Book Description
The beauty of the Arabic language, both spoken and written--and the richness of the Arabic-speaking world, its history and culture--has recently become of increasing importance and a matter of revelation for the English-speaking world. It is essential as this new century unfolds, that understanding develops between nations--and language is the magic key.
The Al-Kitaab Arabic language program is among the English-speaking world's most widely used Arabic language learning texts. Alif Baa with DVDs: Introduction to Arabic Letters and Sounds is the first part of the Al-Kitaab program. This revised, second edition contains updated readings, new and revised exercises, and completely new audio/video materials on two DVDs bound into each volume.
In teaching the sounds and letters of Arabic, Alif Baa provides a variety of exercises aimed at developing the crucial nascent skills of reading, listening, writing, speaking, and cultural understanding. In conjunction with learning how to read and write the alphabet, Alif Baa introduces about 150 basic vocabulary words, including conventional forms of politeness and social greetings.
Standard Arabic vocabulary is distributed throughout the book, enhanced by the visual and audio materials on the DVDs and implemented in practical exercises. It introduces a range of Arabic from colloquial to standard in authentic contexts, including social greetings in dialogues that take place in an Egyptian context, the most widely-used and understood Arabic dialect.
Finally, Alif Baa includes capsules on Arab culture as well as an English-Arabic glossary. Alif Baa provides the essential first twenty contact hours of instruction that are the foundation for the rest of the Al-Kitaab language program.
Customer Reviews:
excellent.......2007-09-26
I love the book, and the DVDs are incredibly helpful. An excellent buy for anyone who wants to learn Arabic.
~*~*Totally Awesome!!*~*~.......2007-09-24
The book I purchased was brand new so of course it was in perfect condition. The book also contained DVDs as part of the lesson. I would recommend this to anyone wanting to learn Arabic because it provides you with listening material for you to practice with and perfect your pronunciation.
Great starting point for students of Arabic.......2007-09-17
Alif Baa text and DVDs provide excellent written, visual and audio descriptions of all the letters, many of which are indistinguishable to the native English speaker. Limited vocabulary and dialogues are included to keep the focus on learning the letters as spoken and as written.
Excellent Introduction to the Alphabet. .......2007-09-13
To is by far the best package for learning the arabic script/alphabet. If you can only afford one thing, I would definitely buy this. You may find other books more helpful but the addition of the DVD makes this indispensable.
There are a few reasons why this book is superior to other Arabic books that attempt to teach the script. However there is one that stands out in my mind.
The teaching of arabic letters as unique sounds apart from the English alphabet and the exact position of the tongue in the mouth, throat constriction, level of aspiration, and great tips for practicing foreign sounds and exercises.
When speaking a language, I pride myself on the accurate pronunciation of it. Once past the conversation level, pronunciation of the language is my priority and I believe that Alif Baa does an excellent, superb job of this. Especially clearing up the tricky difference between Thaa and Dhaa. I knew of the difference, but could not separate it in speech. Now I do it with much greater accuracy.
I recommend this book whole heartedly.
Addendum: I was reading the reviews and someone said it assumed that you had a teacher. This is true and not true at the same time. MAKE SURE YOU BUY THE ANSWER KEY, WHICH IS ONLY $5 EVEN BEFORE YOU BUY THIS BOOK. When you buy this answer key, this becomes the best way to teaching yourself Arabic script.
Did it for me! ... From "romanization" to actual Arabic!.......2007-07-30
This work provided the structure in a comfortable format for me to make the difficult transition from Arabic, phonetically approximated in English letters, to sounding and writing actual Arabic. There are more concise statements of the rules, but this is an actual "work-book" with space to fill in exercises as you progress. Brustad sets a good pace - ten lessons each taking about 2 hours apiece to complete. Sprinkled throughout are elements of Arabic culture ~ and as a bonus you will learn 100+ real words in Arabic as you master the letters and sounds. The DVD's are helpful as you watch the physical act of forming the letters in script and training your speech muscles to make the 9 or 10 sounds Arabic uses that English does not. I did lessons 1-5 without the Answer Key: and there were just enough times I wondered "Have I got that right?" that I ordered it. If you do not have a teacher (I do not) I would suggest buying the Answer Key up front. Remember when you first discovered you could "read English"? I had the same experience - in Arabic - after finishing Alif Baa!
Book Description
The beauty and richness of the history and cultures of the Middle East are matters of increasing interest to the English-speaking world. As nations make their way into this new century, there must be dialogue and understanding--and language is the doorway into that new understanding.
