An Introduction to Health Policy

An Introduction to Health Policy

Based on the current climate of our nation s finances and healthcare spending, it is clear that young doctors and medical students are likely to see a dramatic transformation of the manner in which America offers medical care to its citizens over the course of their careers. As such, it is pivotal that the next generation of America s leaders on the front lines of medicine develop a sense of where healthcare has evolved from and future potential directions of change. An Introduction to Health Policy: A Primer for Physicians and Medical Students is the first of its kind: a book written by doctors for doctors in order to allow busy physicians and medical students to quickly develop an understanding of the key issues facing American healthcare. This book seeks to efficiently and effectively educate physicians and medical students in a clinical context that they can understand on the past, present, and potential future issues in healthcare policy and the evolution of American healthcare. The reader will walk away from the book with the ability to discuss the fundamental issues in American healthcare with ease.

An Introduction to Health Policy

Illicit Antiquities

Illicit Antiquities

The exploitation of archaeological sites for commercial gain is a serious problem worldwide. In peace and during wartime archaeological sites and cultural institutions, both on land and underwater, are attacked and their contents robbed for sale on an international ‘antiquities’ market. Objects are excavated without record, smuggled across borders and sold for exorbitant prices in the salesrooms of Europe and North America. In some countries this looting has now reached such a scale as to threaten the very survival of their archaeological and cultural heritage.

Illicit Antiquities

The Art of Bird Photography

The Art of Bird Photography

Readers will discover practical guidance and professional advice on such topics as making correct exposures, capturing bird behavior and action, and evaluating and selling work. Theyll learn some of the ethical issues related to bird photography, including guidelines on the proper conduct for working in the field and tips for approaching wild birds without causing them undue stress. Theyll also find complete information on the best bird-watching spots throughout North America, with advice on the best times to visit and the types of birds that flock to each location. Finally, this sourcebook is filled with more than 200 incredible color images of egrets, herons, pelicans, ducks, gulls, terns, hawks, falcons, and dozens of other remarkable birds in action.

The Art of Bird Photography

The Small Screen

The Small Screen

Television is one of the most important socializing forces in contemporary culture. This book is a cultural history of prime-time television in America during the 1990s.

The Small Screen

Garden Guide

Garden Guide

We’ve all admired our neighbor’s gorgeous gardens filled with flowering perennials and longed to recreate their beauty in our own back yard. But if we’re being honest, when it comes to gardening, most of us have no idea where to begin. Additionally, in these economic times, who can afford to hire an expert to come in and do the job for us? That said, regular folks all across North America and Europe are returning to the soil, shovels in hand. With the help of this book, there is absolutely no need to fly blind into the world of green thumbs, perennials, and herbs. The name–Garden Guide: A No Nonsense, No PhD Guide to Great Gardens with Hand-Holding How To’s for Beginners and Straightforward Instruction for Advanced Gardeners-truly says it all. Indeed, this book is the hand-holding garden guide that will walk even the most timid novice right through the gardening process from beginning to end. In addition to straight forward, practical advice in everyday language, you will love the stories and anecdotes Olver shares from her fifteen years of backyard, organic gardening adventures. Easy and entertaining, you’ll probably read this book in one sitting, but you’ll reference it for years to come. The beauty of Garden Guide is that Olver divides her advice into two sections: Beginning Gardeners and Advanced Gardeners. No matter what your skill level, there are simple explanations, tips, and tricks that will walk you through every aspect of the garden process. Garden Guide features details such as:* Everything you need to know about location, from sunlight to drainage to selecting just the right spot* How to understand soil types, how to amend and condition them* pH levels and soil testing broken down in simple terms* Step by Step guide for planning your PERFECT garden no matter where the location* Fertilizing made manageable with explanations for all those numbers and organic alternatives * Composting broken down so you can start immediately* Pests obliterated with loads of organic suggestions* The basics of garden maintenance from deadheading to dividing perennials* Loads of helpful website suggestions for purchasing plants online, getting ideas, locating county extension offices, perennial databases and so much more.* Gardening terms are defined in language you will both understand and rememberIf you have time to read only one book on gardening, this is the book to choose. Short enough not to feel like an encyclopedia and just long enough to wet your gardening appetite, Olver has woven basic garden science and practical ideas for everyday people into each page. With her warm, inviting, no-nonsense instruction, you will be amazed how simple and doable gardening really is. Not only will it thoroughly educate you in basic gardening, Garden Guide will send you well on your way toward beautiful perennials gardens and leave you inspired and hungry to begin planting in your own patch of earth.

Garden Guide

The Giant and How He Humbugged America

The Giant and How He Humbugged America

Two-time Newbery Honor Book author has written an amazing account of one of America’s most famous hoaxes!

The Giant and How He Humbugged America

Culture Jamming

Culture Jamming

In this pioneering work of social criticism, Kalle Lasn, the publisher of Adbusters magazine, lays the foundation for the most significant social movement of the next 20 years. Culture jammers are a global network of media activists waging a protracted war against the mass media and against the consumerism that is overtaking America and the world. In Culture Jam, Lasn assesses the current situation, discusses whether spontaneity and individuality can be restored, explores, possibilities for renewal, and offers a glimpse of what could happen if citizens band together to fight.

