The public is now paying considerable attention to the use of molecular evidence in studies of human diversity and origins. Much of the early work in this area was based on evidence from mitochondrial DNA, but this has now been supplemented by important new information from nuclear DNA from both Y chromosomes and the autosomes. The bulk of the material available is from living populations, but this is being extended by the study of DNA from archaic populations. The underlying models used in interpreting this evidence are based on the neutral theory of molecular evolution, but also consider...

Body composition studies are used in a wide variety of fields including human biology, medicine, sports science, epidemiology, and nutrition. They may be used to predict later body composition from childhood measures, to detect bone density loss in the elderly or in athletes under heavy training, to assess obesity in children and adults, and to investigate the likely effects of malnutrition. Recently, there has been a resurgence of interest in the field of body composition, together with rapid development of a whole new range of assessment techniques. In this volume, new and old techniques...

Body composition studies are used in a wide variety of fields including human biology, medicine, sports science, epidemiology, and nutrition. They may be used to predict later body composition from childhood measures, to detect bone density loss in the elderly or in athletes under heavy training, to assess obesity in children and adults, and to investigate the likely effects of malnutrition. Recently, there has been a resurgence of interest in the field of body composition, together with rapid development of a whole new range of assessment techniques. In this volume, new and old techniques...

Physical activity and exercise affect many dimensions of health. This book presents an up-to-date and wide ranging account of the key issues of the biology of physical activity and health. The context is set by considering the comparative and temporal aspects of activity in humans. There follows an examination of the concepts and methodological issues associated with activity, exercise, health, and fitness, as well as their interrelationships. Particular attention is given to activity in children, adolescents and the elderly, activity and weight maintenance, and the psychological effects of...

This volume considers the genetic variability of human populations, particularly in the tropics: its origins and maintenance, and its contribution to the phenotypic variability of complex characters. The first section deals with the ways of analysing genetic variation and provides a valuable review of relevant developments in molecular biology. The origin and maintenance of genetic diversity is considered in the second section with data presented for Pacific, African, Asian and Central American populations. The final section concerns characters in which the genetic contribution to variability...

This book explores the biological effects of human isolation and migration, and how the situations to which they give rise help to elucidate a variety of biological problems, ranging from evolutionary change to disease etiology. The majority of the case studies presented here are by Asian investigators, and provide an uniquely accessible source of information.

The early environment in which we grow up has profound, long lasting, and often irreversible consequences for us throughout our lives. Stresses due to undernutrition in early childhood can mean that in adulthood individuals are smaller, more prone to disease, and have a shorter life expectancy than those with normal diets. Disease and poor living conditions in infancy and childhood also have serious implications in adulthood. While environmental effects on human growth and development are well documented, the long term consequences due to processes taking place at the early stages of growth...

Measures of biological variation have long been associated with many indices of social inequality. Data on health, nutrition, fertility, mortality, physical fitness, intellectual performance and a range of inherited biological markers show the ubiquity of such patterns across time, space and population. This volume reviews the current evidence for the strength of such linkages and the biological and social mechanisms that underlie them. A major theme is the relationship between the proximate determinants of these linkages and their longer term significance for biologically selective social...

Working capacity is the physiological key to understanding man's ability, in technically less advanced communities, to exploit his environment, and hence to understanding his role in the ecological balance. In this volume the knowledge of working capacity in tropical populations is reviewed in a series of illustrative papers. Topics cover the measurement of working capacity in populations: the functional consequences of malnutrition; growth, size and muscular efficiency; ethnic differences in working capacity; energy; expenditure and endemic disease; and energy flow in tropical ecosystems....

Based on a two day symposium in the annual Society for the Study of Human Biology Ssymposium Series, this book covers a wide spectrum of growth physiology, and presents a state-of-art review of human auxology, from factors affecting cellular growth, through nutritional factors affecting the growth of the infant, to endocrine and other factors affecting the growth of the child before and after adolescence.