Books, etc.

The Evolution of Search (Google)

This six-minute video reviews very recent history: from 1999 -- this video is produced by Google, so it has a predictable point of view.  But it gives a great overview quickly!

 

 

Hat tip to Library Link of the Day.

--Gavin Ferriby

Featured Resource: Credo Reference

 

 

 

Credo Reference --This is information you can believe in.

Don't know where to start with your paper?  Down about a project coming up?  Credo Reference is a great place to start -- current, high-quality information with links to databases and resources available to SHU students.

Credo "topic pages" are a huge help: just type in a really general word, like democracy, photosynthesis, or terrorism --and the topic page at the top of the search results gives a basic definition, some related words, and links to journal articles, books, and images.  Click on the Concept Map link in the main menu and (after a pause for Java) an interactive, "live" concept map will open up with clickable links.

No wonder Smart Research Starts Here --with CredoReference.

The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood

The Information: A History, A Theory, a  Flood, by James Gleick.  New York: Pantheon, 2011.  Sacred Heart University Library Z665 .G547 2011. 

In 426 pages Gleick maps the development of a concept, a property, and flow: information.  Just what information is, is hard to pin down: for this reason the book is properly The Information and that definite article is important: THE information.

Gleick's story really begins with Claude Shannon's work that bridge mathematics and electrical circuits in an obscure, technical article in The Bell System Technical Journal, July and October 1948.  Shannon clarified and quantified information as signal, bits, dots and dashes and electrical pulses, bridged by an abstract theory between knowledge and entropy, chaos, and uncertainty.  Shannon hardly cared what the bits meant, what could be resolved into meaning: he was concerned with quantified pulses, signals, loss, or distortion.  The process he discovered what the world runs on now, the fuel, the vital principle of our world.  By the time the physicist John Archibald Wheeler writes in At Home In the Universe (1994), "All things physical are information-theoretic in origin, and this is a participatory universe." (p. 296)  It is now hard to envision the world before Claude Shannon.

Information's maze-like permutations and unexpected entanglements, however, take the reader to Norbert Wiener's MIT, Kurt Goedel's Vienna Circle, and later the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, and Alan Turing's amazing years at Cambridge and Bletchley Park.  From the study of Babylonian cuneiform came a realization of ancient algorithms: instructions in starkly binary clay tablets.  Cryptograph contributed habits such as check-sums and other fail-safes to prevent the loss of signal, and in 1941 Jorge Luis Borges began his story, "The Library of Babel," with the phrase, "The Universe (which others call the Library) …." --the concept of the conceptual, ideational universe entangled with the physical, particle universe was born.

Gleick's book, like Douglas Hofstadter's Godel, Escher, Bach (1979), is hard to understand and exhilarating to read all at once.  Like Brian Greene's The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory (2003), Gleick's book is both readable and at times utterly baffling.  This book requires patience, but rewards the reader with truly unexpected conclusions that are elegant, satisfying, and logically compelling.  This is the kind of book you should read while you're in college.

--Gavin Ferriby

The Reproductive Life-Cycle of Skunk Cabbage … Or the sex talk your parents never gave you

  Walking through the woods of Connecticut in late February or early March (depending on the winter), before spring has officially begun, it is not unusual to see colonies of Symplocarpus foetidus, more commonly known as skunk cabbage, popping through the ground even when snow or ice covered.  Before delving into the fertilization process, it may be helpful to have a little background information about skunk cabbage for those who may not be familiar with it. 

