ralut reporter

RALUT REPORTERRETIRED ACADEMICS AND LIBRARIANS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO

Visit our Web site at www.ralut.utoronto.ca Vol. 8 No. 1 Feb 2008

Ralut RepoRteR Volume 8, NumbeR 1

President’s ReportI’m an academic psychologist. My field is cognitive psychology and perception, but perhaps not surprisingly, I’ve recently become interested in the psychology of aging. And it’s immensely complex. My colleagues list all the ways in which ability declines - many abilities declining from late adolescence or the early twenties. We all know that; no longer can I easily toss a canoe to carry it across a Northern

portage between lakes, or hit a softball reliably in the annual family softball game.

However in the tricky area of cognitive ability, memory, or problem-solving, the picture is not so clear. There are several studies that should give us older academics reason for optimism. Most of the data, for instance, suggest that these functions, if they do decline with age, decline less rapidly in those with greater degrees of education. That’s us, folks.

The thing that researchers into the many aspects of “intelligence” since the earliest days of its study have focused on is not the averages, but on the variability in the population. But what the media tend to highlight in reports of research is, inappropriately, the averages. The younger we are the smarter we are. Trivial. But wait a minute: one recent study followed two groups of seniors for 20 years – the groups differing in when they were born – different by 16 years. The later-born not only scored higher on some central cognitive measures when the same age as their older peers had been, but the rate of decline was less as well.

In this IssuePresident’s Column 1Third Annual Senior Scholars’ Symposium 1Speaking up The Other Doctor Ruth 2Annual General Meeting 3Publications and Honours 3

Eldermusic 4Library Presentation Information 5RALUT Members’ Publications, Service and Honours 6Call For Presentations 7The 2007 RALUT Monograph 8Loose Moose 8

THIRD ANNUAL SENIOR SCHOLARS’ SYMPOSIUMFirst Announcement and Call for PapersThe RALUT Senior Scholars Committee is pleased to announce the third annual Senior Scholars Symposium, which will take place in the Upper Library at Massey College on Thursday April 10 2008.

As last year, registration will begin at 9:00 AM and the Symposium will get underway at 9:30. The two sessions consisting of four papers each will run from 10:00 to 12 noon and from 1:30 to 3:30. Lunch will be in the dining hall of Massey College at 12.15 to 1:15 and there will be a wine and cheese reception at the conclusion of the Symposium.

Active participation by RALUT members is essential to the success of this event. We invite all of you who are currently pursuing research to send an abstract by 15 February either in rtf format by e-mail to [email protected] or [email protected]; or in hard copy to RALUT, suite 404, 256 McCaul Street, Toronto M5T 1W5. We will contact you by 10 March if your abstract has been accepted.

Papers should be directed towards a well-informed, rather than a specialist, audience and presenters must be able to give their papers in person. After the Symposium all the papers will be printed and distributed to the presenters and to members of the University administration and Governing council. They will also be available for purchase by members of RALUT and others. This publication will not, of course, prejudice the presenters’ wish to subsequently publish their work in some other medium.

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We encourage all RALUT members to plan on attending what has regularly been an intellectually stimulating and thoroughly interdisciplinary day. Please e-mail or call the RALUT office by 1 April to indicate that you will attend ([email protected], 416-978-7256). There will be a charge of

$20.00 to help defray the cost of lunch and the reception.

John Dirks, Merrijoy Kelner, and John McClelland, on behalf of the Senior Scholars Committee of RALUT.

Senior Scholars’ Symposium continued from page 1

Is there a lesson here? Only that we all age. We age at different rates and differently in different aspects of the things we do. We are fortunate as academics; either because

of our genes, or because of the lives we have lived, to retain cognitive function on average (watch that generalization!) more successfully than the general populace.

President's Report continued from page 1

SPEAkINg UP

The Other Doctor Ruth It sometimes seems as if service providers do whatever they can to avoid providing the services we expect from them. By pushing the right buttons and with a bit of persistence though, they can usually be persuaded to rectify their ways.

