New Releases by Brian Dennis

What are poems, if not memories of the soul ? A voice, speaking to a life once lived, or yet to be lived. Of love and lust. Of broken relationships long lost to the winds of time, forever haunting. Brian Dennis Hartford''s Collection of Poems does just this, as he takes the reader on a journey into the far past and sometimes the future, of which are unforgiving in the whispers of lost promises. Where souls are crushed upon battle fields in epic feats of daring or in the mourning of life''s inevitable passing''s left to languish, ever waiting for a time when two souls might be whole again.

The fact that surprisingly few Christians actually know and experience the mighty God we preach about, teach about, and sing about is evidenced by the abundance of doubt, worry, and fear that permeate our lives. It is evidenced by the lack of faith and power exemplified in our Churches. It is evidenced by the ordinary lives we live while claiming to be children of the most high God. The resulting inconsistencies between the things we boldly profess and the things we commonly practice have unfortunately become accepted as normal Christian behavior. We no longer expect anything more--not from our own lives, not from the Church, not even from God Himself. This lack of expectancy, this lack of faith in the faithfulness of God clearly indicates a distinct difference between the God we preach and the God we have personally come to know. It reveals that we do not know the very God we proclaim. We do not know the God of the Bible; for if we knew Him, the Church would indeed be an eminent light shining in the darkness, a city set on a hill, an indelible force against which the powers of this present evil world could not prevail. The God we do know, however, the God with whom so many Christians have become familiar, unfortunately, allows us to live comfortably in the weakness of our complacency and blatant disbelief. We live far below the high calling that Christ has placed upon His Church. We walk in ways that deny the very power and authority that belong to the children of God. We do not live by faith. Sadly, we have learned to live in such a way as to where there is no distinguishable difference between the lives of those who claim to know Christ and the lives of those who do not--no distinguishable difference between the Church and the world. The good news is that the truth remains. The God of the Bible is still there. He can do no other than prove Himself faithful to those who hunger and thirst after righteousness--to those who hear His voice and obey. Yes, to those who would yet have a heart to know Him, He is there to be known. We must first, however, lay aside all notions of the small God we have come to know and we must dare to see Him as He is if we are to rise above the routine of cultural Christianity and walk in the truth of knowing Christ.

A Vampire Novel that Changes EverythingWhat is forever anyways? To anyone? Ianthe Gold is a Vampire who will do anything to save her one true love, Charlotte Bell Aberdeen. To finally be united with a love that she has been chasing over the millennia, through time and space. Now, she has found the chance to reunite with Charlotte and keep her promise of forever that she had made to her, the soul within, so long ago. But God, as always, has other plans. WITHOUT, is an epic journey set in the modern day. It eloquently and boldly captures both the beauty and the horror of life, this cosmic journey of the flesh, and the soul within God¿s grand design. Gritty, ugly, and languishing are just a few emotions evoked as we witness the rise and fall of life and love.

Set in the near future, "2198 A Memoir from the Second Revolution, is an uncompromising, often gritty and explosive look into the lives of Benjamin and Lena Bradford as they join and fight as shadow warriors in the world''s newest and most powerful Private Military Security Corporation, Paradigm, in a race to defeat both foreign and domestic threats as America, and the world, falls into economic and political chaos. Driven by the desire to hold onto the life they are slowly losing and patriotism for a country they love, they take up arms to fight for an ideal that may no longer exist.

This dissertation adopts an interdisciplinary approach to ask why in Senegal, home of president-poet Léopold Sédar Senghor and host to two World Black Arts Festivals, theater appears so drastically reduced from the heights of what critics consider the "Golden Age" of Culture of the 1960s and 70s. In fact, theatrical production within this country has become something of a blind spot in the fields of Literary and Performance Studies, since textual analyses and performance fieldwork both prove essential to understanding how theatrical practice is conceived, produced and transmitted within this West African country and former colony. From a contemporary perspective, written texts for stage production, especially published ones, are scant and rarely come to performance, a fact that has called many to declare the apparent death of theatrical practices in Senegal. However, research on the ground reveals that the very term theater takes on a rather different meaning within this country, generally encompassing a more popular, community-based approach and often displaying an unreserved and conscious embrace of non-textual, collective and at times seemingly plagiaristic approaches to drama. Here we will explore archival material and oral histories, using performance fieldwork and textual analysis to discover how artists and performers have come to craft the Senegalese stage - official and otherwise - as it exists today. This will include a discussion of the influence of pedagogical discourses and disputing models of Culture in Senegalese theater, as well as how these are circumvented through performance. This work focuses on pivotal places and events in the crafting of the Senegalese stage, with chapters on pedagogical reform and performance at the Ecole William Ponty; Léopold Sédar Senghor and André Malraux''s complementary views and uses of Culture and the staging of these through the theater of the 1966 Festival Mondial des Arts Négres in Dakar, as read against the 1969 Festival Panafricain d''Alger; as well as contemporary efforts to craft a subversive and activist form of theater operating along global and transnational networks.