When looking at the web of life, plants form the base or the foundation of the web.  Somewhere towards the bottom of this lies skunk cabbage.  Skunk cabbage has been around for a long time.  Colonies can live indefinitely as long as they are left undisturbed.  Some colonies are believed to be as old as giant redwoods.  In order to truly appreciate the importance of skunk cabbage, it is necessary to examine it within the river or floodplain community of plants to which it belongs and to study its role within the river basin.  From this you’ve gathered that skunk cabbage grows in wet areas, especially near streams, ponds, marshes, and wet woods.  It is, as I mentioned already, one of the first plants to bloom, generating enough heat to melt any surrounding snow.  The heat and the strong odor (they really do smell like skunks!) attract insects, such as butterflies, bees, flies, and beetles, which pollinate the plant.  Skunk cabbage plays two important roles in the river basin.  They have an extensive root system which serves to hold the soil and help prevent erosion.  They also serve as a source of food and shelter for flies and other insects.  Medicinal uses of skunk cabbage have been reported as an antispasmodic, a diaphoretic, an expectorant, and as a narcotic.  It has been used to treat, with alleged success, asthma, chronic catarrh, chronic rheumatism, chorea, hysteria, and dropsy.

There are different variations of flowering plants.  Some, like the common alder, are Monoecious, which means that both male and female reproductive parts are in one plant, but separated into different structures.  This contrasts with Dioecious plants, like swamp maple and birch, which have male and female reproductive parts on separate plants.  Skunk cabbage is known as the perfect flower!  This means that it has both male and female reproductive parts in one plant in one structure.

The fertilization process takes place when a pollen grain germinates on the head of the stigma, sending a tube down through the tissue of the stigma and the style, discharging a male nucleus into the ovule, which unites with a female nucleus in the embryo sac of the ovule.  The ovule is thus fertilized, stimulating its development into an embryonic seed.  The coat of the ovule then hardens, producing seed, which then germinates to produce a new plant.

Hopefully this brief blog entry has awakened you to the awes and wonders of the skunk cabbage.  Next time you’re out walking or hiking in late winter or early spring, keep an eye out for Symplocarpus foetidus.  Take a close look and even give it a touch and you’re sure to feel the heat!

--Libby Knapik

Bibliography:

Bendre, Ashok M. and Ashok Kumar.  A Textbook of Practical Botany: II, taxonomy, economic botany, embryology, anatomy, ecology, physiology, biostatistics, cytology and genetics.  Rev. ed.  Meerut, India: Rastogi Publications, 2010. E-book.

Holdrege, Craig.  “Skunk Cabbage (Symplocarpus foetidus).”  In Context #4 (Fall, 2000): 12-18. Print.

Runkel, Sylvan T. and Alvin F. Bull.  Bur Oak Guide: wildflowers of Iowa woodlands. 2nd ed.  Iowa City, IA: University of Iowa Press, 2009. Print

Winters, Chris.  “A Brief Life History Study of Skunk Cabbage.”  New York State Flora Association Newsletter 3:4-5. Print.

When Asia Was The World

When Asia Was the World, by Stewart Gordon. Cambridge, Mass.: Da Capo Press, 2008.  228 pages. Library location: DS 5.95 .G67 2008

This fascinating book traces (according to the cover) the "traveling merchants, scholars, wariors, and monks who created the 'Riches of the East.'"  The author uses some fairly straightforward ideas from social network theory to interpret the traveling records of nine individuals who undertook long journeys for trade, scholarship, diplomacy, and pilgrimage across central and southern Asia from the seventh to the 16th centuries.

Vast scholarship informs this book, but it is all worn very lightly.  Gordon writes in a very accessible manner about individuals you probably have never heard of, and makes them interesting.  Ibn Fadlan in 921-922 undertakes a perilous journey from the heart of Caliphate (Baghadad) to the wilds of the Russian frontier, Almish, King of the Bulgars, on the Volga River.  This obscure journey takes on all the marks of frontier travel in any era: Ibn Fadlan was wiley, clever, lucky, and above all brave.

The Asian empires had many customs in common, such as robing (as a mark of favor and sign of power).  Traders did not represent sovereign powers or kings, and power was often distributed through kinship and tribal systems.  When Gordon finally recounts the Europeans who encountered this innovative, wealthy, and self-reflective Asian world, they seem strange: their armies cohere around command centers and survive the death of generals; traders were responsible to kings; powerful posts went to members of the same ethnicity and the white race.  Europeans held concepts of Christian and heathen which went far beyond sectarian divisions among the followers of the Buddha, or rivals in the Islamic umma (community of the faithful).

