Intravenous calcium replacement is available in two forms, gluconate and chloride. The main difference between the salts is that calcium chloride contains three times more calcium than gluconate on a mmol basis per ml. Specifically, 10 ml of calcium gluconate 10% contains 2.3 mmol of calcium, whereas 10 ml of calcium chloride 10% contains 6.8 mmol. Confusion between these salts can cause harm!

Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing, Only a signal shown and a distant voice in the darkness; So on the ocean of life we pass and speak one another, Only a look and a voice, then darkness again and a silence. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882)

This chapter covers the basics from real analysis to linear algebra and the theory of computation that is foundational for the rest of the book. A careful discussion of different models of computation is taken up, which discusses several issues that are often ignored in other presentations of optimization theory and algorithms.

A Frenchman who arrives in London, will find Philosophy, like every Thing else, very much chang’d there… In France, ’tis the Pressure of the Moon that causes the Tides; but in England ’tis the Sea that gravitates toward the Moon. Letters Concerning the English Nation [1733] Letter XIV: On Descartes and Sir Isaac Newton, Voltaire (1694–1778)

The Project Orion spacecraft is by common consent the craziest interstellar flight concept ever devised. Ironically, it was also the spacecraft design that received the widest support by scientists, the military and other branches of the US government, as well as by private industry. It was as if all of these people had collectively lost their minds. The basic idea was utterly simple and so intuitively obvious that it could be understood by a child. This was a craft whose propulsion system was built upon the Newtonian principle of action and reaction. The central notion was that of placing a bomb under a rocket and then detonating it to loft the rocket up and away – exactly the same process as putting a firecracker under a tin can and watching it blow sky high. To keep it going up, of course, a series of bombs detonated in sequence would be required. And so the Orion rocket would be propelled through space by a stream of bombs, in fact nuclear bombs, exploding one after another behind it, thereby continuously accelerating the craft. That was the project’s key concept, and as such it was simultaneously perfect and insane.

The chapter traces the process by which German corporations largely, though still partially, abandoned their Jewish colleagues in the first eighteen months of Nazi rule and simultaneously shed their earlier, recurrent demands for a “state-free” economy in favor of accepting the Nazi statist one. The account places more than customary emphasis on the role of intimidation.

What were the chief characteristics of the new social democratic system of government that developed in Britain between 1931 and 1976?

Human normal immunoglobulin is prepared by cold alcohol fractionation of pooled plasma from over 1,000 donations. Individual donor units of plasma are screened for hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg) and for the presence of antibodies to human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1), HIV-2 or hepatitis C virus (HCV), which, combined with careful donor selection, minimizes the risk of viral transmission. In addition, the testing for HBsAg, HIV-1, HIV-2 and HCV antibodies is repeated on the plasma pools.

How, given that in 1885 those unable to support themselves were considered personal failures, were they seen as victims of the failures of markets and governments to ensure their welfare by 1931?

When night comes I stand on the steps and listen; the stars cluster in the garden and I stand, out in the darkness. Edith Södergran (1892–1923) “Stjärnorna [The Stars]” [1916] (tr. David Barrett)

A careful exposition of the conceptual underpinnings of algorithmic or computational optimization is presented. Computation in continuous optimization has its origins in the traditions of scientific computing and numerical analysis, whereas discrete optimization broadly views computation via the Turing machine model. The different views lead to some friction. In the continuous world, one often designs algorithms assuming one can perform exact operations with real numbers (consider, for example, Newton’s method), which is impossible in the Turing machine model. In the discrete world, the “input" to a Turing machine becomes a tricky question when dealing with general nonlinear functions and sets. The question of “complexity" of an optimization algorithm is also treated in somewhat different ways in the two communities. This chapter, combined with the careful discussion of computation models in Chapter 1, shows how all these issues can be handled in a unified, coherent way making no distinction whatsoever between "continuous" and "discrete" optimization.