INSURANCE AUTO AUCTIONS, INC.: International Competitive Benchmarks and Financial Gap Analysis (Financial Performance Series)

INSURANCE AUTO AUCTIONS, INC.: International Competitive Benchmarks and Financial Gap Analysis (Financial Performance Series)
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INSURANCE AUTO AUCTIONS, INC.: International Competitive Benchmarks and Financial Gap Analysis (Financial Performance Series)
Inc Icon Group International , and Icon Group Ltd.
Manufacturer: Icon Group International
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Ring-bound

General | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
Insurance | Automotive | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0597382301

Book Description

Are the combined human resources at INSURANCE AUTO AUCTIONS, INC. productive? There is no absolute answer to this question. This report considers the extent to which the company's labor deployment indicators differ from global benchmarks. In this report we consider forecasts of differences between labor ratios and the resulting return on this human investment compared to global benchmarks; the estimation of such differences is commonly called a "gap analysis." What is the ratio of short-term and long-term assets to employee? What are typical capital-labor ratios? How different are these ratios to companies serving the same link in the value chain? What are the average sales and net profits per employee compared to global benchmarks? These and over 50 other indicators of labor productivity are considered in this report. The report does so by going beyond traditional analyses by considering companies competing in the same or similar industrial classification at a global level. The goal of this report, therefore, is to assist consultants, human resource managers, strategic planners, and corporate officers in gauging estimates of a company's human resource indicators compared to firms competing or participating in the same economic sector, at the global level. This report is not about whether a particular company or industry has performed well or poorly in the past or will do so in the future. With the globalization of markets, greater foreign competition, and the reduction of entry barriers, it becomes all the more important to benchmark a company's human resource indicators against other firms on a worldwide basis. Doing so, however, is not an obvious task. First, one needs to find firms competing in the same sector, but not necessarily competing directly with the company in local markets. These firms should not be perceived, therefore, to be direct competitors to the company in question, but simply those that have been classified by various sources (e.g. EDGAR or similar foreign filings), as competing to serve customers in the same link of the value chain, or broad industrial classification, as identified by SIC, NAICS or similar codes. Second, given the international nature of the task, one needs to control for exchange rate volatility. Finally, one needs use comparable financial standards. This report overcomes these issues and gives full human resources benchmarks vis-a-vis worldwide competitors who are present in the same narrow industrial classification. Benchmarks cover labor-asset ratios, labor-liability ratios, and labor-income ratios. Since our reports are printed on demand, the statistics reported are for the latest quarter and are the most up to date available (4 updates are produced each year). Each report provides over 100 statistics and 40 graphs to the reader. This reports is on INSURANCE AUTO AUCTIONS, INC., SCHAUMBURG, USA.

Book Description

The approach to many problems in economic analysis has changed drastically with the development and dissemination of new and more efficient computational techniques. Computational Economic Systems: Models, Methods & Econometrics presents a selection of papers illustrating the use of new computational methods and computing techniques to solve economic problems. Part I of the volume consists of papers which focus on modelling economic systems, presenting computational methods to investigate the evolution of behavior of economic agents, techniques to solve complex inventory models on a parallel computer and an original approach for the construction and solution of multicriteria models involving logical conditions. Contributions to Part II concern new computational approaches to economic problems. We find an application of wavelets to outlier detection. New estimation algorithms are presented, one concerning seemingly related regression models, a second one on nonlinear rational expectation models and a third one dealing with switching GARCH estimation. Three contributions contain original approaches for the solution of nonlinear rational expectation models.

Book Description

The essays in this volume assess the empirical and theoretical questions raised by inequalities of income and wealth. Some consider empirical claims about the amount of equality in modern market economies, assessing the allegation that income and wealth have become more unequally distributed in the past quarter-century. Others consider the extent to which various government initiatives can ameliorate the problems inequality putatively poses. They consider which standards of equality meet the requirements of distributive justice. They also ask if inequality is intrinsically immoral, regardless of its consequences.

