Review of Intro to EM Book by Griffiths

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Introduction to Electrodynamics is a great course in electromagnetism written by great David J. Griffiths. He writes about electromagnetism in a concise, easy style, and, as a rule, tries to create a physical picture of the ideas explored before delving into the underlying mathematics used to describe them. The discussion is accompanied by many examples and exercises that definitely help the readers apply the material they've learned. This textbook is definitely counts as one of the really good ones when it comes to beginner introductions to electrodynamics and will serve as a great reference for years to come.

This textbook presumes that the reader has knowledge of elementary calculus, but introduces to the reader the ideas of vector analysis which form the necessary mathematical background to learn from most of the book. This is the most well-received introductory textbook on electricity and magnetism, and has won that eminence by being an uncomplicated, educational and thorough introduction to topic. The introduction to the mathematics is extremely useful, not only for applying the physics but also for learning applied mathematics and for learning other branches of physics and understanding the basis of the mathematics used. This introduction actually does a better job of explaining vector mathematics than most other textbooks used in undergraduate calculus studies - those specifically written for this subject - that's how clear Griffiths is!

The foremost concern about the text is that the solutions to the book's exercises are only found in the instructor's handbook.This introduction is a marvellous complement to an undergraduate-level| electrodynamics class and a wonderful reference on the subject matter, but somebody self-learning from the book might not be able to solve all of the end-of-chapter problems without access to the solutions or a knowledgeable mentor as guide. But, it's good to know that the elemental problems can be simply untangled with the guidance of the in-chapter examples. Basically, if you have access to the solution manual of even if you do not, you will get the material. If you need it, you can find help on internet discussions and forums, from a mentor by thinking about things on your own for a little longer than usual.

Introduction to Electrodynamics is the best introductory text to electromagnetism there is and a fantastic beginning for anyone interested in understanding the subject. I strongly suggest purchasing this text for your course if it is required and even if it is just a recommended book - you will use it many times. For the amateur, I do recommend this text if you want to solve puzzles and understand the workings of electricity & magnetism in a mathematical way.

For a more in-depth review of Introduction to Electrodynamics by David J. Griffiths visit whichtextbook.com, a website dedicated to finding the best way to learn, the best textbooks and self-learning.

The Myth of Alzheimer's - A Review

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Is Alzheimer's disease just a myth and the resulting brain degeneration caused by aging and affected by lifestyle conditions and choices? That is a question posed by neurology, geriatrics, dementia and cognitive science expert Peter J. Whitehouse, MD, Ph.d. in his book, The Myth of Alzheimer's. This ground breaking book asks the questions that so many early diagnosed patients and their families ask about dealing with the condition.

While Whitehouse was instrumental in developing and testing pharmaceuticals - prescription medications - to treat "Alzheimer's disease" for over 30 years, in 2007, he had an "awakening" of sorts that made him question the true intent of pharmaceutical companies. His goal with the book is to not only influence the pharmaceutical industry in the way they do business, but also to hopefully guide baby boomers in their aging process and health care professionals in diagnosing and treating brain aging.

The myth Whitehouse describes is that of Alzheimer's Disease (AD) being a singular disease with no one biological profile of the condition. Natural aging in one person has the same biological hallmarks in one diagnosed with AD. Since we don't have the biological markers to actually diagnose AD, even those people who are stated to have it can only be deemed "probable." The concern he has is that there is a promise of "curing" AD, although it may be nothing more than accelerated brain aging. Prevention first and the care for those diagnosed are where dollars should be invested are his points. All of our brains are aging and the fear of AD, along with the hope of a cure are merely mythical.

Part one and two of the book expose some of the unsound clinical, political and scientific framework of AD and describe why it is so difficult to treat or "cure" the condition. He encourages the view of AD as a "changing of self" that must be addressed by the individual and his family as we are aging. Whitehouse proposes that the term Alzheimer's, named after Dr. Alois Alzheimer for his cases from 1901-1906, distorts our expectations and understanding of the human brain. Dr. Alzheimer treated the first documented sufferer of AD, a 51 year old woman with problematic symptoms that Dr. Alzheimer described with "Cause of illness: Aeriosclerosis" and "Form of illness: simple mental disorder."

