Neural Networks and their implementation decoded with TensorFlow About This Book Develop a strong background in neural network programming from scratch, using the popular Tensorflow library. Use Tensorflow to implement different kinds of neural networks – from simple feedforward neural networks to multilayered perceptrons, CNNs, RNNs and more. A highly practical guide including real-world datasets and use-cases to simplify your understanding of neural networks and their implementation. Who This Book Is For This book is meant for developers with a statistical background who want to work with neural networks. Though we will be using TensorFlow as the underlying library for neural networks, book can be used as a generic resource to bridge the gap between the math and the implementation of deep learning. If you have some understanding of Tensorflow and Python and want to learn what happens at a level lower than the plain API syntax, this book is for you. What You Will Learn Learn Linear Algebra and mathematics behind neural network. Dive deep into Neural networks from the basic to advanced concepts like CNN, RNN Deep Belief Networks, Deep Feedforward Networks. Explore Optimization techniques for solving problems like Local minima, Global minima, Saddle points Learn through real world examples like Sentiment Analysis. Train different types of generative models and explore autoencoders. Explore TensorFlow as an example of deep learning implementation. In Detail If you're aware of the buzz surrounding the terms such as "machine learning," "artificial intelligence," or "deep learning," you might know what neural networks are. Ever wondered how they help in solving complex computational problem efficiently, or how to train efficient neural networks? This book will teach you just that. You will start by getting a quick overview of the popular TensorFlow library and how it is used to train different neural networks. You will get a thorough understanding of the fundamentals and basic math for neural networks and why TensorFlow is a popular choice Then, you will proceed to implement a simple feed forward neural network. Next you will master optimization techniques and algorithms for neural networks using TensorFlow. Further, you will learn to implement some more complex types of neural networks such as convolutional neural networks, recurrent neural networks, and Deep Belief Networks. In the course of the book, you will be working on real-world datasets to get a hands-on understanding of neural network programming. You will also get to train generative models and will learn the applications of autoencoders. By the end of this book, you will have a fair understanding of how you can leverage the power of TensorFlow to train neural networks of varying complexities, without any hassle. While you are learning about various neural network implementations you will learn the underlying mathematics and linear algebra and how they map to the appropriate TensorFlow constructs. Style and Approach This book is designed to give you just the right number of concepts to back up the examples. With real-world use cases and problems solved, this book is a handy guide for you. Each concept is backed by a generic and real-world problem, followed by a variation, making you independent and able to solve any problem with neural networks. All of the content is demystified by a simple and straightforward approach.

Introducing modular techniques for building sophisticated programs using PythonAbout This Book·The book would help you develop succinct, expressive programs using modular deign·The book would explain best practices and common idioms through carefully explained and structured examples·It will have broad appeal as far as target audience is concerned and there would be take away for all beginners to PythonWho This Book Is ForThis book is intended for beginner to intermediate level Python programmers who wish to learn how to use modules and packages within their programs. While readers must understand the basics of Python programming, no knowledge of modular programming techniques is required.What You Will Learn·Learn how to use modules and packages to organize your Python code·Understand how to use the import statement to load modules and packages into your program·Use common module patterns such as abstraction and encapsulation to write better programs·Discover how to create self-testing Python packages·Create reusable modules that other programmers can use·Learn how to use GitHub and the Python Package Index to share your code with other people·Make use of modules and packages that others have written·Use modular techniques to build robust systems that can handle complexity and changing requirements over timeIn DetailPython has evolved over the years and has become the primary choice of developers in various fields. The purpose of this book is to help readers develop readable, reliable, and maintainable programs in Python.Starting with an introduction to the concept of modules and packages, this book shows how you can use these building blocks to organize a complex program into logical parts and make sure those parts are working correctly together.Using clearly written, real-world examples, this book demonstrates how you can use modular techniques to build better programs. A number of common modular programming patterns are covered, including divide-and-conquer, abstraction, encapsulation, wrappers and extensibility. You will also learn how to test your modules and packages, how to prepare your code for sharing with other people, and how to publish your modules and packages on GitHub and the Python Package Index so that other people can use them. Finally, you will learn how to use modular design techniques to be a more effective programmer.Style and approachThis book will be simple and straightforward, focusing on imparting learning through a wide array of examples that the readers can put into use as they read through the book. They should not only be able to understand the way modules help in improving development, but they should also be able to improvise on their techniques of writing concise and effective code.