This revised and updated second edition of Al-Kitaab contains new video and audio material on three DVDs, along with revised and updated texts and exercises. Following naturally on the introductory text, Alif Baa, for the Al-Kitaab Arabic language program, this initial Part One text further develops skills in standard Arabic while providing additional material in colloquial as well as classical Arabic.
The audio vocabulary portion of the DVDs allow learners to hear a new word followed by a sentence using it in context along with previously acquired vocabulary and grammatical structures, enabling students to build new vocabulary skills while reviewing previously exercised material. The video portion offers the option of seeing and hearing the video of each lesson in both Modern Standard Arabic and Egyptian Colloquial Arabic. The DVDs also contain substantial material exposing the learner to Egyptian Arabic (the most widely used and understood Arabic dialect), a short dialogue in Egyptian Colloquial Arabic appears at the end of each lesson. New video materials also feature subtitled interviews with Egyptians about various aspects of Arab culture, such as gender issues, fasting in the Muslim and Christian traditions, social clubs and their significance, and more.
Customer Reviews:
Better than ever.......2007-08-23
Having been a teacher of Arabic in European universities for over thirty years, I can assure you that Al-kitaab maybe not perfect, but is the best textbook ever. It is a great relief that we can offer the students a serious book now, instead of the rubbish we had to use previously.
I am sure many of the negative reviews here express the tough experience of learning a tough language rather than doing justice to the book. Yes, Spanish is easier, and some textbooks of Spanish are better too, since many people worked on them for a long time. Remember: Al-kitaab is the FIRST acceptable book that ever appeared, so better be grateful.
helped me teach myself.......2007-08-23
I have been trying to learn Arabic for years and this book has truly helped me. This book is great to teach yourself with, the only thing is you have to be motivated (which I think is true, regardless of what book you buy). It does not teach you touristy Arabic, but actual real standard Arabic (and a little of colloquial Egyptian). It gives you a great deal of vocabulary, and the DVD tells you how to pronounce everything... in a way it is like taking a class because the DVD gives a story in Arabic. If you are teaching yourself, I recommend you buy the answer key with this. The only downside is that the answer key does not have answers to all of the problem sets. So, what I did is skipped the problem sets that don't have answers (but if you know someone who can tell you what is right or wrong, then you can do them all). If you finish this book, you can hold an actual intellectual conversation with others in Arabic.
Still awful - even with pretty new actors.......2007-08-13
The only reason these books sell is that for years, there was no other real option. My Arabic teacher made the best he could of this book in our course (and he had to try valiantly), and as a tutorial the book is a failure. What is so wrong?
1. Terribly sophisticated vocab is introduced too early; you learn how to say "United Nations" before "chair." This might be forgiveable if they would only use that vocab once and tell you what it was... but no, you will need to remember these obscure words randomly later on in exercises five chapters later. Good textbooks / teachers / classes / education of any kind use repetition and a gradual increase in difficulty. This book does the opposite. Unforgiveable.
2. Example texts are far too difficult. It is completely brain-numbing and demoralizing to look through an example that has dozens of times the text you need - filled with vocabulary you've never seen. Often, they give you an entire page of text and ask you to find the 4% of it - in a script you are still getting used to - that is relevant to the current lesson. This unforgiveable mistake wastes incredible amounts of time.
3. Examples are given without translation, completely undermining the utility of the examples. Einstein once said "Example is not a good way to teach; it is the only way to teach." A book that makes examples difficult by using new concepts and obscure vocabulary - and incomprehensible by then not translating - is an embarassment. Translations are missing everywhere they should be - in complete sentences, in verb charts, and even in English explanations of grammar.
4. The book has uses an Arabic linguist fetishist approach to introducing grammar, always using the Arabic word for tenses and concepts. I'm sorry, but when English-speaking students are struggling just to get concepts like the jussive, it only makes it harder if we have to learn the Arabic word for "jussive." OK, it isn't so bad to memorize the Arabic words for "masculine," "feminine," and "dual." But "Jussive," "verbal sentence," "nominal sentence," "case endings," "subjuntive," and "verb form?" Come on, we're still stuck on United Nations which you introduced in the first chapter.
5. OK so this isn't a flaw, but just a good practice this book skips. There are lots of things that sound very similar in Arabic, such as the words for "fourth," "Arabic," and "spring." There should be special spelling / listening sections that allow for special practice of these words.
