Grief and loss are fundamental aspects of the human experience. This book explores the desire to make sense out of the nonsensical by exploring specific loss and grief experiences. The autoethnographic essays reflect on the unique and individual experiences of each contributor’s story. Simultaneously, these experiences reveal that although their grief experience is unique, it is also cultural and collective, evoking broader cultural themes related to loss and grief. The chapters in this book represent a wide range of loss experiences ranging from the loss of a parent, child, or partner, loss within larger family systems, ambiguous and anticipatory loss to broader cultural aspects of grief. Scholars of communication, sociology, and family studies will find this book of particular interest.

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

To commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the restoration of the diaconate as a permanent and stable order of ministry in the United States, the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) at Georgetown University undertook a contemporary study of the diaconate in the United States. Building on studies completed in 1981 and 1995 as well as annual research that CARA has conducted for the USCCB since 2005, CARA designed a comprehensive study of deacons, their wives, diaconate directors, and bishops to explore all aspects of this ministry. This book explores trends in the diaconate as well as current and emerging opportunities and challenges in the ministry. Deacons and their wives, diaconate directors, and bishops share insights about how those trends impact diaconal ministry today and into the future.

To commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the restoration of the diaconate as a permanent and stable order of ministry in the United States, the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) at Georgetown University undertook a contemporary study of the diaconate in the United States. Building on studies completed in 1981 and 1995 as well as annual research that CARA has conducted for the USCCB since 2005, CARA designed a comprehensive study of deacons, their wives, diaconate directors, and bishops to explore all aspects of this ministry. This book explores trends in the diaconate as well as current and emerging opportunities and challenges in the ministry. Deacons and their wives, diaconate directors, and bishops share insights about how those trends impact diaconal ministry today and into the future.

Institutions and Incentives in Regulatory Science explores fundamental problems with regulatory science in the environmental and natural resource law field. Each chapter covers a variety of natural resource and regulatory areas, ranging from climate change to endangered species protection and traditional health-based environmental regulation. Regulatory laws and institutions themselves strongly influence the direction of scientific research by creating a system of rewards and penalties for science. As a consequence, regulatory laws or institutions that are designed naively end up incentivizing scientists to generate and then publish only those results that further the substantive regulatory goals preferred by the scientists. By relying so heavily on science to dictate policy, regulatory laws and institutions encourage scientists to use their assessment of the state of the science to further their own preferred scientific and regulatory policy agendas. Additionally, many environmental and natural resource regulatory agencies have been instructed by legislatures to rely heavily upon science in their rulemaking. In areas of rapidly evolving science, regulatory agencies are inevitably looking for scientific consensus prematurely, before the scientific process has worked through competing hypotheses and evidence. The contributors in this volume address how institutions for regulatory science should be designed in light of the inevitable misfit between the political or legal demand for regulatory action and the actual state of evolving scientific knowledge.

Nonprofits often struggle financially, overwhelmed by the need to muster a complex combination of income streams that range from grants and government funding to gifts-in-kind and volunteer labor. Financing Nonprofits draws upon a growing body of scholarship in economics and organizational theory to offer a conceptual framework for understanding this diverse mix of financing sources. By applying theory, readers can understand when a nonprofit organization should pursue particular sources of income and how it should manage its portfolio of income from different sources. Organized under the auspices of the National Center on Nonprofit Enterprise, Financing Nonprofits argues that those who would manage nonprofit organizations must first develop a conceptual framework through which they can understand the complicated and fast-paced landscape surrounding nonprofit decision-making. It offers a piece by piece analysis of the many potential components of nonprofit operating income, including a detailed study on how to accumulate the capital needed for major infrastructure projects or endowments and an examination of how to maintain a healthy investment profile once sufficient capital exists. By melding theory with practice, Young and the other contributors to Financing Nonprofits have created a volume that will serve as a practical guide to financing strategies for executive directors, CFOs, and board members of nonprofit organizations in a wide variety of fields; as a text for graduate students in nonprofit finance; and as a source of ideas for researchers to continue to probe and illuminate the many subtle issues associated with finding the right mix of resources to support the essential work of nonprofit organizations in our society.

