The great strides made in the field of morphological methods during the past decades have perhaps found their most spectacular expression in the functional exploration of the nervous system. In comparison with other tissues, nerve tissue displays three kinds of specificity : structural, because of the unique organization of the neuronal networks ; chemical as shown, for example, by the informative molecules exchanged between the nerve cells, and of course functional, thanks to the particular metabolic and electrophysiological characteristics of the neurons. Although for a long time the structural properties of the nervous system were generally considered to constitute the only field to which morphological techniques could be applied, we are to-day justified in believing that they can also explore the nerve tissue through its specific chemical and functional aspects, thanks to the development of immunocytochemistry and in situ hybridization, to the elaboration of the deoxyglucose method, to the use of voltage or ion sensitive dyes, and to the progress made in the application of in vivo techniques like PET. These methods have evolved so fast, the technical and fundamental problems they raise are so numerous and stimulating, and the importance of the complementary data they provide is so obvious, that we thought it was a good time to organize a new meeting between distinguished specialists in the neurocytochemical field.

..But then as he peered out through the branches, the sky tore open--abruptly, distorting, and bubbling out, a darkness looking at first like a black globbed mass, like dark spittle on a French trapper's beard, but then widening, widening, widening...until Wore Wolf Teeth inched back with dread. This deadly vision came from the spirits, not from a bodied foe...The dark, translucent bubble continued enlarging...Then the sky tunnel of smoked blackness swallowed the whole sky and out of the cavernous maw charged, stormed, a moving drab-gray monster. He gripped his medicine bag hanging from his neck, crawled out of the brush, stood and said, "I am of the Chaticks-si-chaticks (Men of men) Above, the dark gray spirit hovered pulsating, and behind it the sky endless tar. Three miles away, horses of an Oregon-bound wagon train skittered and bucked, one large roan knocking its rider to the ground. The men looked up in shock, bewildered by the sudden darkness. Thus begins The Feeling of the Earth, a new speculative novel concerning an alien research mission to the minor planet Earth which will last at least until 2073, from the conflicts of the Oregon Trail to the mysteries of astrobiology.

Catholic University Of America, Canon Law Studies, No. 298.

In this stream of life, this book of powerful poetic lines of empathy and mercy counter the sorrow and harshness that claim our yesterdays and tomorrows, and help us redeem this present day, this present moment. selah river is the third collection of published poems by Daniel Wilcox, a poet and fiction writer who has traveled rivers of the world and rivers of the soul and rivers of the mind.