Because I’m hard of hearing, I use close captioning when I watch TV. Early in the fall, I noticed that I was not getting close captioning on any programs from TVO, CBC or Bravo. The service department of my provider, Bell ExpressVu claimed that any lack of captioning was due either to the way in which I had set up my TV or because the broadcasters were not transmitting the captioning.

When I learned that captioning for the programs I wanted to watch was available through Rogers, I considered switching. I did not do so because I would need to pay for the change in wiring and because Rogers had an equally bad track record for customer service.

Instead I reported the situation to Bell’s Executive Office. I also notified the broadcasters and on a suggestion from TVO, notified the Canadian Radio and Television Commission (CRTC). Suddenly, Bell acknowledged that, indeed, there was a problem.

I got two e-mails from the Executive Office, each one suggesting a different source of the trouble. The approximate

time line to rectify the first was two months, the second, indefinite.

Again I complained to CRTC. Surely this was too long to wait for the company to provide accommodation for hearing disabled customers.

The next day, I received a call from a service manager. “Did you file a complaint with CRTC?” he asked.

“Yes, I did.” I replied. “I was tired of the lies and stalling from the service department.”

“Well let me tell you,” he said. “We have engineers working around the clock checking each one of our 400 channels. By midnight, you should be receiving close captioning on all channels.” To ensure that I would get a prompt reply and bypass voicemail hell, he gave me his own cell phone number to use if I had any further issues.

By the next day, I did have the captioning he promised. I sent one more e-mail to the Executive Office.

“What about all the money I spent on service I didn’t receive?”

Their response? “As a goodwill/customer service gesture for the inconveniences endured” a rebate of three months programming charge.

So you see, it’s true. The squeaky wheel does get the grease!

CURAC Notice

The Fall 2007 issue of the CURAC Newsletter/Bulletin has been posted on the CURAC website <www.curac.ca>. You will find a link to the PDF file on the “What’s New” page.

CURAC is the national organization for University Retiree Associations of Canada.


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ANNUAL gENERAL MEETINg

Tuesday, April 29, 2008Alumni Hall, Victoria College

12:00 Lunch

1:00 Address by Carole Moore, Chief Librarian at U of T

“The U of T Research Library in the 21st Century”

1:30 Business meeting

AGENDA FOR THE MEETING:0. Address by Carole Moore,

Chief Librarian ofthe Univesity of Toronto

1. Agenda of the Annual General Meeting

2. Minutes of the 2007 Annual General Meeting

3. Report of the President

4. Report of the Treasurer

5. Report of the Committees (a) Membership and social events (b) Benefits (c) Pension (d) Senior Scholars (e) Policy

6. Communications reports (a) The Reporter (b) Website

7. Elections (a) Report of the Nominating Committee (b) Balloting (if necessary) and approval of the 2008-2009 executive committee

8. Other business

9. Adjournment

Ashley, MJ, Victor JC, Brewster JM,. “Pharmacists’ attitudes, role perceptions and interventions regarding smoking cessation: Findings from four Canadian provinces”. Chronic Dis Can 2007;28(1-2):20-8.Ashley, MJ, Brewster JM, Victor JC., “Pharmacists’ smoking cessation practices: relationship to their knowledge and skills, attitudes and perceptions of roles.” J Am Pharm Assoc 2006(Nov-Dec); 46:729-37.Beckwith, John, (Music) participated in the symposium on the music of Istvan Anhalt and Gyorgy Kurtag, held 23-6 January at the University of Calgary. His talk was entitled “Istvan Anhalt: a character sketch.” The compact disc “Avowals,” released in November 2006 on the Centrediscs label, contains vocal works by Beckwith composed in the past two decades. His new choral work, “Derailed” will be [was? depending on publication date] performed by the Mississauga Choral Society on 2 March. The “found” text deals with the CPRail tank-car derailment and civic evacuation in Mississauga (1979). Beckwith is also collaborating with Prof Brian Cherney of McGill on a volume of essays concerning the life and work of the late Canadian composer John Weinzweig.

