"Early in embryonic development, the cells begin to specialize:  Some become liver cells; some become nerve cells; others become the transparent lens of the eye.  Every cell in the body carries the same genes.  (A gene, simply speaking, is a segment of DNA that encodes for a specific protein and therefore dictates a specific cell function.)  If all cells have identical genes, how can one cell be so different from another?  This question is currently the subject of extensive research.  Apparently, cells in various regions of the developing embryo are exposed to different chemical signals that channel the cells into specific pathways of development.”—Thank you, Elaine N. Marieb & Jon Mallat, for Human Anatomy, Second Edition, Benjamin/Cummings, 1997, pp.43-44

"N.__'s first law of motion:  An object moves with a velocity that is constant in magnitude and direction, unless acted on by a nonzero force.  [...]  N__'s second law:  The acceleration of an object is directly proportional to the net force acting on it and inversely proportional to its mass.  [...]  N__'s law of universal gravitation:  Every particle in the universe attracts every other particle with a force that is directly proportional to the product of the masses of the particles and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them.”—Thank you, Raymond A. Serway, Chris Vuille, & Jerry S. Faughn, for College Physics, Volume 1, Eighth Edition, Thomson Higher Education, 2008, pp.85,86,90.  Thank you, Ken Cropper, M.D., for access to the library from which this book was borrowed.  *Isaac Newton.

"As traveling disturbances pass over a coastline or ice edge, they experience a change in surface friction, heat fluxes, and possibly orography. The sudden change in surface conditions can modify the disturbance, but it also can give rise to entirely new phenomena that are peculiar to the coastal region.  [...]  The complexities introduced by such mesoscale and synoptic-scale interactions hinder conceptual understanding, and accurate forecasting of changing coastal conditions requires the simultaneous simulation of a variety of disparate processes and their interactions.  Manifestations of these interactions are numerous.”—Thank you, Health Press, for Coastal Meteorology: A Review of the State of the Science, 1992, p.45

"The female honeyguide [bird...] finds a nest made by another bird and lays a single egg in it when the other mother is not around.  When the honeyguide egg hatches, it is blind and hungry and almost helpless, but it has two sharp hooks on its bill.  It uses them to bite the other nestlings to death.  [...]  The mother bird [...then raises this] baby [...], while her own young have been killed."—Thank you, Alvin Silverstein, Virginia Silverstein, & Laura Silverstein Nunn, for Symbiosis, Twenty-First Century Books, 1998, p.7

"Millions and millions of single-celled [...] bacteria live inside our intestines.  [...]  The survival of many species depends on the presence of bacteria.  Certain bacteria that live in our intestines [...] (intestinal microflora) help to destroy other organisms that could be harmful.  Some microflora break food down to make it easier to digest [...]; others make important vitamins, such as [...] B [...and...] K.  [...]  Scientists now believe that some important parts of the cells of animals and plants were once bacteria that were captured by some long-ago ancestor of present-day species and then were passed on by their hosts from generation to generation.  One important type is the mitochondria, found in the cells of virtually all eukaryotes (organisms whose cells have a nucleus, [which] includes plants, animals, fungi, and protists).  Mitochondria are football-shaped structures that burn food materials to release energy for the cell's activities.  Researchers have found that mitochondria have their own DNA [...].  It's different from the cell's DNA, which is specific for the type of plant or animal; in fact, it's somewhat like the DNA of bacteria."—Thank you, Alvin Silverstein, Virginia Silverstein, & Laura Silverstein Nunn, for Symbiosis, Twenty-First Century Books, 1998, pp.10-11

"[A statistical table is] sometimes referred to as a summary or analytical table.  This type of table is used primarily for analyzing information as opposed to referencing, scheduling, etc.  There are always two or more variables and the data in the body is normally numeric.  Information is generally arranged, ranked, sorted, etc., to make such things as relationships, trends, comparisons, distributions, and anomalies stand out."—Thank you, Robert L. Harris, for Information Graphics: A Comprehensive Illustrated Reference, Oxford University Press, 1983, p.368

"When I was a young student naturalist in Corfu, I did not have access to naturalist shops and it was before the days of mail-order catalogs [...].  Even if this had not been the case, my meager pocket money would not have allowed me to buy specially made butterfly nets and cans for collecting insects.  My nets were homemade out of cheap cheesecloth sewed by myself or by my mother or sister [...], and my killing bottle was and old candy jar with a cotton ball soaked in ether purchased from the druggist.  Not one bottle or can in our house was thrown out, they all made containers of one sort or another for my collection.  Matchboxes were invaluable and any solid container of wood or cardboard was a godsend  When my containers were full of specimens I unhesitatingly used all my pockets, my handkerchief, my shirt [...]."—Thank you, Gerald Durrell, for A Practical Guide for the Amateur Naturalist, Alfred A. Knopf, 1983, p.19.  Thank you, Jill Goff, for access to the library from which this book was borrowed.

