Changes Of Heart

The beloved #1 New York Times bestselling author and “master of the craft of storytelling” (Associated Press) weaves a spellbinding tale of a mother’s tragic loss and one man’s chance at salvation. One moment June Nealon is happily looking forward to years of love and laughter with her family. The next, she is facing a future as empty as her heart as she waits for a miracle. For Shay Bourne, life has no more surprises, and he has nothing to offer the world. In a heartbeat, though, his life is changed by one last chance for redemption through June’s young daughter, Claire. But between June and Shay lies an ocean of bitter regrets and a mother’s rage. Would you give up revenge against someone you hate if it meant saving someone you love? Would you want your dreams to come true if it meant granting your enemy’s dying wish? Soul-stirring and haunting, Change of Heart is “another ripped-from-the-zeitgeist winner” (Publishers Weekly) from Jodi Picoult.

With a sophisticated new life comes daring new love… Janie is the misfit in her New England family, never as pretty, nor as thin, nor as popular as her older sisters. Hidden away in her own solitude, she seeks comfort in her art and in her isolation. Then everything changes. When her abilities as an artist land her a dream position at a prominent advertising company, she finally discovers her true worth. The shy, introverted girl Janie was is no more, replaced by a confident and sophisticated woman. But thrust into a new role and a new world, she’ll soon discover how quickly friends can become enemies, fairy tales don’t always have happy endings, and that even the most determined woman can have…Changes of Heart.

The study was designed to assess the relationship between detection efficiency and beat-to-beat changes in heart rate around task stimuli in a vigilance task. Thirty-six subjects, instrumented for continuous recording of EKG and respiration, individually stood a 96 minute vigil. They monitored a light which flashed on (stimulus event) for 500ms. once every 6.0 seconds and were to report the occasional brighter flashes (signals). Half of the subjects (high signal density group) received 240 signals; the remaining 18 subjects (low signal density group) received but 16 signals. By urging the subjects to do their best, a motivational condition was induced in a six minute post-test. As expected, detection efficiency was higher and better sustained by the high signal density group. Detection efficiency of the low signal density group decayed appreciably over time. In the motivational post-test condition the performance of both groups improved significantly. Measures of changes in heart rate, analyzed both in terms of overall shifts in heart rate over the vigil and beat-to-beat changes in heart rate around each stimulus event, revealed: (1) The median heart rate in succeeding quarters of the vigil, did not differ significantly between the two groups. (2) Heart rate preceding a stimulus event decelerated. (3) In the post-test the significant recovery in detection efficiency was accompanied by an increase in the magnitude of stimulus-oriented cardiac deceleration and by a decrease in overall heart rate. (Author).

An inspiring chronicle of life-changing encounters, personal transformation and a vision of love that transcends the everyday definition, to embrace universal kindness and compassion, based on the knowledge that all beings are one family and that our capacity to love is one of the world's most hidden yet powerful resources. The book is groundbreaking in its affirmation of love as a pathway for people of widely differing viewpoints. Unexpectedly changed by love, Fran Grace went on a journey to learn more about its power to transform and heal. She interviewed renowned spiritual teachers, scientists, activists and artists, all chosen with the help of her spiritual teacher. Each encounter helped her overcome obstacles on her path. The book gives readers a direct encounter with teachers of love in the world today. From diverse faiths and fields of work, they reveal the power of love to be the next frontier of global consciousness, suggesting many ways to uncover it and live it. Includes photographs and unique contributions from: Dr. David R. and Susan Hawkins - H. H. the 17th Karmapa - Father Pavlos of Sinai - Llewellyn and Anat Vaughan-Lee - Mona Polacca and The International Council of the 13 Indigenous Grandmothers - Betty J. Eadie - Belvie Rooks & Dedan Gills - Dr. William and Jean Tiller - Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo - Huston Smith - Mother Teresa and the Missionaries of Charity - Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev - Dr. Viktor Frankl (with grandson Alexander Vesely and Frankl family representative Mary Cimiluca) - Swami Chidatmananda. Fran Grace's personal narrative is pulsed by her encounters with the pioneering teachers of love listed above, each of whom has a chapter that includes a brief biography, excerpts from their dialogue with the author, and her sense of how the encounter helped her to overcome the many obstacles to love. The book takes readers on a journey into Buddhist and Hindu monasteries in India, an Indigenous Grandmothers' fire circle in the Black Hills, Mother Teresa's Homes for the Poor in Rome, Calcutta, and Tijuana, laboratory of a Stanford physicist, home of a Sufi sheikh, largest meditation hall in N. America, and a college classroom in California. She interviews those familiar with the stark Sinai desert, slave dungeons in Ghana, and near-death experiences. In the end, love is found to animate every moment of ordinary life. Inspiring story of personal transformation. Compelling account of how the world is transformed through everyday acts of kindness. A rich resource of teachings on love, healing and compassion from a wide range of spiritual traditions, with a rare inside view of some of the world's most respected teachers. Includes index, biographical profiles, bibliography, endnotes.

The Stressed Heart is truly unique in concept and will provide an eXCItmg adventure to the reader no matter what his or her field of expertise and interest. The title, although quite appropriate, does not adequately indicate the range of topics considered or the rational interrelationships among them. Indeed, perhaps the most important point to be learned from the book is that a serious consideration of the response of the heart to mechanical overload, ischemia, or excessive humoral stimuli must include evaluation of each of the topics in the table of contents. The heart responds to stress through alterations in both structure and function. How these changes are brought about is the subject of the initial chapters. These consider first the normal regulation of gene expression in the heart, the rapid response to mechanical overload that leads to both quantitative and qualitative changes in the contractile proteins, and our current understand ing of the signals that might be elicited by stress and alter gene expression. One chapter emphasizes the fact that, regardless of the nature of the stress, the common denominator is a discrepancy between energy requirements and expenditure. The central role of cellular acidosis in initiating the sequence of responses to stress and the possible roles of peptide regulators of transcription and protein regulators of translation are considered in detail.