MERGE eases you into the front row of a master class on the art and science of the complex sale, taught by one of the "most successful marketers" in financial services. No matter how good you are (or think you are) as a relationship builder, rainmaker, consultant or closer, pick up the head-snapping nuggets of practical wisdom spread across these pages.

MERGE reveals a five-step surefire sales process long forgotten, overlooked, or never learned by so many professionals in finance, insurance, legal, real estate and other high-value professions. Don't miss it this time. Your business, your clients depend on the high-water mark of your greatness.

Praise for MERGE "MERGE offers the insight of one of America's best and most successful marketers in the financial services industry. Read it before your competition does."-Peter D. Quinn, Senior Vice President, Wells Fargo Bank - Executive Benefits

"Bill MacDonald has done a superb job of merging theory and practical application of sales and marketing-how he actually made his theories work in practice. MERGE is a book all up-and-coming sales and marketing executives should read, well-written, and easy to read."-Jim Ellis, Dean, University of Southern California, Marshall School of Business

"MERGE details the mistakes commonly made by consultants in marketing services. Bill's five-step process can be used successfully, no matter the market. The principles are transferable and powerful. He's done a superb job of making his book relational and practical. Every consulting professional will benefit from reading this book."-Guy Baker, Immediate Past President, The Million Dollar Round Table, Managing Director, EMI Consulting

Over the last two decades, advances in the design, miniaturization, and analytical capabilities of portable X-ray fluorescence (pXRF) instrumentation have led to its rapid and widespread adoption in a remarkably diverse range of applications in research and industrial fields. The impetus for this volume was that, as pXRF continues to grow into mainstream use, analysts should be increasingly empowered with the right information to safely and effectively employ pXRF as part of their analytical toolkit. This volume provides introductory and advanced-level users alike with readings on topics ranging from basic principles of pXRF and qualitative and quantitative approaches, through to machine learning and artificial intelligence for enhanced applications. It also includes fundamental guidance on calibrations, the mathematics of calculating uncertainties, and an extensive reference index of all elements and their interactions with X-rays. Contributing authors have provided a wealth of information and case studies in industry-specific chapters. These sections delve into detail on current standard practices in industry and research, including examples from agricultural and geo-exploration sectors, research in art and archaeology, and metals industrial and regulatory applications. As pXRF continues to grow in use in industrial and academic settings, it is essential that practitioners continue to learn, share, and implement informed and effective use of this technique. This volume serves as an accessible guidebook and go-to reference manual for new and experienced users in pXRF to achieve this goal.

This thesis reports the latest developments in the direct amination of various C H bonds using an H Zn exchange/electrophilic amination strategy. McDonald and co-workers reveal this approach to be a rapid and powerful method for accessing a variety of functionalized amines. The material outlined in this book shows how McDonald achieved C H zincation using strong, non-nucleophilic zinc bases and subsequent electrophilic amination of the corresponding zinc carbanions with copper as a catalyst and O-benzoylhydroxylamines as the electrophilic nitrogen source. McDonald's findings are of relevance to medicinal chemistry, drug discovery and materials science. Her thesis is a source of inspiration for scientists entering the field and students beginning their PhD in a related area.

The current literature on resource selection by animals is a maze of methodologies for data collection and interpretation. Field biologists need a guide through the labyrinth. This book provides such a guide. It gives a clear and consistent framework for the study of how animals select their resources (food and habitat) by taking the reader through different types of study design. It is an invaluable handbook for the field biologist, especially those concerned with the management and conservation of wildlife. The authors have clearly identified the need to pull together the diffuse literature, and biologists will greatly improve their experimental design, methodology, and analysis with this book.

The second edition of this popular book has been updated to include many developments in the last few years. There is new material on discrete choice models, the analysis of data from geographical information systems, compositional analysis, Mahalanobis distance methods, and neural networks and related approaches.

Resource Selection by Animals:

• is an invaluable guide for field biologists;
• provides a consistent framework for study of resource selection (food and habitat) by animals;
• is a unique guide, and is the only book which covers this critical topic in such depth; and
• is particularly useful to wildlife managers and conservation biologists.