"In population, [India] ranks second only to China.  The north is mountainous, with mountains and foothills of the Himalayan range.  Rivers, such as the Brahmaputra and Ganges (Ganga), rise in the Himalayas and flow across the fertile northern plains.  Southern India consists of a large plateau, called the Deccan.  The Deccan is bordered by two mountain ranges, the Western Ghats and the Eastern Ghats.  [...]  India has 15 major languages and hundreds of minor ones, together with many religions."—Thank you, Keith Lye, for The Portable World Factbook, Avon Books, 1997, pp.150-151.  Thank you, Jill Goff, for access to the library from which this book was borrowed.

"Orchestra:  a term, dating (in modern times) from the late 17th c[entury], for an instrumental ensemble, usu[ally] restricted to mean an ensemble composed of a section of bowed strings with more than one player to a part along with woodwind, brass and percussion instruments [...]  The modern symphony orchestra usually contains from 40 to 100 players."—Thank you, Philip D. Morehead, for The New American Dictionary of Music, Dutton, 1991, p.385.  Thank you, Jill Goff, for access to the library from which this book was borrowed.

"Plasma is a medium composed of electrons and ions free to move in all spatial directions.  Because a charged particle can interact simultaneously with many other charged particles in its vicinity [...], plasma behaves as a collective medium and is macroscopically neutral."—Thank you, Michael Moisan & Jacques Pelletier, for "Physics of Collision Plasmas: Introduction to High-Frequency Discharges," in Physics of Collisional Sciences, Springer Netherlands, 2012, p.1

"turn on the hydrant and the water's hard
you can't wash your face or fill a pail
and the pump has chewed right through its hose
the crowbar's dull and the pick won't bite
because like death water is tough
though you abolish it altogether

all events are reflected in it separately
even toss a piano from the balcony on your neighbor
like a new man he's vulnerable
and the tongue in your mouth is unbearably white
looks as if we'd been drinking a solution of chalk
and now we're eating it like that

a useless sound from the water arose
the air will not pass down the hollow reed
it has choked, thy flute
granite will ring out on the side of the pail
but in frozen time is no harm
to plants stars and beasts

because the limestone brain is hard
because the world is mountain wax
that congeals without difficulty
and in the well's circle more faithfully than you
its features have been reflected forever
by this stone water"

—Thank you, Aleksei Tsvetkov, for "140" in Contemporary Russian Poetry: A Bilingual Anthology, Indiana University Press, 1993, pp.236-239.  Thank you, Barbara Folsom, for access to the library from which this book was borrowed.

"The vocal cords (vocal folds) are paired bands of fibrous tissue near the base of the larynx.  In normal breathing there is a V-shaped gap between them, called the glottis.  Sound is produced when the cords close together, tighten by muscle action, and vibrate as air from the lungs passes between them.  The greater the tension in the cords, the higher the pitch (frequency).  Above are the false vocal cords (vestibular folds).  These do not produce sound but help close off the larynx when swallowing."—Thank you, Steve Parker, for The Human Body Book, Dorling Kindersley Limited, 2007, p.137   

"The Greek word muthos means formulated speech, whether it be a story, a dialogue, or the enunciation of a plan.  So muthos belongs to the domain of legein ["to speak"], [...] and does not originally stand in contrast to logoi, a term that has a closely related semantic significance and that is concerned with the different forms of what is said.  [...]  Between the eighth and fourth centuries B.C.[E.], a whole series of interrelated conditions caused a multiplicity of differentiations, breaks, and internal tensions with in the mental universe of the Greeks that were responsible for distinguishing the domain of myth from other domains:  The concept of myth peculiar to classical antiquity thus became clearly defined through the setting up of an opposition between muthos and logos, henceforth seen as separate and contrasting terms."—Thank you, Jean-Pierre Vernant for Myth and Society in Ancient Greece, Zone Books, 1990, p.203-204.  Thank you, Chris & Anna Celenza for access to the library from which this book was borrowed.

"All civilizations can be understood to a limited extent purely in thermodynamic terms.  From the food that keeps our bodies at proper metabolic temperature to the draft animals, engines, or nuclear reactors that propel our vehicles, the connection between energy and culture is close and causal."—Thank you, Robert J. Wenke & Deborah I. Olszewski for Patterns in Prehistory, Oxford University Press, 2007, p.484

"G.V.__ argued systematically that the understanding of a past society - even of an earlier period in the history of one's own society - was a demanding, if rewarding, intellectual task.  The modern reader opening a work by Homer or Livy had to realize that it did not describe individuals like himself, men and women whose experiences, feelings, and ideas would be immediately recognizable.  Only by mastering the general laws of social and cultural evolution that Vico himself had formulated could one avoid committing basic errors."—Thank you, Giambattista Vico (1668-1774) for New Science.  Thank you, Anthony Grafton, for the "Introduction" of Penguin Book's 1999 edition (quote from p.xi of "Introduction").  Thank you, Chris & Anna Celenza for access to the library from which this book was borrowed. *Giambattista Vico

"Now I assert, the spirit and the soul / are held conjoint and form one common nature, / but the captain, so to speak, and lord of the body / is the judgment, which we call the soul or mind. / It sits fixed in the center of the breast. / Here alarm bucks loose, and dread, and round these regions / Gladness caresses.  Here, then, is the mind, the soul. / The other, the spirit, sown broadcast through the body, / obeys and moves to the mind's sway and will. / The mind thinks by itself, joys in itself, / Even when nothing is stirring the spirit or body. / And as when our head or eye is stricken with  / Some trying pain, we're still not torture-crossed / throughout the body, so the mind itself / will grieve or flourish in gladness while the spirit, / spread through the frame, is touched by nothing new. / But when the fear that troubles the mind is more / vehement, we see the spirit in all the members / agree, and the body blanches and beads of sweat / break out all over, the tongue-tied voice cracks, falters, / it's dusk with the eyes, ears ring, limbs buckle and give, / and yes, we see men terrified in mind / crumple — so anyone should easily learn / that the spirit and mind are one, for when spirit is struck / by the force of the mind, it thrusts and hurls the body."—Thank you, Lucretius (ca.99-55 BCE) (and Anthony M. Esolen, editor) for De rerum natura (on the nature of things), Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995, p.95.  Thank you, Chris & Anna Celenza for access to the library from which this book was borrowed.

"All stable matter in the universe is made from particles that belong to the first generation [of quarks]; any heavier particles quickly decay to the next most stable level."—Thank you, CERN, 2013, http://home.web.cern.ch/about/physics/standard-model

"The purpose of the reasoning process, logic's principal concern, is demonstration.  I am not reasoning with you if I simply say that such-and-such is true.  [...]  I must show you that such-and-such is true, and I do that by making an argument.  An argument will only be as good as the statements of which it is composed, and those statements, in turn, will only be as good as the terms of which they are composed.  [...]  Argument is the activity of logic, and any particular argument is a concrete manifestation of the reasoning process."—Thank you, D. Q. McInerny (writer) for Being Logical:  A Guide to Good Thinking, Random House, 2004, p.41

"[A] barrier lake [is one] formed by a natural barrier [that] stop[s] water [from] draining away.  Natural barriers can be moraine, rock, or lava."—Thank you, Ajay K. Ghosh (editor) for Academic Dictionary of Geology, Isha Books, 2005, p.19

"[An] overview of fluid mechanical processes occurring at the different interfaces existing in the realm of Environment Fluid Mechanics (EFM), [include, but are not limited to] the air-water interface, the air-land interface, the water-sediment interface, and the water-vegetation interface.  Across any of these interfaces, mass, momentum, and heat are exchanged through different fluid mechanical processes over various spatial and temporal scales."—Thank you, Carlo Gualtieri & Dragutin T. Mihailović (editors) for Fluid Mechanics of Environmental Interfaces, 2nd. Ed., CRC Press, 2012, p.vii

"The microorganisms that decompose the organic matter in the surface soil [of tropical forests] are aided by bacteria and single-celled animals in the alimentary canals of termites, cockroaches, and beetles.  The ubiquitous termites depend on protozoa, which permanently inhabit their gut, for cellulose digestion, and similarly the ants that cultivate fungus gardens use the fungi to digest the cellulose of their plant harvests, for they themselves are unable to do it alone."—Thank you, Michael Emsley (writer) and Kjell B. Sandved (photographer) for Rain Forests and Cloud Forests, Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1979, p.115

"Adult [margined burying beetles (Nicrophorus marginatus)] often drag a small carcass 16 feet, bury it beneath loose dirt, then mate there.  They remove fur or feathers [from the carcass], work [the] body into a ball shape then lay eggs.  Adults care for larvae until larvae pupate, sometimes in a side tunnel."—from Lorus and Margery Milne in The Audobon Society Field Guide to North American Insects and Spiders, Alfred A. Knopt, 1980, p.549