The epic history of how antibiotics were born, saving millions of lives and creating a vast new industry known as Big Pharma. As late as the 1930s, virtually no drug intended for sickness did any good; doctors could set bones, deliver babies, and offer palliative care. That all changed in less than a generation with the discovery and development of a new category of medicine known as antibiotics. By 1955, the age-old evolutionary relationship between humans and microbes had been transformed, trivializing once-deadly infections. William Rosen captures this revolution with all its false starts, lucky surprises, and eccentric characters. He explains why, given the complex nature of bacteria—and their ability to rapidly evolve into new forms—the only way to locate and test potential antibiotic strains is by large-scale, systematic, trial-and-error experimentation. Organizing that research needs large, well-funded organizations and businesses, and so our entire scientific-industrial complex, built around the pharmaceutical company, was born. Timely, engrossing, and eye-opening, Miracle Cure is a must-read science narrative—a drama of enormous range, combining science, technology, politics, and economics to illuminate the reasons behind one of the most dramatic changes in humanity’s relationship with nature since the invention of agriculture ten thousand years ago.
The incredible true story of how a cycle of rain, cold, disease, and warfare created the worst famine in European history—years before the Black Death, from the author of Justinian's Flea and the forthcoming Miracle Cure In May 1315, it started to rain. For the seven disastrous years that followed, Europeans would be visited by a series of curses unseen since the third book of Exodus: floods, ice, failures of crops and cattle, and epidemics not just of disease, but of pike, sword, and spear. All told, six million lives—one-eighth of Europe’s total population—would be lost. With a category-defying knowledge of science and history, William Rosen tells the stunning story of the oft-overlooked Great Famine with wit and drama and demonstrates what it all means for today’s discussions of climate change.
Weaving together evolutionary microbiology, economics, military strategy, ecology, and ancient and modern medicine, author Rosen tells of history's first pandemic--a plague seven centuries before the Black Death that killed tens of millions, devastated th
How can marketers navigate the growing array of marketing specialties, multiplying media options and data sources, and increasing content saturation to improve effectiveness and return on investment? How can they provide consumers with seamless experiences of value across channels that overcome behavioral barriers and actually deliver results? In The Activation Imperative, William Rosen and Laurence Minsky provide a straightforward guide for marketers to move beyond building brands to activating them—from simply projecting what a brand is to optimizing what it does—to move people closer to transaction. Drawing on years of research and experience with the world’s most sophisticated brands, Rosen and Minsky share a unifying cross-discipline marketing approach designed to impact critical behaviors and more effectively drive business results. They reveal how today’s more personalized and trackable communications illuminate tremendous diversity in paths-to-purchase and explain how to leverage this data to develop more effective strategies and creative targeted to individual inflection points. With actionable advice and best-in-class examples, Rosen and Minsky offer marketers a road map to manage today’s increasingly fragmented marketing landscape to more effectively and efficiently build brands and business.
On a Saturday morning in December 1973, a section of New York's West Side Highway collapsed under the weight of a truck full of asphalt. The road was closed, seemingly for good, and the 80,000 cars that traveled it each day had to find a new way to their destinations. It ought to have produced traffic chaos, but it didn't. The cars simply vanished. It was a moment of revelation: the highway had induced the demand for car travel. It was a classic case of "build it and they will come," but for the first time the opposite had been shown to be true: knock it down and they will go away. Samuel I. Schwartz was inspired by the lesson. He started to reimagine cities, most of all his beloved New York, freed from their obligation to cars. Eventually, he found, he was not alone. Since the turn of the twenty-first century, a surreptitious revolution has taken place: every year Americans are driving fewer miles. And the generation named for this new century -- the Millennials -- are driving least of all. Not because they can't afford to; they don't want to. They have better ideas for how to use their streets. An urban transformation is underway, and smart streets are at the heart of it. They will boost property prices and personal fitness, roll back years of congestion and smog, and offer a transformative experience of American urban life. From San Francisco to Salt Lake, Charleston to Houston, the American city is becoming a better and better place to be. Schwartz's Street Smart is a dazzling and affectionate history of the struggle for control of American cities, and an inspiring off-road map to a more vibrant, active, and vigorous urban future.
