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Drugs and Behavior
Drugs and Behavior
What effects do various psychoactive drugs have on such aspects of human behavior as creativity, memory, and sexuality? How effective are such drugs in treating mental disorders? How are new drugs tested and licensed? Presenting an intriguing introduction to the study of psychopharmacology, this fully revised and updated third edition of Drugs and Behavior is uniquely organized around the ways in which human behavior is affected by drugs rather than by categories of drugs only. Beginning with the principles of neurotransmission, pharmacokinetics, and drug classification, the text covers the issues of new drug development, drug dangers and benefits, legalization, drug abuse prevention and treatment, and therapeutic uses of psychoactive drugs. Separate chapters present the latest research findings on drugs' influence on memory, creativity, sex, aggression, and sleep. Features such as chapter-opening questions, bold-facing, defining of new terms, summaries, and end-of-chapter review quizzes help students to understand this complex and controversial material. Professionals and students who are involved in drug and alcohol studies, health, psychology, nursing, or sociology will find this volume to be an invaluable addition to their libraries.
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A Practical Guide to Autism
A Practical Guide to Autism
Autism is in the public spotlight now more than ever as new research and information appears almost daily. Although in many ways this is a positive development it also presents challenges to families and practitioners who want to keep up with the latest developments and are left to sift through new information by themselves to see what is credible and relevant for them.Each of us needs a personal research assistant who can determine which information we need to pay attention to and let us know how it might affect our daily work and the children we are living with or serve. Since we each don’t have our own research assistants on staff, I am delighted to recommend this wonderful book by Fred Volkmar and Lisa Wiesner. Both of these talented professional leaders have combined their scientific skills and understanding of the field with great practical experience and ideas about how research can be translated into clinical practice. The result is a book that provides the best and most comprehensive information about recent scientific developments and a splendid practical guide for how they are being implemented and what we are learning in the process. The issues are presented in all of their complexity but translated into language that is clear, direct, and easy to follow. The format also lends itself to understanding the complex issues and their implications through excellent charts, question and answer sections, and chapters that vary from describing diagnostic issues to stating very specifically how to expand and evaluate the services one is receiving. The comprehensive references and lists of additional resources also add greatly to the overall package. As a professional dedicated to understanding scientific advances and helping families and teachers to utilize them most effectively, I am very pleased to have an ally like this book available. I am very grateful to the authors for providing a very credible, practical, and relevant addition to our field to help the many advocates and family practitioners to better understand the exciting new developments and how they can be implemented in our day to day work. Those taking the time to read through this superb volume will find it time well spent that pays back dividends in many different ways. —FOREWORD by Gary B. Mesibov, Ph.D., Professor and Director of TEACCH, Treatment and Education of Autistic and Related Communication Handicapped Children University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
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Fibroids, Menstruation, Childbirth, and Evolution
Fibroids, Menstruation, Childbirth, and Evolution
In the ancestral environment, a human female typically carried at least half a dozen babies to term. The fact that modern women are able to limit the number of children they bear has dramatic consequences for the incidence of uterine fibroids, as well as the clinical care of fibroids patients. Fibroids, Menstruation, Childbirth, and Evolution explores these connections, integrating a vast amount of medical knowledge about the uterus into one volume. During pregnancy, the mother's blood prepares for an enormous hemostatic event: the delivery of the placenta. That fetal organ is the vascular link between mother and offspring. At childbirth, one-tenth of mother's cardiac output flows through the placenta, feeding the growing child. When the placenta is sheared away from its attachment to the uterus, two hundred large uteroplacental arteries are ripped apart and bleed profusely into the uterine cavity. For many hours following delivery, uterine contractions slow blood flow within the uterus, allowing the high concentration of clotting factors built up in the mother's blood during pregnancy to solidify throughout the uterine circulation and stop blood loss. Then, hours later, the tide reverses, most of these uterine blood clots dissolve, and more normal blood flow returns to the uterus. This amazing process occurs with each pregnancy. During this process, the uterus is ischemic and hypoxic. Unlike brain and heart, which can only survive minutes of decreased blood flow, the uterus can withstand dramatically