Nonprofits often struggle financially, overwhelmed by the need to muster a complex combination of income streams that range from grants and government funding to gifts-in-kind and volunteer labor. Financing Nonprofits draws upon a growing body of scholarship in economics and organizational theory to offer a conceptual framework for understanding this diverse mix of financing sources. By applying theory, readers can understand when a nonprofit organization should pursue particular sources of income and how it should manage its portfolio of income from different sources. Organized under the auspices of the National Center on Nonprofit Enterprise, Financing Nonprofits argues that those who would manage nonprofit organizations must first develop a conceptual framework through which they can understand the complicated and fast-paced landscape surrounding nonprofit decision-making. It offers a piece by piece analysis of the many potential components of nonprofit operating income, including a detailed study on how to accumulate the capital needed for major infrastructure projects or endowments and an examination of how to maintain a healthy investment profile once sufficient capital exists. By melding theory with practice, Young and the other contributors to Financing Nonprofits have created a volume that will serve as a practical guide to financing strategies for executive directors, CFOs, and board members of nonprofit organizations in a wide variety of fields; as a text for graduate students in nonprofit finance; and as a source of ideas for researchers to continue to probe and illuminate the many subtle issues associated with finding the right mix of resources to support the essential work of nonprofit organizations in our society.

Historical Instructional Design Cases presents a collection of design cases which are historical precedents for the field with utility for practicing designers and implications for contemporary design and delivery. Featuring concrete and detailed views of instructional design materials, programs, and environments, this book's unique curatorial approach situates these cases in the field's broader timeline while facilitating readings from a variety of perspectives and stages of design work. Students, faculty, and researchers will be prepared to build their lexicon of observed designs, understand the real-world outcomes of theory application, and develop cases that are fully accessible to future generations and contexts.

Studying the many ideas about how giving charity atones for sin and other rewards in late antique rabbinic literature, this volume contains many, varied, and even conflicting ideas, as the multiplicity must be recognized and allowed expression. Topics include the significance of the rabbis' use of the biblical word "tzedaqah" as charity, the coexistence of the idea that God is the ultimate recipient of tzedaqah along with rabbinic ambivalence about that idea, redemptive almsgiving, and the reward for charity of retention or increase in wealth. Rabbinic literature's preference for "teshuvah" (repentance) over tzedeqah to atone for sin is also closely examined. Throughout, close attention is paid to chronological differences in these ideas, and to differences between the rabbinic compilations of the land of Israel and the Babylonian Talmud. The book extensively analyzes the various ways the Babylonian Talmud especially tends to put limits on the divine element in charity while privileging its human, this-worldly dimensions. This tendency also characterizes the Babylonian Talmud's treatment of other topics. The book briefly surveys some post-Talmudic developments. As the study fills a gap in existing scholarship on charity and the rabbis, it is an invaluable resource for scholars and clergy interested in charity within comparative religion, history, and religion.

Well-established in some fields and still emerging in others, the studio approach to design education is an increasingly attractive mode of teaching and learning, though its variety of definitions and its high demands can make this pedagogical form somewhat daunting. Studio Teaching in Higher Education provides narrative examples of studio education written by instructors who have engaged in it, both within and outside the instructional design field. These multidisciplinary design cases are enriched by the book's coverage of the studio concept in design education, heterogeneity of studio, commonalities in practice, and existing and emergent concerns about studio pedagogy. Prefaced by notes on how the design cases were curated and key perspectives from which the reader might view them, Studio Teaching in Higher Education is a supportive, exploratory resource for those considering or actively adapting a studio mode of teaching and learning to their own disciplines.