Part three offers sound advice and preventive measures to reduce the risk cognitive aging. Whitehouse helps to identify those who need a prescription for memory loss. He describes the ten "symptoms" used by the Alzheimer's Association for needing attention and possibly medication, and then helps the reader decide what is "normal" on each symptom. A guide to visiting with a physician about AD is offered with suggestions for questions to ask and what to expect. The final part of the book offers excellent suggestions in the way of food and nutrition, exercise, environmental factors, limiting stress and building a cognitive reserve.

This book is well written and easy to read - with the text broken up with paragraph headings, lots of bullet points, photos and drawings, and plenty of out-takes boxed in. Individual stories of patients labeled with Alzheimer's are included to bring the points home. If only the masses would pick up this book before being diagnosed with Alzheimer's, they will be well-served in the future.

The mission of At Guardian Angel is to provide information that is relevant to those who wish to age in their own homes rather than transition to an assisted living facility. Information regarding Alzheimer's disease and aging in place can be found at http://www.issueswithalzheimers.com/ and http://www.issueswithaging.com/

A Book Review - Educational Leadership in Pakistan: Ideals and Realities

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All about the Book

This is the first ever book on educational leadership, published in Pakistan. Dr. Jan-e-Alam Khaki and Dr. Qamar Safdar are the editors of this book. The book consists of a series of empirical studies undertaken by qualified educational researchers in Pakistan, associated directly or indirectly with AKU-IED. There are various thought provoking and insightful topics in this book; each complements our learning experiences. The book is divided into four sections and fourteen chapters; each section and chapter is intertwined with each other and illuminates issues and its remedial measures. Section one describes the development of education leadership in Pakistan. The second sections deals with the Diversity of Leadership: perceptions and practices of leadership in Pakistan. The third session looks at the role of the educational change agents, and the fourth sections explores the future prospects of educational leadership in Pakistan. In order to get in-depth insights from the book, we decided to focus on first two sections and reviewed initial six chapters.

In first chapter, Dr. Sajid Ali and Muhammad Babur highlight the issues and nature of governance during pre and post independence. Structure of education during British and after independence is analytically compared. Chapter indicates that involvement of educational leadership is missing in both periods, causing various issues in education system, ineffective management and indistinct teaching methodologies, etc. In the second chapter, Zubaida Bana reflects upon the understanding of effective leadership. Using the Katha (storytelling) approach, she starts the discussion pints of a headteacher who imaginatively discovers the meanings in allegories and metaphors in order to understand the roles and responsibilities of an effective education leader in his/her school. Katha of leadership described in this chapter stimulates our minds that every person has the capacity to lead. Some may lead in wider space; others may lead in smaller landscape.

The third chapter is all about of a female pedagogical leader's journey in a traditional context in Pakistan. The writer reflects upon the critical incidents, she came across in her personal to professional life, which helped or impede her way to become a pedagogical leader. The notion of 'leader as a bridge between management and stakeholders' and 'leader as a life-long learner' is evident from her story. In the fourth chapter, Qamar Safdar explores the roles of two effective headteachers of early years in two private schools. The writer reflects on the capacity and ability for the overall development of children. The chapter 5, deals with an ethnographic study conducted by Mola Dad Shafa in a rural context of northern areas of Pakistan. The author discusses the challenges the headteachers faced and the way addressed them. The chapter six, 'Effective School Leadership Practices' is a doctorial research of Dr. Jan-e-Alam Khaki. In this case study, Khaki explores the roles and beliefs of three effective secondary school headteachers and their influences on the teaching and learning practices in schools.

Key Learning from the Book

Being a student of Teacher Education, I was very unfamiliar with different kinds of leadership and its characteristics. The very first time, in our PL course, I heard the terms instructional, moral, transformational, participative, managerial, contingent and pedagogical leadership. But these terms were not much clear to me; I mostly thought them as just theories with no connection with practical life of a leader. This book review provided me with access not only to understand and differentiate in different kinds of leadership, but also relate it with real-life situations.

