Philosophical issues in psychiatry : explanation, phenomenology, and nosology
By Kenneth S. Kendler
Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008.
Call# RC437.5 .P4355 2008

From Johns Hopkins University Press:

“This multidisciplinary collection explores three key concepts underpinning psychiatry — explanation, phenomenology, and nosology — and their continuing relevance in an age of neuroimaging and genetic analysis.

An introduction by Kenneth S. Kendler lays out the philosophical grounding of psychiatric practice. The first section addresses the concept of explanation, from the difficulties in describing complex behavior to the categorization of psychological and biological causality. In the second section, contributors discuss experience, including the complex and vexing issue of how self—agency and free will affect mental health. The third and final section examines the organizational difficulties in psychiatric nosology and the instability of the existing diagnostic system. Each chapter has both an introduction by the editors and a concluding comment by another of the book’s contributors.”

Clinical management of sensorimotor speech disorders
By Malcolm Ray McNeil
New York : Thieme, 2009.
Call#: RC424.7 .C576 2009

From Thieme Medical Publishers:

“Bringing together the expertise of leading research practitioners in the field, the second edition of Clinical Management of Sensorimotor Speech Disorders is an up-to-date reference for the underlying theory and the basic principles of assessment and treatment. This book provides a solid foundation in the conceptual framework essential for classifying and differentiating disorders according to clinical categories. It covers the theory underlying measurement strategies including acoustic, kinematic, aerodynamic, and electromyographic techniques, and guides the reader through treatments for each disorder.

New in this edition is a comprehensive section with in-depth coverage of the diseases, syndromes, and pathologic conditions which are accompanied by sensorimotor speech disorders. These chapters provide concise descriptions of the disease and its signs and symptoms, neuropathology, epidemiology, and etiology. Each chapter goes on to present the speech impairment associated with the disorder and its signs and symptoms, etiology, neuropathology, associated cognitive, linguistic, and communicative signs and symptoms, special diagnostic considerations, treatment, and key references.

Features:

• Clear articulation of theoretical issues provides a strong foundation for the clinical management of the dysarthrias, apraxia, and speech problems secondary to hearing loss
• New chapter on neurogenic fluency disorders
• Extensive discussion of neuropathologic conditions that cause sensorimotor speech disorders

Authoritative and comprehensive, this expanded edition will prove to be the reference of choice for students in speech-language pathology programs as well as clinicians and researchers.”

Contemporary issues in mental health nursing
by Jonathon E. Lynch
Hoboken, NJ : J. Wiley, 2008.
Call#: RC440 .C584 2008

From Wiley:

“Contemporary Issues in Mental Health Nursing provides a series of essays which critique and comment on the current standing of the profession and addresses some of the post prominent issues and themes in the field today.

Divided into three principal sections, this text first explores professional and political issues in mental health nursing, including change and developing practice, emotional labour and evidence-based practice. The second section looks at clinical issues such as primary mental health promotion, medication management, self-neglect, promoting recovery and multidisciplinary working. Section three focuses on risk and mental health nursing practice. A final chapter explores the future, highlighting areas of strength and matters which the profession is likely to be required to develop in the near future.

Offering thoughtful, critical coverage of some of the key issues, Contemporary Issues in Mental Health Nursing is a comprehensive and valuable text for all involved in mental health care.”

Nature’s beloved son : rediscovering John Muir’s botanical legacy
by Bonnie Johanna Gisel
Berkeley, Calif. : Heyday Books, 2008.

Call# QH31 .M78 G57 2008

From Heydey Books:

Stunned into awe by the orchid Calypso borealis, John Muir wrote: “I never before saw a plant so full of life, so perfectly spiritual, it seemed pure enough for the throne of its Creator.”

Muir was blessed throughout his life with a love of plants. He tucked away interesting specimens from wherever he traveled, sent them to herbariums all over the country, and wrote passionately of them to friends and colleagues. Skilled in the technical aspects of botany, Muir also found in plants “pleasure so deep, so pure, so endless.” The revelatory beauty of plants provided inspiration that suffused his career as a writer, adventurer, and environmental advocate.

In this opulently produced book, photographer Stephen J. Joseph presents images of plants collected directly by Muir, while scholar Bonnie J. Gisel richly lays before us the life and words of a man at once familiar and surprising, a towering figure forever smitten with “nature’s irresistible, divine beauty.”

“Good observers of nature” : American women and the scientific study of the natural world, 1820-1885
by Tina Gianquitto
Athens : University of Georgia Press, 2007.

Call# QH26 .G53 2007

From the University of Georgia Press:

“In “Good Observers of Nature” Tina Gianquitto examines nineteenth-century American women’s intellectual and aesthetic experiences of nature and investigates the linguistic, perceptual, and scientific systems that were available to women to describe those experiences.

Many women writers of this period used the natural world as a platform for discussing issues of domesticity, education, and the nation. To what extent, asks Gianquitto, did these writers challenge the prevalent sentimental narrative modes (like those used in the popular flower language books) and use scientific terminology to describe the world around them? The book maps the intersections of the main historical and narrative trajectories that inform the answer to this question: the changing literary representations of the natural world in texts produced by women from the 1820s to the 1880s and the developments in science from the Enlightenment to the advent of evolutionary biology. Though Gianquitto considers a range of women’s nature writing (botanical manuals, plant catalogs, travel narratives, seasonal journals, scientific essays), she focuses on four writers and their most influential works: Almira Phelps (Familiar Lectures on Botany, 1829), Margaret Fuller (Summer on the Lakes, in 1843), Susan Fenimore Cooper (Rural Hours, 1850), and Mary Treat (Home Studies in Nature, 1885).