Brewster JM, Victor JC, Ashley MJ. Views of Ontarians about health professionals’ smoking cessation advice. Can J Public Health 2007 Sep-Oct; 98(5):395-9.Brownstone, Meyer, “The CCF in Power.” In The Prairie Agrarian Movement Revisited. Edited by Murray Knuttila and Bob Sterling. Canadian Plains Research Center (University of Regina), 2006. [This article is actually two pieces – one on the title and the other a short review and commentary on The Saskatchewan Royal Commission on Agriculture and Rural Life for which Prof. Brownstone was Research Director.]Curtis, Judith, ‘Divine Thalie’: the career of Jeanne Quinault, SVEC 2007:08 (Oxford, Voltaire Foundation, 2007)Prof. Curtis describes this as her “retirement project.”Hanly, Charles is in his second term as Global Representative for North America on the Board of Representatives of the International Psychoanalytic Association.He gave scientific papers “On Fictional Truth” in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and Rome, Italy and “The Epistemology of Dream Interpretation” in Buenos Aires, Argentina and Milan, Italy.

Publications and Honours

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Eldermusic

“Eldermusic” is the title of a display currently on view in the upper and lower lobbies of the Edward Johnson Building, home of the U of T Faculty of Music. It illustrates post-retirement activities of eleven of the Faculty’s two dozen retired academic staff members. Items include a medal awarded to Stephen Chenette for conducting concerts of wind-ensemble music in Kiev, Ukraine, compact-disc recordings and a volume of poetry by William Aide, published and manuscript compositions by Walter Buczynski, John Beckwith, and Derek Holman, biographical studies by Ezra Schabas (on Sir Ernest MacMillan) and John Beckwith (on Alberto Guerrero), Doreen Hall’s Order of Canada citation (2007), and recent articles and books by Maria Rika Maniates, Robert Falck, David Beach, and Andrew

Hughes on theoretical and musicological subjects as diverse as Schoenberg and the ancient Greeks.

From John Beckwith

He has published the following articles: “Pragmatism, tradition and truth,” American Imago, 2006, 63: 261-282; “Pensamento perceptivo e percepcao via pensamento na psicanalise clinica”, Revista Brasileira de Psicanalise, 2006;“Acerca del pensamiento perceptivo y la percepción pensante en el psicoanálisis clínico”, Revista de Psicoanálisis, 2006, 63: 617-631. Helleiner, Gerald was elected a Fellow of the Nigerian Economic Society, the only non-Nigerian ever so honoured. He was inducted at the 50th anniversary conference of the Society in Abuja, Nigeria, on October 24, 2007, where he delivered an evening address.Kushner, Eva gave an invited paper on “Philosophical dramatisation in Renaissance dialogues” in Berlin, at the Frei Universitat, as part of a conference on “The Dialogue in the discursive field of its time – from Antiquity to the Enlightenment”.In October Prof. Kushner was the Lara Memorial lecturer at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri.The latest volume to appear as part of the critical edition of the complete works of Pontus de Tyard, of which Prof. Kushner is director, is De recta nominum impositione, edited by Jean-Claude Margolin and Jean Ceard (Paris: Champion, 2007).Since 2006 Prof. Kushner hass been a vice-president of the Conseil international de la philosophie et des sciences humaines, one of the three Councils under UNESCO linking international federations of learned societies in cooperative endeavours and funding of major projects (the other two Councils are in the Social Sciences, and physical and biological sciences).

Lawee, David, “Mild infectious mononucleosis presenting with transient mixed liver diseases,” Canadian Family Physician, 53: August 2007, 1314-1316.Lee, Martin, “Surface electronic structures of Ba overlayers on W(100), W(110) and W(111),” Z.A. Ibrahim and M.J.G. Lee, Phys. Rev. B 76, 55423 (2007).Léon, Pierre R., Phonétisme et Prononciations du français, 5ème édition, revue et augmentée, (Paris, Armand Colin, 2007).Léon, Pierre R, L’effrontée de Cuba, Short Stories, (Toronto: GREF, 2007).Liman, Anthony was honoured with a festschrift: Dreams and shadows : Tanizaki and Japanese poetics in Prague : essays in honour of Anthony W. Liman, ed.. Zdenka Švarcová (Prague: Karolinum Press, 2006). Marmura, Michael E., “Avicenna’s Critique of Platonists in Bk. VII, Ch.2 of The Metaphysics of His Healing,” in Arabic Theology and Philosophy, Essays in Celebration of Richard M Frank, ed. James. E. Montgomery (Leuven: Peeters. 2006), 356-369. Meadow, Charles,, Text Information Retrieval Systems 3rd edition. Co-authors: Bert Boyce, Donald Kraft, Carol Barry.(Academic Press, 2007).Prof. Meadow was elected Chair, Victoria Chapter of Democrats Abroad, whose main objective is finding Americans living in this area and encouraging and helping them to register and vote.Moore, Keith L. received a prestigious award in May 2007, when he was the recipient of the inaugural Henry Gray/Elsevier Distinguished Educator Award -- the American Association of Anatomists’ highest award for excellence in human anatomy education at