A practical guide to rapidly and efficiently mastering Docker containers, along with tips and tricks learned in the field.About This Book·Use Docker containers, horizontal node scaling, modern orchestration tools (Docker Swarm, Kubernetes, and Mesos) and Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery to manage your infrastructure.·Increase service density by turning often-idle machines into hosts for numerous Docker services.·Learn what it takes to build a true container infrastructure that is scalable, reliable, and resilient in the face of increased complexities from using container infrastructures.·Find out how to identify, debug, and mitigate most real-world, undocumented issues when deploying your own Docker infrastructure.·Learn tips and tricks of the trade from existing Docker infrastructures running in production environments.Who This Book Is ForThis book is aimed at system administrators, developers, DevOps engineers, and software engineers who want to get concrete, hands-on experience deploying multi-tier web applications and containerized microservices using Docker. This book is also for anyone who has worked on deploying services in some fashion and wants to take their small-scale setups to the next level (or simply to learn more about the process).What You Will Learn·Set up a working development environment and create a simple web service to demonstrate the basics·Learn how to make your service more usable by adding a database and an app server to process logic·Add resilience to your services by learning how to horizontally scale with a few containers on a single node·Master layering isolation and messaging to simplify and harden the connectivity between containers·Learn about numerous issues encountered at scale and their workarounds, from the kernel up to code versioning·Automate the most important parts of your infrastructure with continuous integrationIn DetailDeploying Docker into production is considered to be one of the major pain points in developing large-scale infrastructures, and the documentation available online leaves a lot to be desired. With this book, you will learn everything you wanted to know to effectively scale your deployments globally and build a resilient, scalable, and containerized cloud platform for your own use.The book starts by introducing you to the containerization ecosystem with some concrete and easy-to-digest examples; after that, you will delve into examples of launching multiple instances of the same container. From there, you will cover orchestration, multi-node setups, volumes, and almost every relevant component of this new approach to deploying services. Using intertwined approaches, the book will cover battle-tested tooling, or issues likely to be encountered in real-world scenarios, in detail. You will also learn about the other supporting components required for a true PaaS deployment and discover common options to tie the whole infrastructure together.At the end of the book, you learn to build a small, but functional, PaaS (to appreciate the power of the containerized service approach) and continue to explore real-world approaches to implementing even larger global-scale services.Style and approachThis in-depth learning guide shows you how to deploy your applications in production using Docker (from the basic steps to advanced concepts) and how to overcome challenges in Docker-based infrastructures. The book also covers practical use-cases in real-world examples, and provides tips and tricks on the various topics.

Get your statistics basics right before diving into the world of data science About This Book No need to take a degree in statistics, read this book and get a strong statistics base for data science and real-world programs; Implement statistics in data science tasks such as data cleaning, mining, and analysis Learn all about probability, statistics, numerical computations, and more with the help of R programs Who This Book Is For This book is intended for those developers who are willing to enter the field of data science and are looking for concise information of statistics with the help of insightful programs and simple explanation. Some basic hands on R will be useful. What You Will Learn Analyze the transition from a data developer to a data scientist mindset Get acquainted with the R programs and the logic used for statistical computations Understand mathematical concepts such as variance, standard deviation, probability, matrix calculations, and more Learn to implement statistics in data science tasks such as data cleaning, mining, and analysis Learn the statistical techniques required to perform tasks such as linear regression, regularization, model assessment, boosting, SVMs, and working with neural networks Get comfortable with performing various statistical computations for data science programmatically In Detail Data science is an ever-evolving field, which is growing in popularity at an exponential rate. Data science includes techniques and theories extracted from the fields of statistics; computer science, and, most importantly, machine learning, databases, data visualization, and so on. This book takes you through an entire journey of statistics, from knowing very little to becoming comfortable in using various statistical methods for data science tasks. It starts off with simple statistics and then move on to statistical methods that are used in data science algorithms. The R programs for statistical computation are clearly explained along with logic. You will come across various mathematical concepts, such as variance, standard deviation, probability, matrix calculations, and more. You will learn only what is required to implement statistics in data science tasks such as data cleaning, mining, and analysis. You will learn the statistical techniques required to perform tasks such as linear regression, regularization, model assessment, boosting, SVMs, and working with neural networks. By the end of the book, you will be comfortable with performing various statistical computations for data science programmatically. Style and approach Step by step comprehensive guide with real world examples

