During the 16:th to 18:th centuries the art of distilling plants had grown to become an every-day matter. Every mansion had its own distillery and the pharmacies of the time distilled essential oils for medicinal purposes. The doctor would make out a recipe, and the pharmacies would blend the medicines.

In this time herbal medicine grew immensely with the founding of the Royal Society in Britain, the plant classifications by Linnaeus and the great herbals by, amongst others, Culpeper, Gerard and Parkinson. By the end of the 18:th century, essential oils were widely used in medicine alongside herbs, essential oils being the strongest form of medicine in existence.

The late 19:th and early 20:th century saw the flourishing of chemistry as a discipline. As plant cures and essential oils could be synthesized in a laboratory – the cures both stronger and faster in action, essential oils began to lose their place in the pharmacopoeiae.

In the early 1900’s a French chemist, René-Maurice Gattefossé – the father of aromatherapy, rediscovered the effectiveness of essential oils when he after a severe burn dipped his hand in pure lavender-oil and noted the speed of recovery; the pain was instantly subdued, there was no infection nor scarring. This made him devote himself to the study of esssential oils. He discovered that the oils could penetrate the skin to access the blood-stream and chemically interact with the chemistry of the body. In 1937 he published the book “L’aromathérapie” that became the first textbook on essential oils.

Dr. Jean Valnet followed in Gattefossé’s footsteps. He was an army-doctor during WW2. As antibiotics were hard to come by in wartime, he used essential oils with great success. After the war he opened a clinic where he success-fully used essential oils for both physical and psychological healing. Much of his work was based on the antiseptic properties of essential oils. In 1964 Dr Valnet published a book; “Aromathérapie se soigner par les essences de plantes”.

At this stage aromatherapy began popping up all over Europe; Italian doctors Gatti and Cojola start researching the psychological effects of essential oils in the 20:s; In the 70:s their work was followed up by Professor Paolo Rovesti at the University of Milan.

Mme Maury, an Austrian cosmetologist, introduced the idea of massage combined with essential oils in the 50:s. Not being a doctor, she was looking for other ways of administering the essential oils. By blending – or diluting – them with vegetable oil, the resulting blend was milder and could be used directly on the skin without irritating it. Most of her clients were healthy women that wanted beauty-treatments and the results of the aromatherapy was astounding; not only did it make the skin look better, it also had other effects such as relief from rheumathic pain, stronger libido, better and deeper sleep and an overall mood-enhancing effect. In the early 60:s Mme Maury opened her first clinic in London where she also held workshops and training. Some well-known names trained for her in the late 70:s; Robert Tisserand, Shirley Price and Patricia Davis are some of them.

The final break-through for aromatherapy as a valued alternative health practice came in the late 80:s and early 90:s when it finally became a recognized profession in many countries. In Britain and Sweden the training is state-supported and sometimes subsidized.

A large part of supplementary college expenses can be summoned up in one word: Textbooks. Granted, it’s not as costly as the actual tuition fee, but it can still rack up a pretty hefty price, ranging from US$5 to US$200. Per book. So during my freshman year, when I was still very naive, I coughed up around US$550 for all my textbooks. Then I (re)discovered something amazing – I don’t actually have to buy the books! No, this isn’t a confession. I merely use the library to check out all the books I need for class. My school even has an i-share library system where you can borrow books from around 40-50 other libraries at other colleges, so I don’t need to spend a cent on books. Perhaps the reason why it’s so awesome is because it’s got an “i” in front of “share”? Heh. Go Mac. Anyway, I’ve probably saved around $2500 by now, if you don’t include all the books I used for research. Thank God for i-share. Thank God for libraries.

Have a Happy Thanksgiving (sorry, US only)!

I have been always thinking to publish our research work for an Indian audience. Atleast in India, the community of educationists, teachers, etc., get to know what we are working on. With this objective, I had
submitted some preliminary findings of my Ph.D. work to an Indian Journal. The following research paper has been published in the Indian Educational Review (a journal published by NCERT).

Kharatmal M. (2009): Concept Mapping for Eliciting Students’ Understanding of Science. Indian Educational
Review. 45(2), pp.31-43.