The New York Times Bestseller William F. Buckley, Jr. remembers—as only he could—the towering figures of the twentieth century in a brilliant and emotionally powerful collection, compiled by acclaimed Fox News correspondent James Rosen. In a half century on the national stage, William F. Buckley, Jr. achieved unique stature as a writer, a celebrity, and the undisputed godfather of modern American conservatism. He kept company with the best and brightest, the sultry and powerful. Ronald Reagan pronounced WFB “perhaps the most influential journalist and intellectual in our era,” and his jet-setting life was a who’s who of high society, fame, and fortune. Among all his distinctions, which include founding the conservative magazine National Review and hosting the long-running talk show Firing Line, Buckley was also a master of that most elusive art form: the eulogy. He drew on his unrivaled gifts to mourn, celebrate, or seek mercy for the men and women who touched his life and the nation. Now, for the first time, WFB’s sweeping judgments of the great figures of his time—presidents and prime ministers, celebrities and scoundrels, intellectuals and guitar gods—are collected in one place. A Torch Kept Lit presents more than fifty of Buckley’s best eulogies, drawing on his personal memories and private correspondences and using a novelist’s touch to conjure his subjects as he knew them. We are reintroduced, through Buckley’s eyes, to the likes of Winston Churchill and Ronald Reagan, Elvis Presley and John Lennon, Truman Capote and Martin Luther King, Jr. Curated by Fox News chief Washington correspondent James Rosen, a Buckley protégé and frequent contributor to National Review, this volumes sheds light on a tumultuous period in American history—from World War II to Watergate, the “death” of God to the Grateful Dead—as told in the inimitable voice of one of our most elegant literary stylists.William F. Buckley, Jr. is back—just when we need him most.
The Signet Classics edition of Shakespeare's timeless tragedy of conspiracy and betrayal. In the first of his Roman history plays, the Bard tells the story of the murder of emperor Julius Caesar and the gruesome aftermath as ancient Rome descends into a violent mob. This title in the Signet Classics Shakespeare series includes: • An overview of Shakespeare's life, world, and theater • A special introduction to the play by the editors, William and Barbara Rosen • Selections from Plutarch's Lives of Noble Grecians and Romans, the source from which Shakespeare derived Julius Caesar • Dramatic criticism from Roy Walker, Maynard Mack, Richard David, and others • A comprehensive stage and screen history of notable actors, directors, and productions of Julius Caesar • Text, notes, and commentaries printed in the clearest, most readable format • Recommended readings
Recent advances in next-generation sequencing have enabled high-throughput determination of biological sequences in microbial communities, also known as microbiomes. The large volume of data now presents the challenge of how to extract knowledge—recognize patterns, find similarities, and find relationships—from complex mixtures of nucleic acid sequences currently being examined. In this chapter we review basic concepts as well as state-of-the-art techniques to analyze hundreds of samples which each contain millions of DNA and RNA sequences. We describe the general character of sequence data and describe some of the processing steps that prepare raw sequence data for inference. We then describe the process of extracting features from the data, assigning taxonomic and gene labels to the sequences. Then we review methods for cross-sample comparisons: (1) using similarity measures and ordination techniques to visualize and measure differences between samples and (2) feature selection and classification to select the most relevant features for discriminating between samples. Finally, in conclusion, we outline some open research problems and challenges left for future research.
The economic impact of the University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW-Madison) on Dane County and the State was studied during 1983-1984. The overall economic impact of the university consisted of direct spending impact of purchases, taxes, and donations, plus the indirect impact of that money circulating through the community to be respent on other purchases and payments. The direct impact of five expenditure categories (construction and spending by the university, employees, students, and visitors) was an estimated $628.5 million a year, of which $533.2 million went to local businesses. Considering the circulation of that money, the estimate for the total direct and indirect impact of the university on the county economy was $1.41 billion a year. It was estimated that about 3,000 public sector jobs and more than 9,500 private sector jobs were the result of the university's direct spending, while at least 5,300 private jobs were due to indirect effects. In addition, the university employed 21,677 regular and student employees. Appendices include: information on benefits to the state provided by UW-Madison hospital and clinics; survey questionnaires for faculty/employees, students, football fans, parents, and visitors, and a four-page selected bibliography. (SW)
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