California Desert Flowers: An Introduction to Families, Genera, and Species (Phyllis M. Faber Books)

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Excellent new field guide

Comprehensive & Beautifully Illustrated

California Desert Flowers: An Introduction to Families, Genera, and Species (Phyllis M. Faber Books)
Sia Morhardt , and J. Emil Morhardt
Manufacturer: University of California Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Biology | Biological Sciences | Science | Subjects | Books
General | Botany | Biological Sciences | Science | Subjects | Books
General | Nature & Ecology | Science | Subjects | Books
Botany | Biological Sciences | Professional Science | Professional & Technical | Subjects | Books
Reference | Outdoors & Nature | Subjects | Books
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Mojave Desert Wildflowers: A Field Guide to Wildflowers, Trees, and Shrubs of the Mojave Desert, Including the Mojave National Preserve, Death Valley National Park, and Joshua Tree National Park

Introduction to California Desert Wildflowers (California Natural History Guides)

The Jepson Desert Manual: Vascular Plants of Southeastern California

Sonoran Desert Wildflowers: A Field Guide to the Common Wildflowers of the Sonoran Desert, Including Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, Saguaro National Park, Organ Pipe National Monument, Ironwood Forest National Monument, and the Sonoran Portion of Joshua Tree National Park

Flowers and Shrubs of the Mojave Desert

ASIN: 0520240030

Book Description

This easy-to-use guide to the most visible families of California desert flowers includes family and genus keys, color photographs of nearly 300 species, and a wealth of diagrams. Created as a primer on identification to family and genus, California Desert Flowers takes readers to a new level of understanding and appreciation of wildflower relationships and their habitats and adaptations.

Customer Reviews:

Excellent new field guide.......2006-01-27

This field guide contains very useful keys, which is quite rare for a book of this type, with excellent illustrations and Family descriptions.
I own many field guides and botanical manuals and this is one of the best I have seen.

Comprehensive & Beautifully Illustrated.......2004-12-12

Beginner or advanced wildflower botanist, there is something for everyone in this new field guide for California desert wildflowers. Each chapter is introduced with a stunning photo, followed by wildflower species grouped by family, genera, and species, rather than approximate color of the flower. This format enables the user to familiarize themselves with the characteristics and similarities between related species, leading to a better understanding of wildflower diversity and habitat adaptations. The book is illustrated with excellent photos taken almost exclusively by the authors. In addition to close up photos of the flowers, there's often an image showing the entire plant. This is very handy for identification purposes. The text is enriched by tidbits of information regarding usages of the plant, unusual features, etc. For those who wish to own only one field guide about desert wildflowers, this well-researched book should be the one. For those of us with "field-guide-itis," no collection would be complete without this volume on the reference shelf or in a daypack.

Book Description

This digital document is a journal article from Soil Biology and Biochemistry, published by Elsevier in 2005. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Media Library immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Description:
We evaluate the use of signature fatty acids and direct hyphal counts as tools to detect and quantify arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) and saprotrophic fungal (SF) biomass in three Hawaiian soils along a natural soil fertility gradient. Phospholipids16:1@w5c and 18:2@w6,9c were used as an index of AM and saprotrophic fungal biomass, respectively. Both phospholipid analysis and hyphal length indicated that the biomass of AMF was greatest at the highest fertility site, and lowest where phosphorus limits plant growth. Saprotrophic fungal biomass did not vary. Hyphal length counts appeared to under-estimate SF abundance, while the phospholipid AMF:SF ratio was in line with expectations. This study indicates that phospholipids may be a valuable and reliable tool for studying the abundance, distribution, and interactions between AM and saprotrophic fungi in soil.