Publications and Honours continued from page 3

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the medical/dental, graduate, and undergraduate levels of teaching. Prof. Moore tells us that “I was Chair of Anatomy from 1976-1985 and Associate Dean of Medicine from 1985-1990. I retired in 1991 but I am still very active because I must update my 6 textbooks in anatomy every 5 years. These books are translated into several languages.”Schabas, Ezra, Jan Rubes, A Man of Many Talents (Hamilton: Dundurn Press, 2007).Simpson. John H. “The Ordeal of the Roman Catholic Church in America: The Perspective of Father Andrew Greeley.” In Joseph Goering, Francesco Guardiani, and Guilio Silano, editors, Rule Makers and Rule Breakers. (Ottawa, Toronto and New York: Legas Publishing, 2006), pp. 193-198. Simpson, John H.,“The Politics of the Body in Canada and the United States.” In Lori G. Beaman, editor, Religion and

Canadian Society: Traditions, Transitions, and Innovations. (Toronto: Canadian Scholar’s Press, 2006), pp. 255-271This article originally appeared in David Lyon and Marguerite Van Die, editors, Rethinking Church, State, and Modernity: Canada Between Europe and America. (Toronto, Buffalo and London: University of Toronto Press, 2000).Simpson, John H.. In Press. “Globalization and the Sociology of Religion in America: Some Representative Perspectives.” In Anthony J. Blasi, editor, American Sociology of Religion: Histories. (Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers).Simpson, John H. Forthcoming. “Religion As Identity and Contestation” in Peter Beyer and Lori Beaman, editors, Globalization, Religion and Culture. (Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers)Prof. Simpson was the Organizer for a Panel Session, “Religion and Immigration: Globalization, Institutions, Security”; and the Convener of the Regular Paper Session, “Issues In Islam and (Post?) Modernity.” Annual Meeting of

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The Library Sub-Committee of RALUT’s Senior Scholars Committee is pleased to announce that it has arranged two information sessions on library-related matters of interest to retirees. The first is as follows:

Archiving your Life’s Work:A Library Information Session for retired Faculty and Librarians

Monday March 3rd Room 4049 Robarts Library

10 a.m - 12:30p.m.

Welcome: Carole Moore, Chief Librarian, University of Toronto Libraries

“Preparing to Archive Your Teaching and Research Materials: A Primer for Faculty and Librarians”

Garron Wells, University Archivist

U of T Archives and Records Management Services (UTARMS)

“New Initiatives in Digital Archiving: T-Space and Beyond”

Rea Devakos, T-Space Service Co-ordinator U of T Libraries, Information Technology Services

Refreshments will be served

To reserve a place please RSVP to ral.ut @utoronto.ca or call the RALUT Office at 416-978-7256

Secondly we will again be offering a hands-on instructional session on “Updating your Library Skills”, given by reference librarians. This year it will include searching in Scholars Portal (a multidisciplinary search engine), followed by an introduction to the Refworks bibliographic software. It will be held on the morning of April 1st.

Further details about this course will be available soon.



