This book addresses the complex relationship between the values of liberal democracy and the values associated with scientific research. The chapters explore how these values mutually reinforce or conflict with one another, in both historical and contemporary contexts. The contributors utilize various approaches to address this timely subject, including historical studies, philosophical analysis, and sociological case studies. The chapters cover a range of topics including academic freedom and autonomy, public control of science, the relationship between scientific pluralism and deliberative democracy, lay-expert relations in a democracy, and the threat of populism and autocracy to scientific inquiry. Taken together the essays demonstrate how democratic values and the epistemic and non-epistemic values associated with science are interconnected. Science, Freedom, Democracy will be of interest to scholars and graduate students working in philosophy of science, history of philosophy, sociology of science, political philosophy, and epistemology.

Preoperative and intraoperative echocardiography has become an indispensable tool for guiding mitral valve surgery and has fostered the development of many innovative surgical techniques. Mitral valvuloplasty is now an established surgical method for the treatment of mitral insufficiency but the success is largely dependent on the extent of the underlying disease of the mitral valve. The book by Dr. Ng and coauthors is an extraordinary presentation of the relation between echocardiographic display of mitral valve pathology and reconstructive mitral valve surgery. The atlas provides an excellent illustrative guide to teach echocardiographic-anatomic correlations and educates the reader on the techniques of mitral valve repair. The quality of the illustrations, particularly the surgical photographs is exquisite. The book will be helpful for cardiologists and cardiac surgeons.