Most organisms and populations have to cope with hostile environments that threaten their existence. Their ability to respond phenotypically and genetically to these challenges and to evolve adaptive mechanisms is crucial. This book examines the impact of stress on biological sys tems from a evolutionary perspective. It explores how organisms adapt to extreme environments, how stress changes genetic structure and affe cts life histories, how organisms cope with thermal stress through acc limation, and how environmental and genetic stress induce fluctuating asymmetry, shape selection pressure...

This book is an introduction to the theory of linear one-dimensional singular integral equations. It is essentually a graduate textbook. Singular integral equations have attracted more and more attention, because, on one hand, this class of equations appears in many applications and, on the other, it is one of a few classes of equations which can be solved in explicit form. In this book material of the monograph [2] of the authors on one-dimensional singular integral operators is widely used. This monograph appeared in 1973 in Russian and later in German translation [3]. In the final text...

This book comprises the proceedings of an view of the subject to an audience of clinicians. Advanced Teaching Course held in Rotterdam, The outcome is the present book. Due to the ex- The Netherlands, on November 25-26, 1976. pert knowledge and didactic capacity of the con- The history of this Course goes back to tributors, we hope the book will be of some use in 1972, when a small, loosely connected group of making research views accessible to those Dutch researchers, who were fascinated by in- engaged in clinical practice. vestigating fundamental problems of inflam- In organizing this...

In previous studies (1,2) we demonstrated the occurrence of a foetal protein after injury in the rat. This protein, behaving as an acute phase protein, proved to be already known as slow a2 glo- bulin (3), or reproduction associated protein (4). Furthermore it is identical to aM foetoprotein (also known as a2FP or aMFP (5) ). This protein is quite different to the well-known a-foetoprotein (aFP), occurring in man and other species during liver carcinoge- nesis and some other tumours. aMfoetoprotein (aMFP) is a glycoprotein with a mol.w. of 800.000. It is produced in the liver (6,2) and in the...

Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) are one of the most commonly prescribed groups of drugs in the community. This reflects the high frequency of rheumatic complaints but may in part be due to the relative non efficacy of these drugs. Since the introduction of ibuprofen, the first new NSAID to compete with aspirin, phenylbutazone and indomethacin, there has been a proliferation of new NSAIDs of differing chemical classes but an apparent similar spectrum of action. Despite the fact that these drugs are thought to work by an apparent common mechanism of action (suppression of...

Introduction M. Kodaira's vanishing theorem, saying that the inverse of an ample invert- ible sheaf on a projective complex manifold X has no cohomology below the dimension of X and its generalization, due to Y. Akizuki and S. Nakano, have been proven originally by methods from differential geometry ( 39J and 1]). Even if, due to J.P. Serre's GAGA-theorems 56J and base change for field extensions the algebraic analogue was obtained for projective manifolds over a field k of characteristic p = 0, for a long time no algebraic proof was known and no generalization to p > 0, except for certain...

One of the currently most expanding and exciting areas in cardiovascular research is the study of receipt and dispatch of chemical signals by different cell types. Major progress has been made during the last years and a number of intercellular mediators have been structurally identified and their regulation studied. The impressive developments in molecular biology have provided most effective tools, enabling us to understand message generation in much more detail than anyone would have appreciated a couple of years ago. These developments also have a major impact on cardiovascular...

The Eighth International Conference of the Inflammation Research Association was held on October 27 to 31, 1996 at Hershey Lodge and Convention Center in Hershey, Pennsylvania. As have others in this series, the conference focused on understanding the molecular mechanisms involved in acute and chronic inflammatory reactions as well as on therapeutic approaches to treating inflammatory diseases. One outstanding symposium focused on new drugs and was de- signed as a forum for the dissemination of early clinical results on new anti-inflammatory agents. Other symposia spotlighted exciting...

Since prostaglandins were first proposed as mediators of in- flammation some eight years ago, there have been a variety of arachidonic acid metabolites discovered including the thromboxa- nes, prostacyclin, prostaglandin endoperoxides and lipoxygenase products such as SRS-A. All of them have subsequently been shown to have significant and specific biological activities not only in inflammatory responses but also in other physiological pro- cesses. The explosion of research in this area has been an indi- cation of the importance of this field but has also meant that it is time for an...