This book expands upon the guiding principles at the heart of Math Recovery (R) instruction, exploring their connections with learning theory, practical application in the classroom and their wider links to agreed concepts of high-quality mathematics teaching. It provides a well-rounded overview of all major aspects of mathematics teaching including inquiry-based and constructivist approaches, planning and assessment, and strategies that offer children opportunities for reflection, satisfaction and increasing challenge. Particular focus is placed on equitable and inclusive practices in mathematics and how we can develop teaching that connects with the abilities, cultures, and lived experiences of all children. This is essential reading for all teachers familiar with the Math Recovery (R) approach and classroom mathematics teachers in elementary and primary schools everywhere seeking to enhance their own professional knowledge and understanding. Beth L. MacDonald is an associate professor in Early Childhood Mathematics Education in the School of Teaching and Learning at Illinois State University. Jonathan N. Thomas is an associate professor of mathematics education and the chairperson of the Department of STEM Education at the University of Kentucky.

This is the only book of its kind devoted to exploring contentious politics from a North American perspective including protests, social movements, transnational contention, and emergent regional governance processes between Canadian, U.S. and Mexican state and civil society actors.

We have written this book as a guide to the design and analysis of field studies of resource selection, concentrating primarily on statistical aspects of the comparison of the use and availability of resources of different types. Our in tended audience is field ecologists in general and wildlife biologists in particular who are attempting to measure the extent to which real animal populations are selective in their choice of food and habitat. As such, we have made no attempt to address those aspects of theoretical ecology that are concerned with how animals might choose their resources if they acted in an optimal manner. The book is based on the concept of a resource selection function, where this is a function of characteristics measured on resource units such that its value for a unit is proportional to the probability of that unit being used. We argue that this concept leads to a unified theory for the analysis and interpretation of data on resource selection and can replace many ad hoc statistical methods that have been used in the past."

The story of the company that was founded by the inventor of the snowmobile

In 1942, Joseph-Armand Bombardier invented the snowmobile and founded his company to manufacture them. From its humble beginnings as an entrepreneurial company in rural Quebec, led by an enterprising inventor, Bombardier Inc. has emerged as a global leader in the transportation industry. This book tells the fascinating tale of this remarkably well managed company that has enjoyed spectacular growth in its chosen markets through strong leadership and management strategy, succession planning, strategic diversification, and turnaround and acquisition artistry.The fascinating story of the world's largest rail manufacturer for both railway and subwayReveals why Bombardier Inc. is a multi-faceted global company yet nobody knows their name Written by Larry MacDonald the author of Nortel Network

"The Bombardier Story" shows how invention and entrepreneurship, management and leadership, smooth succession planning, and turnaround and acquisition built this global powerhouse.

This collection brings together a diverse range of analyses to interrogate policy changes and to grapple with the on-going transformations of neoliberalism in both North America and various Latin American states.

Refugees experience some of the most visible manifestations of human rights abuses in the world today--and raise difficult issues for researchers and policy makers alike. This book investigates a broad range of complexities that arise as ethnographers work with refugee populations from different geographic areas in research, policy formation, and legal and social assistance. But the issues raised here have application to ethical concerns in ethnographic research and practice beyond refugees. The contributors draw on their intensive fieldwork to explore issues surrounding power and disempowerment between researcher and subject; dilemmas over the protection of research informants; and the rights and actions of refugees in representing themselves and their cultures in advocacy and policy arenas. The wealth of important insights in this book sharpen our understanding of the problems faced in any cross-cultural research and intervention. These explorations revitalize, in vivid detail drawn from case studies, recent theoretical debates on anthropology and ethnographic research, while suggesting new, empowering approaches to applied work and ethnographic study.

I'm just an ordinary writer, Erskine Caldwell once wrote. ""I'm not trying to sell anything; I'm not trying to buy anything. I'm just trying to present my vision of life."" His ostensibly unsolicitous vision of Southern grotesques, of the slack-jawed, pellagra-ridden sharecroppers, repressed farmwives, and over sexed nymphets, elicited, however, anything but an ""ordinary"" response. Hailed by the likes of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Maxwell Perkins, reviled by others as a pornographer or sensationalist, Caldwell was once called ""America's most popular author."" Once the furore flagged, Caldwell was relegated to the ""mansions of subliterature,"" where his reputation resides today. This book contains more than 150 previously unpublished letters, notes, telegrams, and postcards written between 1929 and 1955, at the peak of Caldwell's popularity and influence, all extensively annotated. The Introduction assays Caldwell's significance in American popular culture and literary studies and establishes the importance of Caldwell's correspondence as a means of understanding the intentions of a man who was otherwise terse and unforthcoming about his work.

