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Assurances
by J. O. Morgan**WINNER OF THE COSTA POETRY AWARD 2018****SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2018 FORWARD PRIZE FOR BEST COLLECTION**A war-poem both historic and frighteningly topical, Assurances begins in the 1950s during a period of vigilance and dread in the middle of the Cold War: the long stand-off between nuclear powers, where the only defence was the threat of mutually assured destruction.Using a mix of versed and unversed passages, Morgan places moments of calm reflection alongside the tensions inherent in guarding against such a permanent threat. A work of variations and possibilities, we hear the thoughts of those involved who are trying to understand and justify their roles. We examine the lives of civilians who are not aware of the impending danger, as well as those who are. We listen to the whirring minds of machines; to the voice of the bomb itself. We spy on enemy agents: always there, always somewhere close at hand.Assurances is an intimate, dramatic work for many voices: lyrical, anxious, fragmentary and terrifying; a poem about the nuclear stalemate, the deterrent that is still in place today: how it works and how it might fail, and what will vanish if it does.
Assured Cloud Computing
by Roy H. Campbell Charles A. Kamhoua Kevin A. KwiatExplores key challenges and solutions to assured cloud computing today and provides a provocative look at the face of cloud computing tomorrow This book offers readers a comprehensive suite of solutions for resolving many of the key challenges to achieving high levels of assurance in cloud computing. The distillation of critical research findings generated by the Assured Cloud Computing Center of Excellence (ACC-UCoE) of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, it provides unique insights into the current and future shape of robust, dependable, and secure cloud-based computing and data cyberinfrastructures. A survivable and distributed cloud-computing-based infrastructure can enable the configuration of any dynamic systems-of-systems that contain both trusted and partially trusted resources and services sourced from multiple organizations. To assure mission-critical computations and workflows that rely on such systems-of-systems it is necessary to ensure that a given configuration does not violate any security or reliability requirements. Furthermore, it is necessary to model the trustworthiness of a workflow or computation fulfillment to a high level of assurance. In presenting the substance of the work done by the ACC-UCoE, this book provides a vision for assured cloud computing illustrating how individual research contributions relate to each other and to the big picture of assured cloud computing. In addition, the book: Explores dominant themes in cloud-based systems, including design correctness, support for big data and analytics, monitoring and detection, network considerations, and performance Synthesizes heavily cited earlier work on topics such as DARE, trust mechanisms, and elastic graphs, as well as newer research findings on topics, including R-Storm, and RAMP transactions Addresses assured cloud computing concerns such as game theory, stream processing, storage, algorithms, workflow, scheduling, access control, formal analysis of safety, and streaming Bringing together the freshest thinking and applications in one of today’s most important topics, Assured Cloud Computing is a must-read for researchers and professionals in the fields of computer science and engineering, especially those working within industrial, military, and governmental contexts. It is also a valuable reference for advanced students of computer science.
Assured Response (Scott Dalton and Jackie Sullivan #3)
by Joe WeberNew threats require new weapons. New villains require new heroes. The time is the near future. Osama Bin Laden has been succeeded by a generation of even deadlier terrorists who will stop at nothing in their fanatical quest to destroy the United States. Conventional security is no longer enough. Former military pilots Scott Dalton and Jackie Sullivan are the government's newest weapons--operatives so secret that their very existence is denied by the officials who hired them. Armed with the most up-to-date technology and equipment, their mission is to prevent a plan of nuclear holocaust that will begin at the Canadian border and explode in the centers of American power. They have their work cut out for them. Foremost among their foes are Saeed Shayhidi, a billionaire Iranian "businessman" and mass murderer, far more sophisticated and sadistic than Bin Laden himself; Khaliq Farkas, a mysterious and ever-elusive terrorist, bearing a barbaric grudge; and Zheng-Yen Tsung, the powerful Chinese official who may be the mastermind behind it all. From a shocking sarin attack on a legendary ocean liner to the stalking of chemical plants and oil refineries by aircraft filled with explosives, no attack is too insidious, no symbol of strength and freedom immune. For Dalton and Sullivan, their expertise has never been more necessary--their bravery never more needed--than in a world where unrepentant evil requires an assured response.