Historical Instructional Design Cases presents a collection of design cases which are historical precedents for the field with utility for practicing designers and implications for contemporary design and delivery. Featuring concrete and detailed views of instructional design materials, programs, and environments, this book's unique curatorial approach situates these cases in the field's broader timeline while facilitating readings from a variety of perspectives and stages of design work. Students, faculty, and researchers will be prepared to build their lexicon of observed designs, understand the real-world outcomes of theory application, and develop cases that are fully accessible to future generations and contexts.

Institutions and Incentives in Regulatory Science explores fundamental problems with regulatory science in the environmental and natural resource law field. Each chapter covers a variety of natural resource and regulatory areas, ranging from climate change to endangered species protection and traditional health-based environmental regulation. Regulatory laws and institutions themselves strongly influence the direction of scientific research by creating a system of rewards and penalties for science. As a consequence, regulatory laws or institutions that are designed naively end up incentivizing scientists to generate and then publish only those results that further the substantive regulatory goals preferred by the scientists. By relying so heavily on science to dictate policy, regulatory laws and institutions encourage scientists to use their assessment of the state of the science to further their own preferred scientific and regulatory policy agendas. Additionally, many environmental and natural resource regulatory agencies have been instructed by legislatures to rely heavily upon science in their rulemaking. In areas of rapidly evolving science, regulatory agencies are inevitably looking for scientific consensus prematurely, before the scientific process has worked through competing hypotheses and evidence. The contributors in this volume address how institutions for regulatory science should be designed in light of the inevitable misfit between the political or legal demand for regulatory action and the actual state of evolving scientific knowledge.

Studying the many ideas about how giving charity atones for sin and other rewards in late antique rabbinic literature, this volume contains many, varied, and even conflicting ideas, as the multiplicity must be recognized and allowed expression. Topics include the significance of the rabbis' use of the biblical word "tzedaqah" as charity, the coexistence of the idea that God is the ultimate recipient of tzedaqah along with rabbinic ambivalence about that idea, redemptive almsgiving, and the reward for charity of retention or increase in wealth. Rabbinic literature's preference for "teshuvah" (repentance) over tzedeqah to atone for sin is also closely examined. Throughout, close attention is paid to chronological differences in these ideas, and to differences between the rabbinic compilations of the land of Israel and the Babylonian Talmud. The book extensively analyzes the various ways the Babylonian Talmud especially tends to put limits on the divine element in charity while privileging its human, this-worldly dimensions. This tendency also characterizes the Babylonian Talmud's treatment of other topics. The book briefly surveys some post-Talmudic developments. As the study fills a gap in existing scholarship on charity and the rabbis, it is an invaluable resource for scholars and clergy interested in charity within comparative religion, history, and religion.

Archetypal Expressions is a fresh approach to one of Jung's best-know and most exciting concepts. Richard M. Gray uses archetypes as the basis for a new means of interpreting the world and lays the foundations of what he terms an "archetypal sociology". Jung's ideas are combined with elements of modern biology and systems theory to explore the basic human experiences of life, which recur through the ages.
Revealing the implicitly cross-cultural and interdisciplinary nature of Jungian Psychology, Archetypal Explorations represents a significant contribution to the literature of archetypes and integrative approaches to human behaviour.

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Becoming a Powerhouse Librarian: How to Get Things Done Right the First Time will help you recognize and implement specific behaviors and actions librarians use to successfully drive projects forward, institute new services or revamp old ones, and establish key relationships both inside and outside of the library. Each behavior or trait covered can be either developed or strengthened within an individual or team. The book features practical tips to build skills in each topic area. Examples of topics found in this book include: lifelong learning, risk-taking, creativity, identifying and leveraging stakeholders, creating balance, knowing when to lead and when to follow, handling setbacks and avoiding burnout. Each chapter includes: * A basic description of the behavior and why it is important for success * Overview of core building blocks/elements necessary within each chapter (ex. engaging external stakeholders vs. internal stakeholders) * Examples of actions that readers can take (ex. establishing agreed upon language everyone can understand) * Sidebar of 5 good and bad habits that can impact success * Personal anecdotes from working librarians Whether you're just beginning your library career or you're a seasoned professional, Becoming a Powerhouse Librarian is sure to have something for you!