If You Didn't Want Grits, How Come You Ordered Breakfast? (The Best of "That's Jake")
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If You Didn't Want Grits, How Come You Ordered Breakfast? (The Best of "That's Jake")
Jake Vest
Manufacturer: Tribune Pub
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books
General | Humor | Entertainment | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0941263177

Book Description

With advances in digital technology, musicians can now produce their own music. But the gear is only part of the equation when it comes to recording and mixing. The next part is finding a soundproof room that you can produce it in. Unfortunately, any old room in your house will not suffice for a quality recording. Without a decent room, you'll never be able to record a studio-quality recording you'll be proud of and be excited to have other people hear. So how do you go about creating a space in your home that has similar acoustics to that of a world-class studio? How do you soundproof this room to keep your sound in and outside noise out? How do you construct or modify the room so that its size and shape best complement its function? This book teaches you how to do all these things, from building a professional home studio to saving thousands of dollars in the process. This book shows you how to design and understand your room - how to treat it, wire it, and condition it while using widely available materials. Each step features visual aids to illustrate underlying concepts, as well as professional tips and examples from actual studios. Everything is covered, from room design to electrical considerations, room treatments to codes, permits, special needs, and more.

Customer Reviews:

Must Read.......2007-09-28

If you are planning on building a studio, then you must read this book. If you are thinking of having a contractor build a studio for you, then have THEM read this book too. Rods experience shows throughout this book by giving readers detailed explanations and drawings, clear, consise directions, theory for the "why am I..." and more. Anyone who is determined to build a studio, correctly, can do so with the help of this book. My studio would not be close to what it is today without his help.
Kevin Kuhn

Straight Up Studio Build-out info.......2007-09-07

Rod's book is very well written and easy to follow.
Answers a lot of questions in a straight up way.

Helped me a bunch already.

"Build it like the pros".......2007-09-04

I've read this book twice through now and I'm still learning new things. I've been able to apply almost everything in this book to a basement studio build that I'm doing. The title says it all: "Home recordings studio - Build it like the pro's".
It's a book that explains how professional recording studios are built - and then applies that knowledge and science (in a very readable format) to how it could be used to BUILD a home recording studio. Rod explains a lot of physics without using complex math and a lot of construction techniques without going over your head or boring you with technical step-by-step jargon.
To address some of the negative posts here - I think those readers were looking for a way to "build" a recording studio - without having to "build" anything. Even then - I think this book does a great job of addressing Acuostic treatement of rooms and such.
At any rate - it's a very thorough book that explains a lot in a very readable way.

From the basics to the complex things.......2007-08-16

If you are new in the topic this book is going to help you, undoubtedly. There is a little mess with the "Home" in the title, but there's no problem with it: the book covers from the "Home" to the "Professional" world very well. It describes several of the most efficent DIY designs which can be used even in professional studios, but one thing people doesn't understand is: There is no easier way to get professional insulation with "home tricks", so the book explains the only ways to get it (not cheap, not easy). There are no miracles in acoustics, so just go with it till you cover your needs, either for home, semi-professional or professional studio.

Waste of time.......2007-01-10

If your hope is to work with the equipment and space you have, this is probably not the book for you. The author uses the book to advertise lots of expensive brand merchandise starting on page one. There's also little you can learn from this book unless you are willing and capable of making major structural modifications to your space. "Home" recording studio is a misnomer, if you ask me, unless your home happens to have an unused wing that you can spend a year or so reconstructing as a professional studio. The narrow focus may be perfect for those people who have the time and resources (money for contractors, etc.) to do it, but there were only about five sentences in the whole book that applied to my situation. If you consider yourself more a musician than an engineer, I would not recommend it. I would give it three stars since it is obviously useful to some people, but some horribly unedited writing throughout the book (such as, "Yes, sir, just like magic - it disappeared, and here you've been told that magic doesn't exist.") brought it down a star.

Genes, Mind, and Culture: The Coevolutionary Process
Average customer rating:

Brilliant ideas, flawed analysis

Genes, Mind, and Culture: The Coevolutionary Process
Charles J. Lumsden , and Edward O. Wilson
Manufacturer: Harvard University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 0674344758

Product Description

Long considered one of the most provocative and demanding major works on human sociobiology, Genes, Mind, and Culture introduces the concept of gene-culture coevolution. It has been out of print for several years, and in this volume Lumsden and Wilson provide a much needed facsimile edition of their original work, together with a major review of progress in the discipline during the ensuing quarter century. They argue compellingly that human nature is neither arbitrary nor predetermined, and identify mechanisms that energize the upward translation from genes to culture. The authors also assess the properties of genetic evolution of mind within emergent cultural patterns. Lumsden and Wilson explore the rich and sophisticated data of developmental psychology and cognitive science in a fashion that, for the first time, aligns these disciplines with human sociobiology. The authors also draw on population genetics, cultural anthropology, and mathematical physics to set human sociobiology on a predictive base, and so trace the main steps that lead from the genes through human consciousness to culture.

