The Impact of Immigration on African Americans

Book Description

uppose that scientists identify a gene sequence that predicts the likelihood that a person will commit a serious crime in the future. Laws are passed making genetic tests mandatory, and anyone displaying the genes is sent to a treatment facility. Would the laws be constitutional? In this illuminating history, legal scholar David L. Faigman wrestles with these moral and political conundrums, revealing the tension between science and the law. The Supreme Court works by precedent, while science works through constant innovation. In the nineteenth century, eugenics and phrenology helped decide the 'race question' in the famous Dred Scott and Plessy v. Ferguson cases; Roe v. Wade set a standard for the viability of a fetus that, just thirty years later, could become obsolete with modern medicine. And how does the Fourth Amendment apply in a world filled with high-tech surveillance devices? To ensure our liberties, Faigman argues, the Court must embrace science rather than resist it, turning to the lab as well as to precedent.

Customer Reviews:

A Fascinating View of the Supreme Court.......2005-01-23

For those of us who primarily hear about Supreme Court cases through the news or at school, it is easy to forget that the actual Court decision that emerges from a case is the complex interaction of nine individuals interpreting the law and the facts. This book explores in fascinating detail how the Supreme Court's landmark decisions are very much a human endeavor reflecting the different justices' world views. While Faigman uses the justices' understanding of science (or sometimes misunderstanding) in making their legal decisions as his primary prism to examine the Court, the book is anything but simply a "law and science" book. To me, it was much more about how the justices bring their individual strengths and weaknesses, their hopes and fears as human beings, to deciding cases with profound implications for society. I always had assumed, for example, that Justice Taney, who decided the infamous Dred Scott decision that saw slaves as property to be owned, must have been a bigoted villain. While Taney by no means emerges from Faigman's telling as a hero, he does become much more of a three-dimensional figure, one who had deep personal qualms about slavery but who, in a terribly misguided way, thought he was saving the Union by his opinion in Dred Scott. In chapter after chapter, Faigman similarly shows how Court decisions that we have all heard of, like Brown v. Board of Education, are much more than simply decisions reflecting "The Law," but reflect individual justices' struggles with changing scientific and social understandings. I don't know if the author meant the title "Laboratory of Justice" to have another meaning beyond looking at how the Court tries to adapt the law as science changes our understanding of the world around us, but as I read the book, I did find myself thinking of the justices not as the scientists running the "laboratory of justice" but as part of the experiment itself going on in the laboratory of justice. This is a superb book for anyone who wants to gain insight into the Court's workings as told by someone with a keen eye for interesting facts that are insightful and entertaining at the same time.

Book Description

Eucalypts make up a remarkable genus as the dominant trees of Australia. This authoritative volume provides current reviews by active researchers in many disciplines, including evolutionary history, genetics, distribution and modeling, the relationship of eucalypts to fire and nutrients, ecophysiology, pollination and reproductive ecology, interactions between eucalypts and other coexisting biota as well as conservation and management. Together these reviews explore the reasons for the great success of eucalypts in Australian environments, providing a comprehensive summary for comparison with the ecology of major woody plant genera in other continents.

Customer Reviews:

Book of the Millennium!!!!.......1997-03-30

This book reconstructs the subject of titrimetry...a real page turner from start to finish. From the moment I opened it I knew it was "predestined" to be a winner

Book Description

The TMS320C6x is Texas Instrument's next generation DSP found in over 60 percent of wireless devices from leading manufacturers such as Ericsson, Nokia, Sony, and Handspring
Author has many years experience working with the TI line of TMS DSPs and his books are based on courses and seminars given at TI sponsored meetings
All programs listed in the text will be available on the Wiley FTP site
In addition to its wireless applications, the TMS DSP is tailored to enable a new generation of Internet media entertainment appliances

Download Description

* The TMS320C6x is Texas Instrument's next generation DSP found in over 60 percent of wireless devices from leading manufacturers such as Ericsson, Nokia, Sony, and Handspring

* Author has many years experience working with the TI line of TMS DSPs and his books are based on courses and seminars given at TI sponsored meetings

