Product Description
The search for origins of communication in a wide variety of species including humans is rapidly becoming a thoroughly interdisciplinary enterprise. In this volume, scientists engaged in the fields of evolutionary biology, linguistics, animal behavior, developmental psychology, philosophy, the cognitive sciences, robotics, and neural network modeling come together to explore a comparative approach to the evolution of communication systems. The comparisons range from parrot talk to squid skin displays, from human language to Aibo the robot dog's language learning, and from monkey babbling to the newborn human infant cry. The authors explore the mysterious circumstances surrounding the emergence of human language, which they propose to be intricately connected with drastic changes in human lifestyle. While it is not yet clear what the physical environmental circumstances were that fostered social changes in the hominid line, the volume offers converging evidence and theory from several lines of research suggesting that language depended upon the restructuring of ancient human social groups.

The volume also offers new theoretical treatments of both primitive communication systems and human language, providing new perspectives on how to recognize both their similarities and their differences. Explorations of new technologies in robotics, neural network modeling and pattern recognition offer many opportunities to simulate and evaluate theoretical proposals.

The North American and European scientists who have contributed to this volume represent a vanguard of thinking about how humanity came to have the capacity for language and how nonhumans provide a background of remarkable capabilities that help clarify the foundations of speech. ... Read more

Product Description

Customer Reviews (4)

IBM book
I was able to get the book that I wanted for a decent price and it came in a timely fashion, which was good because I needed it right away.The book was in new condition just like they had said.

A "Must Have" !!!
After having read this book from cover to cover - I currently consider it a "Must Have" on the bookshelf of anyone who is serious about ecological modelling or complex systems. The book is comprehensive, clear, honest, deep and enlightening.

a very useful and inspiring guide
I found it a very clear, useful and inspiring introduction (what's) and guide (how to) to individual based modelling and ecology.

Thorough
I haven't finished the book, but so far it's been very thorough on the subject and has given me lots of ideas for how to proceed on the project I'm working on.Would definitely recommend it. ... Read more

Product Description
In 1995, John Maynard Smith and Eörs Szathmáry published their influential book The Major Transitions in Evolution. The “transitions” that Maynard Smith and Szathmáry chose to describe all constituted major changes in the kinds of organisms that existed but, most important, these events also transformed the evolutionary process itself. The evolution of new levels of biological organization, such as chromosomes, cells, multicelled organisms, and complex social groups radically changed the kinds of individuals natural selection could act upon. Many of these events also produced revolutionary changes in the process of inheritance, by expanding the range and fidelity of transmission, establishing new inheritance channels, and developing more open-ended sources of variation.

Maynard Smith and Szathmáry had planned a major revision of their work, but the death of Maynard Smith in 2004 prevented this. In this volume, prominent scholars (including Szathmáry himself) reconsider and extend the earlier book’s themes in light of recent developments in evolutionary biology. The contributors discuss different frameworks for understanding macroevolution, prokaryote evolution (the study of which has been aided by developments in molecular biology), and the complex evolution of multicellularity. ... Read more

Product Description
The CoRR hypothesisstates that the location of genetic information in cytoplasmic organelles permits regulation of its expression by the reduction-oxidation (" redox") state of its gene products. CoRRis short for "Co-location for Redox Regulation", itself a shortened form of "Co-location (of gene and gene product) for (evolutionary) continuity of R edox R egulation of gene expression." CoRRwas put forward explicitly in 1993 in a paper in the Journal of Theoretical Biology with the title Control of gene expression by redox potential and the requirement for chloroplast and mitochondrial genomes. The central concept had been outlined in a review of 1992. The term CoRRwas introduced in 2003 in a paper in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society entitled The function of genomes in bioenergetic organelles. ... Read more

Product Description
Cell Biology, the study of the morphological and functional organization of cells, is an established field in biochemical research. Computer Science can provide biologists with models able to describe complex systems such as cells. This approach belongs to the new research field called Systems Biology. Many formalisms developed to model interactive systems have been applied to Biology. Formal models avoid ambiguity, that is often a problem of the notations used by biologists. Moreover, they allow the development of simulators and the verification of properties by means of tools that are widely used in other application fields of Computer Science, but unknown to biologists. The aim of this work is to study a new formalism, the Calculus of Looping Sequences, with a simple notation and able to describe systems at different abstraction levels. Formal analysis and stochastic simulation tools are developed and applied to examples of real biological systems. This book is addressed to computer scientists interested either in bioinformatics or in formal methods. It can be used by biologists as an introduction to the application of Theoretical Computer Science means to biological systems. ... Read more

Product Description
Clinton Richard Dawkins, FRS, FRSL (born 26 March 1941) is a British biological theorist with a background in ethology. He is a popular science author focusing on evolution. He popularised the gene-centred view of evolution, and the meme.Dawkins is one of Britain's best-known academics. He came to prominence with his 1976 book The Selfish Gene, which popularised the gene-centred view of evolution and introduced the term meme. In 1982, he further developed the gene-centred view with his book ? The Extended Phenotype, emphasizing that the phenotypic effects Richard Dawkins of genes are not necessarily limited to an organism's body but can stretch via biochemistry and behaviour far into the web of life and the entire environment. He is well known as a presenter of the case for rationalism and scientific thinking. His later works continued to expand upon these ideas and their implications. ... Read more