A comprehensive, illustrated guide to the provision of prompt and appropriate laboratory services during an emergency or disaster. Addressed to national health authorities, aid agencies and relief workers, the manual draws on over 20 years of experience to define the essential laboratory services needed to limit morbidity and mortality, prevent epidemics, manage trauma, and collect vital epidemiological data. Throughout the manual, flow charts, tables and checklists are used to illustrate key actions and procedures, while line drawings and photographs depict essential equipment, types of laboratories, and model plans and layouts. Guidelines are specific to the harsh conditions usually seen in disasters, where equipment and supplies are limited, power supplies erratic, and the number of trained staff inadequate. To facilitate planning and purchasing decisions, the manual includes abundant information on the advantages and disadvantages of equipment in terms of costs, durability, ease of maintenance, and appropriateness to the anticipated workload. Additional details range from instructions for making a waste incinerator out of a metal drum, to advice on calculating energy requirements. The book has twelve chapters. The opening chapters identify 29 diseases commonly encountered in different types of disasters and offer advice on how to anticipate disease outbreaks and the corresponding laboratory needs. Other chapters describe and illustrate different mobile and portable laboratories, identify the most suitable tests, including commercial kits for rapid diagnosis, outline procedures for testing water supplies, and explain the principles of laboratory safety, disinfection, and waste disposal during emergencies. In a key achievement, a chapter on laboratory kits and modules sets out the exact supplies that should be included in each of 22 modules designed to support different components of emergency laboratory work. Modules, which can be combined according to need, range in focus from kits for water testing, through a recommended microscope and accessories, to the supplies needed to perform 200 tuberculosis or bacteriology tests. The remaining chapters provide more detailed guidelines for energy supply, essential laboratory equipment, blood supply for transfusions, the safe handling and transport of specimens, and record keeping and reporting during emergencies.

With many excellent books on medieval stained glass available, the reader of this anthology may well ask: “what is the contribution of this collection?” In this book, we have chosen to step away from national, chronological, and regional models. Instead, we started with scholars doing interesting work in stained glass, and called upon colleagues to contribute studies that represent the diversity of approaches to the medium, as well as up-to-date bibliographies for work in the field. Contributors are: Wojciech Balus, Karine Boulanger, Sarah Brown, Elizabeth Carson Pastan, Madeline H. Caviness, Michael W. Cothren, Francesca Dell’Acqua, Uwe Gast, Françoise Gatouillat, Anne Granboulan, Anne F. Harris, Christine Hediger, Michel Hérold, Timothy B. Husband, Alyce A. Jordan, Herbert L. Kessler, David King, Brigitte Kurmann-Schwarz, Claudine Lautier, Ashley J. Laverock, Meredith P. Lillich, Isabelle Pallot-Frossard, Hartmut Scholz, Mary B. Shepard, Ellen M. Shortell, Nancy M. Thompson.

A visually sensational study of the rose window both in its own right and as a central feature of Gothic architecture. Painton Cowen has dedicated his life to the study of rose windows. Here he presents the world's best-known rose windows in over 300 new photographs and line drawings—Paris (Notre Dame), Chartres, Reims, Strasbourg, Cologne, Florence, Siena, Palma de Mallorca, Santa Maria del Mar, and New York's St. John the Divine, as well as many lesser-known, but no less astonishing, examples. Every aspect of the rose window is covered, including its possible origins in the south of Europe, its flowering in thirteenth-century France, the diffusion of styles across Europe, and modern reinterpretations, as well as the powerful geometry behind the designs and the meanings specific to individual examples. Perennial favorites such as the windows at Chartres are dissected and discussed in detail. This book provides unique insights into the development and organization of the rose window and its central position in Gothic architecture through a lucid, illuminating text and carefully selected comparative material that covers the wealth of Gothic creative activity. It also explores the greater meaning of the rose window through numerology, scholasticism, and the concept of heavenly order. 350 illustrations, 300 in color.

This book is the true account of how I gave my life to a cruel and criminally insane cult leader, and how I was miraculously able to take it back and emerge a stronger and more compassionate person. Escape is the first book that tells an insider's story of daily life ruled by a psychopathic cult leader. The book shows how easy it is to become brainwashed by a charismatic personality into thinking that torture, starvation, and complete isolation are essential to a spiritual life. It is also a cautionary tale for the parents and family members of anyone belonging to a cult, and for people recovering from cults, extreme religions, or abusive relationships.