R is the amazing, free, open-access software package for scientific graphs and calculations used by scientists worldwide. The R Student Companion is a student-oriented manual describing how to use R in high school and college science and mathematics courses. Written for beginners in scientific computation, the book assumes the reader has just some high school algebra and has no computer programming background. The author presents applications drawn from all sciences and social sciences and includes the most often used features of R in an appendix. In addition, each chapter provides a set of computational challenges: exercises in R calculations that are designed to be performed alone or in groups. Several of the chapters explore algebra concepts that are highly useful in scientific applications, such as quadratic equations, systems of linear equations, trigonometric functions, and exponential functions. Each chapter provides an instructional review of the algebra concept, followed by a hands-on guide to performing calculations and graphing in R. R is intuitive, even fun. Fantastic, publication-quality graphs of data, equations, or both can be produced with little effort. By integrating mathematical computation and scientific illustration early in a student’s development, R use can enhance one''s understanding of even the most difficult scientific concepts. While R has gained a strong reputation as a package for statistical analysis, The R Student Companion approaches R more completely as a comprehensive tool for scientific computing and graphing.

ABSTRACT: The results of these projects address a major question about the adaptive value of sexual selection. Clearly, sexual selection can accelerate adaptation by purging deleterious alleles. On balance, however, sexual selection depresses nonsexual fitness in polygamous populations when compared to monogamous populations that do not experience sexual conflict, and there is evidence that this decline is due to antagonism between the sexes.

Nubs, an Iraqi dog of war, never had a home or a person of his own. He was the leader of a pack of wild dogs living off the land and barely surviving. But Nubs''s life changed when he met Marine Major Brian Dennis. The two formed a fast friendship, made stronger by Dennis''s willingness to share his meals, offer a warm place to sleep, and give Nubs the kind of care and attention he had never received before. Nubs became part of Dennis''s human "pack" until duty required the Marines to relocate a full 70 miles away--without him. Nubs had no way of knowing that Marines were not allowed to have pets. So began an incredible journey that would take Nubs through a freezing desert, filled with danger tofind his friend and would lead Dennis on a mission that would touch the hearts of people all over the world. Nubs and Dennis will remind readers that friendship has the power to cross deserts, continents, and even species.

It is impossible to predict the exact behavior of all biological systems and how these same systems are exemplified by patterns of complexity and regularity. Decades of research in ecology have documented how these sorts of patterns are the consequences of deceptively simple rules that determine the nature of the patterns created. Chaos in Ecology will explain how simple beginnings result in complicated results. Chaos in Ecology is the inaugural volume of Theoretical Ecology Series. The authors of this volume have employed data from a proven model system in population dynamics. As a result, this book will be of interest to anyone interested in the ecology of populations. - It is impossible to predict the exact behavior of almost all biological systems and yet these same systems are exemplified by patterns of complexity and regularity. Decades of research in ecology have documented that these sorts of patterns are the consequence of deceptively simple rules that determine the nature of the patterns created. In essence, simple beginnings result in complicated results - This realization is captured in the mathematical notion of "chaos" and is rendered intuitive by the oft-repeated metaphor: "A butterfly beats its wings in China and causing a thunderstorm in the Midwest." Thus, seemingly trivial initial conditions (e.g. a butterfly in China) cascade through a series of intermediate events to create a significant large-scale event (e.g. a thunderstorm) - Chaos in Ecology is the inaugural volume of Theoretical Ecology Series. The authors of this volume have employed data from a proven model system in population dynamics. As a result, this book will be of interest to anyone interested in the ecology of populations

The hallmark of chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML) is the presence of the Philadelphia chromosome and its resultant fusion message, ''BCR-ABL '', and fusion protein, p210. Patients with Philadelphia positive acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) can have a smaller ''BCR-ABL'' fusion transcript possessing only the first exon of ''BCR'' fused to '' ABL''. This smaller transcript encodes a 190 kD protein that is more strongly transforming than the p210 protein derived from the larger CML-associated transcript. We examined the peripheral blood or marrow of 67 patients with CML and found that 35 of them expressed both transcripts while the remainder expressed the p210-encoding transcript exclusively. A comparison of patients co-expressing the p190- and p210-encoding transcripts with those patients who only expressed the p210-encoding transcript detected significantly higher white blood cell (WBC) counts and blast cell counts at time of testing as well as significantly higher white blood cell counts at diagnosis. We believe that the expression of the P190-encoding transcript in the chronic phase of CML is due to alternative splicing. ''BCR'' and ''BCR''/''ABL'' minigenes were constructed to study this phenomenon in more detail. These constructs were transfected into various cell types and splicing was assessed by RT-PCR. While the basic '' BCR'' minigene expressed exon-inclusive transcripts only, insertion of genomic DNA spanning ''ABL'' exon 2 induced exon-skipping but only when expressed in the CML cell lines K562 or EM3. In this study we localize the required sequence element to ''ABL'' exon 2 itself. These results mimic the splicing phenotype displayed by most CML patients. RNA-binding assays using nuclear extracts from both CML and non-CML cells detected differential binding to ''ABL'' exon 2. We propose a model where trans-factors present in some CML cells interact with ABL exon 2 pre-mRNA to promote skipping of upstream BCR exons.

?We provide example analyses of data on whooping crane (Grus americana), grizzly bear (Ursus arctos horribilis) in Yellowstone, Kirtland?s warbler (Dendroica kirtlandii), California condor (Gymnogyps californianus), Puerto Rican parrot (Amazona vittata), palila (Loxioides balleui), and Laysan finch (Telespyza cantans). The model results indicate a favorable outlook for the whooping crane, but long-term unfavorable prospects for the Yellowstone grizzly bear population and Kirtland?s warbler. ?

Aboriginal perspectives to primary school curriculum; suggested units of work, lesson plans.