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Fungal Lipid Biochemistry:

Manufacturer: 0
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000IBMNE2

Book Description

This short new monograph serves as an authoritative introduction to an unusual people of eastern Africa known as Swahili. Middleton, who has known these people for a half a century, describes their highly stratified, merchant society and civilization, documenting their importance both for anthropologists and for others interested in Africa. Swahili continue today their centuries-old role as merchants in long-distance international trade, a role that has led them to form a society very distinct from any other in Africa. Middleton's brief, personal treatment discusses Swahili recorded history as an integral part of their rich tradition and civilization. He clears up past confusions and mistaken assumptions without trying to define a single "Swahili" identity. His lucid approach unravels contradictions about Swahili being merchants and yet fishermen, who live in both cities as well as small villages, and who reckon various kinds of kinship and marriage. Swahili are often considered by non-Swahili as being both Africans and Arabs, but Middleton shows that they remain African despite having long adopted Islam and many aspects of Arab and Asian cultures.

Customer Reviews:

Insult to Swahili People.......2005-02-09

This book should be dismissed as another poorly-constructed attempt to rob African people of the honor of their heritage. Middleton claims that Swahili people are actually of Asian and Arab descent, and the only photos in the book of Swahili people are Asians. You don't need to read this book to know his thesis is completely false. The main countries in which Kiswahili is spoken are Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique, and Uganda. Tanzania is 99% AFRICAN, Kenya is 96% AFRICAN and Uganda is 99% AFRICAN. Maybe Middleton is writing about a different Swahili people- the ones that live on Mars.

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Muslim Swahili - True Africans.

The Rise and Fall of Swahili States
Chapurukha M. Kusimba
Manufacturer: Altamira Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Africa | History | Subjects | Books

Central Africa | Africa | History | Subjects | Books

East Africa | Africa | History | Subjects | Books

Africa | Ancient | History | Subjects | Books

Book Description

The Swahili civilization was a fascinating and complex system-a group of advanced cultures with large economic networks, international maritime trade, and urban sophistication. This book documents the growth of Swahili civilization on the eastern coast of Africa, from 100 B.C. to the time of European colonialism in the sixteenth century. Using archaeological, anthropological, and historical information, Chapurukha M. Kusimba describes the origins of this unique and powerful culture, including its Islamic components, architecture, language, and trading systems. Incorporating the results of his own surveys and excavations, Kusimba provides us with a remarkable African-derived study of the rise and collapse of societies on the Swahili Coast.

Customer Reviews:

Muslim Swahili - True Africans........1999-10-25

The purpose of this book is to document the growth of Swahili civilization on the eastern coast of Africa, from 100 B.C. through the European colonialism in the sixteenth century. By using archaeological, anthropological, and historical information, Dr. Kusimba endeavors to describe the origins of this unique and powerful culture, including its Islamic components, architecture, language, and trading systems. He combines the results of his own anthropological surveys and archaeological excavations, providing a comprehensive study of the origins, rise, and collapse of societies on the Swahili Coast and their broader influence on African history.

Dr. Kusimba definitely views the origins of the Swahili States as distinctly African in nature and he offers historical, anthropological and archaeological evidence in support of this idea. The underlying basis of Swahili societies were long-established populations and cultural mores of African origin. Despite other scholars suggestions supporting extensive Arab settlement and even colonization along the Swahili Coast, Dr. Kusimba maintains that Swahili culture was not simply imported or derivative, but a rich fabric of African manufacture, one woven with threads spun from local fiber as well as imported yarn. The author repeatedly emphasizes that the ancestors of modern Swahili settled in East Africa long before the ancestors of many ethnic groups. The evidence presented in this book suggests that the Coastal peoples are not biologically different from other East African groups. The cultural diversity of Coastal peoples is similar in magnitude to the general diversity one finds among African peoples. The author proclaims such diversity should be celebrated rather than demeaned by who believe that the Swahili states originated from foreign settlement.

