springer springer jul 1990 (200 risultati)

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware - General Practice is undergoing the most major series of changes since the introduction of the National Health Service in 1948. They concern both concepts of care and practical details of the way care is delivered. In spite of the hostility generated by the changes most of the broad general concepts have been accepted. The principle of patients having more choice is widely sup ported, the inclusion of preventive medicine and antici patory care in the responsibilities of practice has few opponents, the introduction of audit as a way of im proving performance has been generally welcomed. Even the idea of putting GPs in better financial management of patients and drug budgets has had supporters in prin ciple. The antipathy has generally related to the method of introduction of these changes. One important con cern has been the time requirements of the New Con tract and the feeling that these will erode the real nature of our work: the close personal relationship with pa tients. If we improve the quality of our management this is less likely to happen. We shall be able to work within the New Contract and retain the quality of service we pro vide. If we improve the understanding of our staff of what we are trying to achieve we are more likely to reach the targets that we set whilst keeping people happy. vii This book sets out to explain the New Contract.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware - Presents a discrete in time-space universal map of relative dynamics that is used to unfold an extensive catalogue of dynamic events not previously discussed in mathematical or social science literature. With emphasis on the chaotic dynamics that may ensue, the book describes the evolution on the basis of temporal and locational advantages. It explains nonlinear discrete time dynamic maps primarily through numerical simulations. These very rich qualitative dynamics are linked to evolution processes in socio-spatial systems. Important features include: The analytical properties of the one-stock, two- and three-location map; the numerical results from the one- and two-stock, two- and three-location dynamics; and the demonstration of the map's potential applicability in the social sciences through simulating population dynamics of the U.S. Regions over a two-century period. In addition, this book includes new findings: the Hopf equivalent discrete time dynamics bifurcation; the Feigenbaum slope-sequences; the presence of strange local attractors and containers; switching of extreme states; the presence of different types of turbulence; local and global turbulence. Intended for researchers and advanced graduate students in applied mathematics and an interest in dynamics and chaos. Mathematical social scientists in many other fields will also find this book useful.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware - The assessment of outcomes of medical interventions is a central concern of patients, physicians, nurses, and of individuals, groups and government agencies who pay for medical care. Outcome assessments are incomplete without measurements of functional status. Functional Status Measurement in Primary Care provides an indepth discussion of psychometric issues as applied to functional status assessment and details the practical experience of Family Physicians/General Practitioners in several countries with functional status measurements in their patient populations. International experience with the use of the Darthmouth COOP Charts is described along with their practical application in the daily practice of physicians and nurses of ambulatory patients.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware - Cache And Interconnect Architectures In Multiprocessors Eilat, Israel May 25-261989 Michel Dubois UniversityofSouthernCalifornia Shreekant S. Thakkar SequentComputerSystems The aim of the workshop was to bring together researchers working on cache coherence protocols for shared-memory multiprocessors with various interconnect architectures. Shared-memory multiprocessors have become viable systems for many applications. Bus based shared-memory systems (Eg. Sequent's Symmetry, Encore's Multimax) are currently limited to 32 processors. The fIrst goal of the workshop was to learn about the performance ofapplications on current cache-based systems. The second goal was to learn about new network architectures and protocols for future scalable systems. These protocols and interconnects would allow shared-memory architectures to scale beyond current imitations. The workshop had 20 speakers who talked about their current research. The discussions were lively and cordial enough to keep the participants away from the wonderful sand and sun for two days. The participants got to know each other well and were able to share their thoughts in an informal manner. The workshop was organized into several sessions. The summary of each session is described below. This book presents revisions of some of the papers presented at the workshop.