An acclaimed expert in Christian mysticism travels to a monastery high in the Trodos Mountains of Cyprus and offers a fascinating look at the Greek Orthodox approach to spirituality that will appeal to readers of Carlos Castaneda. In an engaging combination of dialogues, reflections, conversations, history, and travel information, Kyriacos C. Markides continues the exploration of a spiritual tradition and practice little known in the West he began in Riding with the Lion. His earlier book took readers to the isolated peninsula of Mount Athos in northern Greece and into the group of ancient monasteries. There, in what might be called a “Christian Tibet,” two thousand monks and hermits practice the spiritual arts to attain a oneness with God. In his new book, Markides follows Father Maximos, one of Mount Athos’s monks, to the troubled island of Cyprus. As Father Maximos establishes churches, convents, and monasteries in this deeply divided land, Markides is awakened anew to the magnificent spirituality of the Greek Orthodox Church. Images of the land and the people of Cyprus and details of its tragic history enrich the Mountain of Silence. Like the writings of Castaneda, the book brilliantly evokes the confluence of an inner and outer journey. The depth and richness of its spiritual message echo the thoughts and writings of Saint Francis of Assisi and other great saints of the Church as well. The result is a remarkable work–a moving, profoundly human examination of the role and the power of spirituality in a complex and confusing world.

The flowering of Gothic architecture depended to a striking extent on the use of drawing as a tool of design. By drawing precise "blueprints" with simple tools such as the compass and straightedge, Gothic draftsmen were able to develop a linearized architecture of unprecedented complexity and sophistication. Examination of their surviving drawings can provide valuable and remarkably intimate information about the Gothic design process. Gothic drawings include compass pricks, uninked construction lines, and other telltale traces of the draftsman's geometrically based working method. The proportions of the drawings, moreover, are those actually intended by the designer, uncompromised by errors introduced in the construction process. All of these features make these drawings ideal subjects for the study of Gothic design practice, but their geometry has to date received little systematic attention. This book offers a new perspective on Gothic architectural creativity. It shows, in a series of rigorous geometrical case studies, how Gothic design evolved over time, in two senses: in the hours of the draftsman's labor, and across the centuries of the late Middle Ages. In each case study, a series of computer graphics show in unprecedented detail how a medieval designer could have developed his architectural concept step by step, using only basic geometrical operations. Taken together, these analyses demonstrate both remarkable methodological continuity across the Gothic era, and the progressive development of new and sophisticated permutations on venerable design themes. This rich tradition ultimately gave way in the Renaissance not because of any inherent problem with Gothic architecture, but because the visual language of Classicism appealed more directly to the pretensions of Humanist princes than the more abstract geometrical order of Gothic design, as the book's final chapter demonstrates.

New studies of the Basilica in Assisi as well as innovative looks at early panel paintings and Franciscan stained glass are included.

The fourteen essays in this collection demonstrate a wide variety of approaches to the study of Byzantine architecture, a reflection of both newer trends and traditional scholarship in the field. Three papers examine Early Christian monuments, two of which expand the inquiry into their architectural afterlives. Others discuss later monuments in Byzantine territory and monuments in territories related to Byzantium such as Serbia, Armenia, and Norman Italy. No Orthodox Church being complete without interior decoration, two papers discuss issues connected to frescoes in late medieval Balkan churches. Finally, one study investigates the continued influence of Byzantine palace architecture long after the fall of Constantinople.

1. General collapse information 2. Terms of construction and building design 3. Building construction: firefighting problems and structural hazards 4. Masonry wall collapse 5. Collapse dangers of parapet walls 6. Wood floor collapse 7. Sloping peak roof collapse 8. Timber truss roof collapse 9. Flat roof collapse 10. Lightweight steel roof and floor collapse 11. Lightweight wood truss collapse 12. Ceiling collapse 13. Stairway collapse 14. Fire escape dangers 15. Wood-frame building collapse 16. Collapse hazards of buildings under construction 17. Collapse caused by master stream operations 18. Search-and-rescue at a building collapse 19. Safety precautions prior to collapse 20. Why the World Trade Center Towers collapsed 21. High-rise building collapse 22. Post-fire analysis 23. Early floor collapse EPILOGUE: Are architects, engineers, and code-writing officials friends of the firefighters?