BRILL

Dispute settlement in international space law; a multi-door courthouse for outer space.

The multi-door courthouse is a concept in international law that grew out of alternative dispute resolution movements in the domestic law of several countries, says Goh. She describes how it could be used to resolve disputes between countries over space law. Her topics include the applicability of international dispute settlement mechanisms to space law, the need for a sectorial space law dispute settlement mechanism, and implementing the multi-door courthouse for outer space. The study began as her doctoral dissertation in air and space law at Leiden University, the Netherlands; no date is noted. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Knowing animals.

Simmons (film, television, and media studies, U. of Auckland) and Armstrong (English and cultural studies, U. of Canterbury) present twelve essays by New Zealander and Australian scholars in philosophy, literary criticism, art history, and cultural studies on topics in the emerging "animal studies" discipline. The contributors view humans as animals among other animals, challenging the notion that the humanities are reserved for human nature only. Essays examine human-animal interactions and cultures through not exclusively or necessarily biological viewpoints. Concepts illuminated here include beast fables, anthropomorphs, humanimals, and l'animot. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

The multivalence of biblical texts and theological meanings.

Theologians and related scholars in North America and Europe deliberately blur the distinction between historical and theological approaches to biblical theology in order to explore the many ways in which biblical texts are related to theological meaning. One of the notions underlying their endeavor is that theology is a historically located conceptual discipline, so with each historical layer of a text, different possibilities for theological meaning are conveyed. Among their studies are Christian theological readings of the Song of Songs, Luke-Acts and the negotiation of authority and identity in the Roman world, and Louis-Marie Chauvet's sacramental reading of John 4:21-24. The clothbound edition is published by Brill; the paperbound edition is published by the Society of Biblical Literature. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

The Psocoptera of tropical South-east Asia.

New (zoology, La Trobe U., Australia) and Lienar (Natural History Museum of Geneva) provide a preliminary guide to one of the lesser known insect orders in a region that displays complex patterns of transition between the Oriental and Australasian realms in many faunal groups. The material includes an introduction to the study of Psocoptera; discussions of morphology, biology, collecting, and biogeography; keys to suborders and families; a systematic treatment of three suborders; and a checklist of all known species found in the region with references to original sources. The illustrations have been collected from a wide range of published sources, but redrawn to a single format. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Spiders; biology, ecology, natural history and behavior.

Punzo (biology, U. of Tampa) offers professional biologists, students, and general readers a broad reference to arachnid biology, encompassing such areas as classification, evolution, external and internal anatomy, development, reproduction, and a range of behavior. He includes a glossary without pronunciation, and 32 color photographs. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Ultrasonic diagnostics in medicine; physical foundations.

The most fundamental of the foundations is simple: an organism is irradiated with sound waves and the changes in the sound field caused by the presence of the organism are detected; these changes are analyzed to draw conclusions concerning the structure of the body and deviations of some of its parts from the normal state. Among the first complications is that the sound waves change the characteristics of the organism, as well as vice versa. Blavin and Zabashta, who are not otherwise identified, look at the operant models of biological tissue and organisms, the emission of sound waves, the scattering of those waves when they encounter biological material, and visualizing to make practical sense of the results. Translated, presumably from Russian, by P. V. Malyshev and D. V/. Malyshev. VSP is a subsidiary of Brill. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)