Download or read book Fireflies Honey and Silk written by Dr. Gilbert Waldbauer and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2009-10-06 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The ink our ancestors wrote with, the beeswax in altar candles, the honey on our toast, the silk we wear. This enchanting book is a highly entertaining exploration of the myriad ways insects have enriched our lives–culturally, economically, and aesthetically. Entomologist and writer Gilbert Waldbauer describes in loving, colorful detail how many of the valuable products insects have given us are made, how they were discovered, and how they have been used through time and across cultures. Along the way, he takes us on a captivating ramble through many far-flung corners of history, mythology, poetry, literature, medicine, ecology, forensics, and more. Enlivened with personal anecdotes from Waldbauer's distinguished career as an entomologist, the book also describes surprising everyday encounters we all experience that were made possible by insects. From butterfly gardens and fly-fishing to insects as jewelry and sex pheromones, this is an eye-opening ode to the wonder of insects that illuminates our extraordinary and essential relationship with the natural world.
Download or read book Fireflies Honey and Silk written by Gilbert Waldbauer and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Gilbert Waldbauer takes us on a wild and storied ride through the insect world. Page after page, Fireflies, Honey, and Silk is highly entertaining, authoritative, encyclopedic, mesmerizing."—Erich Hoyt, author of Insect Lives and The Earth Dwellers: Adventures in the Land of Ants "In Fireflies, Honey, and Silk, Waldbauer serves up a veritable smorgasbord of insects from around the world whose lives directly intersect our whims and desires. With wide-ranging essays, the author reveals species that not only please and inspire us, but also those we have used to nourish, adorn, and cure our bodies."—Arthur V. Evans, author of National Wildlife Federation Field Guide to Insects and Spiders of North America and What's Bugging You?
Download or read book An Insect View of Its Plain written by Rosemary Scanlon McTier and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2013-01-30 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the nineteenth century, insects became a very fashionable subject of study, and the writing of the day reflected this popularity. However, despite an increased contemporary interest in ecocriticism and cultural entomology, scholars have largely ignored the presence of insects in nineteenth-century literature. This volume addresses that critical gap by exploring the cultural and literary position of insects in the work of Henry David Thoreau, Emily Dickinson, and John Muir. It examines the beliefs these authors share about the nature of our connection to insects and what insects have to teach about creation and our place in it. An important contribution to both ecocriticism and literary entomology, this work contributes much to the understanding of Thoreau, Dickinson, and Muir as nature writers, natural scientists, entomologists, and botanists, and their intimate and highly spiritual relationships with nature.
Download or read book Silk Biomaterials for Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine written by Subhas C. Kundu and published by Elsevier. This book was released on 2014-03-24 with total page 595 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Silk is increasingly being used as a biomaterial for tissue engineering applications, as well as sutures, due to its unique mechanical and chemical properties. Silk Biomaterials for Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine discusses the properties of silk that make it useful for medical purposes and its applications in this area. Part one introduces silk biomaterials, discussing their fundamentals and how they are processed, and considering different types of silk biomaterials. Part two focuses on the properties and behavior of silk biomaterials and the implications of this for their applications in biomedicine. These chapters focus on topics including biodegradation, bio-response to silk sericin, and capillary growth behavior in porous silk films. Finally, part three discusses the applications of silk biomaterials for tissue engineering, regenerative medicine, and biomedicine, with chapters on the use of silk biomaterials for vertebral, dental, dermal, and cardiac tissue engineering. Silk Biomaterials for Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine is an important resource for materials and tissue engineering scientists, R&D departments in industry and academia, and academics with an interest in the fields of biomaterials and tissue engineering. - Discusses the properties and applications of silk for medical purposes - Considers pharmaceutical and cosmeceutical applications
Download or read book Eat the Beetles written by David Waltner-Toews and published by ECW Press. This book was released on 2017-05-09 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Provides a sturdy literary exoskeleton to the field of human insectivory . . . it entertains as it enlightens” (Daniella Martin, author of Edible). Meet the beetles: there are millions and millions of them and many fewer of the rest of us—mammals, birds, and reptiles. Since before recorded history, humans have eaten insects. While many get squeamish at the idea, entomophagy—people eating insects—is a possible way to ensure a sustainable and secure food supply for the eight billion of us on the planet. Once seen as the great enemy of human civilization, destroying our crops and spreading plagues, we now see insects as marvelous pollinators of our food crops and a potential source of commercial food supply. From upscale restaurants where black ants garnish raw salmon to grubs as pub snacks in Paris and Tokyo, from backyard cricket farming to high-tech businesses, Eat the Beetles! weaves these cultural, ecological, and evolutionary narratives to provide an accessible and humorous exploration of entomophagy. “Waltner-Toews punctuates this serious subject with his quirky humour . . . Eat the Beetles! is an essential part of a growing buzz.” —Toronto Star “An excellent read for those interested in multiple perspectives on the issue of entomophagy, digging deep into science and math with flair and irreverence.” —Scene Magazine “When it comes to the future of insects as food for humans and livestock, Waltner-Toews walks the line between skepticism and optimism in an intelligent, witty, and provocative analysis.” —Jeff Lockwood, author of The Infested Mind “Full of humor and science, this edible insect book is definitely a must read!” —EntoMove Project
Download or read book The Chemistry of Plants and Insects written by Margareta Séquin and published by Royal Society of Chemistry. This book was released on 2017-04-28 with total page 197 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explains the natural chemical compounds that determine the fascinating interactions between plants and insects providing a gentle and absorbing introduction to organic chemistry.
