Macclade 4: Analysis of Phylogeny and Character Evolution

Book Description

MacClade is a computer program, with accompanying manual, that provides theory and tools for the graphic and interactive analysis of molecular and morphological data, phylogeny, and character evolution. The program includes many tools for data manipulation, including molecular sequence alignment. MacClade reconstructs and displays character evolution on the phylogenetic tree, and, as the user manipulates the tree on screen, the program gives feedback via tree graphics, statistics, and charts. Systematists and other evolutionary biologists can use its flexible tools to analyze phylogeny and character evolution, yet its ease of use allows beginning students to grasp phylogenetic principles in an interactive environment.

Two distinct versions of MacClade 4 are available. The full version may be purchased on an individual basis or for simultaneous use on multiple machines (i.e., as a site license), while a special Classroom Version may be purchased under a site license arrangement only. The Classroom Version is identical to the full version of MacClade except that it allows teachers to place restrictions on those elements of each file (data, assumptions, trees, and so on) that can be edited by students. Teachers can therefore determine, on a file-by-file basis, the extent to which students can alter files.

We offer two distinct versions of the MacClade 4 site license—a Full Version and a Classroom Version. The two were identical upon publication, except for the fact that, with the Classroom Version, instructors could place restrictions on the degree to which students could manipulate the data files. Since that time, however, David Maddison has added functionality to the Full Version, via downloadable upgrades, and we expect that this will continue to happen over time.

Book Description

The Mössbauer spectroscopic technique has carved out an important niche for itself, providing magnetic and electronic information for solid-state materials at specific atomic sites. The current volume discusses applications of the technique, particularly as it relates to materials of technological and commercial importance. Researchers working across the gamut of solid-state materials science-from the engineering of new materials to the chemistry and physics of their interactions-will find this book indispensible.

Book Description

The theme of this book is modeling the real world using mathematics. The authors concentrate on the techniques used to set up mathematical models and describe many systems in full detail, covering both differential and difference equations in depth. Among the broad spectrum of topics studied in this book are: mechanics, genetics, thermal physics, economics and population studies.

Nonlinear Difference Equations: Theory with Applications to Social Science Models (Mathematical Modelling: Theory and Applications)

Average customer rating:

Nonlinear Difference Equations: Theory with Applications to Social Science Models (Mathematical Modelling: Theory and Applications)
H. Sedaghat
Manufacturer: Springer
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Popular Economics | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

General | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

General | Science | Subjects | Books

General | Mathematics | Science | Subjects | Books

Mathematical Analysis | Mathematics | Science | Subjects | Books

General | Medicine | Subjects | Books

All Titles | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books
ASIN: 1402011164

Book Description

This book presents a rare mix of the latest mathematical theory and procedures in the area of nonlinear difference equations and discrete dynamical systems, together with applications of this theory to models in economics and other social sciences The theoretical results include not only familiar topics on chaos, bifurcation stability and instability of cycles and equilibria, but also some recently published and some as yet unpublished results on these and related topics (e.g., the theory of semiconjugates). In addition to rigorous mathematical analysis, the book discusses several social science models and analyzes some of them in substantial detail. This book is of potential interest to professionals and graduate students in mathematics and applied mathematics, as well as researchers in social sciences with an interest in the latest theoretical results pertaining to discrete, deterministic dynamical systems.

Modelling with Differential and Difference Equations.

Average customer rating:

Modelling with Differential and Difference Equations.

ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding
ASIN: B0000CP0P8

Amazon.com

This Library of America volume gathers all the long fiction published by the beloved Mississippi writer Eudora Welty. Throughout her long and storied career, Welty has been most famous, perhaps, for her short stories. But it's in her novels that she attempted some of her most ambitious and powerful creations: the idiosyncratic fable that is The Robber Bridegroom, drawing on legends, local history, folktale, and myth; the underrated, wickedly funny short novel The Ponder Heart; and Losing Battles, a familial epic 15 years in the making and begun in bits and pieces while Welty cared for her sick mother. In a strange inversion of the author's usual career trajectory, Welty's only attempt at a roman à clef came late in life, with the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Optimist's Daughter, the quiet, moving, largely autobiographical story of a woman coming to grips with her father's death. The novels alone earn Welty a place as one of the finest writers our century has produced; taken together with the Library of America companion volume, Stories, Essays, & Memoir, it's a body of work that William Maxwell calls "beyond human power of praising." Welty rarely strayed for long from the place of her birth, but her fiction is as capacious as the human heart itself. Like Faulkner, she has taken her own corner of Mississippi and made it encompass the world.