6. One of the most basic concepts when writing a textbook of any kind (math, language, social sciences) is to introduce simple material and examples early, and then build upon them later on. This book does the opposite. In examples and exercises, it uses grammar you don't learn about until 100 pages later. All the worse, they don't translate anything for you so you don't even realize what is going on. When writing or editing a textbook, it is the job of the authors to make sure that advanced concepts are not included until after they have been explained. A good math textbook doesn't include division in examples that are meant to teach addition. This book does far worse, and it is not a difference of "teaching philosophy," it is just plain sloppy and lazy editing.
7. It might seem that the integration of audio, video, and visual image material is a strength of this series. It isn't. These materials seem to have been thrown in there with no regard for the grammar and vocabulary that they contain compared to the grammar and vocabulary the students have been taught. Again lax quality control about what goes in there is to blame.
It's HORRIBLE for students who aren't good at languages........2007-08-05
First of all, if you're planning on teaching yourself, then LEAVE this page right now, because you CANNOT do it with this book. In my experience, when professors/teachers begin teaching, many complain about the way the Al-Kitaab books present the Arabic language (and sympathize when students whine the morning after homework). They have serious organizational issues. The most frustrating flaw of this book is that there is NO grammar glossary. Grammar (extremely tedious in Arabic) is spread throughout each chapter, so it's impossible to review unless you literally flip through every page to find what you're looking for. I often have each finger of one hand holding the page where a related grammar concept is hidden. This makes studying for tests very difficult. I recommend carrying 10 bookmarks. At my university in California, native-speaking professors are not allowed to teach classes in which the Al-Kitaab series is used unless they've received special training to get aquatinted with it. I've heard this is a requirement at some other schools as well. Some of this review is taken from my review of book 2, but that one has some issues all its own. It's essentially an excellent try, but STUDENTS NEED TO BE CONSULTED!!! I'm only rating it one star to off-set the 5 star reviews, it probably deserves a 2.5
Good, but not great.......2007-06-12
As a student entering second year with the al-kitaab series, i can truthfully say that you MUST have alif baa completed before even attempting this book. Yes it does have a lot of flaws, namely expressing complex grammatical concepts in script, but if one has a teacher willing to push hard, i.e. alif baa in two weeks then a chapter a week for the rest of the (university) year (if you have a life and see that a professor's only teaching experience was the Defense Lang. Institute RUN!!). Unlike some of the other books, it enters with an expectation of knowledge of the Alphabet, unlike some other books that try to teach it with vocab and grammar. As far as the colloquial goes AVOID IT. I spent a year in Iraq and what I learned actually put me at a disadvantage because I had to unlearn, then learn some words, letters and especially grammar (i.e. il vs al). Just remember that when you buy a dictionary also buy a grammar book as both will help immensely.
Average customer rating:
- Book explains concepts well
- A truly beautiful book
- Excellent Intro to the subject
- Excellent intro, the way a textbook should be
- Primer on the subject
|
Cellular and Molecular Immunology, Updated Edition (Book + Student Consult + Evolve
Abul K. Abbas , and
Andrew Lichtman
Manufacturer: Saunders
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 1416023895 |
Book Description
This highly acclaimed text is now more up to date than ever! The Updated 5th Edition features new information and free access to a full-text online edition, images, animations, and much more at the
brand-new STUDENT CONSULT website. Readers will continue to enjoy the current, concise, and straightforward approach to the field that made previous editions so popular. Theyll understand the experimental observations that underlie the science of immunology at the molecular, cellular, and whole organism leveland explore the conclusions that can be drawn from those observations.
The smart way to study!
Elsevier titles with STUDENT CONSULT will help you master difficult concepts and study more efficiently in print and online! Perform rapid searches. Integrate bonus content from other disciplines. Download text to your handheld device. And a lot more. Each STUDENT CONSULT title comes with full text online, a unique image library, case studies, USMLE style questions, and online note-taking to enhance your learning experience.
Customer Reviews:
Book explains concepts well.......2006-12-09
Immunology is not an easy concept to digest at first, but luckily this book explains the difficult topics quite well. With any subject that deals with explaining molecular processes, both the descriptions and diagrams take great importance and I feel that this book for the most part addresses both very efficiently.
A truly beautiful book.......2006-04-03
Few books are illustrated this well, and while the book suffers from the absence of a glossary, it is incredibly well written, with sufficient detail that you are sure you are getting the full story.
