After a terrible cliffhanger, the story of Amber, Charissa, Sophie, and Megan defeating the evil half-brother of their coach and his allies continues, with an unexpected twist. One of their allies, Brads, finds a mysterious stranger who has a connection to his past, and the girls find out that in order to defeat this stranger, they must do what they never would've thought was possible or made any sense before.
There be dragons all over the Bible. From the great sea monsters of Genesis to the great dragon of Revelation, dragons appear as the Bible opens and closes, and they pop their grisly heads up at various junctures in between. How did they get there and what on earth (or indeed in heaven) are they doing there? This is a book for those who find standard discussions of faith and suffering frustrating. Andy Angel opens up the rich biblical tradition of living with God in the midst of suffering. He takes the reader on a journey of exploration through biblical texts that are often overlooked on account of their strangeness--texts about dragons. He shows how these peculiar passages open up a language of prayer through suffering in which people share their anger, weariness, disillusionment, and even joy in suffering with God. Angel explores how such "weird" Scriptures open up a whole new way of praying and reveal a God who approves of honest spirituality, a spirituality that the Bible holds open but too many of its interpreters do not.
If you think you know all about angels, think again! Although the modern Western world claims to have left angels behind as mythical creatures, they are back in popular culture. And much of what people are thinking, exploring, and believing about them finds its roots in ancient Jewish and Christian beliefs. Andrew Angel opens up the surprising world of angels to interested enquirers through an examination of the ancient Jewish and Christian texts in which they are found. He asks questions about what angels have to do with religious ecstasy, surviving suffering, and politics, among other things--finding surprising and sometimes controversial answers. Informed by the latest scholarship yet accessible to all, this book provides a well-researched and thought-provoking introduction to angels.
String theory is one of the most active branches of theoretical physics and has the potential to provide a unified description of all known particles and interactions. This book is a systematic introduction to the subject, focused on the detailed description of how string theory is connected to the real world of particle physics. Aimed at graduate students and researchers working in high energy physics, it provides explicit models of physics beyond the Standard Model. No prior knowledge of string theory is required as all necessary material is provided in the introductory chapters. The book provides particle phenomenologists with the information needed to understand string theory model building and describes in detail several alternative approaches to model building, such as heterotic string compactifications, intersecting D-brane models, D-branes at singularities and F-theory.
Although chaotic behaviour had often been observed numerically earlier, the first mathematical proof of the existence, with positive probability (persistence) of strange attractors was given by Benedicks and Carleson for the Henon family, at the beginning of 1990's. Later, Mora and Viana demonstrated that a strange attractor is also persistent in generic one-parameter families of diffeomorphims on a surface which unfolds homoclinic tangency. This book is about the persistence of any number of strange attractors in saddle-focus connections. The coexistence and persistence of any number of strange attractors in a simple three-dimensional scenario are proved, as well as the fact that infinitely many of them exist simultaneously.
The book covers production, structure, properties and potential applications of nanocellular polymers fabricated by using foaming methods. These materials are porous materials with pore sizes in the nanometer range, processed as bulk or film materials, from a wide set of polymers. Reduction of pore size to the nanoscale drastically modifies important properties such as thermal conductivity, optical properties, mechanical properties and specific surface area among others providing improved properties and promising applications for these materials in automotive, aeronautic, renewable energies, construction, filtration or thermal insulation.
The Psychology Express undergraduate revision guide series will help you to understand key concepts quickly, revise effectively and make sure your answers stand out. Each text is tailored to engage the reader and help you: Prepare for exams and coursework using sample questions and assessment advice Maximise your marks and approach exams with confidence Quickly grasp key research, critical issues and practical applications This new addition to the Psychology Express revision guide series will provide concise coverage of the key areas of health psychology.
This book is intended as a textbook for a first-year PhD course in mathematics for economists and as a reference for graduate students in economics. It provides a self-contained, rigorous treatment of most of the concepts and techniques required to follow the standard first-year theory sequence in micro and macroeconomics. The topics covered include an introduction to analysis in metric spaces, differential calculus, comparative statics, convexity, static optimization, dynamical systems and dynamic optimization. The book includes a large number of applications to standard economic models and over two hundred fully worked-out problems.
Lucas Osiander (1534-1604) was an influential preacher of the Lutheran orthodoxy. As a Wuerttemberg court preacher and superintendent, he played a central role when the country was established as one of the leading Lutheran forces in the Empire. Osiander preached to a wide audience in a time when sermons were a privileged form of communication and when preachers could address and negotiate the central interests in society. Using confessionalization theory, Sivert Angel studies Osiander's preaching in its political and theological context and shows how Osiander as a preacher could exert political influence. By analyzing Osiander's sermons in light of his own homiletic, the author describes how Osiander's role as a preacher may be traced in his sermons' rhetoric structures and in his use of theological concepts. The discussion of Osiander's theory and practice of preaching documents the ways that Osiander's sermons reinforced the existing political and social order and portrays central aspects of theology and piety in the later sixteenth century.
Public Transportation Quality of Service: Factors, Models, and Applications is the first book to help researchers better understand the contributing factors that can improve public transportation perception among users. The book compiles in one place metrics currently dispersed in journal articles, government publications and book chapters. It critically analyzes currently available modeling methodologies such as the Ordered Logit/Probit model and Models of Structural Equations, highlighting their advantages and disadvantages. The book addresses models of desired quality, including the views of users and non-users, discussing the gap between desired and perceived quality. The book also examines data mining approaches such as decision trees and neural networks, showing how to involve the public in the decision-making process to create policies that encourage public transport demand. Measuring passenger’s views on public transportation is of critical concern to promote wider transit use in cities around the world. Includes insights from both theoretical and practical points of view for both researchers and practitioners Features case studies in each chapter that apply models discussed Helps readers develop and design their own studies for measuring quality of service Shows how to include perceived quality in contracts Provides access to the survey formulas and data to better enable implementation of models
No state has a greater density of Chicano community leaders and politicians than does Texas. This study examines the lives and politics of a distinguished group of Chicana women who have risen to positions of power. The authors profile women who serve in various public capacities—federal judges, candidates for Lieutenant Governor, a statewide chair of a political party, and members of school boards and city and county governments. The diverse careers of these women offer rare glimpses of the kinds of struggles they face, both as women and as members of the Chicano community. Chicans in Charge will be of great value to those interested in gender studies, political science, local government, public policy, oral history, biography, and Chicano studies.
This book is devoted to some recently developed techniques in quantum field theory (QFT), as well as to their main applications to different areas of parti cle physics. All together they are known as the effective or phenomenological Lagrangian formalism. Motivated by the enormous amount of work carried out in this field during the last years, our purpose when writing this book has been to give a modern and pedagogical exposition of the most relevant as pects of the topic. We hope that our efforts will be useful, both for graduated students in the search for a solid theoretical background in modern phe nomenology and for more experimented particle physicists willing to learn about this field or to start working on it. Even though we have tried to keep the book as self-contained as possible, it has been written assuming that the reader is familiar, at least, with the most basic concepts and techniques of QFT, gauge theories, the standard model (SM) and differential geometry, at the level of graduate studies. It is therefore possible that senior high-energy physicists may find the book too detailed and so they could probably omit several sections. The book is divided into two main parts and the appendices. In the first part we introduce the fundamentals of the effective Lagrangian formalism and other basic topics such as Ward identities, non-linear sigma models (NLSM), spontaneous symmetry breaking (SSB), anomalies, the SM symmetries, etc.
Igniting a long-overdue dialogue about how the legacy of racial injustice and white supremacy plays out in society at large and Buddhist communities in particular, this urgent call to action outlines a new dharma that takes into account the ways that racism and privilege prevent our collective awakening. The authors traveled around the country to spark an open conversation that brings together the Black prophetic tradition and the wisdom of the Dharma. Bridging the world of spirit and activism, they urge a compassionate response to the systemic, state-sanctioned violence and oppression that has persisted against black people since the slave era. With national attention focused on the recent killings of unarmed black citizens and the response of the Black-centered liberation groups such as Black Lives Matter, Radical Dharma demonstrates how social transformation and personal, spiritual liberation must be articulated and inextricably linked. Rev. angel Kyodo williams, Lama Rod Owens, and Jasmine Syedullah represent a new voice in American Buddhism. Offering their own histories and experiences as illustrations of the types of challenges facing dharma practitioners and teachers who are different from those of the past five decades, they ask how teachings that transcend color, class, and caste are hindered by discrimination and the dynamics of power, shame, and ignorance. Their illuminating argument goes beyond a demand for the equality and inclusion of diverse populations to advancing a new dharma that deconstructs rather than amplifies systems of suffering and prepares us to weigh the shortcomings not only of our own minds but also of our communities. They forge a path toward reconciliation and self-liberation that rests on radical honesty, a common ground where we can drop our need for perfection and propriety and speak as souls. In a society where profit rules, people's value is determined by the color of their skin, and many voices—including queer voices—are silenced, Radical Dharma recasts the concepts of engaged spirituality, social transformation, inclusiveness, and healing.
Originally published in 1912. Author: Norman Angel Language: English Keywords: Social Sciences Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. Obscure Press are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.
This invaluable textbook covers the theory and circuit design techniques to implement CMOS (Complementary Metal-Oxide Semiconductor) class-D audio amplifiers integrated circuits. The first part of the book introduces the motivation and fundamentals of audio amplification. The loudspeaker's operation and main audio performance metrics explains the limitations in the amplification process. The second part of this book presents the operating principle and design procedure of the class-D amplifier main architectures to provide the performance tradeoffs. The circuit design procedures involved in each block of the class-D amplifier architecture are highlighted. The third part of this book discusses several important design examples introducing state-of-the-art architectures and circuit design techniques to improve the audio performance, power consumption, and efficiency of standard class-D audio amplifiers.
First Published in 2002. The Italian phenomenon known as raddoppiamento sintattico, or sometimes raddoppiamento fonosintattico, has received a vast amount of attention. Long recognized in Italian grammar books, the process consists of the gemination of a word-initial consonant in certain environments. The word raddoppiamento means “doubling,” and it is deemed “syntactic” or “phonosyntactic” because the process spans word boundaries. This offers a synchronic and diachronic cross-dialectical study of this phenomenon.
Iterative processes are the tools used to generate sequences approximating solutions of equations describing real life problems. Intended for researchers in computational sciences and as a reference book for advanced computational method in nonlinear analysis, this book is a collection of the recent results on the convergence analysis of numerical algorithms in both finite-dimensional and infinite-dimensional spaces and presents several applications and connections with fixed point theory. It contains an abundant and updated bibliography and provides comparisons between various investigations made in recent years in the field of computational nonlinear analysis. The book also provides recent advancements in the study of iterative procedures and can be used as a source to obtain the proper method to use in order to solve a problem. The book assumes a basic background in Mathematical Statistics, Linear Algebra and Numerical Analysis and may be used as a self-study reference or as a supplementary text for an advanced course in Biosciences or Applied Sciences. Moreover, the newest techniques used to study the dynamics of iterative methods are described and used in the book and they are compared with the classical ones.
Providing an holistic approach to IMS technologies, IMS: A Development and Deployment Perspective explores service architecture for development and delivery of IMS services. Approaching IMS from the perspective of the user and the service provider it examines both the current state of deployment and future trends. The book offers a realistic view of IMS deployment to operators and service providers, giving practical examples, application cases and business models. It also presents IMS deployment strategies based on real-life deployment statistics from a live IMS test bed connected to an operator network and proof-of-concept applications including inter-operability trials and results. Focusing on IMS potential in terms of service creation, service composition and service provision the book discusses the ability of IMS to act not only as a service delivery framework, but also as a service integration framework. It presents the possible future of IMS in terms of convergence with Internet services, including discussions about integration with web technologies including the WIMS 2.0 initiative. The book enables a better understanding of how web technologies can complement the IMS service architecture and pioneer the post-IMS progress and success. Presents a novel service-oriented approach to IMS services and applications from a deployment perspective Places IMS in the context of the current telecom environment providing business models through WIMS 2.0 initiative Predicts the trends and potential future for the IMS evolution Provides a technical foundation to IMS principles and architecture Gives examples and solutions to the challenges of service creation and implementation and analyses deployment hurdles and interoperability trials Describes trends of convergence based on IMS and Web technologies
Richly varied collection of 10 plays from 16th through 20th centuries. The Vigilant Sentinel by Miguel de Cervantes; Fuente Ovejuna by Lope de Vega; Life Is a Dream by Pedro Calderon de la Barca; Blood Wedding by Federico García Lorca, 6 more. Preface by John Gassner. Introduction and notes on each play.
Hardcore Programming for Mechanical Engineers is for intermediate programmers who want to write good applications that solve tough engineering problems – from scratch. This book will teach you how to solve engineering problems with Python. The “hardcore” approach means that you will learn to get the correct results by coding everything from scratch. Forget relying on third-party software – there are no shortcuts on the path to proficiency. Instead, using familiar concepts from linear algebra, geometry and physics, you’ll write your own libraries, draw your own primitives, and build your own applications. Author Angel Sola covers core programming techniques mechanical engineers need to know, with a focus on high-quality code and automated unit testing for error-free implementations. After basic primers on Python and using the command line, you’ll quickly develop a geometry toolbox, filling it with lines and shapes for diagramming problems. As your understanding grows chapter-by-chapter, you’ll create vector graphics and animations for dynamic simulations; you’ll code algorithms that can do complex numerical computations; and you’ll put all of this knowledge together to build a complete structural analysis application that solves a 2D truss problem – similar to the software projects conducted by real-world mechanical engineers. You'll learn: • How to use geometric primitives, like points and polygons, and implement matrices • Best practices for clean code, including unit testing, encapsulation, and expressive names • Processes for drawing images to the screen and creating animations inside Tkinter’s Canvas widget • How to write programs that read from a file, parse the data, and produce vector images • Numerical methods for solving large systems of linear equations, like the Cholesky decomposition algorithm
Effective political communication involves diligent identification of problems on the one hand and proffering solutions on the other using popular images to affect decision making, sharing, and acting. This book is aimed at making readers politicians, students, policy makers, political activists, social actors, and researchers to understand the fact that political communication is not value-free. It shows the ways and means of generating media literacy as well as power literacy. Political communication is a multidisciplinary subject required to elevate and polish language, politically crafted to enable target audience give diverse interpretations to the message conveyed by the source. The book shows also the dissensual value-choosing relationships between politics, communication, rhetorical tropes, and social media. "The primary strength of Folorunso's book resides in its rhetorical emphasis particularly in regard to the uses of images, campaigns, drama, and social media in politics, as essential skills needed in a democratic community consciously driven by charismatic and/or transformational leadership" (Rhetoric Society of Africa).
Fuzzy logic has virtually exploded over the landscape of emerging technologies, becoming an integral part of myriad applications and a standard tool for engineers. Until recently, most of the attention and applications have centered on fuzzy systems implemented in software. But these systems are limited. Problems that require real-time operation, low area, or low power consumption demand hardware designed to the fuzzy paradigm - and engineers with the background and skills to design it. Microelectronic Design of Fuzzy Logic-Based Systems offers low-cost answers to issues that software cannot resolve. From the theoretical, architectural, and technological foundation to design tools and applications, it serves as your guide to effective hardware realizations of fuzzy logic. Review fuzzy logic theory and the basic issues of fuzzy sets, operators, and inference mechanisms Explore the trade-offs between efficient theoretical behavior and practical hardware realizations Discover the properties of the possible microelectronic realizations of fuzzy systems - conventional processors, fuzzy coprocessors, and fuzzy chips Investigate the design of fuzzy chips that implement the whole fuzzy inference method into silicon Analyze analog, digital, and mixed-signal techniques Reduce your design effort for fuzzy systems with CAD tools - learn the requirements they should meet and survey current environments. Put it all together - see examples and case studies illustrating how all of this is used to solve particular problems related to control and neuro-fuzzy applications
Sociologists from the University of Texas document the impact of gender, poverty, and ethnic and racial minority status on the physical and mental health of children and adult women in families without fathers. They explore the demographics, health- care and welfare policies, and the health effects of the culture of poverty not only on children and their mothers, but also on older women. Paper edition (13964-6), $19.95. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Cutaneous lymphoid infiltrates which are suspicious for lymphoma, are always important challenges for the general pathologist who faces them occasionally. Many times they are also difficult even for the dermatopathologist, and the most modern diagnostic weapons sometimes play a crucial role in the differential diagnosis with other non-malignant entities, as well as between the different types of lymphomas. Clinically, they sometimes simulate many other conditions, and are not always easy to be recognise by the dermatologist. In 2005, a new classification of cutaneous lymphomas was published, in an attempt to achieve a better comprehension of the nature and behaviour of these tumours. Nevertheless, many new aspects of pathogenesis, diagnosis and differential diagnosis, are constantly appearing in medical literature. This current book is an attempt to present to the reader, the field of cutaneous lymphomas in a way that can be useful in daily practice, either as a general surgical pathologist, a dermatologist, or a dermatopathologist. At the same time, the reader will find updated information which will probably be very helpful in order to face confidently most of the difficult clinical and histopathologic cases. The book goes through most of the cutaneous lymphomas in systematic order, either B-cell, T-cell, or Hodgkin type, presenting the clinical, and morphological aspects, which include many of the most recent molecular contributions. Many of the chapters also provide a therapeutic approach.
This book presents a systematic approach to the implementation of Internet of Things (IoT) devices achieving visual inference through deep neural networks. Practical aspects are covered, with a focus on providing guidelines to optimally select hardware and software components as well as network architectures according to prescribed application requirements. The monograph includes a remarkable set of experimental results and functional procedures supporting the theoretical concepts and methodologies introduced. A case study on animal recognition based on smart camera traps is also presented and thoroughly analyzed. In this case study, different system alternatives are explored and a particular realization is completely developed. Illustrations, numerous plots from simulations and experiments, and supporting information in the form of charts and tables make Visual Inference and IoT Systems: A Practical Approach a clear and detailed guide to the topic. It will be of interest to researchers, industrial practitioners, and graduate students in the fields of computer vision and IoT.
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