* All programs listed in the text will be available on the Wiley FTP site

* In addition to its wireless applications, the TMS DSP is tailored to enable a new generation of Internet media entertainment appliances

Customer Reviews:

Decent lab style book, lacking in structure, format, and ease of use.......2007-06-27

This book is a requirement for a DSP class that I am taking. However, I feel that this book is not meant as a learning guide on DSP but more as a hands-on type lab manual. Any professors out there looking to use this book as a staple to the "classroom" side of a Digital Signal Processing should reconsider and think about using it for the "lab" portion of the class.

The instructions for going through each example, step-by-step is rather cumbersome because of the lack of structure (i.e. Step 1, Step 2, but rather in paragraph form). Additionally, each example builds on the last which makes it very cumbersome in adding all of the programs. For instance, in Chapter 2, Example 2.4 requires that you use the same support files as in Example 2.3. Example 2.3 refers you to use the same support files as in Example 2.2. Example 2.2 refers you to Example 2.1 and 1.1 which also refers you to other files. You will spend nearly a half hour trying to figure out which programs to you use. The layout and format of this book make it quite inefficient, but once you learn to decipher it, it is a decent "lab" style book.

A good applications book.......2004-05-02

As an engineer with digital design experience but little DSP application experience, I found this book to be very helpful in understanding and applying everyday DSP algorithms. The book is basically a digest containing many C coded examples of realtime DSP designs including filters, tone generators, FFTs and other common DSP routines. They are easy to implement (all scipts are included on the accompanied CD) and are also fun to play with.
Assuming you have the TMS320C6711 DSK with code composer studio(I got mine on ebay for $100), you will be realizing the designs within minutes after first opening the text.
This book is not a first course in DSP. It helps to know a little about the theory (signals and systems and/or a dsp course) before diving into this text.
In conclusion, if you know a little about DSP but have no experience in applying it, I highly recommend this text.

Best book for DSP hands-on.......2004-03-25

If you are looking for a book to learn DSP hands-on, this is it. This is a DSP application tool that "brings to life" all that DSP theory and what to do with it.

Comments by author.......2003-07-15

I am the author of this book and wanted to respond to the comments by the reader from NH. This book is not about the C6x DSK. Rather, as the title implies, it is on "DSP Applications". The book is "using C and the TMS320C6x DSK" to discuss various applications of DSP, using dozens of illustrative examples with the C6x DSK. Furthermore, the book is not meant to be primarily on the theoretical aspects of DSP. There are many fine texts on theoretical DSP. Again, as stated in the title, the intent of the book is to emphasize the applications of DSP using the C6x DSK as a medium to illustrate. I hope this helps any future readers considering my book.

An opinion of a DSP Lab Instructor.......2002-11-12

It is a interesting book that allows students and DSP and professionals to obtain a quick satate of the art vision of TI DSP techonology. Easy to read and understand, it has good examples that I have been able to verify in the DSP Lab course I conduct. I strongly recommend this book for people that wish to advance quickly in this area and in it's applications. I would like the aurthor to consider writing similar books on DSP applications for control engineering with TI DSPs.

Average customer rating:

Please Dover, DO update your translations!

SHOWS GREAT RESPECT FOR VIKING HISTORY!!

the best of all icelandic sagas

A serious chronicle with lots of juicy tidbits

Heimskringla or the Lives of the Norse Kings
Snorre Sturlason
Manufacturer: Kessinger Publishing, LLC
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | World | History | Subjects | Books
Medieval | World | History | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:

Saga of the Jomsvikings

Eyrbyggja Saga (Penguin Classics)

Orkneyinga Saga: The History of the Earls of Orkney (Penguin Classics)

Njal's Saga (Penguin Classics)

The Saga of the Volsungs (Penguin Classics)

