Light Emitting Silicon for Microphotonics

Book Description

Light Emitting Silicon for Microphotonics offers fascinating insight the state-of-the-art in silicon microphotonics and what we can expect in the near future. The book presents an overview of the current understanding of obtaining light from silicon. It concentrates on low-dimensional silicon structures, like quantum dots, wires and wells, but also covers alternative approaches like porous silicon and the doping of silicon with rare-earth elements. The emphasis is on the experimental and theoretical achievements concerning the optoelectronic properties of confined silicon structures, especially sillicon-based photonic crystals, obtained during recent years. Also, an in-depth discussion of the route towards a silicon laser is presented.

Book Description

Simone’s starting her junior year in high school. Her mom’s a lawyer for the ACLU, her dad’s a political cartoonist, so she’s grown up standing outside the organic food coop asking people to sign petitions for worthy causes. She’s got a terrific younger brother and amazing friends. And she’s got a secret crush on a really smart and funny guy–who spends all of his time with another girl.

Then her birth mother contacts her. Simone’s always known she was adopted, but she never wanted to know anything about it. She’s happy with her family just as it is, thank you.

She learns who her birth mother was–a 16-year-old girl named Rivka. Who is Rivka? Why has she contacted Simone? Why now? The answers lead Simone to deeper feelings of anguish and love than she has ever known, and to question everything she once took for granted about faith, life, the afterlife, and what it means to be a daughter.

Customer Reviews:

A 2007 Association of Jewish Libraries Honor Award Winner for Teens.......2007-01-28

Sixteen-year-old Simone has always known that she is adopted and that her birth mother is a woman named Rivka. But, when Simone learns that Rivka is the daughter of a Hasidic Rabbi who accidentally got pregnant as a teenager, Simone's whole life and identity is turned up-side down. As Simone gets to know Rivka, who is dying from ovarian cancer, she also learns about Judaism, celebrating Shabbat, Hanukkah, and Passover, experiences her first relationship with a boy, and comes to terms with her own spiritual identity. Reinhardt's characters are smart, sassy, realistic American teenagers and her portrayal of a warm, loving, functional adoptive family is refreshing. Highly readable, fast-paced, and thought-provoking, A Brief Chapter in My Impossible Life will be enjoyed by YA readers of all faiths.

Courtesy of Teens Read Too.......2007-01-08

Sixteen-year-old Simone has always known she was adopted but has never questioned it. She's aware of her dark features in her family of blond hair and fair skin. Her "parents" have talked to her about her birth mother, a woman named Rivka, but Simone has never wanted to learn more simply because she's happy with the family she has.

Then, one day, Rivka calls and wants to get in contact with Simone. With her parents urging her along, Simone is going to face her past--her real mother, her real family, and her true cultural background.

This book was a real treat to read. I enjoyed the different scenes and elements it contained: Simone meeting Rivka and learning the story of her adoption; Simone speaking up for her beliefs (she's an atheist who supports abortion); and Simone dealing with her high school crush.

All in all, this is a book definitely worth reading.

Reviewed by: Safia Abdul

A brief chapter worth reading.......2006-11-11

Simone Turner-Bloom is your average above-average teenager. She has a mother, a father and a younger brother. She lives in an upper middle class home and is an excellent student with a gift for math. But, Simone is different from most of her peers in one significant way. She's adopted and doesn't look like her parents or her brother. This doesn't bother her much, because she's happy in her family and really feels an integral part of the Turner-Bloom home.

One day, however, Simone's parents tell her that her birth mother, Rivka, wants to meet her. Simone struggles with this decision for months until, finally, she agrees to invite Rivka to Thanksgiving dinner. And, guess what? Simone finds herself drawn to her young birth mother and they begin a close relationship as Simone finds out about her past from her birth mother. Part of Rivka's past is Judaism, and atheist Simone is drawn to Rivka's practice of Judaism and its culture.

There's a hitch, however, in this happy new relationship and it is the reason Rivka sought Simone out before adulthood. Rivka's sick with ovarian cancer and only has months to live. And, in the background of these momentous changes in Simone's life are everyday teenage challenges--first kisses, boyfriends, a friend's family troubles, etc.

"a brief chapter in my impossible life" is different from most YA fiction in one, very unique way. Everyone involved--from Simone, to her friends and family, past and present--is essentially good. There's no abuse, alcoholism, or cutting in this book. It's a gorgeous examination of what happens when an extraordinary, but perfectly understandable, event challenges an essentially good, well-meaning teen.

