Now in a fourth edition, Contemporary Topics expands on its highly respected approach to developing academic listening and study skills. Organized around realistic college lectures, the text guides learners through carefully sequenced activities in skills such as note-taking, focusing attention, intensive listening, and vocabulary building. It also helps students evaluate their interests and explore possible career paths. New to This Edition New subject areas, presented as one-on-one academic lectures, emphasize professional applications such as software engineering, multimedia design, information technology, urban planning, and social psychology. Learning Outcomes listed at the outset of each unit let students know the goals of each unit and what their learning experience will be. New audio interviews with topic experts provide context for the upcoming unit lecture. Bottom-up listening and pronunciation exercises emphasize important principles and improve real-time perception. An oral presentation activity, supported by specific preparation and delivery strategies, concludes each unit and includes the opportunity for peer evaluation. Proficiency assessments composed of short academic audio lectures and multiple-choice exams simulate TOEFL-style test format for practice on high-stakes tests. New Essential Online Resources include audio, video, and teacher materials (assessments, teaching notes, answer keys, audioscripts, presentation points, and more). Other Highlights Corpus vocabulary drawn from the Academic Word List ensures that students are exposed to core academic vocabulary. Collaborative activities with presentation strategies and peer evaluations allow students to make connections and develop critical thinking skills. Unit comprehension tests assess students' grasp of key concepts presented in the unit lecture. Mapped to the Global Scale of English.

Prepares students for the challenge of college lectures with practice in a wide range of listening, speaking, and note-taking skills and strategies.

Now in a fourth edition, Contemporary Topics expands on its highly respected approach to developing academic listening and study skills. Organized around realistic college lectures, the text guides learners through carefully sequenced activities in skills such as note-taking, focusing attention, intensive listening, and vocabulary building. It also helps students evaluate their interests and explore possible career paths. New to This Edition New subject areas, presented as one-on-one academic lectures, emphasize professional applications such as software engineering, multimedia design, information technology, urban planning, and social psychology. Learning Outcomes listed at the outset of each unit let students know the goals of each unit and what their learning experience will be. New audio interviews with topic experts provide context for the upcoming unit lecture. Bottom-up listening and pronunciation exercises emphasize important principles and improve real-time perception. An oral presentation activity, supported by specific preparation and delivery strategies, concludes each unit and includes the opportunity for peer evaluation. Proficiency assessments composed of short academic audio lectures and multiple-choice exams simulate TOEFL-style test format for practice on high-stakes tests. New Essential Online Resources include audio, video, and teacher materials (assessments, teaching notes, answer keys, audioscripts, presentation points, and more). Other Highlights Corpus vocabulary drawn from the Academic Word List ensures that students are exposed to core academic vocabulary. Collaborative activities with presentation strategies and peer evaluations allow students to make connections and develop critical thinking skills. Unit comprehension tests assess students' grasp of key concepts presented in the unit lecture. Mapped to the Global Scale of English.

Is the everyday understanding of belief susceptible to scientific investigation? Belief is one of the most commonly used, yet unexplained terms in neuroscience. Beliefs can be seen as forms of mental representations and one of the building blocks of our conscious thoughts. This book provides an interdisciplinary overview of what we currently know about the neural basis of human belief systems, and how different belief systems are implemented in the human brain. The chapters in this volume explain how the neural correlates of beliefs mediate a range of explicit and implicit behaviours ranging from moral decision making, to the practice of religion. Drawing inferences from philosophy, psychology, psychiatry, religion, and cognitive neuroscience, the book has important implications for understanding how different belief systems are implemented in the human brain, and outlines the directions which research on the cognitive neuroscience of beliefs should take in the future. The Neural Basis of Human Belief Systems will be of great interest to researchers in the fields of psychology, philosophy, psychiatry, and cognitive neuroscience.

This outstanding three-title series prepares college-bound ESL students to understand academic lectures in English. Each text equips students for the challenges of college and university study by helping them listen selectively, take notes, review key ideas, retain information, and apply what they have learned. Twelve recorded lectures in each level are performed in lively and natural styles to provide a motivating introduction to academic listening. Lectures cover a wide range of thought-provoking contemporary topics. Controlled, realistic note-taking practice, ample pre-listening activities, vocabulary preview, post-lecture tests, and a wealth of illustrations also aid student understanding. Audiocassettes offer full lectures, presented both divided into parts and in their entirety. Each book offers the following features: -- Topic preview -- Vocabulary preview -- Identifying main ideas and supporting details -- Note-taking skills -- Review and post-listening tests -- Application of ideas through post-listening activities

The intersection between the fields of behavioral decision research and neuroscience has proved to be fertile ground for interdisciplinary research. Whereas the former is rich in formalized models of choice, the latter is rife with techniques for testing behavioral models at the brain level. As a result, there has been the rapid emergence of progressively more sophisticated biological models of choice, geared toward the development of ever more complete mechanistic models of behavior. This volume provides a coherent framework for distilling some of the key themes that have emerged as a function of this research program, and highlights what we have learned about judgment and decision making as a result. Although topics that are theoretically relevant to judgment and decision making researchers are addressed, the book also ventures somewhat beyond the traditional boundaries of this area to tackle themes that would of interest to a greater community of scholars. Neuroscience of Decision Making provides contemporary and essential reading for researchers and students of cognitive psychology, neuroscience, philosophy, and economics.

Ensuring the delivery of quality, accessible, affordable, and safe healthcare presents an ongoing complex challenge crucial to the progression and advancement of modern healthcare systems. In addition to providing the highest quality health care to patients, healthcare leadership and systems must also provide for the safety and security of healthcare providers throughout the entire, complex healthcare conglomerate, including pre-hospital providers, pharmacists, patient care technicians, radiological technicians, nurses, physical therapists, physician extenders, and physicians. Every aspect of care provided merits consideration for quality improvement, augmenting clinical efficiency, promoting effective, efficient collaboration and coordination between different clinical services, curtailing exorbitant healthcare costs, and boosting patient and provider safety. This third installment of Contemporary Topics in Patient Safety examines a broad variety of interrelated connected themes corresponding to the benefits and challenges of providing safety-focused quality patient care via improved clinical infrastructure, conceptual planning, symbiotic team-building enhancements, and sage leadership. The elements, issues, and dilemmas discussed in this textbook pertain to both resource-replete and resource-challenged nations, and to worldwide health systems, which develop uniquely in response to unique, local conundrums and dilemmas. Topics discussed in this volume address the central factors of identifying and facilitating the promotion of continual advancement of clinical routines and regimens among individuals and medical teams as well as institutional practices towards enhanced safety and improved outcomes.