Lasers with a gaseous active medium offer high flexibility, wide tunability, and advantages in cost, beam quality, and power scalability. Gas lasers have tended to become overshadowed by the recent popularity and proliferation of semiconductor lasers. As a result of this shift in focus, details on modern developments in gas lasers are difficult to find. In addition, different types of gas lasers have unique properties that are not well-described in other references. Collecting expert contributions from authorities dealing with specific types of lasers, Gas Lasers examines the fundamentals, current research, and applications of this important class of laser...

The cosmic microwave background (CMB) is the radiation left over from the Big Bang. Recent analysis of the fluctuations in this radiation has given us valuable insights into our Universe and its parameters. Examining the theory of CMB and recent developments, this textbook starts with a brief introduction to modern cosmology and its main successes, followed by a thorough derivation of cosmological perturbation theory. It then explores the generation of initial fluctuations by inflation....

Covering investigative and surgical procedures, Atlas of Gynecologic Oncology provides a full description and illustration of the majority of procedures in the repertoire of a gynecological oncologist. International opinion leaders contribute their expertise on a range of topics, including tumor markers, pain management, cross-sectional imaging, treatment of vascular defects and many other areas of interest.

This revised and updated atlas provides a comprehensive guide to modern contraceptive practice, and is filled with full-color photographs, illustrations, and line drawings that guide the reader through the various contraceptive options available...

Food and diet are central to understanding daily life in the middle ages. In the last two decades, the potential for the study of diet in medieval England has changed markedly: historians have addressed sources in new ways; material from a wide range of sites has been processed by zooarchaeologists and archaeobotanists; and scientific techniques, newly applied to the medieval period, are opening up possibilities for understanding the cumulative effects of diet on the skeleton. In a multi-disciplinary approach to the subject, this volume, written by leading experts in different fields, unites analysis of the historical, archaeological, and scientific record to provide an up-to-date synthesis...

On the court and on the field, they are the world’s winners, exhibiting a natural grace and prowess their adoring fans can only dream about. Yet so often, when off the field, our sports heroes lose: their perspective, their balance, their place. In a work as timely as the latest fracas on the basketball court or the most recent drug-induced scandal in the dugout, Stanley H. Teitelbaum looks into the circumstances behind so many star athletes’ precipitous fall from grace...

Post-modernism offers a revolutionary approach to the study of society: in questioning the validity of modern science and the notion of objective knowledge, this movement discards history, rejects humanism, and resists any truth claims. In this comprehensive assessment of post-modernism, Pauline Rosenau traces its origins in the humanities and describes how its key concepts are today being applied to, and are restructuring, the social sciences. Serving as neither an opponent nor an apologist for the movement, she cuts through post-modernism's often incomprehensible jargon in order to offer all readers a lucid exposition of its propositions. Rosenau shows how the post-modern challenge to reason and rational organization radiates across academic fields. For example, in psychology it questions...

Newly updated study surveys the concept of space from the standpoint of historical development, including space in antiquity, Judeo-Christian ideas about space, Newton’s concept of absolute space, space from 18th century to the present. Extensive new chapter reviews changes in philosophy of space since publication of second edition (1969). Numerous original quotations and bibliographical references. "...admirably compact and swiftly paced style."—Philosophy of Science. Foreword by Albert Einstein. Bibliography.

This was one of the first World of Darkness books for general use, instead of a specific game line, though it is also intended for mortal games. It has an introduction that expands on using ghosts from the Rulebook, and five stories intended both for use and for showcasing how to create ghost stories for the World of Darkness...

Dr. Ralph Moss is a beacon of knowledge in the controversial and contradictory world of alternative medicine. This book spells out a blueprint for appropriate supplement use in patients undergoing cancer treatment. Learn how antioxidants reduce the side-effects of chemotherapy and may even make it more effective.

In the early morning of June 30, 1908, a fireball flew across the Siberian sky and exploded in a 15 megaton blast that flattened 2,150 acres of Siberian forest. In the years that followed, scientists correlated atmospheric pressure readings, reports of unusually bright sunsets and "night glows" in the skies over northern Europe, recordings of seismic waves, and eyewitness accounts, concluding that the cause was probably a stony asteroid that entered the earth's atmosphere and broke up explosively 8 kilometers above the Earth at 7:14 am local time...

He was born in New York City, and he died in New York City. But Tito Puente would live his life as a Puerto Rican who would become one of the greatest Hispanic-American musicians of the 20th century. During the 1940s and 1950s, American music experienced some of its most significant changes. The separate worlds of jazz, swing, and Latin music came together to take on new forms and styles, resulting in a music that created a beat and syncopation that brought countless thousands of frenetic fans to the dance floors and night clubs of the Big Apple...

The aim of the State of the Universe annuals is to provide an annual astronomy review suitable for the popular science level reader to be published every September in a format that will be suitable for, and appeal to, the Christmas market. The book will cover all major astronomical news on topics beyond the Solar System and place them in the context of the longer term goals of astronomers and astrophysicists around the world. The aim is to capture the excitement and vibrancy of modern astronomical research. This section also includes web links for all major...

Playing and writing rock and metal songs go hand-in-hand. Troy and Shauna unveil the technique you will need to let yourself create ideas and then organize them into useable material for songs (both music and lyrics). They also give you actual songs fully transcribed (all included on the accompanying audio) complete with descriptions of the creative process they used to create each one!...

This book aims to familiarize the reader with the essential properties of the chaotic dynamics of Hamiltonian systems by avoiding specialized mathematical tools, thus making it easily accessible to a broader audience of researchers and students. Unique material on the most intriguing and fascinating topics of unsolved and current problems in contemporary chaos theory is presented...