Giovanni Costa Bücher

After a brief survey of biotopic and vegetational features and an account of the main groups of desert animals, the most unusual patterns of the behaviour of the xerophilous fauna are examined. The importance of the thermohygric regulation and self-protective and locomotor mechanisms to the survival of arid-adapted animals is emphasized and various adaptations in the alimentary, reproductive and social spheres are analyzed. The clear and fluent treatment will awaken the interest of the reading public, from the amateur naturalists to research scientists.

Symmetries, coupled with the mathematical concept of group theory, are an essential conceptual backbone in the formulation of quantum field theories capable of describing the world of elementary particles. This primer is an introduction to and survey of the underlying concepts and structures needed in order to understand and handle these powerful tools. Specifically, in Part I of the book the symmetries and related group theoretical structures of the Minkowskian space-time manifold are analyzed, while Part II examines the internal symmetries and their related unitary groups, where the interactions between fundamental particles are encoded as we know them from the present standard model of particle physics. This book, based on several courses given by the authors, addresses advanced graduate students and non-specialist researchers wishing to enter active research in the field, and having a working knowledge of classical field theory and relativistic quantum mechanics. Numerous end-of-chapter problems and their solutions will facilitate the use of this book as self-study guide or as course book for topical lectures.

As world competitiveness sharpens, more industries are using shiftwork. This set of short pages from the most recent international symposium on shiftwork brings together review papers on a number of the world's leading shiftwork researchers. Health problems must concern both shiftworkers and their managers, and a series of papers report new findings on coronary risk factors and cardiovascular diseases, general health complaints, sleep and the effect of poor sleep in performance. Should women work night shifts? There is a series of contributions on women and nightwork, a topic that has grown into controversy in a number of countries in recent years. Recent research has highlighted the role of bright light in influencing human adaptability to unusual working hours, and some recent work on this is reported. There are also many contributions covering other topics concerned with shiftwork such as the adoption of condensed working hours and the standardization of questionnaires used in epidemiological studies.