A World in a Drop of Water: Exploring with a Microscope

Book Description

This inexpensive volume showcases an array of curious creatures: a blob-like amoeba; a slipper-shaped paramecium and its mortal enemy, the suctorian; and many others. The authors recount the feeding, reproductive, and defensive strategies employed by these animals in easy-to-understand language that opens the door to a wonderful world of discovery. 37 illustrations.

Customer Reviews:

Fascinating, but NOT a how-to manual........2005-12-29

This is an excellent book describing the various life forms in a drop of pond water. It may well serve to make your child interested in using microscopes. In addition, there are a couple of pages about Anthony van Leeuwenhoek, who first made and described a microscope and what he could see with it.

But if your child is the owner of a new microscope, I recommend the Usborne book "The World of the Microscope" which will give you ideas for making your own slides and give tips for using the microscope.

For early-mid elementary aged kids, I also recommend "Greg's Microscope", which is a level 3 early reader that follows a young boy who yearns for a microscope, finally gets one, and learns to use it. THAT was the book that got my daughter to decide she wanted a microscope for Christmas!

The best for young beginners.......2005-12-01

I spent about half of my childhood staring down the end of a microscope. This book is by far the best introduction to microsopy for children. The instructions are clear and easy to follow and the projects are such that almost anyone with a mud puddle or pond nearby can do them. It's hard to compete with video games but if your child has any interest in sciecne then this book, along with the tools that come with any microscope set, will open up an entire world of fun and learning.

Book Description

Northern Colorado offers an exhilarating blend of recreational activities and beauty from alpine meadows and wild canyons to hike and bike to dark mossy forests and sage brush meadows to ski. There is plenty of room among the thousands of acres of parks and natural areas in the region of Fort Collins, Poudre Valley, and North Park.

Outside the hustle and bustle of Fort Collins, where 120,000 people reside and Colorado State University is located, there are hundreds of lakes and majestic mountains to explore.

Within a scenic drive of Fort Collins are Poudre Valley and the western town of North Park. North Park's vast grasslands are surrounded on three sides by stunning views of the Medicine Bow, Rabbit Ears, Never Summer, and Park Mountain ranges-terrain to enjoy year-round on your skies and bike. The "moose viewing capitol of the world" is in this area as well, providing plentiful opportunities for people who enjoy watching wildlife.

Trail Guide of Northern Colorado has more than eighty-five trail descriptions. Each description includes a map, a photograph, and detailed information, making this an indispensable reference for those wanting to explore the natural beauty in this region.

Customer Reviews:

Great book for the Northern Front Range hiker........2003-11-07

I have hiked several of the trails described in the book and I agree with the author on ratings of the trails. The trail descriptions are well done and give you a very visual idea as to what you will experience on the trail. The directions to trails are pretty straight forward, and the maps are pretty good but a bit simple for my taste. The only real fault I have with the book is that there are no UTM or Latitude, Longitude info for the trailheads. Having this information would have made it easy to pull up my own research for the area. That one annoyance is the only reason I did not give it five stars.

Book Description

New Page 1

Its unparalleled author team, including National Geographic, ensures accuracy in every detail of the narrative, maps, and charts.

• Foldables—student-made three-dimensional graphic organizers—are a unique strategy that helps students read effectively and also can be used as assessment or study tools.
• A Guide to Reading, Reading Checks, and a Summary in every chapter keep students on track as they learn to read for information and process what they’ve read.

• TIME Notebooks allow students to step into the past, learning about everyday life in various periods and the “hot topics” of different eras.
• National Geographic's Geography and History features show students how geography and events intertwine to create the history of a location or nation.

• The program emphasizes skill development—from reading maps to analyzing primary and secondary sources to exploring the connections between history and geography, economics, government, citizenship, and current events.

Book Description

Current Topics in Developmental Biology provides a comprehensive survey of the major topics in the field of developmental biology. The volumes are valuable to researchers in animal and plant development, as well as to students and professionals who want an introduction to cellular and molecular mechanisms of development. The series has recently passed its 30-year mark, making it the longest-running forum for contemporary issues in developmental biology.

This volume contains ten important contributions from leading minds in developmental biology.

* Series Editor Gerald Schatten is one of the leading minds in reproductive and developmental science
* Presents major contemporary issues and astonishing discoveries at the forefront of modern developmental biology, stem cells and cloning, and regenerative medicine
* The longest-running forum for current issues in developmental biology with over 30 years of coverage

Current Topics in Developmental Biology, Volume 62: Developmental Vascular Biology

Average customer rating:

Current Topics in Developmental Biology, Volume 62: Developmental Vascular Biology
Gerald P. Schatten
Manufacturer: Academic Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OHD0QK

Book Description

Etched against the background of a dying rural society, Tess of the d'Urbervilles was Thomas Hardy's 'bestseller,' and Tess Durbeyfield remains his most striking and tragic heroine. Of all the characters he created, she meant the most to him. Hopelessly torn between two men—Alec d'Urberville, a wealthy, dissolute young man who seduces her in a lonely wood, and Angel Clare, her provincial, moralistic, and unforgiving husband—Tess escapes from her vise of passion through a horrible, desperate act.