ASIN: 0766186938

Book Description

1932. Contents: Snorre's Life; Snorre's Writings; The Manuscripts; Previous Translations; Character and Customs of the Nordic Races; The Origin of the Nordic Races; the Norse Kings; The Jutes, Angles and Saxons; England's Danish Kings; History of the Norse Kings: Ynglinga Saga; Halvdan the Black; Harald Hairfair; Hacon the Good; Eric's Sons; Hacon the Jarl; Olav Trygvason; St. Olav; Magnus the Good; Harald Hardrade; Olav Kyrre (or the Peaceful); Magnus Barefoot; Sigurd the Crusader and his brothers Eystein and Olav; Magnus the Blind and Harald Gilli (Gilchrist); Sigurd, Inge, and Eystein, the sons of Harald Gilli; Hacon Broad-shoulder; and Magnus Erlingson.

Customer Reviews:

Please Dover, DO update your translations!.......2007-07-14

Dover, please update your translation, it's as if you rehash you book with and updated preface. Your "books" are full of errors, or mistranslations of names. I checked and found the translation to be in 1932....the Victorian era....ok; it's over...that kind of romanticism. However it's not as bad as you OTHER "book" (Myths of the Norsemen From the Eddas and The Sagas by H.A. Guerber, translator is probably dead by now unless she has the Dorian Grey syndrome and the picture only ages.) filled with Victorian romanticism, it was a dictionary of Norse mythology, but for Victorian romanticism (emphatically), a form of emasculated Norse Mythology. Dover, translations aren't forever and we aren't wearing chapeaus with canes, heh, some call this age post-modernism era, I don't buy that thought, but after hippies and disco, and many James Bond movies, it's safe to say...it isn't the Victorian era. Nothing against Victorian era, my gripe is against romanticism when I'm trying to be a scholar. Of course it's hard to extricate "Romanticism with Victorianism"...at any rate at least they translated the WHOLE Heimskringla, outdated and now archaic because of other most recent versions, at least of the '64, there could be even more modern translations as well. But please, Dover...stop rehashing your books...they won't last forever trust me. You have just lost a customer. But please release any of your books again...with a nice 2007 preface, while the core goes back to the Victorian era...
With new translations of this book, this is a relic of the novelty of pretty Victorian romances...

SHOWS GREAT RESPECT FOR VIKING HISTORY!!.......2004-10-08

If you want to know more about the lives of your norse ancestors, this is the book for you!! I like Erling Monsen's comments about the "historicity" of the book, because, apparently, other more recent historians have downplayed the importance of Snorri. But there is ALOT of detail in these chapters of many individuals.

the best of all icelandic sagas.......1999-05-30

Heimskringla is the account of the kings of Norway, starting with the Norse god Odin as a great general and wizard and centered around the story of St. Olav, king of Norway for 15 years. The detailed account of his years as a king is over 200 pages long and the Old Norwegian terms will keep you reading the footnotes some of the time, but it helps.

A serious chronicle with lots of juicy tidbits.......1997-03-20

Few topics might have a less boring promise to them than a a dreary, commented narration of the deeds of long-dead monarchs. But, as it happens, in the skilful hands of that remote, enigmatic figure that was Snorre Sturlason, this compendium becomes a thrilling subject likely to satisfy the mind of the professional historian and thirst for adventure of the young, budding intellectual turk. Mr. Sturlason is indeed a kind of mysterious figure. Icelandic by birth, he would no doubt feel at home in the world of modern politics; as a matter of fact, he might have one or two things to teach any well seasoned contemporary politician. Why he devoted his life to political scheming and Norse history, we shall never know for sure; but should be under no illusion about his prowess in both disciplines. He's no doubt the Herodotus of the northern latitudes - and the Machiavelli. Nonetheless, in analogy to other historical figures, he machinated and intrigued a bit too far, which brought him his demise, after an anyway rather long life. At the thirteenth century, the historical framework that saw the flourishing of Snorre Sturlason, the dynasties of Norwegian kings have come to an end. Not surprisingly so though, due to the extreme bellicosity and, from our late twentieth century point of view, hooligan-like features that characterized that string of monarchs. Snorre's tale starts at the mythical times of the creation of the world, eons ago, with a crisp narrative of the well-known old Norse cosmology. It is not clear where mythology terminates and history begins, and one cannot help but wondering if the scheming historian kept the ambiguity on purpose. At any rate, Snorre's prose flows easily and leads the reader deep into the old Norse world and customs, everyday life, nonchalantly describing grim, sometimes gruesome deeds, bringing us back to a period in which the conception of the world, ethics, morality and existence itself, were vastly different from ours in the West. The reader will no doubt be captured by the relentless, powerful sense of revenge implicit in the death of a Scottish chieftain, who succumbed to infection that set in due to the injuries done to his leg by the teeth of the head of a Norse invader, that he had cut off and tied up to this horse's saddle as a victory trophy; or by the moving, and the same time horrific, reaction of king Harald the Fairhaired at the death of his favourite lover Snaefrid, the details of which we leave for the inquisitive reader to discover. A milestone in the world literature and history, the Heimskringla will leave no one unmoved, and will surely expand the vision of many.

