Author: Peter Mansfield File Type: pdf In this autobiography, Sir Peter Mansfield describes his life from war time childhood that initially sparked his interest in physics to his work in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) that eventually led to the award of the Nobel Prize in 2003. Peter Mansfield grew up in London, but was evacuated to Devon during the blitz and following the V1 and V2 attacks on London. At the end of hostilities, he worked briefly in the printing industry before deciding to pursue his real interests in science by joining the Rocket Propulsion Department at Westcott near Aylesbury. Following a period of National Service and his studies at Queen Mary College, University of London, he married and moved to the USA for two years, returning in 1964 as a Lecturer in Physics at the University of Nottingham. In 1972 he spent a sabbatical period in Heidelberg, and during this period corresponded with his student, Peter Grannell, in Nottingham on the novel idea of magnetic resonance imaging. This led to his first paper on MRI which was presented at the first Specialised Colloque Ampere in 1973. During this period, he demonstrated how the MRI radio signals can be analysed and turned into images of the body. In 2003 the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded jointly to Sir Peter and Paul Lauterbur for their crucial achievements in the development of MRI.

Author: Gary Noesner File Type: mobi From Publishers WeeklyNoesner, a former FBI hostage negotiator for 23 years, was the first person to run the bureaus Crisis Negotiation Unit. Looking back, he recalls some major standoffs along with his efforts to understand and interpret the behavior of hostage takers, sometimes finding negotiations thwarted by the actions of his own colleagues. The compelling centerpiece of the book is Noesners analysis of what went wrong at Waco with the Branch Davidians when negotiation and tactical teams were working at cross purposes. After opening with a dramatic account of a man who abducted his estranged common-law wife and their son and was holding a gun to her head, Noesner describes his own quintessentially American childhood, when he got the idea for his lifes work from a segment about the FBI on The Mickey Mouse Club. Drawing on official reports, personal notes, memos, and memories of conversations, he writes with a simple style that nevertheless generates much suspense, recreating past events with a vivid intensity certain to fascinate true crime readers. br Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. FromFormerly chief of the FBIs unit for hostage negotiation, Noesner interlinks principles for talking to cornered desperadoes with cases from his career. Some of those caught nationwide attention, such as the disastrous 1993 siege of religious zealots in Waco, Texas, and here Noesner tells his side of the story. In his discussion of less-well-known incidents, Noesner underlines his core belief that negotiation is more effective in peacefully resolving standoffs than law enforcements method of tactical assault. Although professionals are the audience for that debate, true-crime readers have plenty to absorb in Noesners accounts, which include several episodes of the husband-abducting-wife-and-kids scenario, a couple of prison riots, three 1990s showdowns between the law and beleaguered fanatics (the Branch Davidians, the Montana Freemen, and the Republic of Texas), and a miscellany of terrorism and kidnapping incidents. Working his ideas into the narrative, Noesner reconstructs negotiating dialogue both as a critique of techniques, such as establishing rapport with a hostage taker, and as life-or-death drama. The latter, plus the inside-the-FBI tone, renders Noesners recollections a guaranteed attraction in new-books displays. --Gilbert Taylor