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware - The science associated with the development of artificial sen sory systems is occupied primarily with determining how information about the world can be extracted from sensory data. For example, computational vision is, for the most part, concerned with the de velopment of algorithms for distilling information about the world and recognition of various objects in the environ (e. g. localization ment) from visual images (e. g. photographs or video frames). There are often a multitude of ways in which a specific piece of informa tion about the world can be obtained from sensory data. A subarea of research into sensory systems has arisen which is concerned with methods for combining these various information sources. This field is known as data fusion, or sensor fusion. The literature on data fusion is extensive, indicating the intense interest in this topic, but is quite chaotic. There are no accepted approaches, save for a few special cases, and many of the best methods are ad hoc. This book represents our attempt at providing a mathematical foundation upon which data fusion algorithms can be constructed and analyzed. The methodology that we present in this text is mo tivated by a strong belief in the importance of constraints in sensory information processing systems. In our view, data fusion is best un derstood as the embedding of multiple constraints on the solution to a sensory information processing problem into the solution pro cess.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware - by Michael G. Dyer Natural language processing (NLP) is an area of research within Artificial Intelligence (AI) concerned with the comprehension and generation of natural language text. Comprehension involves the dynamic construction of conceptual representations, linked by causal relationships and organized/indexed for subsequent retrieval. Once these conceptual representations have been created, comprehension can be tested by means of such tasks as paraphrasing, question answering, and summarization. Higher-level cognitive tasks are also modeled within the NLP paradigm and include: translation, acquisition of word meanings and concepts through reading, analysis of goals and plans in multi-agent environments (e. g. , coalition and counterplanning behavior by narrative characters), invention of novel stories, recognition of abstract themes (such as irony and hypocrisy), extraction of the moral or point of a story, and justification/refutation of beliefs through argumentation. The robustness of conceptually-based text comprehension systems is directly related to the nature and scope of the knowledge constructs applied during conceptual analysis of the text. Until recently, conceptually-based natural language systems were developed for, and applied to, the task of narrative comprehension (Dyer, 1983a; Schank and Abelson, 1977; Wilensky, 1983). These systems worked by recognizing the goals and plans of narrative characters, and. using this knowledge to build a conceptual representation of the narrative, xx UNDERSTANDING EDITORIAL TEXT including actions and intentions which must be inferred to complete the representation. A large portion of text appearing in newspapers and magazines, however, is editorial in nature.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware - This series of books, devoted to aspects of blood cell biochemistry, development, immu nology, and ultrastructure, has evolved and separated from the long-established Plenum series Subcellular Biochemistry. It is the intention of these volumes to draw together related areas of investigation and to provide, in the fullness of time, complete coverage of this rapidly advancing important biomedical discipline. Both fundamental and medically applied topics, dealing with normal and pathological cells, will be included. This, the first volume of the series, contains a diverse collection of chapters, all of which relate to erythroid cells. The range of material included is extremely broad and the authors have used contrasting technical approaches, both within their personal experimen tal studies and within their manuscripts. This has led to the production of a very interest ing compilation, which does, nevertheless, possess a strong overall thematic unity. As with all edited volumes, some topics of importance and interest are not included. This may be because of oversight on my part, as editor, or because the authors originally selected failed to submit their manuscript by the agreed-upon submission date. For these omissions I take full responsibility and trust that at least some of the topics omitted, for instance membrane cation transport systems, will be covered within a future volume of the series. This book commences with two chapters of a developmental nature.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware - For a period of some fifteen years following completion of my internship training in clinical psychology (1950-1951) at the Washington University School of Medicine and my concurrent successful navigation through that school's neuroanatomy course, clinical work in neuropsychology for me and the psychologists of my generation consisted almost exclusively of trying to help our physician colleagues differentiate patients with neurologic from those with psychiatric disorders. In time, experience led all of us from the several disciplines involved in this enterprise to the conclusion that the crude diag nostic techniques available to us circa 1945-1965 had garnered us little valid information upon which to base such complex, differential diagnostic decisions. It now is gratifying to look back and review the remarkable progress that has occurred in the field of clinical neuropsychology in the four decades since I was a graduate student. In the late 1940s such pioneers as Ward Halstead, Alexander Luria, George Yacorzynski, Hans-Lukas Teuber, and Arthur Benton already were involved in clinical studies that, by the late 1960s, would markedly have improved the quality of clinical practice. However, the only psychological tests that the clinical psychologist of my immediate post-Second World War generation had as aids for the diagnosis of neurologically based conditions involving cognitive deficit were such old standbys as the Wechsler Bellevue, Rorschach, Draw A Person, Bender Gestalt, and Graham Kendall Memory for Designs Test.