Customer Reviews:

Brilliant ideas, flawed analysis.......1999-03-08

It is difficult to decide whether to praise this book for its (at the time) innovative and novel approach to gene-culture coevolution or criticize it for its endless slurry of ad hoc models with groundless or unspecified assumptions. One can do both. The idea they present, that there is a positive feedback mechanism between biological and cultural evolution, is by far the best working hypothesis for why human society "took off" after millenea of paleolithic stasis. The theory central to the book is that genetic constraints shape culture, which in turn becomes the cultural environment in which an individual's Darwinian fitness is determined, forming a positive feedback between cultural and evolutionary change. This posits a specific mechanism for the role of genetic change in cultural evolution, going far beyond the intellectually vacuous "resolution" of the nature-nurture debate by those who say "it's both." However, none of the models they present can be regarded as anything but mathematical playthings, in few cases are any of the variables or parameters quantities that can actually be measured or therefore tested. Often, it is not entirely clear what the dependent variables in the system correspond to in nature. Worse still, some of the models are completely ad hoc: first positing a dynamical behavior, then presenting an apparently arbitrary dynamical system which exhibits the property as "proof" of the theory. In essence, an uneven work, but one which I think will be at the foundation for further work in the area, at least as a basis for concepts and theory (provided the specifics are taken with a large grain of salt).

Unsilent Revolution: Television News and American Public Life, 1948-1991 (Woodrow Wilson Center Press)
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Unsilent Revolution: Television News and American Public Life, 1948-1991 (Woodrow Wilson Center Press)
Robert J. Donovan Raymond L. Scherer Lee H. Hamilton
Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000MC7NQA

Book Description

Learn the tips, tricks and lessons that Web design professionals know, without the years of experience or formal training. Find out how to use FrontPage with other applications such as Flash and Dreamweaver.Protect your site and your customers by getting the latest info on Internet Security. Put your business online and learn how to serve customers, record data and fulfill orders automatically with your FrontPage Web site. Maximize database connections to your Web site.

Made with the do-it-yourself-er in mind, FrontPage 2002 Bible is your 100omplete resource to quickly creating and managing dynamic websites.

Customer Reviews:

FrontPage 2002 Bible.......2007-08-11

I didn't expect it to arrive for at least another week and was pleasantly surprised. It came in excellant condition and am very please with the fast and timely response to my order. I will certainly order again in the near future. Everything was as they said it would be and am very pleased.

Everything I needed........2006-01-31

I was tasked with redesigning our company's Education Department's intranet site. I should start by saying my background is in HTML and JS. The company developed a FrontPage Theme and I needed to incorporate that theme into the new site. This book allowed me the ability to find all of the information I needed to build the site and was structured and well written. Though I am still not a huge fan of FP, this book will help you get the job done, assuming you are not a super web-designer.

Good book, but watch out for errors.......2002-04-14

This book generally lives up to its reputation. It has good coverage of FrontPage from the basics to fairly advanced techniques involving databases, client-side scripting, and ASP scripting. I found most of the answers I have been looking for to build better webs with FrontPage.

I would have rated this book higher if I had been more impressed with its Web support sites. For example, Tutorial 20-2 has an error in the onSubmit event handler. That's okay, so long as I can download a correction from the Web. But the data file on the authors' and publisher's support sites not only fails to correct the error, but the code in the file doesn't match the tutorial in the book. That's a weak feature of an otherwise good book.

This "Bible" is missing a few verses!.......2002-04-11

The cover of the book states "100% -COMPREHENSIVE- AUTHORITATIVE- WHAT YOU NEED- ONE HUNDRED PERCENT". Now call me naïve, but to me that statement means this book has everything I could possibly want to know about FrontPage 2002! Unfortunately, that's not the case.

I first attempted to find information in the book about subwebs. I hear them referenced quite a bit and wanted to know what they are, how they're used and how to create one. The book makes some vague references to subwebs, but no detailed descriptions about them anywhere.

Next I wanted to find out how I can assign passwords to certain web pages to restrict the permissions for browsing pages. The only password information in the book pertains to administration of the web in FrontPage itself and nothing about assigning passwords to users.