Heimskringla or the lives of the Norse Kings

Average customer rating:

Heimskringla or the lives of the Norse Kings
Snorre (Monsen, Erling, [ed]) Sturlason
Manufacturer: W Heffer
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000GP4A8W

Average customer rating:

Heimskringla, or The Lives of the Norse Kings
ed) Snorre Sturlason (Monsen
Manufacturer: Heffer
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000J5Z10U

Average customer rating:

Heimskringla Or The Lives Of The Norse Kings
Snorre Sturlason
Manufacturer: NY
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000MUFMIS

Book Description

This compact, colorful volume introduces the history of Bellevue, Washington's fifth largest city and unofficial capital of the state's high-tech sector. Far from being a "bedroom community," Bellevue is a vibrant metropolitan center in its own right. The community has pursued a strategy of innovative urban development and social diversification since its incorporation in 1953, and its parks, environmental quality, and growth management policies have been hailed as national models.

Bellevue Timeline has been designed as a companion to the popular Seattle and King County Timeline as part of Bellevue's "50Fest" celebration.

Customer Reviews:

What the heck's an "edge city"?.......2004-07-03

I understand the term "edge city" has something to do with a certain pattern of urban and suburban development, and is not a reflection on Bellevue as a suburb -- although it isn't -- of Seattle. Still, though the term is used in the book's subtitle (but not, as Amazon.com has it, as "Leading-Edge City") and the foreword by Connie Marshall and Kemper Freeman, I didn't see it actually defined anywhere in the text.

Still, that minor quibble out of the way, I admit to being a fan of Walt Crowley and the gang at HistoryLink.org. I thought they did a very good job with the earlier "Seattle and King County Timeline," and am pleased to see they have turned in another fine work. Though long in the shadow of her sister across the lake, Bellevue has a story of her own. Alan J. Stein and the HistoryLink staff have assembled a good narrative and a great selection of images, and built them around the timeline itself, which runs from 10,000 BC to the present.

Now a major city in her own right (and growing such that maybe someday Seattle will be her suburb?), Bellevue deserves an accessible and entertaining history like this one. Proud citizens, or anyone else interested in the history of this region, ought to find this little book worth checking out.

Average customer rating:
Gender and Assimilation in Modern Jewish History: Roles and Representations of Women (The Samuel & Althea Stroum Lectures in Jewish Studies)
Paula E. Hyman
Manufacturer: University of Washington Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Jewish | World | History | Subjects | Books
General | World | History | Subjects | Books
General | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
General | Sociology | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
General | Women's Studies | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
All Titles | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books
Nonfiction | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books
Similar Items:

The Jew in the Modern World: A Documentary History

The Jews of the United States, 1654-2000 (Jewish Communities in the Modern World)

American Jewish Women's History: A Reader

Eros and the Jews: From Biblical Israel to Contemporary America

The Making of the Jewish Middle Class: Women, Family, and Identity in Imperial Germany (Studies in Jewish History)

ASIN: 0295974265

Average customer rating:
Gender and Assimilation in Modern Jewish History: Roles and Representations of Women
Paula E. Hyman
Manufacturer: Washington
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000LZIJX4