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware - General Articles.- Effects of invertebrate predation on the seasonal succession of a zooplankton community: a two year study in Lake Aydat, France.- Invertebrate zooplankton predator composition and diversity in tropical lentic waters.- A comparison between predation effects on zooplankton communities by Neomysis and Chaoborus.- Cyclomorphosis in Daphnia: an adaptation to avoid invertebrate predation.- Progress towards characterization of a predator/prey kairomone: Daphnia pulex and Chaoborus americanus.- Flatworms.- Typhloplanid flatworms (Mesostoma and related genera): Mechanisms of predation and evidence that they structure aquatic invertebrate communities.- A laboratory study of the feeding of Mesostoma lingua (Schmidt) (Turbellaria: Neorhabdocoela) on Daphnia magna Straus at four different temperatures.- Predation on and by pelagic Turbellaria in some lakes in Brazil.- Laboratory observations on the vertical distribution of a tropical pelagic flatworm (Mesostoma sp.) in relation to satiation.- Branchiopoda.- The feeding behaviour of Leptodora kindti and its impact on the zooplankton community of Neusiedler See (Austria).- On predatory tendencies in the feeding ecology of the fairy shrimp Streptocephalus proboscideus (Frauenfeld, 1873) (Crustacea: Anostraca).- Copepods.- Estimating predation risk in zooplankton communities: the importance of vertical overlap.- An analysis of prey selection by Mesocyclops edax.- Predation on Ceriodaphnia cornuta and Brachionus calyciflorus by two Mesocyclops species coexisting in Barra Bonita reservoir (SP, Brazil).- Some aspects of vulnerability to cyclopoid predation of zooplankton prey individuals.- Spatial overlap of a predatory copepod, Acanthocyclops robustus, and its prey in a shallow eutrophic lake.- Coexistence of the predatory cyclopoids Acanthocyclops robustus (Sars) and Mesocyclops leuckarti (Claus) in a small eutrophic lake.- Chaoborus.- Creating conditions for changes in prey community structure by Chaoborus spp. in a lake in Sweden.- Chaoborus predation and zooplankton community structure in a rotifer-dominated lake.- Water Mites.- Can water mites control populations of planktonic Cladocera .- Epilogue.- Summary of final round-table discussion on current issues in research on freshwater invertebrate predation.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware - In view of the massive change in the area of distribution of many world biota across classical biogeographical realms, and of the drastic restructuring of the biotic components of numerous ecosystems, the Scientific Committee on Problems of the Environment (SCOPE) decided at its general Assembly in Ottawa, Canada, in 1982 to launch a project on the 'Ecology of Biological Invasions'. Several regional meetings were subsequently organized within the framework of SCOPE, in order to single out the peculiarities of the invasions that took place in each region, the behaviour of their invasive species and the invasibility of their ecosystems. Most noteworthy among such workshops were one in Australia in August 1984, one concerning North America and Hawaii in October 1984, and one dealing with southern Africa in November 1985. A leitmotiv of these workshops was that most of the invasive species to those regions were emanating from Europe and the Mediterranean Basin, inadvertently or intentionally introduced by man. It was therefore considered as a timely endeavour to organize the next regional meeting in relation to this region. The workshop on 'Biological Invasions in Europe and the Mediterranean Basin' was held in Montpellier, France, 21 to 23 May 1986, thanks to the financial support of SCOPE and of the A.W. Mellon Foundation, and the logistic facilities of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (C.N .R.S.).

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -The central theme of this volume is commutative algebra, with emphasis on special graded algebras, which are increasingly of interest in problems of algebraic geometry, combinatorics and computer algebra. Most of the papers have partly survey character, but are research-oriented, aiming at classification and structural results. 