Secondhand smoke exposure and aging caused synergistic effects on the activation of heart adaptive mechanisms. Active cigarette smoking influences all these pathways. Secondhand smoke exposure always makes human pathological cardiac hypertrophy. In left ventricular individual, secondhand smoke exposure may stimuli first a phase of cardiac hypertrophy. Secondhand smoke increases arterial stiffness and coronary cardiac disease events. Because of secondhand smoke exposure involves the combina...

This book provides state-of-the-art information on advances in the diagnosis and treatment of pulmonary aspergillosis to help specialists and clinical practitioners make appropriate decisions concerning the management of patients with this condition.The incidence of pulmonary aspergillosis has increased steadily due to the widespread use of broad-spectrum antibiotics, cytotoxic drugs, immunosuppressive agents and adrenal hormones, as well as the growing number of organ transplantat...

Tibet, a tiny nation cloaked in mystery and clouded by myth, is the setting for this riveting family saga.

Playwright David Fishelson has adapted Dostoyevsky’s masterpiece The Brothers Karamazov into a spellbinding full-cast drama. The passionate Karamazov brothers spring to life, led by their rogue of a father, who entertains himself by drinking, womanizing, and pitting his three sons against each other. The men have plenty to fight over, including the alluring Grushenka.An L.A. Theatre Works full cast performance featuring:John de Lancie as Ivan KaramazovSharon...

Dostoyevsky’s titanic novels are transformed into spellbinding full cast drama by playwright David Fishelson. In The Brothers Karamazov, the passionate Karamazov brothers spring to life, led by their rogue of a father, who entertains himself by drinking, womanizing, and pitting his three sons against one another. In The Idiot, we meet the childlike Prince Myshkin as he returns to the decadent social whirl of St. Petersburg. The two most beautiful women in town compete for...

The sensuality of Louisiana's humid, jasmine-scented air permeates this love triangle about three people who are haunted by the memories of the Vietnam war.An L.A. Theatre Works full-cast performance featuring Powers Boothe and Frances Conroy, Ping Wu.

This open access book monitors the development of the temperature field within concrete structures and, based on the Arrhenius equation, constructs F-P maturity equations applicable to different temperature ranges. It investigates the impact of hydration rate on the strength prediction method of the maturity equation. Furthermore, the book employs artificial neural network theory to improve the accuracy of early concrete strength predictions, optimizing the neural network model to develop ...

"The edge of the sea is a strange and beautiful place." A book to be read for pleasure as well as a practical identification guide, The Edge of the Sea introduces a world of teeming life where the sea meets the land. A new generation of readers is discovering why Rachel Carson's books have become cornerstones of the environmental and conservation movements. New introduction by Sue Hubbell

Now a CBS All Access series: “A riveting tale of rocketry, the occult, and boom-and-bust 1920s and 1930s Los Angeles” (Booklist).The Los Angeles Times headline screamed: ROCKET SCIENTIST KILLED IN PASADENA EXPLOSION. The man known as Jack Parsons, a maverick rocketeer who helped transform a derided sci-fi plotline into actuality, was at first mourned as a scientific prodigy. But reporters soon uncovered a more shocking story: Parsons had been a de...

The first full biography of Joy Davidman brings her out from C. S. Lewis’ shadow, where she has long been hidden, to reveal a powerful writer and thinker.Joy Davidman is known, if she is known at all, as the wife of C. S. Lewis. Their marriage was immortalized in the film Shadowlands and Lewis’ memoir A Grief Observed. Now, through extraordinary new documents as well as years of research and interviews, Abigail Santamaria brings Joy Davidman Gresham Lewis to the p...

A man-made wonder, a connective network, an economic force, a bringer of blight and sprawl and the possibility of escape—the U.S. interstate system transformed America. The Big Roads presents the surprising history of how we got from dirt tracks to expressways in the space of a single lifetime.Earl Swift brings to light the visionaries who created these essential highways as well as the critics and citizens who questioned their headlong expansion throughout the country, in...

Slave narratives are extremely rare. Of the one hundred or so of these testimonies that survive, a mere handful are first-person accounts by slaves who ran away and freed themselves. Now two newly uncovered narratives, and the biographies of the men who wrote them, join that exclusive group.Wallace Turnage was a teenage field hand on an Alabama plantation, John Washington an urban slave in Virginia. They never met. But both men saw opportunity in the chaos of the Civil War, both es...