Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles 2006

Health Sciences Top

Myths about Attention Deficit Disorder/Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder(ADD/ADHD) abound. This disorder frequently goes unrecognized, and even when diagnosed may be inadequately treated. In this up-to-date and clearly written book, a leading expert offers a new way of understanding ADD. Drawing on recent findings in neuroscience and a rich variety of case histories from his own clinical practice, Dr. Thomas E. Brown describes what ADD syndrome is, how it can be recognized at different ages, and how it can best be treated. This is the first book to address the perplexing question about ADD: how can individuals, some very bright, be chronically unable to “pay attention,” yet be able to focus very well on specific tasks that strongly interest them? Dr. Brown disputes the “willpower” explanation and explains how inherited malfunctions of the brain’s management system prevent some people from being able to deal adequately with challenging tasks of childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. His book is an authoritative and practical guide for physicians and psychologists, parents and teachers, and the 7 to 9 percent of persons who suffer from ADD/ADHD.

A creature of Jewish mythology, a golem is an animated being made by man from clay and water who knows neither his own strength nor the 280 of his ignorance. Like science and technology, the subjects of Harry Collins and Trevor Pinch's previous volumes, medicine is also a golem, and this Dr. Golem should not be blamed for its mistakes—they are, after all, our mistakes. The problem lies in its well-meaning clumsiness. Dr. Golem explores some of the mysteries and complexities of medicine while untangling the inherent conundrums of scientific research and highlighting its vagaries. Driven by the question of what to do in the face of the fallibility of medicine, Dr. Golem encourages a more inquisitive attitude toward the explanations and accounts offered by medical science. In eight chapters devoted to case studies of modern medicine, Collins and Pinch consider the prevalence of tonsillectomies, the placebo effect and randomized control trials, bogus doctors, CPR, the efficacy of Vitamin C in fighting cancer, chronic fatigue syndrome, AIDS cures, and vaccination. They also examine the tension between the conflicting faces of medicine: medicine as science versus medicine as a source of succor; the interests of an individual versus the interests of a group; and the benefits in the short term versus success rates in the long term. Throughout, Collins and Pinch remind readers that medical science is an economic as well as a social consideration, encapsulated for the authors in the timeless struggle to balance the good health of the many—with vaccinations, for instance—with the good health of a few—those who have adverse reactions to the vaccine. In an age when the deaths of research subjects, the early termination of clinical trials, and the research guidelines for stem cells are front-page news, Dr. Golem is a timely analysis of the limitations of medicine that never loses sight of its strengths.

The aim of The Elgar Companion to Health Economics is to take an audience of advanced undergraduates, postgraduates and researchers to the frontier of research in health economics, by providing them with short and easily readable introductions to key topics. The volume brings together 50 chapters written by more than 90 leading international contributors. The contributions to the Companion are concise and focus on specific concepts, methods and key evidence.

A bioethicist discusses the dilemmas of modern medicine.

The ancient Greeks used the term catharsis for the cleansing of both the body by medicine and the soul by art. In this inspiring book, internationally renowned cardiologist Andrzej Szczeklik draws deeply on our humanistic heritage to describe the artistry and the mystery of being a doctor. Moving between examples ancient and contemporary, mythological and scientific, Catharsis explores how medicine and art share common roots and pose common challenges. The process of diagnosis, for instance, belongs to a world of magic and metaphor; the physician must embrace it like a poem or painting, with particular alertness and keen receptivity. Speculation on ways to slow aging through genetics, meanwhile, draws directly on the dream of immortality that artists and poets have nourished through the ages. And the concept of catharsis itself has made its way from the writings of Aristotle to today's growing interest in the benefits of music to health, especially in newborns. As Szczeklik explores such subjects as the mysteries of the heart rhythm, the secret history of pain relief, the enigmatic logic of epidemics, near-death or out-of-body experiences, and many more, he skillfully weaves together classical literature, the history of medicine, and moving anecdotes from his own clinical experiences. The result is a life-affirming book that will enrich the healing work of patients and doctors alike and make an invaluable contribution to our still-expanding vision of the art of medicine.

Written by leading experts who not only describe the most important people, events, and transformations, but give explanations for why medicine developed as it did, this new contains one of the first historical summaries of the development of medicine after the Second World War. It is an authoritative source of new information as well as a synthesis of the current state of knowledge on this fascinating subject. The Western Medical Tradition, 1800-2000 is a companion volume to The Western Medical Tradition, 800 BC to AD 1800.