I have learnt many new things about effective leadership from this book, but due toe limited word limit I will describe some crux of it. While analyzing the first chapter of the book, I feel the same that governance and planning has the role in deteriorated education system in Pakistan. It takes a lot of time in planning and framing the policy, then sending it to the national assembly and senate for debate and translating it into the law. Then piloting of the policy takes long time and when it comes to be implementation, the government gets changed and so the policy. It creates the environment of despair, but when I go through the second chapter (Katha of Leadership), it gives a hope. Here, I learnt that nothing is unachievable in this world. Every person is capable to contribute in the process of change and everyone has capacity to lead. We should not stay waiting for any cosmos power to come to help us; it is high time for everyone to come forward and lead.

The third chapter of the book was the most inspiring and learning factor for me. Here, I learned that how a person (particularly a woman), with her/his strong will, sincerity and zeal breaks the chains of traditional rules. While reading that article, I was deeply thinking that someone has to initiate and take the first step toward the collective development. This article took me in my own context, where female is still considered as the property of the man and only the reproductive machine. Education, even the good food is the sole right of male child. Here, my elder sister (who could not get education herself) by sending her daughter into school, proved herself as traditional rule breaker. Some of other females start following her foot-steps by sending their daughters to the schools. Ten years back, there was no single literate girl in my village, but due to that small step, more than forty to fifty girls have completed their primary education so far. Besides it, I also learnt that leader is life-long learner. He/she learns through self-reflection and negotiating and discussing the issues with others and seeking guidance from them.

Overall, this book serves as a pioneer of exploring our thinking about our own role as a leader and proves to be a best resource for the policy makers to develop alternative approaches to deal with school and teaching and learning practices.

Conclusion

This book very obviously describes the role of leadership and management in an educational organization. A leader being a role model should motivate and encourage the staff because performance and commitment of people employed in any organization makes it effective. Through critical analysis of the book, I came to know that this book possesses stories and cases from Pakistani context so many of the ideas suit my own. So, it would be easier for my future role as a teacher educator to deal with the school management and leadership related issues in an effective manner.

Sayed Muzaffar Ali Shah
M.Ed. student
Aga Khan University, Institute for Educational Development, Karachi, Pakistan

Reference:

Khaki, J., & Safdar, Q. (Eds). (2010). Educational Leadership in Pakistan: Ideals and Realities. Karachi: Oxford University Press

How Colleges Have Given Up on Educating Your Child: A Book Review

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I am a mother of two teens. I am a college graduate and a Master Degree drop out from St John's University, New York. In fact, I was accepted by St John's and decided not to attend because they required a year of English Language course and also other subjects that I have already taken. I felt it was unnecessary and a waste of time and money.

For the past year, I have been researching on the relevance of college education in this new economy. In my journey of researching, I found out that there are many roads that lead to a child's success in life and career. In this nation, the vast majority of us are categorized as middle class families. Good old fashioned, hard working Americans looking for ways to help our children advance socially and economically.

However, with the price tag of college education increasing each year, most families are going into certain types of loans just to 'buy' an education for their children. But parents, is that the only road to advancement? Do we want to see our children in debt just to get that education and later find out that it does not buy success? Have you wonder why so many young graduates are struggling financially even with a college education?

One of the books that I have recently read is "The Five-Year Party: How Colleges have given up on educating your child and what you can do about it" by Craig Brandon. I do not agree with everything, however, there are many tips and checklists to take away from Mr. Brandon's book.

Craig Brandon said the purpose of this book is to inform parents about the abuses of higher education that party schools engage in to maximize the number of customers and their incomes at the expense of real education.

He defined party school as a relatively inexpensive four-year residential college/university that rates among the third and fourth tiers (rated by U.S. News and World Report), that admits low grades and low SAT scores.

These are the colleges that most middle income Americans goes to. According to his research:

1. Majority of the students are no better than a high school drop out after graduating. These students are not interested in learning and do not put in effort to learn.

