When NASA detects huge asteroids hurtling toward Earth, the President of the United States announces his plan to deploy nuclear warheads from the space shuttle to destroy them. As the West Coast evacuates, General Jack Harrison, a man haunted by nightmares from a long ago war, is chosen to implement a controversial and top-secret backup plan should the shuttle mission fail.Against a clock that seems to be ticking far too fast, Jack, two long-time comrades, and a disparate group of men and women little different from any of us feverishly work to turn a Cold War museum into an operational...

The heart-cry of every child without parents-a cry to be loved and to belong-told through the story of one boy named Jacob.
For over two decades, Gary Stephens, his wife Helen, and their four biological children lived in Hong Kong. There they worked with Vietnamese refugees, then founded several homes for orphans and assisted with local and international adoptions. Later, their work spilled into mainland China, when they learned of baby girls being abandoned in alarming numbers, innocent victims of the one-child policy. Gary and Helen acted, helping to found an orphanage in a...

This book brings together leading international experts to discuss recent advances in the regulation of presynaptic voltage-gated Ca2+ channels (VGCCs), key signal transducers that represent one of the most widely modulated proteins in the body. It is now commonly accepted that presence of the VGCC complex defines an excitable cell. At a basic level, VGCCs transduce membrane potential change to chemical neurotransmitter release at presynaptic terminals. However, on-going scientific research, presented here, in areas including neuroscience, electrophysiology, pharmacology, biochemistry and,...

This book presents recent advances in knowledge of the regulation of presynaptic Ca2+ channels. These represent one of the most widely modulated proteins in the body, target of a range of effector pathways and drugs; this range will be fully represented here.