Lastly I went to the book to learn about SharePoint Team Services. The book has much information about this topic, but under the heading "Administering a SharePoint Site" it reads "Complete coverage of these topics is beyond the scope of this book..." Doesn't 100% include complete coverage?

I suppose with a topic as vast as Web design, and especially with a program as big as FrontPage, it would be rather difficult to include every single bit of information one could possibly want or need. But I thought the information for which I was searching would certainly be covered in a ONE HUNDRED PERCENT, COMPREHENSIVE, WHAT YOU NEED- Bible!

Maybe I need to find a "Bible" with a cover that boasts "ONE HUNDRED TWENTY PERCENT"?!!

A MANUAL TO EXPLAIN IT ALL.......2002-01-18

After using Front Page 2001 and 2002 for 9 months, I have finally found a book that is comprehensive, informative and written for the "average joe". I am an online retailer that has a FP generated website. Although I was pleased with FP already, the FP Bible 2002 gave me the insight and ammunition I needed to make my good site, fantastic! Highly recommend this book. (If you have never used Front Page before, I recommend getting a more basic book like "Front Page for Dummies" or "Front Page for Busy People" for a beginning reference.)

Masters of Chaos: The Secret History of the Special Forces
Average customer rating:

Tons of interesting stuff, but...

well worthy

One of the Best books on the Special Forces

Why Special Forces are special

Excellent Book

Masters of Chaos: The Secret History of the Special Forces
Linda Robinson
Manufacturer: PublicAffairs
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Iraq | Middle East | History | Subjects | Books
General | Military | History | Subjects | Books
General | United States | Military | History | Subjects | Books
Military Science | History | Subjects | Books
General | Science | Subjects | Books
History of Technology | Technology | Science | Subjects | Books
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Killer Elite: The Inside Story of America's Most Secret Special Operations Team

ASIN: 1586482491
Release Date: 2004-10-12

Amazon.com

The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have given the U.S. Army's Special Forces, also known as the Green Berets, a central role in American military action like never before. Several hundred U.S. Special Forces operators helped a motley band of Afghan rebels orchestrate a stunning rout when they overthrew the Taliban after 9/11. In Iraq, as journalist Linda Robinson explains in Masters of Chaos: The Secret History of the Special Forces, Special Forces units were the main U.S. elements on the ground in the northern and western regions of the country, where they defeated government forces that outnumbered them many times over. Robinson tells the story of the Special Forces through the eyes of a few of its more colorful personalities, men with call signs like Rawhide and Killer. She follows them around the world from Panama and El Salvador to Somalia, Kosovo, and, finally, Afghanistan and Iraq. Surprisingly, however, she devotes only a few pages to the Green Beret-led victory in Afghanistan, even though it was arguably their greatest achievement since they were created after World War II.

Critics and supporters of the recent American interventions alike should find the technical proficiency of the Special Forces interesting and impressive. Each 12-soldier team may marshal more than a century of combined experience in weapons, foreign languages, intelligence, communications, air control, and trauma medicine. For a book about such an action-packed subject, though, Robinson's effort is somewhat dry, and she devotes more time to mundane background biographies than to the dramatic battle scenes in which the Special Forces invariably find themselves. In addition, Robinson's "secret history" is an authorized and sympathetic one, and readers may be left wondering what she may have left out of her accounts in order to maintain her access. --Alex Roslin

Book Description

A journalist with unique access tells the gripping, never-before-told, inside story of America's elite troops in action -- from the nadir of their reputation after Vietnam to their preeminence today on the frontlines against terrorism around the world.

Special Forces soldiers are daring, seasoned troops from America's heartland, selected in a tough competition and trained in an extraordinary range of skills. They know foreign languages and cultures and unconventional warfare better than any U.S. fighters, and while they prefer to stay out of the limelight, veteran war correspondent Linda Robinson gained access to their closed world. She traveled with them on the frontlines, interviewed them at length on their home bases, and studied their doctrine, methods and history. In Masters of Chaos she tells their story through a select group of senior sergeants and field-grade officers, a band of unforgettable characters like Rawhide, Killer, Michael T, and Alan -- led by the unflappable Lt. Col. Chris Conner and Col. Charlie Cleveland, a brilliant but self-effacing West Pointer who led the largest unconventional war campaign since Vietnam in northern Iraq.

