An Introduction To Experimental Design And Statistics For Biology

Book Description

This illustrated textbook for biologists provides a refreshingly clear and authoritative introduction to the key ideas of sampling, experimental design, and statistical analysis. The author presents statistical concepts through common sense, non-mathematical explanations and diagrams. These are followed by the relevant formulae and illustrated by worked examples. The examples are drawn from all areas of biology, from biochemistry to ecology and from cell to animal biology. The book provides everything required in an introductory statistics course for biology undergraduates, and it is also useful for more specialized undergraduate courses in ecology, botany, and zoology.

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Readable book about statistics........2001-11-27

This book covers a dry subject in a way that hasn't put me to sleep. It uses practical examples more than just formulas to explain the ideas. It also deals with common problems with experimental design quite well.

An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine

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The wonderful world of homeostasis

An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine
Claude Bernard
Manufacturer: Dover Publications
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0486204006

Book Description

Clear and penetrating presentation of the basic principles of scientific research from the great French physiologist whose contributions in the 19th century included the discovery of vasomotor nerves; nature of curare and other poisons in human body; functions of pancreatic juice in digestion; elucidation of glycogenic function of the liver.

Customer Reviews:

The wonderful world of homeostasis.......2001-02-06

As Bernard puts it: "I think I was the first to urge the belief that animals have really two environments: a milieu extérieur in which the organism is situated, and a milieu intérieur in which the tissue elements live. The living organism does not really exist in the milieu extérieur (the atmosphere it breathes, salt or fresh water if that is the element) but in the liquid milieu intérieur formed by the circulating organic liquid which surrounds and bathes all the tissue elements; this is the lymph or plasma, the liquid part of the blood which, in the higher animals, is diffused through the tissues and forms the ensemble of the intercellular liquids and is the basis of all local nutrition and the common factor of all elementary exchanges. A complex organism should be looked upon as an assemblage of simple organisms which are the anatomical elements that live in the liquid milieu intérieur."

This book is a wonderful book for the biology student or for anyone interested in how medicinal studies and biology "began." Claude Bernard introduces his idea of homeostasis in this book and he explains how and why it works, and how humans, as well as animals, could not live without such an idea.

Book Description

This book presents an up-to-date overview of cathodoluminescence microscopy and spectroscopy in the field of geosciences. For a decade, no books have been dedicated to this topic. This volume includes new important data on cathodoluminescence spectroscopy, physical parameters and systematic spectral analysis of doped minerals. Each chapter, written by a well-known specialist, covers classic and new fields of application such as carbonate diagenesis, silicates, brittle deformation in sandstones, gemstone recognition, biomineralization, economic geology or geochronology. It will be useful to all scientists, graduate students and professional engineers throughout the geosciences community.

Book Description

This text considers waves the great unifying concept of physics. With minimal mathematics, it emphasizes the behavior common to phenomena such as earthquake waves, ocean waves, sound waves, and mechanical waves. Topics include velocity, vector and complex representation, energy and momentum, coupled modes, polarization, diffraction, and radiation. 1974 edition.

Customer Reviews:

A very readable intro to the physics of waves..........1998-12-11

This is an excellent book that discusses the physics of waves with a minimum of math. A very readable introduction to waves. Sadly, at the time of this writing, this book is out of print. However, if you can find a copy it is worth reading.

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Almost All About Waves.
John R. Pierce
Manufacturer: see notes for publisher info
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000M4NFY2

Amazon.com

What was a nice Eton boy like Eric Blair doing in scummy slums instead of being upwardly mobile at Oxford or Cambridge? Living Down and Out in Paris and London, repudiating respectable imperialist society, and reinventing himself as George Orwell. His 1933 debut book (ostensibly a novel, but overwhelmingly autobiographical) was rejected by that elitist publisher T.S. Eliot, perhaps because its close-up portrait of lowlife was too pungent for comfort.

In Paris, Orwell lived in verminous rooms and washed dishes at the overpriced "Hotel X," in a remarkably filthy, 110-degree kitchen. He met "eccentric people--people who have fallen into solitary, half-mad grooves of life and given up trying to be normal or decent." Though Orwell's tone is that of an outraged reformer, it's surprising how entertaining many of his adventures are: gnawing poverty only enlivens the imagination, and the wild characters he met often swindled each other and themselves. The wackiest tale involves a miser who ate cats, wore newspapers for underwear, invested 6,000 francs in cocaine, and hid it in a face-powder tin when the cops raided. They had to free him, because the apparently controlled substance turned out to be face powder instead of cocaine.