Erskine Caldwell has been compared to literary giants like Faulkner and Hemingway, yet he has also been reviled as peddler of pop trash. Was he a genius, or just a shooting star whose brilliance faded long before he stopped writing? Caldwell began his career in the late 1920s and gained fame for revealing the gritty backwoods South in novels such as his seminal ""Tobacco Road"". He wrote prolifically, sometimes as much as a book a year. As the editor of this book maintains, perhaps anyone who wrote so much would inevitably stumble. These 12 essays explore a variety of issues. They discuss Caldwell as humorist, social commentator, modernist, and revolutionary novelist. They examine his themes and tropes (political image, social injustice, the environment, ideological struggles) and his use of artistic devices (short stories, cubist strategies, repetition). A generous bibliography includes not only books on Caldwell but also chapters and forewords, journal articles, essays, news items and obituaries. The reader is encouraged to look at Caldwell with fresh eyes, to press beyond his controversial image, and to compare his works, especially his early ones, to those of any of the top names in literature.

In the field of marriage and family therapy, the Global Assessment of Relational Functioning (GARF) tool can be used to meet the needs of the client, therapist, managed care workers, and contractual payers. It can also provide therapists with assessment data for guiding their clinical work and outcome data for verifying treatment success to outside evaluators. This sourcebook outlines the basic elements of GARF as described in the DSM-IV. These elements include: solving problems and negotiating goals, rules and routines within the practice, organizing roles and responsibilities, and establishing a positive emotional environment for everyone. In order to fulfil these basic elements, the authors provide clinicians with some necessary tools including structural knowledge, process charts, and growth-producing environmental proposals. In the first portion of the book, clinicians will find a quick understanding of the GARF and how it can produce effective outcomes from different treatment approaches. In addition, this sourcebook provides clinicians with a start-up manual to using the GARF in marriage and family therapy. Managed care needs are discussed later in the book and a comparison of major family assessment tools is also included for the experienced clinician.

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Hidden Markov Models for Time Series: An Introduction Using R, Second Edition illustrates the great flexibility of hidden Markov models (HMMs) as general-purpose models for time series data. The book provides a broad understanding of the models and their uses. After presenting the basic model formulation, the book covers estimation, forecasting, decoding, prediction, model selection, and Bayesian inference for HMMs. Through examples and applications, the authors describe how to extend and generalize the basic model so that it can be applied in a rich variety of situations. The book demonstrates how HMMs can be applied to a wide range of types of time series: continuous-valued, circular, multivariate, binary, bounded and unbounded counts, and categorical observations. It also discusses how to employ the freely available computing environment R to carry out the computations. Features Presents an accessible overview of HMMs Explores a variety of applications in ecology, finance, epidemiology, climatology, and sociology Includes numerous theoretical and programming exercises Provides most of the analysed data sets online New to the second edition A total of five chapters on extensions, including HMMs for longitudinal data, hidden semi-Markov models and models with continuous-valued state process New case studies on animal movement, rainfall occurrence and capture-recapture data

This thesis reports the latest developments in the direct amination of various C H bonds using an H Zn exchange/electrophilic amination strategy. McDonald and co-workers reveal this approach to be a rapid and powerful method for accessing a variety of functionalized amines. The material outlined in this book shows how McDonald achieved C H zincation using strong, non-nucleophilic zinc bases and subsequent electrophilic amination of the corresponding zinc carbanions with copper as a catalyst and O-benzoylhydroxylamines as the electrophilic nitrogen source. McDonald's findings are of relevance to medicinal chemistry, drug discovery and materials science. Her thesis is a source of inspiration for scientists entering the field and students beginning their PhD in a related area.