The author is not targeting me (a dilettante if ever there was one) but I find I can make my way through 99% of the book without questions or issues, and what I need help with I can find on the internet or by asking doctor friends.
If you are truly interested in how the immune system works, in some detail, this is a wonderful book.
Excellent Intro to the subject.......2003-09-24
For the advanced reader, I like Janeway's text better because of the depth of information presented, but for an introductory class, Abbas is more accessable and understandable in the introductory chapters. I recommend using them in tandem, I do! The figures are good, but interestingly enough, the illustrations in all the major texts on immunology are largely the same! If you need a CD with illustrations (you are an instructor or want to use them for a presentation etc) I recommend the CD accompanying Peter Parham's text book.
Excellent intro, the way a textbook should be.......2003-08-30
My only immunology background was in medical school in the early 80s. I bought this book to try to get a basic grasp on what immunology is about now, 20 years later. This book is excellent for that. As other reviewers have commented, the material is well organized and illustrated. The illustrations are numerous enough and detailed enough to almost form an outline in their own right.
While there is considerable repetition, I consider that this is one of the best features of the book for a newcomer such as I. The repetition is clearly very intentional, not the result of disorganization or sloppy editing. Rather it is enough to let the reader grasp both the forest and the trees. It also lets you, to some extent, read from any section of the book without being totally lost if you don't remember the previous material.
Primer on the subject.......2003-03-21
The title of the book says it all: this book treats the expertise of immunology at the cellular and molecular level. It approaches the subject through a collection of explanations of experimental observations. Neither am I a physician nor a medical student, I find this book very comprehensible and helpful in explaining the principles of molecular biology/biochemistry [along with my expertise in chemistry] pertinent to the HIV virus. The book is abound with illustrations and pictorials though the authors at times drag on repeating concepts. The section on effector mechanisms of the immune responses is done in excellent gory details. Tons of illustrations, graphics making understanding of biochemical and immunological mechanisms a less strenuous task. For example, the HIV virus, the book will cover the abnormal events that occur at the first contact of the HIV virus. Then it talks about the virus mechanisms and the effect on the immune response. This 5th edition has been revised and now includes new info and materials about the lymphoid organs and innate immunity mechanism. I recommend it to medical students, pre-meds, and all health care professionals. 4.0 stars.
Customer Reviews:
An excellent presentation of an intoxicating language.......2007-09-29
This this an excellent learning tool. I finished the book one with a tutor. I am trying to study the part two on my own. I have to say this is not a self study book. You are required to make presentations, write essays etc. You need somebody to correct them. But still there are a lot of stuff you can learn from part two without a tutor. The grammar is excellent. Almost intoxicating. It draws you in, keeps you captive, makes you wonder " what a magical language". I speak 6 languages, haven't seen something like this. I stay up sometime until two AM doing these exercises. Unfortunately there are not many institutions teaching arabic and this book. At least not in my area.
In this book, the story of the beautiful Maha and her gorgeous cousin Khaled is moved to 3amiyyah. I study hard for each chapter and my bonus at the end is seeing this soap opera.
Each chapter has Listening exercises. They are offered with different degree of difficulty. First one or two is easily understandable for my level. But usually there is one exercise in each chapter that is from real life Arabic television or order programming. You are not expected to understand all of it. I wish there were scrips of these parts available somewhere as well.
I have written to the authors of the book asking them for these scripts. So far I have not received any response yet.
Arabic is probably the most beautiful and magical language and this book truly displays these features. If you are not ready to surrender to it, don't bother.
*Notoriously* terrible, but admirable........2007-08-05
At my university in California, native-speaking professors are not allowed to teach classes in which the Al-Kitaab series is used unless they've received special training to get aquatinted with it. I've heard this is a requirement at some other schools as well. When they begin teaching, many complain about the way these books present the Arabic language (and sympathize when students whine the morning after homework). The most frustrating flaw of this book is that there is NO grammar glossary. Grammar (extremely tedious in Arabic) is spread throughout each chapter, so it's impossible to review unless you literally flip through every page to find what you're looking for. I often have each finger of one hand holding the page where a related grammar concept is hidden. This makes studying for tests very difficult. I recommend carrying 10 bookmarks.
Be warned that the vocabulary lists in each chapter Al-Kitaab pt. 2 (this book) are about 4-5 times larger than in book one. Some chapters have 60 words to memorize. This volume also changes the order that it presents conjugation charts. Why does this matter? Well, when you've been memorizing a year's-worth of verb forms in a specific form order (in Al-Kitaab pt. 1), to suddenly shuffle that chart order around while introducing more and more forms...doesn't help at ALL!
