Physiology in extreme conditions can reveal important reactions of the human body, which help our assessment of limits emerging under healthy conditions and critical signals of transition toward disease. While many mechanisms could simply be associated with adaptations, others refer to unexpected reactions in response to internal stimuli and/or external abrupt changes.

Understanding how humans cope in extreme environments has expanded our knowledge of the physiological and psychological challenges involved and helped us to quit our comfortable paradigms built on “steady states”. Furthermore, measuring our reactions to intermittent stressors and determining the oscillations of our coping mechanisms has led us to unexpected understandings. This methodology has also directly improved our translational or multidisciplinary approach to the subject. Studying healthy individuals in extreme environments could improve our understanding of patients with impaired physiological capacities (who are coping with an environment that becomes extreme to them) and also improve our understanding of physiology and psychology in the elderly.This eBook collects articles that address this translational multidisciplinary approach in an integrative way. As a whole, this Research Topic aims to better understand human/animal physiology and psychology.

Human Physiology in Extreme Environments, Second Edition, offers evidence on how human biology and physiology is affected by extreme environments, also highlighting technological innovations that allow us to adapt and regulate environments. Covering a broad range of extreme environments, including high altitude, underwater, tropical climates, desert climates, arctic climates and space travel, the book also includes case studies that can be used to illustrate practical application. Graduate students, medical students and researchers will find this to be an interesting, informative and useful resource for human physiology, environmental physiology and medical studies. Includes coverage of current global challenges and their consequences on human physiology and performance Presents human physiological challenges in extreme environments Provides an excellent source of information on paleontological and anthropological aspects Offers practical medical and scientific uses of current concepts

In their very first lecture biochemists learn that biomolecules, namely nucleic acids, proteins and lipids, are extremely temperature sensitive and will denature and lose their function easily. Then how do Archaebacteria survive in hot springs or Antarctic fishes which live in ice-cold water? The way nature engineered subcellular structures, lipid membranes or proteins to meet the biochemical requirements of extreme conditions - like extreme temperature or salt concentrations - is described in Life Under Extreme Conditions.

The study of biochemical adaption provides fascinating insights into how organisms "work" and how they evolve to sustain physiological function under a vast array of environmental conditions. This book describes how the abilities of organisms to thrive in widely different environments derive from two fundamental classes of biochemical adaptions: modifications of core biochemical processes that allow a common set of physiological functions to be conserved, and "inventions" of new biochemical traits that allow entry into novel habitats. Biochemical Adaptation: Mechanisms and Process in Physiological Evolution asks two primary questions. First, how have the core biochemical systems found in all species been adaptively modified to allow the same fundamental types of physiological processes to be sustained throughout the wide range of habitat conditions found in the biosphere? Second, through what types of genetic and biochemical processes have new physiological functions been fabricated? The primary audience for this book is faculty, senior undergraduates, and graduate students in environmental biology, comparative physiology, and marine biology. Other likely readers include workers in governmental laboratories concerned with environmental issues, medical students interested in some elements of the book, and medical researchers.

Extreme Environments: Mechanisms of Microbial Adaptation is a collection of papers presented at the symposium on Extreme Environments: Mechanisms of Microbial Adaptation, held at Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, California in June 1974. The meeting emphasizes research work leading to an understanding of the molecular mechanisms that allow the organism to survive extreme environments. The book presents lectures and papers on the general aspects of microbial adaptation; effects of temperature and high salt concentration on the various steps in information transfer; and on microbial enzymes. Effects of temperature, salt, and pressure on membrane structure and function are analyzed as well. The book will be of interest to biologists, microbiologists, biochemists, zoologists, and students of life sciences.