The Power of a Plant: A Teacher's Odyssey to Grow Healthy Minds and Schools
Stephen Ritz - 2017
After what can only be defined as a cosmic experience when a flower broke up a fight in his classroom, he saw a way to start tackling his school’s problems: plants. He flipped his curriculum to integrate gardening as an entry point for all learning and inadvertently created an international phenomenon. As Ritz likes to say, “Fifty thousand pounds of vegetables later, my favorite crop is organically grown citizens who are growing and eating themselves into good health and amazing opportunities.”The Power of a Plant tells the story of a green teacher from the Bronx who let one idea germinate into a movement and changed his students’ lives by learning alongside them. Since greening his curriculum, Ritz has seen near-perfect attendance and graduation rates, dramatically increased passing rates on state exams, and behavioral incidents slashed in half. In the poorest congressional district in America, he has helped create 2,200 local jobs and built farms and gardens while changing landscapes and mindsets for residents, students, and colleagues. Along the way, Ritz lost more than 100 pounds by eating the food that he and his students grow in school. The Power of a Plant is his story of hope, resilience, regeneration, and optimism.
Out of Thin Air: Running Wisdom and Magic from Above the Clouds in Ethiopia
Michael Crawley - 2021
It is a place where an anonymous runner in the forest told me, miming an imaginary scoreboard and with a completely straight face, that he had dreamt that he would run 10km in 25 minutes. It is a place where they tell me that the air at Mount Entoto will transform me into a 2.08 marathon runner. It is a place, in short, of wisdom and magic, where dreaming is still very much alive.’Why does it make sense to Ethiopian runners to get up at 3am to run up and down a hill? Who would choose to train on almost impossibly steep and rocky terrain, in hyena territory? And how come Ethiopian men hold six of the top ten fastest marathon times ever?Michael Crawley spent fifteen months in Ethiopia training alongside (and sometimes a fair way behind) runners at all levels of the sport, from night watchmen hoping to change their lives to world class marathon runners, in order to answer these questions. Follow him into the forest as he attempts to keep up and get to the heart of their success.
Survival Hacks
Creek Stewart - 2016
Survival Hacks takes you step-by-step through transforming simple objects like soda tabs and plant leaves into essential survival tools. This rough-and-rugged guide covers everything from small-scale hacks, like using sticks and rope to make a table, to the big stuff, like creating a one-person emergency shelter from a trash bag or purifying dirty water using a plastic bottle and the sun. And you can be ready anywhere you go with everyday carry kits, pocket-sized survival kits, so you're never without the essential tools you need to make it on your own. Being prepared can make the difference when it comes to your survival in an emergency. And Survival Hacks makes it a whole lot easier.
The Honey Bee: A Business Parable About Getting Un-stuck and Taking Control of Your Financial Future
Jake Stenziano - 2019
The Honey Bee tells the story of Noah—a disappointed, disaffected salesman who feels like his life is going nowhere until the day he has a chance encounter with a man named Tom Barnham, the beekeeper. In his charming, down-home way, Tom the “Bee Man” teaches Noah and his wife Emma how to grow their personal wealth using the lessons he learned from his beekeeping passion. Full of concrete lessons delivered through chapter after chapter of engaging vignettes, each of which includes actionable advice for new or aspiring entrepreneurs. Workbook-style sections at the end of each chapter help bring the lessons home, including questions to help you apply the lessons to your own business, and links to rich digital resources for even more information on how to get started creating your own multiple streams of income.
Your Money Ratios: 8 Simple Tools for Financial Security
Charles Farrell - 2009
Forget complicated, abstract philosophy—people need sound financial advice that's easy to follow and can be implemented immediately. For the first time, a leading financial adviser has developed a remarkable set of guidelines to give individuals the same kind of objective insight into their personal finances that successful businesses have. Your Money Ratios will help readers effectively manage debt, invest prudently, and develop a realistic and effective savings plan to ensure both financial success and security. Readers need only plug their income and age into Farrell's ratios in order to get an instant picture of their savings status and overall financial health, as well as a roadmap for the important choices they must make in the future. Here’s what you will find in this book:IF YOU ARE IN YOUR 20s OR 30s: Your Money Ratios will tell you how to get started and what you need to do over the next 35 years to stay on track. If you are lucky enough to read this book when you are young, you will have a clear vision for where you need to go throughout your working career. By setting yourself on the right path, you won’t have to work so hard later in life to meet your goals.IF YOU ARE IN YOUR 40s: You can benchmark your own financial circumstances against the ratios and see how you are doing with respect to your savings, debt, investments and insurance. You have plenty of time to make adjustments if necessary and plot out your path to retirement.IF YOU ARE IN YOUR 50s: The formula will provide you with a realistic assessment of your ability to retire. It will help you make the important decisions about how to allocate your financial resources over the next 10 to 15 years, and how to put on the final push for retirement.
What If Everything You Knew about Education Was Wrong?