The author maintains that the Swahili elite (during the Omani regime) wished to be associated with places from which power and authority emanated. Therefore, they emphasized traditions of blood ties to Oman and Persia while minimizing their African roots. They even claimed to be Sharifs, the reputed descendants of the prophet Mohamed. Because of this myth that Swalili states originated from Arab settlements, many modern Africans consider the story of the Coast to be outside the African experience. Thus, the descendants of that colonial heritage occupy only a marginal position in the current order of things. Anti-Swahili sentiments among post-colonial East Africans have arisen from an under-appreciation of the relevance of Swahili history and culture.

Book Description

In Port Cities and Intruders, historian Michael Pearson explores the role of port cities and their orientation, relations between the coast and the interior, the place of the coast in the world economy, and the impact of the Portuguese in the early modern period.

The Swahili-speaking peoples of Kenya's coast, 1895-1965 (Peoples of East Africa, no. 4)

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The Swahili-speaking peoples of Kenya's coast, 1895-1965 (Peoples of East Africa, no. 4)
Ahmed Idha Salim
Manufacturer: East African Pub. House
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

Central Africa | Africa | History | Subjects | Books
ASIN: B0006CDOU0

The Swahili-speaking peoples of Zanzibar and the East African Coast: Arabs, Shirazi and Swahili (Ethnographic survey of Africa: East Central Africa)

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The Swahili-speaking peoples of Zanzibar and the East African Coast: Arabs, Shirazi and Swahili (Ethnographic survey of Africa: East Central Africa)
Adriaan Hendrik Johan Prins
Manufacturer: UMI Books on Demand
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding
ASIN: B0007K1NQI

Early Muslim trading settlements on the East African coast: New evidence from Shanga

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Early Muslim trading settlements on the East African coast: New evidence from Shanga
Mark Horton
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press]
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding
ASIN: B0007C3FQ2

Environments, spaces, and identities: An exploration in the history of part of the Swahili coast

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Environments, spaces, and identities: An exploration in the history of part of the Swahili coast
Matthew Cenzer
Manufacturer: Institute for Advanced Study & Research in the African Humanities, Northwestern University
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

Kenya | Africa | History | Subjects | Books
ASIN: B0006QIQ86

Panels, pillars, and posterity: Ancient tombs on the north Kenyan coast : a preliminary study (Fort Jesus occasional papers)

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Panels, pillars, and posterity: Ancient tombs on the north Kenyan coast : a preliminary study (Fort Jesus occasional papers)
Richard Wilding
Manufacturer: s.n.]
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

THE SWAHAILI-SPEAKING PEOPLES OF ZANIBAR AND THE EAST AFRICAN COAST ( ARABS, SHIRAZI AND SWAHILI)

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THE SWAHAILI-SPEAKING PEOPLES OF ZANIBAR AND THE EAST AFRICAN COAST ( ARABS, SHIRAZI AND SWAHILI)
A. H. J. Prins
Manufacturer: International African Institute
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000LLWYDE

Book Description

The prediction of the three-dimensional structure of a protein from its sequence is a problem faced by an ever-increasing number of biological scientists as they strive to utilize genetic information. The increasing sizes of the sequence and structural databases, the improvements in computing power, and the deeper understanding of the principles of protein structure have led to major developments in the field in the last few years. This book presents practical computer-based methods using the latest computer modelling algorithms.

Book Description

In the past decades, model reduction has become an ubiquitous tool in analysis and simulation of dynamical systems, control design, circuit simulation, structural dynamics, CFD, and many other disciplines dealing with complex physical models. The aim of this book is to survey some of the most successful model reduction methods in tutorial style articles and to present benchmark problems from several application areas for testing and comparing existing and new algorithms. As the discussed methods have often been developed in parallel in disconnected application areas, the intention of the mini-workshop in Oberwolfach and its proceedings is to make these ideas available to researchers and practitioners from all these different disciplines.