The article is on display in our library. I have also uploaded the article which can be downloaded from the publications page of my blog

I happen to visit the vishwakosh (encyclopedia) office in vai on 7th nov. I was really glad to interact with the people and look at the interesting and resourceful library of classic collection and encyclopedia. It is worth visiting the library. Prof. H.C.Pradhan was discussing with Mr. Chaunde related to the biology encyclopedia.  Since i had some curiousity about it which i have also mentioned in my earlier post related to change in biological terms, I participated in their discusison. Chaunde was showing how they are managing the entries, the usage of sorting cards. The information on the sorting cards display the name of the term and also a related entry with see also. In this way, they are now trying to embedd the terms which are introduced in the textbooks. It seems that the vishwakosh project began about five years ago, the list of entries was decided but the textbook committee have overlooked this project and hence there has been discrepancies in the names of the terms. But even this problem is being handled by the vishwakosh. They are really meticulously taking care of such issues.

Over a cup of coffee, Chaunde shared his experiences about peoples responses to their work. Overall, I was satisfied with this meet, cos my quest of finding the rationale behind the change in the terms was a bit resolved.

Is it permissible for a mother to be completely unaware of the developmental sequences and the importance of developmental milestones?  I understand that not everyone reads early childhood development textbooks (mine’s full of strange multicultural anecdotes that just underscore how hard it’s trying to be multicultural), but don’t commonly found and purchased books like What to Expect the __ Year explain the basics of if your spawn is X months, you should be seeing such and such and if at Y months you don’t, then bring that to the attention of your ped?

California can’t have infant milestones totally off those of MD.  There’s just no way that a state which leads the country in environmental legislation lags behind us, measly middle-class Maryland, in terms of child development.  This mom is just doubly ignorant.

Her parents run a daycare. Her parents run a daycare, so does that explain why the younger kid was in a bouncy seat the first 10 months of its life?  Because it’s not a good daycare?  Obviously it’s just easier on mom if your kid is strapped in and can’t get out.  Obviously that will not affect the development of such skills as sitting up, crawling or walking.  Obviously when at 12 months the pediatrician recommends the kid for physical therapy, he’s totally nuts and won’t let your child enjoy her childhood.

“They aren’t letting kids be kids, my girls are happy.”  I notice you omit the word healthy, since the 2.5 year old who eats french fries and drinks chocolate milk has had a cold for about 5 weeks. No correlation.  Just keep putting Target brand liquid vitamins into her Sunny D, that’ll totally make everything develop normally.

I work in and come from many households who agree that Sunny D is not a food.  This mom thinks it equals orange juice.  Just like clear apple juice will help the kid poop.  Right.  Because you can just see the insoluble fiber hanging out…where?

I know there’s no manual, there’s no test, there’s no quiz, there’s really no accountability unless you’re doing something so egregiously wrong that a cop can do something about it.  If you’re in that weird gray area where you’re buying toys and milk and taking them to the doctor on time, but at home you do absolutely nothing (nothing including not interacting with your children, but spending hundreds of dollars per month on free Facebook games because you wanted to decorate a treehouse in Yoville, nothing also including buying things nonstop for yourself), then until your children exhibit a noticeable developmental delay, there’s really nothing anyone can do.

And then once physical therapy IS recommended and then you go into complete denial about there being anything wrong…then what?

I thought about quitting, talking to another mom helped me understand the situation from a different perspective, the non-childhood development perspective, that of the mom hearing something is wrong with your child and not really being able to understand or digest that.  But the difference is, the huge difference is, that one disability has an unknown biological, neurological cause (autism).  The other is pure ignorance, and the absolute lack of desire to educate one’s self.  Buying Salem’s Lot is all well and good for late at night and you want a shit horror book to pass the time.  But really, wouldn’t something helpful about parenting (not Dr. Laura’s 900 or whatever stupid things parents do to mess up their children which really turned out to be some weird diatribe on how all children should have a religion…yeah, I was bored but not bored enough to continue with that swill) be more useful?  Just a thought, but what do I know.

