Bursting

Neurons in the brain communicate with each other by transmitting sequences of electrical spikes or action potentials. One of the major challenges in neuroscience is to understand the basic physiological mechanisms underlying the complex spatiotemporal patterns of spiking activity observed during normal brain functioning, and to determine the origins of pathological dynamical states, such as epileptic seizures and Parkinsonian tremors. A second major challenge is to understand how the patterns of spiking activity provide a substrate for the encoding and transmission of information, that is, how do neurons compute with spikes? It is likely that an important element of both the dynamical and computational properties of neurons is that they can exhibit bursting, which is a relatively slow rhythmic alternation between an active phase of rapid spiking and a quiescent phase without spiking. This book provides a detailed overview of the current state-of-the-art in the mathematical and computational modelling of bursting, with contributions from many of the leading researchers in the field.

In Bursting Bubbles, Robert Walters takes us on a journey to visit Champagne's great growers. Along the way, he reveals a secret history of Champagne and dispels many of the myths that still persist about this celebrated wine style. Controversial and ground breaking, Bursting Bubbles will change the way you think about Champagne.

He was known around the world as the "Bubble Boy". Now told for the first time by the person who was his caretaker and confidant, Bursting the Bubble is the heart-rending story of the life and death of David Vetter. Due to the scientific zeal of doctors and religious authorities, and the compliance of his trusting family, he lived his life in a sterile chamber bereft of human touch from birth until a few days before his death at age 12 and a half. Mary Ada Murphy, Ph.D., was a child psychologist on staff at St. Luke's-Texas Children's Hospital throughout David Vetter's life and became his closest friend and confidant. She was with him when he died. She received the Hadassah Myrtle Wreath Award in 1985 in recognition of her outstanding achievement in the psychological support of David Vetter and his family. Raymond J. Lawrence, whom Murphy entrusted with the Bursting the Bubble manuscript and writes an introduction to it, was the hospital chaplain in place during David's early years, and who convened the only formal ethics consultation on the Vetter case.

Advances in trenchless pipe rehabilitation have been leaping forward in giant steps for the past twenty years. Because of its economical and technical efficiency, the pipe bursting method arouses great interest. This book introduces the technology of pipe rehabilitation by means of the pipe bursting method, provides extensive examples from practice and assists network owners, consulting engineers, planners and users in their every-day practice of specifying, tendering and performing pipe bursting projects.

In 1650, Archbishop James Ussher of Armagh joined the long-running theological debate on the age of the earth by famously announcing that creation had occurred on October 23, 4004 B.C. Although widely challenged during the Enlightenment, this belief in a six-thousand-year-old planet was only laid to rest during a revolution of discovery in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In this relatively brief period, geologists reconstructed the immensely long history of the earth-and the relatively recent arrival of human life. Highlighting a discovery that radically altered existing perceptions of a human's place in the universe as much as the theories of Copernicus, Darwin, and Freud did, Bursting the Limits of Time is a herculean effort by one of the world's foremost experts on the history of geology and paleontology to sketch this historicization of the natural world in the age of revolution. Addressing this intellectual revolution for the first time, Rudwick examines the ideas and practices of earth scientists throughout the Western world to show how the story of what we now call "deep time" was pieced together. He explores who was responsible for the discovery of the earth's history, refutes the concept of a rift between science and religion in dating the earth, and details how the study of the history of the earth helped define a new branch of science called geology. Rooting his analysis in a detailed study of primary sources, Rudwick emphasizes the lasting importance of field- and museum-based research of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Bursting the Limits of Time, the culmination of more than three decades of research, is the first detailed account of this monumental phase in the history of science.