Average customer rating:
Gender and Assimilation in Modern Jewish History: Roles and Representations of Women (The Samuel & Althea Stroum Lectures in Jewish Studies)
Paula E. Hyman
Manufacturer: University of Washington Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000ORT56O

Book Description

Probabilistic Reasoning in Intelligent Systems is a complete and accessible account of the theoretical foundations and computational methods that underlie plausible reasoning under uncertainty. The author provides a coherent explication of probability as a language for reasoning with partial belief and offers a unifying perspective on other AI approaches to uncertainty, such as the Dempster-Shafer formalism, truth maintenance systems, and nonmonotonic logic.

The author distinguishes syntactic and semantic approaches to uncertainty--and offers techniques, based on belief networks, that provide a mechanism for making semantics-based systems operational. Specifically, network-propagation techniques serve as a mechanism for combining the theoretical coherence of probability theory with modern demands of reasoning-systems technology: modular declarative inputs, conceptually meaningful inferences, and parallel distributed computation. Application areas include diagnosis, forecasting, image interpretation, multi-sensor fusion, decision support systems, plan recognition, planning, speech recognition--in short, almost every task requiring that conclusions be drawn from uncertain clues and incomplete information.

Probabilistic Reasoning in Intelligent Systems will be of special interest to scholars and researchers in AI, decision theory, statistics, logic, philosophy, cognitive psychology, and the management sciences. Professionals in the areas of knowledge-based systems, operations research, engineering, and statistics will find theoretical and computational tools of immediate practical use. The book can also be used as an excellent text for graduate-level courses in AI, operations research, or applied probability.

Customer Reviews:

Outstanding introduction to the field.......2007-06-28

Recently I needed to learn the principles of Bayesian networks quickly, so I bought three books: this one by Pearl, "Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning" by Bishop, and "Bayesian Artificial Intelligence" by Korb and Nicholson. Each has a very different audience and different set of strengths.

The Bishop book would probably be a great text for a serious student with a year to spend learning the theory of machine learning. But I found it a bit too concise, with a bias towards an "algebraic" description rather than a "geometric" one (my preference). I wound up spending a lot of time trying to translate equations into mental pictures in order to grasp the concepts. Too much work, so I dropped this after a couple of days.

Next I tackled the Korb and Nicholson book. This one's aimed at the application engineer who wants to get a network up and running quickly, and is not too concerned about how it works. I've been in that position many times in my career, and have always welcomed books like this for giving me a quick start into a new field. But this time I needed to really understand how Bayesian networks worked, and for this the Korb and Nicholson book is not great. In the first 9 pages of chapter 3 they try to explain the belief propagation algorithm, but their hearts just weren't it in--I found their explanation to be unintelligible. (I suspect most readers just skim this to get to the applications.) So after several days of struggling and getting nowhere, I tossed this aside as well.

The Pearl book was the only left; I put it off to last since I was initially somewhat intimidated by it. After all, this is one of the books that kicked off the "Bayesian revolution," so I was fearing a foundational math book consisting of one dry theorem after another. Not so! Although you have to read 174 pages to get through the belief propagation algorithm for trees, this took far less time than reading the first 62 pages of Korb and Nicholson, which cover roughly the same ground. The reason: Pearl is a gifted teacher and writer. His explanations are a series of baby steps, leaving nothing out, never assuming the reader will make "obvious" inferences, and supplying motivation every step of the way. Although he doesn't have a lot of figures in the book, the ones he does have are excellent, and by the time I hit page 175, I had a clear picture in my head of not just how it all worked, but why it worked. In fact, after just two days of reading, I was able to implement the belief propagation algorithm in software in an afternoon (I tested the software with examples from the Korb and Nicholson book, so that book was ultimately useful). Pearl made the subject seem almost obvious. If you are looking for a book to help you get canned Bayesian software up and running for an application quickly, this is not it. But if you want to really understand how these things work, and don't have a lot of time available, I cannot imagine a better book than this.

a classic book.......2007-05-10

Pearl's book is a classic in artificial intelligence. Many of his ideas are still being studied today.