Robinson follows the Special Forces from their first post-Vietnam combat in Panama, El Salvador, Desert Storm, Somalia, and the Balkans to their recent trials and triumphs in Afghanistan and Iraq. She witnessed their secret sleuthing and unsung successes in southern Iraq, and recounts here for the first time the dramatic firefights of the western desert. Her blow-by-blow story of the attack on Ansar al-Islam's international terrorist training camp has never been told before. The most comprehensive account ever of the modern-day Special Forces in action, Masters of Chaos is filled with riveting, intimate detail in the words of a close-knit band of soldiers who have done it all. AUTHOR BIO: Linda Robinson is a senior writer for U.S. News & World Report. She was a Nieman fellow at Harvard University in 2000-2001 and in 1999 she received the Maria Moors Cabot prize form Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism. She has covered numerous wars, guerrilla conflicts and special forces operations, and currently lives in Washington, D.C.

Customer Reviews:

Tons of interesting stuff, but..........2007-05-18

I guess I'm a fan of this book, but I can't make myself call it anything better than "good." There are some truly great parts, but I struggled through quite a bit. Maybe my expectations were too high, but this book didn't thrill me like I was expecting. I wanted a gripping, real-life story of the modern Special Forces in action. I only got that in doses. I hate to use this word, but I even found it "boring" at times.

well worthy.......2007-03-17

A very easy to read tense and exciting account of a snapshot in the life of these fairly extraordinary human beings. Written a bit in the style of b/hawk down it gives a glimpse of the other sides of the soldiers involved. A must for any admirer of good special forces lit.The book also provides a sneak preview into iraq and afghanistan All in all a great read

One of the Best books on the Special Forces.......2007-01-10

This is an excellent read on a very reclusive and elite group in the US Army. It details many great feats by many great men over the last 20 years. Linda Robinson does a great job at righting this book and keeping it interesting and flowing along and covers most everything in great detail without making the story drag.

Why Special Forces are special.......2006-12-30

This is a good collection of military stories covering the past fifteen years based on interviews with soldiers, official government documents and archival material. Some details are left out so as to protect security and identities of countries involvements in operations but overall it is a fun read for the military enthusiast.The activites of the Special Forces(aka Green Berets) is well chronicled but to a much lesser extent the exploits of the much more secret(to use a word from the title)Delta Force and Seal operations are discussed even though many operations are in conjunction with these other elite forces. Linda Robinson takes you globetrotting to witness "behind the scenes" how America's Special Forces is fighting terrorism throughout the world. Operations discussed through recollections and documents include Panama, El Salvador, Desert Storm, Somalia, The Balkans, Afghanistan and of course Iraq. Recommended for an overview of the Special Forces various counterterrorism missions.

Excellent Book.......2006-11-10

This book is very exciting, because it tells us of the Special Forces missions that have happened most recently, and not just the ones we've heard about so much over and over again in the past. There are not very many in depth stories about the SF operations that have been conducted in Iraq/Afghanistan so it is nise to read about some of the action that we never heard about on the news. I would definitely recommend this book for anyone interested in learning more about the SF and about the 'behind the scenes' war that went on and is still going on today.

Masters of Chaos: The Secret History of the Special Forces.(Book Review) : An article from: Military Review

Average customer rating:

Masters of Chaos: The Secret History of the Special Forces.(Book Review) : An article from: Military Review
Alan Cate
Manufacturer: Thomson Gale
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital

General | Science | Subjects | Books

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Book Description

This digital document is an article from Military Review, published by Thomson Gale on July 1, 2005. The length of the article is 437 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Masters of Chaos: The Secret History of the Special Forces.(Book Review)
Author: Alan Cate
Publication: Military Review (Magazine/Journal)
Date: July 1, 2005
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 85 Issue: 4 Page: 102(1)

Article Type: Book Review

Distributed by Thomson Gale

Book Description

The Cambridge World History of Human Disease (CWHHD) was first published by Cambridge in 1993. The basis of this Dictionary is Part VIII, the last section of the work, that comprises a history and description of the world's major diseases of yesterday and today in chapters organized alphabetically from "Acquired Immune Deficient Syndrome (AIDS)" to "Yellow Fever." The last section of CWHHD has been fully revised and the essays have been condensed into shorter entries, with up-to-date information on AIDS, Alzheimer's disease, Ebola, and Tuberculosis. The Dictionary also includes three chapters from other parts of the CWHHD on "Heart-Related Diseases," "Cancer," and Genetic Disease." Including contributions from over 100 medical and social scientists worldwide, the Dictionary is a truly interdisciplinary history of medicine and human disease. Kenneth Kiple is a distinguished professor of history at Bowling Green State University. His research and teaching interests include Latin America and the history of medicine, disease, and nutrition. His work has been supported by grants and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Fulbright Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, the American Philosophical Society, and the National Institutes of Health. He is the editor of The Cambridge History of World Disease (Cambridge, 1993) and with Kriemhild Coneé Ornelas, the award-winning Cambridge World History of Food (Cambridge, 2000).