In the early 1990s, people predicted the death of privacy, an end to the current concept of property, a paperless society, 500 channels of high-definition interactive television, world peace, and the extinction of the human race after a takeover engineered by intelligent machines. Imagining the Internet zeroes in on predictions about the Internet's future and revisits past predictions--and how they turned out. It gives the history of communications in a nutshell, illustrating the serious impact of pervasive networks and how they will change our lives over the next century.

New viruses pop up every day, spam continually overloads our inboxes, and system crashes seem to happen for no reason! Figuring out how to protect against these problems is a challenge for all computer users, so they need to know about the tools and techniques available to help protect their computers. Protecting Your PC provides a detailed guide to the many hazards out there, including spyware, addware, spam, viruses, personal identity theft, and a variety of surreptitious tools used by hackers. It teaches users what these programs are and how to prevent them from wreaking havoc on their computers. The book details the five major areas users need to know about, including Malware, the Internet, email, system maintenance, and personal information. With this information and the tools included on the companion CD-ROM, users will be armed and ready for a safe and enjoyable computer experience!

Processor designs can be broadly divided into CISC (Complex Instruction Set Computers) and RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computers). The dominant processor in the PC market, Pentium, belongs to the CISC category, and Linux is fast becoming the number onenbsp;threat to Microsoft's Windows in the server market. This unique guidebook provides comprehensive coverage of the key elementsnbsp;of Assemblynbsp;language programming, specifically targeting professionals and students who would like to learn Assembly and intend or expect to move to the Linux operating system. The book instructs users on how to install Linux on existing Windows machines, providing DVDs containing the complete Fedora Core 3 Linux distribution. Readers are introduced to Linux and its commands, and will gain insights into the NASM assembler (installation and usage). This highly useful guidebook comes complete with all the necessary software (Linux, NASM, debugger), making it an extremely valuable resource tool for all those who want to learn Assembly programming and Linux.

Evolutionary computation, the use of evolutionary systems as computational processes for solving complex problems, is a tool used by computer scientists and engineers who want to harness the power of evolution to build useful new artifacts, by biologists interested in developing and testing better models of natural evolutionary systems, and by artificial life scientists for designing and implementing new artificial evolutionary worlds. In this clear and comprehensive introduction to the field, Kenneth De Jong presents an integrated view of the state of the art in evolutionary computation. Although other books have described such particular areas of the field as genetic algorithms, genetic programming, evolution strategies, and evolutionary programming, Evolutionary Computation is noteworthy for considering these systems as specific instances of a more general class of evolutionary algorithms. This useful overview of a fragmented field is suitable for classroom use or as a reference for computer scientists and engineers.

"The Information Revolution" presents the complete history of the World Wide Web - from its original design and engineering as an information management system at CERN to its introduction onto the Internet and its rapid acceptance as a de facto standard for publishing information on the Internet to its role in transforming the Internet into a resource that virtually anyone can use. The Web's history is followed by a detailed explanation of how the Web's technology works and why it works so well. "The Information Revolution" also examines many of the ways in which business, government, other organizations, and individuals are using the Web, and it explores how the Web is changing to meet changing needs as well as one possible future for the Web, which is called the Semantic Web.

Your expert guide to information security As businesses and consumers become more dependent on complex multinational information systems, the need to understand and devise sound information security systems has never been greater. This Information Security : Principles and Practice takes a practical approach to information security by focusing on real-world examples. While not sidestepping the theory, the emphasis is on developing the skills and knowledge that security and information technology students and professionals need to face their challenges. The book is organized around four major themes: Cryptography: classic cryptosystems, symmetric key cryptography, public key cryptography, hash functions, random numbers, information hiding, and cryptanalysis Access control: authentication and authorization, password-based security, ACLs and capabilities, multilevel and multilateral security, covert channels and inference control, BLP and Biba's models, firewalls, and intrusion detection systems Protocols: simple authentication protocols, session keys, perfect forward secrecy, timestamps, SSL, IPSec, Kerberos, and GSM Software: flaws and malware, buffer overflows, viruses and worms, software reverse engineering, digital rights management, secure software development, and operating systems security Additional features include numerous figures and tables to illustrate and clarify complex topics, as well as problems-ranging from basic to challenging-to help readers apply their newly developed skills. A solutions manual and a set of classroom-tested PowerPoint(r) slides will assist instructors in their course development. Students and professors in information technology, computer science, and engineering, and professionals working in the field will find this reference most useful to solve their information security issues.