From these writings emerges a set of common concerns about the interaction of reason and emotion in the study of nature, the best vocabularies for representing objects in nature (local, scientific, or moral), and the competing systems for ordering the natural world (theological, taxonomic, or aesthetic). This is an illuminating study about the culturally assumed relationship between women, morality, and science.”

Why Evolution is True
by Jerry A. Coyne
New York : Viking, 2009.

Call# QH366.2 .C74 2009

From Viking:

“In all the current highly publicized debates about creationism and its descendant “intelligent design,” there is an element of the controversy that is rarely mentioned—the evidence, the empirical truth of evolution by natural selection. Even Richard Dawkins and Stephen Jay Gould, while extolling the beauty of evolution and examining case studies, have not focused on the evidence itself. Yet the proof is vast, varied, and magnificent, drawn from many different fields of science. Scientists are observing species splitting into two and are finding more and more fossils capturing change in the past—dinosaurs that have sprouted feathers, fish that have grown limbs.

Why Evolution Is True weaves together the many threads of modern work in genetics, paleontology, geology, molecular biology, and anatomy that demonstrate the “indelible stamp” of the processes first proposed by Darwin. In crisp, lucid prose accessible to a wide audience, Why Evolution Is True dispels common misunderstandings and fears about evolution and clearly confirms that this amazing process of change has been firmly established as a scientific truth.”

Exploring animal social networks
By Darren P. Croft, Richard James, and Jens Krause
Princeton : Princeton University Press, 2008.

Call# QL775 .C764 2008

From Princeton University Press:

“Social network analysis is used widely in the social sciences to study interactions among people, groups, and organizations, yet until now there has been no book that shows behavioral biologists how to apply it to their work on animal populations. Exploring Animal Social Networks provides a practical guide for researchers, undergraduates, and graduate students in ecology, evolutionary biology, animal behavior, and zoology.

Existing methods for studying animal social structure focus either on one animal and its interactions or on the average properties of a whole population. This book enables researchers to probe animal social structure at all levels, from the individual to the population. No prior knowledge of network theory is assumed. The authors give a step-by-step introduction to the different procedures and offer ideas for designing studies, collecting data, and interpreting results. They examine some of today’s most sophisticated statistical tools for social network analysis and show how they can be used to study social interactions in animals, including cetaceans, ungulates, primates, insects, and fish. Drawing from an array of techniques, the authors explore how network structures influence individual behavior and how this in turn influences, and is influenced by, behavior at the population level. Throughout, the authors use two software packages–UCINET and NETDRAW–to illustrate how these powerful analytical tools can be applied to different animal social organizations.”

The paradise of all these parts : a natural history of Boston

By John Hanson Mitchell

Boston : Beacon Press, c2008.

Call# QH105 .M4 M58 2008

From Beacon Press:

”

In 1614, explorer John Smith sailed into what was to become Boston Harbor and referred to the wild lands and waters around him as “the Paradise of all these parts.” Within fifteen years, the Puritans were developing the tadpole-shaped Shawmut Peninsula, as members of the Massachusett tribe fled. Now, nearly four hundred years later, one must wonder what remains of John Smith’s “Paradise.”

Equipped with wit, intellect, and an innate curiosity about people and places, John Hanson Mitchell strolls through Boston’s streets, chronicling the nonhuman inhabitants and surprisingly diverse plant life, as well as the eccentric characters he meets at various turns. Using his modern observations as a starting point, he tells the fascinating stories of the tribal leaders, naturalists, community activists, and organizations who worked to preserve nature in the city over generations, from the Victory Gardens of the Fenway to the expansive woods of Franklin Park.

But much of the history is in the land itself. As he battles traffic on notorious Route 128, Mitchell considers the ancient origins of the rocks that line the highway and those that form the city’s foundation. A walk across Boston Common calls to mind the Tremount Hills, flattened by seventeenth-century newcomers; only Beacon Hill remains. A stroll through the Back Bay allows Mitchell to imagine the Charles River, so polluted by sewage that it became a public nuisance and was partially covered over with a massive nineteenth-century landfill. With this natural history in mind, Mitchell explores both ancient and new green space from Chelsea to South Boston, including the greenway formed by the Big Dig.

Endlessly readable and full of personality, The Paradise of All These Parts offers Boston visitors and residents alike a whole new perspective on one of America’s oldest cities.”

Handbook of membrane separations : chemical, pharmaceutical, food, and biotechnological applications

By Anil Kumar Pabby

Boca Raton : CRC Press, c2009.

Call# TP248.25 .M46 H35 2009

From CRC Press:

Lichen biology 2nd ed.

Ed. by Thomas H. Nash III

Cambridge ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 2008.

Call# QK581 .L47 2008

From Cambridge University Press:
“Lichens are symbiotic organisms in which fungi and algae and/or cyanobacteria form an intimate biological union. This diverse group is found in almost all terrestrial habitats from the tropics to polar regions. In this second edition, four completely new chapters cover recent developments in the study of these fascinating organisms, including lichen genetics and sexual reproduction, stress physiology and symbiosis, and the carbon economy and environmental role of lichens. The whole text has been fully updated, with chapters covering anatomical, morphological and developmental aspects; the contribution of the unique secondary metabolites produced by lichens to medicine and the pharmaceutical industry; patterns of lichen photosynthesis and respiration in relation to different environmental conditions; the role of lichens in nitrogen fixation and mineral cycling; and the use of lichens as indicators of air pollution. This is a valuable reference for both students and researchers interested in lichenology.

• Contains new chapters on sexual reproduction; stress physiology and symbiosis; the carbon economy of lichens; and the environmental role of lichens

• Carefully selected team of chapter authors ensures authoritative and even coverage

• Comprehensive coverage (including anatomy, morphology, physiology, ecology, systematics), and fully updated throughout”