In my yard, I have the perfect area for a waterfall feature. It’s on a 5-foot downhill slope in a sunny area. It’s hard to get anything but weeds to grow there instead of fescue grass because of perpetual, late-summer sun. We have many gardens, but I’m concerned that the heat would do many plants in. So I want to install a waterfall feature to bring sounds alongside flair, but I’m unsure how to do…
Writing fiction is a difficult art. Writing fiction that sells and impacts is even more difficult. Literary agent Donald Maass seeks to educate writers how to write meaningful fiction with meaningful characters. The key, he says, is to develop characters’ emotional layer so that they become more dynamic. Thus, readers identify with characters and want to spend time in your book. The key to developing characters is, as an author, to develop one’s own emotional…
In today’s software design, much focus hones in on users’ experience with the interface. Teams make large efforts to make that experience as pleasing as possible so as not to drive away customers. However, they don’t place as much emphasis on the conceptual nature of software – what concepts users extract from the software and what concepts the software requires for effective use. Since the advent of the GUI, today’s software conveys intellectual matter that…
For those unaware (like me earlier this week), JWT stands for JSON Web Token. JSONs are a standard formats computers on the Internet exchange data in. JWTs are a standardized way to pass encrypted information from a client to a server to prevent tampering. To provide security, it uses modern encryption tools along with a signature and information stored in the header of a web transaction. Thus, web users cannot tamper with information for malicious…
I work in software applications in biomedical research. Artificial intelligence (AI) is a natural interest impacting my work and team. I’m always looking for thoughtful explorations of the topic. I stumbled upon this book on Amazon and thought I’d give the audiobook a try. I’m glad I did. Though Daniel Dinkelman’s work is far from perfect, it provided a helpful survey of the research landscape across the landscape in computational linguistics and AI. It concisely…
First, I want to acknowledge the nobility of this book’s purpose. HIV is a dehumanizing condition that only worsens with stigma. Today, both women and orphans are disproportionately affected, and both groups have traditionally been objects of the church’s compassion. However, such a compassionate orientation hasn’t been the case with HIV; instead, stigma reigns, especially in countries hardest hit by the epidemic. This book represents a direct call for the church to instead reclaim its…
This book is hard to place. As the title suggests, it’s about how to design research studies in the social sciences. However, it relies on more-or-less mathematical modeling to define how a study should proceed. The book is filled with mathematical notation – not as much to derive theorems but to give the thinking precision. It’s very abstract, perhaps too abstract for more practical needs. I’m not sure people with limited experience, like me or…
When inventing plays, the ancient Greeks noticed stories often healed audiences of their psychological ills. Stories remain some of the first historic signs of civilizations the world over. Even today, weekends for many often consist of movies and/or fiction. What fascinates us so about them? Will Storr takes a gambit to explain this deeply human topic. He wants us to understand stories – and ourselves – better so that we can tell the next tale…
Metabolic syndrome is a growing problem, particularly in America with widespread obesity. This book was published in 2006 and updated in 2009, but the problem has become worse, not better, since then. What is it? Metabolic syndrome is loosely defined as a bunch of symptoms that can worsen together, including high cholesterol, high blood pressure, diabetes, obesity, a fatty liver, and cardiovascular problems. None of these conditions by themselves are good, but together, they can…
Therapies for serious mental illness – namely, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder – have become more prevalent in recent decades. Second- and now third-generation antipsychotics more effectively deal with symptoms while having less stigma-provoking side effects. These diseases, once intractable, are now relatively treatable. This book provides a well-documented summary of the research about these drugs. Reading this book is not for the feint of heart. It’s highly technical and requires significant biomedical literacy. Most patients…