The Future of the Brain: The Promise and Perils of Tomorrow's Neuroscience
Average customer rating:

A nuanced account of what neuroscience really knows

Should be titled "History of the Brain"

So what's new in neurosciences?

Awful on two accounts

How neuroscience will and will not change our lives

The Future of the Brain: The Promise and Perils of Tomorrow's Neuroscience
Steven Rose
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Biology | Biological Sciences | Science | Subjects | Books
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General | Medicine | Subjects | Books
Neuroscience | Neurology | Internal Medicine | Medicine | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: 019530893X

Book Description

Brain repair, smart pills, mind-reading machines--modern neuroscience promises to soon deliver a remarkable array of wonders as well as profound insight into the nature of the brain. But these exciting new breakthroughs, warns Steven Rose, will also raise troubling questions about what it means to be human. In The Future of the Brain, Rose explores just how far neuroscience may help us understand the human brain--including consciousness--and to what extent cutting edge technologies should have the power to mend or manipulate the mind. Rose first offers a panoramic look at what we now know about the brain, from its three-billion-year evolution, to its astonishingly rapid development in the embryo, to the miraculous process of infant development. More important, he shows what all this science can--and cannot--tell us about the human condition. He examines questions that still baffle scientists and he explores the potential threats and promises of new technologies and their ethical, legal, and social implications, wondering how far we should go in eliminating unwanted behavior or enhancing desired characteristics, focusing on the new "brain steroids" and on the use of Ritalin to control young children. The Future of the Brain is a remarkable look at what the brain sciences are telling us about who we are and where we came from--and where we may be headed in years to come.

Customer Reviews:

A nuanced account of what neuroscience really knows.......2006-07-17

Steven Rose, a founding member of the Society for Social Responsibility in Science, has 40 years of publishing in neuroscience behind him. Since the 1960s he fought against "On Aggression," "The Territorial Imperative," "The Naked Ape" and has combated a whole succession of varieties of social Darwinism and biological determinism up to the current batch of snake oil salesmen marketing pharmaceutical solutions to social problems.
"The Future of the Brain" summarises the achievements and limitations of the great progress that neuroscience has made over recent decades, from one of the few neuroscientists who have appropriate modesty about what their science can tell us about the human condition and what it can't. If you have read any of the current crop of books on the mind, then you absolutely must read this book. If Rose is right, then we face grave dangers: not so much because neuroscience will enable a futuristic dystopia of thought-control or eugenic manufacture of super-brains, but rather that ill-advised and counter-productive medical intervention will enrich the pharmaceutical industry at the cost of increasing human suffering.
Rose gives a much more nuanced understanding of what the mind is, how it is enabled by our biology and shaped by our lives and those of our evolutionary and social forebears.

Should be titled "History of the Brain".......2006-01-06

Neurobiologist Steven Rose goes to great lengths to correct common misperceptions about the explanatory potential of current genetics, evolutionary psychology, and molecular neuroscience. Ultimately, only the last two chapters cover the "future" of the neurosciences, delving into topics like transcranial magnetic stimulation, pharmacological cognitive enhancement, and neuroethics. But before telling us where we're headed, Rose spends 10 chapters telling us where we've been, both in terms of cognitive change across the lifespan, the cascading processes of synaptogenesis and apoptosis seen in utero and in early childhood, and the changes in brains both across species and across evolutionary time. If "The Future of the Brain" could be said to have a central principle, it's that "the past is the key to the present," and it is here that Rose's talents as a writer truly shine: he integrates the histories of neurons, individuals, psychopharmacology, sociobiology, cognitive psychology and genetics into a coherent narrative, with both appropriate subtlety and engaging clarity.

