This book presents the methodology and applications of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) in measuring productivity, efficiency and effectiveness in Financial Services firms such as banks, bank branches, stock markets, pension funds, mutual funds, insurance firms, credit unions, risk tolerance, and corporate failure prediction. Financial service DEA research includes banking; insurance businesses; hedge, pension and mutual funds; and credit unions. Significant business transactions among financial service organizations such as bank mergers and acquisitions and valuation of IPOs have also been the focus of DEA research. The book looks at the range of DEA uses for financial services by presenting prior studies, examining the current capabilities reflected in the most recent research, and projecting future new uses of DEA in finance related applications.

""Within twenty-four standard hours we will sit firmly astride the communications link that connects the worlds of the Republic. . . . Our control will be a dagger thrust directly at Coruscant. This is the move that will win the war for us."
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With these ominous words, Pors Tonith, ruthless minion of Count Dooku, declares the fate of the Republic sealed. Commanding a Separatist invasion force more than one million strong, the cunning financier-turned-warrior lays siege to the planet Praesitlyn, home of the strategic intergalactic communications center that is key to the Republic's survival in the Clone Wars. Left unchallenged, this decisive strike could indeed pave the way for the toppling of more Republic worlds . . . and ultimate victory for the Separatists. Retaliation must be swift and certain.
But engaging the enemy throughout the galaxy has already stretched Supreme Chancellor Palpatine's armies to the limit. There is no choice but to move against the surging waves of invading battle-droids on Praesitlyn with only a small contingent of clone soldiers. Commanding them will be Jedi Master Nejaa Halcyon-hand-picked by the Council for the do-or-die mission. And at his side, skilled young starfighter pilot Anakin Skywalker, a promising young Jedi Padawan eager to be freed of the bonds of apprenticeship-and to be awarded the title of Jedi Knight.
Shoulder to shoulder with a rogue Republic army officer and his battle-hardened crew, a hulking Rondian mercenary with an insatiable taste for combat, and a duo of ready-for-anything soldiers, the Jedi generals take to the skies and the punishing desert terrain of occupied Praesitlyn-to bring the battle to the Separatist forces. Already outnumbered and outgunned, when confronted with an enemy ultimatum that could lead to the massacre of innocents, they may also be out of options. Unless Anakin Skywalker can strike a crucial balance between the wisdom born of the Force . . . and the instincts of a born warrior."
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"From the Hardcover edition."

Service Productivity Management is an in-depth guide to using the most powerful available benchmarking technique to improve service organization performance - Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). It outlines the use of DEA as a benchmarking technique. It identifies high costs service units. It isolates specific changes to each service unit to elevate their performance to the best practice services level providing high quality service at low cost. And most important, it guides the improvement process. The discussion and methods are all supported by case-study applications to organizations that have sought and have successfully improved its performance. The techniques discussed in the book are accessible to any and all managers with access to Microsoft Excel spreadsheet software (Excel). Step-by-step guidance is provided to enable any reader to apply DEA and the Excel software to their organization with a ready-to-use DEA software CD for Microsoft Excel Add-in to run DEA analyses on any set of organizations of interest.

Offering a new translation of the famous chapter 4 ("Self-Consciousness") of Phenomenology of Spirit, this book reflects the far-reaching insights of contemporary Hegelian scholarship. Included is extensive commentary as well as a review of its reception by such important twentieth-century thinkers as Kojeve, Heidegger, Sartre, Gadamer, Bataille, Deleuze, Lacan, and Habermas.

Interest in Hegel has historically centered around the Phenomenology of Spirit. In particular chapter 4, including Hegel's celebrated "master-slave dialectic, " has influenced philosophers, political theorists, social psychologists, cultural anthropologists, and literary theorists alike. Hegel began this chapter with an influential discussion of the nature of human "desire, " and then described a hypothetical encounter between two pre-social human beings who engage in a life-and-death struggle for recognition. Out of this struggle that gave rise to self-identity, emerged such forms of consciousness as master and slave, stoicism skepticism, and what Hegel referred to as "the unhappy consciousness, " which he took to be paradigmatic of early, Christianity. These forms of consciousness, in turn, are transcended by other, more comprehensive, forms of consciousness that ultimately come to reflect the highest elaborations of societal life. The impetus for these dynamic changes comes from the dialectical contradictions that inhere within our most basic conceptions of personhood.

Distilling the available knowledge on ethanol-induced liver damage and directly complementing the available bio-medical literature, Ethanol and the Liver covers pathogenic and clinical aspects of alcoholic liver disease. Providing broader coverage of the subject than any available monograph, the editors and their panel of experts relate basic science to pathogenesis and treatment modalities and explore future developments. Coverage includes: Histopathology-fatty liver, alcoholic hepatitis, and cirrhosis Ethanol metabolism and its consequences Mechanisms in the pathogenesis of ALD, including genetics, immunology, and insulin-like growth factors Extrahepatic effects of ALD and the role of alcohol in potentiating liver damage due to other etiologies Interaction of alcohol with viral hepatitis Epidemiology, diagnosis, and treatment Management strategies, including transplantation The vast amount of knowledge and expertise gathered in this book make it an unparalleled resource.