Assuring Data Quality and Validity in Clinical Trials for Regulatory Decision Making: Workshop Report
by Institute of MedicineA report Assuring Data Quality and Validity in Clinical Trials for Regulatory Decision Making
Assuring Data Quality at U.S. Geological Survey Laboratories
by Engineering Medicine National Academies of SciencesThe U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) mission is to provide reliable and impartial scientific information to understand Earth, minimize loss of life and property from natural disasters, and manage water, biological, energy, and mineral resources. Data collection, analysis, interpretation, and dissemination are central to everything the USGS does. Among other activities, the USGS operates some 250 laboratories across the country to analyze physical and biological samples, including water, sediment, rock, plants, invertebrates, fish, and wildlife. The data generated in the laboratories help answer pressing scientific and societal questions or support regulation, resource management, or commercial applications. At the request of the USGS, this study reviews a representative sample of USGS laboratories to examine quality management systems and other approaches for assuring the quality of laboratory results and recommends best practices and procedures for USGS laboratories.
Assuring Quality Ambulatory Health Care: The Martin Luther King Jr. Health Center
by Donald Angehr SmithIn its ten-year existence the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Health Center has been pledged to quality health care and has developed detailed procedures to assure its staff and consumers that such care can and does exist. An essential part of its program has been a committee established early in the center's history to continually monitor and evaluate
Assuring Quality in Online Education: Practices and Processes at the Teaching, Resource, and Program Levels
by Kay ShattuckOnline distance education continues to grow at a fast pace, even outpacing the overall growth of U.S. higher education. Demands for quality are coming from all shareholders involved. As if caught by surprise, a patchwork response to quality is often the typical organizational response. The result can be inconsistent and uncoordinated levels of value to those invested in online learning. This often promotes negative images of the educational experience and institution.Comprised of highly regarded experts in the field, this edited volume provides a comprehensive overview of quality assurance, a snapshot of current practices and proven recommendations for raising standards of quality in online education.Topics discussed include:* Improving practices for teaching online* Using educational analytics for quality assurance and improvement* Accessibility: An important dimension of quality assurance* Assuring quality in online course design* Assuring quality in learner support, academic resources, advising and counseling* The role and realities of accreditationThis text clearly answers the call for addressing quality from a broad, deep and coordinated understanding. It addresses the complexities of quality assurance in higher education and offers professionals top-shelf advice and support. *This text is also appropriate for students enrolled in Educational Technology and Higher Education Administration Masters and PhD programs
Assuring a Future U.S.-Based Nuclear and Radiochemistry Expertise
by Committee on Assuring a Future U.S.-Based Nuclear Chemistry ExpertiseThe growing use of nuclear medicine, the potential expansion of nuclear power generation, and the urgent needs to protect the nation against external nuclear threats, to maintain our nuclear weapons stockpile, and to manage the nuclear wastes generated in past decades, require a substantial, highly trained, and exceptionally talented workforce. <P><P>Assuring a Future U.S.-Based Nuclear and Radiochemistry Expertise examines supply and demand for expertise in nuclear chemistry nuclear science, and radiochemistry in the United States and presents possible approaches for ensuring adequate availability of these skills, including necessary science and technology training platforms.<P>Considering a range of reasonable scenarios looking to the future, none of these areas are likely to experience a decrease in demand for expertise. However, many in the current workforce are approaching retirement age and the number of students opting for careers in nuclear and radiochemistry has decreased dramatically over the past few decades. In order to avoid a gap in these critical areas, increases in student interest in these careers, in the research and educational capacity of universities and colleges, and sector specific on-the-job training will be needed. Concise recommendations are given for actions to avoid a shortage of nuclear chemistry, nuclear scientists, and radiochemists in the future.
