Posts for 'Science' Category

Nine out of ten pet owners say that they consider their pets to be members of the family, and more than half of the respondents in an American Animal Hospital Association survey say that if stranded on a desert island, they would prefer the company of their pets to any human companion.

But as Meg Daley Olmert argues in Made for Each Other, our four-legged friends offer much more than companionship. Recent studies indicate that caring for pets brings a host of health benefits, from lower levels of stress to reduced blood pressure and risk of heart disease.

Pet owners make fewer visits to health care providers than non-pet owners and seem to enjoy higher survival rates following coronary heart disease. And therapy with animals has been shown to help in a range of conditions, from autism to Alzheimer's to depression.

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If you want to know how to achieve peak perennial bloom display, this is the book for you. It is quite simply a definitive, comprehensive guide to the growing of perennials.  Anisko is curator of the Longwood gardens and is an expert on the subject - and it shows.

Studying this book will provide all the information a keen gardener needs to achieve maximum effect from perennials over a short or long period. This book shows how plants are affected by seasonal and environmental conditions highlighting how gardeners can take this into account when planting.

This has been made possible by exhaustive study of data from all over the world from Russia to the USA. There are hundreds of graphs showing month by month bloom times. The book is fully illustrated with some stunning photographs.   Overall this is a excellent reference book  for gardeners. 

Review by Jeff Ayers- Even though I never missed an episode, I was never a big fan of Voyager. Inconsistent and bizarre at times, the show would have a fantastic episode one week, and the next week introduce Fairhaven or the consequences of traveling at Warp 10. 

(I could never understand why they didn't travel that way to get home and have the doctor turn everyone back to humans after the journey).

The novels set after their reappearance in the Alpha Quadrant have been less than stellar also.  So when I heard that Kirsten Beyer was writing the next novel in the cycle, I shrugged, even though I thoroughly enjoyed her String Theory novel.

The novel's storyline has a lot of catching up to do with the regular timeline that is prevalent through the remains of the Trek universe after David Mack destroyed it. 

An ambitious admiral has plans for Captain Chakotay and his crew, while desperate parents have to plan with Kahless to protect a little girl.  Seven deals with an aunt who is slowly dying, and the doctor gets an invitation from his creator.

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A new book that tells the stories of breakthrough discoveries by New Zealand scientists has received high praise from Professor Gerry Gilmore of Cambridge University’s Institute of Astronomy.

Gilmore, who was born and raised in Christchurch, and became the first New Zealander to receive a doctorate in astronomy, said receiving an advance copy of The Awa Book of New Zealand Science from the publisher had ruined his weekend. ‘I could not put it down this wonderful collection of writings by remarkable people, many heroes and several geniuses.’

The Awa Book of New Zealand Science is a gripping read. Consisting largely of eyewitness accounts by scientists themselves, it tells the stories of widely varying scientific discoveries, from colonial naturalists describing New Zealand’s unique birdlife, to physicists unveiling the structure of the atom and DNA, and today’s medical researchers finding new links between environment, genetics and disease.

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The biggest growth in science fiction publishing these days, hands down, is happening in the young adult market, and that's great news. While the "real" science fiction publishers are chasing a shrinking — and graying — readership, tweens and teens are discovering SF for themselves, thanks to books from a diverse range of writers. Best of all, YA science fiction isn't aimed at a subculture, but at everybody of a particular age.

It's been 20 years since Bruce Sterling compared the "mainstream" of science fiction to a fossilizing Politburo. Since that time, the situation has only gotten more dire.

People are constantly remarking on the graying of science fiction readership, but statistics seem to be hard to come by. Here's Tor's Patrick Nielsen Hayden talking about the fact that almost no people born in the 1970s or later have won Hugos or Nebulas.

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Book Review: Jonathan Zittrain's "The Future of the Internet And How to Stop It"

When I reach Jonathan Zittrain by phone, the law professor isn't doing well. Jet-lagged, recovering from strep throat, and forced to use a colleague's office, he sounds like a man beaten down by life (or at least by the prospect of having to read a hundred law student briefs). But when he starts talking about "generativity" and the potential risks of cloud computing, he's intelligent, witty, and articulate. He's fired up about the need for open systems, even with a burning throat. And that's when his home burglar alarm goes off.

Zittrain's new book, The Future of the Internet And How to Stop It, sounds an alarm of its own. It's a klaxon calling to arms everyone who believes that platforms open to user innovation should rule the world, not tethered, "sterile" appliances that are controlled only by their designers.

