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The Erice International Seminars are multidisciplinary seminars attended by over 100 eminent participants from all fields of Science. Each year, a few scientific issues are selected and experts are invited to present contrasting views during the plenary multidisciplinary sessions of the Seminar, followed by general debates. These sessions offer a unique opportunity for specialists to enlarge their fields of vision by being confronted to the ideas and suggestions from high level scientists in complementary domains of science. Associated workshops allow the experts to further refine and process the ideas evoked during the seminar. This year's topics are focused on the World Energy Crisis and more specifically on the Essential Technologies for Moderating Climate Change and Improving Energy Security and for Energy & Limits of Development. We also concentrated on Managing the Challenges of Climate Change, Energy Security and Pollution in Asian Countries. On Global Monitoring of the Planet we have focused on the Climate Change issues and specifically on the Sensitivity of Climate to Additional CO2 as indicated by Water Cycle Feedback Issues, Climate Uncertainties Addressed by Satellites, and the Basic Mathematics Needed for All Models. In Information Security we focused on Cyber Conflict and Cyber Stability. For Pollution and Medicine we focused on the Revolution in the Environmental Health Sciences and the Emergence of Green Chemistry.

For decades, administrations of both political parties have used cost-benefit analysis to evaluate and improve federal policy in a variety of areas, including health and the environment. Today, this model is under grave threat. In Reviving Rationality, Michael Livermore and Richard Revesz explain how Donald Trump has destabilized the decades-long bipartisan consensus that federal agencies must base their decisions on evidence, expertise, and analysis. Administrative agencies are charged by law with protecting values like stable financial markets and clean air. Their decisions often have profound consequences, affecting everything from the safety of workplaces to access to the dream of home ownership. Under the Trump administration, agencies have been hampered in their ability to advance these missions by the conflicting ideological whims of a changing cast of political appointees and overwhelming pressure from well-connected interest groups. Inconvenient evidence has been ignored, experts have been sidelined, and analysis has been used to obscure facts, rather than inform the public. The results are grim: incoherent policy, social division, defeats in court, a demoralized federal workforce, and a loss of faith in government's ability to respond to pressing problems. This experiment in abandoning the norms of good governance has been a disaster. Reviving Rationality explains how and why our government has abandoned rationality in recent years, and why it is so important for future administrations to restore rigorous cost-benefit analysis if we are to return to a policymaking approach that effectively tackles the most pressing problems of our era.

Covering both the theoretical and practical aspects of critical care,Irwin & Rippe’s Intensive Care Medicine, Ninth Edition, provides state-of-the-art, evidence-based knowledge for specialty physicians and non-physicians practicing in the adult intensive care environment. Drs. Craig M. Lilly, Walter A. Boyle, and Richard S. Irwin, along with a team of expert contributing authors and education expert, William F. Kelly, offer authoritative, comprehensive guidance from an interprofessional, collaborative, educational, and scholarly perspective, encompassing all adult critical care specialties.

Texas has one of the world’s largest prison systems, in operation for more than 170 years and currently employing more than 28,000 people. Hundreds of thousands of people have been involved in the prison business in Texas: inmates, correctional officers, public officials, private industry representatives, and volunteers have all entered the secure facilities and experienced a different world. Previous books on Texas prisons have focused either on records and data of the prisons, personal memoirs by both inmates and correctional officers, or accounts of prison breaks. Tall Walls and High Fences is the first comprehensive history of Texas prisons, written by a former law enforcement officer and an officer of the Texas prisons. Bob Alexander and Richard K. Alford chronicle the significant events and transformation of the Texas prison system from its earliest times to the present day, paying special attention to the human side of the story. Incarceration policy evolved from isolation to hard labor to rodeo and educational opportunities, with reform measures becoming an ever-evolving quest. The complex job of the correctional officer has evolved as well—they must ensure custody and control over the inmate population at all times, in order to provide a proper environment conducive to safety and positive change. Alexander and Alford focus especially on the men and women who work with diligence and dedication at their jobs “inside the walls,” risking their lives and—in too many instances—giving their lives in a peculiar line of duty most would find unpalatable. Within these pages are stories of prison breaks, bloodhounds chasing escapees, and gunfights. Inside the walls are deadly confrontations, human trafficking, rape, clandestine consensual trysts, and tricks turned against correctional officers. Famous people and episodes in Texas prison history receive their due, from Texas Rangers apprehending and placing outlaws in prison to the famed gunfighter John Wesley Hardin’s time in and out of prison. Tall Walls and High Fences covers numerous convict escape attempts and successes, including the 1974 prison siege at Huntsville and the 2007 prisoner gunfight and escape at the Wynne Unit. Throughout this long history Alexander and Alford pay special tribute to the more than 75 correctional officers, lawmen, and civilians who lost their lives in the line of duty.