Recent books from Duke Biology Faculty

Click on image for more information	2003 - Comparative Biomechanics: Life’s Physical World Why do you shift from walking to running at a particular speed? How can we predict transition speeds for animals of different sizes? Why must the flexible elastic of arterial walls not behave like a rubber tube or balloon? How do leaves manage to expose a broad expanse of surface to the sky in light breezes while suffering only a small fraction of the drag of, for instance, flags in high winds? Prof. Steven Vogel's new book Comparative Biomechanics: Life's Physical World (Princeton University Press) provides the first comprehensive textbook of broadly biological rather than specifically human biomechanics. It grows out of the author's earlier, prize-winning book, Life's Devices, but amounts to a balanced meal rather than a selection of appetizers. Its primary audience consists of middle-level undergraduates and graduate students in biology. For them, the book introduces the relevant physical variables and devices for quantification in the early chapters. In addition, it will be useful for physical scientists and engineers seeking a sense of the state-of-the-art of biomechanics and a guide to its rather scattered literature. For a still wider audience, it establishes the basic biological context for applied areas such as ergonomics, orthopedics, mechanical prosthetics, kinesiology, sports medicine, and biomimetics. See reviews in Science and Nature
Click on image for more information	2003 - Do Humans Cause Deserts? A New Look at Global Desertification A great deal of disagreement exists as to the causes and extent of this land degradation, and consequently about how much of its impact on human well-being is manageable. The resulting arguments create confusion in policies and management programs and have had a direct effect on the implementation of the United Nationís Convention to Combat Desertification. Recognizing the need for novel interdisciplinary approaches to address the pressing global problem of desertification, Global Desertification: Do Humans Cause Deserts? (Dahlem University Press, Berlin), co-edited by Prof. James Reynolds and Mark Stafford Smith, presents a new paradigm for a synthetic assessment framework for desertification beyond regional and disciplinary concerns. This paradigm explicitly accommodates the various linkages between socioeconomic and biophysical factors, as well as the fact that these linkages evolve over time in disparate ways and at different scales. It thus provides the basis for a new approach to assess the extent of desertification and to tailor appropriate solutions to the myriad of problems encompassed by that term.
Click on image for more information and review	2002 - Quantitative Conservation Biology The goal of this book by Prof. Bill Morris and D.F. Doak is to provide practical, intelligible, and intuitive explanations of population modeling to empirical ecologists and conservation biologists. Modeling methods that do not require large amounts of data (typically unavailable for endangered species) are emphasized. As such, Quantitative Conservation Biology: Theory and Practice of Population Viability Analysis (Sinauer Associates) is appropriate for undergraduate and graduate students interested in quantitative conservation biology, managers charged with preserving endangered species, and, in short, for any conservation biologist or ecologist seeking to better understand the analysis and modeling of population data.
	2002 - When Push Comes to Shove Only recently have pistons, turbines, even windmills aided our personal efforts. For most of the time we humans have walked the earth, our muscles have done our work - with some help in recent millennia from the muscles of our oxen, horses, and sundry other domesticated animals. Prime Mover: A Natural History of Muscle (W.W. Norton & Company Press) by Prof. Steven Vogel, explores how muscles work and how we've used them in our technology. As engines, muscles resemble no other, but in appearance and performance muscles differ little among themselves. In recent decades, we've come to understand the way muscles works and how hard they can work, as both force and power. We've learned, as well, the way different animals explore its limitsòas flies fly, rattlesnakes rattle, and squid shoot out their tentacles. See reviews
	2002 - Hopeful View Of Earth's Plight As described by Prof. Rob Jackson in his book The Earth Remains Forever (University of Texas Press), the planet is losing species at more than 100 times the average historical rate as reflected in the fossil record, the human population is growing exponentially and farmers pour billions of pounds of pesticides into its soils each year. This book offers the public an accessible, realistic source of information about global environmental problems and approaches to solving them. The book emphasizes what Jackson calls "generational time;" that is, how profound long-term consequences for future generations will result from postponing environmental action today. The book also stresses economic incentives and free-market solutions to those problems. Click on image for more information
	2001 - The Theoretical Analysis of Behavior In Adaptive Dynamics: The Theoretical Analysis Of Behavior (MIT Press), Prof. John Staddon charts a middle ground between the behaviorist and cognitive approaches. Prof. Staddon proposes an explanation of behavior that lies between cognitive psychology, which seeks to explain it in terms of mentalistic constructs, and cognitive neuroscience, which tries to explain it in terms of the brain. Staddon suggests a new way to understand the laws and causes of learning, based on the invention, comparison, testing, and modification or rejection of parsimonious real-time models for behavior. Staddon shows how simple dynamic models can explain a surprising varietyof animal and human behavior, ranging from simple orientation, reflexes, and habituation through feeding regulation, operant conditioning, spatial navigation, stimulus generalization, and interval time. More information
	2000 - Simulating Ecological and Evolutionary Systems Prof. Will Wilson's book Simulating Ecological and Evolutionary Systems in C (Cambridge University Press) models a diverse range of biological processes and systems, including competition, foraging, predation, mating systems, and life-history optimization, by simulating large collections of interacting individuals. Using the widely available computer programming language C, the book starts with elementary programs modeling stochastic birth-death processes, slowly increasing programming complexity as the chapters progress. Although computer simulations of extremely complicated biological processes are released from rigid mathematical constraints, each of the simulations is also placed in the context of a mathematical formulation examined either analytically or numerically. Procedures covered include testing random number generators, producing PostScript files, root-finding, numerical integration and using the genetic algorithm. More information
	2000 - The New Behaviorism The New Behaviorism: Mind, Mechanism and Society (Psychology Press) is a navigational chart on sailing between the Scylla of Skinnerism and the Charybdis of modern cognitive theory. After a review of the history of behaviorism and an introduction to the experimental foundations of radical behaviorism, Prof. John Staddon launches into a critique of radical behaviorism on empirical, social policy, and theoretical grounds ... He argues that philosophically Watsonian and Skinnerian behaviorism were fundamentally flawed, but that nonetheless they yielded valuable techniques and results. His positive project here is to provide a satisfactory philosophical foundation for a new behaviorism, one that eschews neither theory nor internal states." From a review by Robert Brandon
	2000 - Bear Bones and Ferrous Wheels Description Nature and human designers contend with the same physical environment, yet their designs often turn out to be wildly dissimilar. Thus our hinges turn because hard parts slide around each other, whereas nature's hinges (a rabbit's ear, for example) more often swing by bending flexible materials. Cats' Paws and Catapults: Mechanical Worlds of Nature and People (W.W. Norton & Company Press) by Prof. Steven Vogel and Kathryn K. Davis explores those differences--as well as the similarities--using each technology as a distant mirror to gain perspective on the other. It asks why these technologies took such separate paths and what we can learn from their differences. See reviews