This book demonstrates principles of Ancestor Veneration Avatars (AVAs), by running avatars based on eleven deceased members of one family through ten highly diverse virtual worlds from the violent Defiance to the intellectual Uru: Myst Online, from the early EverQuest to the recent Elder Scrolls Online.

Writing a textbook on microbial genetics in about 200 pages was un doubtedly a difficult task, but I have been encouraged by the response from both students and lecturers to the first edition. The requirement for a second edition is also a measure of the need for such a book. My experience as a lecturer has shown that what is needed first is an intelligible framework which can be read in a reasonable period of time. Armed with these principles, a student can then go to reviews and the original literature with a reasonable chance of understanding the jargon and the details. Molecular genetics is now so well advanced that it is easy to lose track of the purpose of a set of experiments in the wealth of sequence data and complex interactions. I have therefore kept the same format for this edition with a well-illustrated text giving original papers, popular reviews, monographs and detailed reviews to enable the student to take the subject further as required."

Writing a textbook on microbial genetics in about 200 pages was un doubtedly a difficult task, but I have been encouraged by the response from both students and lecturers to the first edition. The requirement for a second edition is also a measure of the need for such a book. My experience as a lecturer has shown that what is needed first is an intelligible framework which can be read in a reasonable period of time. Armed with these principles, a student can then go to reviews and the original literature with a reasonable chance of understanding the jargon and the details. Molecular genetics is now so well advanced that it is easy to lose track of the purpose of a set of experiments in the wealth of sequence data and complex interactions. I have therefore kept the same format for this edition with a well-illustrated text giving original papers, popular reviews, monographs and detailed reviews to enable the student to take the subject further as required.

Continued economic growth, human welfare, and national security depend upon constant technological progress; and the chief area for innovation in the coming years will be converging technologies, the synergistic combination of the "NBIC" fields: nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology, and new technologies based in cognitive science.

The significance of convergence was initially recognized in the first National Science Foundation conference on the societal implications of nanotechnology in 2000, which reported that the newly developed ability to measure, manipulate, and organize matter on the nanoscale was revolutionizing science and technology.

This volume will mark a major step forward, for three reasons: (1) Enough is understood about convergence now to permit serious consideration of governance issues and the likely human consequences. (2) Among the many convergence-related research projects, several in diverse areas have begun to deliver real results. (3) The network of NBIC researchers and analysts has developed to the point of being a real scientific and engineering community.

One cross-cutting theme will be the ethical, legal, and social consequences of technological convergence. Another is the hunt for areas of remarkable research opportunities and the transforming tools required to take maximum advantage of them.

Convergence will bring new approaches to what are currently diverse areas of research, such as converging technology platforms, physical and mental performance, human-machine interfaces, human cognition and communication, education and training, work efficiency, and many others. On their own, each of the NBIC technologiesoffers the potential for extraordinary advancement, but combined their potential is enormous and may provide revolutionary progress in human longevity, quality of life, learning, and productivity.

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