Lastly, dialogs are key to learning any language, and this book ignores them completely. Instead, you've given mundane texts to translate, which doesn't effectively teach anything because it just makes you go back to the chapter glossary to look words up. The reason people learn languages better in foreign countries is because of the language is in context. This book does not present anything in context. One positive is that the vocabulary lists are at least usable (with the exception of the word "aesthetic" in chapter 4). These books have potential and try to be helpful ( I've met two of the authors, who are both very nice), but lack very fundamental student aids. I recommend searching Amazon for a more user-friendly book, and if you're not buying this for a class, it would be smart to switch to colloquial Arabic now that you know some basic Modern Standard Arabic (MSA/Foosha). Peace.
ps: The only Maha and Khalid you see in this book are in the colloquial section of the DVDs, which the text doesn't go into, so most students won't even know they're there. You can also say goodbye to the English-Arabic dictionary in the back.
Wonderful and challenging.......2006-08-10
Just as with the first volume, comprehensive completion of the exercises and time (quality time!) spent with the DVD will slather layers of Arabic on your brain like so much hummus.
Concerning the first book, many leveled complaints of incompleteness, obscurity and the like. I think many of these people were not prepared to actually acquire a language, which is the goal of this work (unlike, say, most secondary and post-secondary American curricula). It is not about interpersonal, daily communication. This is not for the busy or casual, this is an information bomb in every chapter.
Though there may be a lack of simple conversation, this can be explained in that standard Arabic is rarely used for conversation of that kind and is best left to dialect courses or phrasebooks. Not to mention that every chapter contains a gentle, progressive introduction to Egyptian colloquial Arabic at the end. In any case, I find criticisms of a grammar of literary Arabic complaining that it is too "literary" to be utterly bizarre.
It *is* deceptively simple, because the detail is spread out through vocab, grammar, reading and listening. Therefore, there aren't countless grammar points, which can make it seem less dense than it is. But the sheer volume of text and exercise is commendable and formidible. A few minor snafus here and there will be worked out over the editions and are absolutely understandable...
It is my feeling that this represents a monumental contribution to Arabic studies and that it will be a universal standard text in no time, if it isn't already. Don't let reviews of the earlier editions throw you off. If you are serious and have the time, this is the best bang for your buck.
Customer Reviews:
Not for self study.......2007-06-19
Perhaps if you are studying with a teacher this book would merit another star. However, it does not help much with learning vocabulary. I also agree with a previous reviewer that the Michigan text, although dated, offers clearer explanations of the grammar and with its accompanying tapes is much more helpful for self-study.
"Constructivist" methodology wastes students' time.......2007-03-30
Much research has recently shown why "constructivist" methodology is inefficient, and this book provides ample empirical evidence. Students are expected to guess the meaning of words, and to help them out, much vocabulary has neither definitions in the text nor in the glossary. The learner can spend endless hours looking up the words rather than learning Arabic. It is certainly not reassuring to just guess the words, the learner ought to have clear definitions. Since so much vocabulary is left up in the air, the book requires a teacher working extra hard, since students cannot do work alone. By the way, amazon is selling a key for exercises, but this is unacceptable. One spends a lot of money on this book and must then buy another book to learn from it. Also, the book assumes the student can figure out fast enough unvoweled Arabic and gives copious texts. Students require hours and hours of tedious reading that ultimately has little to do with live language. Great way to drop out of Arabic!
The revised version has DVDs with visuals aside from readings. But this is no help at all. Watching people recite Arabic in middle-age clothing does not help decipher the missing vocabulary.
Anyone teaching themselves should pick one of the many books available. And Arabic teachers should look at other series. For 20 years, the standard textbook was Michigan Modern Standard Arabic, 3 volumes with tapes. The texts are dated, but the book works very well.
Not as much help as I had hoped..........2005-08-10
I was under the impression that this would be an answer key for more drills than just the listening drills. All that it does is fill in the blanks of the single listening drill per chapter of the second Al-Kitaab fi' Ta'allum al-'Arabiya book. This is only minimally helpful.
Ideally I would have wanted an answer key to the rest of the drills, so that I could make sure that the hours I spend doing drills isn't in vain. (I currently spend hours doing the drills incorrectly).