Rose begins with theories of the origins of life, proto-cells, and nucleic acids. He uses this broad introduction to debunk the simplifications we often make without hesitation: thinking of humankind as the highest on some evolutionary scale of nature; considering organisms to be passive players in evolution; believing that evolution strives for increased complexity as time continues. As he writes, "all living forms on earth ... are more or less equally fit for the environment and life style they have chosen. I use the word chosen deliberately, for organisms are not merely the passive products of selection; in a very real sense they create their own environments ... The grand metaphor of natural selection suggers from its implication that organisms are passive, blown hither and thither by environment change as opposed to being active players in their own destiny." In this way, Rose complicates the popular notion of causality frequently seen in news articles, where researchers claim to have discovered a gene "for" this or that; to Rose, every result has multiple causes, both genetic and environmental.

After reviewing how neural nets may have initially developed in the first multicellular animals (Coelenterates), Rose describes the development of the mammalian cortex during gestation as autopoesis, the process of continual self-creation. The reader is whisked from fertilisation to the embryonic formation of the neural groove, to the birth of neurons and glia in the neural tube, to the migration of neurons as they follow concentration gradients of neural growth factors. We then follow changes in brain structure seen in hominins, then hominids, and finally homo sapiens.

The later chapters document the development of psychopharmacology and the rise of Big Pharma, from aspirin to valium and now Ritalin and Strattera. Rose winds up with fascinating predictions about the future of neurotechnology, all of them well-tempered by a thorough understanding of our past.

Rose's book is quite simply the best popular neuroscience writing I have read. It is hard to imagine another writer that could so seamlessly weave together the fields of genetics, cognitive science, neurophysiology, and pharmacology into such an entertaining yet informative book. Highly recommended...

So what's new in neurosciences?.......2005-09-12

It is very well known that the brain is an incredibly complicated mass of tissue--not to mention a complicated and popular subject of today's trend sciences. Therefore to attempt to write anything concerning this feild would be considerably challenging, regardless of your educational and professional background...yet I believe that Steven Rose has done a great job for two very important reasons.

Firstly, Rose translates the subject and its ideas into a form that is digestible by all readers. Yet, the material is sometimes bland and redundant for those who have studied the subject in greater depth.

Secondly, Rose is honest. He not only critiques himself for past publications, but also comments how some of the material in the book has been illustrated in his own life. I believe that the latter is very important because it encourages the reader to do the same, and this type of learning, I personally believe, is awesome. Rose knows that although his entire audience are not experts, some of the ideas about the brain concerning memory, cognition and interpretation can be easily explored by experiences with one's surroundings; and this is what is so intriguing about biological sciences.

The book is a quick read and again, easy to understand. For those who have a background in the field, Rose presents the material well and gives a somewhat journalistic review of the current issues, fallacies and anticipations in the field.

Awful on two accounts.......2005-07-07

I got only half way through this book, so I am writing this review as a warning. This book is awful on two accounts. It is hastily written, and it isn't very informative. I would expect most readers to be either confused and/or bored, depending on their background (I cannot account for the other reviews). Rose has several schematics of the brain, but does not actually explain them except in the most cursory way. Rose emphasizes the interplay between genes and environment where environment must be interpreted in the broadest sense: for the unborn it includes not only the uterine environment but the signals from the other cells constituting the embryonic/fetal complex. This is fine, but well accepted, at least amongst the scientists I have read. Rose is impressed with Dimasio's work on consciousness, but he more refers to it than tries to make it clear, just as with his brain schematics. He raises some interesting questions about evolutionary psychology, but he is so dismissal of the field, that the reader must seek elsewhere for an objective analysis. Yes, I enjoy reading Richard Dawkins and even Steven Pinker, but I am not writing this review with an axe to grind.

How neuroscience will and will not change our lives.......2005-05-31

The Future of the Brain (Rose's 15th book) is about how neurotechnology derived from neuroscience will atttempt to change our brains, about what we can and cannot expect from science, and what we should fear. Rose is a brain scientist whose speciality is in the neuroscience of memory.

He is also a prolific writer on evolutionary biology. He is a proactive opponent of a strictly reductionist stance in biology and a stern critic of what he sees as a genocentric approach to psychology and what it means to be human. Some of his books (most notably Not in Our Genes (1984) written with Richard Lewontin and Leo Kamini, and Alas, Poor Darwin: Arguments Against Evolutionary Psychology (2000) which he edited with Hilary Rose) are more about the politics of evolutionary biology than about the science; but here Rose keeps his political views mostly in the background. The result is an informative book that helps us to understand what science is learning about how the brain works and about how it can be affected by outside agents.

