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Books: Text Books: Artificial Intelligence
Artificial Happiness: The Dark Side of the New Happy Classby Ronald W. Dworkin List Price: $24.95 Available from Amazon $15.72 On 7-21-2006 
See Item's Page From Publishers Weekly In this impassioned but hard-to-swallow treatise, Dworkin, an M.D. and senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, laments the rise among primary care physicians of the "ideology" that "unhappiness [is] a disease" to be treated with "external cures" from psychotropic drugs to "obsessive" exercise. This view, he argues, has led doctors to push antidepressants onto patients at an explosive rate. Dworkin argues that primary care doctors initiated and conquered a turf war with psychiatrists in which antidepressants are their main source of power. The author shows how placebo science, the desire for happy patients and a desire for more personal doctoring led to a rise in dubiously beneficial alternative health practices. He belittles the 1980s buzzword "stress" with its accompanying surge of mind-body activities and denigrates the moral deficit he perceives to be underlying a widespread obsession with fitness culture. He also argues that "many Americans are only superficially religious, outwardly professing belief in God while crossing over to medicine for help when life grows really difficult." Dworkin's thesis is provocative but its sweeping claims, heavy reliance on the term "ideology" to describe doctors' motivations and his confrontational approach undermine the book's power to persuade. (June) Copyright © Reed business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From Booklist Anesthesiologist and political philosopher Dworkin believes the American public may be headed straight to hell in a psychopharmaceutical handbasket. Drawing together numerous threads of medical occurrence and social change during the last half-century, he weaves a tapestry that portends disaster as millions of children are treated with mood- and thought-altering drugs before they can develop personal moral compasses. It's one thing for adults to pop pills to feel better about issues they feel powerless to alter, he says, and quite another to medicate youngsters rather than teach them how to effect positive change in their lives. He lays basic responsibility for the problem at the feet of primary-care physicians and a de facto mental-health system in which they, rather than psychiatrists, are treating roughly half the nation's mentally ill and medicating for mental illness at more than double the rate that psychiatrists do. But not only psychotropic drugs are implicated. Add alternative medicine and the fitness revolution, and the picture painted by Dworkin's thoughtful evaluation darkens further. Donna Chavez Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved |
Textbook of Biochemistry With Clinical Correlationsby Thomas M. Devlin List Price: $115.00 Available from Amazon $105.54 On 7-21-2006
See Item's Page Product Review "a very readable textideal for medicine or clinical biochemistry undergraduate studentshas much to offer to medicinal chemistry students" (Chemistry World, April 2004) "Outstanding…classicclear illustrations aboundan exceedingly thorough, accurate, and up-to-date volume." (The Quarterly Review of Biology) "A delightful book to read…I would recommend this book highlyfor any who seek to understand the biochemical basis of disease" (Annals of Clinical Biochemistry) "…I believe this text fills an important niche, and in that niche it is very well done…a very useful text for those going into medicine.” (Biochemistry and Molecular Education, July-August 2002) "a comprehensive biochemistry booknew material in key areas justifies the new edition" (Doody's Health, April 19, 2002) "There are numerous good textbooks available for general biochemistry, but medical, pharmacy, and other health professional students often question the relevance of the extensive coverage given tosimpler organismsDevlin's textbook fills the needs of these students, with its strong emphasis on human biochemistryan excellent choice for a pharmaceutical or medical biochemistry course." (Journal of Medicinal Chemistry, Vol. 45, No. 11) "This is a welcome and relatively inexpensive volume for students of biochemistry and especially those involved with clinical biochemistry".(Cell Biochemistry & Function, June 2003)
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
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Computational Principles of Mobile Roboticsby Gregory Dudek and Michael Jenkin List Price: $39.99 Available from Amazon $29.32 On 7-21-2006 
See Item's Page Product Review ' a good synthesis of robotics for computer science people, and is a useful tool for approaching the area.' G. Gini, Computing Reviews ' clearly presents the range of topics covered in this multidisciplinary field.' industrial Robot Book Description This is a superb textbook for advanced undergraduate and graduate students in the field of mobile robotics. With a special emphasis on computation and algorithms, Dudek and Jenkin address a range of strategies for enabling robots to master problems of navigation, pose estimation, and autonomous exploration. While they concentrate on wheeled and legged mobile robots, they also discuss a variety of other propulsion systems with kinematic models developed for many of the more common locomotive strategies. Chapters present algorithms for both visual and nonvisual sensor technologies, including sonar, vision, and laser scanners. In the section on reasoning, the authors thoroughly examine the subject of planning and the issues related to spatial representation. A comprehensive overview of the field, Computational Principles of Mobile Robotics complements its discussion of state-of-the art methods with 139 illustrations of key current and historical technologies. |
Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligencesby Howard Gardner List Price: $21.00 Available from Amazon $13.65 On 7-21-2006
See Item's Page About The Author Howard Gardner is the John H. and Elisabeth A. Hobbs Professor in Cognition and Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Among numerous honors, Gardner received a MacArthur Prize Fellowship in 1981. In 1990, he was the first American to receive the University of Louisville's Grawemeyer Award in education. In 2000, he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. |
In Their Own Way: Discovering and Encouraging Your Child's Multiple Intelligencesby Thomas Armstrong List Price: $14.95 Available from Amazon $9.72 On 7-21-2006 
See Item's Page Book Description Does your child have a favorite subject, activity, or hobby? children learn in multiple ways, and educator Thomas Armstrong has shown hundreds of thousands of parents and teachers how to locate those unique areas in each of our children where learning and creativity seem to flow with special vigor. In this fully updated classic on multiple intelligences, Armstrong sheds new light on the "eight ways to bloom," or the eight kinds of "multiple intelligences." While everyone possesses all eight intelligences, Armstrong delineates how to discover your child's particular areas of strength among them. The book shatters the conventional wisdom that brands our students as "underachievers," "unmotivated," or as suffering from "learning disabilities," "attention deficit hyperactivity disorder," or other "learning diseases." Armstrong explains how these flawed labels often overlook students who are in possession of a distinctive combination of multiple intelligences, and demonstrates how to help them acquire knowledge and skills according to their sometimes extraordinary aptitudes. Filled with resources for the home and classroom, this new edition of In Their Own Way offers inspiration for every learning situation. About The Author Thomas Armstrong, Ph.D., is a psychologist, learning specialist, and consultant to educational groups around the world. He has written for Family Circle, Ladies' Home Journal, and Parenting magazine, and is the author of nine books, including Awakening Your Child's Natural Genius and The Myth of the A.D.D. Child. |
Intelligence Reframed: Multiple Intelligences for the 21st Centuryby Howard Gardner Available from Amazon $18.00 On 7-21-2006
See Item's Page Product Review How would a musical genius like Mozart have performed on the SAT or GRE? Well enough to go to an Ivy League? Difficult to say, of course, but thank goodness Howard Gardner thought to ask the question: Can every sort of intelligence be measured with the tools we've been using for the past century and more? In his 1983 book, Frames of Mind, Gardner laid out the foundation for the theory of multiple intelligences (MI). In Intelligence Reframed, a revisitation and elaboration of MI theory, he details the modern history of intelligence and the development of MI, responds to the myths about multiple intelligences, and handles FAQs about the theory and its application. He also restates his ideal educational plan, which would emphasize deep understanding of iconic subjects following from a variety of instructional approaches. (His book The Disciplined Mind discusses this plan in more detail.) Most excitingly, Gardner discusses the possibility for three more intelligences. Of these, he endorses only one, the naturalist intelligence--a person's ability to identify plants and animals in the surrounding environment. He writes, "My recognition that such individuals could not readily be classified in terms of the seven antecedent intelligences led me to consider this additional form of intelligence and to construe the scope of the naturalist's abilities more broadly." An absorbing read from cover to cover, Intelligence Reframed should be studied and discussed by teachers, administrators, policy makers, and all those eager to serve children and prepare them to lead fulfilling lives. --Brian J. Williamson
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Knowledge Representation and Reasoning (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Artificial Intelligence) (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Artificial...by Ronald Brachman and Hector Levesque Available from Amazon $69.95 On 7-21-2006 
