This series provides a variety of different discussions on topics within the field of growth factors and cytokines in health and disease.

The book describes the major degenerative processes and pathologies exacerbated by senescence and how they can be alleviated through retardation of cellular aging. Topics discussed include neurodegenerative disease, protein oxidation, cerebrovascular disease, particle-induced inflammation and cardiovascular disease, Alzheimer's disease, ovarian aging, dietary and endogenous anti-oxidants in management of Parkinson's disease, and effects of exercise on oxidation and inflammation. The nineteen expertly authored chapters are organized into three sections in order to present a complete picture to the reader: Age Related Cellular Events, Role of Inflammatory and Oxidative Processes in Age-Related Diseases, and Retardation of Cellular Aging. Inflammation, Oxidative Stress and Age-Related Disease draws from a variety of international perspectives and provides a comprehensive overview of the relationship between disease, cell aging, and oxidative stress, as well as potential for preventing or slowing these processes. This installment of Springer's Oxidative Stress in Applied Basic Research and Clinical Practice is ideal for researchers, clinicians, and advanced graduate students in the fields of cardiology, neuroscience, biogerontolgy, and cell biology.

This volume deals with some of the multiple systems that growth factors and cytokines affect. The role of growth factors and cytokines on foetal development, in the immune and haemopoietic systems as well as in the skeletal and reproductive systems are covered. Various cancers are examined in a number of the chapters. This is the third and concluding volume of the treatise on growth factors and cytokines in health and disease.

Progress in molecular technology in recent years has caused an amazing growth of information about intercellular peptide messengers and their receptors. The number of characterized interleukins for example numbered just three six years ago and now there are at least 16. In addition, the number of described neutrophic peptides is around 30 and the number of receptors is ever increasing. Because many of these new peptide ligands and receptors were identified by "reverse genetic" techniques the understanding of their biological roles falls behind the knowledge of their molecular structures. However a new strain of functional studies has begun and animal models are developed allowing for further research into the biological roles of these messenger peptides and their receptors. Cytokines, the theme of this volume, describes a group of proteins identified primarily within the immune and hematopoietic systems. As many cytokines as possible are included along with their receptors providing the reader with a guide to an ever-changing field of scientific research.

To Pray and to Love is for all persons who want to pray but do not know how, who pray but feel uncertain about it, and who pray happily but want to grow more deeply. For those who have longing for prayer and yet have never prayed, the author offers some specific suggestions about attitudes, beliefs, and dispositions that get in the way of our prayer without us even noticing. Bondi also shares some of what the founders of early monasticism had to say about prayer and Christian love that she has found especially helpful over the years.

Teachings from this fourteenth-century mystic provide spiritual direction and call for you to open yourself, body and soul, to divine love. Many people are familiar with the phrase "All shall be well" but do not know much, if anything, about Julian of Norwich, the fourteenth-century English mystic who wrote those words. Thomas Merton declared her to be “without a doubt one of the most wonderful of all Christian voices,” and former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams says that her writings “may well be the most important work of Christian reflection in the English language.” This accessible introduction to Julian's Revelations of Divine Love, an extended reflection on a series of her mystical visions, includes an informative introduction that addresses the historical, cultural and sociological context of Julian’s life and writings. Mary Earle’s facing-page commentary focuses on Julian’s profoundly hopeful vision of humanity and God, her creative imagery and her rigorous honesty about the spiritual life. Drawing directly from Julian’s text, Earle addresses a variety of topics essential to understanding Julian’s mysticism, including the infinite nature of God, the life of prayer, God’s suffering with us, the eternal and undying life of the soul, the motherhood of Jesus and the motherhood of God, “all shall be well” and more. Drawing directly from Julian’s text, the commentary addresses a variety of topics including the infinite nature of God, the life of prayer, God’s suffering with us, the eternal and undying life of the soul, the motherhood of Jesus and the motherhood of God, “all shall be well” and more.

The book describes the major degenerative processes and pathologies exacerbated by senescence and how they can be alleviated through retardation of cellular aging. Topics discussed include neurodegenerative disease, protein oxidation, cerebrovascular disease, particle-induced inflammation and cardiovascular disease, Alzheimer's disease, ovarian aging, dietary and endogenous anti-oxidants in management of Parkinson's disease, and effects of exercise on oxidation and inflammation. The nineteen expertly authored chapters are organized into three sections in order to present a complete picture to the reader: Age Related Cellular Events, Role of Inflammatory and Oxidative Processes in Age-Related Diseases, and Retardation of Cellular Aging. Inflammation, Oxidative Stress and Age-Related Disease draws from a variety of international perspectives and provides a comprehensive overview of the relationship between disease, cell aging, and oxidative stress, as well as potential for preventing or slowing these processes. This installment of Springer's Oxidative Stress in Applied Basic Research and Clinical Practice is ideal for researchers, clinicians, and advanced graduate students in the fields of cardiology, neuroscience, biogerontolgy, and cell biology.

"Prayer is a hard topic for most of us modern folk, and we have little place to talk about it. My own first conversation partners were the great ancient teachers, the Abbas and Ammas of the Egyptian desert...These men and women have been urging me for nearly thirty years to pray and to seek healing for the wounds of my heart I carry from childhood, from my own temperament, from my culture, even the culture of my church. They have also urged me all along to write about what I have learned from them and from my own experience, for, as they tell us, nothing, neither the most wonderful nor the most humiliating thing we are given as Christians, is ever given for ourselves alone...The chapters that follow are in the form of letters to a friend. My intention, of course, is that you, the reader, understand yourself to be the friend to whom I am writing..." --excerpted from the author's Preface

"What a wonderful example of spiritual guidance through letters Out of her own rich experience and struggle and scholarship Roberta Bondi speaks about prayer as one who knows. Those who have a lot of questions about experience of God in everyday life will not want to miss reading In Ordinary Time." --E. Glenn Hinson, Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond, Richmond, Virginia

Being a Christian means learning to love with God's love. But God's love is not a warm feeling in the pit of the stomach. It has definite characteristics we learn in the course of our life, in the behavior and teaching of the early monastics, as we ponder over what we can say about God as God deals with us, and finally, as we model our own lives on what we have learned.