168 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -These are notes of lectures on Nevanlinna theory, in the classical case of meromorphic functions, and the generalization by Carlson-Griffith to equidimensional holomorphic maps using as domain space finite coverings of C resp. Cn. Conjecturally best possible error terms are obtained following a method of Ahlfors and Wong. This is especially significant when obtaining uniformity for the error term w.r.t. coverings, since the analytic yields case a strong version of Vojta's conjectures in the number-theoretic case involving the theory of heights. The counting function for the ramified locus in the analytic case is the analogue of the normalized logarithmetic discriminant in the number-theoretic case, and is seen to occur with the expected coefficient 1. The error terms are given involving an approximating function (type function) similar to the probabilistic type function of Khitchine in number theory. The leisurely exposition allows readers with no background in Nevanlinna Theory to approach some of the basic remaining problems around the error term. It may be used as a continuation of a graduate course in complex analysis, also leading into complex differential geometry. 184 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -The central topics of this volume are enumerative geometry and intersection theory. The contributions are original (refereed) research papers. 316 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -These proceedings contain original (refereed) research articles by specialists from many countries, on a wide variety of aspects of Navier-Stokes equations. Additionally, 2 survey articles intended for a general readership are included: one surveys the present state of the subject via open problems, and the other deals with the interplay between theory and numerical analysis. 252 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -These proceedings contain research and survey papers from many subfields of recursion theory, with emphasis on degree theory, in particular the development of frameworks for current techniques in this field. Other topics covered include computational complexity theory, generalized recursion theory, proof theoretic questions in recursion theory, and recursive mathematics. 408 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -The volume is devoted to the interaction of modern scientific computation and classical function theory. Many problems in pure and more applied function theory can be tackled using modern computing facilities: numerically as well as in the sense of computer algebra. On the other hand, computer algorithms are often based on complex function theory, and dedicated research on their theoretical foundations can lead to great enhancements in performance. The contributions - original research articles, a survey and a collection of problems - cover a broad range of such problems. 228 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -The aim of the present proceedings volume is to discuss recent advances in the mathematical representation of engineering, socio-technical and socio-economical systems as well as in the optimization of their performance. The papers presented are extended versions of about 100 lectures (plenary lectures as well as lectures of the parallel sessions) of the conference. All papers include original researching results of the authors. Some have the character of a survey. 976 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -Project planning, scheduling, and control are regularly used in business and the service sector of an economy to accomplish outcomes with limited resources under critical time constraints. To aid in solving these problems, network-based planning methods have been developed that now exist in a wide variety of forms, cf. Elmaghraby (1977) and Moder et al. (1983). The so-called 'classical' project networks, which are used in the network techniques CPM and PERT and which represent acyclic weighted directed graphs, are able to describe only projects whose evolution in time is uniquely specified in advance. Here every event of the project is realized exactly once during a single project execution and it is not possible to return to activities previously carried out (that is, no feedback is permitted). Many practical projects, however, do not meet those conditions. Consider, for example, a production process where some parts produced by a machine may be poorly manufactured. If an inspection shows that a part does not conform to certain specifications, it must be repaired or replaced by a new item. This means that we have to return to a preceding stage of the production process. In other words, there is feedback. Note that the result of the inspection is that a certain percentage of the parts tested do not conform. That is, there is a positive probability (strictly less than 1) that any part is defective. 260 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -The aim of this book is to reflect the substantial re- search done in Artificial Intelligence on sorts and types. The main contributions come from knowledge representation and theorem proving and important impulses come from the 'application areas', i.e. natural language (understanding) systems, computational linguistics, and logic programming. The workshop brought together researchers from logic, theoretical computer science, theorem proving, knowledge representation, linguistics, logic programming and qualitative reasoning. 