For many in the Middle Ages, pilgrimages were seen to represent a clear risk of moral and religious perdition for women, and they were strongly discouraged from making them; this exhortation would have been universally disseminated and generally followed, except, of course, in the case of the virtuous 'extraordinary women', such as saints and queens. Women and Pilgrimage in Medieval Galicia represents an analysis of the social history of women based on documentary sources and physical evidence, breaking away from literary and historiographical stereotypes, while at the same time contributing to a critical assessment of the myth that medieval women were kept hidden away from the world. As the chapters here show, women - and not only those 'extraordinary women', but also women from other social strata - became pilgrims and travelled the paths that led from their homes to the most important Christian shrines, especially - although not exclusively - Jerusalem, Rome and Santiago de Compostela. It can be seen that medieval women were actively involved in this ritualistic expression of devotion, piety, sacrifice or penitence. This situation is thoroughly documented in this multidisciplinary book, with emphasis both on the pilgrimages abroad from Galicia and on the pilgrimages to the shrine of St James at Compostela.

For many in the Middle Ages, pilgrimages were seen to represent a clear risk of moral and religious perdition for women, and they were strongly discouraged from making them; this exhortation would have been universally disseminated and generally followed, except, of course, in the case of the virtuous 'extraordinary women', such as saints and queens. Women and Pilgrimage in Medieval Galicia represents an analysis of the social history of women based on documentary sources and physical evidence, breaking away from literary and historiographical stereotypes, while at the same time contributing to a critical assessment of the myth that medieval women were kept hidden away from the world. As the chapters here show, women - and not only those 'extraordinary women', but also women from other social strata - became pilgrims and travelled the paths that led from their homes to the most important Christian shrines, especially - although not exclusively - Jerusalem, Rome and Santiago de Compostela. It can be seen that medieval women were actively involved in this ritualistic expression of devotion, piety, sacrifice or penitence. This situation is thoroughly documented in this multidisciplinary book, with emphasis both on the pilgrimages abroad from Galicia and on the pilgrimages to the shrine of St James at Compostela.

Is it possible to rethink the multilayered and polyvalent Christology of the Qur'an against the intersecting of competing peripheral Christianities, anti-Jewish Christian polemics, and the making of a new Arab state in the 7th-century Near East? To what extent may this help us to decipher, moreover, the intricate redactional process of the quranic corpus? And can we unearth from any conclusions as to the tension between a messianic-oriented and a prophetic-guided religious thought buried in the document? By analysing, first, the typology and plausible date of the Jesus texts contained in the Qur'an (which implies moving far beyond both the habitual chronology of the Qur'an and the common thematic division of the passages in question) and by examining, in the second place, the Qur'an's earliest Christology via-a-vis its later (and indeed much better known) Muhamadan kerygma, the present study answers these crucial questions and, thereby, sheds new light on the Qur'an's original sectarian milieu and pre-canonical development.

This book consists of invited survey articles and research papers in the scientific areas of the "International Workshop on Operator Algebras, Operator Theory and Applications," which was held in Lisbon in July 2016. Reflecting recent developments in the field of algebras of operators, operator theory and matrix theory, it particularly focuses on groupoid algebras and Fredholm conditions, algebras of approximation sequences, C* algebras of convolution type operators, index theorems, spectrum and numerical range of operators, extreme supercharacters of infinite groups, quantum dynamics and operator algebras, and inverse eigenvalue problems. Establishing bridges between the three related areas of operator algebras, operator theory, and matrix theory, the book is aimed at researchers and graduate students who use results from these areas.

Is it possible to rethink the multilayered and polyvalent Christology of the Qur'an against the intersecting of competing peripheral Christianities, anti-Jewish Christian polemics, and the making of a new Arab state in the 7th-century Near East? To what extent may this help us to decipher, moreover, the intricate redactional process of the quranic corpus? And can we unearth from any conclusions as to the tension between a messianic-oriented and a prophetic-guided religious thought buried in the document? By analysing, first, the typology and plausible date of the Jesus texts contained in the Qur'an (which implies moving far beyond both the habitual chronology of the Qur'an and the common thematic division of the passages in question) and by examining, in the second place, the Qur'an's earliest Christology via-a-vis its later (and indeed much better known) Muhamadan kerygma, the present study answers these crucial questions and, thereby, sheds new light on the Qur'an's original sectarian milieu and pre-canonical development.

