Ever since the pioneering work of Darwin and Wallace, evolutionary biologists have attempted to understand the evolutionary dynamics of genetic systems. A range of theories on evolutionary ratesfrom static to gradual to punctuated to quantumhave been developed, primarily by comparing morphological changes over geological timescales as described in the fossil record. Recent studies, however, are beginning to change the way that we view evolutionary patterns and processes. New paleontological, experimental, molecular, and genomic investigations are providing a tremendous amount of novel data and fresh perspectives, offering valuable insights on the rates of evolutionary change, particularly in fast-evolving genetic systems. Rapidly Evolving Genes and Genetic Systems captures these recent exciting developments across a broad range of morphological, molecular, cellular, developmental, and genetic investigations in both natural and experimental populations over a diversity of life forms. The book provides a fascinating series of case studies that exemplify rapid evolution, and showcases the diversity of rapidly evolving genes and genetic systems, emphasizing the extremely important roles that they play in adaptation, speciation, and the generation and maintenance of a diversity of biological traits and properties. This exciting collection showcases the latest research of more than 50 eminent evolutionary biologists. It will be suitable for senior undergraduate students, graduate students, researchers, and for all those interested in the study of evolution.

"This book compiles studies that demonstrate effective approaches to the structural analysis of genetic systems and bioinformatics"--Provided by publisher.

Designing complex programs such as operating systems, compilers, filing systems, data base systems, etc. is an old ever lasting research area. Genetic programming is a relatively new promising and growing research area. Among other uses, it provides efficient tools to deal with hard problems by evolving creative and competitive solutions. Systems Programming is generally strewn with such hard problems. This book is devoted to reporting innovative and significant progress about the contribution of genetic programming in systems programming. The contributions of this book clearly demonstrate that genetic programming is very effective in solving hard and yet-open problems in systems programming. Followed by an introductory chapter, in the remaining contributed chapters, the reader can easily learn about systems where genetic programming can be applied successfully. These include but are not limited to, information security systems, compilers, data mining systems, stock market prediction systems, robots and automatic programming.

Dimensions of Gender Problems: Policies and Prospects is the outcome of the papers contributed by eminent scholars in the filed social science. There are 14 selected papers relating to the various issues on gender problem. Women are constantly living under pressure of the incidents like distorted personality development due to discrimination, threat of or actual occurrences of deception, rape, kidnapping, dowry tortures, murder, etc. The contributors of this volume drawn from different faculties have presented their well considered judicious views in rare style on various issues pertaining to development of society. The study is of paramount importance in understanding and formulating policy relating to various dimensions related to gender problems. It is hoped that researchers of social science, women studies, developmental studies, population studies and general readers interested in the problem would appreciate the work.

The traditional role of evolutionary theory in the social sciences has been to explain the existence of an object in terms of the survival of the fittest. In economics this approach has acted as a justification for hypotheses such as profit maximisation, or the existence of institutions in terms of their overall efficiency. This volume challenges that view and argues that one of the first tasks of economic theory should be to explain the enormous diversity of institutional arrangements that has characterised human societies.

Charles Fox and Jason Wolf have brought together leading researchers to produce a cutting-edge primer introducing readers to the major concepts in modern evolutionary genetics. This book spans the continuum of scale, from studies of DNA sequence evolution through proteins and development to multivariate phenotypic evolution, and the continuum of time, from ancient events that lead to current species diversity to the rapid evolution seen over relatively short time scales in experimental evolution studies. Chapters are accessible to an audience lacking extensive background in evolutionaryy genetics but also current and in-depth enough to be of value to established researchers in evolution biology.

The purpose of this book is to present a new mechanistic theory of mutation-driven evolution based on recent advances in genomics and evolutionary developmental biology. The theory asserts, perhaps somewhat controversially, that the driving force behind evolution is mutation, with natural selection being of only secondary importance. The word 'mutation' is used to describe any kind of change in DNA such as nucleotide substitution, gene duplication/deletion, chromosomal change, and genome duplication. A brief history of the principal evolutionary theories (Darwinism, mutationism, neo-Darwinism, and neo-mutationism) that preceded the theory of mutation-driven evolution is also presented in the context of the last 150 years of research. However, the core of the book is concerned with recent studies of genomics and the molecular basis of phenotypic evolution, and their relevance to mutation-driven evolution. In contrast to neo-Darwinism, mutation-driven evolution is capable of explaining real examples of evolution such as the evolution of olfactory receptors, sex-determination in animals, and the general scheme of hybrid sterility. In this sense the theory proposed is more realistic than its predecessors, and gives a more logical explanation of various evolutionary events. Mutation-Driven Evolution is suitable for graduate level students as well as professional researchers (both empiricists and theoreticians) in the fields of molecular evolution and population genetics. It assumes that the readers are acquainted with basic knowledge of genetics and molecular biology.