Master the art of creating impressive and reactive UIs for mobile applications on the latest version of Android Oreo. About This Book A comprehensive guide to designing and developing highly interactive user interfaces for your app. Design responsive and agile applications targeting multiple Android devices (up to Android Oreo) using Android Studio 3.0 Write reactive user interfaces with minimal effort by leveraging the latest Android technologies, such as Architecture components and the Lifecycle API Avoid common design problems and pitfalls with the help of shared UI design patterns and best practices. Who This Book Is For This book is for novice Android and Java developers who have a basic knowledge of Android development and want to start developing stunning user interfaces. What You Will Learn Create effective and efficient user interfaces that allow users to carry out tasks smoothly Understand the fundamentals of Android UI design, and take a look at the basic layouts, Inputs, and controls Learn about various UI components provided by Android, which include structured layout objects and UI controls that allow you to build the graphical user interface for your app Explore various styles and themes that allow you to customize the look and feel of your app Leverage the animation and graphics APIs to improve user experience and draw custom 2D graphics In Detail A great user interface (UI) can spell the difference between success and failure for any new application. This book will show you not just how to code great UIs, but how to design them as well. It will take novice Android developers on a journey, showing them how to leverage the Android platform to produce stunning Android applications. Begin with the basics of creating Android applications and then move on to topics such as screen and layout design. Next, learn about techniques that will help improve performance for your application. Also, explore how to create reactive applications that are fast, animated, and guide the user toward their goals with minimal distraction. Understand Android architecture components and learn how to build your application to automatically respond to changes made by the user. Great platforms are not always enough, so this book also focuses on creating custom components, layout managers, and 2D graphics. Also, explore many tips and best practices to ease your UI development process. By the end, you'll be able to design and build not only amazing UIs, but also systems that provide the best possible user experience. Style and approach This book takes an easy tutorial approach to help you learn how to create consistent and efficient user interfaces for your apps. The book first takes you through the basics of user interfaces such as basic layouts, inputs, and controls, and also covers animations and graphics. By the end of the book, you will have learned best practices and will be able to develop inspired interfaces that look good and also work subtly in the background.

Your quick, no-nonsense guide to building real-world apps with Angular 2About This Book·The first and best overview of Angular 2 on the market—this guide gathers together everything there is to know about Angular 2 and groups it into intuitive sections.·This book is your detailed map of every feature and its use cases.·The author has done all the hard work of fitting everything Angular 2 means for developers together for you, making this book the quickest way to learn Angular 2 from scratch.Who This Book Is ForThis book is targeted at web developers who want to build the next generation of state-of-the-art mobile and desktop web applications with Angular 2. This book does not require you to have prior exposure to either Angular 1.x or 2, although comprehensive knowledge of JavaScript is assumed. It's great for newcomers to Angular who learn best through clear explanations and definitions of concepts.What You Will Learn·Set up your working environment in order to have all the tools you need to start building Angular 2 components with minimum effort·Get up to speed with TypeScript, a powerful typed superset of JavaScript that compiles to plain JavaScript·Take full control of how your data is rendered and updated upon data changes·Build powerful web applications based on structured component hierarchies that emit and listen to events and data changes throughout the elements tree·Explore how to consume external APIs and data services and allow data editing by harnessing the power of web forms made with Angular 2·Deliver seamless web navigation experiences with application routing and state handling common features with ease·Discover how to bulletproof your applications by introducing smart unit testing techniques and debugging toolsIn DetailAngular 2 was conceived as a complete rewrite in order to fulfill the expectations of modern developers who demand blazing fast performance and responsiveness from their web applications.This book will help you learn the basics of how to design and build Angular 2 components right from the beginning, providing full coverage of the TypeScript syntax required to follow the examples included. From that point on, we will build upon our first components, interconnect them, and give shape to larger web applications. We will then move to implementing routing in Angular 2, analyzing how to handle application states, and navigating from one component to another in depth. After this, the book features full coverage of web forms and user input validation, later leveraging all of this information to go through the basics of implementing user authentication in Angular 2 and providing a bird's eye view of the different strategies at hand to secure pages and areas of your website. Animating components and DOM elements with Angular 2 is also covered in this book. The final part of this book provides broad insights into how to unit test components and other modules such as services, directives, routes or pipes.Style and approachThis book covers everything there is to know about getting well-acquainted with Angular without bogging you down. Everything is neatly laid out under clear headings for quick consultation, offering you the information required to understand a concept immediately, with short relevant examples of each feature.