In other news, writing your first lead teaching plan…kinda scary.  I did things with Excel today that I never thought possible.

Finding really cheap college textbooks can be quite the frightening task for college students of any level, from freshman to last year graduate student. They always put a drain on your money when starting the semester, without promise of basically getting use out of the book! Many college book stores no longer provide a rental program. Additionally, most varsity bookstores only carry a limit controlled number of used books, and provide a paltry amount on book buybacks.

Book price comparison

These sites search through dozens, if not more, online bookstores and return to you a list of the lowest costs available. This is far faster and quicker than going to each site individually. The downside is that often the data provided to these sites isn’t recent, and you’ll have to do a little manual tracking. Overall the best option for starting a search though. Below I have listed an idea based primarily on past experience. Bookspy appears to be recent, and provide a nice straightforward way to find the books you want.

The other option in finding really cheap college textbooks is to go to all the big web bookstores themselves. Most online book shops have a market-place section where 3rd party sellers can sell used and new copies of the book you are looking for, regularly significantly cheaper than retail price, probably saving upwards of 80% in a few cases. Keep in mind however that most book price comparison sites search thru the market sellers a s well! The major online bookshops of really cheap college textbooks are :

Ecampus Books

.

Era digital benar-benar memberikan pemerataan akses terhadap ilmu pengetahuan. Jika anda sedang kuliah pada saat ini, anda tidak perlu lagi pusing-pusing memikirkan textbook. Bahkan buku-buku kedokteran yang sangat mahal itupun bisa anda dapatkan dengan mudah di internet.

Kuncinya adalah keyword atau kata kunci. Ini berlaku tidak hanya ketika anda sedang mencari ebook tetapi juga berlaku ketika anda sedang googling. Yang kedua tentu saja mengetahui situs (file hosting site) yang menyediakan akses terhadap ebook-ebook tersebut.

Salah satu situs yang yang banyak menampung koleksi ebook adalah www.4shared.com. Di situs ini anda bisa dengan mudah mendapatkan berbagai macam jenis buku tergantung dari kata kunci yang anda masukkan.

Anda bisa membatasi pencarian dengan mmemasukkan ukuran file dan jenis file yang ingin anda cari. Berbagai macam ebook terdapat dalam situs ini, mulai dari buku teknik, kedokteran, sastra, biologi, kimia, dll. Karena sebagaian besar bukunya dalam bahasa Inggris maka untuk memperbesar peluang pencarian sebaiknya anda mencari dengan kata kunci dalam bahasa Inggris, misalnya: engineering, mechanical, plants, chemical, process, maintenace, atlas dll.

Untuk sekedar mendownload/mengunduh file-file yang terdapat dalam situs ini anda tidak perlu menjadi user dulu. User diperlukan ketika anda ingin meng-upload/mengunggah file anda dan tidak adanya proses menunggu ketika mengunduh suatu file.

Selamat mencoba!

Berikut adalah tampilan halaman muka dari www.4shared.com

Title: Comparative Politics: A Global Introduction
Author: Michael J. Sodaro
Pages: 848
Published: 2008
Source: Half.Com (Required Reading)

“Comparative Politics: A Global Introduction presents a uniquely comprehensive approach to the study of politics in a variety of countries. Part I surveys the core topics of comparative politics and equips students with the concepts and analytical methods they need to understand the complexities of today’s political world. Part I enhances critical thinking skills by explaining in a step-by-step fashion how the basic techniques of the scientific method, such as qualitative hypothesis testing, can be used to understand political realities. Part II provides in-depth studies of many major countries, using the concepts and analytical techniques introduced in Part I. By combining rich conceptualization, analytical methods, and extensive coverage of a diversity of countries, this engaging text teaches introductory-level students how to think about politics for themselves, logically and systematically.”

In the interest of full disclosure, I have not read the entirely of this textbook as my Intro to Comparative Politics class focused solely on Britain, Germany, China, and Mexico. Therefore, I only read the chapters on these countries and a handful of others dealing with political economy, conditions for democracy, conditions for development, and the like.