Assuring the U.S. Department of Defense a Strong Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Workforce
by National Research Council National Academy of Engineering Division on Engineering and Physical Sciences Policy and Global Affairs Board on Higher Education and Workforce Committee on Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Workforce Needs for the U.S. Department of Defense and the U.S. Defense Industrial BaseThe ability of the nation's military to prevail during future conflicts, and to fulfill its humanitarian and other missions, depends on continued advances in the nation's technology base. A workforce with robust Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) capabilities is critical to sustaining U.S. preeminence. Today, however, the STEM activities of the Department of Defense (DOD) are a small and diminishing part of the nation's overall science and engineering enterprise. Assuring the U.S. Department of Defense a Strong Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Workforce presents five principal recommendations for attracting, retaining, and managing highly qualified STEM talent within the department based on an examination of the current STEM workforce of DOD and the defense industrial base. As outlined in the report, DOD should focus its investments to ensure that STEM competencies in all potentially critical, emerging topical areas are maintained at least at a basic level within the department and its industrial and university bases.
Assyria: The Rise and Fall of the World's First Empire
by Eckart FrahmA new history of Assyria, the ancient civilization that set the model for future empires At its height in 660 BCE, the kingdom of Assyria stretched from the Mediterranean Sea to the Persian Gulf. It was the first empire the world had ever seen. Here, historian Eckart Frahm tells the epic story of Assyria and its formative role in global history. Assyria&’s wide-ranging conquests have long been known from the Hebrew Bible and later Greek accounts. But nearly two centuries of research now permit a rich picture of the Assyrians and their empire beyond the battlefield: their vast libraries and monumental sculptures, their elaborate trade and information networks, and the crucial role played by royal women. Although Assyria was crushed by rising powers in the late seventh century BCE, its legacy endured from the Babylonian and Persian empires to Rome and beyond. Assyria is a stunning and authoritative account of a civilization essential to understanding the ancient world and our own.
Assyrians in Modern Iraq: Negotiating Political and Cultural Space
by Alda BenjamenExamining the relationship between a strengthened Iraqi state under the Baʿth regime and the Assyrians, a Christian ethno-religious group, Alda Benjamen studies the role of minorities in twentieth-century Iraqi political and cultural history. Relying on extensive research in Iraq, including sources uncovered at the Iraqi National Archives in Baghdad, as well as in libraries and private collections in Erbil, Duhok, and Mosul, in Arabic and modern Aramaic, Benjamen foregrounds the Iraqi periphery as well as the history of bilingualism to challenge the monolingual narrative of the state. By exploring the role of Assyrians in Iraq's leftist and oppositional movements, including gendered representations of women, she demonstrates how, within newly politicized urban spaces, minorities became attracted to intellectual and political movements that allowed them to advance their own concerns while engaging with other Iraqis of their socio-economic background and relying on transnational community networks. Assyrian intellectuals not only negotiated but also resisted government policies through their cultural production, thereby achieving a softening of Baʿthist policies towards the Assyrians that differed markedly from those of later repressive eras.
Asta's Book
by Ruth RendellAn &“obsessively readable&” mystery from the New York Times–bestselling author of Dark Corners about a century-old diary that holds clues to a murder (The Sunday Telegraph). Asta Westerby is lonely. In 1905, shortly after coming to East London from Denmark with her husband and their two little boys, she feels like a stranger in a strange land. And it doesn&’t help that her husband is constantly away on business. Fortunately, she finds solace in her diary—and she continues to do so until 1967. Decades later, her granddaughter, Ann, finds the journal, and it becomes a literary sensation, offering an intimate view of Edwardian life. But it also appears to hold the key to an unsolved murder and the disappearance of a child. A modern masterpiece by the Edgar Award–winning author of the Inspector Wexford Mysteries, and an excellent choice for readers of P. D. James, Ian Rankin, or Scott Turow, Asta&’s Book is at once a crime story, a historical novel, and a psychological portrait told through the diary itself and through Ann, who is bent on unlocking the journal&’s excised mystery.