Download or read book The Deep Zoo written by Rikki Ducornet and published by Coffee House Press. This book was released on 2014-12-15 with total page 134 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Included in Library Journal’s "25 Key Indie Fiction Titles, Fall 2014-Winter 2015" Within the writer's life, words and things acquire power. For Borges it is the tiger and the color red, for Cortázar a pair of amorous lions, and for an early Egyptian scribe the monarch butterfly that metamorphosed into the Key of Life. Ducornet names these powers The Deep Zoo. Her essays take us from the glorious bestiary of Aloys Zötl to Abu Ghraib, from the tree of life to Sade's Silling Castle, from The Epic of Gilgamesh to virtual reality. Says Ducornet, "To write with the irresistible ink of tigers and the uncaging of our own Deep Zoo, we need to be attentive and fearless—above all very curious—and all at the same time." "Ducornet’s skill at drawing unexpected connections, and her ability to move between outrage and meditativeness, are gripping to behold."—Star Tribune
Download or read book Ten Insects That Changed the World written by Jim Nelson and published by Outskirts Press. This book was released on 2024-05-26 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Did you know that the mosquito played an important role in the Louisiana Purchase? Or that dung beetles saved the cattle industry in Australia? That honeybees pollinate about one third of the food we eat? Or that the deadliest animal on earth is an insect? There’s an ant colony some 3,700 miles long! Morgan’s sphinx moth has a tongue more than 13 inches long. A locust plague stopped trains as the tracks became slippery with their crushed bodies. There’s a grasshopper in Africa that eats mice. Jim Nelson’s latest book is a treasure house of fascinating facts, stunning photographs and shocking historical events. One moment you might cringe reading about billions of locusts descending on farmland. The next you may laugh out loud at anecdotes and original poetry. Read about the wasp that turns a cockroach into a zombie or the historic 2024 hatch of a trillion cicadas. Trivia buffs will love the “Insect Book of Records” and chefs can add several insect recipes to their repertoire.
Download or read book How Not to Be Eaten written by Gilbert Waldbauer and published by University of California Press. This book was released on 2021-04-06 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “At times this informative book turns wonderfully gross and lovely, reminding us that there’s an entire universe of largely unnoticed creatures all around us.”—Audubon All animals must eat. But who eats who, and why, or why not? Because insects outnumber and collectively outweigh all other animals combined, they comprise the largest amount of animal food available for potential consumption. How do they avoid being eaten? From masterful disguises to physical and chemical lures and traps, predatory insects have devised ingenious and bizarre methods of finding food. Equally ingenious are the means of hiding, mimicry, escape, and defense waged by prospective prey in order to stay alive. This absorbing book demonstrates that the relationship between the eaten and the eater is a central—perhaps the central—aspect of what goes on in the community of organisms. By explaining the many ways in which insects avoid becoming a meal for a predator, and the ways in which predators evade their defensive strategies, Gilbert Waldbauer conveys an essential understanding of the unrelenting coevolutionary forces at work in the world around us.
Download or read book The Insect Epiphany written by Barrett Klein and published by Timber Press. This book was released on 2024-10-15 with total page 427 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From entomologist Barrett Klein comes a buzz-worthy exploration of the many ways insects have affected human society, history, and culture Insects surround us. They fuel life on Earth through their roles as pollinators, predators, and prey, but rarely do we consider the outsize influence they have had on our culture and civilization. Their anatomy and habits inform how we live, work, create art, and innovate. Featuring nearly 250 color images—from ancient etchings to avant-garde art, from bug-based meals to haute couture—The Insect Epiphany proves that our world would look very different without insects, not just because they are crucial to our ecosystems, but because they have shaped and inspired so many aspects of what makes us human.