Reviewers write a lot about how YA fiction offers much to teens who are struggling with issues, but books like "a brief chapter in my impossible life" are important too. Simone and her story, minus the adoption and math genius issues, are easily recognizable to me and I suspect will be to many teen readers.

"a brief chapter in my impossible life" is a beautifully written story. Simone's voice is strong and sympathetic. "a brief chapter in my impossible life" reminded me most of Justina Chen Headley's "Nothing But the Truth (and a few white lies)." Both are highly recommended.

Impossible to Resist.......2006-10-23

Simone is a fairly well-adjusted teenager who is about to have her life turned upside down. She has known since she was a little girl that she was adopted, but she has never met her biological parents. She has never considered her adoptive parents anything less than Mom and Dad, and she loves them as much as and as well as her younger brother.

Then the phone rings. Simone's biological mother, Rivka has called in hopes that she can finally meet her sixteen-year-old daughter. Simone is understandably anxious about their first meeting, and becomes even more troubled after Rivka gives her some undeniably sad news.

A Brief Chapter in My Impossible Life by Dana Reinhardt is a double delight: a fantastic debut novel and a fantastic novel, PERIOD. It deals with family, friends, and fears - high school, home, and hope - love, laughter, and loss. This book's wit and wisdom will stay with readers for a long time. Highly recommended.

A BRIEF CHAPTER IN MY IMPOSSIBLE LIFE.......2006-10-04

Simone has always known she was adopted, but has suppressed any curiosity about her past. However, when her birth mother Rivka develops cancer, she invites Simone to get in touch, to learn about her heritage before it is too late. Simone and Rivka develop a strong relationship even as Rivka is dying. An interesting twist to the story is that Simone has been raised as a gentile atheist while Rivka is a liberal Jew with a Hasidic background. While Simone makes an effort to learn about the rituals that enrich Rivka's life, the question of her own religious identity remains open-ended. Rivka's Hasidic family remains distant and unreceptive to Simone.

The "Jewish angle" of the story is interesting, but the main focus is on Simone's relationships and growing maturity. The author has even made it easy on her protagonist by giving her a neutral non-believing family rather than one whose beliefs would present conflicts with Judaism. Because the Jewish aspect of the story is not essential to the plot, the book may be considered an additional purchase for Jewish libraries. However, this is a well-written and emotionally charged novel that would make an excellent book for discussion groups, and would be appropriate for Jewish collections serving teens. Communities must consider whether the accepting attitudes towards premarital sex and homosexuality among Simone's friends make the book right for their libraries. Appropriate for high school readers. Reviewed by Heidi Estrin

Autobiography: Chapters in the Course of My Life: 1861-1907 (The Collected Works of Rudolf Steiner)

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A fantastic resource
It's a long one guys!
Great Place to Start with Steiner

Autobiography: Chapters in the Course of My Life: 1861-1907 (The Collected Works of Rudolf Steiner)
Rudolf Steiner
Manufacturer: Steiner Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 088010600X

Book Description

Rudolf Steiner has been called "the best kept secret of the twentieth century." Who was the unique individual behind the personality of this individual? Who was the man who introduced the the world to the spiritual path of anthroposophy? What was behind the ideas that formed what we know today as Waldorf education? What led this teacher to approach inner development as a science that uses thinking as a path to inner freedom?

In this unique and fascinating autobiography, Rudolf Steiner recalls the first thirty-five years of his life as he wrote of them in seventy weekly installments for a newsletter. Although he seldom spoke of personal matters, here he offers us a rare opportunity to view the intimacy of his inner life, his personal relationships, and the events that shaped him. Steiner doesn't focus on life's successes and failures; rather, this is an autobiography of a soul, and we are allowed to witness the evolving consciousness of a modern spiritual master.

Steiner possessed a precise and probing scientific mind aided by his natural clairvoyant ability to see into the spiritual world. He recognized the integrity and importance of modern scientific methods and, as a result, developed a modern discipline he termed "spiritual science." Since then, his insights have touched and enriched many areas of life in ways that continues to change lives.

This book is the self-portrait of a man whose ideas remain ahead of our time-and whose ideas are sorely needed in an increasingly chaotic and materialistic world.