324 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -This volume contains papers presented at the BCS-FACS Workshop on Specification and Verification of Concurrent Systems held on 6-8 July 1988, at the University of Stirling, Scotland. Specification and verification techniques are playing an increasingly important role in the design and production of practical concurrent systems. The wider application of these techniques serves to identify difficult problems that require new approaches to their solution and further developments in specification and verification. The Workshop aimed to capture this interplay by providing a forum for the exchange of the experience of academic and industrial experts in the field. Presentations included: surveys, original research, practical experi ence with methods, tools and environments in the following or related areas: Object-oriented, process, data and logic based models and specifi cation methods for concurrent systems Verification of concurrent systems Tools and environments for the analysis of concurrent systems Applications of specification languages to practical concurrent system design and development. We should like to thank the invited speakers and all the authors of the papers whose work contributed to making the Workshop such a success. We were particularly pleased with the international response to our call for papers. Invited Speakers Pierre America Philips Research Laboratories University of Warwick Professor M. Joseph David Freestone British Telecom Organising Committee Charles Rattray Dr Muffy Thomas Dr Simon Jones Dr John Cooke Professor Ken Turner Derek Coleman Maurice Naftalin Dr Peter Scharbach vi Preface We would like to aeknowledge the finaneial eontribution made by SD-Sysems Designers pie, Camberley, Surrey. 624 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -This book deals withthe presentation and systematic design of mathematical proofs, including correctness proofs of algorithms. Its purpose is to show how completeness of argument, an important constraint especially for the correctness of algorithms, can be combined with brevity. The author stresses that the use of formalism is indispensible for achieving this. A second purpose of the book is to discuss matters of design. Rather than addressing psychological questions, the author deals with more technical questions like how analysis of the shape of the demonstrandum can guide the design of a proof. This technical rather than psychological view of heuristics together with the stress on exploiting formalism effectively are two key features of the book. The book consists of two independently readable parts. One part includes a number of general chapters discussing techniques for clear exposition, the use of formalism, the choice of notations, the choice of what to name and how to name it, and so on. The other part consists of a series of expositional essays, each dealing with a proof or an algorithm and illustrating the use of techniques discussed in the more general chapters. 196 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -Termination proofs constitute a crucial part of program verification. Much research about termination has been done in the context of term rewriting systems. But until now there was little hope that termination proofs for nontrivial programs could be achieved automatically. This book gives a comprehensive discussion of the termination problem in the context of logic programming. Although logic programs pose specialdifficulties for termination proofs it turns out that automation of this task is obtainable to a much larger degree than for programs in imperative languages. A technique for the automatic derivation of termination proofs is presented in detail. The discussion of several nontrivial examples illustrates its range of applicability. The approach is based on the concept of declarative semantics, and thus makes use of an important feature of logic programming. 156 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -This volume contains the revised versions of 28 papers presented at the third workshop on Computer Science Logic held in Kaiserslautern, FRG, October 2-6, 1989. These proceedings cover a wide range of topics both from theoretical and applied areas of computer science. More specifically, the papers deal with problems arising at the border of logic and computer science, e.g. in complexity, data base theory, logic programming, artificial intelligece, and temporal logic. The volume should be of interest to all logicians and computer scientists working in the above field. 452 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -This volume presents a selection of the contributions to the Seventh Workshop on Informatics and Psychology. The theme of the workshop was Visualization in Human-Computer Interaction. Visualization is nowadays recognized as an important aspect of user-oriented human-computer interfaces. Both informatics and psychology are concerned with this topic. In informatics, the technology is being developed which makes visualization and interaction based on visual concepts feasible. Another important trend in informatics is the development of prototypical solutions. Visual programming, visual languages, graphical interfaces, visual representations and many other keywords characterize current efforts in this field. Psychologists are working on the question of how people represent knowledge visually and how they can take advantage of visual representations when solving tasks. 