New York Times bestselling author Elmore Leonard's U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens is the mesmerizing hero of numerous books and the hit FX series Justified. Now the first three Raylan books—Pronto, Riding the Rap, and Fire in the Hole—are together in one ebook, along with an excerpt from Raylan, the brand new novel in the series.

Recommended for viewing on a colour tablet. South America has long been known for its bountiful flora and fauna. The richness in bird life has attracted visitors from all over the world and has helped to make South America an increasingly popular wildlife tourist spot. This major new field guide to the birds of South America covers all the passerines (perching birds), with all plumages for each species illustrated, including males, females and juveniles. The text gives information on key identification features, habitat, and songs and calls. Beautiful artwork featured across 195 colour plates appears opposite the relevant text for quick and easy reference. Distribution maps are included, showing where each species can be found and how common it is, to further aid identification.

Available together for the first time—all three books in the #1?New York Times?bestselling Divergent trilogy, plus the companion volume told from the perspective of the immensely popular character Tobias. Perfect for established fans who want to own the full Divergent library or readers new to the series, this ebook bundle includes?Divergent,?Insurgent,?Allegiant, and?Four: A Divergent Collection.Divergent: One choice can transform you. Veronica Roth's #1?New York Times?bestselling debut is a gripping dystopian tale of electrifying choices, powerful consequences, unexpected romance, and a deeply flawed "perfect society."Insurgent: One choice can destroy you. Veronica Roth's second #1?New York Times?bestseller continues the dystopian thrill ride. As war surges in the factions all around her, Tris attempts to save those she loves—and herself—while grappling with haunting questions of grief and forgiveness, identity and loyalty, politics and love.Allegiant: The explosive conclusion to Veronica Roth's #1?New York Times?bestselling Divergent trilogy reveals the secrets of the dystopian world that has captivated millions of readers.Four: A Divergent Collection: A companion volume to the worldwide bestselling Divergent series, told from the perspective of Tobias. The four pieces included—"The Transfer," "The Initiate," "The Son," and "The Traitor"—plus three additional exclusive scenes, give readers a fascinating glimpse into the history and heart of Tobias, and set the stage for the epic saga of the Divergent trilogy.

In 1915, western farmers mounted one of the most significant challenges to party politics America has seen: the Nonpartisan League, which sought to empower citizens and restrain corporate influence. Before its collapse in the 1920s, the League counted over 250,000 paying members, spread to thirteen states and two Canadian provinces, controlled North Dakota's state government, and birthed new farmer-labor alliances. Yet today it is all but forgotten, neglected even by scholars.Michael J. Lansing aims to change that. Insurgent Democracy offers a new look at the Nonpartisan League and a new way to understand its rise and fall in the United States and Canada. Lansing argues that, rather than a spasm of populist rage that inevitably burned itself out, the story of the League is in fact an instructive example of how popular movements can create lasting change. Depicting the League as a transnational response to economic inequity, Lansing not only resurrects its story of citizen activism, but also allows us to see its potential to inform contemporary movements.

As with any enterprise involving violence and lots of money, running a plantation in early British America was a serious and brutal enterprise. Beyond resources and weapons, a plantation required a significant force of cruel and rapacious men-men who, as Trevor Burnard sees it, lacked any better options for making money. In the contentious Planters, Merchants, and Slaves, Burnard argues that white men did not choose to develop and maintain the plantation system out of virulent racism or sadism, but rather out of economic logic because-to speak bluntly-it worked.These economically successful and ethically monstrous plantations required racial divisions to exist, but their successes were always measured in gold, rather than skin or blood. Burnard argues that the best example of plantations functioning as intended is not those found in the fractious and poor North American colonies, but those in their booming and integrated commercial hub, Jamaica. Sure to be controversial, this book is a major intervention in the scholarship on slavery, economic development, and political power in early British America, mounting a powerful and original argument that boldly challenges historical orthodoxy.

At the close of the Second World War, modernist poets found themselves in an increasingly scientific world, where natural and social sciences claimed exclusive rights to knowledge of both matter and mind. Following the overthrow of the Newtonian worldview and the recent, shocking displays of the power of the atom, physics led the way, with other disciplines often turning to the methods and discoveries of physics for inspiration.?In Physics Envy, Peter Middleton examines the influence of science, particularly physics, on American poetry since World War II. He focuses on such diverse poets as Charles Olson, Muriel Rukeyser, Amiri Baraka, and Rae Armantrout, among others, revealing how the methods and language of contemporary natural and social sciences-and even the discourse of the leading popular science magazine Scientific American-shaped their work. The relationship, at times, extended in the other direction as well: leading physicists such as Robert Oppenheimer, Werner Heisenberg, and Erwin Schrdinger were interested in whether poetry might help them explain the strangeness of the new, quantum world. Physics Envy is a history of science and poetry that shows how ultimately each serves to illuminate the other in its quest for the true nature of things.

