been wilfully ignored, and that the environment is still being poisoned. Throughout her study, the author weaves two stories - of Rachel Carson and her battle to be heard and of her own cancer of the bladder, which she traces back to agricultural and industrial contamination.

Explaining Cancer

Explaining Cancer PDF Author: Anya Plutynski
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190904585
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
In Explaining Cancer, Anya Plutynski addresses a variety of philosophical questions that arise in the context of cancer science and medicine. She begins with the following concerns: · How do scientists classify cancer? Do these classifications reflect nature's "joints"? · How do cancer scientists identify and classify early stage cancers? · What does it mean to say that cancer is a "genetic" disease? What role do genes play in "mechanisms for" cancer? · What are the most important environmental causes of cancer, and how do epidemiologists investigate these causes? · How exactly has our evolutionary history made us vulnerable to cancer? Explaining Cancer uses these questions as an entrée into a family of philosophical debates. It uses case studies of scientific practice to reframe philosophical debates about natural classification in science and medicine, the problem of drawing the line between disease and health, mechanistic reasoning in science, pragmatics and evidence, the roles of models and modeling in science, and the nature of scientific explanation.

Never Fear Cancer Again

Never Fear Cancer Again PDF Author: Raymond Francis
Publisher: Health Communications, Inc.
ISBN: 075731550X
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 386

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Book Description
Most cancer research dollars have been wasted by asking the wrong questions, looking in the wrong places, and recycling the same failed approaches while expecting different results. Conventional cancer treatments damage health, cause new cancers, lower the quality of life, and decrease the chances of survival. In fact, most people who die from cancer are not dying from cancer, but from their treatments! That's the bad news. Here's the good news: We can end the cancer epidemic. In Never Fear Cancer Again, readers will gain a revolutionary new understanding of health and disease and will come to understand that cancer is a biological process that can be turned on and off, not something that can be surgically removed or destroyed with radiation or toxic chemicals. So whether cancer has already been diagnosed or if prevention is the concern, it is possible to turn off the wayward production of these malfunctioning cells once and for all by reading this book and implementing its strategies. The key to any disease has one simple cause: malfunctioning cells that are created by either deficiency or toxicity. By switching off the malfunctioning cells, you switch off the cancer. Never Fear Cancer Again guides readers along six pathways that cause deficiency or toxicity at the cellular level: nutritional path, genetic path, medical path, toxin path, physical path, and the psychological path. By making key lifestyle changes, people truly have the power to take control of cancer and transform their health. This radically different, yet holistic approach restored author Raymond Francis back to health just as it has helped thousands of others, many of whom were told they had no other options or that their cancer was incurable. Take back your health with this book and never fear cancer again.

The First Cell

The First Cell PDF Author: Azra Raza
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 1541699505
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
With the fascinating scholarship of The Emperor of All Maladies and the deeply personal experience of When Breath Becomes Air, a world-class oncologist examines the current state of cancer and its devastating impact on the individuals it affects -- including herself. In The First Cell, Azra Raza offers a searing account of how both medicine and our society (mis)treats cancer, how we can do better, and why we must. A lyrical journey from hope to despair and back again, The First Cell explores cancer from every angle: medical, scientific, cultural, and personal. Indeed, Raza describes how she bore the terrible burden of being her own husband's oncologist as he succumbed to leukemia. Like When Breath Becomes Air, The First Cell is no ordinary book of medicine, but a book of wisdom and grace by an author who has devoted her life to making the unbearable easier to bear.