Customer Reviews:

A fantastic resource.......2007-01-03

Steiner's autobiography is a real classic, telling of his childhood in central Austria, his antics as a schoolboy, and his youth in thriving Vienna. It is an inner narrative about the events and impressions that shaped him, written in the last two years of his life. This Complete Works edition is copiously annotated by Paul Marshall Allen, who explains many references that, while understandable to German speakers in 1925 have since become obscure.

It's a long one guys!.......2006-03-31

As long as this book is, it does get boring at times.

The whole autobiography is described in purely external events, and done in the most detatched and objective way imaginable. That's why I think that it's stale in the beginning and middle sections.

It all starts to get interesting (for me) around 1900 when he gets involved with the Theosophical Society, then the occult action and drama picks up and doesn't let up. And right when you least expect, it abruptly ends, in 1907.

This is very intriguing because you think that he will talk about his spiritual experiences throughout but he doesn't. He just keeps it on the physical all the way, and it's like he does it on purpose. He only rarely mentions anything spiritual, but when he does, he does in an almost "intellectual" way, it's very strange!

I give it 3 stars because as much as I love Steiner, it still is too long of a book and somewhat tiresome. A lot of the what he talks about really doesn't means mean much to me in the long run, Eg: going to this place and hearing about the personality of this guy etc. I don't understand why he includes such random details? (as interesting as some of them are).

I would recommend reading others' reminiscinces and recollections of Steiner rather than his own autobiography.

But it is a necessary read for any Steinerite at least once. His language demands that you take leaps and bounds within your own thinking to meet him on "his" level.

Great Place to Start with Steiner.......2001-08-23

If you are wondering how to approach the work of Rudolph Steiner, this autobiography is a great place to start. It gives an excellent presentation of the development of Steiner's ideas, including how he was influenced and who he worked with and why. The extensively researched endnotes lead to an endless array of avenues for further study of people and ideas associated with Steiner. Steiner's methodology for his own studies serves as inspiration for anyone who wants to delve more deeply into his work.

Six Chapters from My Life Downunder (Renditions Books)

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Six Chapters from My Life Downunder (Renditions Books)
Chiang Yang
Manufacturer: University of Washington Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0295966440

Later Chapters of My Life: The Lost Journal of Queen Marie of Romania

Average customer rating:

A little self congratulatory but still interesting

Later Chapters of My Life: The Lost Journal of Queen Marie of Romania
Diana Mandache
Manufacturer: Sutton Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0750936916

Book Description

Queen Marie of Romania was one of the most brilliant monarchs of the twentieth century. This recently discovered last volume of her memoirs--long believed to have been destroyed--covers the period following the War,

Customer Reviews:

A little self congratulatory but still interesting.......2006-01-23

The autobiography of Marie, Queen of Romania, is well written, but somewhat florid and self congratulatory in its attempts to describe her feelings about events, particularly her appointment as the "face of Romania" at the Paris talks that brought the end of world war one in 1919. Her style is best when she is most lacking in self consciousness. Her estimates of the various players at the peace conference are penetrating and probably correct. Certainly her description of the war torn countryside of Europe through which she passed are graphic and emotionally moving visions.

The book is probably most charming in its depiction of the family relationships within her own immediate household and in her extended family. The characterizations, especially of Edward and Queen Mary of England, provide a much more intimate picture of the royal family than most biographical and historical works are able to do.

That this is significant to an understanding of the period is very evident when one realizes how throughly interrelated were all of the royal families of Europe. For them, the world war was not just a political issue, it was a family feud. Most of the contenders, with the exception of the United States, were countries lead by various descendants of Queen Victoria. In short, almost everyone on both sides of the conflict were cousins, aunts, uncles, even parents. That the conflict lead to emotional agony for many is certain, as the account of Maries' last meeting with her mother Alexandra shows. The authoress herself realizes that the world has changed, that her mother has little place in it, and at the end of her own life, that she herself has little place in it.

What she doesn't seem to realize is that the war was actually the death knell of the monarchical form of government and lifestyle as it had been practiced. Hereditary rule was being replaced by other ways of selecting governors. Marie's amusement over the American volunteers and their curiosity about a "real" queen reveals this blinkered point of view. Her use of the terms "peasants" in respect to the rural population of her country and her patronizing attitude toward them reveals the pitfalls into which this ancient form of government was headed and into which the Russian branch of "the Family" had already fallen.