This book consists of invited survey articles and research papers in the scientific areas of the "International Workshop on Operator Algebras, Operator Theory and Applications," which was held in Lisbon in July 2016. Reflecting recent developments in the field of algebras of operators, operator theory and matrix theory, it particularly focuses on groupoid algebras and Fredholm conditions, algebras of approximation sequences, C* algebras of convolution type operators, index theorems, spectrum and numerical range of operators, extreme supercharacters of infinite groups, quantum dynamics and operator algebras, and inverse eigenvalue problems. Establishing bridges between the three related areas of operator algebras, operator theory, and matrix theory, the book is aimed at researchers and graduate students who use results from these areas.

The aim of the book is to present the emerging environmental issues in organization and management of complex supply chains. The book includes set of solutions which show different stakeholders' viewpoints on sustainability. The scope of book takes into consideration how the emerging environmental regulation might be transformed into business practices. Therefore, the authors present the innovative approach to eco-friendly organization and coordination of logistics processes and supply chain configuration. A broad scope of practical solutions from different countries and industries is provided

Building on fuzzy logic and evolutionary computing, this book introduces fuzzy cooperative coevolution as a novel approach to systems design, conductive to explaining human decision process. Fuzzy cooperative coevolution is a methodology for constructing systems able to accurately predict the outcome of a decision-making process, while providing an understandable explanation of the underlying reasoning.

The central contribution of this work is the use of an advanced evolutionary technique, cooperative coevolution, for dealing with the simultaneous design of connective and operational parameters. Cooperative coevolution overcomes several limitations exhibited by other standard evolutionary approaches.

The applicability of fuzzy cooperative coevolution is validated by modeling the decision processes of three real-world problems, an iris data benchmark problem and two problems from breast cancer diagnosis.

After the success of I'm a Zcary Vampire, comes a new, not-so-scary tale that will have children laughing out loud! Bewaaare....! Everyone in Scaryville lives in fear of the ghost with the smelly old underwear! One by one, the townsfolk pluck up the courage to face the smelly phantom. Will it be Mr Redpen, the school teacher who stops the ghost scaring the whole town or perhaps Shirley Burly? And what if it turns out that the ghost with the smelly old underwear is not actually that scary after all... A funny book about courage, overcoming fears and smelly underpants!

The other day at school, a classmate got angry at me and said, "Clown!" I thanked him and gave him a kiss. He didn't understand but we became friends again." "What do you want to be when you grow up" is a question that fascinates kids and this book explores two occupations -- healing the soul (clown) and healing the body (doctor). Plus there's a need for books showing families of all types so children can see themselves and their families represented in books. Jose Carlos Andres is a famous author in Spain. He is a professional clown and children's theater actor. Natalia Hernandez has illustrated several picture books in Spain. Her unique style is reminiscent of vintage-style art.

This volume provides detailed descriptions on cutting-edge experimental methods to assess the multiple and complex interactions between T. cruzi and its host. Chapters detail a series of methods and protocols, ranging from rather classical biochemical/genetic approaches to modern, powerful and high-throughput '-omics' technologies, to tackle this issue, as well as novel techniques to improve treatment and clinical evaluation of Chagasic patients. Genome-wide mining strategies aimed at identifying potential parasite antigens and vaccine candidates and an overview on the challenges and milestones encountered during T. cruzi genome assembly are also included. Written in the highly successful Methods in Molecular Biology series format, chapters include introductions to their respective topics, lists of the necessary materials and reagents, step-by-step, readily reproducible laboratory protocols, and tips on troubleshooting and avoiding known pitfalls. Authoritative and cutting-edge, T. cruzi Infection: Methods and Protocols aims to provide students, researchers, and clinicians who are interested in the study of Chagas disease an indispensable source of information.