Customer Reviews:

Mistress of Southern Fiction.......2006-12-21

Each new volume from The Library of America, the non-profit publisher that has become the de facto literary hall of fame, is a cause for celebration. Its goal of preserving in an enduring format the best fiction and non-fiction is a significant bulwark against the encroaching tides of cultural relativism that attempts to render any value judgments meaningless, as well as a consumer society that insists that if it ain't new, it ain't good.

In the case of Eudora Welty, we're given two volumes: a collection of five novels ("The Robber Bridegroom," "Delta Wedding," "The Ponder Heart," "Losing Battles" and the Pulitzer-winning "The Optimist's Daughter"), and another of her essays, her memoir "One Writer's Beginnings" and her short stories. From her first published short stories, "Lily Daw and the Three Ladies" in 1937, to her last novel in 1972, Welty captures with her highly readable style and sharp eye and ear the varieties and eccentricities of Southern life.

But while the South claims Welty as one of its own, she may not necessarily return the favor. Teh cause is both geographic and a matter of choice. Although she was born in Jackson, Miss., in 1909 and lived there all her life, her father was from Ohio and her mother from West Virginia, a state created by the Civil War that went for the Union. This isn't Margaret Mitchell we're talking about here.

Then, in her essay "Place in Fiction," she stresses that while it is important for a writer to capture the feeling of an area, it is not the paramount goal in fiction:

"It is through place that we put out roots ... but where those roots reach toward ... is the deep and running vein, eternal and consistent and everywhere purely itself, that feeds and is fed by the human understanding."

But what pedigree does not provide, her environment probably did, for her work contains those elements poularly associated with Southern fiction. "Delta Wedding" celebrates the Southern family through the sprawling Fairchild clan and its passel of sons, daughters, cousins, aunts, great-aunts, nieces and nephews, all involved in each others' lives to a degree rarely seen today.

Many of her stories revolve around characters marginalized by society, struggling to exist and reach out to others: the simple Lily Daw who tries to evade the determination of the town's ladies to either marry her off or send her to the asylum; the generous, slightly retarded Daniel Ponder who would give away everything he has at the drop of a hat; the demented Clytie in "A Curtain of Green," who rushes about looking in people's faces until, seeing her reflection in a barrel of rainwater, dives in and drowns.

Eudora Welty was a sharp, perceptive writer, and her enshrinement by the Library of America is most welcome.

Greatest living southern writer.......2001-06-15

I began my acquaintance with Eudora Welty's works in college with One Writer's Beginnings and fell in love with the lyrics of her writing. I moved on to her short stories where I believe Ms. Welty surely shines brightest, but her novels are almost as wonderful. Very few people have the depth of insight into the mind and motivations of southerners that Eudora Welty has. She is right up there with William Faulkner. She has the gift of seeing and conveying the universal experiences of her decidedly regional cast of characters.

Since this is a collection of all of Ms. Welty's novels it is difficult to give a concise review. Suffice it to say that for reading pleasure you will not spend better money. The Optimist's Daughter won the Pulitzer Prize, but Losing Battles may be even better (the novel centers on all of the family stories told at a huge family reunion--great framing device for so many wonderful tales). The Robber Bridegroom is a southern fairy tale.

Book Description

A vivid and charming portrait of a large southern family, the Fairchilds, who live on a plantation in the Mississippi delta. The story, set in 1923, is exquisitely woven from the ordinary events of family life, centered around the visit of a young relative, Laura McRaven, and the family’s preparations for her cousin Dabney’s wedding.

Customer Reviews:

Delta Wedding.......2006-11-10

I had always wanted to read something by Eudora Welty, and this book cured me of that. What a confusing bunch of characters--one didn't know if they were white or black--young or old. The one bright spot in the book was her very descriptive language.

Southern Lit at its Best.......2006-10-31

Welty has a way with words that is unlike any other American author. Delta Wedding is one of those "typical" Welty books that delivers passages that you have to reread several times because they are so evocative of time, place or spirituality.

DW is set at Shellmound, the Fairchild's plantation in the Mississippi Delta, aka cotton country. Laura McRaven, a cousin to the Fairchilds' travels by train from Jackson to Fairchild and is both overwhelmed by her huge family of cousins, aunts and uncles, and lured to be accepted by them. Laura's mother had recently passed away, and she expects to be treated special as a result. Other than her first greeting by her Aunt Ellen (the matriarch of this enormous family) she is pretty much left to fend for herself. Sometimes this proves too much for her, but by the end of the novel it seems that Laura fits right in with the rest of the Fairchilds.