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the Association for the Sociology of Religion, Montreal, August 10-12, 2006.He is Associate Editor, Canadian Journal of Sociology, and Director of Research, Hitachi Survey Research Centre, University of Toronto at Mississauga. (See John H. Simpson, Director of Research, Hitachi Survey Research Centre, Final Report, March 2007. Available on request.)Tass, Olev was awarded the Order of the White Cross by the President of Estonia on the occasion of the 89th Anniversary of Estonian Independence (February 24, 2007) in recognition of “...service to the Country and the Nation”. On the same occasion Prof. Trass was presented with the gold service medal from the Estonian Central Council in Canada. He later received, in Toronto, the President’s Order from the Estonian Charge d’Affaires.”

Ward, Charles A. of Mechanical & Industrial Engineering is Director of the Thermodynamics & Kinetics Laboratory. He has recently published:Ward, Charles A., (with Jiyu Wu), “Effect of Adsorption on the Surface Tension of Solid-Fluid Interfaces”, J. Phys. Chem. B,111, 3658-3694 (2007); Ward, Charles A., (with Jiyu Wu and T. Farouk), “Pressure Dependence of the Contact Angle”, J. Phys. Chem. B, 111, 6189-6197 (2007);Ward, Charles A., (with Kausik S. Das), “Surface Thermal Capacity and its Effects on the Boundary Conditions at Fluid-Fluid Interfaces”, Physical Review E 75, 065303(R) (2007).Warkentin, Germaine, “Infaticabile maestro: Ernest Hatch Wilkins and the Manuscripts of Petrarch’s Canzoniere,” in Petrarch and the Textual Origins of Interpretation, ed.


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Publications (for specified academic year)Books

– For book chapters give retiree’s name, et al. if appropriate, chapter # and title, pages, publisher, city and date.

– If single author of a book as above for chapter– If editor of a book, as above for chapter

Articles in peer-reviewed and other journals– Indicate first and last names of retiree (if co-author

indicate by ‘et al’ even if retiree is not first author) followed by title of article (no acronyms). End with name of journal citing year; volume #: pages (first to last page separated by a hyphen). Use punctuation as indicated

Other– For articles in newspapers, magazines, bulletins etc

give retiree’s name (indicating ‘et al.’ if appropriate), title of article, name of publication, date and page number

– Describe briefly conference papers, exhibits, translations or performances.

Public Service (for specified academic year)– Membership in working groups, boards, advisory

bodies to government, national associations or academic institutions.

– Addresses to academics or the lay public– University service

Honours (for specified academic year)– Invited Membership/Fellowship in distinguished

organizations (eg: Royal Society)– Public recognition (as in Order of Canada) or other

indications of merit institutionally awarded.

Distribution– As an annual stand-alone Appendix to the Reporter

to facilitate distribution to relevant recipients; mailed with a regular issue of the Reporter.

– Ralut Website

Format– Individuals in alphabetical order stratified by category

(publications, service and honours). Thus one individual may be found in any of five categories.

– Names should be accompanied by current or previous departmental affiliation

Action PlanThe REPORTER will solicit this information for the academic year 07/08, in the late spring of 2008. The deadline for submission to the RALUT office by mail or email should be Sept. 30, 2008.

RALUT Members’ Publications, Service and Honours The Senior Scholars Committee has decided on the following way to provide members with a list of publications

and honours for the coming years:



AROHE’s biennial conference brings together AROHE member organizations, university administrators, and others from colleges and universities across the United States and Canada to explore trends and models of retirement in higher education.

We are seeking members of retiree organizations, those interested in organizing a retiree group, retired faculty and staff, institution administrators, and others who can provide experience, insight, research, and information of interest to retirees, pre-retirees, higher education institutions, and others that serve these populations.

We encourage a variety of presentation types including those that are of a practical “how to nature,” focused on timely issues, describe innovative and successful practices, or present relevant inquiry and research. Varied formats are welcome and may include describing a program or activity at a roundtable, an issue focused panel discussion, or a formal presentation. Ideally, the presentations will help conference participants to increase their organization’s value and create opportunities for retirees and retiree organizations on their campus.

AROHE reserves the right to decline proposals and/or adjust the length or format of the presentations to best serve the purpose and goals of the conference.

Member organizations are invited to bring and display printed materials (registration at the conference is required). Others may purchase exhibit space, with a 20% discount to Affiliate Members.