Customer Reviews:

no title.......2005-11-17

No wonder he won the Nobel Prize! Four hauntingly magnificent short stories, all but the third with death as the end. Or maybe not the end, but the raison d'etre of the story. "The Gentleman from San Francisco" almost half the book, translated rather badly, I suspect, in the version I read, by D. H. Lawrence; "Gentle Breathing", an incredibly subtle story; "Kasimir Stanislavatch", and "Son". In each, he takes the human tragedy and contrasts it with beautiful nature. His detail is remarkable. The stories are all short, plots not intricate or even eventful, but he manages to make each one simply live and breathe and have being. It rather reminds me of all Russian writers; they're all so tragic. What is it about being a Russian? And nobody remembers him as they do Chekhov, or Tolstoy. I wonder why. Perhaps his volume of writing was not large enough.

The Capacity to Feel with a Singular Intensity.......2005-08-10

In the meditation entitled "Night," Bunin's unnamed narrator says: "Why did God choose to brand me so deeply with wonderment, thought and `wisdom', and why is that fatal mark constantly growing inside me?" Although the voice is abstract, I think it works as a description of Bunin himself. He wasbclearly a man with (again in his own words) "the capacity to feel with a singular intensity ... not only their own identities but those of other people...." And although he may feel that his capacity is somehow unusual, he does a remarkable job of imagining (or is it projection?) that capacity in others. Everybody, he says somewhere (although I can't put my finger on it), has a story that deserves to be told.

In his introduction, David Richards calls Bunin "egocentric." In context I think I know what it means, but it's an odd choice of words and I suspect misleading. Conceded that Bunin is not a "social" novelist in the sense that Tolstoi is, nor a dramatist like Dostoevsky: his metier is, indeed, the minute attention to feelings. In some sense I suppose these feelings are "his own," but in some sense, every artist's feelings are "his own." Perhaps closer to the mark to suggest that at some level every one of us is an egocentric, and that Bunin may be able to capture the egocentricity in all of us.

Caution: Bunin won a Nobel Prize, but don't be misled into disappointment. He's a fine and rewarding writer, but not better than several others who did not win the prize, the award of which inevitably has more to do with politics than with intrinsic merit.

Great stories.......2005-03-25

Ivan Bunin is a great writer. And as for the readers, reading his stories and enjoying them are a mark of achievement. As you read his stories fierce chill pierces through you simultaneously as grand pictures fill your imaginations.

Amazing short stories.......2000-01-04

Bunin is one of the most brilliant Russian writers of the early 20th century. His short stories express more in a couple of pages than most novels do in hundreds. It is poetry in prose.

The Gentleman from San Francisco and Other Stories

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The Gentleman from San Francisco and Other Stories
Ivan A. Bunin
Manufacturer: Washington Square Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000NPV0RY

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The Gentleman from San Francisco and Other Stories
D.H.). BUNIN, I.A. (LAWRENCE
Manufacturer: Hogarth Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000ILLOH4

The Gentleman from San Francisco and Other Stories (Landmark Library)

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The Gentleman from San Francisco and Other Stories (Landmark Library)
I.A. Bunin
Manufacturer: Chatto and Windus
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Short Stories | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0701113839

Download Description

ocean, which heaved about the sides of the ship, was dreadful, but no one thought of it. All had faith in the controlling power, of the captain, a red-headed giant, heavy and very sleepy, who, clad in a uniform with broad golden stripes, looked like a huge idol, and but rarely emerged, for the benefit of the public, from his mysterious retreat.

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THE GENTLEMAN FROM SAN FRANCISCO AND OTHER STORIES

Manufacturer: Vintage Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000I17QGC

The Gentleman from San Francisco and Other Stories (Modern Classics S.)

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The Gentleman from San Francisco and Other Stories (Modern Classics S.)
I.A.; Richards, D.; Lund, S. Bunin
Manufacturer: Penguin Books Ltd
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OIVU6Q

Gentleman from San Francisco and Other Stories (Penguin Classics)

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Gentleman from San Francisco and Other Stories (Penguin Classics)
Ivan; Richards, David; Lund, Sophie Bunin
Manufacturer: Penguin Classics
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OIZLUM

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