Nicholas Peters

Mars was once a thriving planet with an advanced civilization. But four hundred years ago, a large object struck Mars, leaving its surface cold and lifeless. Some of its inhabitants survived underground, searching for a way to leave their planet. Help arrived in 1976 when NASA put two spacecraft on the surface of Mars. The Viking landers studied the planet for more than a decade. The conclusion - Mars was a lifeless planet, incapable of supporting life. Future missions to Mars would support this theory that nothing could live on the cold, sterile surface of the planet. But they were there - watching and waiting. Fast-forward to present day. Two scientists, members of the original Viking mission team, go back to look at data collected on late evening forty years ago. A radio signal was sent from Mars, weird and complex and like nothing ever they had seen before. So complex was the message that no technology in 1976 could decipher the message. Only now, using today's technology, are they able to learn what was contained in that mysterious radio signal from forty years ago. When they do, they find something that will change the course of human history. Plains of Gold is the story of first contact and what happens when we finally learn that we are not alone in the universe. It is a riveting tale of action and intrigue as humans and extraterrestrials meet for the first time and in doing so, try to save the civilizations of two worlds.

Over the last century the ECG has been used by clinicians to make major clinical decisions with regard to electric pacing, the use of thrombolytic drugs in acute myocardial infarction and the timing of surgery. In conjunction with a chest X-ray and the echocardiogram it is a fundamental part of the initial investigation of a patient with suspected heart disease. These electrical squiggles have always been difficult for students to understand. In part the problem has been that the formatting of the ECG has only become standard in the last two decades. Some important books have not provided the full twelve-lead ECG. On occasion the interpretation of the ECG has been related to complex explanations of the shapes of the electrical signals. For the practising physician much of the interpretation is a matter of pattern recognition.