Culture Jamming

Endgame 1758

Endgame 1758

The story of what happened at the colonial fortified town of Louisbourg between 1749 and 1758 is one of the great dramas of the history of Canada, indeed North America. This book presents the dramatic military and social history of this short-lived and significant fortress, seaport, and community, and the citizens who made it their home.

Endgame 1758

Reading Fiction in Antebellum America

Reading Fiction in Antebellum America

James L. Machor offers a sweeping exploration of how American fiction was received in both public and private spheres in the United States before the Civil War.

Reading Fiction in Antebellum America

Forest Ghost

Forest Ghost

Modern-day America. Fifteen Boy Scouts and their seven adult leaders are found to have committed suicide in the forest of a scout reservation. One of the dead boys is a friend of Sparky Wallace, whose father Jack runs a Polish restaurant in Chicago. Drawn into investigating the suicides, Jack discovers a connection with his own grandfather, who killed himself in the Kampinos Forest in Poland when he was fighting the Nazis in World War II.

Forest Ghost

Red Cell Seven

Red Cell Seven

Created more than forty years ago by secret executive order, Red Cell Seven is a highly classified intelligence agency tasked with protecting America from the most catastrophic of terrorist attacks. But in the aftermath of a string of deadly terrorist attacks across the nation, Red Cell Seven finds itself drawn into a conspiracy that threatens to tear the organization apart.

Red Cell Seven

The Source

The Source

‘Why do I feel so tired and drained?’ You’re not alone if you’re constantly asking yourself this question. Exhaustion is epidemic in America and ‘lack of energy’ one of the top five complaints to doctors nationwide. This is because vast numbers of people have lost their connection with the inner energy that is the source of healing and radiant vitality.

The Source

Boys Will Be Boys

Boys Will Be Boys

They were called America’s Team. Led by Emmitt Smith, the charismatic Deion ‘Prime Time’ Sanders, Hall of Famers Troy Aikman and Michael Irvinand lorded over by swashbuckling, power-hungry owner Jerry Jones and his two hard-living coaches, Jimmy Johnson and Barry Switzerthe Cowboys seemed indomitable on the football field throughout the 1990s. Off the field the ‘Boys were a dysfunctional circus, fueled by ego, sex, drugs, and jaw-dropping excess. What they achieved on game day was astonishing; what they did the rest of the week was unbelievable.

Boys Will Be Boys

The Yellow Papers

The Yellow Papers

It’s 1872 and China still bruised from its defeat in the two Opium Wars sends a group of boys, including seven-year-old Chen Mu, to America to study and bring back the secrets of the West. But nine years on Chen Mu becomes a fugitive and flees to Umberumberka, a mining town in outback Australia. He eventually finds peace working for Matthew Dawson, a rich pastoralist.

The Yellow Papers

Mandarins of the Future

Mandarins of the Future

Because it provided the dominant framework for ‘development’ of poor, postcolonial countries, modernization theory ranks among the most important constructs of twentieth-century social science. In Mandarins of the Future: Modernization Theory in Cold War America Nils Gilman offers the first intellectual history of a movement that has had far-reaching and often unintended consequences.

Mandarins of the Future

Zen and the Art of Poker

Zen and the Art of Poker

Inside the intriguing world of poker lies a fascinating exercise in strategy and extreme concentration–many of the same principles that underpin the one-thousand-year-old philosophy of Zen spirituality. Zen and the Art of Poker is the first book to apply Zen theories to America’s most popular card game, presenting tips that readers can use to enhance their game. Among the more than one hundred rules that comprise this book, readers will learn to: * Make peace with folding * Use inaction as a weapon * Make patience a central pillar of their strategy * Pick their times of confrontation Using a concise and spare style, in the tradition of Zen practices and rituals, Zen and the Art of Poker traces a parallel track connecting the two disciplines by giving comments and inspirational examples from the ancient Zen masters to the poker masters of today.

Zen and the Art of Poker

The Therapeutic Use of Ayahuasca

The Therapeutic Use of Ayahuasca

This book presents a series of perspectives on the therapeutic potential of the ritual and clinical use of the Amazonian hallucinogenic brew ayahuasca in the treatment and management of various diseases and ailments, especially its role in psychological well-being and substance dependence. Biomedical and anthropological data on the use of ayahuasca for treating depression, PTSD, and substance dependence in different settings, such as indigenous contexts, neo-shamanic rituals, contemporary therapeutic circles, and in ayahuasca religions, in both South and North America, are presented and critiqued. Though multiple anecdotal reports on the therapeutic use of ayahuasca exist, there has been no systematic and dense reflection on the topic thus far. The book brings the therapeutic use of ayahuasca to a new level of public examination and academic debate. The texts in this volume stimulate discussion on methodological, ethical, and political aspects of research and will enhance the development of this emergent field of studies.

