Most Popular Books by Elizabeth Cook

What is a crustacean and how clever are they? Are crabs and lobster hard to catch because they can see us, smell us or hear us? How do barnacles eat? Entertain reluctant readers with answers to these and other interesting facts about the crustacean family.

This perceptive and illuminating study offers a stimulating, new approach to major aspects of late Renaissance literature that tend to be either misunderstood or neglected. It is an account and an analysis of the way in which English poetry in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries registers a new kind of attentiveness to the material world and unusually full awareness of the resources peculiar to language.

This project is a thorough study of symptoms of trauma in childhood. A review of related literature outlines and emphasizes the definition of trauma, the criteria for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and how trauma symptoms manifest in play and art within therapy sessions. In corroboration with the review of related literature, case studies of three separate clients are summarized. Symptomology within therapy sessions is viewed in regards to the ages, developmental levels, and types and duration of the traumatic events of each client. Varying presentations of the same symptoms are noted between separate clients. The appearance and disappearance of symptoms, as well as any changes in severity, are noted for all three clients in an attempt to showcase the beginnings of mastery and resiliency.

Come learn about the creepiest sea creatures in the ocean. From barracuda to sea cucumbers, wolf eels to crocodile fish, explore some of the strangest, most exotic, and most interesting animals in the ocean.

Abstract : l. vi-vii.

Ensnare students with intriguing animals that use tentacles for feeding, mating, and protection. Study differences between octopuses and squid. Have a close encounter with a chambered nautilus. And discover whose tentacles are poisonous and whose are friendly.

In 2010, Chicago Public Schools (CPS) was facing a dilemma, to deliver a consistent sex education program in a complex and diverse school district. Four years earlier, the school board had adopted a policy calling for students in grades 5 through 12 to receive family life and comprehensive sex education. To help support schools in meeting this requirement, CPS purchased access to HealthTeacher, a popular online K-12 health education program used by hundreds of other school districts around the country as a comprehensive and affordable approach to health education. CPS was particularly interested in using HealthTeacher to provide sex education to middle school students as a way to help prevent future teen births and risky sexual behaviors among district students. The district made program lessons easily accessible to middle school teachers throughout the district. In this study, we evaluate the impacts of a CPS demonstration project to support the implementation of HealthTeacher in a select number of Chicago 7th grade classrooms.

Normative ideals of masculinity in Japan continue to largely revolve around the figure of the 'salaryman': the responsible (middle-class) salaried worker, breadwinner and father. Although this model of adult manhood is becoming less attainable for many young men, the social and self expectations of many remain focused on these very ideals, as do normative ideals of adulthood. But what happens to young men who are unable or unwilling to attain salaried work? This thesis explores the lives of freeters: officially defined as part-time workers aged between fifteen and thirty-four, who, by their employment status, are almost the antithesis of the steady, productive salaryman. Freeters are often depicted in popular discourse as either lazy unmotivated youth or the victims of a changing economic climate. The vast majority of studies on freeters come from sociology, education and labour economics. These are generally data-rich, but people-poor, and most seek to structurally understand why people become freeters and the role that education and changing economic structures play in this. Little focus is given to the role of gender or issues of agency or the ways in which cultural notions of adulthood, selfhood and gender intertwine. Yet these are intimately tied into the discourse on freeters and to their lifestyles. Much of the concern surrounding the freeter 'issue' focuses on male freeters who are perceived to be failing to be proper productive citizens through their irregular working styles, low (or absent) payments into the social welfare system, and their comparatively modest marriage rate. Indeed, failure was never far from the thoughts of male freeters, though for differing reasons. They felt that by continued pursuit of their non-mainstream aspirations they were failing at being 'proper' adult men because of their inability to become core breadwinners and provide familial stability. Yet, they also felt that they would be failing themselves by shelving their aspirations and succumbing to a lifestyle that many had been seeking to move away from. By ethnographically exploring the lives of freeters I seek a different perspective from previous studies. By examining the interplay between cultural (gendered) notions of maturity and selfhood, and normative ideals of masculinity in Japan, it is possible to see how individuals' attempts to create more meaningful lives for themselves are mediated by gendered notions (created and maintained by both men and women) of what it means to be an adult man in Japan.

Mistletoes in Australia are keystone resources that are patchily aggregated in space and with peak fruit production that varies in time. Understanding how seed dispersing birds find fruiting mistletoe and what visual or habitat-based characteristics may influence their searching decisions can shed light on potential bird-driven distributions of mistletoe. While mistletoe selection by foraging frugivores has been investigated in other mistletoe systems, none have explored their search strategies, specifically, the potential use of a search image and spatial memory. To determine the potential search strategies of frugivorous birds and the influences of those strategies when searching for mistletoe fruit, I designed a series of novel, manipulative experiments. These involved two approaches: 1) defoliation and 2) moving whole mistletoe plants to new locations. In Chapter 2, I compare bird visitation to defoliated and intact fruiting mistletoes to determine the visual effects of leaves on potential seed dispersing birds. Chapter 3 investigates the effects of mistletoe location in host versus non-host trees and the effects of visual characteristics of the host tree and manipulated mistletoe in a continuous forest. This was achieved by cutting mistletoe and either 1) replacing it (In-situ), 2) moving it to another tree of the same species or (Same Species) or 3) moving it to a tree species that does not host mistletoe (Different species). In Chapter 4, I repeat a modified version of the experiment conducted in Chapter 3, using only In-situ and Same Species treatments in a roadside habitat. The results of this experiment were then compared to the corresponding results from Chapter 3 to determine potential effects of habitat type on bird visitation of fruiting mistletoes. For each experiment I also explored potential differences in visitation patterns among birds grouped into three dietary guilds: mistletoe specialists, feeding primarily on mistletoe fruits and nectar; generalist frugivores, potential seed dispersers known to eat a variety of fruits and invertebrates; and opportunistic foragers that visit mistletoes but may be searching for invertebrates rather than fruits. Overall, birds showed a preference for intact, In-situ mistletoes in continuous forest habitat, preferences that were largely driven by the generalist frugivore guild. My research provides the first evidence of spatial memory in mistletoe-dispersing birds, linking foraging behaviour to aggregated seed dispersal patterns. As mistletoes are patchy fruiting resources with limited, specialised seed dispersers, the findings of this thesis may be transferrable and testable in other specialised fruit-frugivore systems.

Discover where these ocean reptiles live and why they are endangered. Visit a turtle sanctuary and learn how turtles make a nest and lay their eggs. Read how scientists and supporters are tracking and caring for these special ocean dwellers.