The history of slavery in early America is a history of suicide. On ships crossing the Atlantic, enslaved men and women refused to eat or leaped into the ocean. They strangled or hanged themselves. They tore open their own throats. In America, they jumped into rivers or out of windows, or even ran into burning buildings. Faced with the reality of enslavement, countless Africans chose death instead.In The Power to Die, Terri L. Snyder excavates the history of slave suicide, returning it to its central place in early American history. How did people-traders, plantation owners, and, most importantly, enslaved men and women themselves-view and understand these deaths, and how did they affect understandings of the institution of slavery then and nowSnyder draws on ships' logs, surgeons' journals, judicial and legislative records, newspaper accounts, abolitionist propaganda and slave narratives, and many other sources to build a grim picture of slavery's toll and detail the ways in which suicide exposed the contradictions of slavery, serving as a powerful indictment that resonated throughout the Anglo-Atlantic world and continues to speak to historians today.

In this beautifully conceived book, Ayesha Ramachandran reconstructs the imaginative struggles of early modern artists, philosophers, and writers to make sense of something that we take for granted: the world, imagined as a whole. Once a new, exciting, and frightening concept, "e;the world"e; was transformed in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. But how could one envision something that no one had ever seen in its totalityThe Worldmakers moves beyond histories of globalization to explore how "e;the world"e; itself-variously understood as an object of inquiry, a comprehensive category, and a system of order-was self-consciously shaped by human agents. Gathering an international cast of characters, from Dutch cartographers and French philosophers to Portuguese and English poets, Ramachandran describes a history of firsts: the first world atlas, the first global epic, the first modern attempt to develop a systematic natural philosophy-all part of an effort by early modern thinkers to capture "e;the world"e; on the page.

What species occur where, and why, and why some places harbor more species than others are basic questions for ecologists. Some species simply live in different places: fish live underwater; birds do not. Adaptations follow: most fish have gills; birds have lungs. But as Patterns in Nature reveals, not all patterns are so trivial.Travel from island to island and the species change. Travel along any gradient-up a mountain, from forest into desert, from low tide to high tide on a shoreline -and again the species change, sometimes abruptly. What explains the patterns of these distributionsSome patterns might be as random as a coin toss. But as with a coin toss, can ecologists differentiate associations caused by a multiplicity of complex, idiosyncratic factors from those structured by some unidentified but simple mechanismsCan simple mechanisms that structure communities be inferred from observations of which species associations naturally occurFor decades, community ecologists have debated about whether the patterns are random or show the geographically pervasive effect of competition between species. Bringing this vigorous debate up to date, this book undertakes the identification and interpretation of nature's large-scale patterns of species co-occurrence to offer insight into how nature truly works.Patterns in Nature explains the computing and conceptual advances that allow us to explore these issues. It forces us to reexamine assumptions about species distribution patterns and will be of vital importance to ecologists and conservationists alike.

For decades, James Joyce's modernism has overshadowed his Irishness, as his self-imposed exile and association with the high modernism of Europe's urban centers has led critics to see him almost exclusively as a cosmopolitan figure.In Joyce's Ghosts, Luke Gibbons mounts a powerful argument that this view is mistaken: Joyce's Irishness is intrinsic to his modernism, informing his most distinctive literary experiments. Ireland, Gibbons shows, is not just a source of subject matter or content for Joyce, but of form itself. Joyce's stylistic innovations can be traced at least as much to the tragedies of Irish history as to the shock of European modernity, as he explores the incomplete project of inner life under colonialism. Joyce's language, Gibbons reveals, is haunted by ghosts, less concerned with the stream of consciousness than with a vernacular interior dialogue, the "e;shout in the street,"e; that gives room to outside voices and shadowy presences, the disruptions of a late colonial?culture in crisis.Showing us how memory under modernism breaks free of the nightmare of history, and how in doing so it gives birth to new forms, Gibbons forces us to think anew about Joyce's achievement and its foundations.