See Item's Page Product Review "This book clearly and concisely distills decades of work in AI on representing information in an efficient and general manner. The information is valuable not only for AI researchers, but also for people working on logical databases, XML, and the semantic web: read this book, and avoid reinventing the wheel!" Henry Kautz, University of Washington "Brachman and Levesque describe better than I have seen elsewhere, the range of formalisms between full first order logic at its most expressive and formalisms that compromise expressiveness for computation speed. Theirs are the most even-handed explanations I have seen." John McCarthy, Stanford "This textbook makes teaching my KR course much easier. It provides a solid foundation and starting point for further studies. While it does not (and cannot) cover all the topics that I tackle in an advanced course on KR, it provides the basics and the background assumptions behind KR research. Together with current research literature, it is the perfect choice for a graduate KR course." Bernhard Nebel, University of Freiburg "This is a superb, clearly written, comprehensive overview of nearly all the major issues, ideas, and techniques of this important branch of artificial intelligence, written by two of the masters of the field. The examples are well chosen, and the explanations are illuminating. Thank you for giving me this opportunity to Review and praise a book that has sorely been needed by the KRR community." Bill Rapaport, University at Buffalo "A concise and lucid exposition of the major topics in knowledge representation, from two of the leading authorities in the field. It provides a thorough grounding, a wide variety of useful examples and exercises, and some thought-provoking new ideas for the expert reader." Stuart Russell, UC Berkeley "Brachman and Levesque have laid much of the foundations of the field of knowledge representation and reasoning. This textbook provides a lucid and comprehensive introduction to the field. It is written with the same clarity and gift for exposition as their many research publications. The text will become an invaluable resource for students and researchers alike." Bart Selman, Cornell University "KR&R is known as "core AI" for a reason -- it embodies some of the most basic conceptualizations and technical approaches in the field. And no researchers are more qualified to provide an in-depth introduction to the area than Brachman and Levesque, who have been at the forefront of KR&R for two decades. The book is clearly written, and is intelligently comprehensive. This is the definitive book on KR&R, and it is long overdue." Yoav Shoham, Stanford University Book Description Knowledge representation is at the very core of a radical idea for understanding intelligence. Instead of trying to understand or build brains from the bottom up, its goal is to understand and build intelligent behavior from the top down, putting the focus on what an agent needs to know in order to behave intelligently, how this knowledge can be represented symbolically, and how automated reasoning procedures can make this knowledge available as needed. This landmark text takes the central concepts of knowledge representation developed over the last 50 years and illustrates them in a lucid and compelling way. Each of the various styles of representation is presented in a simple and intuitive form, and the basics of reasoning with that representation are explained in detail. This approach gives readers a solid foundation for understanding the more advanced work found in the research literature. The presentation is clear enough to be accessible to a broad audience, including researchers and practitioners in database management, information retrieval, and object-oriented systems as well as artificial intelligence. This book provides the foundation in knowledge representation and reasoning that every AI practitioner needs. *Authors are well-recognized experts in the field who have applied the techniques to real-world problems * Presents the core ideas of KR&R in a simple straight forward approach, independent of the quirks of research systems *Offers the first true synthesis of the field in over a decade |
Multiagent Systems: A Modern Approach to Distributed Artificial Intelligenceby Gerhard Weiss Available from Amazon $50.00 On 7-21-2006
See Item's Page Book Description This is the first comprehensive introduction to multiagent systems and contemporary distributed artificial intelligence that is suitable as a textbook. The book provides detailed coverage of basic topics as well as several closely related ones. Unlike traditional textbooks, the book brings together many leading experts, guaranteeing a broad and diverse base of knowledge and expertise. It emphasizes aspects of both theory and application, and provides many illustrations and examples. Also included are thought-provoking exercises of varying degrees of difficulty and a twenty-page glossary of terms found in the study of agents, multiagent systems, and distributed artificial intelligence. The book can be used for teaching as well as self-study, and is designed to meet the needs of both researchers and practitioners. In view of the interdisciplinary nature of the field, it will be a useful reference not only for computer scientists and engineers, but for social scientists and management and organization scientists as well. Book Info A comprehensive introduction of multiagent systems in artificial intelligence. Can be used as a textbook or for self-study, for researchers and practitioners. Brings together leading experts in the field, emphasizing both theory and application, and provides many illustrations and examples. Softcover. DLC: Intelligent agents. |
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