Comparative Politics offers a fairly compact look at the political system of each country it delves into, and it’s fairly easy to get the “gist” of a country. However, I found that the book was pretty dry; it wasn’t boring, per say, but lacked a little pizazz to keep the reader interested. If you’re not interested in the country you’re reading about, Sodaro isn’t going to give you a reason to. And, personally, I found the journal articles my professor assigned to be much more interesting than the chapters of this textbook.

Rating: 2

“[Constantine] Vaporis has written a magnificent book on the sankai kotai, or alternate attendance system. . . . Long considered the central political control mechanism of the Tokugawa period, the system has received surprisingly little scholarly attention until now. Filling a major gap in the understanding of Japanese history, the author provides a detailed account of the mechanics of the system and demands placed on daimyo and retainers on tours of duty in Edo. Exploiting the latest archaeological and archival sources, Vaporis makes clear the economic burden of the system on the daimyo, as well as its role as an engine of cultural, intellectual, and material exchange, from the center in Edo and between regions. The author also provides intimate details of the lives of samurai, both on the road to and from Edo and while serving their time in Edo. For all interested in early modern history. . . . Highly recommended.” —Choice

November 2009 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3470-8 / $23.00 (PAPER)

Title: All But My Life
Author: Gerda Weissmann Klein
Pages: 261
Published: 1995
Source: Campus Bookstore (Required Reading)

At 9:10 a.m. Gerda Weissmann’s life ended; the Nazis invaded Poland and red, black, and white flags with swastikas hung from her neighbor’s windows. Uncertainty turns into upheaval first with the deportation of her brother and then with the loss of her family’s home. Her ill father becomes listless; her mother withdrawals into herself. And almost as quickly as it begins Gerda finds herself in the Bielitz ghetto where she separated from her father, then to a transit camp where she is separated from her mother, and then onto the labour camp, Bolkenhain. This is only the beginning of Klein’s story, a story that ends with the Nazis robbing her of all but her life.

This is the book that’s been missing from my course on the Holocaust. We’ve learned about Merin, a member of the Judenrat who lined his pockets; we’ve learned about the difference between labour camps and concentration camps. And according to our syllabus, in the coming weeks we’re going to learn about death marches. But as well as my professor is at telling stories for lectures instead of saying “these are the facts you need to know,” there is something you can only get by reading the memoir of a survivor. The “I” makes it personal; the “I” makes facts visible realities.

Even on the written side, All But My Life is one of the most, if not the most, well-written written memoirs I’ve ever read. It’s heart-wrenching, emotional, and personal when other Holocaust memoirs are distant. You relive Klein’s past, and I can understand why in the preface Klein says she is now, finally, emancipated from her burden.

It’s so personal, so powerful, and worth every tear I shed. And I would love to read The Hours After, a collection of letters between Klein and her husband, U.S. Army lieutenant Kurt Klein, who liberated her on May 7th, 1945, after the war.

Rating: 5

As we continue to explore emerging technologies, we must consider the implications for not only available bandwidth and Internet-enabled computer access, but also the impact on technologies used to support students with disabilities (SWD). SWD often utilize various technologies (e.g., screen readers, JAWS) to access information on websites and in academic courses. E-books are considered an emerging technology – what impact do they have on SWD and their access to academic content?

Finding the Kindle a Poor Device for the Blind, 2 Universities Say They Won’t Buy More

By Simmi Aujla

Full article is available at http://chronicle.com/blogPost/Finding-the-Kindle-a-Poor/8808/?sid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en.

I’m happy to announce that 4dancers will be moving into the area of product reviews for the remainder of 2009 and into 2010. We will be accepting any dance (or dance-related) product for impartial review and will be posting them here for you to read. You can expect to see things such as:

• DVD/CD reviews
• Clothing/bag reviews
• Book reviews
• Dance gift reviews
• Textbook reviews

We are also interested in reviewing products that are designed for dance studio owners, such as dance flooring, barres and software.

If you have something that you would like us to evaluate and review, please send an e-mail to:

info (at) moonbeamdigital.com with the words REVIEW REQUEST in the subject line.

