Mark Plaster takes readers beyond the ambulance bay doors into the stranger-than-fiction world of the Emergency Department. By turns heart-warming and gut-wrenching, "Night Shift" chronicles the ebb and flow of human life, in all of its unvarnished glory, as it passes through the doors of the ED.

    Illustrated.

    But archaeological and historical evidence challenges this narrative. The first agrarian states, says James C. Scott, were born of accumulations of domestications: first fire, then plants, livestock, subjects of the state, captives, and finally women in the patriarchal family—all of which can be viewed as a way of gaining control over reproduction.   Scott explores why we avoided sedentism and plow agriculture, the advantages of mobile subsistence, the unforeseeable disease epidemics arising from crowding plants, animals, and grain, and why all early states are based on millets and cereal grains and unfree labor. He also discusses the “barbarians” who long evaded state control, as a way of understanding continuing tension between states and nonsubject peoples.

    Patel challenges the widespread belief that music and language are processed independently. Since Plato's time, the relationship between music and language has attracted interest and debate from a wide range of thinkers. Recently, scientific research on this topic has been growing rapidly, as scholars from diverse disciplines, including linguistics, cognitive science, music cognition, and neuroscience are drawn to the music-language interface as one way to explore the extent to which different mental abilities are processed by separate brain mechanisms. Accordingly, the relevant data and theories have been spread across a range of disciplines. This volume provides the first synthesis, arguing that music and language share deep and critical connections, and that comparative research provides a powerful way to study the cognitive and neural mechanisms underlying these uniquely human abilities.Winner of the 2008 ASCAP Deems Taylor Award.

    She illuminates the social lives of the people who produce coffee, and those who process, distribute, market, and consume it. The Gimi peoples, who grow coffee in Papua New Guinea's highlands, are eager to expand their business and social relationships with the buyers who come to their highland villages, as well as with the people working in Goroka, where much of Papua New Guinea's coffee is processed; at the port of Lae, where it is exported; and in Hamburg, Sydney, and London, where it is distributed and consumed. This rich social world is disrupted by neoliberal development strategies, which impose prescriptive regimes of governmentality that are often at odds with Melanesian ways of being in, and relating to, the world. The Gimi are misrepresented in the specialty coffee market, which relies on images of primitivity and poverty to sell coffee. By implying that the "backwardness" of Papua New Guineans impedes economic development, these images obscure the structural relations and global political economy that actually cause poverty in Papua New Guinea.

    This iconoclastic, witty, and extremely readable book illuminates the deep background of our place in nature and asks us to think critically about what science is, and what passes for it, in modern society.

    That’s right: growing more mushrooms may be the best thing we can do to save the environment, and in this groundbreaking text from mushroom expert Paul Stamets, you’ll find out how. The basic science goes like this: Microscopic cells called “mycelium”--the fruit of which are mushrooms--recycle carbon, nitrogen, and other essential elements as they break down plant and animal debris in the creation of rich new soil. What Stamets has discovered is that we can capitalize on mycelium’s digestive power and target it to decompose toxic wastes and pollutants (mycoremediation), catch and reduce silt from streambeds and pathogens from agricultural watersheds (mycofiltration), control insect populations (mycopesticides), and generally enhance the health of our forests and gardens (mycoforestry and myco-gardening).  In this comprehensive guide, you’ll find chapters detailing each of these four exciting branches of what Stamets has coined “mycorestoration,” as well as chapters on the medicinal and nutritional properties of mushrooms, inoculation methods, log and stump culture, and species selection for various environmental purposes. Heavily referenced and beautifully illustrated, this book is destined to be a classic reference for bemushroomed generations to come.

    In " An Introduction to the Event-Related Potential Technique," Steve Luck offers the first comprehensive guide to the practicalities of conducting ERP experiments in cognitive neuroscience and related fields, including affective neuroscience and experimental psychopathology. The book can serve as a guide for the classroom or the laboratory and as a reference for researchers who do not conduct ERP studies themselves but need to understand and evaluate ERP experiments in the literature. It summarizes the accumulated body of ERP theory and practice, providing detailed, practical advice about how to design, conduct, and interpret ERP experiments, and presents the theoretical background needed to understand why an experiment is carried out in a particular way. Luck focuses on the most fundamental techniques, describing them as they are used in many of the world's leading ERP laboratories. These techniques reflect a long history of electrophysiological recordings and provide an excellent foundation for more advanced approaches.The book also provides advice on the key topic of how to design ERP experiments so that they will be useful in answering questions of broad scientific interest. This reflects the increasing proportion of ERP research that focuses on these broader questions rather than the "ERPology" of early studies, which concentrated primarily on ERP components and methods. Topics covered include the neural origins of ERPs, signal averaging, artifact rejection and correction, filtering, measurement and analysis, localization, and the practicalities of setting up the lab.

