Americans are living longer, and the elder population is growing larger. To meet the ongoing need for quality information on elder health, the Encyclopedia of Aging and Public Health combines multiple perspectives to offer readers a more accurate and complete picture of the aging process. The book takes a biopsychosocial approach to the complexities of its subject. In-depth introductory chapters include coverage on a historical and demographic overview of aging in America, a guide to biological changes accompanying aging, an analysis of the diversity of the U.S. elder population, legal issues commonly affecting older adults, and the ethics of using cognitively impaired elders in research. From there, over 425 entries cover the gamut of topics, trends, diseases, and phenomena: -Specific populations, including ethnic minorities, custodial grandparents, and centenarians -Core medical conditions associated with aging, from cardiac and pulmonary diseases to Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s -Mental and emotional disorders -Drugs/vitamins/alternative medicine -Disorders of the eyes, feet, and skin -Insomnia and sleep disorders; malnutrition and eating disorders -Sexual and gender-related concerns -And a broad array of social and political issues, including access to care, abuse/neglect, veterans’ affairs, and assisted suicide Entries on not-quite-elders’ concerns (e.g., midlife crisis, menopause) are featured as well. And all chapters and entries include references and resource lists. The Encyclopedia has been developed for maximum utility to clinicians, social workers, researchers, and public health professionals working with older adults. Its multidisciplinary coverage and scope of topics make this volume an invaluable reference for academic and public libraries.

This book explains how the immune system functions, namely, how individual cells of the immune system make the decision to respond or not to respond to foreign microbes and molecules, and how the critical molecules function to trigger the cellular reactions in an all-or-none (quantal) manner. To date, there has not been a complete description of the immune system and its cells and molecules, primarily because most of the information has accumulated only in the last 40 years and our understanding has been expanding rapidly only in the last 20 years. It is now clear that the cells have evolved a way to ?count? the number of foreign antigenic molecular ?hits?, and they only react when a critical number of events have accumulated. Subsequently, control over the reaction is transferred to a systemic lymphocytotrophic hormone system that determines the tempo, magnitude and duration of the immune reaction. This book explains in detail how the immune system, cells and molecules work for the first time. With this understanding as a basis, the pathogenesis of autoimmunity can now be understood as a mutational usurpation of the genes encoding molecules that participate in a sensitive feedback regulatory control of the immune reaction. By comparison, malignant transformation is understood as a mutational usurpation of the genes encoding the molecules that control the quantal decision to proliferate, so that normal ligand/receptor cell growth control is circumvented. This molecular understanding of the immune system is especially important for the design of successful vaccines, and also explains why vaccines fail.

Engaging scholars from across humanistic fields grappling with the role and value of theory in our times, Theory's Autoimmunity argues for reclaiming theory's skepticism as a value. To cultivate theory's skeptical impulses is to embrace what Jacques Derrida has termed autoimmunity: a condition of openness to the outside—openness of the self, the community, democracy, or other ideals—that allows for change. Openness to change comes with risks, and the self-protective temptation to immunize oneself or one's community against these risks is strong. Yet without such risks, without openness to otherness, no encounter with the new, with difference, can ever take place. Without autoimmunity, theory becomes stagnant and programmatic, unable to receive and respond to the other or the event, to address, revise, and produce new meanings. Taking up the challenge of thinking theory as skepticism, with and against philosophy, this study turns to literature as an interlocutor, investigating the ways theory, like the literary works of Montaigne, Baudelaire, Stendhal, Morrison, or Duras, declines to put on the interpretive brakes, to stop reading at a point of understanding. Undoing and remaking itself, theory—those critical interpretive practices that revel in the creation and proliferation of meaning—becomes autoimmune.

This work focuses on the autoimmune processes that have now been proven to underlie a number of serious diseases, including diabetes mellitus, rheumatoid arthritis and multiple sclerosis. Papers explore the rapidly expanding developments in research on immune response and regulation, and their potential in the development of treatments for autoimmune diseases. The wide range of subjects covered here include: the nature of intracellular and cell surface-derived ``self'' antigens; competing theories of the generation of immune tolerance and their implications of current theories for research and treatment; possible links between autoimmunity and genetic complement deficiency; the contributions of interferons and class II HLA antigen expression to autoimmunity; and the potential of monoclonal antibodies and other biotechnological advances in treating human autoimmune conditions.

Aging inspired a large number of theories trying to rationalize the aging process common to all living beings. In this publication the most important environmental and intrinsic mechanisms involved in the aging process and in its pathological consequences are reviewed. Furthermore theoretical and experimental evidence of the most important theoretical elements based on Darwinian evolution, cellular aging, role of cell membranes, free radicals and oxidative processes, receptor-mediated reactions, the extracellular matrix and immune functions as well as the most important environmental and intrinsic mechanisms involved in the aging process and in its pathological consequences are discussed. These presentations of theories and related experimental facts give a global overview of up to date concepts of the biology of the aging process and are of essential reading not only for specialists in this field but also for practitioners of scientific, medical, social and experimental sciences.

This volume details our current understanding of the architecture and signaling capabilities of the B cell antigen receptor (BCR) in health and disease. The first chapters review new insights into the assembly of BCR components and their organization on the cell surface. Subsequent contributions focus on the molecular interactions that connect the BCR with major intracellular signaling pathways such as Ca2+ mobilization, membrane phospholipid metabolism, nuclear translocation of NF-kB or the activation of Bruton’s Tyrosine Kinase and MAP kinases. These elements orchestrate cytoplasmic and nuclear responses as well as cytoskeleton dynamics for antigen internalization. Furthermore, a key mechanism of how B cells remember their cognate antigen is discussed in detail. Altogether, the discoveries presented provide a better understanding of B cell biology and help to explain some B cell-mediated pathogenicities, like autoimmune phenomena or the formation of B cell tumors, while also paving the way for eventually combating these diseases.