Benchmarking has become a key tool in the water industry to promote and achieve performance targets for utilities. The use of this tool for performance improvement through systematic search and adaptation of leading practices, has expanded globally during the past decade. Many ongoing projects worldwide aim to address different needs and objectives, in varying contexts, with outstanding results and impact. Benchmarking Water Services provides valuable information to everyone interested in benchmarking in the water industry. The text is aimed at utilities considering joining a benchmarking project, experienced practitioners in charge of organizing a benchmarking exercise, consultants, regulators and researchers. The document is presented with a clear practice oriented approach and can be used as a how-to-benchmark guide presented from different perspectives (participants, organizers, supervising bodies). Readers will gain practical insight on real life benchmarking practices and will benefit from the experiences gained in some of the leading benchmarking projects of the water industry (including the IWA-WSAA benchmarking efforts, the European Benchmarking Co-operation and the several benchmarking projects carried out in Austria and Central Europe). The manual also presents the new IWA Benchmarking Framework, which aims to harmonize the terms used to describe benchmarking and performance indicators practices in the water industry, guaranteeing a more fluent and efficient communication. This Manual of Best Practice is edited by the IWA Specialist Group on Benchmarking and Performance Assessment, and co-published by AWWA and IWA Publishing. Praise for Benchmarking Water Services: "The continual trend of conceptual to specifics throughout the book provides for an educational experience each time the book is either casually perused or carefully studied." "The authors (Cabrera, Haskins and Fritiz) diligently pursue the focus of improvement." "Benchmarking Water Services is an in depth and practical ‘must have’ guide for any utility currently engaged in or planning to develop a benchmarking process" - Gregory M. Baird (2012) Benchmarking: An International Journal 19:2. More information about the book can be found on the Water Wiki in an article written by the author: http://www.iwawaterwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Articles/TheNewIWABenchmarkingFramework A Spanish language version of this book is available as a free eBook: http://www.iwawaterwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Articles/eBookTitlesfromIWAPublishingFreetoDownload-Volume2#HBenchmarkingParaServiciosdeAgua
The Complete Owners Guide. Includes Information on Height, Health, Temperament and Training, Grooming, Breeding and Caring for Great Dane Puppies to Full Grown Dogs.
The Complete Owners Guide. Includes Information on Height, Health, Temperament and Training, Grooming, Breeding and Caring for Great Dane Puppies to Full Grown Dogs.
Welcome All to the Complete and Comprehensive Guide to Owning, Enjoying and Learning All About Great Danes!! Within the pages of this easy-to-read book, you will find a wealth of information on the wonderful world of Great Danes with detailed instructions for keeping them as pets. You will also learn how to Groom, Breed, Feed and Show your Great Dane. Great Danes are very social and friendly dogs, which make them a joy, keep as pets. If you have ever thought about adopting a Great Dane and accepting them into your life or if you are just curious to learn more, then this book is perfect for you! Here is just some of what you will learn from this book: - Great Dane Facts, History and types - What to know before you purchase a Great Dane .i.e. Licencing and Costs - Where to buy a Great Dane and how many to keep - Great Danes with other dog breeds, family and different pets - The Pros & Cons of Great Danes - Caring for Great Danes from Puppies to Full Grown Dogs, Feeding, Grooming and Training - The Breeding Process and Behaviour - Raising and keeping your Great Dane happy and healthy while preventing all common health problems By the time you finish this book you will be equipped with enough knowledge to know whether Great Danes are right for you and you will have the foundation you need to get started in owning and caring for these gentle and Regal Giants.
Some of the serial killers chosen for this first annual Serial Killers True Crime Anthology you might have heard of and we present their tales in new ways. Others have not graced every newspaper, tabloid or television screen and represent tales of true crime horror told in detail for the first time in these pages. Five of true crime's most prolific authors have come together in these pages to present their most compelling cases of serial homicide, famous and not so famous. WARNING: This book contains graphic forensic crime scene photos and statements that some may find disturbing. "The lambs may have stopped screaming, but Hannibal Lecter has nothing on the very 'real' monsters presented here." Serial killers; they cross the bounds of evil. They murder at random without logic or reason other than the one twisting in their sick and evil minds. They are diabolical vile creatures devoid of morality or pity. You will meet a chosen few of them in these pages. We will see that serial killers are roaming among us all, from small towns to big cities. They are not limited to a particular place, gene pool, culture, social class or religion. They are not restricted to any particular demographic, political propensity and they can be of any gender. "To cover such vast territory of the criminal mind is a credit to the dedication a small group of determined authors who possess a passion in true crime and it is evident in the pages of Serial Killers True Crime Anthology 2014, a book you will embrace and come back to repeatedly, I will. I am excitedly anticipating volume two next year."- ★★★★★ John Douglas, FBI Profiler bestseller author of Mind Hunter
In recent years, formalist and deconstructive approaches to literary studies have been under attack, charged by critics with isolating texts as distinctive aesthetic or linguistic objects, separate from their social and historical contexts. Historicist and cultural approaches have often responded by simply reversing the picture, reducing texts to no more than superstructural effects of historical or ideological forces. In Writing Revolution, Peter J. Bellis explores the ways in which literature can engage with—rather than escape from or obscure—social and political issues. Bellis argues that a number of nineteenth-century American writers, including Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry David Thoreau, and Walt Whitman, saw their texts as spaces where alternative social and cultural possibilities could be suggested and explored. All writing in the same historical moment, Bellis's subjects were responding to the same cluster of issues: the need to redefine American identity after the Revolution, the problem of race slavery, and the growing industrialization of American society. Hawthorne, Bellis contends, sees the romance as "neutral territory" where the Imaginary and the Actual—the aesthetic and the historical—can interpenetrate and address crucial issues of class, race, and technological modernity. Whitman conceives of Leaves of Grass as a transformative democratic space where all forms of meditation, both political and literary, are swept away. Thoreau oscillates between these two approaches. Walden, like the romance, aims to fashion a mediating space between nature and society. His abolitionist essays, however, shift sharply away from both linguistic representation and the political, toward an apocalyptic cleansing violence. In addition to covering selected works by Hawthorne, Whitman, and Thoreau, Bellis also examines powerful works of social and political critique by Louisa May Alcott and Margaret Fuller. With its suggestions for new ways of reading antebellum American writing, Writing Revolution breaks through the thickets of contemporary literary discourse and will spark debate in the literary community.
The Fourth Edition of Peter G. Northouse’s bestselling Introduction to Leadership: Concepts and Practice provides readers with a clear overview of the complexities of practicing leadership and concrete strategies for becoming better leaders. The text is organized around key leader responsibilities such as creating a vision, establishing a constructive climate, listening to outgroup members, and overcoming obstacles. Three interactive components in every chapter—self-assessment questionnaires, observational exercises, and reflection and action worksheets—get readers actively involved in applying leadership concepts to their own lives. Grounded in leadership theory and the latest research, the fully updated, highly practical Fourth Edition includes a new chapter on how leaders can embrace diversity and inclusion, as well as new material on the dark side of leadership and a new ethical leadership style questionnaire.
Next Generation meets New Frontier as Captain Jean-Luc Picard joins forces with Captain Mackenzie Calhoun to track down and confront the hidden architects of the recurring plague that is threatening the universe. Captain Calhoun of the Starship Excalibur is ordered to Earth, where his experience with the Thallonion Empire makes him an invaluable to Starfleet Intelligence in their investigation of a Thallonion nobleman. Commander Riker, in temporary command of Calhoun's Excalibur, engages a swarm of Romulan warbirds and captures the Romulan leader, Sela. Battle damage, however, leaves the Excalibur adrift in space with all its computer systems offline, no navigational controls - and a decidedly uncooperative captive. Meanwhile, the information Calhoun discovers leads him to a man named Gerrid Thul and Thul's associate Kwint - and Kwint turns out to be none other than Captain Jean-Luc Picard!
Northern Europe and North America have dominated the world stage for more than two centuries. Using a wide range of sources, this book provides the first coherent account from a multi-national perspective of the ideas and perceptions that, from the Renaissance onwards, fuelled the North’s rise to prominence, and enabled it to rival the traditional cultural and political hegemony of the South. This includes not only the fascinating conquest of the polar regions, but also the religious upheaval of the Reformation, the changing view of nature engendered by Romanticism, and, not least, the revival of ancient Nordic and Celtic culture. Finally, the book offers an indispensable historical background to current events in the Far North, where the past and the future meet in a complex web of dramatic environmental concerns, the exploitation of natural resources, and the strategies of politics and commerce.
This new edition of Statehood and Union: A History of the Northwest Ordinance, originally published in 1987, is an authoritative account of the origins and early history of American policy for territorial government, land distribution, and the admission of new states in the Old Northwest. In a new preface, Peter S. Onuf reviews important new work on the progress of colonization and territorial expansion in the rising American empire.
Heroin is universally considered the world's most harmful illegal drug. This is due not only to the damaging effects of the drug itself, but also to the spread of AIDS tied to its use. Burgeoning illegal mass consumption in the 1960s and 1970s has given rise to a global market for heroin and other opiates of nearly 16 million users. The production and trafficking of opiates have caused crime, disease, and social distress throughout the world, leading many nations to invest billions of dollars trying to suppress the industry. The failure of their efforts has become a central policy concern. Can the world heroin supply actually be cut, and with what consequences? The result of a five-year-long research project involving extensive fieldwork in six Asian countries, Colombia, and Turkey, this book is the first systematic analysis of the contemporary world heroin market, delving into its development and structure, its participants, and its socio-economic impact. It provides a sound and comprehensive empirical base for concluding that there is little opportunity to shrink the global supply of heroin in the long term, and explains why production is concentrated in a handful of countries--and is likely to remain that way. On the basis of these findings, the authors identify a key set of policy opportunities, largely local, and make suggestions for leveraging them. This book also offers new insights into market conditions in India, Tajikistan, and other countries that have been greatly harmed by the production and trafficking of illegal opiates. A deft integration of economics, sociology, history, and policy analysis, The World Heroin Market provides a rigorous and vital look into the complex--and resilient--global heroin trade.
Facing Armageddon is the first scholarly work on the 1914-18 War to explore, on a world-wide basis, the real nature of the participants experience. Sixty-four scholars from all over the globe deliver the fruits of recent research in what civilians and servicemen passed through, in the air, on the sea and on land.
A small town on the Mexican border draws a colorful array of characters in search of romance, sanctuary, fame, or fortune, including Mackie Larkin, a suburban mother desperate for money; her ex-husband Keith, a man with a host of get-rich schemes; their impulsive teenage daughter, Lianne; charismatic strip-club owner Buck Samsonov; and Nicholas Loeb, a struggling mystery writer. Reprint.
Anchored in historical pragmatics, historical sociolinguistics, and corpus linguistics, this book weaves together a powerful narrative of the significance of stance marking in the history of English. Focusing on the community of practice that developed during the witch trials in Salem (Massachusetts) in 1692–1693, it showcases how witnesses and the recorders of their ca. 450 depositions deployed linguistic features to signal the evaluation of experiences with alleged witchcraft, the intensification of those experiences, and the sources of the witnesses’ knowledge. The resulting stance profiles for groups of depositions, witnesses, and recorders highlight varying strategies of claiming, supporting, and boosting the importance of the evidence and the role of the witnesses within the community of practice. With its innovative focus on sociopragmatic variation in a historical community, the book demonstrates the essential contribution of synchronic-historical research to the analysis, description, and theorization of stance and historical English more broadly.
The continuing voyages of the Starship Excalibur! Many years ago, a bizarre alien life-form known as the Black Mass consumed and destroyed an entire solar system in what was then the Thallonion Empire. Now the Black Mass has returned and its target is Tulan IV, homeworld of the fearsome Redeemers. Faced with near-certain destruction the Overlord of the Redeemers is forced to turn to an unlikely ally: Captain Calhoun and the Starship Excalibur. Busy coping with the return of his rebellious son, Calhoun is none too eager to come to the aid of his despotic enemy, but when innocent lives are threatened he has no choice but to confront the unstoppable Black Mass. But how can one starship turn back a force capable of consuming entire suns?
Ever since the fall of the Thallonian Empire, Si Cwan has been searching for his younger sister, the only other survivor of the royal family. Now it seems his quest may be nearing its end. On the planet Montos a mysterious young woman, her past shrouded in secrecy, finds herself pursued both by the fanatical Redeemers and a vicious race of feral predators known only as the Dogs of War. All are after information regarding the true nature and location of the Quiet Place, a mystical realm celebrated in myth and legend. Is Riella indeed Si Cwan's long-lost sister? Before he can learn the truth, he and his companions - Mackenzie Calhoun, the scarred, alien captain recommended by Jean-Luc Picard; Commander Shelby, ambitious first officer and Calhoun's fomer lover; Dr Selar, the Vulcan physician formerly assigned to the Enterprise; Ops officer Robin Lefler, and the rest of the Excalibur's crew - must brave the unchecked savagery of the Dogs of War - and enter the terrifying heart of the Quiet Place.
Many years ago, a bizarre alien lifeform known as the Black Mass consumed and destroyed an entire solar system in what was then the Thallonian Empire. Now the Black Mass has returned and its target is Tulan IV, homeworld of the fearsome Redeemers. Faced with near-certain destruction, the Overlord of the Redeemers is forced to turn to an unlikely ally: Captain Mackenzie Calhoun and the Starship Excalibur. Busy coping with the return of his rebellious son, Calhoun is none too eager to come to the aid of his despotic enemy; but when innocent lives are at stake he has no choice but to confront the implacable Black Mass. But how can one solitary Starship hope to turn back a force capable of consuming entire suns?
Swing has never gone out of style. It was the music the Greatest Generation danced to--and went to war to. And no musician evokes the Big Band era more strikingly than Tommy Dorsey, whose soaring trombone play and hit tunes influenced popular music for a generation. Tommy Dorsey (1905-1956) led a rich and complex life. Beginning with his childhood in the coal mining towns of Pennsylvania, we follow the young trombonist's journey to fame and fortune during the Jazz Age. Tommy, with his brother Jimmy, created one of the most popular bands of the era and played with such giants as Bing Crosby and Glenn Miller. They also launched the career of a skinny young singer named Frank Sinatra. But Tommy's volcanic personality eventually split the band and Tommy went off on his own. Drawing on exhaustive new research and scores of interviews with the musicians who knew him best, Levinson delves into Dorsey's famously eccentric lifestyle and his oversize appetite for drink, women, and perfection. The first biography on Dorsey in more than thirty years, Tommy Dorsey is a dazzling portrait of the Big Band's brightest star--his tumultuous life, his turbulent times, and the unforgettable music that made him a legend.
These eclectic collections feature brilliant photographs and fascinating stories of famous men and women and their beloved dogs, from Marilyn Monroe to Madonna, Humphrey Bogart to David Bowie.
...shows that sometimes the most unlikely of people become the most heroic." — Asian Review of Books In December 1937, the Chinese capital, Nanjing, falls and the Japanese army unleash an orgy of torture, murder, and rape. Over the course of six weeks, hundreds of thousands of civilians and prisoners of war are killed. At the very onset of the atrocities, the Danish supervisor at a cement plant just outside the city, 26-year-old Bernhard Arp Sindberg, opens the factory gates and welcomes in 10,000 Chinese civilians to safety, beyond the reach of the blood-thirsty Japanese. He becomes an Asian equivalent of Oskar Schindler, the savior of Jews in the European Holocaust. This biography follows Sindberg from his childhood in the old Viking city of Aarhus and on his first adventures as a sailor and a Foreign Legionnaire to the dramatic 104 days as a rescuer of thousands of helpless men, women, and children in the darkest hour of the Sino-Japanese War. It describes how after his remarkable achievement, he receded back into obscurity, spending decades more at sea and becoming a naturalized American citizen, before dying of old age in Los Angeles in 1983, completely unrecognized. In this respect, too, there is an obvious parallel with Schindler, who only attained posthumous fame. The book sets the record straight by providing the first complete account of Sindberg’s life in English, based on archival sources hitherto unutilized by any historian as well as interviews with surviving relatives. What emerges is the surprising tale of a person who was average in every respect but rose to the occasion when faced with unimaginable brutality, discovering an inner strength and courage that transformed him into one of the great humanitarian figures of the 20th century and an inspiration for our modern age, demonstrating that the determined actions of one person—any person—can make a huge difference.
Thank you for visiting our website. Would you like to provide feedback on how we could improve your experience?
This site does not use any third party cookies with one exception — it uses cookies from Google to deliver its services and to analyze traffic.Learn More.