The insect societies

Sample

H. Frederik Nijhout

Although insect endocrinology is one of the oldest and most active branches of insect physiology, its classic general texts are long out of date, while its abundant primary literature provides little biological context in which to make sense of the discipline as a whole. In this book, H. Frederik Nijhout's goal is to provide a complete, concise, and up-to-date source for students and nonspecialists seeking an overview of the dynamic and wide-ranging science that insect endocrinology has become since its beginnings nearly eighty years ago in the study of insect metamorphosis. The author offers a comprehensive survey of the many roles that hormones play in the biology of insects. Among the topics discussed are the control of molting, metamorphosis, reproduction, caste determination in social insects, diapause, migration, carbohydrate and lipid metabolism, diuresis, and behavior. The account features a summary of the most current and accurate thinking on the complex roles of ecdysone and juvenile hormone in the control of metamorphosis, a process still misunderstood and misrepresented in biological textbooks and many professional reviews. Throughout, the book's emphasis is on the biology of the organism and the ways in which physiological and developmental regulatory mechanisms are integrated into the insect's life cycle.

Sample

Alan R. Katritzky

Established in 1960, Advances in Heterocyclic Chemistry is the definitive serial in the area--one of great importance to organic chemists, polymer chemists, and many biological scientists. Written by established authorities in the field, the comprehensive reviews combine descriptive chemistry and mechanistic insight and yield an understanding of how the chemistry drives the properties.

Sample

Dietmar Hildenbrand

<p>The author defines “Geometric Algebra Computing” as the geometrically intuitive development of algorithms using geometric algebra with a focus on their efficient implementation, and the goal of this book is to lay the foundations for the widespread use of geometric algebra as a powerful, intuitive mathematical language for engineering applications in academia and industry. The related technology is driven by the invention of conformal geometric algebra as a 5D extension of the 4D projective geometric algebra and by the recent progress in parallel processing, and with the specific conformal geometric algebra there is a growing community in recent years applying geometric algebra to applications in computer vision, computer graphics, and robotics.</p><p><p>This book is organized into three parts: in Part I the author focuses on the mathematical foundations; in Part II he explains the interactive handling of geometric algebra; and in Part III he deals with computing technology for high-performance implementations based on geometric algebra as a domain-specific language in standard programming languages such as C++ and OpenCL. The book is written in a tutorial style and readers should gain experience with the associated freely available software packages and applications.</p><p>The book is suitable for students, engineers, and researchers in computer science, computational engineering, and mathematics.

Sample

William E. Shotts, Jr

You've experienced the shiny, point-and-click surface of your Linux computer -- now dive below and explore its depths with the power of the command line. The Linux Command Line takes you from your very first terminal keystrokes to writing full programs in Bash, the most popular Linux shell. Along the way you'll learn the timeless skills handed down by generations of gray-bearded, mouse-shunning gurus: file navigation, environment configuration, command chaining, pattern matching with regular expressions, and more. In addition to that practical knowledge, author William Shotts reveals the philosophy behind these tools and the rich heritage that your desktop Linux machine has inherited from Unix supercomputers of yore. As you make your way through the book's short, easily-digestible chapters, you'll learn how to: Create and delete files, directories, and symlinks; Administer your system, including networking, package installation, and process management; Use standard input and output, redirection, and pipelines; Edit files with Vi, the world's most popular text editor; Write shell scripts to automate common or boring tasks; Slice and dice text files with cut, paste, grep, patch, and sed; Once you overcome your initial "shell shock," you'll find that the command line is a natural and expressive way to communicate with your computer. Just don't be surprised if your mouse starts to gather dust. - Publisher.