The Making of the Cretan Landscape

Book Description

This is the first book to help the visitor understand Crete's remarkable landscape, which is just as spectacular as the island's rich archaeological heritage. Crete is a wonderful and dramatic island, a miniature continent with precipitous mountains, a hundred gorges, unique plants, extinct animals and lost civilisations, as well as the characteristic agricultural landscape of olive groves, vines and goats, Jennifer Moody and Oliver Rackham explain how the island's peculiar and extraordinary features, moulded and modified by centuries of human activity, have come together to create the landscape we see today. They also explain the formation and ecology of Crete's beautiful mountains and coastline, and the contemporary threats to the island's fragile natural beauty.

Customer Reviews:

Understanding what you see.......2007-05-03

This amazing book puts together a stunning amount of knowledge collected both on the ground and in scientific and historical research into an elegant package. I have been visiting Crete for decades, yet I learn something new on every page about the land, the people, the animals, and the plants.

The many photos and hand-drawn maps are valuable, though some of the lettering on the maps is hard to read in this edition. In any case, a large-scale map would make a good complement to the book.

Highly recommended both for the armchair traveler and the visitor.

From pygmy hippos to plastic greenhouses.......2002-08-22

The authors have traveled almost everywhere in Crete, observing at first hand vegetation, landform, and human effects on the landscape. They have also studied a vast body of literature, ranging from archaeological reports to Venetian archives to travelers' accounts. They have presented their knowledge in a very insightful, often original way, exploding older received wisdom such as the "ruined landscape theory" that regards long-inhabited places such as Crete to have begun as virgin forest and to have been gradually degraded to a semidesert. (In fact, many parts of Crete are sprouting new trees very nicely!) Learn about earthquakes altering the landscape, prehistoric and historic vegetation, the pygmy hippos and elephants that roamed in Paleolithic times, and the effects of the first human inhabitants from the Neolithic up to the 20th century. The book also gives a useful foundation for understanding more specialized aspects of Crete such as botany, forestry, agriculture, anthropology, etc. Moreover, the book is a good read. You can appreciate it equally by reading from cover to cover, or by choosing a chapter that particularly interests you. If you are curious to learn why Crete looks like it does, then this book is for you.

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Modeling phytoplankton blooms in a stratified embayment (Occasional paper - Utah Water Research Laboratory ; 8)
William J Grenney
Manufacturer: Utah Water Research Laboratory, College of Engineering, Utah State University
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

General | Plants | Biological Sciences | Science | Subjects | Books
Natural History | Nature & Ecology | Science | Subjects | Books
ASIN: B0006CSBNU

Amazon.com

Ben will be damned if he's going to stay in Sturbridge, Pennsylvania, when he gets out of high school. Work in the cinder block factory like everyone else? No way. He's also not going to let his friend Al win the state wrestling championship. Ben wants it more than Al does. Ben needs it more than Al does. Ben is going to win. Robert Cormier writes: "in a beautifully understated first novel, Rich Wallace brings the town and the teenager achingly alive as Ben wrestles not only his high school opponents, but with the big issues of life and love and the choices a teenager must make."

Book Description

The critics' votes are in--Wrestling Sturbridge is a winner! Now available in rack-sized paperback.

Customer Reviews:

Wrestling Woes.......2007-04-26

Ben and his three friends have been a solid group since middle school. They started out wrestling together when they were that young, and their dream was always to wrestle for the high school team and perhaps lead their team to state championships in four different weight classes. Wrestling is a huge sport--the only sport that matters--in the town of Sturbridge, though, and many other boys have had the same dream. Ben and his friends think that they have the drive to make it, though.

Suddenly it is senior year, and they seem to be living the dream. Well, all except Ben. The previous year it had seemed like he and his friends would rule four consecutive weight classes. Then one of his friends gained weight and moved up into Ben's class, and Ben can't seem to beat him. He can't gain enough weight in muscle to move up beyond his friends, and he can't lose enough weight to drop a class without being too weak to wrestle at all. It is beginning to look to Ben like he may not wrestle this season--unless he is able to beat his friend in a match for the slot on the team. Will Ben have the drive and the ability to earn a varsity position? When his focus is drawn to a new girlfriend, will wrestling even matter to him anymore?