After an introductory chapter he begins with the nitty-gritty of how the brain came to be and how it might be understood--from proto-cells in the pre-biotic soup to axons, dendrites, synapses and brain "structures." His theme throughout is that the brain cannot be understood except as a process continually in motion. He argues that how our brains developed cannot be appreciated through an isolated study of the genetic blueprint. Instead we must look to the brain's developmental history in interaction with the environment to determine what it is and how it works and why.

The middle chapters move from the brain to the mind, from the nuts and bolts of neurology to the experiential human being living in an environment in part created by itself. Rose touches on the "mystery" of consciousness and the paradox of free will. He finishes with some conjectures about what kinds of pharmaceutical agents are to come, what kinds of invasive procedures might be employed in attempts to combat various diseases or to cope with the effects of ageing or to help make us "better than normal." The final chapter is on "Ethics in a Neurocentric World."

Although Rose does not spell out how the mind differs from the brain--I take it he presumes a dictionary definition--much of the book is concerned with the distinction. The brain is the flesh and blood; the mind is the experience, is how I read him. I want to add that the distinction between brain and mind can be seen as similar to the distinction between sex and gender. Sex is biology. Gender is the cultural expression of that biology.

He objects to viewing the brain as composed of "modules" directed by genetic imperatives. He writes that "...life is not a static 'thing' but a process" (p. 62) We are forever changing. The Steven Rose of 30 is not the same as the Steven Rose of today. He is a different person because of what has happened to him during the ensuing decades, and how he has reacted to what has happened, and what he has learned. And if Steven Rose were somehow cloned, that Steven Rose would be different still because of the different environments--pre-natal and afterward--in which he would grow.

He speaks of "patterns of activity" in the working brain. He doesn't like the use of "modules" such as a supposed "reading module" or "reading instinct." (p. 134) However it is really impossible to write about something as foreign to our everyday experience as the workings of the brain without resorting to metaphor and analogy. Something is like something else. Something is compared to something else. This is how we learn. So instead of modules, Rose employs variously, "a collection of mini-organs" (p. 149); "brain regions" (p. 157); "brain...structures" (p. 133), etc. In fact he uses the term "modules" himself on, for example, pages 149, 156, 158. Furthermore his railing against the use of our experience in the "Environment of Evolutionary Adaptation" during the Pleistocene by evolutionary psychologists is partially contradicted by his acknowledgment that we are indeed shaped by our environment as we in turn shape it. It is clear to me that where Rose and the evolutionary psychologists differ is in their perception of how much the environments since the Pleistocene have changed us. Steven Pinker, Edward O. Wilson and others think "not all that much," while Rose thinks "a whole lot." The truth, one can imagine, lies somewhere in between.

It should be noted that one of the unsolved problems in evolution is knowing how fast evolutionary change can take place. Stephen Jay Gould spoke of rapid change after long periods of stasis while others have disagreed; but no one can say how much we have changed biologically since the Pleistocene. It is known that large populations are strongly resistant to evolutionary change because mutations quickly get swamped in the huge genetic pool. My feeling is that in populations as large as ours, little evolutionary change is taking place. The environment is constantly changing, but the selective pressure usually brought about through starvation, disease, and competition from other species is really not much in evidence. And so I tend to side with those who believe we haven't changed all that much.

Steven Rose is a wise and caring man who sometimes forgets his manners when speaking about those with whom he has sharp disagreements. But in this book he is at his best and most well-behaved. Let me finish with perhaps the wisest of his observations. He is speaking of the increased "powers of surveillance and coercion available to an authoritarian state." He warns, "The neurotechnologies [now available and to come] will add to these powers, but the real issue is probably not so much how to curb the technologies, but how to control the state." (p. 302)

The Future of the Brain: The Promise and Perils of Tomorrow's Neuroscience

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The Future of the Brain: The Promise and Perils of Tomorrow's Neuroscience
Steven Rose
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: 0739458078

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The Future Of The Brain: The Promise And Perils Of Tomorrow's Neuroscience
Steven P. R. Rose
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OKPUJM

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This digital document is an article from ATV Magazine, published by Thomson Gale on October 1, 2005. The length of the article is 1055 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Conquering the Croix: excellent riding and scenic views await at the St. Croix State Forest.
Author: Eric Skogman
Publication: ATV Magazine (Magazine/Journal)
Date: October 1, 2005
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 10 Issue: 5 Page: 54(2)

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