The presence of speculative bubbles in capital markets (an important area of interest in financial history) is widely accepted across many circles. Talk of them is pervasive in the media and especially in the popular financial press. Bubbles are thought to be found primarily in the stock market, which is our main interest, although bubbles are said to occur in other markets. Bubbles go hand in hand with the notion that markets can be irrational. The academic community has a great interest in bubbles, and it has produced scholarly literature that is voluminous. For some economists, doing bubble research is like joining the vanguard of a Kuhnian paradigm shift in economic thinking. Not so fast. If bubbles did exist, they would pose a serious challenge to neoclassical finance. Bubbles would contradict the ideas that markets are rational or work in an informationally efficient manner. That’s what makes the topic of bubbles interesting. This book reviews and evaluates the academic literature as well as some popular investment books on the possible existence of speculative bubbles in the stock market. The main question is whether there is convincing empirical evidence that bubbles exist. A second question is whether the theoretical concepts that have been advanced for bubbles make them plausible. The reader will discover that I am skeptical that bubbles actually exist. But I do not think I or anyone else will ever be able to conclusively prove that there has never been a bubble. From studying the literature and from reading history, I find that many famous purported bubbles reflect inaccurate history or mistakes in analysis or simply cannot be shown to have existed. In other instances, bubbles might have existed. But in each of those cases, there are credible rational explanations. And good evidence exists for the idea that even if bubbles do exist, they are not of great importance to understanding the stock market.

'A brilliant and appealing book. The story it tells is fascinating and compelling, leaving me thirsty to try some of the wines that are its subject' - Tim James, Wine Mag Once upon a time, the region of Champagne produced only still wines - wines that were not meant to sparkle. If a Champagne had bubbles in it, it was faulty, undrinkable, an abomination. How did Champagne go from vin du diable ('devil's wine') to Veuve Clicquot? And how did the rise of a group of artisanal producers in Champagne over the last twenty years challenge everything we thought we knew about this famous wine and region? In Champagne: A secret history, Robert Walters takes us on a journey to visit these great growers. Along the way, he reveals the clandestine history of the region and dispels many of the myths that persist about the world's most celebrated wine style. Controversial and ground-breaking, this book will change the way you think about Champagne.

When phagocytes are exposed to a number of different stimuli, they undergo dra matic changes in the way they process oxygen. Oxygen uptake increases markedly, frequently more than 50-fold; the phagocytes begin to produce large quantities of superoxide and hydrogen peroxide; and they immediately begin to metabolize large amounts of glucose by way of the hexose monophosphate shunt. This series of changes has become known as the respiratory burst. It was first believed that the major function of this respiratory burst was to generate powerful antibacterial agents by the partial reduction of oxygen. It is becoming apparent that the respiratory burst has much wider application, and its physiological function in many different biolog ical areas is clear. In this volume, we have attempted to bring together the work of experts who have published extensively on the involvement of the respiratory burst in different physiological functions. In the first three chapters, Dr. Borregaard and Dr. Berton and co-workers and Dr. Roos and co-workers bring together what is known about the respiratory burst. They present up-to-date versions of the biochemical and metabolic activities associ ated with the burst. In Chapter 4, Dr. Styrt and Dr. Klempner discuss the respiratory burst as it affects cellular ion homeostasis. Dr. Cohen and Dr. Britigan (Chapter 5) present some interesting data on the competition between the respiratory burst and bacteria for oxygen. Dr. Dobrina and Dr.

Explains the relationship of electrophysiology, nonlinear dynamics, and the computational properties of neurons, with each concept presented in terms of both neuroscience and mathematics and illustrated using geometrical intuition. In order to model neuronal behavior or to interpret the results of modeling studies, neuroscientists must call upon methods of nonlinear dynamics. This book offers an introduction to nonlinear dynamical systems theory for researchers and graduate students in neuroscience. It also provides an overview of neuroscience for mathematicians who want to learn the basic facts of electrophysiology. Dynamical Systems in Neuroscience presents a systematic study of the relationship of electrophysiology, nonlinear dynamics, and computational properties of neurons. It emphasizes that information processing in the brain depends not only on the electrophysiological properties of neurons but also on their dynamical properties. The book introduces dynamical systems, starting with one- and two-dimensional Hodgkin-Huxley-type models and continuing to a description of bursting systems. Each chapter proceeds from the simple to the complex, and provides sample problems at the end. The book explains all necessary mathematical concepts using geometrical intuition; it includes many figures and few equations, making it especially suitable for non-mathematicians. Each concept is presented in terms of both neuroscience and mathematics, providing a link between the two disciplines. Nonlinear dynamical systems theory is at the core of computational neuroscience research, but it is not a standard part of the graduate neuroscience curriculum—or taught by math or physics department in a way that is suitable for students of biology. This book offers neuroscience students and researchers a comprehensive account of concepts and methods increasingly used in computational neuroscience. An additional chapter on synchronization, with more advanced material, can be found at the author's website, www.izhikevich.com.