284 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -'Specification and transformation of programs' is short for a methodology of software development where, from a formal specification of a problem to be solved, programs correctly solving that problem are constructed by stepwise application of formal, semantics-preserving transformation rules. The approach considers programming as a formal activity. Consequently, it requires some mathematical maturity and, above all, the will to try something new. A somewhat experienced programmer or a third- or fourth-year student in computer science should be able to master most of this material - at least, this is the level I have aimed at. This book is primarily intended as a general introductory textbook on transformational methodology. As with any methodology, reading and understanding is necessary but not sufficient. Therefore, most of the chapters contain a set of exercises for practising as homework. Solutions to these exercises exist and can, in principle, be obtained at nominal cost from the author upon request on appropriate letterhead. In addition, the book also can be seen as a comprehensive account of the particular transformational methodology developed within the Munich CIP project. 516 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -Neurotransmitter changes taking place in the brain of patients with dementia disorders, mainly Alzheimer type dementia, are reported. Their role in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer's disease is discussed; and the neurochemical changes are considered as a base for formulating treatment strategies. By studying markers in the cerebrospinal fluid, diagnostic methods may be achieved that will aid in diagnosing subgroups of dememtia. 96 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -Directed towards graduate students and researchers in modern theory control, this text presents a general technique for the synthesis of controllers, and indicates areas where further research is indicated. 152 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -During the years 1987 and 1988 we published a series of articles on the molding of thermoplastics materials in the magazine British Plastics and Rubber (B P & R). These articles were very well received and we also received a large number of requests for reprints. In order to cater for what is obviously a need in the thermoplas tics molding industry, we therefore brought the information together and produced it in the form of a book. We can only hope that it serves you well and that you find the information useful. We in turn would like to thank the editor of the magazine B P & R for helping us in this matter. Thanks are also due to our many friends and colleagues throughout the molding industry for their useful help and advice, in particular the company Moldflow (Europe) limited deserve a special mention as they allowed us to extract information from their extensive data base. 132 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -This volume contains the texts of papers presented at the Second Irish Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science, held at Dublin City University in September 1989. This Conference has now become the major annual forum in Ireland for the presentation and discussion of current research work in the multi-disciplinary area of Artificial Intelligence. Papers in this volume have been divided into seven sections which vary in their subject matter. Image processing, human-computer interaction, planning, applications and theory of expert systems, learn ing, speech, and natural language processing and semantics repre sents as broad a spectrum of AI and AI-related topics as can be found in current AI research. This harmonises quite well with the aims and scope of the AICS'89 conference which were to provide a forum for industry and academic research to discuss AI and AI-related topics and we were delighted that such a broad coverage of topics was achieved. Despite the broad nature, however, none of the papers are primarily review articles; each paper presents new research results within its own specific area. 360 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -In many ways this book is a team effort. Many people have helped me in writing it. Firstly, I thank my wife who read the manuscript twice correcting grammatical errors and spelling and clarifying many sentences. Secondly, I thank friends and colleagues at St. Mary's Hospital, including Mrs Jean Emerson, Renal Unit Social Worker and Mrs June Morgan, Senior Dietician, both of whom contributed technical information; Sisters Christine Holmes and Malinie Polpitiye who read and criticized some chapters; Miss Mary Williams, Mr Robert Minor and Mr Richard Viner who as patients read some sections and made useful suggestions. My thanks are due to Miss Veronica Adams who typed most of the manuscript and also to Mrs June Marshall and Miss Joyce Meadows who helped with typing and much photocopying. I must thank Baxter Healthcare whose generous financial support enabled this book to be published. The editorial staff of MTP Press have been very helpful, rapid and efficient in publishing the text. If any reader wants to know more about renal disease, there are several good introductory books on renal medicine available. I am sure that the local public library will be pleased to help. Any parts of this book that are wrong or misleading are my responsibility. If anyone has the energy to point out errors to me I will try to correct them in any subsequent edition. 176 pp. Englisch.