What this Book is About

Personal evolution, rather them change, might be a better term to describe what this book is about. Nevertheless, to the extent that you do believe or feel different things, you will have changed as a person - and hopefully in the direction of growth rather than regression. 

At the same time that I was observing the effects of these drugs on people that I knew, I was investigating the neuropharmacological basis of sleep, especially REM sleep dreaming, and it occurred to me early on that there must be some common ground between these two areas of work. And that common ground is what this book is about. 

That s a lot of what this book is about, but before I can ask the reader to accept such radical premises, I must first create a foundation for how it might be made plausible for sober consideration. The following hypotheses, based upon empirical experience, provide a starting point for the discussion which follows. 

Oftentimes the short highways can be travelled on auto pilot, and carriage return becomes the most important, if not the only, key on the computer. Referring to the decimal value of the carriage return key in the ASCII character set, we could call this the Highway 13—and that is not what this book is about. This book is about the outdoor adventure of roaming the rough roads of refinement, those perilous paths of... 

It is important at the start to have a clear conception of what this book is about I don t want to raise false hopes or expectations. The science of heterogeneous catalysis is now so extensive that one person can only hope to write about a small part of it. I have tried to select a part of the field with which I am familiar, and which while significant in size is reasonably self-contained. Metal-catalysed reactions of hydrocarbons have been, and still are, central to my scientific work they have provided a lifetime s interest. Age cannot wither nor custom stale their infinite variety. 

Documentary Storytelling. That s what this book is about. It s about the story, how to convey that story eloquendy, effectively, and ethically. This book is absolutely brilliant... packed full of interviews with award-winning documentary filmmakers offering up information, advice, and wisdom you ll find interesting and useful."... 

This is what this book is about, using a structured, methodical approach to job hazard analysis (JHA) in lieu of just focusing on individual programs. 

It is the role, and the privilege, of a scientist to study Nature and to seek to unlock her secrets. To unlock these secrets, a certain process is customarily taken. Normally, the scientific process starts with observations the scientist observes some part of the natural world and attempts to find patterns in the behaviors observed. These patterns, when they are uncovered out of what may otherwise be a quite complicated set of events, are then called the laws of behavior for the particular part of nature that has been scrutinized. But the process does not stop there. Scientists are not content merely to observe nature and catalog her patterns—they seek explanations for the patterns. The possible explanations that scientists propose take the form of hypotheses and theories— models —about how things work behind the scenes of outside appearance. This book is about one such type of model and how it can be used to understand the patterns of chemistry. 

This book is about neurotransmitters, the substances released from neurons to act on neurons. It covers what they do, how they do it and how their activity is involved in brain function and affected by drugs and disease. 

This book is about quality in the analytical chemistry laboratory, but what do we mean by quality It is easier to understand when dealing with various products, e.g. cars or clothes. All successful manufacturers have to produce goods that they can sell. Car manufacturers will have a range of products to suit their customers needs. They will all be made to a high standard so that they comply with legislation however, they will be aimed at people with different needs. You can compare this with an analytical laboratory. Analytical chemists produce results that are passed on to someone else (the customer) who will use them to solve a problem. The laboratory is providing a service. 

Finally, a warning about what this book is not my collection of papers is not a textbook or a monograph on cationoid polymerisations. My contributions to that subject, though... 

As far as I know, this alteration in my consciousness happened spontaneously. And I have no idea, even in retrospect, what if anything in my recent experience stimulated or was—even symbolically—represented by it. All I know is that any time I begin to write about dreams, my awareness of them increases. Because this book is about the psychedelic potential of dreams, it is certainly possible that my brain-mind is primed to produce exotic imagery. But I did not prime it explicitly as I do sometimes when I want to have a specific kind of exotic dream or become lucid and enjoy watching a dream unfold with half of my brain-mind dissociated from REM and bumped up into waking consciousness. 

Its intrinsic worth proved, however, to be its very limitation. It was quickly apparent that the principal value, to behavioral researchers, of the reports of new hallucinogenic drugs, was not in the nature of their action but in the amount of stuff needed to produce that action. This was an essential axis against which the animal pharmacologist could plot his findings. A number was wanted, and the mescaline unit was just that number. Sadly, the major question that is asked by most academic researchers in their evaluation of the psychedelic materials is, How much does it take, rather than What does it do. The marvelous nuances of action, the subtle variations of effect, are dismissed as being hopelessly subjective and thus without scientific worth. But they are, I believe, of great worth. That is exactly what this book is all about. 

This book is about materials in fibrous form, precisely what the title says. Perhaps the only thing that needs to be emphasized is that the materials aspects of fibers are highlighted. The main focus is on the triad of processing, microstructure, and properties of materials in a fibrous form. I have kept the mathematics to the bare minimum necessary. More emphasis is placed on physical and chemical insights. Although all kinds of fibers are touched upon, there is a distinct tilt toward synthetic, nonapparel-type fibers. This is understandable inasmuch as the second half of the twentieth century has seen tremendous research and development activity in this area of high performance fibers, mainly for use as a reinforcement in a variety of matrix materials. 

To appreciate the dangers and the risks from chemicals of aU kinds it is necessary to understand how, when and why they are toxic. This falls within the field of toxicology and is what this book is aU about. 

It could be so different if we were more enlightened. Why do we fall so short of our possibilities What is the nature of our fallen state. The next part of this book is about the reasons we are entranced instead of enlightened. 

Through self-examination I realized that while the conceptual content of what she said was fine, indeed noble, the emotional tone of her talk was angry and aggressive, and aroused an automatic emotional opposition. Conditioned emotional reactions were aroused in spite of intellectual acceptance. She illustrated, unfortunately. His Holiness s main point. If you don t have peace within yourself, your attempts to create peace in the outer world can backfire, and may create even more hostility than if you hadn t done anything. This book is about the unconscious aspects of our selves that destroy our chances for real peace. 

This book is about schemas, but it is more than that. It is also about how we can use what we know of schemas to improve people s learning, how schemas can direct the assessment of learning, how understanding schemas can lead to better understanding of memory, and how we can use this understanding to create more satisfactory models of learning and performance. These endeavors have both theoretical and practical consequences. 

This book is about the physical chemistry of biological macromolecules and how we can study it. The approach here is unashamedly experimental this is the way science actually works, and in any case we do not yet have the rigorous theoretical understanding perhaps found in more mature areas of chemistry. This is what makes it a fun topic, and why it poses fascinating challenges for both theoretical and experimental scientists. 

Perhaps I should say what this book is not about. It does not contain the standard number-crunching problems found in scientific texts—most often these do not stimulate creativity, nor do they have artistic appeal. Also, the problems and topics in this book are not of a linear variety, where variables are fed into an equation and a succinct answer is returned. In fact, many of the exercises are of the stop-and-think variety and can be explored without using a computer. 

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