To reiterate moussie99, Not so much.......2006-04-20

I've read the first half of this book twice now (once for a class, once to pass M.S. test). The book is terrible. There are virtually no examples to help you learn how to construct a Bayesian network. I'm serious. Virtually the only example is actually a homework question at the end of a chapter and the question is wrong!!! (there are dependcies in the table given for the joint distribution, but the acyclic graph shows them as independencies).

This book was written in defense of Bayesian Networks as a "Reasonable" graphical model. At the time, perhaps it was needed, but today we accept them as useful and move on unless we are trying to model medical diagnosis. For this reason the book is written with proofs where there should be examples (and perhaps references to an appendix). Please don't prove to me that Bayesian networks are reasonable, show me how they are useful!

To reiterate, you will learn how to create and use Bayesian networks from somewhere else, even if you buy this book.

Oh, and my FAVORITE example is the Prisoner's Paradox. He uses this example to show relationships that should be representable in a graphical model. But the whole point of the paradox is that humans are VERY bad at thinking in this manner. Though Pearl makes general claims as to the similarity between Bayesian Networks and the way humans think (doctors performing medical diagnosis is not a normal human task!), this example shows the opposite. It is called a paradox because it is unintuitive, weakening claims as to the likeness of Bayesian Networks to human thought.

Elegant Discussion On Probabilistic Reasoning And Uncertainty.......2005-12-13

Pearl's "Probabilistic Reasoning in Intelligent Systems" is elegantly done seminal work on uncertainty, probabilistic reasoning and all things related inference. As the author says, "This book is a culmination of an investigation into the applicability of probabilistic methods to task requiring automated reasoning under uncertainty", it covers topics on all level i.e. basic ideas, technical and substantive discussions and advanced research. However, my impression of book's target audiences is researchers and readers with a advance understanding of these topics.

"Probabilistic Reasoning in Intelligent Systems" provides very comprehensive and detailed discussion on topics like why uncertainty is important, probabilistic reasoning for query answering system, Markov and Bayesian networks etc; It goes beyond the text and into philosophical discussion as well, for instance it talks about what Bayesian rule's mathematical representation actually mean. The topic "Learning structures from data" is a good discussion of belief networks. As an advance text book, it's equipped with theorem proofs, exercises but not very many examples which disappoints. The book covers default logic very well; topics like semantics for default reasoning, casualty modularity and tree structures, evidential reasoning in taxonomic hierarchies, decision analysis, and autonomous propagation as a computational paradigm are some of the well discussed ones. I particularly enjoyed the Bayesian vs. Dempster-Shafer formulism, probabilistic treatment of the Yale shooting problem and dialogue between logicist and probablist, the concluding discussion.

I'd recommend this book as a secondary resource for advance researchers in the field of probability and uncertainty.

Not so much.......2003-04-09

I used this text in addtition to a few others for a course in probablistic reasoning (Bayes nets, etc.) and found that it was very unhelpful. The explanations were very poor and many parts were difficult to read. Also, there weren't very many examples and those that were provided were not very detailed. If you're looking for a text to learn probabilistic reasoning I would suggest trying a different book. Pearl's book could be useful as a 2nd or 3rd reference but not for the primary text. 2 thumbs down.

Book Description

Down to Earth offers an original perspective on the current state of the environment. Presented as a dialogue between the author, Mother Nature herself (in the form of a beautiful woman who possesses mysterious powers), and her crew - a unique cast of characters in their own right - this fresh, funny work is a must-read for anyone interested in environmental issues. Merging the latest scientific findings with such disciplines as history, sociology, anthropology, and business, Down to Earth explores the topics of air and water pollution, rainforest destruction, over-population, land degradation, species extinction, and global warming to name a few. By addressing the problems while at the same time providing a host of solutions, this book represents both a call to action and a ray of hope in the defense of Planet Earth.

Books:

Books Index

Books Home

Recommended Books