How to Know What the Bible Teaches is a reliable guide for achieving a clear understanding of the Bible and beginning the discipline of systematic Bible study. Designed as a concise overview of what the Bible teaches, it is a simple introduction to the adventure of learning God's Word. Here is what the Bible says about: - The Word of God - The Trinity - God's relationship with the world - Sin and its remedies - The person and work of the Holy Spirit - The blessings of life in Christ - God - Creation and the Fall - The person and work of Christ - Faith and repentance - The Christian life The topics highlight a method for studying the Bible and growing as a Christian. Bible verses to commit to memory are included. Already a bestseller for many years, How to Know What the Bible Teaches was originally written by James Gray, a former president of the Moody Bible Institute. It has been updated by the staff of the Moody Bible Institute.

Well-established in some fields and still emerging in others, the studio approach to design education is an increasingly attractive mode of teaching and learning, though its variety of definitions and its high demands can make this pedagogical form somewhat daunting. Studio Teaching in Higher Education provides narrative examples of studio education written by instructors who have engaged in it, both within and outside the instructional design field. These multidisciplinary design cases are enriched by the book's coverage of the studio concept in design education, heterogeneity of studio, commonalities in practice, and existing and emergent concerns about studio pedagogy. Prefaced by notes on how the design cases were curated and key perspectives from which the reader might view them, Studio Teaching in Higher Education is a supportive, exploratory resource for those considering or actively adapting a studio mode of teaching and learning to their own disciplines.

Probability, Random Processes, and Ergodic Properties is for mathematically inclined information/communication theorists and people working in signal processing. It will also interest those working with random or stochastic processes, including mathematicians, statisticians, and economists. Highlights: Complete tour of book and guidelines for use given in Introduction, so readers can see at a glance the topics of interest. Structures mathematics for an engineering audience, with emphasis on engineering applications. New in the Second Edition: Much of the material has been rearranged and revised for pedagogical reasons. The original first chapter has been split in order to allow a more thorough treatment of basic probability before tackling random processes and dynamical systems. The final chapter has been broken into two pieces to provide separate emphasis on process metrics and the ergodic decomposition of affine functionals. Many classic inequalities are now incorporated into the text, along with proofs; and many citations have been added.

This book is an updated version of the information theory classic, first published in 1990. About one-third of the book is devoted to Shannon source and channel coding theorems; the remainder addresses sources, channels, and codes and on information and distortion measures and their properties. New in this edition: Expanded treatment of stationary or sliding-block codes and their relations to traditional block codes Expanded discussion of results from ergodic theory relevant to information theory Expanded treatment of B-processes -- processes formed by stationary coding memoryless sources New material on trading off information and distortion, including the Marton inequality New material on the properties of optimal and asymptotically optimal source codes New material on the relationships of source coding and rate-constrained simulation or modeling of random processes Significant material not covered in other information theory texts includes stationary/sliding-block codes, a geometric view of information theory provided by process distance measures, and general Shannon coding theorems for asymptotic mean stationary sources, which may be neither ergodic nor stationary, and d-bar continuous channels.

Holocaust education is a controversial and rapidly evolving field. This book, which critically analyses the very latest research, discusses a number of the most important debates which are emerging within it. Adopting a truly global perspective, it explores both teachers' and students' levels of Holocaust knowledge as well as their attitudes and approaches towards the subject.

Stochastic Image Processing provides the first thorough treatment of Markov and hidden Markov random fields and their application to image processing. Although promoted as a promising approach for over thirty years, it has only been in the past few years that the theory and algorithms have developed to the point of providing useful solutions to old and new problems in image processing. Markov random fields are a multidimensional extension of Markov chains, but the generalization is complicated by the lack of a natural ordering of pixels in multidimensional spaces. Hidden Markov fields are a natural generalization of the hidden Markov models that have proved essential to the development of modern speech recognition, but again the multidimensional nature of the signals makes them inherently more complicated to handle. This added complexity contributed to the long time required for the development of successful methods and applications. This book collects together a variety of successful approaches to a complete and useful characterization of multidimensional Markov and hidden Markov models along with applications to image analysis. The book provides a survey and comparative development of an exciting and rapidly evolving field of multidimensional Markov and hidden Markov random fields with extensive references to the literature.