I liked the relationship between Ben and his father, and especially the odd gift Ben's father gives him at the end of the book. I also liked the description of Sturbridge; it was very well set up in this book. I liked the way each chapter started with lists of things that were important to know about Ben, and I especially liked the unpredictable ending.

I didn't really understand the relationship between Ben and Kim. It seemed that all of a sudden they were dating pretty seriously with no real lead-in or explanation.

A Young Adult Novel That Isn't.......2007-04-10

Rich Wallace's WRESTLING STURBRIDGE is the best young adult novel you are likely to read...and a darn good novel period (regardless of age demarcations). I think I've given away at least 10 copies of this book to nieces and nephews over the years and every one of them loved it. Along with STONEWALL'S GOLD, WRESTLING STURBRIDGE proves that the YA genre is no longer the domain of hacks and scribes who have failed at other genres. There is some terrific fiction out there for discriminating teens and tweeners and I would put STURBRIDGE at the very top of the pile.

champion wrestler.......2007-02-08

Here comes a team of lean mean wrestling machines! They are going to Sturbridge for a wrestling match. Who will win? Will Benny the main character or his friend al win? You'll see who wins in the book Wrestling Sturbridge by Rich Wallace. Benny is an athletic teenager that cant beat his friend Al, or will that change.
He has 2 more friends on his wrestling team Digit and Hatcher. They are good wrestlers but not good enough to beat Benny or Al. They hooked up as a wrestling team ever since they started. Who will win you'll see in this fabulous book Wrestling Sturbridge. This exciting book is very good so you should read it.
This wrestling team was friends or will that change when benny an al have to wrestle each other and become enemies wrestling for king of the mat. So get to reading the best wrestling book around.

A Syrupy Romance Book .......2006-11-12

This is a sad, tragic tale that is all too common for many U.S. high school wrestlers - a kid with the potential to become a state champion and win a free ride to college, but who blows it all because his hormones are raging and he can't stay focused on his goal. Wallace attempts to highlight the impediments to individual success within the young wrestler's cultural milieu, thereby producing a useful social commentary.

The plot is whether the wrestler will make his school's varsity squad by knocking off his fellow state-seeded team mate. The subplot, heavily intertwined with the plot, is whether the wrestler can keep his mind off girls so he can wrestle. Unfortunately, much of the subplot is inappropriate for school-aged readers - "I can taste Kim's mouth and her skin" (p132). Adult readers will sense the author has no daughters of his own.

As a retired wrestling coach, I found the subplot unhelpful to the main character. A lesser character, another member of the team, could have been shown to fail at wrestling because of his lack of focus rather than the main character. The author could have shown the rewards for a wrestler that come from perserverance and persistance rather than setting his sights on the mistakes of a loser who is content that he got the girl - "Life is good. I have Kim" (133). The main character hasn't graduated school yet, failed to make varsity when he is good enough to be offered a college scholarship for wrestling, has no plans beyond the moment, and believes "life is good". In short, this is a short manual on what NOT TO DO to be a winner at wrestling.

Wrestle Offs.......2005-09-28

A boy named Ben who wants to be the best Wrestler. But to get there he has to beat out his friend Al. Al is also the best in State. As his senior year comes to an end, will he beat out Al at wrestle offs or watch his dream wash away as he sits the bench?
I really liked this book because it shows a typical teenager trying to be the best. I liked how it showed Ben trying to get Kim the girl he liked to be his girlfriend. It also has a lot about wrestling in the book. I liked the parts of the book that are realistic like when Ben is cutting weight. The only thing I didn't like was that the ending wasn't how I pictured it.
A person who would probably like this book is a person who likes wrestling. Other people that might like this book are people that like shorter books.