The great contribution of such scholarship is finally to glimpse one's own culture or history as though from the outside.   The book succeeds in doing just that --the restless, commercial, innovating Asians are "normal" and the Europeans are the outliers.  And so it was until the 18th century, when Europeans began to re-organize trade patterns millenia old.  I wonder whether Asia will in turn wind up re-organizing European and American trade and cultural patterns to resemble more closely the Asia portrayed in this book.

--Gavin Ferriby

Wicked Plants: The Weed That Kill Lincoln's Mother & Other Botanical Atrocities

Wicked Plants: The Weed That Killed Lincoln's Mother & Other Botanical Atrocities, by Amy Stewart.  Chapel Hill, N.C. : Algonquin Books, 2009.  236 pages.  See also: http://www.amystewart.com/wickedplants.html

Daffodil, tulip, hyacinth, azalea, hydrangea, rhododendron, chrysanthemum, and lily: these are the names of some popular flowers in my garden which could be poisonous to human or animal.
In addition, the world's most important food crops of potatoes, corn, beans, and cashews can all be poisonous if we don’t cook them properly or are consumed too much!

What’s so great about the book Wicked Plants? First, the cover jacket, then its charming etchings and ghastly illustrations will allure you into the magical land of the plant kingdom. You will be alarmed and enlightened by the power of plants.

Abraham Lincoln’s mother, Nancy Hanks Lincoln died at the age of 34 from Milk sickness caused by the White Snakeroot plant eaten by cows.

How can luxuriant trees, shrubs, flowers, and grass, which look so innocent and beautiful, be so wicked and dangerous?  Some plants conceal deadly and dangerous toxic or could be illegal or painful or destructive or intoxicating such as:

• This houseplant could be your last - The peace lily made people call poison control center more than any other plants poisoning in 2005.
• Deadly dinner - corn had caused pellagra in Europe in 1735. It killed   many people, including100, 000 Americans during the early 20th century until scientist understood the disease in 1930s.
• Devil’s bartender – tonic water, added with the tree extract of quinine, is prohibited to army pilots 72 hours before flying.
• Don’t look now – our beloved Fredrick Law Olmstead could lose his eyesight by the sap of poison sumac.
• Dreadful bouquet – a bouquet of larkspur, delphinium, and lily of the valley could be lethal if someone ate enough of it.
• Forbidden garden – yellow Jessamine took children’s lives as kids mistakenly suck the nectar out of the flowers, thinking it is honeysuckle.
• Psychedelic plants – the morning glory seed may produce a natural high and some kids have been hospitalized with dangerously high heart rates and frightening hallucinations.
• Here comes the sun – farm workers or ones who eat large quantities of celery could end up with severe sunburn when exposed to light.
• Suicide tree – in India, people take advantage of cerbera fruit to end one or another’s life. This region’s suicide rate is 3 times higher than India’s average. Its blossoms resemble plumeria which are so fragrant and beautiful!       

Stewart says the most wicked weed of all is tobacco. Its leaf is so toxic that it has taken the lives of 90 million people worldwide and can kill workers through skin contact. She claims that this plant contributed to the establishment of slavery in America. 

Toxic plants do not only lurk in the tropical jungle or at a faraway place. Do not underestimate the power of the plants and be aware of the dark side of the plants. Think about this, just 3 pedals of a lily could kill your cat!

--Sue Shim

You Are Not a Gadget: Jaron Lanier

You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto, by Jaron Lanier.  New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2010.  209 pages.  Sacred Heart University Library: HM851 .L358 2010

We’ve heard the terminology:   crowdsourcing, the hive mind, the noosphere, the wisdom of crowds.  Jaron Lanier, a technology pioneer and Silicon Valley insider, dares in You Are Not a Gadget  to question the current elevation of the collective intelligence at the expense of individual intelligence.   He sees value in the collective, but as a tool, not as a replacement for the individual.  A case in point is authorship.  As Lanier puts it:

"An impenetrable tone deafness rules Silicon Valley when it comes to the idea of authorship. … The approach to digital culture I abhor would indeed turn all the world’s books into one book… If the books [being scanned into] the cloud are accessed via user interfaces that encourage mashups of fragments that obscure the context and authorship of each fragment, there will be only one book.  This is what happens today with a lot of content; often you don’t know where a quoted fragment from a news story came from, who wrote a comment, or who shot a video. … Authorship – the very idea of the individual point of view – is not a priority of the new ideology. … The one collective book will absolutely not be the same thing as the library of books by individuals it is bankrupting."  (p.46-47)

Lanier’s book has been widely reviewed, in The New York Times, for example, and he was recently profiled in The Economist.  He wants us to remain individuals even as we invent and use technology, and not “respect bits too much.” (p.119)  “Any gadget”, he says, “gets boring after a while. But a deepening of meaning is the most intense potential kind of adventure available to us.” (p.192)

--Bonnie Figgatt

Going to Extremes: How Like Minds Unite and Divide

Going to Extremes: How Like Minds Unite and Divide, by Cass R. Sunstein.  Oxford Univ. Press, 2009. 199 pages.  Sacred Heart University Library: HN90 .R3 S848 2009

Talking things over can bring people closer, but not always in positive ways.  So we learn from Cass Sunstein’s recent book, Going to Extremes. 

 Sunstein says his book’s theme “is simple:  When people find themselves in groups of like-minded types, they are especially likely to move to extremes.” (p.2)   So, people who approve  of a particular war effort will be even more supportive of it after talking to each other, or people who are   racially prejudiced will show more prejudice after talking with each other. (p.3-4)    He sees implications for this polarization phenomenon in any number of areas – politics, religious organizations, investments, and consumer behavior among them –and he writes engagingly, with lots of well-documented examples to illustrate his points. 

David Brooks cites Sunstein’s work in a 2010 New York Times column, while considering the tendency to live in “information cocoons,” filtering out information that may challenge our views.

Cass Sunstein was previously the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, and is now serving in the Obama administration.  His books include Radicals in Robes,  Infotopia,  Nudge,  Why Societies Need Dissent, and others.

--Bonnie Figgatt

Biography in Context: More Than Just Biographies!

Biography in Context.  Farmington Hills, Mich: Gale Cengage Learning, 1999- (continuously updated). 

 

http://0-rqst-agent.auto-graphics.com.enterprise.sacredheart.edu/LoginModule/Goto.aspx?cuid=rqst&dataid=150

Biography in Context is an online biography resource that offers much more than just biographies of famous people. Some of the added features include:
•    600,000+ biographies
•    Contemporary and historical people
•    Images, videos, and audio clips 
•    Links to magazine and academic journal articles
•    Links to recommended websites
•    NY Times, USA Today and UPI News feeds

Here’s an example of information found in Biography in Context. Many students at SHU read Plato’s Republic so we looked up Plato and found:  13 biographies, images, 2 audio recordings discussing his influence, 6 recommended websites, 26 magazine articles, and 112 academic journal articles. You can access all of this through the SHU Library database listing. Click on the Find Resources tab on the library homepage, select Find Articles Search Databases, and choose Biography in Context.

--Nancy DelVecchio

Online Britannica: better than Wikipedia!

Britannica – the Online Encyclopedia. Go to: http://0-www.britannica.com.enterprise.sacredheart.edu/

It’s better than Wikipedia!

The online version on the Encyclopedia Britannica features many great resources you can use in your research.
•    300+ streaming videos covering science, the arts, world studies
•    New York Times and BBC News feeds
•    Comprehensive statistics on world countries
•    Thousands of ebooks
•    Primary documents
•    Comprehensive statistics on world countries
•    Interactive world atlas
•    4000+ quotations, contemporary and classic
•    Dictionary and Thesaurus
•    Encyclopedia entries written by scholars

You can access all of this through the SHU Library database listing. Click on the Find Resources tab on the library homepage, select Find Articles Search Databases, and choose Britannica. Britannica is a great place to start basic research and then add in videos, current news articles, primary documents, or images. It’s easy to use and provides scholarly information. Take at look at Britannica today, it’s better than Wikipedia.

--Nancy DelVecchio