Hidden Markov Models for Time Series: An Introduction Using R, Second Edition illustrates the great flexibility of hidden Markov models (HMMs) as general-purpose models for time series data. The book provides a broad understanding of the models and their uses. After presenting the basic model formulation, the book covers estimation, forecasting, decoding, prediction, model selection, and Bayesian inference for HMMs. Through examples and applications, the authors describe how to extend and generalize the basic model so that it can be applied in a rich variety of situations. The book demonstrates how HMMs can be applied to a wide range of types of time series: continuous-valued, circular, multivariate, binary, bounded and unbounded counts, and categorical observations. It also discusses how to employ the freely available computing environment R to carry out the computations. Features Presents an accessible overview of HMMs Explores a variety of applications in ecology, finance, epidemiology, climatology, and sociology Includes numerous theoretical and programming exercises Provides most of the analysed data sets online New to the second edition A total of five chapters on extensions, including HMMs for longitudinal data, hidden semi-Markov models and models with continuous-valued state process New case studies on animal movement, rainfall occurrence and capture-recapture data

We have written this book as a guide to the design and analysis of field studies of resource selection, concentrating primarily on statistical aspects of the comparison of the use and availability of resources of different types. Our in tended audience is field ecologists in general and wildlife biologists in particular who are attempting to measure the extent to which real animal populations are selective in their choice of food and habitat. As such, we have made no attempt to address those aspects of theoretical ecology that are concerned with how animals might choose their resources if they acted in an optimal manner. The book is based on the concept of a resource selection function, where this is a function of characteristics measured on resource units such that its value for a unit is proportional to the probability of that unit being used. We argue that this concept leads to a unified theory for the analysis and interpretation of data on resource selection and can replace many ad hoc statistical methods that have been used in the past."

We have written this book as a guide to the design and analysis of field studies of resource selection, concentrating primarily on statistical aspects of the comparison of the use and availability of resources of different types. Our intended audience is field ecologists in general and, in particular, wildlife and fisheries biologists who are attempting to measure the extent to which real animal populations are selective in their choice of food and habitat. As such, we have made no attempt to address those aspects of theoretical ecology that are concerned with how animals might choose their resources if they acted in an optimal manner. The book is based on the concept of a resource selection function (RSF), where this is a function of characteristics measured on resourceunits such that its value for a unit is proportional to the probability of that unit being used. We argue that this concept leads to a unified theory for the analysis and interpretation of data on resource selection and can replace many ad hoc statistical methods that have been used in the past.

This collection brings together a diverse range of analyses to interrogate policy changes and to grapple with the on-going transformations of neoliberalism in both North America and various Latin American states.

This book expands upon the guiding principles at the heart of Math Recovery (R) instruction, exploring their connections with learning theory, practical application in the classroom and their wider links to agreed concepts of high-quality mathematics teaching. It provides a well-rounded overview of all major aspects of mathematics teaching including inquiry-based and constructivist approaches, planning and assessment, and strategies that offer children opportunities for reflection, satisfaction and increasing challenge. Particular focus is placed on equitable and inclusive practices in mathematics and how we can develop teaching that connects with the abilities, cultures, and lived experiences of all children. This is essential reading for all teachers familiar with the Math Recovery (R) approach and classroom mathematics teachers in elementary and primary schools everywhere seeking to enhance their own professional knowledge and understanding. Beth L. MacDonald is an associate professor in Early Childhood Mathematics Education in the School of Teaching and Learning at Illinois State University. Jonathan N. Thomas is an associate professor of mathematics education and the chairperson of the Department of STEM Education at the University of Kentucky.

The Pantheon in Rome is one of the grand architectural statements of all ages. This richly illustrated book isolates the reasons for its extraordinary impact on Western architecture, discussing the Pantheon as a building in its time but also as a building for all time.

Mr. MacDonald traces the history of the structure since its completion and examines its progeny--domed rotundas with temple-fronted porches built from the second century to the twentieth--relating them to the original. He analyzes the Pantheon's design and the details of its technology and construction, and explores the meaning of the building on the basis of ancient texts, formal symbolism, and architectural analogy. He sees the immense unobstructed interior, with its disk of light that marks the sun's passage through the day, as an architectural metaphor for the ecumenical pretensions of the Roman Empire.

Past discussions of the Pantheon have tended to center on design and structure. These are but the starting point for Mr. MacDonald, who goes on to show why it ranks--along with Cheops's pyramid, the Parthenon, Wren's churches, Mansard's palaces-as an architectural archetype.