A keyword listing of serial titles currently received by the National Library of Medicine.

Historical Background lowe my interest in the lactic acid bacteria (LAB) to the late Dr Cyril Rainbow, who introduced me to their fascinating world when he offered me a place with him to work for a PhD on the carbohydrate meta bolism of some lactic rods isolated from English beer breweries by himself and others, notably Dr Dora Kulka. He was particularly interested in their preference for maltose over glucose as a source of carbohydrate for growth, expressed in most cases as a more rapid growth on the disaccharide, but one isolate would grow only on maltose. Eventually, we showed that maltose was being utilised by 'direct fermen tation' as the older texts called it, specifically by the phosphorolysis which had first been demonstrated for maltose by Doudoroff and his associates in their work on maltose metabolism by a strain of Neisseria meningitidis. I began work on food fermentations when I came to Strathclyde University, and I soon found myself involved again with the bacteria which I had not touched since completing my doctoral thesis. In 1973 lG. Carr, C. V. Cutting and G. c. Whiting organised the 4th Long Ashton Symposium Lactic Acid Bacteria in Beverages and Food and from my participation in that excellent conference arose a friendship with Geoff Carr. The growing importance of these bacteria was subsequently confirmed by the holding, a decade later, of the first of the Wageningen Conferences on the LAB.

Pore-forming proteins and peptides play a central role in bacterial pathogenesis, the immune response, defense from venomous attack, and innate immunity. These proteins attack and eliminate other organisms by punching an aqueous channel through their membranes, which disrupts appropriate cell function. The discovery of this cellular interaction has

A collection of biographical notes of some 350 men who were physiologists in the years 1885-1914. The notes are grouped under the University or Medical School in which the men worked and together with brief explanatory paragraphs, the biographies aim to provide a history of the development of medical science in each institution over the years before the Great War of 1914-1918. The biographies extend to the end of each man's life, providing some account of physiology in the 1920s and 1930s and even longer.

Nelson Fausto The Greek myth of Prometheus with its picture of a vulture feasting on its chained victimhas traditionallyprovided a visualimageofliverregeneration. Itis apowerful and frightening representationbut ifone were to substitute the vulture by a surgeon and Prometheus by a patient laying on a properly prepared operating table, the outcomeoftheprocedurewould not differ significantlyfrom that describedbyGreek poets. Yet few of us who work in the field have stopped long enough to ask where this myth originated. Did the poet observe a case of liver regeneration in a human being? Was it brilliant intuition or perhaps, literally, just a 'gut feeling' of a poet looking for good rhymes that led to the prediction that livers grow when part of the tissueisremoved? Thisbookdoesnotattemptto solve these historical issues. Itdoes, instead, cover in detail some of the major modem themes of research on liver regen eration, injury and repair. As indicated in Dr. N. Bucher's chapter, the modem phase ofexperimental studies on liver regeneration started in 1931 with the publication by Higgins and Anderson of a method to perform a two-thirds resection of the liver of a rat. The technique described has 3 remarkable features: 1) it is highly reproducible, resulting in the removal of 68% of the liver, 2) it has minimal if any mortality, and 3) it consists only of blood vessel ligation and does not involve cutting through or wounding hepatic tissue.

Toxic plants and other natural toxicants have a variety of roles in the fields of human health, medical research and the production of safe food and also represent an economic problem in terms of animal health and crop production. Estimates of economic impact on livestock have ranged in the millions of dollars in countries such as Australia and the United States. This book brings together applied and fundamental research from botanists, chemists, biochemists, agricultural scientists, veterinarians and physicians and advice from regulatory bodies. It consists of more than 100 edited papers from the Fifth International Symposium on Poisonous Plants, held in Texas in May 1997. All aspects of poisonous plants, mycotoxicoses and herbal intoxications are covered. Their adverse effects are described, such as fatalities, reduced or failed reproduction, fetotoxicity, spontaneous abortions, deformities, reduced productivity and organ-specific toxicity. Methods of detection, isolation and identification of the chemical compounds responsible are included. The biochemistry of the plant-associated toxins and elucidation of their mechanism of action is investigated, including the protocols for management or eradication, immunization programs, behaviour modification, withholding periods for metabolic detoxification, regulatory advice concerning human usage of natural products and advice concerning toxin-residue in agricultural produce. The development of non-toxic strains of plants for use as fodder is also discussed. This book is essential reading for toxicologists concerned with animal and human health, food industry regulators and plant scientists.

This book is intended to present current concepts in molecular biology with the emphasis on the application to animal, plant and human pathology, in various aspects such as etiology, diagnosis, prognosis, treatment and prevention of diseases as well as the use of these methodologies in understanding the pathophysiology of various diseases that affect living beings.