One theme in particular that I liked about the book is that of the view of the outsider. Laura is an outsider who both wants to be inside and remain outside. She likes her "special-ness" by being an orphan and not being part of the Fairchild clan, but she desperately wants to be part of something grand, and the Fairchilds seem like a good place to start. Ellen, who married Battle Fairchild, is from Virginia and is seen as snooty even though she is thoroughly in love with the people around her. Welty does such a wonderful job of showing someone who is so overwhelmed by her life that she can't seem to react with enthusiasm--it's as if she's a piece of drift wood in the Yazoo River. Then there is Troy Flavin who is the bride groom of the story. Not only is he from another part of Mississippi where there are hills, but he is the overseer for the plantation--he is doubly outside. He looks different than everyone else, too. Unfortunately, we don't get to see the world from Troy's perspective other than in the few statements he makes about his mother and her quilting.

I enjoyed reading DW, though I have to admit I wished it were a little shorter. I felt myself being overwhelmed by the huge cast of characters. I still don't know how many children Battle and Ellen have, and I found myself wondering who some minor characters were upon their reintroduction to the story. That said, Welty has such a talent for a turn of phrase or for the absurd, that I found myself laughing out loud and thoroughly enjoying this book.

We are most hospitably invited to the festivites........2005-08-09

Eudora Welty, winner of the National Medal for Literature and the Pulitzer Prize, paints a haunting, lyrical portrait of the enormous Fairchild clan at Shellmound - their rustically feudal cotton plantation in the 1920's Mississippi Delta.

The family has gathered for the wedding of Dabney, the second and prettiest daughter, (in her particular generation), and Troy Flavin, Shellmound's overseer, a ruddy-haired man who is totally unsuitable, in the eyes of various family members. However, nothing is expressed verbally to indicate their displeasure. Their attitudes, the way they live and treat each other, say it all.

It is late summer, and the festivities are underway in the semi-tropical heat which hangs heavy over the river and bayou. Nine year-old Laura McRaven, a cousin whose mother just died, arrives for the celebrations on a trial visit, of sorts, that will decide whether she is to become a permanent member of the clan, or be sent back to her non-Fairchild father in Jackson. The plot is a simple one, however, the novel's pattern of relationships are most complex. The characters' reveal themselves through their actions, conversations, soliloquies, and sometimes through the perceptions of young Laura, as they all deal with the issues which unite and divide them.

Welty's sensitive story vividly portrays the charm and customs of old Southern family gatherings of yesteryear, and explores the complexities and chaos associated with close-knit families. The author literally invites the reader, most hospitably, into Shellmound and beckons us to join the festivities.

"Delta Wedding" was Ms. Welty's first novel, published in 1946. While I thoroughly enjoyed "Delta Wedding," I do prefer Ms Welty's short stories to her novels.
JANA

Forgetting Delta Wedding.......2005-08-03

The only reason I completed this silly, disappointing novel was because I had just finished all of Welty's remarkable short stories and her flawless novella, "The Optimist's Daughter." It's as if a completely different author had written this superficial, fatuous novel. If you desire to read about 20 forgettable people in a seriously inbred family speaking at the same time about the impending wedding of one of their own, then this novel is for you. The only explanation for this work is that it came very early in Welty's career. I realize that others have defended this novel as revealing quintessential Southern dialogue and acute psychological tension in the characters. While the dialogue is clearly of the South, it is senseless, repetitive and tedious, and the characters dash madly in and out of the novel, without making any lasting impression on this reader. Instead, read Welty's short stories and "The Optimist's Daughter" and you will discover a totally different Welty: one whose fully realized characters and profound psychological insights will leave you with the enduring belief in her genius.

Alienation in a large family.......2005-05-14

When you see the title "Delta Wedding," please don't assume that Eudora Welty's novel is either a gaudy supermarket romance or a pollyanna tribute to nuptial celebration and Southern domesticity. It is about the events leading up to a wedding, and of course there is plenty of talk about dresses and cooking and dancing, but Welty, almost like Virginia Woolf's American counterpart, suffuses the atmosphere with mysterious psychological undercurrents and the foreboding aura of secrecy. We get the sense that there is more to these people's personalities than the text can convey, and we read on patiently and attentively, hoping to unravel the complexities.