In London, Orwell studied begging with a crippled expert named Bozo, a great storyteller and philosopher. Orwell devotes a chapter to the fine points of London guttersnipe slang. Years later, he would put his lexical bent to work by inventing Newspeak, and draw on his down-and-out experience to evoke the plight of the Proles in 1984. Though marred by hints of unexamined anti-Semitism, Orwell's debut remains, as The Nation put it, "the most lucid portrait of poverty in the English language." --Tim Appelo

Book Description

This unusual fictional account, in good part autobiographical, narrates without self-pity and often with humor the adventures of a penniless British writer among the down-and-out of two great cities. In the tales of both cities we learn some sobering Orwellian truths about poverty and society.

Customer Reviews:

If you're Down and Out............2007-10-09

If you're down and out read Down and Out in Paris and London. Most likely you'll change the outlook on your situation.

George Orwell gives the lowdown on being downright poverty stricken and homeless in Paris and London in the 1930's. The book's graphic detail and description gives the reader a woeful glance of the ugliness of life on the street. Some of the psychos, freaks and weirdos he encounters are a bit difficult to bear at times, and I even suggest SKIPPING chapter 2 entirely. It was awful and disturbing! Don't read it expecting "mercy".

Aside from that chapter, the book is interesting and absorbing and will open your eyes to a day in the life of society's poorest, whose purpose in life is merely to survive.

Despite the above reference about chapter 2, it's a quick and easy read. If you, like me, are unfamiliar with the small amount of French in the story, babelfish.altavista will come in very handy.

"Down and out", but alive and indeed real people.......2007-06-24

Orwell presents this story as an autobiography. He starts the story in Paris where he prepares to go to work in a Hotel but then for a variety of reasons sort of just descends into poverty. Being an English teacher doesn't work and waiting to take a job in a hotel and the problems he has leaves him close to starvation. Even finding the Hotel job just leaves him with long hours of work and he finds himself at the bottom of a hotel's social structure. This is reflective of the society he lives in where there are little opportunities for one to rise above where one starts in life and of course work. He describes drinking on a Saturday night as the "one thing that made life worth living". At one point a murder happens right outside where he is sleeping and he just comments that within three minutes he had gone back to sleep not wanting to waste time over it. In London he lives as a beggar and a tramp and the experience just adds to his understanding of being down and out. Life there is no better for him. One can not help but think of "1984", and much of Orwell's other writings, and see in the story told here some of what later was the core of his message. His work in the Hotel was considered slavery and it seemed to him that the cause was that the lower class was trapped. In part the reason for being trapped was that the rich were just unconcerned and unaware of the poor. He could also see that the rich may really fear what may be the inevitable rising up by the lower classes up to fight back. These events were ones that Orwell would have related to socialism and the issue of whether it was itself good or bad. One side of the society was looking for liberty and the other side fearing they could lose it.
The books conclusions are well worth reading and understanding. He acknowledges that what he has shown to be poverty is really just a small insight into what it really is. He uses the books characters to graphically show the human side of the poor. The conclusion is clear that the "down and out" are real people, individuals, and are important.

Heavily edited edition.......2007-06-03

Be advised that the Harcourt edition appears to be the original edited version. As such the passages on slang end up containing a lot of "-----" which is interesting from the perspective of censorship in the 1930s, but is clearly contrary to the authors intent. Before purchasing a copy check the third or fourth page of chapter 32 for the following passage:

"The current London adjective, now tacked on to every noun is ..."

Orwell doesn't like Jews and gays..........2007-02-02

If you pick this little book up--while seated in your most comfortable chair, with a ready beverage nearby, and an empty bladder--odds are you'll finish it before you put it down again. Orwell is my kind of writer: he means what he says. This book imparts information, clearly and precisely; it is not a stylistic work, where the word trumps the meaning, and every syllabic filigree is employed. Here, the narrative is paramount (but the writing is still elegant and well-constructed). It is vastly entertaining, with Orwell's implacable candor, self-honesty, and knack for detail on full display.

La Vache Enragée.......2006-10-31

George Orwell, whose real name is Eric Blair, was born in India in 1903. He served in Burma with the Indian Imperial Police and spent the end of the 1920s - as any self-respecting author would've done - living in Paris . Orwell later fought for the Republicans against Franco in the Spanish Civil War. He became well-known following the publication of "Animal Farm" (a satire on Soviet Russia) and died in 1950, shortly after the publication of "1984".