'Like the greatest characters in literature, Tess lives beyond the final pages of the book as a permanent citizen of the imagination,' said Irving Howe. 'In Tess he stakes everything on his sensuous apprehension of a young woman's life, a girl who is at once a simple milkmaid and an archetype of feminine strength. . . . Tess is that rare creature in literature: goodness made interesting.'

Now Tess of the d'Urbervilles has been brought to television in a magnificent new co-production from A&E Network and London Weekend Television. Justine Waddell (Anna Karenina) stars as the tragic heroine, Tess; Oliver Milburn (Chandler & Co.) is Angel Clare; and Jason Flemyng is Alec d'Urberville. The cast also includes John McEnery (Black Beauty) as Jack Durbeyfield and Lesley Dunlop (The Elephant Man) as Joan Durbeyfield. Tess of the d'Urbervilles is directed by Ian Sharp and produced by Sarah Wilson, with a screenplay by Ted Whitehead; it was filmed in Hardy country, the beautiful English countryside in Dorset where Thomas Hardy set his novels.

From the eBook edition.

Customer Reviews:

A Darkly Compelling Tragedy.......2006-02-24

Thomas Hardy's "Tess of the D'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman" is, well, the story about Tess of the D'Urbervilles, a "simple,sensuous and passionate" peasant girl whose maturation into a woman has tremendous antipathy to its brim. The transfiguration of "a fine and handsome" country lass into a blooming woman with hapless consequences is the theme of this the most ambitious tragic Hardyan novel and the artistic flair of the late Victorian novelist blended with the subtle craftsmanship transcends the individual concern into one of the society.

The proposition involved in "Tess of the D'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman" first published in 1891 in three volumes has a tragic enough diction as we get it so clearly throughout the 550 or so odd pages of the book. It is to contract the unending horizon of the human life into a miniscule and apparently insignificant domain of an individual, who's inexperienced, unsophisticated, candid and uncanny. Tess Durbeyfield is a meek, submissive sixteen-and-a-half year old country girl with several siblings, a dissipated father and an illusioned mother living in the village of Marlott in the county of 19th. century fictitious Wessex,Hardy's eternal refuge from the real world outside. The chance discovery of John Durbeyfield from Parson Tringham, the antiquary of Stagfoot Lane, of his ancestral line of D'Urbervilles and a freak accidnt culminating in the death of one of his horses for which Tess herself shouldrs the blame sends the eponymous protagonist of this darkly compelling drama to find monetary solace in the wealthy Mrs. D'Urberville. As if the exploitation of the have nots in terms of financial issues weren't enough, the poor peasant girl from the poor "blighted" Durbeyfield family is seduced by Mrs. D'Urberville's sensual and lustful son Alec. Alec shuns her, Tess becomes pregnant, the child passes away in infancy, the unmarried mother mother starts working as a diarymaid in a farm, the Talbothays, falls in love with Angel Clare, the rector's son.....the whole flow of the tyde has a strangely familiar suspicion about itself and it's actually Thomas Hardy's exceptional gift for exploring a relatively small setting to compile a general drama of human life that transpires real tragic proportions from a fictitious figure.

Art is indeed often illusory, sometimes it's even a whisper of the urge of reformation; but in more probabilities than one, art is symbolic, a sign of much deep-seated intent. The genuine accomplishment of all forms of art---be it literature, painting,sculpture,music or much else---is to portray the vastness of the human expanse in the most trimmed space and geniuses of all ages in all spheres of art have managed to do just that. Van Gogh's "Sunflowers" and "The Starry Night" are more symbolic than cliches, Tolstoy's "Anna Karenina" is the depiction of social turmoil in 19th. century Russia, Shakespeare's "Hamlet" is a journey through a distorted and divided soul's mind and Eric Clapton's song "Tears of Heaven" is the ultimate homage to our passed away beloved ones. "Tess of the D'Urbevilles" too is a metaphor for agonies, humiliations, inward and outward strifes, twists and turns in life and the ultimatum. The unprecedented and nihilistically conspiring turn of events that Tess encounters in her hard and lonely life could've been thrown to anyone in general and any woman of any age in particular and through Tess's character as well as through the brilliant evocation of the fictional Wessex landscape and people, Hardy stags "the ache of modernism"in the novel.

This abyss of "the ache of modernism" is aptly poured into the images of the rustic realm and the ascend of the morally and spiritually corrupt. Nowhere in the book is this concept clearer than in the nature of the shrewd and machiavellian Alec D'Urberville. A sinful man come to no good by demolishing an unsuspecting girl's life, Alec is also a preacher of the Gospels in his so-called reformed stage. But all his baser passions are aroused on seeing Tess after four years and he turns into a wolf once more: "Remember, my lady, I was your master once! I will be your master again. If you are any man's wife, you are mine!" This to a Tess whose innocent flaw of revealing her horrendous past to Angel on their weddind night had caused their subsequent separation and 'the deserted wife"-'s struggle in sustaining hr livelihood. The typical male sexual desires and possessive phyche is symbolized in Angel Clare whose own sinful past is acceptable but not Tess's unconditioned misery.