The Therapeutic Use of Ayahuasca

The Price of Paradise

The Price of Paradise

Many American communities, especially the working and middle class, are facing chronic problems: fiscal stress, urban decline, environmental sprawl, failing schools, mass incarceration, political isolation, disproportionate foreclosures, and severe public health risks. In The Price of Paradise, David Dante Troutt argues that it is a lack of what he calls regional equity in our local decision making that has led to this looming crisis now facing so many cities and local governments. Unless we adopt policies that take into consideration all class levels, he argues, the underlying inequity affecting poor and middle class communities will permanently limit opportunity for the next generations of Americans. Arguing that there are structural flaws in the American dream, Troutt explores the role that place plays in our thinking and how we have organized our communities to create or deny opportunity. Through a careful presentation of this crisis at the national level and also through on-the-ground observation in communities like Newark, Detroit, Houston, Oakland, and New York City that all face similar hardships, he makes the case that Americas tendency to separate into enclaves in urban areas or to sprawl off on ones own in suburbs gravely undermines the American dream. Troutt shows that the tendency to separate also has maintained racial segregation in our cities and towns, itself cementing many barriers for advancement. A profound conversation about America at the crossroads, The Price of Paradise is a multilayered exploration of the legal, economic, and cultural forces that contribute to the squeeze on the middle class, the hidden dangers of growing income and wealth inequality, and environmentally unsustainable growth and consumption patterns. David Dante Troutt is Professor of Law and Justice John J. Francis Scholar at the Rutgers University-Newark Law School. He also serves as Director of the Center on Law in Metropolitan Equity at Rutgers Law School.Troutt is a columnist, novelist, and the author of several works of nonfiction, most recently After the Storm: Black Intellectuals Explore the Meaning of Hurricane Katrina.

The Price of Paradise

Multicarrier Techniques for 4G Mobile Communications

Multicarrier Techniques for 4G Mobile Communications

‘As research for future fourth generation (4G) mobile communication systems is underway worldwide in major companies and academic institutions, forward-thinking professionals are striving to gain a thorough understanding of the cutting-edge technologies and design techniques that will make these systems work. This book helps readers do just that by: providing a comprehensive introduction to multicarrier techniques for 4G mobile communications with a special focus on the analytical aspects; explaining radio channel characteristics and phenomena and discussing the advantages and disadvantages of the OFDM scheme; featuring new multicarrier-related techniques, MC-CDMA, research on several 4G systems, and a look at several problems to be overcome with these systems; examining the concept and detail of the ODFM scheme and how to carry out theoretical analysis on the performance of transmission systems in radio channels; showing how ODFM has been successfully adopted as a modulation scheme in communications systems and broadcasting systems such as ADSL, wireless LANs, and DVB-T.’–BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Multicarrier Techniques for 4G Mobile Communications

Introduction to Variance Estimation

Introduction to Variance Estimation

We live in the information age. Statistical surveys are used every day to determine or evaluate public policy and to make important business decisions. Correct methods for computing the precision of the survey data and for making inferences to the target population are absolutely essential to sound decision making. Now in its second edition, Introduction to Variance Estimation has for more than twenty years provided the definitive account of the theory and methods for correct precision calculations and inference, including examples of modern, complex surveys in which the methods have been used successfully. The book provides instruction on the methods that are vital to data-driven decision making in business, government, and academe. It will appeal to survey statisticians and other scientists engaged in the planning and conduct of survey research, and to those analyzing survey data and charged with extracting compelling information from such data. It will appeal to graduate students and university faculty who are focused on the development of new theory and methods and on the evaluation of alternative methods. Software developers concerned with creating the computer tools necessary to enable sound decision-making will find it essential. Prerequisites include knowledge of the theory and methods of mathematical statistics and graduate coursework in survey statistics. Practical experience with real surveys is a plus and may be traded off against a portion of the requirement for graduate coursework. This second edition reflects shifts in the theory and practice of sample surveys that have occurred since the content of the first edition solidified in the early 1980s. Additional replication type methods appeared during this period and have featured prominently in journal publications. Reflecting these developments, the second edition now includes a new major chapter on the bootstrap method of variance estimation. This edition also includesextensive new material on Taylor series methods, especially as they apply to newer methods of analysis such as logistic regression or the generalized regression estimator. An introductory section on survey weighting has been added. Sections on Hadamard matrices and computer software have been substantially scaled back. Fresh material on these topics is now readily available on the Internet or from commercial sources. Kirk Wolter is a Senior Fellow at NORC, Director of the Center for Excellency in Survey Research, and Professor in the Department of Statistics, University of Chicago. He is a Fellow of the American Statistical Association and a Member of the International Statistical Institute. He is a past president of the International Association of Survey Statisticians and a past chair of the Survey Research Methods Section of the American Statistical Association. During the last 35 years, he has participated in the planning, execution, and analysis of large-scale complex surveys and has provided instruction in survey statistics both in America and around the world.

Introduction to Variance Estimation