Herb Caen, a popular columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle, recently quoted a Voice of America press release as saying that it was reorganizing in order to "eliminate duplication and redundancy. " This quote both states a goal of data compression and illustrates its common need: the removal of duplication (or redundancy) can provide a more efficient representation of data and the quoted phrase is itself a candidate for such surgery. Not only can the number of words in the quote be reduced without losing informa tion, but the statement would actually be enhanced by such compression since it will no longer exemplify the wrong that the policy is supposed to correct. Here compression can streamline the phrase and minimize the em barassment while improving the English style. Compression in general is intended to provide efficient representations of data while preserving the essential information contained in the data. This book is devoted to the theory and practice of signal compression, i. e., data compression applied to signals such as speech, audio, images, and video signals (excluding other data types such as financial data or general purpose computer data). The emphasis is on the conversion of analog waveforms into efficient digital representations and on the compression of digital information into the fewest possible bits. Both operations should yield the highest possible reconstruction fidelity subject to constraints on the bit rate and implementation complexity."

In the current age of information technology, the issues of distributing and utilizing images efficiently and effectively are of substantial concern. Solutions to many of the problems arising from these issues are provided by techniques of image processing, among which segmentation and compression are topics of this book. Image segmentation is a process for dividing an image into its constituent parts. For block-based segmentation using statistical classification, an image is divided into blocks and a feature vector is formed for each block by grouping statistics of its pixel intensities. Conventional block-based segmentation algorithms classify each block separately, assuming independence of feature vectors. Image Segmentation and Compression Using Hidden Markov Models presents a new algorithm that models the statistical dependence among image blocks by two dimensional hidden Markov models (HMMs). Formulas for estimating the model according to the maximum likelihood criterion are derived from the EM algorithm. To segment an image, optimal classes are searched jointly for all the blocks by the maximum a posteriori (MAP) rule. The 2-D HMM is extended to multiresolution so that more context information is exploited in classification and fast progressive segmentation schemes can be formed naturally. The second issue addressed in the book is the design of joint compression and classification systems using the 2-D HMM and vector quantization. A classifier designed with the side goal of good compression often outperforms one aimed solely at classification because overfitting to training data is suppressed by vector quantization. Image Segmentation and Compression Using Hidden Markov Models is an essential reference source for researchers and engineers working in statistical signal processing or image processing, especially those who are interested in hidden Markov models. It is also of value to those working on statistical modeling.

The Fourier transform is one of the most important mathematical tools in a wide variety of science and engineering fields. Its application - as Fourier analysis or harmonic analysis - provides useful decompositions of signals into fundamental ('primitive') components, giving shortcuts in the computation of complicated sums and integrals, and often revealing hidden structure in the data. Fourier Transforms: An Introduction for Engineers develops the basic definitions, properties and applications of Fourier analysis, the emphasis being on techniques for its application to linear systems, although other applications are also considered. The book will serve as both a reference text and a teaching text for a one-quarter or one-semester course covering the application of Fourier analysis to a wide variety of signals, including discrete time (or parameter), continuous time (or parameter), finite duration, and infinite duration. It highlights the common aspects in all cases considered, thereby building an intuition from simple examples that will be useful in the more complicated examples where careful proofs are not included.Fourier Analysis: An Introduction for Engineers is written by two scholars who are recognized throughout the world as leaders in this area, and provides a fresh look at one of the most important mathematical and directly applicable concepts in nearly all fields of science and engineering. Audience: Engineers, especially electrical engineers. The careful treatment of the fundamental mathematical ideas makes the book suitable in all areas where Fourier analysis finds applications.