Download or read book Turning Points and Transformations written by Christine DeVine and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2011-07-12 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the Irish Cailleach and other shape-shifters of folk legends to modern movie “transformers”; from Ovid’s Metamorphoses to the moment when Gregor Samsa woke up one morning to find himself transformed into an insect in Kafka’s novella; from conversion narratives to slave narratives, turning points and transformations have always been central to literary works and to cultural developments. In fact, with Freytag’s pyramid in mind, one could claim that all literary works focus on the trope of a transformation born of a turning point, because such moments comprise the very essence and vitality of human life and culture. But why are turning points necessarily transformational and in what way? And what brings about those turning points in language, literature, culture and human lives? These are essentially the questions the essays in this volume seek to answer. The contributors examine turning points and transformations – personal, literary and cultural – brought about through the randomness of the universe as well as through human interference, and discuss ways in which humans in general and writers in particular, through their art, experience and cope with the ineluctable results.
Download or read book Animals in Religion written by Barbara Allen and published by Reaktion Books. This book was released on 2016-06-15 with total page 555 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Animals in Religion explores the role of animals within a wide range of religious traditions. Exploring countless stories and myths passed down orally and in many religious texts, Barbara Allen—herself a practicing minister—offers a fascinating history of the ways animals have figured in our spiritual lives, whether they have been Christian, Jewish, Muslim, or any number of lesser-known religions. Some of the figures here will be familiar, such as St. Francis of Assisi, famous for his accord with animals, or that beloved remover of obstacles, Ganesha, the popular elephant god in the Hindu pantheon. Delving deeper, Allen highlights the numerous ways that our religious practices have honored and relied upon our animal brethren. She examines the principle of ahimsa, or nonviolence, which has Jains sweeping the pathways before them so as not to kill any insects, as well as the similar principle in Judaism of ts’ar ba’alei chayim and the notion in some sects of Islam that all living creatures are Muslim. From ancient Egypt to the Druids to the indigenous cultures of North America and Australia, Allen tells story after story that emphasizes the same message: all species are spiritually connected.
Download or read book Indigenous Interfaces written by Jennifer Gómez Menjívar and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2019-05-07 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cultural preservation, linguistic revitalization, intellectual heritage, and environmental sustainability became central to Indigenous movements in Mexico and Central America after 1992. While the emergence of these issues triggered important conversations, none to date have examined the role that new media has played in accomplishing their objectives. Indigenous Interfaces provides the first thorough examination of indigeneity at the interface of cyberspace. Correspondingly, it examines the impact of new media on the struggles for self-determination that Indigenous peoples undergo in Mexico and Central America. The volume’s contributors highlight the fresh approaches that Mesoamerica’s Indigenous peoples have given to new media—from YouTubing Maya rock music to hashtagging in Zapotec. Together, they argue that these cyberspatial activities both maintain tradition and ensure its continuity. Without considering the implications of new technologies, Indigenous Interfaces argues, twenty-first-century indigeneity in Mexico and Central America cannot be successfully documented, evaluated, and comprehended. Indigenous Interfaces rejects the myth that indigeneity and information technology are incompatible through its compelling analysis of the relationships between Indigenous peoples and new media. The volume illustrates how Indigenous peoples are selectively and strategically choosing to interface with cybertechnology, highlights Indigenous interpretations of new media, and brings to center Indigenous communities who are resetting modes of communication and redirecting the flow of information. It convincingly argues that interfacing with traditional technologies simultaneously with new media gives Indigenous peoples an edge on the claim to autonomous and sovereign ways of being Indigenous in the twenty-first century. Contributors Arturo Arias Debra A. Castillo Gloria Elizabeth Chacón Adam W. Coon Emiliana Cruz Tajëëw Díaz Robles Mauricio Espinoza Alicia Ivonne Estrada Jennifer Gómez Menjívar Sue P. Haglund Brook Danielle Lillehaugen Paul Joseph López Oro Rita M. Palacios Gabriela Spears-Rico Paul Worley
Download or read book Finding Our Way Home written by Myke Johnson and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2016-11-25 with total page 181 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this time of ecological crisis, all that is holy calls us into a more intimate partnership with the diverse and beautiful beings of this earth. In Finding Our Way Home, Myke Johnson reflects on her personal journey into such a partnership and offers a guide for others to begin this path. Lyrically expressed, it weaves together lessons from a chamomile flower, a small bird, a copper beech tree, a garden slug, and a forest fern, along with insights from Indigenous philosophy, environmental science, fractal geometry, childhood Catholic mysticism, the prophet Elijah, fairy tales, and permaculture design. This eco-spiritual journey also wrestles with the history of our society's destruction of the natural world, and its roots in the original theft of the land from Indigenous peoples. Exploring the spiritual dimensions of our brokenness, it offers tools to create healing. Finding Our Way Home is a ceremony to remember our essential unity with all of life.
