Algorithms control the computational processes relating the indispensable sensors and actuators required for robot navigation and environmental perception. A clear and thorough understanding of how algorithms work is fundamentally essential for developing efficient and usable robots. Capably edited by Bruce Randall Donald, Kevin Lynch, and Daniela Rus, Algorithmic And Computational Robotics: New Directions is drawn from an interdisciplinary group of scientists who contributed their findings, commentaries, and analysis to the Fourth Workshop on the Algorithmic Foundation of Robotics (WAFR 2000). This superbly presented text covers such issues as geometric algorithms, minimalist and underactuated robotics, robot controllability, manufacturing and assembly, holonomic and nonholonomic motion planning, manipulation planning, sensor-based planning, task-level planning, grasping, navigation, biometrics, medical robots, self-assembly, modular and reconfigurable robots, and distributed manipulation. Algorithmic And Computational Robotics is an impressive and highly recommended addition to robotic studies reference collections and reading lists.

Professor Donald provides insight into how the collective decisions of the past have led to so many of the problematic circumstances we face as a nation today. Professors Donald, Baker and Holt take the reader back to over twenty years before the beginning of the Civil War and continue through Reconstruction to examine the various factors and angles from which the entire history of the Civil War and Reconstruction is derived. The student of American History has everything needed in one concise volume to gain a working knowledge of the Civil war and Reconstruction era. This work is a well-documented, factual and detailed account of the most trying period of history our nation has seen to date. The work is accurate, comprehensive and concise. No doubt The Civil War and Reconstruction by David H. Donald will maintain a prominent place in any serious historical library for years to come.

Though a complete laboratory text with 50+ experiments, lab techniques, tables of unknowns and spectroscopy, the organic faculty prepare our own lab manual to be followed. Pavia text becomes a close handy reference for lab techniques and setup. The techniques section, which include filtration, crystallization, distillation (simple, fractional, and steam), chromatogrpahy (column, thin-layer, and gas)... should be carefully studied before conducting experiments for beginning students. Unless your organic lab course follows almost exactly the outline of experiments in this text, you can check it out from the library and read it.

I have taken a full course using this book and I think that it is the best one I have seen! Organic chemistry is a hard subject and this book lays it out in an understandable way. The "techniuques" section is current, readable, and the pictures are well done. The essays that accompany many of the experiments are entertaining and give good background information that helps doing the experiments more enjoyable. Probably the best section is the "identification of unknowns" section which lays out in a good logical way how to identify what you have in the lab. I think that the book also addresses and promotes a great trend in chemistry i.e. microscale research that reduces waste and promotes conservation of chemicals and the environment.

An outstanding lab text for sophomore level 1-yr organic courses. Any chemistry/physical science major should not sell this book back at the end of the semester! Half of the book is dedicated to experiments which while informative is not the real gem here. The other half of the book covers techniques in organic and microscale chemistry. If you ever need to build a chromatographic column or do vacuum filtration again, you will be glad that you kept this book in your library.

The techniques section alone justifies buying this book. Chemistry majors, microbiologists, environmental scientists and engineers will all find this text valuable in their future careers.