Throughout the novel, the bounteous description of the landscape, the environment and Nature keeps the reader spell-bound at the author's immense imaginative power, marvellous visualisation skill and abundant choice of similes and metaphors and aptly used words. Yet the language and mood always maintain a touch of pessimism and not even spares the simple, unrestrained and self-sacrificing friendship of Marian,Retty Priddle,Izz Huett and Tess.

Hardy is barely good at analysing characters and that is vividly exposed towards the end of the novel. Angel returns from Brazil and scampers to rejoin with "a cottage-girl, his young wife" only to find her with Alec D'Urberville once again. In utter desperation of realising that she was taken in by Alec with morbid promises about her dishevelled family, Tess kills him and then elopes with Angel nly to be caught within a short span of time and be hanged. Such a sudden turnaround of events is too confusing and leaves one wondering whether more words and pages should've been devoted to such critical situations. The reader rues too the missingdescription of Tess's and Angel's marriage as much as the incomplete pictored characters' change of notions.

That the end of the novel is a befitting tribute, be it poetically just, tragic or sarcastic, to the three major characters is a Jack jumping out of the box. Alec's sin is too much for this world to bear and so he dies; Tess's life is too inundated with misery, despair, responsibility and uncertainty and so she meets with a tragic end; Angel's puritan perspective finds him a pure, genteel partner in the shape of Tess's younger sister Liza-Lu.

What adds jewels to the crown are the dramatic effects installed into the novel to make the reader approach the chain of events with a sigh and regret. What if Tess's written confession pushed under Angel's door hadn't gone under the carpet? Surely the tragic aftermath could've been bypassed. Again, had Tess not overheard her husband's brothers' critical approach to her, she would've surely met with her in-laws and her life would've turned over a new leaf. But tragedy is always concentrated on inevitability and waivering of the obvious and so it is in the case of Tess, the "little fool".

The fate of an unassuming girl "put to by an Enemy in the shape of a friend' and played from one court to another and back again like a shuttlecock isn't rare enough but what's rare is the quality of Hardy to paint a solemn picture about the essence of the issue. True, the book does often become a laboured read and provokes a deep pang of pain, anger, frustration, resentment, resentment and a rebellious intent,but the reader cannot help but fel that "Tess of the D'Urbervilles" is "a new kind of beauty, a beauty of tragic tone".

SUBHANKAR MONDAL, UG STUDENT, BANGALORE, INDIA

I love Tess!.......2005-06-16

Angel's perceptual turnabout comes a day late and a dollar short. In Hardy's Victorian world, the victim was the co-perpetrator. He had to justify to his audience that despite her technical loss of virginity, Tess was pure in essence. She was a victim of bad luck, particularly that of being at the wrong place at the wrong time. I loved when Irving Howe remarked that "Tess is...goodness made interesting." Unfortunately, Tess never got to appreciate or even recognize her goodness. She was so full of (unmerited) shame and a sense of inferiority. Angel's liberalism and code of ethics gave way to censure, and he reinforced Tess's self-doubts. He could overlook her being a milkmaid from the fallen D'Urbeville lineage, but not a victim of rape. That even a man like Angel would be influenced by the Victorian attitude (and not recognize the timeless double standard) is Hardy's sharp social critique.

Daunting but Delightful.......2002-07-10

My quirky yet brilliant English teacher assigned this work in the beginning of my senior year. Undoubtedly, I approached this book with much doubt and skepticism. If you know Hardy, you immediately recall his superfluity of detail and monotonous landscaping, which inevitably impedes character and plot development. Suprisingly, though all discouraging factors were present, I found the book exceptionally appealing. Hardy's portraiture of Tess validates him as a captivating author. He draws us into her persona, leaving us trampled and bruised with the grievances of life. He walks us through her struggles, though mangled with her inability to step forward, she still persists.
I highly reccommend this book to any avid reader of British literature.

A great book!.......2002-01-22

This is truly one of Hardy's best books! The story is of a young girl (Tess) who's father finds out that he comes from the old great family of the D'Urbervilles. So the family sends Tess to one of their relations to ask for money but also Tess' mother knows that at the house where she is going to be staying there is a man named Alec and she hopes that Tess and he will marry. Alec is tempted by Tess and seduces her after she has been working at his house for a while. Tess has the baby which soon dies. Tess goes to a dairy farm where she meets Angel, a higher class well edgucated young man. These two fall in love and marry. On their wedding night he confesses to her a bad part of his past and she tells him about her child. Angel can not forgive her and leaves. I will stop here beacause I do not want to ruin the book for you, but I will say this it has a whollop of a finish and you will be surprised!

The novel for the realist.......2001-10-30

A true joy to read, Tess of the D'Urbervilles is filled with situations that paint pictures of real life. Hardy knew that Tess' reality was filled with enough emotion and drama that there was no reason to add to it the things fairy tales are made of.

When reading Tess of the D'Urbervilles you are brought into the story by Hardy's suberb way of sketching the scene. Though Hardy's descriptive writing can sometimes be hard to digest, his choice of words allow you to enter the landscape and smell the glen yourself.

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