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Thanatology. Autopsy (1890) by Enrique Simonet. Thanatology is the scientific study of death and the losses brought about as a result. It investigates the mechanisms and forensic aspects of death, such as bodily changes that accompany death and the postmortem period, as well as wider psychological and social aspects related to death.
Entropy and life. Research concerning the relationship between the thermodynamic quantity entropy and both the origin and evolution of life began around the turn of the 20th century. In 1910 American historian Henry Adams printed and distributed to university libraries and history professors the small volume A Letter to American Teachers of ...
The free radical theory of aging states that organisms age because cells accumulate free radical damage over time. [1] A free radical is any atom or molecule that has a single unpaired electron in an outer shell. [2] While a few free radicals such as melanin are not chemically reactive, most biologically relevant free radicals are highly ...
Self-preservation is a behavior or set of behaviors that ensures the survival of an organism. [1] It is thought to be universal among all living organisms. For sentient organisms, pain and fear are integral parts of this mechanism. Pain motivates the individual to withdraw from damaging situations, to protect a damaged body part while it heals ...
In contrast to necrosis, which is a form of traumatic cell death that results from acute cellular injury, apoptosis is a highly regulated and controlled process that confers advantages during an organism's life cycle. For example, the separation of fingers and toes in a developing human embryo occurs because cells between the digits undergo ...
Life is a quality that distinguishes matter that has biological processes, such as signaling and self-sustaining processes, from matter that does not. It is defined descriptively by the capacity for homeostasis, organisation, metabolism, growth, adaptation, response to stimuli, and reproduction. All life over time eventually reaches a state of ...
The Denial of Death is a 1973 book by American cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker which discusses the psychological and philosophical implications of how people and cultures have reacted to the concept of death. [1] The author argues most human action is taken to ignore or avoid the inevitability of death. [2]
Programmed cell death ( PCD; sometimes referred to as cellular suicide [1]) is the death of a cell as a result of events inside of a cell, such as apoptosis or autophagy. [2] [3] PCD is carried out in a biological process, which usually confers advantage during an organism's lifecycle. For example, the differentiation of fingers and toes in a ...