Find a Perl programmer, and you'll find a copy of Perl Cookbook nearby. Perl Cookbook is a comprehensive collection of problems, solutions, and practical examples for anyone programming in Perl. The book contains hundreds of rigorously reviewed Perl "recipes" and thousands of examples ranging from brief one-liners to complete applications. The second edition of Perl Cookbook has been fully updated for Perl 5.8, with extensive changes for Unicode support, I/O layers, mod_perl, and new technologies that have emerged since the previous edition of the book. Recipes have been updated to include the latest modules. New recipes have been added to every chapter of the book, and some chapters have almost doubled in size.

This volume grows out of an initiative in the World Bank on resource allocation and purchasing (“RAP”), which started in 2000, and continues to publish articles and books related to strategic purchasing. The initiative emerged from such questions in developing economies as: Why do individuals need help in purchasing health services from providers? Is the “middleman” really necessary? Can people not just buy health services in the same way they would go to the local market to buy bread, milk, or fruit—especially since, throughout most of history, that is what most people did? When sick, they contacted local healers directly. Public policy historically was limited largely to protecting the sick against charlatans and was enforced through ethical codes such as the Hippocratic oath. There was no expensive technology, and most serious conditions led to death. Loss of employment and burial costs were the most expensive parts of illness. With industrialization and the scientific revolution, all this changed. As understanding about the causes, prevention, and treatment of illness expanded, interventions become more complex and expensive. Health care was no longer the exclusive domain of traditional healers.

A Litigator's Guide to DNA educates litigators, judges, criminalists, students, and others about all aspects of the use of DNA evidence in criminal and civil trials. It includes discussions of the molecular biological basis for the tests, essential laboratory practices, probability theory and mathematical calculations. It presents issues relevant to all parties involved in trying a case, from the prosecution and the defense, and to the judge and jury. The book is also extremely useful as a text for students aspiring to careers in forensic science and criminal law. The authors provide a full background on both the molecular biology and the mathematical theory behind forensic tests written specifically for people with little or no science background. No other book relates the foundational information on molecular biology and statistics to legal practice issues as extensively as this book does.