Diophantine geometry has been studied by number theorists for thousands of years, since the time of Pythagoras, and has continued to be a rich area of ideas such as Fermat's Last Theorem, and most recently the ABC conjecture. This monograph is a bridge between the classical theory and modern approach via arithmetic geometry. The authors provide a clear path through the subject for graduate students and researchers. They have re-examined many results and much of the literature, and provide a thorough account of several topics at a level not seen before in book form. The treatment is largely self-contained, with proofs given in full detail.

Commencing with an introductory chapter on combinatorial, finite differences and probabilistic fundamental background, this book provides a self-contained reference for the area. This volume provides the necessary combinatorial methods in the theory of discrete distributions, including basic enumerative techniques, finite differences, Stirling numbers and partition polynomials. Key features include: * Numerous worked examples * Provides a rich collection of exercises of varying difficulty, which help to consolidate the concepts and results being presented, while others complement, extend or generalize some of the results * An extensive bibliography refers readers to multiple sources of interest * Reference notes are included at the end of each chapter to inform on the original contribution

Basic Mathematics and Statistics for Science is a low-level introduction to the essential techniques students need to understand. It assumes little prior knowledge, and adopts a gentle approach that leads through examples in the book and website. No other text provides this range of educational support for science students. The integration between book and website provides study options that would be impossible through a book alone, and allows students to study in ways that suit their own circumstances and preferences. The combination of book and website also provides ready-prepared material for lectures, tutorials and computer practicals. Tutors can use the material to develop a variety of coherent programme using different learning styles. The book develops the mathematics and statistics through examples and questions that reflect the scientific context, and has succeeded in being relevant to a range of undergraduate science programmes.

Bestselling author and physicist Stephen Hawking explores the "masterpieces" of mathematics, 25 landmarks spanning 2,500 years and representing the work of 15 mathematicians, including Augustin Cauchy, Bernard Riemann, and Alan Turing. This extensive anthology allows readers to peer into the mind of genius by providing them with excerpts from the original mathematical proofs and results. It also helps them understand the progression of mathematical thought, and the very foundations of our present-day technologies. Each chapter begins with a biography of the featured mathematician, clearly explaining the significance of the result, followed by the full proof of the work, reproduced from the original publication. Physicist Stephen Hawking has been described as "the most intelligent man in the world today" by the Chicago Sun-Times, and as "the scientific heir to Einstein, Newton... and Galileo" by People magazine. Hawking's A Brief History of Time sold more than 10 million copies in 40 different languages. His previous God Created the Integers : The Mathematical Breakthroughs That Changed History for Running Press, On the Shoulders of Giants, has sold more than 50,000 copies.

Mathematica is today's most advanced technical computing system. It features a rich programming environment, two-and three-dimensional graphics capabilities and hundreds of sophisticated, powerful programming and mathematical functions using state-of-the-art algorithms. Combined with a user-friendly interface, and a complete mathematical typesetting system, Mathematica offers an intuitive, easy-to-handle environment of great power and utility. The Mathematica GuideBook for Numerics (text and code compatible with Mathematica 5.1) concentrates on Mathematica's numerical mathematics capabilities - the indispensable sledgehammer tools for dealing with virtually any "real life" problem. The arithmetic types are carefully analyzed. Fundamental numerical operations, such as compilation of programs, numerical Fourier transforms, minimization, numerical solution of equations, ordinary/partial differential equations are analyzed in detail and are applied to a large number of examples in the main text and in the solutions to the exercises. The Mathematica GuideBook for Numerics is an indispensable resource for practitioners, professionals, and researchers in mathematics, computer science, engineering and other scientific disciplines. It will find a natural place on the bookshelf as an essential reference work. The author will also maintain a website for the book with additional material and updates at http://www.MathematicaGuideBooks .org. Michael Trott is a symbolic computation and computer graphics expert. He holds a Ph.D. in theoretical physics and joined the R&D team at Wolfram Research in 1994, the creators of Mathematica. Since 1998, he has been leading the development of the Wolfram Functions Site http://functions.wolfram.com, which currently features more that 85,000 formulas and identities, and 10,000 visualizations.