The setting is the area of central Mississippi through which the Yazoo River flows, not far from Faulkner country geographically or literarily; much of the land in this particular locality is owned by a family named the Fairchilds, the dynastic centerpiece of the story. The prevalent symbol in the novel is a train called the Yellow Dog, the principal means of mass transportation that connects this part of Mississippi to the rest of the state. This is the train that brings nine-year-old Laura McRaven from Jackson to visit the Fairchilds, her cousins, on their plantation, where Dabney (that's a girl) Fairchild is engaged to be married within the week to a man twice her age named Troy Flavin.

It is also the train that, not long before the novel begins, nearly ran over Laura's uncle George as he tried to rescue his addled niece Maureen who had caught her foot in a trestle. George's wife Robbie had witnessed this near-accident and now is using it as an excuse to leave him--how could he be so selfish as to risk his life and widow her? Although this does not speak well of Robbie's character, the source of her discontent is really alienation. She knows that she is beneath George's station, and every instance in which he bonds with another Fairchild only affirms that the Fairchild mystique is a closed circle, impenetrable to her.

For a novel concerned about a wedding in the immediate present, it is deeply immersed in its characters' pasts. Laura is an only child whose mother has recently passed away, so this large house where she is surrounded by myriad cousins, aunts, and uncles, like legendary creatures whose fantastic world she has suddenly entered, is an awesome environment with a rich and intricate history. The Fairchilds are such a regional monument that the entire town cemetery is practically their very own mausoleum; Dr. Murdoch, the insensitive local physician, picks out future burial plots for Fairchilds as though he were deciding where to plant flowers in a garden.

One interesting characteristic of "Delta Wedding" is that, true to impressionistic storytelling, there is no traditional protagonist that I could identify. Laura receives much of the focus, but this is not really her story, nor is it narrated in her voice. Dabney is too shallow and spoiled to be a heroine; her older sister Shelley, a smarter and more serious girl, is not interested in being a heroine, and good for her. "Delta Wedding" does well without a hero because it is realistic fiction at its most crystalline; a sincere, authentic depiction of life in the rural deep South of the 1920s which shows a part of the country modernizing to the twentieth century even while clinging to the shadows of the past.

Average customer rating:

Delta Wedding

Manufacturer: Recorded Books, Inc.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Audio Cassette
ASIN: 1556909985

Product Description

Set on the Mississippi Delta in 1923, this story captures the mind and manners of the Fairchilds, a large aristrocratic family, self-contained and elusive as the wind. . . .

Average customer rating:

Delta Wedding
Eudora Welty
Manufacturer: Harcourt Brace
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
Similar Items:

Their Eyes Were Watching God

ASIN: B000GDLE8S

Average customer rating:

Delta Wedding
Eudora Welty
Manufacturer: Harvest/Harcourt Brace & Co
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000IXEZIM

Average customer rating:

DELTA WEDDING
Eudora Welty
Manufacturer: Harcourt, Brace & Co.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000HWDALW

Average customer rating:

Delta Wedding
Eudora Welty
Manufacturer: Recorded Books, LLC
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Audio Cassette
ASIN: 1402523629

Product Description

7 cassettes/12 hours

Average customer rating:

Delta Wedding
Eudora Welty
Manufacturer: Signet
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
ASIN: B000TZ02WW

Delta Wedding. Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 177, nos. 1-4

Average customer rating:

Delta Wedding. Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 177, nos. 1-4
Eudora. Welty
Manufacturer: Boston:
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000IVJYQC

Wedding with a Bang: In The Shadow of Danger Series: Volume 1 (In the Shadow of Danger)

Average customer rating:

Wedding with a Bang: In The Shadow of Danger Series: Volume 1 (In the Shadow of Danger)
Charles & Delta Walton
Manufacturer: Infinity Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Mystery | Mystery & Thrillers | Subjects | Books

General | Mystery & Thrillers | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 074141984X

Book Description

In The Shadow of Danger is the first volume of the adventure series, involving the dynamic detective agency of Winchester and Winchester.

Tired of the red tape law enforcement hassle of private investigating, the two founding brothers of Winchester and Winchester decide to become bounty-hunters, walking the fine line which determines law.

These books are filled with danger, intrigue, drama, romance and the tough kick-ass approach of the two brothers who show their dislike for bullies, con-men, thieves and killers alike.

Books:

Books Index

Books Home

Recommended Books