Great readings but not for self-study.......2002-04-28
The second part of the Al Kitaab series puts an emphasis on the development of reading skills and concentrates on more complex grammatical structures and vocabulary, the type that students are likely to encounter in authentic texts (mainly for academic purposes).
As a whole, this book is a lot more "academic" than the first part and this is probably why there seems to be such a wide gap between the two books. Al Kitaab One is about "learning Arabic and having fun doing it" and Al Kitaab Two seems to leave out the "having fun" part.
Those hoping that Al Kitaab Two will address topics in everyday life communication which were not found in Part One will be disappointed. Part Two teaches you the vocabulary you need to read about the first newspapers in the Arab world but it won't teach you how to say "Could you pass me the bread please".
I believe that one reason for this is the setting for which the Al Kitaab series was initially developed: the Middlebury Summer Immersion Arabic program. Now, in an immersion program this would be the perfect book. It gives you the necessary materials for work in class and skipps over some aspects of everyday communication assuming that you will be exposed to them anyway outside the classroom.
Unfortunately, if you are a student in normal academic setting or someone struggling to learn Arabic on their own, this book needs a lot of supplementary materials and, most of all, a very good teacher/consultant to make up for the defficiencies.
You should also be aware that the audio and video tapes that go with the book make it twice as useful. Good luck finding them :)
Big jump.......2001-10-13
While this book is helpful and one of the most commonly used textbooks for learning Arabic, there is a big gap between it and the first book. The texts are very dense and the grammatical explanations are not that detailed. Also the vocabulary is very strange and leaves a lot to be desired in the everyday sense. I do think that the contextual way of learning vocabulary is very good and the texts are interesting. Probably not a good book for someone who is trying to learn Arabic on their own, but good for someone who has a good base of knowledge and wants to work on their reading skills.
Customer Reviews:
Kinda Beat Up.......2007-09-11
The product got to me in excellent time and I was extremely happy about that. But some of the ends were bent and folded and I was disappointed as the book was suppose to be brand new. It looks like it was dropped or smashed a couple of times but sent anyway.
Customer Reviews:
It's the standard for a reason.......2007-08-05
Alif Baa is SO much better than the later "Al-Kitaab" books in this series. If you want to learn the Arabic script, buy this and do the drills (then turn elsewhere for the language).
I love Alif Baa.......2007-08-03
My only gripe is that I bought the book in the store and had to buy the answer key online. The answer key should be included with the book in store as well or INCLUDED in the damn book.
This is the answer key to an AWESOME product.......2007-04-09
This is the answer key. It is very useful if you want to check your work and it isn't very expensive.
Below is my review for the Alif Baa: Introduction to Letters and Sounds set (just to help you while you are looking).
This is the answer key to a product that is AWESOME! The explanations are very clear. The listening exercises give students exposure to colloquial Egyptian Arabic. The listening exercises also help the learner to distinguish between letter sounds and reinforce their letter sound pronunciation.
You really should buy this if you are learning Arabic. It is that useful!
Alright for what it is.......2007-01-11
Fine answer key. Very Useful but not completely necessary for study in Alif Baa.
Middle Aged College Arabic Student.......2005-10-07
We meet twice a week at night. No contact with the Teacher in between. So the answer key lets me know how I'm doing with the assignments. You could cheat and just write in the answers but you'd pay dearly for it during quizzes, exams or trips to the board during class. Using this has kept me on track and helped identify things I need to do again - and again.
Customer Reviews:
good, but not complete.......2007-08-23
These answers are great to use while self teaching yourself the material from al-kitaab. The only problem is that not all of the problem sets are answered.
Good Answer Key.......2007-03-09
This is a good supplement for the text and definitely helps in learning Arabic.
A must to leanr the Arabic language........2006-03-01
One of the most interesting books teaching the Arabic language. The dvds are an excellent source of pronunciation and make the study much more interesting and pleasant.
Straight Foward.......2005-09-23
I personally liked the layout. This answer key gives the answers in a concise, organized manner. Please take note that this is different from a solutions manual which gives explainations of the answers.
