Books by "J. Murray Lawson"
3 books found
Neuromuscular Junction
by R.E.M. Bowden, J. Maglagan, E. Zaimis, B. Collier, R.D. Dripps, L.W. Duchen, G.E. Hale Enderby, B.L. Ginsborg, S. Head, F. Hobbiger, D.H. Jenkinson, F.C. MacIntosh, S.E. Smith
2013 · Springer Science & Business Media
Has the neuromuscular junction been over-exposed or is it perhaps already a closed book? I asked myself this at a recent International Congress when an American colleague complained that the Journal of Physiology had articles on nothing but the neuromuscular junction, while another colleague asked why I was editing a volume on a subject about which everything was already known. It is worrying to think that these views may be shared by other people. I hope that this volume will convince my two colleagues and other readers that the neuromuscular junction is very much alive and continues to attract the interest of many workers from a variety of fields; strange as it may seem, the synapse between a motor nerve ending and muscle fibre, with its relatively simple architecture, is one of the most inter esting sites in the body-I do hope we have done it justice. The various chapters of this volume present a cross section of knowledge as viewed by a group of 13 individuals, actively engaged in research. Multi-author volumes such as this are frequently criticised on the grounds that chapters or sec tions overlap. I believe that such criticium is only valid where the overlap is repetitious. Where it results in the reader having available discussions of material from differing stand-points, overlap becomes a valuable feature of this type of publication.
Strategically located at the gateway to the South American continent, Colombia has long been a key player in shaping the United States' involvement with its Latin American neighbors. In this book Stephen J. Randall examines the course of U.S.-Colombian relations over two centuries, taking into account the broad spectrum of political, social, cultural, and economic contacts that have figured in the interaction. A leader in the movement for independence from Spain in the early nineteenth century, Colombia shared with the United States the aspiration of becoming a leader for the entire hemisphere. Its early efforts in this direction--notably its initiation in the 1820s of the first Pan-American Conference--soon languished, however, as the unequal growth between the two countries took its toll. By the turn of the century, after years of destructive civil war, Colombia had slipped far behind its northern neighbor militarily, economically, and politically. The United States, meanwhile, had emerged as a great power, and the first major manifestation of the two countries' divergence came with the U.S.-supported secession of Panama in 1903--an event that deeply shocked Colombians and tainted their view of the United States for subsequent generations. During the twentieth century, Randall explains, a tension in Colombian politics and culture has persisted between those who advocate an independent, even antagonistic, stance toward the United States and those who propound a policy of realism that accepts Colombia's place as a middle, regional power within the U.S. orbit. For its part, the United States has continually failed to realize that Colombians, with their European intellectual heritage stretching back four hundred years, do not see themselves as an insignificant Third World nation. The result has been an often strained relationship, which Randall traces through two world wars, economic booms and depressions, the Cold War, and, finally, the present-day guerrilla conflicts and drug trade controversies. Drawing on archival sources in both countries, many previously unused, this book is the first comprehensive overview in more than fifty years of the U.S.-Colombian relationship.
Best known for his writings on economic history and communications, Harold Innis also produced a body of biographical work that paid particular attention to cultural memory and how it is enriched by the study of neglected historical figures. In this compelling volume, William Buxton addresses Innis's engagement with the legacy of the fur trader and adventurer Peter Pond. Harold Innis on Peter Pond comprises eight texts by Innis, including his 1930 biography of Pond as well as his writings on the explorer's myriad activities. The book also features a collection of eight letters exchanged between Innis and Florence Cannon, a descendent of Pond with a strong interest in her ancestor's life and times, and an unpublished 1932 article on Pond's 1773–75 activities as a fur trader on the upper Mississippi, written by Innis's former student R. Harvey Fleming. Situating Innis's writings on Pond in relation to his broader body of biographical work, Buxton interprets what these texts tell us about Innis's intellectual practice, historiography, and the writing of biography. The book explores how Innis's perspectives shifted with changing intellectual and political circumstances and shows that his advocacy of Pond as an unrecognized "father of confederation" challenged conventional views of Canadian nation-building. A critical edition of previously overlooked biographical texts, Harold Innis on Peter Pond traces what these writings disclose about the biographer's character and values even as they discuss their subject.