Download or read book Unwriting Maya Literature written by Paul M. Worley and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2019-05-07 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Unwriting Maya Literature provides an important decolonial framework for reading Maya texts that builds on the work of Maya authors and intellectuals such as Q’anjob’al Gaspar Pedro González and Kaqchikel Irma Otzoy. Paul M. Worley and Rita M. Palacios privilege the Maya category ts’íib over constructions of the literary in order to reveal how Maya peoples themselves conceive of artistic creation. This offers a decolonial departure from theoretical approaches that remain situated within alphabetic Maya linguistic and literary creation. As ts’íib refers to a broad range of artistic production from painted codices and textiles to works composed in Latin script, as well as plastic arts, the authors argue that texts by contemporary Maya writers must be read as dialoguing with a multimodal Indigenous understanding of text. In other words, ts’íib is an alternative to understanding “writing” that does not stand in opposition to but rather fully encompasses alphabetic writing, placing it alongside and in dialogue with a number of other forms of recorded knowledge. This shift in focus allows for a critical reexamination of the role that weaving and bodily performance play in these literatures, as well as for a nuanced understanding of how Maya writers articulate decolonial Maya aesthetics in their works. Unwriting Maya Literature places contemporary Maya literatures within a context that is situated in Indigenous ways of knowing and being. Through ts’íib, the authors propose an alternative to traditional analysis of Maya cultural production that allows critics, students, and admirers to respectfully interact with the texts and their authors. Unwriting Maya Literature offers critical praxis for understanding Mesoamerican works that encompass non-Western ways of reading and creating texts.
Download or read book Building Character with True Stories from Nature written by Barbara A. Lewis and published by Free Spirit Publishing. This book was released on 2012-08-27 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This flexible resource combines character education with analogies to powerful stories from nature. The heart of each of the book’s twenty-five lessons is an engaging story, written to kids, describing a particular animal or plant and its distinctive qualities. Busy classroom teachers will like this book’s accessibility and flexibility. Kids can read a story individually or in groups, or follow along as the teacher reads it aloud. Accompanying each story, teachers will find several activities—most of them quick, easy, and requiring few supplies—that further investigate animals or plants and the connections between their qualities and human behaviors. Every lesson examines several main character traits, providing starting points and sample questions for discussing and exploring analogies between events in nature and human acts of character. Features include a chart cross-referencing lessons to specific character traits and a list of further resources. Digital content contains all of the book’s reproducible forms, including a color photo of each plant and animal, plus a complete bonus lesson.
Download or read book The Silk Fist Conspiracy written by David Stedman and published by Troubador Publishing Ltd. This book was released on 2014-05-28 with total page 496 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Across the world, three officers must battle a hidden evil enemy as well as their own governments to unravel a dangerous mystery. What is the Silk Fist conspiracy, and will they expose the true culprits before it is too late? Sergeant Christopher Wyatt of the British Royal Protection Squad has been framed by a powerful source from the Russian media, linking him with Silk Fist, a mysterious conspiracy that threatens world peace. Mistrusted and branded a renegade traitor by the British authorities, he must clear his name by finding the true origin of these dangerous attacks. Linda Marquez is a sergeant of the United States Secret Service and trusted special assistant to the First Lady, until she is betrayed by a member of the US intelligence services or someone within the White House. No longer able to trust her own government, she puts aside her initial deep distrust of Wyatt to protect herself from these new enemies and prove her innocence. At the Indian Intelligence Service, Premendra Dhawan risks his own career to gather intelligence about the Silk Fist attacks. Together with Marquez and Wyatt, he must decipher a hard won series of clues that point to the upper echelons of the British and American governments, and a devastating attack on a gathering of world leaders… Can the three officers put their mistrust and suspicion of each other aside in order to expose the deadly plot? Will they ever discover the reasons behind the attacks? And will the ultimate secret of who is behind the Silk Fist conspiracy be revealed? Designed to be an entertaining and commercial thriller, The Silk Fist Conspiracy is set in many exotic and fascinating parts of the world. It is an ideal read for those who have an appreciation for facts, recent history and a gripping thriller. Featuring several red herring characters and a collection of puzzling clues, the book will keep readers guessing, chapter after chapter. With an equal balance of tough action and deepening relationships, this is a story that keeps the reader enthralled and surprised until the very end.