Astatine
by Michael KenyonAstatine is an Italian girl, who like Dante's Beatrice, haunts the narrator of Michael Kenyon's incandescent fourth book of poetry. Named after a radioactive element whose isotopes endure half-lives of mere seconds, she is simultaneously a disappearing and abiding presence who cajoles and comforts, who questions and points, who often leaves the poet puzzled, electrified, heart-broken, and wanting more. Astatine is Kenyon's meditation on the evanescent and persevering tragedy of our lives on Earth. He takes us on an inspirational journey through time that embraces all we are born to and must too soon let go of, even as we make peace with the ever-changing fortunes of existence, even as we come upon unexpected joy.
Aster DM Healthcare: Budgeting for a Crisis
by V. G. NarayananIn April 2020, Alisha Moopen, Deputy Managing Director of Aster DM Healthcare, a network of clinics, hospitals, and pharmacies in the Middle East and India, must create her company’s budget for the 2021 fiscal year in light of the onset of Covid-19. The pandemic had forced Aster to indefinitely cancel elective procedures, which represented 70% of the company’s revenue. Meanwhile, materials costs increased as the Aster team had to procure enough personal protective equipment (PPE) to keep frontline staff safe from the virus, even as revenue from clinics and pharmacies declined. To offset the impact of the pandemic, Alisha and her team must decide whether to implement austerity measures, such as temporary salary decreases, whether to request temporary rent reductions from their landlords, and whether to renegotiate their debt covenants with their lenders. They must also decide what assumptions they can make about revenue: when elective procedures will resume, whether their new telehealth practice will gain traction, and when clinic and pharmacy revenue will recover.
Aster and the Accidental Magic: (A Graphic Novel) (Aster)
by Thom PicoA fun, action-packed fantasy adventure about a girl, her dog, and magic gone wrong!Quiet . . . birds . . . nature. . . .That's what Aster expects when her parents move their whole family to the middle of nowhere. It's just her (status: super-bored), her mom and dad (status: busy with science), her brother (status: has other plans), and . . .. . . magic?In her new home, Aster meets a mysterious old woman with a herd of dogs who gives her a canine companion of her own. But when she and her dog Buzz are adventuring in the forest, they run into a trickster spirit who gives Aster three wishes. After wishing for the ability to understand and talk to her dog, she becomes only able to talk in dog language . . . and the trouble she gets into is just starting. Maybe the middle of nowhere will be more interesting than Aster thought."Crisp, vibrant artwork." -The AV Club
Aster and the Mixed-Up Magic: (A Graphic Novel) (Aster)
by Thom PicoAster is charming, resourceful, and fun." - Dana Simpson, author of Phoebe and Her UnicornMagic turned Aster's life upside-down -- and it's not over! Get ready for more family, more fun, and even more magic in this graphic novel adventure.Moving to the middle of nowhere has been less of a disaster than Aster expected. Her mom's science experiments are actually pretty cool; her dad's cooking has gotten much better; her new dog is possibly the best canine companion anyone could ask for. And she's gotten to save the day -- and her family -- and the whole valley she lives in -- from various magical calamities in what even she has to admit were extremely fun adventures. So now she can have a break, right? Guess what?Oh no; things get even more interesting.
Aster of Ceremonies: Poems
by JJJJJerome EllisA polyphonic new entry in Multiverse—a literary series written and curated by the neurodivergent—JJJJJerome Ellis’s Aster of Ceremonies beautifully extends the vision of his debut book and album, The Clearing, a “lyrical celebration of and inquiry into the intersections of blackness, music, and disabled speech” (Claudia Rankine).Aster of Ceremonies asks what rites we need now and how poetry, astir in the asters, can help them along. What is the relationship between fleeing and feeling? How can the voices of those who came before—and the stutters that leaven those voices—carry into our present moment, mingling with our own? When Ellis writes, “Bring me the stolen will / Bring me the stolen well,” his voice is a conduit, his “me” is many. Through the grateful invocations of ancestors—Hannah, Mariah, Kit, Jan, and others—and their songs, he rewrites history, creating a world that blooms backward, reimagining what it means for Black and disabled people to have taken, and to continue to take, their freedom.By weaving a chorus of voices past and present, Ellis counters the attack of “all masters of all vessels” and replaces it with a family of flowers. He models how—as with his brilliant transduction of escaped slave advertisements—we might proclaim lost ownership over literature and history. “Bring me to the well,” he chants, implores, channels. “Bring me to me.” In this bringing, in this singing, he proclaims our collective belonging to shared worlds where we can gather and heal.