Take Apple as an example. Tim Wu recently called the iPhone "central to the future of the Internet," and he was drawing on the opening example in Zittrain's book. There, Zittrain argues that two iconic Apple products have gone down very different paths.

"Though these two inventions iPhone and Apple II were launched by the same man, the revolutions that they inaugurated are radically different," he writes. "The Apple II was quintessentially generative technology. It was a platform. It invited people to tinker with it... The iPhone is the opposite. It is sterile. Rather than a platform that invites innovation, the iPhone comes preprogrammed... Whereas the world would innovate for the Apple II, only Apple would innovate for the iPhone."

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ASP.NET developers are bored with traditional books that outline concepts in a lengthy way. These books are good if you like to learn the features in a detailed manner. However, by the time the book is read, a new version will be released. Hence, many learners including myself prefer short and succinct books that not only explain the topics in a user-friendly way, but also enable the reader to learn the concepts of the current technology before a new version is released. ASP.NET 2.0 – Your Visual Blueprint for Developing Web Applications is a book that examines ASP.NET 2.0 in a new style without providing any junk content.
When I got the book to review, I quickly glanced through it and was immediately impressed. The author has done a great job of restricting the content of each exercise to two pages. At first I thought he hadn’t divided the content into chapters. But looking more carefully I saw the chapter titles were laid vertically on the right-hand side of the page. The author begins with brief coverage of Visual Studio 2005, ASP.NET and then explores important aspects of standard Web controls, validation controls, Membership, RoleProviders, Navigation controls, SiteMaps, MasterPages, Themes, Personalization, Data Objects, Error handling, Messaging, Web Services, and AJAX.

I very much liked the coverage of GridView, DataList, and DetailsView controls. I’d prefer to see the implementation of an exercise that prompts a MessageBox while deleting records from a GridView. I wonder why the author failed to cover ASP.NET 3.5 even though it was in beta when he wrote the book. I hope he’ll release an update soon. I found that he places special emphasis on nomenclature and syntax throughout the book.

The author provides a brief outline followed by relevant steps with screen captures including additional information at the end that I hope will help you learn advanced techniques for each concept discussed. A unique feature of the book is that screenshots are marked in colored bullets alongside the relevant steps. I feel that this approach will help learners, especially beginners, to master the concepts quickly because they can see the Visual Studio screen directly.

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Have you ever wondered in this century if there was a place where spirituality and good evolutionary science could be brought together? Have you longed for a simple explanation of some of its key tenets?

Thank God for Evolution! may just answer your questions. Subtitled "How the marriage of science and religion will transform your life and our world," it's by Michael Dowd, an ordained clergyman in the Disciples of Christ. As John Mather, NASA chief scientist and 2006 Nobel Prize winner in physics, notes, "the universe took 13.7 billion years to produce this amazing book."

The book jacket proclaims that "drawing upon cutting edge astrophysics, geology, biology, anthropology, and evolutionary brain science, this book presents the history of the universe as an epic drama where our generation has a critical role to play."

I found this book giving me an accurate understanding of the current evidence of evolution from a scientific perspective in clear language. The book demonstrated that we are indeed created of star dust from exploding supernovas.

Dowd takes the reader on a transformative spiritual journey to get beyond second century Flat Earth theology and culture, moving instead to a theological understanding which recognizes that God is God of the Universe who has created and speaks to us through the evidence and fingerprint of our own evolutionarily created 13.7 billion year old world. He explores the roots of the diversity of theology, personality, sexual attraction and abilities within the human species as a natural part of life centered in God.

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The Spring Book Bazaar continues through Saturday at the Charles County Public Library's La Plata Branch.

The annual sale of used books, books on tape, books on CD, music CDs and cassettes, and movies on DVD and VHS is sponsored by the Citizens for the Charles County Public Library.

The sale is open from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. today, 1 to 5 p.m. tomorrow and 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Saturday. Items for sale are on the lower level of the La Plata library, 2 Garrett Ave.

When we reviewed the former edition of this book, we had a few negative comments. The new book is almost twice the size, has better structure and is better explained. Definitions are more precise than in the old book and it seems that a lot of thought has gone into using the right definitions/terms at the right time.

Good flow
The tempo is quite high for an newbie, but it should work. The only thing beginners may find difficult is where and how to save their class files. This is mentioned early in the book, but with a book this size you may easily overlook such a basic thing. Seasoned coders should be able to skim the book, just to get the core changes. If a subject is not yet introduced, there are always instructions on skipping ahead and then come back, but newbies should probably try not to jump around too much back and forth. Since there's little repetition in the book, you may miss out on important topics if you don't read the chapters in sequence.

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