    They’ve tested France’s first guillotines, ridden the NASA Space Shuttle, been crucified in a Parisian laboratory to test the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin, and helped solve the mystery of TWA Flight 800. For every new surgical procedure, from heart transplants to gender confirmation surgery, cadavers have helped make history in their quiet way. “Delightful—though never disrespectful” (Les Simpson, Time Out New York), Stiff investigates the strange lives of our bodies postmortem and answers the question: What should we do after we die?“This quirky, funny read offers perspective and insight about life, death and the medical profession. . . . You can close this book with an appreciation of the miracle that the human body really is.” —Tara Parker-Pope, Wall Street Journal“Gross, educational, and unexpectedly sidesplitting.” —Entertainment Weekly

    However, arguing that variation is as characteristic of globalization as standardization, the book stresses the necessity for a bottom-up, comparative analysis. Distinguishing between the cultural, political, economic and ecological aspects of globalization, the book highlights the implications of globalization for people's everyday lives. Throughout, the discussion is illustrated with wide-ranging case material. Chapter summaries and a guide to further reading underline the book's concern to clarify this most complex and influential of ideas.

    She knew instantly that her decision to work in general practice was the ‘biggest and worst mistake of her life’. Fortunately, however, this did not deter her from continuing in general practice, and this fascinating memoir (spanning half a century) is testament to her resilience and professionalism, as well as her pragmatic and charismatic personality. She shares real stories about real people in this intriguing book. Some stories are truly heart-breaking and will have you reaching for the tissues (such as the times when she has lost patients, and encountered and supported abused children and rape victims). But it isn’t all serious. There are lots of light-hearted and heart-warming moments too, such as the stories about Jessie-dog – her bodyguard when she made home visits, and the time when she helped a large (and desperately in need) family to get rehoused, and her time as a country GP. She also recalls with honesty and candidness, the prejudice and unimaginable pressure she had to contend with, as a young female GP in the 1960s. As well as a plethora of fascinating stories, experiences and case studies, this book also gives us, as 21st Century readers, a glimpse into the rapid changes in general practice and the NHS in general. Whether you’re in general practice, or you’re a medical professional, or you have a penchant for all kinds of autobiographies/memoirs, you will find this a thought-provoking and captivating book that’s impossible to put down. Take a peek at the ‘Look Inside’ feature now and be prepared to be instantly intrigued.

    It remains an elementary and non-mathematical introduction to molecular spectroscopy that emphasizes the overall unity of the subject and offers a pictorial perception rather than a mathematical description of the principles of spectroscopy.

    This major work of ecological philosophy startles the senses out of habitual ways of perception.For a thousand generations, human beings viewed themselves as part of the wider community of nature, and they carried on active relationships not only with other people with other animals, plants, and natural objects (including mountains, rivers, winds, and weather patters) that we have only lately come to think of as inanimate. How, then, did humans come to sever their ancient reciprocity with the natural world? What will it take for us to recover a sustaining relation with the breathing earth?In The Spell of the Sensuous David Abram draws on sources as diverse as the philosophy of Merleau-Ponty, Balinese shamanism, Apache storytelling, and his own experience as an accomplished sleight-of-hand of magician to reveal the subtle dependence of human cognition on the natural environment. He explores the character of perception and excavates the sensual foundations of language, which--even at its most abstract--echoes the calls and cries of the earth. On every page of this lyrical work, Abram weaves his arguments with a passion, a precision, and an intellectual daring that recall such writers as Loren Eisleley, Annie Dillard, and Barry Lopez.

    As he walks with us through dark territories, he points out the significant and reflects on its meaning.”—Mary Pipher, Ph.D., author of Reviving OpheliaThe passage from adolescence to adulthood was once clear. Today, growing up has become more complex and confusing, as young men drift casually through college and beyond—hanging out, partying, playing with tech toys, watching sports. But beneath the appearance of a simple extended boyhood, a more dangerous social world has developed, far away from the traditional signposts and cultural signals that once helped boys navigate their way to manhood—a territory Michael Kimmel has identified as "Guyland."In mapping the troubling social world where men are now made, Kimmel offers a view into the minds and times of America's sons, brothers, and boyfriends, and he works toward redefining what it means to be a man today—and tomorrow. Only by understanding this world and this life stage can we enable young men to chart their own paths, stay true to themselves, and emerge safely from Guyland as responsible and fully formed male adults.

    What they discover is beyond anything they imagined: the fossilized bones of Danuvius guggenmosi ignite a global media frenzy. This ancient ancestor defies our knowledge of human history—his nearly twelve-million-year-old bones were not located in Africa—the so-called birthplace of humanity—but in Europe, and his features suggest we evolved much differently than scientists once believed.In prose that reads like a gripping detective novel, Ancient Bones interweaves the story of the dig that changed everything with the fascinating answer to a previously undecided and now pressing question: How, exactly, did we become human? Placing Böhme’s discovery alongside former theories of human evolution, the authors show how this remarkable find (and others in Eurasia) are forcing us to rethink the story we’ve been told about how we came to be, a story that has been our guiding narrative—until now.