It seems particularly appropriate that this pioneering collection of papers should be dedicated to Donald Sholl since those of us who count, measure, and reconstruct elements of the neural en~emble are all very much in his debt.

The third international symposium on Critical Care and Pulmonary Medicine was held in Norwalk Hospital, Yale University School of Medicine in June 1981. This publication contains the majority of papers that were presented at the three day conference. The book deals with the use of computers in: (1) monitoring (2) pulmonary laboratory (3) anesthesia (4) database management. Extraordinary progress in the use of computers in critical care medicine and pulmonary function testing is evident in the presen tations. I would like to thank the members of the Steering Committee and the International...

In studying physiological systems bioscientists are continually faced with the problem of providing descriptions of cause-effect relationships. This task is usually carried out through the performance of stimulus-response experiments. In the past, the design of such experiments has been ad hoc, incomplete, and certainly inefficient. Worse yet, bioscientists have failed to take advantage of advances in fields directly related to their problems (specifically, advances in the area of systems analysis). The raison d'etre of this book is to rectify this deficiency by providing the physiologist...

In May 1979 the first international symposium on Computers in Critical Care and Pulmonary Medicine was held at Norwalk Hospital-Yale University School of Medicine. Scientists from eigh- teen different countries participated in the program which illus- trated the importance of computer applications in critical care and respiratory physiology. This book presents the proceedings of the symposium. would I like to thank Miss Nancy Smith for her untiring efforts and excellent work in typing the manuscripts. Mr. Gary Jacobson and Mr. Thomas Haller have been invaluable in the computerized preparation...

This first volume is but an introduction to the growing use of computer-based systems in health-science education. It is unlikely that the intellectual or applied system constructs herein are either exhaustive of the field or immutable; growth is inevitable. For one thing, the field is still fractured and loosely organized, which is an inevitable description of an adolescent science in a rich mine of ideas. There is emerging, however, an organizing concept. A short look into the future indicates that educational system design will be dominated by a concept which, for want of a better term, we...