Asterion
by Patrice Martinez Edib BeširevićPatrice Martinez brings us the new adventures from ancient Greece. This time he leads us to the island of Crete, in the labyrinth of Minotaur. But in this new myth from antiquity it is not Theseus who kills Minotaur. What really happened with Minotaur and its labyrinth on the island of Crete in the dawn of our civilisation, you will find out on following pages. If you like ancient Greek mythology, you must read this story.
Asterione
by Patrice Martinez Jessica LioneZenone si inoltrò nell'antro del palazzo di Cnosso, a Creta. Il labirimto del Minotauro era dominato da incredibili forze telluriche e siderali che presto il giovane ateniese avrebbe scoperto...
Asterisk
by Campbell ArmstrongMaster of suspense Campbell Armstrong delivers a spine-tingling espionage novel about two men struggling to stop--and survive--a murderous conspiracy based in the darkest corners of the American government John Thorne lives a good life in Washington, DC, with a girlfriend he adores and a stable job at the White House. But when an old family friend, Major General Burckhardt, gives him an attaché case with a file inside labeled "the Asterisk Project," John starts investigating. What he uncovers is a secret that could change the world--if it doesn't kill him first.
Asterisk 1.4: The Professional’s Guide
by David Duffett Colman CarpenterEmploying a comprehensive handbook-style approach, this easy-to-follow book shows the reader various means of implementing the power of Asterisk in a commercial environment. In next to no time, the reader will gain a deeper understanding of many of the issues faced by Asterisk consultants and the solutions they believe work best. Primarily aimed at Asterisk Professionals, this book provides real-world insight for Asterisk Network Administrators and System Implementers in the commercial environment. This book is not for newcomers to Asterisk. Readers are expected to be experienced with installing and administering Asterisk systems.
Asterisk 1.6
by Barrie Dempster David GomillionThe book offers readers both a detailed description as well as step by step instructions on deploying software solutions as well as Asterisk configurations. Screenshots are provided in sections to give a visual perspective of the instructions. For Asterisk configurations actual sample code is listed in the book which can be directly inserted into your Asterisk solution.This book is aimed at anyone who is interested in building a powerful telephony system using the free and open source application, Asterisk, without spending many thousands of dollars buying a commercial and often less flexible system. This book is suitable for the novice and those new to Asterisk and telephony. Telephony or Linux experience will be helpful, but not required.
Asterisk Cookbook: Solutions to Everyday Telephony Problems
by Leif Madsen Russell BryantAsterisk has a wealth of features to help you customize your PBX to fill very specific business needs. This short cookbook offers recipes for tackling dialplan fundamentals, making and controlling calls, and monitoring channels in your PBX environment. Each recipe includes a simple code solution you can put to work immediately, along with a detailed discussion that offers insight into why and how the recipe works.This book focuses on Asterisk 1.8, although many of the conventions and information presented are version-agnostic. These recipes include solutions to help you:Authenticate callers before moving on in your dialplanRedirect calls received by your auto-attendantCreate an automatic call-back serviceInitiate hot-desking to login to and accept calls at any office deviceMonitor and interrupt live calls to train new employees at a call centerRecord calls from your Asterisk dialplan
Asterisk Gateway Interface 1.4 and 1.6 Programming
by Nir SimionovichThis friendly, clear tutorial takes a pragmatic approach to developing Asterisk applications, helping you to find the best solutions for your needs. Unlike most books, which simply show you how to do or what to do, this book tries to show you: "why to do?"--thus explaining the logic behind certain Asterisk development paradigms. This book is intended for developers wishing to utilize Asterisk, system administrators wishing to gain better control over their Asterisk installation, and telephony service providers wishing to deploy Asterisk-based solutions to their infrastructure. You are expected to have some experience with Asterisk and a basic understanding of programming. No knowledge of Asterisk programming is required.