Average customer rating:

Wrestling Sturbridge
Pos
Manufacturer: Alfred A. Knopf
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: 0676760171

Book Description

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the International Workshop on Biometric Recognition Systems, IWBRS 2005, held in Beijing, China in October 2005 within the scope of ICCV 2005, the International Conference on Computer Vision. This workshop combines the annual Chinese Conference on Biometric Recognition (Sinobiometrics 2005).

The 32 revised full papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 130 submissions. The papers address the problems of automatic and reliable authentication of individuals in face, iris, fingerprint, palmprint, speaker, writing and other biometrics, and contribute new ideas to research and development of reliable and practical solutions for biometric authentication.

Automated Biometrics: Technologies and Systems (The International Series on Asian Studies in Computer and Information Science)

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Automated Biometrics: Technologies and Systems (The International Series on Asian Studies in Computer and Information Science)
David D. Zhang
Manufacturer: Springer
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Accessories:

ASIN: 0792378563

Book Description

Biometrics-based authentication and identification are emerging as the most reliable method to authenticate and identify individuals. Biometrics requires that the person to be identified be physically present at the point-of-identification and relies on `something which you are or you do' to provide better security, increased efficiency, and improved accuracy. Automated biometrics deals with physiological or behavioral characteristics such as fingerprints, signature, palmprint, iris, hand, voice and face that can be used to authenticate a person's identity or establish an identity from a database. With rapid progress in electronic and Internet commerce, there is also a growing need to authenticate the identity of a person for secure transaction processing.
Designing an automated biometrics system to handle large population identification, accuracy and reliability of authentication are challenging tasks. Currently, there are over ten different biometrics systems that are either widely used or under development. Some automated biometrics, such as fingerprint identification and speaker verification, have received considerable attention over the past 25 years, and some issues like face recognition and iris-based authentication have been studied extensively resulting in successful development of biometrics systems in commercial applications. However, very few books are exclusively devoted to such issues of automated biometrics.
Automated Biometrics: Technologies and Systems systematically introduces the technologies and systems, and explores how to design the corresponding systems with in-depth discussion. The issues addressed in this book are highly relevant to many fundamental concerns of both researchers and practitioners of automated biometrics in computer and system security.

Customer Reviews:

Victorian melodrama.......2005-10-14

I am perhaps being unfair to this author by giving his work only 4 stars, but it is certainly not up to the standard of his classic works "The Woman In White" and "The Moonstone". In his defense, however, I will say that this novella is interesting, for a work that grew out of a play performed by the author and Charles Dickins. It's a typical Victorian melodrama, with coincidences abounding everywhere, and florid speeches and unusual (for our time) actions by the main characters. There really isn't any character development, perhaps because the tale is so short, but you do get into the spirit of the story fairly quickly. It's an entertaining diversion that will keep you occupied for an hour or so.

Average customer rating:

Deep-Frozen Death (Linford Mystery)
Sarah J. Mason
Manufacturer: Ulverscroft Large Print
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Mystery | Mystery & Thrillers | Subjects | Books

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Literature & Fiction | Large Print | Formats | Books

Mystery & Thrillers | Large Print | Formats | Books
ASIN: 0708955967

3 Titles By Sean Hanlon Prester John Riordan Mystery Series : The Cold Front Deep Freeze The Frozen Franklin

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3 Titles By Sean Hanlon Prester John Riordan Mystery Series : The Cold Front Deep Freeze The Frozen Franklin
Sean Hanlon
Manufacturer: pocket
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback

General | Mystery | Mystery & Thrillers | Subjects | Books
ASIN: B000MQK85O

Product Description

3 Titles By Sean Hanlon Prester John Riordan Mystery Series : The Cold Front Deep Freeze The Frozen Franklin. Three mmpb books.

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A comprehensive guide to deep freezing
Morag Williams
Manufacturer: Hamlyn
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding
ASIN: B0007AYCW0

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Deep Freeze Cookbook
Norma McCulloch
Manufacturer: Hamlyn
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover