La capitaine Marie Lesaux, fraîchement débarquée au sein de la brigade de protection de la famille de Clermont-Ferrand, se voit confier, sous le sceau de la plus grande des confidentialités, l’étrange mission de tester les capacités de son nouveau coéquipier. Valmont, réputé infaillible et doté d’une puissance de travail sans égale, serait capable d’élucider des affaires non résolues, quelle que soit leur complexité. De fait, Valmont n’est pas un policier comme les autres, mais bien une somme d’algorithmes, un formidable programme expérimental ultra secret à la puissance de calcul phénoménal mis en place par l’État français pour lutter contre toutes les formes de criminalité : un savant mélange d’intelligence artificielle et de réalité virtuelle que Marie va devoir appréhender pour mieux comprendre le formidable champs des possibles permis par la police 2.0. Assistée d’Ethan Milo qui a travaillé sur le projet et qui vit cloué dans un fauteuil des suites d’un attentat, mais en but à l’hostilité de certains de ses collègues, la jeune capitaine va mettre Valmont sur le cas du « suicide » d’une fillette d’origine africaine retrouvée au pied d’une tour. La gamine est-elle vraiment tombée toute seule ? Quel crédit accorder à cette rumeur insistante dans les quartiers, entre terreur et légende urbaine, indiquant qu’une « hyène » vaudou, mi-homme, mi-animal, tournerait dans les citées pour « voler » des jeunes filles ? Le fait est que des disparitions ont bel et bien eut lieu et que la population se tait. Un symbole étrange, là où il n’y avait été question que de morts naturelles ou d’accidents, se trouve sur bien des scènes de ce qui va très vite devenir des crimes irrésolus. Il se trame quelque chose dans l’illusoire banalité des jours... Marie et Ethan Milo, aidés du programme Valmont, vont bientôt être confrontés à une épouvantable vérité venue du fond des âges.
Showing that truth is stranger than fiction, Sylvain Neuvel weaves a sci-fi thriller reminiscent of Blake Crouch and Andy Weir, blending a fast moving, darkly satirical look at 1940s rocketry with an exploration of the amorality of progress and the nature of violence in A History of What Comes Next. Download a FREE sneak peek today! Always run, never fight. Preserve the knowledge. Survive at all costs. Take them to the stars. Over 99 identical generations, Mia’s family has shaped human history to push them to the stars, making brutal, wrenching choices and sacrificing countless lives. Her turn comes at the dawn of the age of rocketry. Her mission: to lure Wernher Von Braun away from the Nazi party and into the American rocket program, and secure the future of the space race. But Mia’s family is not the only group pushing the levers of history: an even more ruthless enemy lurks behind the scenes. A darkly satirical first contact thriller, as seen through the eyes of the women who make progress possible and the men who are determined to stop them... At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
Beyond Normality covers a broad range of subjects—everything from human behavior, to feminism and sex, to child rearing, to violence, to drugs and alcohol, to changes in society and the oppressions of modern life. From family orientation, to religion and mankind consciousness. Readers are asked to consider Beyond Normality as a “modern guide for complete internal harmony”. Numerous themes run throughout this work, the most persistent and prevalent is the belief on the growing disconnect between what is natural and what has come to be thought of as normal. There is, in the author’s view, a great deal that is wrong with modern society, and much of it stems from our insistence on shielding ourselves from the rigors of the natural order of things.
A PopMatters Best Book of the Year A perceptive study of how Israel’s actions, which run counter to the traditional historical values of Judaism, are putting Jewish people worldwide in an increasingly untenable position, now with a new introduction. More than a decade ago, the historian Tony Judt considered whether the behavior of Israel was becoming not only “bad for Israel itself” but also, on a wider scale, “bad for the Jews.” Under the leadership of Benjamin Netanyahu, this issue has grown ever more urgent. In The State of Israel vs. the Jews, veteran journalist Sylvain Cypel addresses it in depth, exploring Israel’s rightward shift on the international scene and with regard to the diaspora. Cypel reviews the little-known details of the military occupation of Palestinian territory, the mindset of ethnic superiority that reigns throughout an Israeli “colonial camp” that is largely in the majority, and the adoption of new laws, the most serious of which establishes two-tier citizenship between Jews and non-Jews. He shows how Israel has aligned itself with authoritarian regimes and adopted the practices of a security state, including the use of technologies such as the software that enabled the tracking and, ultimately, the assassination of Saudi Arabian journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Lastly, The State of Israel vs. the Jews examines the impact of Israel’s evolution in recent years on the two main communities of the Jewish diaspora, in France and the United States, considering how and why public figures in each differ in their approaches.
The author of the Gabriel's Inferno Trilogy reveals a beautiful yet deadly underworld where creatures of the night roam and Gabriel and Julianne become the target of a powerful but elusive enemy... Raven Wood spends her days at Florence’s Uffizi gallery restoring Renaissance art. But an innocent walk home after an evening with friends changes her life forever. When she intervenes in the senseless beating of a homeless man, his attackers turn on her, dragging her into an alley. Raven is only semiconscious when their assault is interrupted by a cacophony of growls followed by her attackers' screams. Mercifully, she blacks out, but not before catching a glimpse of a shadowy figure who whispers to her... Cassita vulneratus. When Raven awakes, she is inexplicably changed. Upon returning to the Uffizi, no one recognizes her. More disturbingly, she discovers that she’s been absent an entire week. With no recollection of her disappearance, Raven learns that her absence coincides with one of the largest robberies in Uffizi history - the theft of a set of priceless Botticelli illustrations. When the police identify her as their prime suspect, Raven is desperate to clear her name. She seeks out one of Florence's wealthiest and most elusive men in an attempt to uncover the truth. Their encounter leads Raven to a dark underworld whose inhabitants kill to keep their secrets... THIS EDITION ONLY: Includes Bonus Scenes
In a dystopian not-too-distant future in Japan, Hiro lives with his father on an island populated by androids, where they eke out a meager existence while trying to keep out of sight. But when they run afoul of a troop of high-tech military thugs, Hiro's dad sacrifices himself to save his son, turning Hiro's already-bleak world upside-down. He is then rescued by a samurai robot called a "yojimbot," and together they seek to avenge his father's death and make contact with a mysterious associate known only as the "rights holder," before the soldiers and their drones close in...
We thought we had gone through the topic in the first volume, those two games opened new pists of reflexions. The in-depth analysis of Hidetaka Miyazaki's Dark Souls saga continues with this volume 2, decoding the Bloodborne and Dark Souls III episodes. An indinspensale ebook for all the fans of the game Dark Souls ! EXTRACT "The project, christened Project Beast, began soon after the Astorias of the Abyss DLC was released in August 2012. At the time, FromSoftware was also beginning to build Dark Souls II, its cash cow. Miyazaki kept his distance from this sequel, which was handed off to Tomohiro Shibuya and Yui Tanimura, with support from the FromSoftware president and creator of King’s Field, Naotoshi Zin, who supervised the game system. On his end, Hidetaka Miyazaki formed a trusted team of regular collaborators, such as lead programmer Jun Itô (who had already filled this role for Demon’s Souls and Dark Souls), composer and lead sound designer Tsukasa Saitô (Armored Core games), and most of his regular artists: Daisuke Satake, Masanori Waragai and Hiroshi Nakamura. The success of Demon’s Souls, and the even greater success of Dark Souls, allowed FromSoftware to grow its ranks significantly. In total, no fewer than fifty programmers participated in the project, along with around twenty game system designers and fifty people working on visual creation (animation, scenery, characters, etc.). Thanks to financial support from Sony, many Japanese, Chinese and Taiwanese studios were sub-contracted during the production to help with graphics and visuals." ABOUT THE AUTHORS Passionate about films and video games, Damien Mecheri joined the writers team of Gameplay RPG in 2004, writing several articles for the second special edition on the Final Fantasy saga. He continued his work with the team in another publication called Background, before continuing the online adventure in 2008 with the site Gameweb.fr. Since 2011, he has come aboard Third Éditions with Mehdi El Kanafi and Nicolas Courcier, the publisher’s two founders. Damien is also the author of the book Video Game Music: a History of Gaming Music. For Third Éditions, he is actively working on the “Level Up” and “Année jeu vidéo” collections. He has also written or co-written several works from the same publisher: The Legend of Final Fantasy X, Welcome to Silent Hill: a journey into Hell, The Works of Fumito Ueda: a Different Perspective on Video Games and, of course, the first volume of Dark Souls: Beyond the Grave. Curious by nature, a dreamer against the grain and a chronic ranter, Sylvain Romieu is also a passionate traveler of the real and the unreal, the world and the virtual universes, always in search of enriching discoveries and varied cultures. A developer by trade, he took up his modest pen several years ago to study the characteristics and richness of the marvelously creative world of video games. He writes for a French video game site called Chroniques-Ludiques, particularly on the topic of RPGs, his preferred genre.
Story of a saga video games... If the Dark Souls series managed to seduce players and journalists, it was mainly by word of mouth. It was such a great success that Dark Souls 2 was named “Game of the Year” 2014 by the vast majority of gaming magazines and websites. To date, this saga is one of the most important in the gaming industry. The odd thing is that these games are well known for their difficulty and their cryptic universe. This publication narrates the epic success story, but also describes its gameplay mechanics and its specific lore across more than 300 pages. Characters, plots and the scenario of the three Souls (Demon's Souls, Dark Souls and Dark Souls II) are deciphered by Damien Mecheri and Sylvain Romieu, who spent a long year studying these dense and enigmatic games down to the smallest detail. The serie Dark Souls and her spiritual father Demon's Souls will not have secrets for you anymore! EXTRACT In May 2014, Hidetaka Miyazaki succeeded Naotoshi Zin as president of FromSoftware, after the studio was purchased by Kadokawa Shoten. This was a highly significant promotion for the person who had led the company’s most successful project, Dark Souls. And yet, he did not lose from view what had attracted him to the field: an insatiable creative drive. In spite of his new status within the studio, one of the conditions he requested and was granted was to remain creative director of his new project: Bloodborne. This allowed him to successfully design this spiritual successor to the first Souls game, while also assuming his new responsibilities. Given his drive to work and create, it is not surprising how quickly Miyazaki moved up through the ranks. ABOUT THE AUTHORS Passionate about films and video games, Damien Mecheri joined the writers team of Gameplay RPG in 2004, writing several articles for the second special edition on the Final Fantasy saga. He continued his work with the team in another publication called Background, before continuing the online adventure in 2008 with the site Gameweb.fr. Since 2011, he has come aboard Third Éditions with Mehdi El Kanafi and Nicolas Courcier, the publisher’s two founders. Damien is also the author of the book Video Game Music: a History of Gaming Music. For Third Éditions, he is actively working on the “Level Up” and “Année jeu vidéo” collections. He has also written or co-written several works from the same publisher: The Legend of Final Fantasy X, Welcome to Silent Hill: a journey into Hell, The Works of Fumito Ueda: a Different Perspective on Video Games and, of course, the first volume of Dark Souls: Beyond the Grave. Curious by nature, a dreamer against the grain and a chronic ranter, Sylvain Romieu is also a passionate traveler of the real and the unreal, the world and the virtual universes, always in search of enriching discoveries and varied cultures. A developer by trade, he took up his modest pen several years ago to study the characteristics and richness of the marvelously creative world of video games. He writes for a French video game site called Chroniques-Ludiques, particularly on the topic of RPGs, his preferred genre.
A critical resource for K-12 educators that serve BIPOC and first-generation students that explores why inclusive and culturally relevant pedagogy is necessary to ensure the success of their students The practices and values in the US educational system position linguistically, culturally, and socioeconomically diverse children and families at a disadvantage. BIPOC dropout rates and levels of stress and anxiety have linked with non-inclusive school environments. In this collection, 3 educators tell and will draw on their experiences as immigrants and educators to address racial inequity in the classroom and provide a thorough analysis of different strategies that create an inclusive classroom environment. White educators that serve BIPOC students will benefit from these reflections on incorporating culturally relevant pedagogies that value the diverse experiences of their students. With a focus on Haitian and Dominican students in the US, the authors will reveal the challenges that immigrant and first-generation students face. They’ll also offer insights about topics such as: • How do language policies and social justice intersect? • How can educators use culturally relevant teaching and community funds of knowledge to enrich school curriculum? • How can educators center the needs of the student within the classroom? • How can educators support Haitian Creole-speaking students?
This book proposes tools for analysis of multidimensional and metric data, by establishing a state-of-the-art of the existing solutions and developing new ones. It mainly focuses on visual exploration of these data by a human analyst, relying on a 2D or 3D scatter plot display obtained through Dimensionality Reduction. Performing diagnosis of an energy system requires identifying relations between observed monitoring variables and the associated internal state of the system. Dimensionality reduction, which allows to represent visually a multidimensional dataset, constitutes a promising tool to help domain experts to analyse these relations. This book reviews existing techniques for visual data exploration and dimensionality reduction such as tSNE and Isomap, and proposes new solutions to challenges in that field. In particular, it presents the new unsupervised technique ASKI and the supervised methods ClassNeRV and ClassJSE. Moreover, MING, a new approach for local map quality evaluation is also introduced. These methods are then applied to the representation of expert-designed fault indicators for smart-buildings, I-V curves for photovoltaic systems and acoustic signals for Li-ion batteries.
This story takes place on a tiny, far-flung island in the middle of the Indian Ocean, whose nearest neighbor is Madagascar, 500 kilometers away... In 1760, the Utile, a ship carrying black slaves from Africa, was shipwrecked here and abandoned by her crew. The surviving slaves had to struggle to stay alive in this desolate land for fifteen years... When this tale got back to France, it became the cornerstone of the battle of Enlightenment to outlaw slavery. More than two hundred years later, the artist Sylvain Savoia accompanied the first archeological mission in search of understanding how these men and women, who had come from the high mountains of Madagascar, had survived alone in the middle of the ocean. This is the story of that mission, through which we're exposed to the extraordinary story of the slaves themselves.
152 pages with over 100 images in full color. The creation of these new digital combine artworks represents another chapter in an ongoing creative effort. Ultimately, in all these works there exists the artist, Frank Dixon, questioning, ridiculing, loving, tortured and celebrating the madness and the sublime in Man, telling his story
This is a thoughtful essay, well research and written with special edits by Reverend Sifu Sylvain Chamberlain on the core of all Buddha's teachings on the process of all phenomena and noumena. The concept of Dependent Origination also known by other transliterations as Conditioned Genesis, end several others, are repeated discussions in various sutra throughout the Buddha's 58 years of teaching. It is the fundamental concept in Tien-Tai's 3000 realms in a single thought moment, Nichiren's Ichinen Sanzen, the Satipatthana's formation of bodies, and countless discourses. Well explained with many source references, this essay will contribute a greater understanding in yet another voice, for those seeking a well reasoned argument for the practice and insight into liberation from the sufferings of samsara.
“A History of What Comes Next is a riveting blend of historical thriller and scientific speculation, which never loses its core of humanity.”—James Rollins, #1 New York Times bestselling author For generations, Mia’s family has shaped human history to push them to the stars. The year is 1945 and now it is her turn. Her mission: to lure scientist Wernher Von Braun away from the Nazi party and into the American rocket program, securing the future of the space race. But there is a threat. A ruthless enemy lurks behind the scenes. Sylvain Neuvel’s genre-bending sci-fi thriller is a dark and gripping exploration of the amorality of progress and the nature of violence, as seen through the eyes of the women who make that progress possible and the men who are determined to stop them. Always run, never fight. Preserve the knowledge. Survive at all costs. Take them to the stars. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
A walking journey through France’s vast interior becomes a meditation on both personal recovery and the role of history in the present—more than 425,000 copies sold in France After a free-climbing accident lands him in a coma and a hospital for four months, the French writer Sylvain Tesson makes a promise to himself: if he’s ever able to walk again, he will traverse the entire country of France on foot. Part literary adventure, part philosophical reflection on our contemporary consumer culture, On the Wandering Paths takes us deep into the heart of what Tesson terms France’s “hyperrural” zones. Tracing the obscure paths peasants once followed throughout the countryside, Tesson embarks on a three-month journey of solitude and personal contemplation as he walks along vast stretches of mountain ranges and rivers, encountering ancient Roman stone bridges and walkways, the French Foreign Legion, pagan prayer sites, Provençal villages, and the majestic Mont-Saint-Michel. Connecting deeply with the places he visits, his experiences inspire reflection on the essential need to disengage from the digital and immerse oneself in natural beauty. Rich with humor, historical insight, and literary power, On the Wandering Paths is both a meditation on the act of recovery and a potent recognition of the traces of our past in the present. Asking us to reassess our values and our relationship to the land, Tesson’s exquisite chronicle through landscapes that continue to resist urbanization and technology is a thoughtful—and thought-provoking—glimpse into a poet’s adventurous life. Les Chemins de Pierre, a film based on the book starring Jean Dujardin, is due to release in 2022.
This book is the result of a long-term cooperation between French and East African scholars and universities under the aegis of the French Institute of Research in Africa (IFRA-Nairobi). This book presents the main results of the research program Cooperation for University and Scientific Research (CORUS): Mountains and Small and Medium Cities in East Africa: Environmental Management, Flows of People and Resources, funded by the French Ministry of Foreign Afairs and supported by IFRA-Nairobi. The specific subject is to rethink the development of the East African mountains in relation to the fast growing towns and cities that surround them. Three East-African mountains were chosen: Mount Kenya, Mount Elgon (Ugandan side) and Uporoto Mountains (Tanzania). Comparisons are included, especially with Mount Kilimanjaro, which has been studied in previous books and programs (e.g. Kilimanjaro: Mountain, Memory and Modernity, Mkuki na Nyota, Dar es Salaam, 2006). The authors are East African (Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya) and French scholars, most of them geographers. Made from 12 contributions, this book focuses on a recent change in those mountains: a growing urbanization which shapes new mountain systems. This phenomenon, which is actually a major upheaval, is the focal point of this book, giving rise to this question: what are the links between Rural-Urban evolution in such contexts? What are the impacts on livelihoods and development? This book, covering social and environmental scientific issues relating to Rural-Urban nature, is the first of its kind for African mountains.
The wide diffusion of 3D printing technologies continuously calls for effective solutions for designing and fabricating objects of increasing complexity. The so called "computational fabrication" pipeline comprises all the steps necessary to turn a design idea into a physical object, and this book describes the most recent advancements in the two fundamental phases along this pipeline: design and process planning. We examine recent systems in the computer graphics community that allow us to take a design idea from conception to a digital model, and classify algorithms that are necessary to turn such a digital model into an appropriate sequence of machining instructions.
A quiet revolution is taking place within the computer ecosystem; one that will change the way we do business on the internet. It’s called blockchain, and it promises to disrupt the way people interact with one another online, whether its messaging, banking, keeping up with medical records, land records, booking a vacation, socializing, or voting. Programs are also being developed to use blockchain to serve as one’s identity “papers.” Blockchain technology is based on the idea that all online transactions should be between two people without the need for public or private third-party oversight. Blockchain technology developers believe thoughts and ideas should be shared, not quashed. It’s a world where web platforms are governed by their members, not a board of directors; privacy comes first, and one’s personal information is kept private, not for third parties to take and sell as they, please. Blockchain technology offers everyone opportunities to take part. Anyone can participate in the fast-growing world using non-fungible tokens (NFTs), where works of art, music, literature, and poetry can be tokenized and sold or traded on a blockchain. These components comprise the next generation of the world wide web, which is referred to as Web 3.0. Billions of dollars are being spent to create infrastructure to create a viable framework to mainstream blockchain. This book offers a peek into this new world with examples of how this technology is being used today as well as the hurdles, including legal challenges, it must overcome to be viable. So, if you’re ready, let’s meet blockchain.
There is much of interest here, and the authors provide background information and digressions that make their analysis more accessible to noneconomists.' - M. Veseth, Choice This book is the first in English to comprehensively examine the French economy and how it is adjusting to the exigencies of an increasingly globalized environment. The opening of the French market to international competition has forced recent governments to realize that the old closed model in which France had considerable autonomy over policy is no longer valid. French solutions to domestic problems had to be given up in the early 1980s. Changes in technology have had dramatic impacts on the comparative advantage of French producers and the necessary restructuring has been far from easy. These twin aspects of globalization have also altered the situation of France's various regions and urban economies and the highly centralized structure has come under pressure. This has forced a change in the thinking of French public and private sector leaders. The role of the state, the degree of intervention, the extent of control over the domestic economy, and the need to be accommodating to market forces have all been subject to public debate and to fundamental reconsideration. While this is a book on the French economy, Kresl and Gallais deal with issues, challenges, and processes of change and adaptation that are facing all of Europe, and indeed all industrialized economies.
Dans les dédales du temps, les histoires d'amour fleurissent et puis se fanent. Les souvenirs s'estompent, les visages s'évanouissent, les rêves s'envolent... Jusqu'à ce que vous la retrouviez, votre flamme jumelle, cette autre partie de vous-même qui n'attendait que vous depuis l'éternité.C'est ce qui arriva à Simon... Il ne l'espérait pas. Il ne l'attendait pas. Il ne la connaissait pas. Mais ce qu'il ne savait pas, c'est que son âme la connaissait par coeur.
Showing that truth is stranger than fiction, Sylvain Neuvel weaves a sci-fi thriller reminiscent of Blake Crouch and Andy Weir, blending a fast moving, darkly satirical look at 1940s rocketry with an exploration of the amorality of progress and the nature of violence in A History of What Comes Next. Download a FREE sneak peek today! Always run, never fight. Preserve the knowledge. Survive at all costs. Take them to the stars. Over 99 identical generations, Mia’s family has shaped human history to push them to the stars, making brutal, wrenching choices and sacrificing countless lives. Her turn comes at the dawn of the age of rocketry. Her mission: to lure Wernher Von Braun away from the Nazi party and into the American rocket program, and secure the future of the space race. But Mia’s family is not the only group pushing the levers of history: an even more ruthless enemy lurks behind the scenes. A darkly satirical first contact thriller, as seen through the eyes of the women who make progress possible and the men who are determined to stop them... At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
In France, comics are commonly referred to as the "ninth art". What does it mean to see comics as art? This book looks at the singular status of comics in the French cultural landscape. Bandes dessinées have long been published in French newspapers and magazines. In the early 1960s, a new standard format emerged: large hardback books, called albums. Albums played a key role in the emergence of the ninth art and its acceptance among other forms of literary narrative. From Barbarella in 1964 to La Ballade de la mer salée in 1975, from Astérix and its million copies to Tintin and its screen versions, within the space of just a few years the comics landscape underwent a deep transformation. The album opened up new ways of creating, distributing, and reading bandes dessinées. This shift upended the market, transformed readership, initiated new transmedia adaptations, generated critical discourse, and gave birth to new kinds of comics fandom. These transformations are analysed through a series of case studies, each focusing on a noteworthy album. By retracing the publishing and critical history of these classic bandes dessinées, this book questions the blind spots of a canon based on the album format and uncovers the legitimisation processes that turned bande dessinée into the ninth art.
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