Social interactions within networks comprise an increasing event nowadays. Different aspects of societies and competitive markets, such as Social Medias through the Internet and Telecommunications environments hold a high correlation with the social network analysis methodology. By understanding these social structures and its interactions might be possible to realize how individuals and consumers relate each other and hence predict further social structures in the future. However, most of the current social network analysis projects are in relation to static structures, not considering how the social network evolves over the time. The dynamic approach can points out new perspectives in terms of social network analysis, including prediction and simulations scenarios. In order to perceive the social network relations over the time is crucial to collect the distinct snapshots of the social structure, understanding not just how the social members relate each other but in addition to that how this relationships evolves over the time. Measures in relation to social network describe nodes and links by static metrics, depicting its strength, its overall distances to the other related nodes, and its amounts of connections, among others. This dynamic approach makes possible to create a historical data, quite usual for predictive modeling. As such, new social network measures and algorithms should be created in order to describe dynamic features assigned to social structures over the time. Chapter 1 gives a brief overview of social network, such as its characteristics and how to visualize it. Chapter 2 discusses the general practice of building pervasive online social networks using real-world services and presents various projects that focus on the online social networking of the physical world. Chapter 3 presents a semantic model, non probabilistic and predictive, for the decisional analysis of professional and institutional social networks. Chapter 4 describes a novel approach towards the visualization and analysis of network dynamics. The goal is to handle network data and visualization in ways that explicitly deal with its time-based nature while simultaneously assessing nodal- and macro- network dynamics. Chapter 5 shows how the network topology affects epidemic diffusion and cascade dynamics. It also clarifies the largest maximum eigenvalue of the adjacency matrix of the network is the key index to estimate the properties of networks. Chapter 6, discusses the behaviors of malware propagation in online social networks using analytical models and conducts some simulations. Chapter 7 analyzes the Google Analytics data from multiple web companies. These web services all positioned themselves as social network sites within a relatively short time from their establishment. Several important measures available on Google Analytics were discussed with experienced practitioners to be identified for data collection. Chapter 8 explores the effects of spatiality and the direction of information transmission over cooperation dynamics. The model is based on the well-known "selfish herd" concept, and assumes that cultural and biological dynamics are driven by natural selection of the phenotypes. This model allows us to study the differences between the dynamics of cooperative, group-forming individuals subject to a selective pressure (predation). Chapter 9 does the survey about the types of private information and privacy threats on social network graphs, and then introduce the methods to protect the private information. Chapter 10 reviews the e-Government development processes in Canada, Malaysia, Australia, Singapore and Korea in order to identify the factors that contribute to the successful development of e-Government therein.

Master's Thesis from the year 2012 in the subject Computer Science - Commercial Information Technology, grade: 2.0, University of Applied Sciences Bonn-Rhein-Sieg; Rheinbach, language: English, abstract: Cloud computing is gaining importance in the industry and specially within small and medium-sized companies due to the many benefits in terms of cost savings, faster time to market, scalability, cost flexibility and optimization of resources. Today, cloud computing is considered as the next IT revolution and the number of articles, books, papers and technical reports flood the literature. Within the scope of this master thesis, relevant cloud computing applications for small- and medium- sized companies are identified and the key success factors for adoption of cloud computing services are analyzed based on the empirical investigation performed as part of this work. Finally, the benefits and constraints of the different cloud computing service models are presented including also the state-of-the-art research in the cloud computing area and a summary of the most important results.

This work presents new approaches for motion design and analysis suitable for the integration of Computer Aided Design (CAD), Computer Aided Manufacturing (CAM) and Computerized Numerical Control (CNC). Therefore, not only shape but also kinematic information is conveyed in an efficient manner that can be easily implemented in CAD/CAM systems and eventually interpreted by CNC manufacturing equipment. By using dual quaternions, quaternions and planar quaternions, the displacements of a rigid body in Cartesian space are mapped into points in the image space of displacements, transforming the kinematic problem of motion interpolation into a geometric problem where the powerful techniques for curve and surface interpolation from Computer Aided Geometric Design (CAGD) can be readily applied. Three techniques are developed using quaternion biarcs, a four point interpolatory subdivision scheme and its tensor product version. A preliminary approach for mechanism simulation using subdivision schemes is also attempted. The results obtained have applications in CNC tool path generation, robot path planning, and computer animation.

Recently, there has been increasing interest in how emotions affect decision making. In particular, how does emotion interact with cognition when people make decisions? The work of Carlos A. Trujillo represents a bold attempt to illuminate the interplay between cognitive and emotional factors when people are involved in this important activity. His contribution is both empirical and theoretical. Trujillo reports the results of five experiments and then goes on to develop an organizing framework. His results are informative and his work is innovative. It defines both new paths and challenges for further investigation into the mysteries of the mind. By: Robin M. Hogarth (ICREA Research Professor, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona) In this work, particular attention is paid to the role of meta cogitive activities, the situational cognitive capacities of individuals and the way people produce and employ categorical information. Results are of interest for behavioral decision scientists, management and marketing researchers.