*Please note that we cannot meet timeline requests for reviewing products. We will do our best to attend to reviews in a reasonable time-frame, but are not able to guarantee publication at a particular time. Products sent in for review will not be returned, and all reviews will be impartial. We look forward to seeing all the wonderful things that are out there in the world of dance and sharing them with our readers!

This is a thoroughly revised edition of Integrated Korean: Beginning 1, the first volume of the best-selling series developed collaboratively by leading classroom teachers and linguists of Korean. In response to comments from hundreds of students and instructors of the first edition, the new edition features a more attractive two-color design with all new photos and drawings and an additional lesson and vocabulary exercises. Lessons are now organized into two main sections, each containing a conversational text (with its own vocabulary list) and a reading passage. The accompanying workbook, newly written, provides students with extensive skill-using activities based on the skills learned in the main text.

Integrated Korean series
November 2009 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3440-1 / $28.00 (PAPER)

Audio files for both the textbook and workbook may be downloaded in RealAudio or MP3 format at http://www.kleartextbook.com.

Mike Masnick has a new post disagreeing with a recent court decision that answers to textbook questions were a derivative work. From the post:

This still makes no sense to me. First, there’s no “copying.” Second, isn’t answering a question a “factual” statement? How can answering a question be copyright infringement?

So tonight, instead of working on my M.Ed. portfolio, grading, or getting my sub plans ready for Thursday, I’m twittering on #edchat.

I can’t keep up.

At least I hope I’ll be able to expand my Twitter contacts from tonight.

The only bad thing about being at a 1:1 school is that I work too much. Used to be, I’d leave school work at school. But now? It’s an all consuming hobby. Maybe this just means I have to get a *new* hobby.

Textbook committee Thursday, next week teaching curriculum projects to the last group of ELA teachers in the district, but the important thing is that I have EIGHT (8) MORE DAYS UNTIL THANKSGIVING! w00t!

I’m teaming up with the tech guy on campus to create promotional videos for the school to recruit new students. Granted, it’s a little late for it now, but at least we’ll have something for next year. We may be able to ge a few out in time for this year, but my students have a really hard time following deadlines. Take a look at my gradebook and see how many zeros I have!

I’ll be a fun, learning process. Glad to be with L. making this movie. I just have a hard time with the tech side of things sometimes – I know just enough to get myself into trouble.

For the record: I love TweetDeck – just wish I had it on campus.

• Commentary on the future of textbooks @ Dot Physics
• Word Cloud Generator @ Teach Science and Math
• Blooms Taxonomy discussion @ Teach Science and Math
• Educational Science Games @ Teach Science and Math
• Student Response Systems @ Dot Physics
• General Resource for Teachers @ Educational Technology Guy
• How to bypass YouTube blockage @ Educational Technology Guy
• Google Accessibility @ Educational Technology Guy
• Powerpoint Tutorial @ Educational Technology Guy
• Calculus Lifesaver @ Educational Technology Guy

Chapter Four in Brown: p. 86-122

Opening of Section II and first teensy section of Chp 5: p 123-127

Silver:  #24 Homeless not Poor – what would you do to organize around this issue?

Cambodian students can learn about the Khmer Rouge era now the country’s first textbook on the regime’s atrocities has been published…. From BBC News. Full story

This site may contain information about: population density cities. For a different topic see here. The blog is also related to: city streets.

Here’s a recent article posted on http://blog.curriki.org/

Recently in OER: Are Textbooks Going the Way of the Dinosaurs?.

Doesn’t it seem that you either can love or hate textbooks, but sometimes we can’t be in between?

I guess my history with textbooks is a love/hate affair.  But, some of my greatest teaching tools are professional texts.  We can call them professional texts or textbooks, but frankly… aren’t they the same thing?

There are so many fantastic, stimulating, higher order thinking textbooks out there.  My favorite is Joy Hakim’s History of Us http://joyhakim.com/  .  Why did it get discontinued?!?  We still have a copy that we use in our 7th grade history class.

Are there any textbooks out there that you love? Hate? How do you teach your readers to access them?

Textbook of Psychoanalysis (2005)