Remember! March 28, 2008 is the deadline to submit your proposal

Information about the conference & copies of the application form are available on the AROHE website http://www.arohe.org

CALL FOR PRESENTATIONSAROHE’s 4th Biennial Conference

Retiree Organizations in Higher Education: Values and Opportunities

October 24-26 , 2008University of Southern California -- USC, Los Angeles, California

Teodolinda Barolini and H. Wayne Storey, (Columbia Studies in the Classical Tradition. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2007), 45-65.Wilson Fred, “Science and Religion: No Irenics Here,” Metaphysica, 7 (2006), pp. 159-170.Reprinted in P. Kurtz, ed., Science and Ethics (Amherst NY: Prometheus Books, 2007), pp. 247-257. Wilson, Fred, “Mill’s Autobiography,” in T. Mathien and D. G. Wright, eds., Philosophy as Autobiography (London: Routledge, 2006), pp. 180-210.Wilson, Fred, “Placing Bergmann,” in Laird Addis, Greg Jesson and Erwin Teigtmeir, eds., Ontology and Analysis:

Essays and Recollections about Gustav Bergmann (Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag, 2007), pp. 185-276.Wilson, Fred, Acquaintance, Ontology and Knowledge (Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag, 2007).Wilson, Fred, Body, Mind and Self in Hume’s Critical Realism (Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag, 2008).Wilson, Fred, The External World and Our Knowledge of It: Hume’s Critical Realism, an Exposition and a Defense (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, forthcoming 2008).Wilson, Fred, Review of L. Snyder, Reforming Society: A Victorian Debate on Science and Society, in Victorian Studies, 49 (2007), pp. 515-517



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Publication NoticeThe RALUT REPORTER is published by RALUT, (Retired Academics and Librarians of the University of Toronto), a non-profit association of retirees, near retirees, and surviving spouses/partners of the faculty and librarians of the University of Toronto. RALUT or any of its officers can be reached by post at its office at 256 McCaul Street, Toronto ON M5T 1W5

Telephone: 416-978-7256E-mail: [email protected] CommitteeDoug Creelman, President [email protected] Garber, Past President, [email protected] Russell, Honorary President [email protected] Grima, Vice-President [email protected] Barbeau, Vice-President [email protected] Baines, Secretary [email protected] Henderson, Treasurer [email protected] Beate Lowenberg, Membership [email protected] Pike, Benefits [email protected] Rosenthal, Pensions [email protected] Bellamy, Policy [email protected] Wilson, Editor, Reporter [email protected] Eddie [email protected] Pringle [email protected] Rogers [email protected] John Rucklidge [email protected] Stevenson [email protected] office – Liz Walker [email protected] who help:Joan Winearls, Archivist [email protected] Rea [email protected]

Loose MooseAlex Michalos, UNBC, forwarded me the following. And we think we have problems!

From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Peter Hickey

Sent: Wednesday, January 02, 2008 9:31 AMTo: [email protected]: [Facstaff ] FW: Moose

Please be aware that there has been a report of an aggressive moose in the vicinity of EFL.

Thanks. Don MaxfieldUNBC Security/Parking ServicesUniversity of Northern British Columbia

Alex C. Michalos is Ph.D., F.R.S.C.ChancellorDirector, Institute for Social Research and EvaluationProfessor Emeritus, Political ScienceUniversity of Northern British Columbia

Papers presented at the March 29, 2007 Senior Scholars Symposium were assembled to produce a monograph, printed last fall. After distributing copies to a targeted audience including the presenters themselves, appropriate individuals at Simcoe Hall, the Chancellor, the Master of Massey College, and department heads associated with the presenters, we have received very positive feedback for this attractive publication.

Readers of the Reporter can download the monograph as a pdf

from the RALUT website. A few copies of the printed version will be available at the AGM for a nominal sum of $5.00.

Cornelia J Baines MD, MSc, FACEProfessor Emerita,Department of Public Health Sciences,University of Toronto155 College St., 6th floorToronto, Ontario M5T 3M7

Phone: 416-946-8083Fax: 416-978-2087

The 2007 RALUT Monograph - now available on our website


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