Book Description
Generally speaking, grid computing seeks to unify geographically dispersed computing systems to create one large, powerful system. Over the past 20 years, grid computing has had a relatively small impact on corporate productivity, due to the substantial investment it required to deploy and maintain it. This has radically changed over the last year due to technological advancements in the industry. Numerous companies, including IBM and Sun, have begun maximizing grid computing to accomplish tasks faster and cheaper, and the productivity gains have been staggering. If the trend continues, all IT professionals will need to have a solid understanding of grid computing technology in order to remain competitive in their field. This book provides IT professionals with a clear, readable, and pragmatic overview to all aspects of grid computing technology, with hands-on guidelines on implementing a workable grid-computing system. Beginning with a thorough history of the technology, the book then delves into the key components including security, Web services, sensor grids, data grids, globus, and much more. The last section of the book is devoted to creating industry-specific grid computing applications. Throughout the book are numerous contributed chapters from grid computing experts.
Customer Reviews:
Good Overview.......2005-01-21
The newest, highest performance PC's are more powerful than the biggest supercomputers of the early 1990's. But with the higher computational capacity the bigger the tasks assigned to be computed. Note that these are not your typical business applications. The biggest computational tasks today lie in four areas: atomic energy research, weather prediction, cryptography and bioinformatics.
Some of these tasks lend themselves well to being split up amongst a bunch of computers. Cryptography, as an example lends itself well to taking a message and assigning each computer to attack the message with a different key. The processing is independent of the results from other computers attacking the message. What one computer could do eventually, 30,000 or 3 million can do just that much faster.
This book is obviously on using a collection of computers, not necessarily co-located to handle such complex computing tasks. A full time practitioner writes it with collaboration from leaders in the field.
Fairly good overview.......2004-12-14
The interest in grid computing has increased dramatically in scientific circles in the last decade, due in part to the need for high performance scientific computing and the availability of operating systems that make the deployment of distributed computing more painless for the scientific investigator. With the exception of financial firms, grid computing has not made inroads into the business community. Private industry has expressed concerns about the security of grid computing and various psychological barriers have prohibited it from being incorporated even in business LAN environments. This book gives a fairly comprehensive overview of grid computing for those interested in obtaining knowledge as to its efficacy in high performance computing or for those who are investigating whether it can indeed be practical for business. It is readily apparent that the author wants private industry to take grid computing more seriously, and he gives ample discussion of just how this could be done.
Part of this discussion involves the relation between Web services and grid computing. Those readers who deal with Web services would expect a connection between grid computing and Web services, and the `Open Grid Services Architecture', spearheaded by IBM and the Globus team, is an attempt to unify the two. The author points out the main difference between the two architectures, namely that Web services support "persistent" services while grid architectures must also support "transient" services, such as video conferencing. Web services is in place in many different industries at the present time, but it remains to be seen whether it will remain so in years to come, due in part to the conflicts between the different standardization efforts.
The different types of grids that can be configured are also discussed in the book. These include departmental grids, designed for a group of people within an enterprise, enterprise grids which cover all users within an enterprise, and extraprise grids, which can be established within companies. Grid computing has had some reported successes, particular the SETI grid project and the FOLD grid project for calculating protein folding. Both are popular with the public and have GUI interfaces that are very pleasing from an aesthetic point of view.
One of the biggest reasons for not being able to do grid computing in a business environment is the reluctance of management to allow many or all of the machines in the organization to be dedicated to the grid, even if done when the machines are offline. This is true even for the `desktop' grids that are discussed in this book. Subjective factors, such as privacy issues (even if they are not valid) and imagined interference come into play when approaching grid computing in a professional business environment. The presence of distributed software on the various machines in the organization may cause many to believe it is the cause of an outage or other problems when they occur. Trust in grid computing has to develop before it will be used routinely in a business environment. The author does address these concerns in the book.
He also discusses the need for an easier transition to grid computing in a business context, if the decision to deploy it has been made. The time taken to make grid computing a reality in this context must be minimal, considering the great amount of investment that has already been made in designing, implementing, and maintaining existing applications. Such a transition can be handled by using the approach of Web services, or what he calls Grid services. He outlines a few different ways in which the existing code can be wrapped. If the source code is not available, one can wrap the executables for example. If it is, it can wrapped and additional code overlaid on it in order to interface properly with any existing applications. A WSDL (Web Service Description Document) is then generated and placed in a registry service, in order that other applications can make use of the service. The Universal Description, Discovery and Integration (UDDI) registry is the one that is advocated by the author.
Several applications of grid computing are discussed in the book, each having various degrees of ease in actual deployment. Numerical applications using Monte Carlo are viewed as the easiest ones to be "grid-enabled", and this is born out in experience. Financial and biotechnology firms in particular are heavy users of grid-enabled applications that utilize Monte Carlo simulations. The author discusses a rudimentary test, called the `compute intensity ratio' to check whether an application is suitable for deploying on a grid. If this ratio is greater than one, then the application is deemed to be well suited for distributed processing on a grid. Applications in desktop grid computing such as risk management and financial derivatives, molecular docking for drug discovery, and architectural rendering are briefly discussed.
