People live by ideas which help them to make sense of their experiences. Yet different people live by different ideas. Without an attempt to communicate and comprehend, they would at best be unable to share, at worst be obliged to fight. This book is concerned with communicating and comprehending. It takes the view that ideas matter and that a dialogue with alternative worldviews is a civilised exercise in tolerance.
Economic Thought and Political Theory, concentrates on the ideas of Plato, Steuart, Mill, Schumpeter, Hayek, Buchanan, the Catholic social economists and the...

Fuzzy logic is a recent revolutionary technology' which has brought together researchers from mathematics, engineering, computer science, cognitive and behavioral sciences, etc. The work in fuzzy technology at the Laboratory for International Fuzzy Engineering (LIFE) has been specifically applied to engineering problems. This book reflects the results of the work that has been undertaken at LIFE with chapters treating the following topical areas: Decision Support Systems, Intelligent Plant Operations Support, Fuzzy Modeling and Process Control, System Design, Image Understanding, Behavior...

Despite 50 years of antibiotics, infection remains a major source of both morbidity and mortality. Immunosuppression, either secondary to drugs in transplant recipients or secondary to HIV, has expanded the number of microorganisms that are known to be pathogenic in man.
Imaging of infection has a vital role both in the initial diagnosis and in the continuing management of patients with infection or suspected infection. Functional imaging using nuclear medicine techniques has a unique role to play in identifying sites of infection in a wide range of patients with varying clinical...

Diseases of the gastrointestinal tract are common. There is increasing appreciation of the importance of the immune system in the pathogenesis of a number of these diseases. This book covers basic aspects of innate and adaptive immunity in the gastrointestinal tract, oral tolerance, and cellular and molecular mechanisms of acute and chronic inflammation. Specific disease covered include bacterial infections, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection, coeliac disease, and inflammatory bowel disease. Other topics include mucosal immunisation and intestinal transplantation immunology.
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This book brings together physicians, scientists and those concerned with the production and use of anti-inflammatory drugs to discuss basic issues affecting all aspects of side-effects, including their detection and treatment.

The ongoing globalization of financial markets has increased the import ance to users of financial services, policy-makers and financial analysts of understanding the structure and operation of banking systems in other countries as well as that in their own country. This volume contributes to such an understanding. The structure and operation of the banking system are described for 10 important countries, plus the European Economic Community, under one cover. The contributing authors are knowledgable and widely respected experts. The author, or at least one of the coauthors, of each chapter...