Contents:
Part 1. Specific Lesions 1. Alcoholic Fatty Liver Andrew J. Bathgate and Kenneth J. Simpson 2. Alcoholic Hepatitus H. Denk, K. Zatloukal and C. StumptnerIN 3. Fibrosis in Alcoholic Cirrhosis Samuel W. French Part 2. Direct and Indirect Consequences of Alcohol Metabolism 4. Genetics of Ethanol Metabolism and Alcoholic Liver Disease Paul Y. Kwo and David W. Crabb 5. Acetaldehyde Adducts: Role in Ethanol-Induced Liver Disease John Koskinas Part 3. Mechanisms of Damage 6. Free Radicals and Alcohol-Induced Liver Injury Emanuele Albano 7. Ethanol and the Hepatic Microcirculation Robert S. McCuskey 8. Cytokines and Alcohol Liver Disease F. Javier Laso, J. Ignacio Madruga Alberto Orfao 9. Adhesion Molecules and Chemokines in Alcoholic Liver Disease Neil C. Fisher and David H. Adams 10. Role of Endotoxin and Kupffer Cells as Triggers of Hypoxia-Reoxygenation in Alcoholic Liver Injury R.G. Thurman, B.U. Bradford, K.T. Knecht, Y. Iimuro, G.E. Arteel, M. Yin, H.D. Connor, C. Rivera, J.A. Raleigh, M.V. Frankenberg, Y. Adachi, D.T. Forman, D. Brenner, M. Kadiiska and R.P. Mason 11. Ethanol and Protein Turnover Elena Volpi 12. Insulin-Like Growth Factors: Clinical and Experimental Anthony J. Donaghy 13. Cellular Mechanisms of Liver Regeneration and the Effect of Alcohol Martin Phillips, Elika Kashef and Robin Hughes 14. Alcohol and Hepatocellular Carcinoma Stephen D. Ryder 15. Animal Models of Ethanol-Induced Liver Disease Harri A. Järveläinen and Kai O. Lindros Part 4. Epidemiology and Diagnosis 16. Epidemiology and Comparative Incidence of Alcohol-Induced Liver Disease John B. Saunders and Benedict M. Devereaux 17. Serum Diagnosis of Alcoholic Liver Disease and Markers of Ethanol Intake Onni Niemelä Part 5. Extrahepatic Effects 18. Extrahepatic Effects of Alcohol: An Overview Helen L. Reeves and Christopher P. Day 19. Endocrine System Christian Gluud 20. Cardiomyopathy and Skeletal Muscle Myopathy Alvaro Urbano-Márquez, Joaquim Fernández-Solà and Ramon Estruch 21. Cerebral Consequences of Alcoholic Liver Disease Roger F. Butterworth Part 6. Management 22. General Management of Alcoholic Liver Disease Martin Phillips and John O'Grady 23. The Role of the Psychiatrist in the Treatment of Alcoholic Liver Disease José Martínez-Raga and E. Jane Marshall 24. Pharmacological Treatment for Alcoholic Hepatitis and Cirrhosis: Present Practice and Future Strategies Philippe Mathurin and Thierry Poynard 25. Nutritional Support in Alcoholic Liver Disease: Practical Management and Future Strategies Angela Madden 26. Alcohol and Viral Hepatitis: Interactions and Management Albert Parés and Joan Caballería 27. Liver Transplantation in Alcoholic Liver Disease Stephen P. Pereira and Roger Williams

Here is an in-depth guide to the most powerful available benchmarking technique for improving service organization performance - Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). The book outlines DEA as a benchmarking technique, identifies high cost service units, isolates specific changes for elevating performance to the best practice services level providing high quality service at low cost and most important, it guides the improvement process.

Taking its title from Faulkner's epochal modernist novel, David Sherman's study traces the myriad ways death and its effect on the living defined modernist fiction and verse in England, Ireland, and the U.S. A focus on the disturbing but recurring image of the corpse allows Sherman to consider a range of texts marked by their sense of mortal fragility. Wilfred Owen's war poetry and Virginia Woolf's early novel Jacob's Room illustrate an incipient anxiety over new governmental techniques for efficiently managing the burial of the dead during World War I. Joyce's Ulysses and As I Lay Dying offer opportunities to consider narratives organized by the problem of an unburied corpse. Eliot's The Waste Land and Djuna Barnes's novel Nightwood, which Eliot edited, demonstrate how modernist writers often respond to death and the loss of corporality with erotic encounters at the moment mortality is most threatened. Two poems by William Carlos Williams and Wallace Stevens, in the monograph's concluding section, provide emblems for competing attitudes toward the disposal of the dead in the first half of the twentieth century. Enriched by insights from psychology, anthropology, and philosophy, In a Strange Room presents a richly textured transatlantic study of a defining aspect of modernist literature and culture.

Antonio Negri is known in the English-speaking world primarily through his collaborations with Michael Hardt; Empire , Multitude, and Commonwealth have become some of the most widely discussed political works of recent times. Here, Reading Negri unravels the ideas and life of the man whose work has become a rallying point for students, workers, and intellectuals opposing capitalist globalization. It also delves into many of the thinker's other writings, such as his novel readings of Machiavelli, Descartes, and Spinoza -- revolutionary reinterpretations of the central texts of Marx -- and his works of contemporary political analysis. Whereas most critical accounts of Negri focus only on his collaborations with Hardt, this insightful collection of essays presents readers with a fuller picture of his thoughts, one that does justice to his ability to use the great texts of the philosophical tradition to illuminate the present. This collection contains essays from scholars representing a broad spectrum of disciplines and interests, and offers both criticism of and positive commentary on Negri's work.