Hardly anything in psychology is as irking as the trait concept. Psychologists and laypersons alike use primarily adjective trait-names to characterize and even concep tualize the individuals they encounter. There are more than a hundred well-defined personality traits and a great many questionnaires for their assessment, some of which are designed to assess the same or very similar traits. Little is known about their ontogenetic development and even less about their underlying dynamics. Psy choanalytic theory was invoked for explaining the psychodynamics underlying a few personality traits...

Copper has long been known as essential to living systems, in part through its fundamental role in electron transport and respiration. Over the years into the present, its involvement in an ever increasing number of processes in all kinds of organisms has become apparent, and new and exciting vistas of its roles in such areas as the central nervous system, and in humoral functions, are appearing on the horizon. Although the biochemistry of this element has not been studied nearly as much as that of many others, a for- midable amount of work has been carried out. It has thus been a challenge...

This volume is based on a FEMS Symposium entitled "Bacterial Growth and Lysis: Metabolism and Structure of the Bacterial Sacculus" held at the Monastery of Lluc (Mallorca, Spain) on 5-10 April, 1992. The goals of the symposium were to assess the present state of knowledge on the structure and physiology of the bacterial murein sacculus, and to develop new hypotheses and strategies to promote further development of the field. Consequently, the contributions compiled in this volume include broadly different approaches, from the introduction of new analytical methods to the presentation of...

Basic Concepts in Information Theory and Coding is an outgrowth of a one semester introductory course that has been taught at the University of Southern California since the mid-1960s. Lecture notes from that course have evolved in response to student reaction, new technological and theoretical develop ments, and the insights of faculty members who have taught the course (in cluding the three of us). In presenting this material, we have made it accessible to a broad audience by limiting prerequisites to basic calculus and the ele mentary concepts of discrete probability theory. To keep the...

Biochemistry of Scandium and Yttrium gathers together existing knowledge about scandium and yttrium from a wide variety of disciplines. Part 1 will present a comparative study of the physical and chemical properties of scandium and yttrium, looking at both their similarities and their differences. (Part 2 will address the biochemical aspects of these two elements, and the various medical and environmental applications.) While these elements are relatively rare in nature, these books will show that they have unusual physical and chemical properties, and a disproportionate...

Seeing is life. Seeing is transfonning luminous col- We wish to extend our academic and theoretical ored stimulations and shapes into amental represen- knowledge and also to complete and exchange our tation, structured in space and in time. But seeing is technical and professional experience to prepare also opening onto the world that surrounds us: it is corrective means for the future. thus a means for communicating and learning. Numerous questions have yet to be answered, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, a philosopher worth such as: quoting during the bicentennial of the French Revo- lution of which...

A detailed evaluation of the similarities and differences in the theoretical and experimental approaches implemented in the studies of the three types of systems. The papers from the September 1989 Workshop are presented within three sections addressing structure and geometry, models for stability a

In recent years many exciting research results have indicated that selen- ium, depending on its concentration, can influence mammalian metabo- lism. It has been estimated that in selenium-deficient areas, selenium or selenium-vitamin E combinations added to animal feed can prevent an- nuallosses to beef and dairy cattle and sheep valued at 545 million dollars and poultry and swine losses valued at 82 million dollars. Some animal diseases that can be prevented by a selenium-supple- mented diet include liver necrosis, nutritional muscular dystrophy, exu- dative diathesis, pancreatic...