diminished blood flow for hours. In fact, it is natural for this to occur once every few years. Uterine ischemia and hypoxia are a natural part of every woman's genetic makeup. In 1995 a group of French physicians discovered that it was possible to emulate the physiology of childbirth by stopping blood flow to the uterus with small plastic particles. Initially, they injected these particles to diminish blood loss during subsequent fibroid surgery. However, they soon learned that the injection of these particles was therapeutic in and of itself for women with symptomatic fibroids. Unbeknownst to this French group, earlier, in 1964, an American physician surgically occluded the uterine arteries to treat women without fibroids who had excessive monthly menstrual blood loss. Subsequent physicians have occluded the uterine arteries in various ways to treat a third common disorder, adenomyosis. Finally, these clinical successes suggest that future episodes of endometriosis may be preventable in some women treated with uterine artery closure. Dr. Fred Burbank's comprehensive book provides insight into how physicians can use uterine artery closure techniques to more effectively treat uterine disorders. In addition, his book contains short courses on magnetic resonance imaging, hemodynamics, uterine artery embolization, and the hemostatic and hemolytic systems, making it possible for readers less familiar with these complex subjects to understand the text without referring to outside sources. About the Author Dr. Burbank is an epidemiologist, a psychiatrist, a diagnostic radiologist, a cardiovascular interventionalist, and an expert in women's health. He is also an inventor-entrepreneur. For recreation, he flies, swims, and reads. For more information, please visit his bio on www.saltcreekmedical.com.
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A History of the Baseball Fan
A History of the Baseball Fan
From the genesis of baseball in the 1840s, when so-called "kranks" cheered the teams of their choice, fans have been an ever-present component of the sport. As the number of fans has increased over the years, their influence has increased proportionally. Following the evolution of the game and its fans over more than a century, this book examines the role fans have played in the formation of modern baseball and the part the sport has played in the lives of its devotees. How have fans influenced, reacted to, or been affected by baseball's changes through history? How do fans determine player popularity? Are there famous fans--and how do they manifest that interest? How has the evolution of baseball in the media, including newspapers, radio, and television, affected the fan base? The answers to these questions and more give a lively feel to this baseball history from a fan's perspective. The final chapter sums up the fan's importance to the sport of baseball.
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A Manual of Orthopaedic Terminology
A Manual of Orthopaedic Terminology
Compendium of terms used in the orthopedic field.
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A Cognitive Psychology of Mass Communication
A Cognitive Psychology of Mass Communication
A Cognitive Psychology of Mass Communication is the go-to text for any course that adopts a cognitive and psychological approach to the study of mass communication. In its sixth edition, it continues its examination of how our experiences with media affect the way we acquire knowledge about the world, and how this knowledge influences our attitudes and behavior. Using theories from psychology and communication along with reviews of the most up-to-date research, this text covers a diversity of media and media issues ranging from commonly discussed topics, such as politics, sex, and violence, to lesser-studied topics, such as sports, music, emotion, and prosocial media. This sixth edition offers chapter outlines and recommended readings lists to further assist readability and accessibility of concepts, and a new companion website that includes recommended readings, even more real-world examples and activities, PowerPoint presentations, sample syllabi, and an instructor guide.
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Towards a Socio-liberal Theory of World Development
Towards a Socio-liberal Theory of World Development
A study of the determinants of world development from 1960 onwards, using advanced statistical techniques and data from up to 171 countries and territories. Arno Tausch also debates the perspectives for world socialism and for neo-corporatism in the industrialized West.
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Incommensurability and Commensuration
Incommensurability and Commensuration
This title was published in 2003.This volume presents a detailed examination of incommensurability in the value-theoretical sense. Exploring how choosers deal with problems and constraints of choice, the author draws on work in cognitive psychology, in sociology, in jurisprudence, in economics, and in the theory of value to show how choosers learn to make "trade-offs" when there is potential incommensurability among the options they are considering. The analysis is also informed by recent work in the tradition of Michel Foucault. With so many modern devices and ideals of government dependent on the comparability of options, this book is timely and can inform public debate about de-regulation, user-pays, accountability, and the substitution of market mechanisms for government regulation and supply.
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