2. Since early 1990s, colleges have been reinventing and transforming into institutions that focus on profits instead of education. Because of this transformation, the administrators want to ensure they retain students by giving exactly what they want, that is, less work more fun.

3. To retain students who are their 'customers', they enlarged dining halls into gourmet food courts, campuses with hot tubs, water parks, climbing walls, work out centers and wide screen television sets all over.

4. Dormitories being replaced by luxury condominiums. So instead of spending money on education, they used it for facilities and luxuries.

5. They use grading curve to transform an F score to a magical B. There is no high expectation for quality school work. Flunking is almost eliminated.

6. Focusing on increasing revenue, they squeezed as many students as possible onto campuses for the highest tuition and longest possible amount of years.

7. When parents and their high school age children tour the campus before they make decision, they are given a 'golden walk'. They give a misrepresentation, misstatement and 'lies' to entice them to sign up.

8. 21 cents to a dollar of your college tuition is for instructions and the rest go to administrators' salaries, construction programs and multi-million-dollar advertising and public relations campaigns.

9. Because of the high tuition fee, two thirds of students need loans to complete their studies and the schools have private loan companies to offer loans to students. Most students do not understand the terms and conditions of the loans until they graduate and are faced with the truth.

10. He outlined the dangers of these campuses because of alcohol, crime, rape, and their obsession with secrecy where parents do not find out the problems until it is too late.

Craig Brandon offered an action plan and a call to action for parents. We need to reinvent higher education with main focus on:

Educating not entertaining.

Go back to basics, the goal is to create "no frills colleges"

Replace unnecessary irrelevant courses with core subjects necessary to maintain our economy, our government and the future of our country

Students need to pass a "value added" exam before granted a degree. Value added means skills and knowledge required to be a leader

Transparency for all college policies and proof that colleges are providing education

My conclusion from this book: talk to our children and find out what are their strengths, goals and passion in life. Without a serious talk,direction and a game plan, we will walk the road to nowhere. Colleges are not the only roads that lead to our children's success.

For further information on strategies to educate your children, please download our Free Report, which is on the top right hand corner of this page. Please leave us a comment on our facebook wall.

Claudia is a mother of 2, wife and stay at home and work from home mom for 16 years. She desires to see parents stepping up to be their best and raising up a generation of uncompromising, relevant and purposed driven adults. She believes traveling, volunteering and learning another language in addition to English are important tools for educating children.

You can find her at http://www.uncommongeneration.com/. You can download a FREE REPORT: 7 Little Known Strategies the Elite Few Use to Educate their Children without Breaking the Bank!

Textbook Book Review - An Introduction to Business

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Are you considering a career in business? Perhaps now is the time to get yourself ready, as the economy starts to recover and jobs start to come back to America. Are you considering getting an MBA, or a degree in business? Do you see yourself in the future as being a business manager of a business unit, or retail store? If so, perhaps you should learn more about how businesses operate, make their money, and manage their employees.

Of course it's not all that simple, s there is a lot more to it than that. Nevertheless, it makes sense to get an early start, and perhaps consider some business courses as well. If you don't have time to go to school right now there's a very good book that I would like to recommend to you. It is a textbook, and it is available online. It is a book that I do own in my personal library for reference, even though I am a retired franchisor, and perhaps I could've written the book myself.

The reason I keep this book is because I believe it's interesting to get the academic perspective on the topic, and to learn what our business schools, and community colleges are teaching future students who will attain business degrees, and then move into the workforce. The name of the book is;

"Intro to Business" Fourth Edition) by Steven A. Eggland, Les R. Dlabay, James L. Burrow, Robert A. Ristau, South Western Educational Textbook Publishers, Cincinnati, OH, (2000), 677 pages, ISBN: 0538-69146-8.

This book is broken into chapters or sections, which are referred to as units. Each unit and subsequent chapters goes into a different aspect of business, things that you need to know. For instance unit one talks about the economic environment, which is extremely important right now, as we exit the downturn in the business cycle to an inflationary period. Learn about business cycles, creating statistical modeling, and making proper economic decisions. Then there is a section or unit on business operations, and one on business and government regulations.

