What do the following have in common: the promise of Botox as the key to everlasting youthful looks; E. coli O157 hamburger disease; a mysterious illness which killed 35 heroin users in 2000; and the assassination by poisoned umbrella-tip of a Bulgarian dissident in the 1970s? The answer is that all of these are caused by toxins, the powerful...

Optics--a field of physics focusing on the study of light--is also central to many areas of biology, including vision, ecology, botany, animal behavior, neurobiology, and molecular biology. The Optics of Life introduces the fundamentals of optics to biologists and nonphysicists, giving them the tools they need to successfully incorporate...

This timely volume reviews current data on the effects of estrogen on the central nervous system, highlighting clinical aspects of this topic. Experts from the fields of psychiatry, pharmacology, neurology, and geriatrics collaborate to clarify the known risks and benefits of hormone therapy and explore questions that remain to be...

This Festschrift volume, dedicated to He Jifeng on the occasion of his 70th birthday in September 2013, includes 24 refereed papers by leading researchers, current and former colleagues, who congratulated at a celebratory symposium held in Shanghai, China, in the course of the 10th International Colloquium on Theoretical Aspects of Computing,...

In this Very Short Introduction, Michael Ferber explores Romanticism during the period of its incubation, birth, and growth, covering the years roughly from 1760 to 1860. This is the only introduction to Romanticism that incorporates not only the English but the Continental movements, and not only literature but music, art, religion,...

What is the basic nature of the modern computer? How does it work? How has it been possible to squeeze so much power into increasingly smaller machines? What will the next generations of computers look like? In this Very Short Introduction, Darrel Ince looks at the basic concepts behind all computers, the changes in hardware and...

John Heskett wants to transform the way we think about design by showing how integral it is to our daily lives, from the spoon we use to eat our breakfast cereal, and the car we drive to work in, to the medical equipment used to save lives. Design combines "need" and "desire" in the form of a practical object that can also...

This clear and concise new introduction examines all the major debates and issues in the field of art history, using a wide range of well-known examples. Dana Arnold also examines the many different ways of writing about art, and the changing boundaries of the subject of art history.

Other topics covered include the canon of...

We live in a society that is awash with information, but few of us really understand what information is. In this Very Short Introduction, one of the world's leading authorities on the philosophy of information and on information ethics, Luciano Floridi, offers an illuminating exploration of information as it relates to both...

Beginning with the description of operating system in general the book discusses features that made Unix the most suitable operating system of its time. An overview of file management in Unix and commonly used Unix commands is then provided. Further, it delves into the detailed description of file system and compression techniques, processes...