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The field of Artificial Life (ALife) is now firmly established in the scientific world, but it has yet to achieve one of its original goals: an understanding of the emergence of life on Earth. The new field of Artificial Chemistries draws from chemistry, biology, computer science, mathematics, and other disciplines to work toward that goal. For if, as it has been argued, life emerged from primitive, prebiotic forms of self-organization, then studying models of chemical reaction systems could bring ALife closer to understanding the origins of life. In Artificial Chemistries (ACs), the emphasis is on creating new interactions rather than new materials. The results can be found both in the virtual world, in certain multiagent systems, and in the physical world, in new (artificial) reaction systems. This book offers an introduction to the fundamental concepts of ACs, covering both theory and practical applications. After a general overview of the field and its methodology, the book reviews important aspects of biology, including basic mechanisms of evolution; discusses examples of ACs drawn from the literature; considers fundamental questions of how order can emerge, emphasizing the concept of chemical organization (a closed and self-maintaining set of chemicals); and surveys a range of applications, which include computing, systems modeling in biology, and synthetic life. An appendix provides a Python toolkit for implementing ACs.

In Heat Advisory I examine climate change from a broad public health perspective, where health includes mental and social well-being in addition to climate-related changes in diseases. I begin from baselines defined by worldwide selected causes of death and risk factors for disease as seen partially through the lens of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals to discuss how climate change will affect health. I draw primarily on a broad cross-section of the peer-reviewed literature and governmental reports. In addition to heat-related illnesses, I discuss infectious diseases including dengue, malaria, and Zika; effects on agriculture and the potential for famine; rising sea level, severe weather, and environmental refugees; anticipated effects of climate change on air quality with a focus on ozone and asthma; the influence of climate on violence, conflict, and societal disruption; and, finally economic considerations related to health. Following fundamental public health and medical practices, I discuss, primary prevention in terms of mitigation of climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and secondary prevention, by adapting to climate change. Health professionals have a professional responsibility to affect political will and foster the extensive stakeholder involvement required to tackle climate change, the “greatest public health opportunity” of this century.

Many parts of the world endemic for the most common infectious diseases have the highest prevalence rates of trace metal deficiencies and increasing rates of trace metal pollution. The co-clustering of major infectious diseases with trace metal deficiency or toxicity has created a complex web of interactions with serious but poorly understood health repercussions. Infectious diseases can increase human susceptibility to adverse effects of metal exposure while metal excess or deficiency can increase the incidence or severity of infectious diseases. The combined effects of exposure to metals and pathogens on the burden of disease and the mechanisms of interactions between trace metals, pathogens, and the environment have largely been overlooked in animal and human studies. Drawing on expertise from several fields, this book focuses on the distribution, trafficking, fate, and effects of trace metals in biological systems, with the goal of enhancing our understanding of the relationships between homeostatic mechanisms of trace metals and the pathogenesis of infectious diseases. It provides a comprehensive review of current knowledge on vertebrate metal-withholding mechanisms and the strategies employed by different microbes to compete for metals to avoid starvation (or poisoning). State-of-the-art analytical techniques available to investigate pathogen-metal interactions are summarized and open questions highlighted to guide future research. Improving knowledge in these areas will be instrumental to the generation of novel therapeutic countermeasures against infectious diseases.