As an example of a cluster grid, the famous Beowulf cluster, which is heavily used in scientific computing, is discussed in the book. Scientific computing is the major driver behind grid computing, as is readily apparent throughout the book. Discussion of high performance grid computing occupies an entire chapter of the book in fact. Production High Performance Computing via the use of the Message Passing Interface (MPI) has allowed scientists to develop grid applications more effectively, without having to worry too much about architectural issues.
The author has included several examples of how grid computing is used in the business community, such as in telecommunications and bioinformatics. There are more examples than he discusses, but they are usually not made public because of considerations of propriety. Businesses that have used grid computing to further their success are usually not vocal in their approaches. The book would have been better if the author had included actual benchmarking studies of how businesses have improved their financial positions by using grid computing, with in-depth figures that illustrate quantitatively the power of grid computing. The inclusion of such studies would definitely assist those who are seriously considering grid computing.
Customer Reviews:
Best Farsi English Dictionary I've used........2007-01-19
This is the best dictionary of the 5 or 6 Farsi to English dictionaries I've come across. Obviously, the more Farsi you know the easier it is to use. What I like about this dictionary the most is that it has Farsi to English and English to Farsi in one volume. Furthermore, each definition is usually followed by synonyms, related words and contextual examples, sometimes sentences utilizing the word being defined, sometimes common phrases. I don't know of any other Farsi dictionary that does that. This is also the dictionary that the U.S. military uses at the Defense Language Institute.
No Farsi Pronounciations & No verb declination.......2006-09-14
Old "French-English"", "German-English", "Italian-English" and "Spanish to English" dictionaries (even back in the 80s) had verb declinations and pronounciations in both languages. This dictionary one has no verb declinations in either language and only English Pronounciations. More helpful for Farsi readers than for English readers trying to learn Farsi. Also, In the English to Farsi section, there can be several words translating into 1 English word but there is no explanation as to the difference and when one word should be used over another.
Not perfect, but the best one out there.......2005-08-04
If you're looking to buy a Persian dictionary, and don't already know it, there's a reality you have to face. Persian-English dictionaries are a lot worse than dictionaries for most other languages.
That said, Aryanpour is the best one out there, at least for MODERN Persian. If you're dealing with medieval texts, there is no better book than Steingass.
In every Persian class I've taken, people have started out with an assortment of dictionaries, and by the end of the course most, if not all the students decided to buy Aryanpour. I think that speaks volumes for its thoroughness and ease of use.
Copies of Aryanpour that I've seen were not very well printed-- the inking is uneven, sometimes the text becomes crooked --but far from illegible.
As for organization, I'd say the Persian-English section is much better than the English-Persian. The English-Persian section gives direct translations without context (for instance, if you're looking up the word "sentence," the author does not give you any way to distinguish between the word for "prison sentence," and that meaning "a group of words"). However, whenever there are multiple meanings in the Persian-English section, the author provides generally solid context.
Two more strenghts of this book: it includes prefixes and suffixes, explains how to use them, and gives definitions for a good number of words which take them; and it includes a lot of the Arabic words commonly found in the Persian language.
My main complaint about the book, besides its weaker English-Persian section, is that it does not always include diacritical marks on Persian text, which is particularly annoying if you're looking up an English word and have to guess on the pronunciation.
One complaint I've heard about this books is that it doesn't include transliterations, like some other dictionaries. I can only agree with this insofar as I have a problem with those words where the authors decided not to include the diacritical. Otherwise, it's really the reader's responsibility to learn to read the Persian script.
The bottom line is, this is book is worth having. I wish I could say the same for the rest of the ones currently on the market.
Best I've used.......2004-04-21
This dictionary is very useful. It has thousands of entries and is written by two men, one of whom is Iranian and studied in England for years. One may have to cross-reference some words, because it is a foreign language and meanings do not exactly correspond sometimes, until you find the one that fits best.
It even gives example uses, and derivatives of usage. I challenge you to find a better one, even in Iran...
needs work.......2003-08-16
I have been using this dictionary for over a year and I hate it!A good many of the definitions don't match from one language to another. This dictionary is so very poorly organized that it is not even worth the paper it is printed on. Avoid this dictionary if you can.
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