In one week, Manhattan will be gone. In one month, the country. In two months . . . the world. At New York's JFK Airport an arriving Boeing 777 taxiing along a runway suddenly stops dead. All the shades have been drawn, all communication channels have mysteriously gone quiet. Dr. Eph Goodweather, head of a CDC rapid-response team investigating biological threats, boards the darkened plane . . . and what he finds makes his blood run cold. A terrifying contagion has come to the unsuspecting city, an unstoppable plague that will spread like an all-consuming wildfire—lethal, merciless, hungry . . . vampiric. And in a pawnshop in Spanish Harlem an aged Holocaust survivor knows that the war he has been dreading his entire life is finally here . . .

From the author of Jurassic Park, Timeline, and Sphere comes a captivating thriller about a deadly extraterrestrial microorganism, which threatens to annihilate human life. Five prominent biophysicists have warned the United States government that sterilization procedures for returning space probes may be inadequate to guarantee uncontaminated re-entry to the atmosphere. Two years later, a probe satellite falls to the earth and lands in a desolate region of northeastern Arizona. Nearby, in the town of Piedmont, bodies lie heaped and flung across the ground, faces locked in frozen surprise. What could cause such shock and fear? The terror has begun, and there is no telling where it will end.

Public health officials and organizations around the world remain on high alert because of increasing concerns about the prospect of an influenza pandemic, which many experts believe to be inevitable. Moreover, recent problems with the availability and strain-specificity of vaccine for annual flu epidemics in some countries and the rise of pandemic strains of avian flu in disparate geographic regions have alarmed experts about the world's ability to prevent or contain a human pandemic. The workshop summary, The Threat of Pandemic Influenza: Are We Ready? addresses these urgent concerns. The report describes what steps the United States and other countries have taken thus far to prepare for the next outbreak of "killer flu." It also looks at gaps in readiness, including hospitals' inability to absorb a surge of patients and many nations' incapacity to monitor and detect flu outbreaks. The report points to the need for international agreements to share flu vaccine and antiviral stockpiles to ensure that the 88 percent of nations that cannot manufacture or stockpile these products have access to them. It chronicles the toll of the H5N1 strain of avian flu currently circulating among poultry in many parts of Asia, which now accounts for the culling of millions of birds and the death of at least 50 persons. And it compares the costs of preparations with the costs of illness and death that could arise during an outbreak.

Proceedings of the First International Congress of Parasitology, Volume One focuses on the advancements of processes, methodologies, approaches, and reactions involved in parasitology. The selection first offers information on the role of molluscan hosts in trematode speciation; ecological analysis of the fluke fauna of birds in the USSR; digenetic trematodes of fishes as indicators of the ecology, phylogeny, and zoogeography of their hosts; and aspects of the biology of a monogenean skin parasite. The text then examines bacterial flora as one of the etiological factors influencing the establishment of parasites in the bowel of their host, responses of helminths to temperature gradients, and reservoir parasitism in helminths. The publication takes a look at the physical and biochemical characteristics of helminth glycogens; effect of insulin on glucose uptake and glycogen synthesis in the liver fluke Fasciola hepatica L.; regulation of glycogen synthesis in the liver fluke Fasciola hepatica L.; and changes in catalase activity during embryonation of Ascaris eggs and its relationship to respiration and cytochrome oxidase activity. The selection is a vital reference for researchers interested in parasitology.

Structural control offers opportunities to design new structures and to retrofit existing structures by the application of counter-forces, smart materials, frictional devices, etc., instead of just increasing the strength of the structure at greater cost.The Association for the Control of Structures (ACS) is promoting in Europe the development of this new technology in architectural design and infrastructure renewal and rehabilitation. The First European Conference on Structural Control was organized as one of the major initiatives toward this objective.

The Novrosk Peninsula: the Soviet naval base has been abandoned, the nuclear submarines are rusting and rotting. Cold, isolated, forgotten. Until the Russian Special Forces arrive and discover that the Doctor and his companions are here too. But there is something else in Novrosk. Something that predates even the stone circle on the cliff top. Something that is at last waking, hunting, killing. Can the Doctor and his friends stay alive long enough to learn the truth? With time running out, they must discover who is really responsible for the Deviant Strain... Featuring the Ninth Doctor as played by Christopher Eccleston, together with Rose and Captain Jack as played by Billie Piper and John Barrowman in the hit Doctor Who series from BBC Television.

Strain imaging (also known as speckle-tracking echocardiography or STE) is a rapidly growing, affordable, and versatile cardiac imaging technology of great interest to clinicians in both inpatient and outpatient settings. ASE's Comprehensive Strain Imaging is the first reference designed to help you master a wide range of strain imaging/STE applications, including screening, diagnosis, treatment, and follow up. Written and edited by a team of international experts from the American Society of Echocardiography (ASE), this new resource provides the information you need to optimize imaging acquisition and analysis using this important new echocardiography method. - Covers step-by-step techniques on how to use strain imaging with expert tips on nuances, pitfalls, and clinical decision making. - Discusses the growing range of strain imaging applications for assessing diastolic function, atrial function, heart failure, arterial disease, valve disease, hypertrophy, and other common cardiovascular conditions. - Provides up-to-date information on screening and follow up of patients who receive cardio-toxic oncologic agents during cancer treatment and evaluation of patients with cardiomyopathy, heart failure, arterial disease, valve disease, implantable pacemakers, pericardial disease, hypertrophy, ischemic disease, and chest radiation. - Includes more than 150 images using the latest strain imaging technology, as well as videos that depict evaluation and monitoring of patients with cardiomyopathies. - Addresses future applications, including elastography.

“A cross between The Hot Zone and ’Salem’s Lot.” —Entertainment Weekly “I cannot wait to see where Del Toro and Hogan take us next.” —James Rollins, New York Times bestselling author of Bloodline The wait is over! Guillermo del Toro, one of Hollywood’s most popular and imaginative storytellers (Pan’s Labyrinth, Hellboy) and Hammett Award-winning thriller writer Chuck Hogan (Prince of Thieves) return with The Fall—the second blood-chilling volume in their critically acclaimed, New York Times bestselling Strain Trilogy. The Fall picks up where The Strain left off—with a vampiric infection spreading like wildfire across America as a small band of heroes struggles to save the dwindling human race from the vampire plague. Horror fiction and dark fantasy fans will be swept up in this epic story that bestselling author Nelson DeMille describes as “Bram Stoker meets Stephen King meets Michael Crichton.”