"Down and Out in Paris and London" was first published in 1933 and is a largely autobiographical account - though there have been a few tweaks here and there. It covers Orwell's times living on the breadline : working as a plongeur in Paris, being caught out by con-artists and life as a tramp on his return to England. The book was originally called "A Scullion's Diary" and - it would appear - focused only on his days in Paris. After it was rejected a few times, Orwell tried his luck with the stories of his life on the streets in and around London added. To be honest, I find it a pity this happened, as the stories set in Paris are much more readable. While some of the characters we meet - Charlie, for example - are far from admirable, Orwell himself doesn't come out of the book entirely unscathed. His occasional foolishness is forgivable, but his apparent snobbery and insincerity can be a bit hard to take. For example, as the book closes, he comments he'd like to know people like Paddy (a fellow tramp he'd met in England) "intimately". However, on the very same page, the news of Paddy's apparent death is met with barely a shrug of the shoulders : "perhaps my informant was mixing him up with someone else". More honestly, it's clear from how he wrote about Paddy that Orwell considered himself better than his 'mate' and - rather than getting to know him intimately - just didn't care.

Recommended with reservations : if you only read two books by George Orwell, make this your third pick.

Down and Out in Paris and London (Essential.penguin)

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A classic
Orwell's denial of the post war democracy

Down and Out in Paris and London (Essential.penguin)
George Orwell
Manufacturer: Penguin Books Ltd
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0140282564

Customer Reviews:

A classic.......2007-02-26

An upclose and personal look at the experiences of the down-and-out in London and Paris. The reader gets a clear sense of what it's like to be out of work and out of luck. How to survive from day to day? These are men who want to work but have a hard time finding work. If nothing else, this book will make you consider how lucky you are.

Orwell's denial of the post war democracy.......2003-03-13

In Down and Out in Paris and London, George Orwell, otherwise known as Eric Blair, introduces his readers to a compelling tale that loosely retraces his own life during the time he spent in Paris and London in the thirties. In this semi-autobiographical chronicle, he records the hardships that he faced as a Parisian "plongeur" (a restaurant worker at the very bottom of the industry's hierarchy) and as a voluntary "tramp" in London. Clearly, Orwell's account is a very personal one; however, it resonates the destitution of so many others who were equally unfortunate to have been the victims of the post-war social reform failure and the subsequent Great Depression that descended upon the world in the late nineteen twenties and thirties.
The author focuses on France and Britain in particular because these two countries, magnificent superpowers of the past, have abandoned their poor in order to pursue different agendas in terms of their political policy. During this era, France was much concerned with securing its borders with Germany. This was a reaction to the Great War, during which France suffered great losses in every aspect. Although Britain was not faced with similar issues as France, it struggled with its political instability that arose in the light of the economic hardship of the Great Depression. Orwell acknowledges the differences between the two countries but insists on the recurring similarities in the treatment of the lowest social class. In his account, Orwell presents several important issues that would most likely be overlooked or altogether unknown to those outside the lower social order that Orwell describes. He points out the invisibility of the lower classes, forgotten or made forgotten by those for whom hardship of this kind was unknown, the abhorrent conditions in which existence had to be made possible, and the practically inevitable maintenance of the same class order throughout their entire life. The presentation of these three main issues highlights Orwell's repudiation of respectable democratic society and outlines his disdain for this ideology that he believed to be a failure.

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Down and Out in Paris and London
George Orwell
Manufacturer: Blackstone Audio Inc.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Audio CD

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Down and Out in Paris and London

ASIN: 0786161477

Product Description

The "I" of this novel sets down the experiences of a man who finds himself in Paris, in the early 1930s, without a penny. He manages to keep alive and to record, with sensitivity and graphic power, the strange incidents and characters with which his poverty brings him in contact.

Down and Out in Paris and London (Penguin Modern Classics)

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Down and Out in Paris and London (Penguin Modern Classics)
George Orwell
Manufacturer: Penguin Books Ltd
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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The Belly of Paris (Green Integer)

ASIN: 0141187360

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Down and Out in Paris and London
George Orwell
Manufacturer: Blackstone Audio Inc.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: CD-ROM

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Product Description

Orwells own experiences inspire this semi-autobiographical novel about a man living in Paris in the early 1930s without a penny. The narrators poverty brings him into contact with strange incidents and characters, which he manages to chronicle with sensitivity and graphic power. The latter half of the book takes the English narrator to his home city, London, where the world of poverty is different in externals only.

Product Description

A socialist who believed that the lower classes were the wellspring of world reform, Orwell actually went to live among them in England and on the continent. His novel draws on his experiences of this world, from the bottom of the echelon in the kitchens of posh French restaurants to the free lodging houses, tramps, and street people of London. In the tales of both cities, we learn some sobering Orwellian truths about poverty and society.

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Down and out in Paris and London
George Orwell
Manufacturer: Permabooks
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding
ASIN: B000857S9I

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Down and out in Paris and London
George Orwell
Manufacturer: Secker & Warburg
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding
ASIN: B0007JNEPM

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Down and out in Paris and London (A Berkley Medallion Book)
George Orwell
Manufacturer: Berkley Pub. Co
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding
ASIN: B0007DS78C

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