David Didau - 2015
What if everything you knew about education was wrong? is just a title. Of course, you probably think a great many things that aren't wrong. The aim of the book is to help you 'murder your darlings'. David Didau will question your most deeply held assumptions about teaching and learning, expose them to the fiery eye of reason and see if they can still walk in a straight line after the experience. It seems reasonable to suggest that only if a theory or approach can withstand the fiercest scrutiny should it be encouraged in classrooms. David makes no apologies for this; why wouldn't you be sceptical of what you're told and what you think you know? As educated professionals, we ought to strive to assemble a more accurate, informed or at least considered understanding of the world around us. Here, David shares with you some tools to help you question your assumptions and assist you in picking through what you believe. He will stew findings from the shiny white laboratories of cognitive psychology, stir in a generous dash of classroom research and serve up a side order of experience and observation. Whether you spit it out or lap it up matters not. If you come out the other end having vigorously and violently disagreed with him, you'll at least have had to think hard about what you believe. The book draws on research from the field of cognitive science to expertly analyse some of the unexamined meta-beliefs in education. In Part 1; 'Why we're wrong', David dismantles what we think we know; examining cognitive traps and biases, assumptions, gut feelings and the problem of evidence. Part 2 delves deeper - 'Through the threshold' - looking at progress, liminality and threshold concepts, the science of learning, and the difference between novices and experts. In Part 3, David asks us the question 'What could we do differently?' and offers some considered insights into spacing and interleaving, the testing effect, the generation effect, reducing feedback and why difficult is desirable. While Part 4 challenges us to consider 'What else might we be getting wrong?'; cogitating formative assessment, lesson observation, grit and growth, differentiation, praise, motivation and creativity.
The Baby Chase: An Adventure in Fertility
Holly Finn - 2011
“I smoked in my twenties. I preferred red wine to sparkling water. I ate too much milk chocolate. I liked limericks. I know all the wrong I’ve done. But also, more than any of that, I’ve always longed for children.” Yet there she was: successful, social, mostly happy, and not a mother. Knowing that her chances of becoming pregnant naturally were quickly fading, Finn decided to gamble: she—like some 85,000 other women in the U.S. each year—would attempt in vitro fertilization. Almost three years later, she’s still trying, and in the process has become an accidental pioneer (and, at times, a guinea pig) in the ever-evolving science of IVF.“The Baby Chase” is a primer for anyone contemplating or undergoing IVF. More than that, it’s a story of longing, hope—and hormones—that will appeal to all parents, present and future.Finn’s engaging and honest account sheds light on a subject that few people who undergo IFV are willing to talk about: what happens when the science doesn’t work. “Usually, it’s only the people who come out on the other side, beaming, with a baby on one hip, who speak up about IVF,” she writes. “We never hear from those IVF has failed - it’s too crushing to talk about. We don’t hear from men and women in the middle of treatment, either.... People like me.”
AWS Lambda: A Guide to Serverless Microservices
Matthew Fuller - 2016
Lambda enables users to develop code that executes in response to events - API calls, file uploads, schedules, etc - and upload it without worrying about managing traditional server metrics such as disk space, memory, or CPU usage. With its "per execution" cost model, Lambda can enable organizations to save hundreds or thousands of dollars on computing costs. With in-depth walkthroughs, large screenshots, and complete code samples, the reader is guided through the step-by-step process of creating new functions, responding to infrastructure events, developing API backends, executing code at specified intervals, and much more. Introduction to AWS Computing Evolution of the Computing Workload Lambda Background The Internals The Basics Functions Languages Resource Allocation Getting Set Up Hello World Uploading the Function Working with Events AWS Events Custom Events The Context Object Properties Methods Roles and Permissions Policies Trust Relationships Console Popups Cross Account Access Dependencies and Resources Node Modules OS Dependencies OS Resources OS Commands Logging Searching Logs Testing Your Function Lambda Console Tests Third-Party Testing Libraries Simulating Context Hello S3 Object The Bucket The Role The Code The Event The Trigger Testing When Lambda Isn’t the Answer Host Access Fine-Tuned Configuration Security Long-Running Tasks Where Lambda Excels AWS Event-Driven Tasks Scheduled Events (Cron) Offloading Heavy Processing API Endpoints Infrequently Used Services Real-World Use Cases S3 Image Processing Shutting Down Untagged Instances Triggering CodeDeploy with New S3 Uploads Processing Inbound Email Enforcing Security Policies Detecting Expiring Certificates Utilizing the AWS API Execution Environment The Code Pipeline Cold vs. Hot Execution What is Saved in Memory Scaling and Container Reuse From Development to Deployment Application Design Development Patterns Testing Deployment Monitoring Versioning and Aliasing Costs Short Executions Long-Running Processes High-Memory Applications Free Tier Calculating Pricing CloudFormation Reusable Template with Minimum Permissions Cross Account Access CloudWatch Alerts AWS API Gateway API Gateway Event Creating the Lambda Function Creating a New API, Resource, and Method Initial Configuration Mapping Templates Adding a Query String Using HTTP Request Information Within Lambda Deploying the API Additional Use Cases Lambda Competitors Iron.io StackHut WebTask.io Existing Cloud Providers The Future of Lambda More Resources Conclusion
Journal with Purpose: Over 1000 Motifs, Alphabets and Icons to Personalize Your Bullet or Dot Journal
Helen Colebrook - 2019
Copy or trace direct from the page, or follow one of the quick exercises to improve your skills. Featuring all the journal elements you could wish for - banners, arrows, dividers, scrolls, icons, borders and alphabets - this amazing value book will be a constant source of inspiration for journaling and an 'instant fix' for people who find the more artistic side of journaling a challenge.