There are also units on international business, as well as small business management. Also you can learn about business credit and financing, as well as strategic investment strategies and risk management and return on investment. This is a very well-rounded book, easy-to-read, nicely formatted, and pre-highlighted to make your learning much easier. If you are looking for a starter book on the introduction to business - this is definitely a book that I would like to recommend to you, and like I said you can find it online.

Lance Winslow is an Online Author, his latest eBook about Boat Detailing is now available in the "Lance Winslow Small Business Series" titled; "How to Start a Boat Cleaning Business" (a Nook Book available at the Barnes and Noble Website). Lance Winslow is semi-retired and Founder of the Online Think Tank http://www.worldthinktank.net/ - You may contact Lance Winslow by email for dialogue, discourse, discussion, or debate on interesting topics.

A Book Review: The Ultimate Stranger The Autistic Child

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The Ultimate Stranger The Autistic Child

Carl Delacato EdD Academic Therapy Publications, 1974

In the 1930s and 1940s Dr. Temple Fay gathered some younger professionals to form the Institute for the Achievement of Human Potentials in Philadelphia: Dr. Robert Doman (physiatrist) and Glenn Doman (physical therapist) as well as Dr. Carl Delacato (educator). Early on Delacato spent much of his time researching and working with children who had reading and speech difficulties resulting in a number of books. At some point he was asked to turn his work over to others and to move on to another challenge. He began to explore the autistic child and his needs. These men all shared a keen sense of observation and the inability to rest until solutions were found.

In The Ultimate Stranger, Delacato introduces us to the autistic child and gives a history of what we know about autism.

As early as 1943, Kanner had described the autistic child as one who:

Could not relate / interact with people.Could not communicate with others through language.Was obsessed with maintaining sameness and resisting changes.Was preoccupied with objects in favor of people.Had the occasional evidence of good potential for intelligence.

Over the years there have been modifications and additions to that list.

After Dr. Delacato spent time observing these individuals he concluded that all of those "autisms" were actually "sensoryisms." All of those strange behaviors are because of either: too much sensory input; too little sensory input or white noise. Due to injury in the sensory channels (sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch) there is either too much input, not enough clear input or the child produces his own "white noise" to drown out bad sensory input. The good news is that the same sensory stimulation can normalize the sensory input. Many of the activities that Delacato and the others found helpful in those early days are used today by neurodevelopmentalists and other professionals.

First step: "Read the 'sensoryism'" / observe - Is it hyper, hypo or white noise; Which sense or sense(s) is (are) in play?

Second step: Normalize the sensory input. For instance: The trigeminal nerve enervates all the senses in the head and face area. One activity that normalizes these "sensoryisms" is "Trigeminal Stimulation" - one variation is to lightly touching all of the areas in the neck and head area beginning at the midline and moving away and around. Follow that by firmly touching these same areas. This should be done in short (2 minutes), frequent (2 times a day) for a period of months.

While following the steps above, the parent / therapist must stop all sensory play or "stimming." This type of input is not specific and controlled. It is neurologically disorganizing and may result in regression. The autistic individual becomes so involved in "sensory play" that they can not get on with life / development. A parent / therapist will know the behavior is sensory play if the child resists when told to stop.

Delacato's masterpiece, The Ultimate Stranger - The Autistic Child succeeds in helping us to understand the world of an autistic individual and sets the stage for comprehensive way to address all of the sensory issues.

Maggie Dail and her husband, Ronnie operate the Center for Neuro Development, in Lakewood, Washington. She is a certified Neurodevelopmentalist with the International Christian Association of Neurodevelopmentalists and earned M.A. in Special Education in 1989. Dail authored Rounding the Bases: Chris Learned to Read, a chapter book for individuals and families who face reading struggles. For more information: http://www.centerforneurodevelopment.com/

The Ultimate Stranger available: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=The+ULtimate+stranger&x=9&y=19