That Queen Marie was still functioning in the ancient mode of monarchy herself is apparent by the pride with which she recounts the connections she arranged for her children with other royal houses, arrangements which would hardly last much past her own life. The photo of the "Three Queens and the Infante of Spain"--Marie, two of her daughters and her younger sister Beatrice--is a little sad. The emotionally drained, almost tragic face of Beatrice, already facing issues in Spain, is virtually a prophecy for the three smiling queens in the future. Knowing as one does the end of the story, one can hardly be unmoved by the tender family scene the photo portrays: the last happy days.

One has the sense that the lady was enough aware of world affairs and of the ways of the world to know already at the end of her life that Europe was again headed for a major war. Though she probably penned these last memoirs to preserve them from her son Carol II's interference, she probably also wrote them as a coda for the war through which she herself had lived and in which she had taken an active part.

She certainly seems to have been abundantly aware of the failings of the 1919 peace accords even as they were being pounded out and signed. Most who study the two world wars as history congratulate themselves over seeing that the seeds of the second were sown in the first; but then, hindsight is 20-20. For the Queen, however, this knowledge was foresight. It was as if she alone could see, at the very beginning, that Europe had set itself up for a second great war by its own unwillingness to forgive.

This is perhaps the very point at which the change in the political intellect changed. The cardinal point at which Monarchy died and Democracy/Socialism begins. The family feud was settled by outsiders, so-to-speak, making punishment and reparation the rules of the day. Family cannot afford to do this. Family must remember that it depends on all of its members, that it has interests in common, that hurt feelings have to be addressed. Democracy/Socialism knows no "feelings." Rule by the Demos-Athens aside-is a relatively new phenomenon, and it still has to struggle to learn what thousands of years of monarchy had learned the hard way. Marie is painfully aware that the terms of the peace agreement would not work, that it would cause anger and hate, and ultimately war. The years of peace were only going to be a period of catching political breath before the fight began again in ernest and with more ferocity. The so-called Great War would just be round one.

My only complaint is that the authoress did not describe more events and more people. Much of the book is a repetitious self congratulation, an awareness of her place in history. This leads to saying the same thing in a dozen different ways which I found frustrating. The prose style moves along more smoothly when the author is focusing on others and events. Admittedly the book is an autobiography and the author a queen not a jounalist, but it could have used more focus. She doesn't really hit her stride until about a third of the way through the book, but by the final chapter one is wanting to hear more.

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Anne of Green Gables My First Classics
L. M. Montgomery
Manufacturer: HarperFestival
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0060791470
Release Date: 2005-09-20

Book Description

A girl with spunk and dreams in search of a place to call home . . .

Marilla and Matthew Cuthbert planned to adopt a boy to help out around the farm, but waiting at the train station is a freckle–faced, red–headed eleven–year–old orphan named Anne Shirley. From the minute Anne sets foot in Matthew's buggy, Green Gables will never be the same! Anne is overflowing with spunk and dreams, but at heart what she wants most of all is a place to call home.

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The Burning: A Chapter in My Life
Braden Lloyd
Manufacturer: Writers Club Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Book Description

This is a realistic drama set in the world of today's gay youth.

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A Chapter in My Life
Jesse Keen
Manufacturer: Writers Club Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0595195032

Book Description

Funny look back over an imagined life. A look at how co-workers influence the characters work life, and some of the interesting situations he gets into and out of. A realistic look at everyday life, and why we live it and what we see when we look back at the chapters in our life.

Chapters From My Diplomatic Life: Embassy At Berlin 1897-1902

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Chapters From My Diplomatic Life: Embassy At Berlin 1897-1902
Andrew D. White
Manufacturer: Kessinger Publishing, LLC
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: 1428611355

Book Description

Contains: Presentation At Court, The New Chancellor Von Bulow, Trials Of A Homeless Ambassador, An Embittered Feeling Against America, The Open Door In China, The Spanish War, Emperor William's Opinion Of The Destruction Of The U.S.S. Maine, Relations With The Spanish Ambassador, The Business Of Being A Monarch, Difficulties During The Spanish War, Protecting The Naturalized American Citizen, Professor Mommsen's Feeling Toward America, Etc. Portraits Include Franz Joseph Of Austria, And Empress Frederick.

Chapters From My Life With Special Reference To Reunion

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Chapters From My Life With Special Reference To Reunion
Henry S. Lunn
Manufacturer: Kessinger Publishing, LLC
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: 0548045860

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Chapters in My Life
Frederick Gates
Manufacturer: Free Pr
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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