Fluency Made Easy
Ikenna D. Obi
Learn how to reach fluency in your goal language fast, fun and easily.
Ancestors in Our Genome: The New Science of Human Evolution
Eugene E. Harris - 2014
Since then, we have sequenced the full genomes of a number of mankind's primate relatives at a remarkable rate. The genomes of the common chimpanzee(2005) and bonobo (2012), orangutan (2011), gorilla (2012), and macaque monkey (2007) have already been identified, and the determination of other primate genomes is well underway. Researchers are beginning to unravel our full genomic history, comparing it with closely related species to answerage-old questions about how and when we evolved. For the first time, we are finding our own ancestors in our genome and are thereby gleaning new information about our evolutionary past.In Ancestors in Our Genome, molecular anthropologist Eugene E. Harris presents us with a complete and up-to-date account of the evolution of the human genome and our species. Written from the perspective of population genetics, and in simple terms, the book traces human origins back to their sourceamong our earliest human ancestors, and explains many of the most intriguing questions that genome scientists are currently working to answer. For example, what does the high level of discordance among the gene trees of humans and the African great apes tell us about our respective separations fromour common ancestor? Was our separation from the apes fast or slow, and when and why did it occur? Where, when, and how did our modern species evolve? How do we search across genomes to find the genomic underpinnings of our large and complex brains and language abilities? How can we find the genomicbases for life at high altitudes, for lactose tolerance, resistance to disease, and for our different skin pigmentations? How and when did we interbreed with Neandertals and the recently discovered ancient Denisovans of Asia? Harris draws upon extensive experience researching primate evolution inorder to deliver a lively and thorough history of human evolution. Ancestors in Our Genome is the most complete discussion of our current understanding of the human genome available.
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks: Young Adult Edition
Gregory Mone - 2013
Henrietta Lacks was a poor Southern tobacco farmer whose cervical cancer cells taken without her knowledge in 1951 treatment, have been vital in fighting polio, cancer, and viruses. Topics are race, bioethics, research, rights, family, and whether we control our cells.
You Bet Your Life: From Blood Transfusions to Mass Vaccination, the Long and Risky History of Medical Innovation
Paul A. Offit - 2021
In You Bet Your Life, physician Paul A. Offit argues that, from the first blood transfusions four hundred years ago to the hunt for a COVID-19 vaccine, risk has been essential to the discovery of new treatments. More importantly, understanding the risks is crucial to whether, as a society or as individuals, we accept them. Told in Offit’s vigorous and rigorous style, You Bet Your Life is an entertaining history of medicine. But it also lays bare the tortured relationships between intellectual breakthroughs, political realities, and human foibles. Our pandemic year has shown us, with its debates over lockdowns, masks, and vaccines, how easy it is to get everything wrong. You Bet Your Life is an essential read for getting the future a bit more right.
21 Habits of Highly Broke People: Break Free From Destructive Habits With Practical Steps To Turn Your Finances Around
Dipo Adesina - 2018
It is a direct result of bad choices made overtime that eventually turned into habits that masters you. Like a thermostat, once these habits are set, it becomes nearly impossible to break them without deliberate and intentional effort. 21 Habits of Highly Broke People dives into details on the habits that keeps people poor, and practical action steps you can take to break free from these habits. 21 Habits of Highly Broke People shows you: 1. How your choices about money is keeping you broke. 2. What the rich do differently from the poor. 3. How to break bad habits and replace them with positive habits.
100 Questions Every First-Time Home Buyer Should Ask: 4th Edition
Ilyce R. Glink - 2018
It will be the place where you plant your roots, come home after a long day, raise a family, or make a successful investment. But how, with everything from student loans and an uncertain marketplace stacked against you, do you get to that idyllic future? In 100 Questions Every First-Time Home Buyer Should Ask, Ilyce Glink, one of the most trusted names in real estate, answers all of your questions about home buying--and some you didn't know you had--and takes you on a personal journey from open houses to moving day. Weaving together advice from top brokers around the country with illustrative stories and her own unparalleled expertise, 100 Questions is a one-stop shop to getting the home of your dreams.