How did flying birds evolve from running dinosaurs, terrestrial trotting tetrapods evolve from swimming fish, and whales return to swim in the seaThese are some of the great transformations in the 500-million-year history of vertebrate life. And with the aid of new techniques and approaches across a range of fields-work spanning multiple levels of biological organization from DNA sequences to organs and the physiology and ecology of whole organisms-we are now beginning to unravel the confounding evolutionary mysteries contained in the structure, genes, and fossil record of every living species.This book gathers a diverse team of renowned scientists to capture the excitement of these new discoveries in a collection that is both accessible to students and an important contribution to the future of its field. Marshaling a range of disciplines-from paleobiology to phylogenetics, developmental biology, ecology, and evolutionary biology-the contributors attack particular transformations in the head and neck, trunk, appendages such as fins and limbs, and the whole body, as well as offer synthetic perspectives. Illustrated throughout, Great Transformations in Vertebrate Evolution not only reveals the true origins of whales with legs, fish with elbows, wrists, and necks, and feathered dinosaurs, but also the relevance to our lives today of these extraordinary narratives of change.

In the aftermath of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, residents of the city's iconic Mission District bucked the city-wide development plan, defiantly announcing that in their neighborhood, they would be calling the shots. Ever since, the Mission has become known as a city within a city, and a place where residents have, over the last century, organized and reorganized themselves to make the neighborhood in their own image.In Making the Mission, Ocean Howell tells the story of how residents of the Mission District organized to claim the right to plan their own neighborhood and how they mobilized a politics of place and ethnicity to create a strong, often racialized identity-a pattern that would repeat itself again and again throughout the twentieth century. Surveying the perspectives of formal and informal groups, city officials and district residents, local and federal agencies, Howell articulates how these actors worked with and against one another to establish the very ideas of the public and the public interest, as well as to negotiate and renegotiate what the neighborhood wanted. In the process, he shows that national narratives about how cities grow and change are fundamentally insufficient; everything is always shaped by local actors and concerns.

During the Great Recession, the housing bubble took much of the blame for bringing the American economy to its knees, but commercial real estate also experienced its own boom-and-bust in the same time period. In Chicago, for example, law firms and corporate headquarters abandoned their historic downtown office buildings for the millions of brand-new square feet that were built elsewhere in the central business district. What causes construction booms like this, and why do they so often leave a glut of vacant space and economic distress in their wake?In From Boom to Bubble, Rachel Weber debunks the idea that booms occur only when cities are growing and innovating. Instead, she argues, even in cities experiencing employment and population decline, developers rush to erect new office towers and apartment buildings when they have financial incentives to do so. Focusing on the main causes of overbuilding during the early 2000s, Weber documents the case of Chicago's "e;Millennial Boom,"e; showing that the Loop's expansion was a response to global and local pressures to produce new assets. An influx of cheap cash, made available through the use of complex financial instruments, helped transform what started as a boom grounded in modest occupant demand into a speculative bubble, where pricing and supply had only tenuous connections to the market. Innovative and compelling, From Boom to Bubble is an unprecedented historical, sociological, and geographic look at how property markets change and fail-and how that affects cities.

The eighty-nine cetacean species that swim our seas and rivers are as diverse as they are intelligent and elusive, from the hundred-foot-long, two-hundred-ton blue whale to the lesser-known tucuxi, ginkgo-toothed beaked whale, and diminutive, critically endangered vaquita. The huge distances these highly migratory creatures cover and the depths they dive mean we catch only the merest glimpses of their lives as they break the surface of the water. But thanks to the marriage of science and technology, we are now beginning to understand their anatomy, complex social structures, extraordinary communication abilities, and behavioral patterns. In this beautifully illustrated guide, renowned marine mammalogist Annalisa Berta draws on the contributions of a pod of fellow whale biologists to present the most comprehensive, authoritative overview ever published of these remarkable aquatic mammals.Opening with an accessible rundown of cetacean biology-including the most recent science on feeding, mating, and communication-Whales, Dolphins, and Porpoises then presents species-specific natural history on a range of topics, from anatomy and diet to distribution and conservation status. Each entry also includes original drawings of the species and its key identifiers, such as fin shape and color, tooth shape, and characteristic markings as they would appear both above and below water-a feature unique to this book.Figures of myth and-as the debate over hunting rages on-figures of conflict since long before the days of Moby-Dick, whales, dolphins, and porpoises are also ecologically important and, in many cases, threatened. Written for general enthusiasts, emergent cetacean fans, and biologists alike, this stunning, urgently needed book will serve as the definitive guide for years to come.

How to Use Community Health Assessment to Reduce the Burden of HIV and AIDS Worldwide