George C. Scott plays the miserly Ebenezer Scrooge in this version of the Dickens Christmas classic. Scrooge is a misanthrope unimpressed by the fuss everyone makes during the festive season. That is, until his sleep is disturbed one Christmas Eve by the ghosts of Christmas past, present and future, each of which takes him on a journey which helps him to open his heart to his fellow man and to thereby learn the joy of Christmas. Filmed entirely on location in the historic town of Shrewsbury.

Modern Written Arabic: A Comprehensive Grammar is a complete reference guide to Arabic grammar. The Grammar presents a fresh and accessible description of the language, concentrating on the real patterns of use in contemporary written Arabic. Data is taken from actual written Arabic, both literary and non-literary, observed or published since 1990. Sources range from street signs to high literature. This comprehensive work is an invaluable resource for anyone at the intermediate to advanced level, from students through to teachers and linguists. It is ideal for use in colleges, universities and adult classes of all types. The volume is organized to promote a thorough understanding of Arabic grammar. It offers a stimulating analysis of the complexities of the language, and provides full and clear explanations. Features include: detailed treatment of the common grammatical structures and parts of speech extensive exemplification particular attention to areas of confusion and difficulty Arabic-English parallels highlighted throughout the book an extensive index and numbered paragraphs for ease-of-reference Elsaid Badawi was Professor of Arabic Language and Linguistics at the American University in Cairo. Michael G. Carter is Honorary Professor at Sydney University. Adrian Gully is an Independent Professional Interpreter and Translator. Maher Awad is Senior Lecturer of Arabic at Rice University.

Operations Research: A Practical Introduction is just that: a hands-on approach to the field of operations research (OR) and a useful guide for using OR techniques in scientific decision making, design, analysis and management. The text accomplishes two goals. First, it provides readers with an introduction to standard mathematical models and algorithms. Second, it is a thorough examination of practical issues relevant to the development and use of computational methods for problem solving. Highlights: All chapters contain up-to-date topics and summaries A succinct presentation to fit a one-term course Each chapter has references, readings, and list of key terms Includes illustrative and current applications New exercises are added throughout the text Software tools have been updated with the newest and most popular software Many students of various disciplines such as mathematics, economics, industrial engineering and computer science often take one course in operations research. This book is written to provide a succinct and efficient introduction to the subject for these students, while offering a sound and fundamental preparation for more advanced courses in linear and nonlinear optimization, and many stochastic models and analyses. It provides relevant analytical tools for this varied audience and will also serve professionals, corporate managers, and technical consultants.

Modern Written Arabic: A Comprehensive Grammar is a complete reference guide to Arabic grammar. The Grammar presents a fresh and accessible description of the language, concentrating on the real patterns of use in contemporary written Arabic. Data is taken from actual written Arabic, both literary and non-literary, observed or published since 1990. Sources range from street signs to high literature. This comprehensive work is an invaluable resource for anyone at the intermediate to advanced level, from students through to teachers and linguists. It is ideal for use in colleges, universities and adult classes of all types. The volume is organized to promote a thorough understanding of Arabic grammar. It offers a stimulating analysis of the complexities of the language, and provides full and clear explanations. Features include: detailed treatment of the common grammatical structures and parts of speech extensive exemplification particular attention to areas of confusion and difficulty Arabic-English parallels highlighted throughout the book an extensive index and numbered paragraphs for ease-of-reference Elsaid Badawi was Professor of Arabic Language and Linguistics at the American University in Cairo. Michael G. Carter is Honorary Professor at Sydney University. Adrian Gully is an Independent Professional Interpreter and Translator. Maher Awad is Senior Lecturer of Arabic at Rice University.

Prior work has shown that there is a significant amount of turnover amongst the African poor as households exit and enter poverty. Some of this mobility can be attributed to regular movement back and forth in response to exogenous variability in climate, prices, health, etc. ('churning'). Other crossings of the poverty line reflect permanent shifts in long-term well-being associated with gains or losses of productive assets or permanent changes in asset productivity due, for example, to adoption of improved technologies or access to new, higher-value markets. Distinguishing true structural mobility from simple churning is important because it clarifies the factors that facilitate such important structural change. Conversely, it also helps identify the constraints that may leave other households caught in a trap of persistent, structural poverty. The papers in this book help to distinguish the types of poverty and to deepen understanding of the structural features and constraints that create poverty traps. Such an understanding allows communities, local governments and donors to take proactive, effective steps to combat persistent poverty in Africa. This book was previously published as a special issue of the Journal of Development Studies.

Prior work has shown that there is a significant amount of turnover amongst the African poor as households exit and enter poverty. Some of this mobility can be attributed to regular movement back and forth in response to exogenous variability in climate, prices, health, etc. ('churning'). Other crossings of the poverty line reflect permanent shifts in long-term well-being associated with gains or losses of productive assets or permanent changes in asset productivity due, for example, to adoption of improved technologies or access to new, higher-value markets. Distinguishing true structural mobility from simple churning is important because it clarifies the factors that facilitate such important structural change. Conversely, it also helps identify the constraints that may leave other households caught in a trap of persistent, structural poverty. The papers in this book help to distinguish the types of poverty and to deepen understanding of the structural features and constraints that create poverty traps. Such an understanding allows communities, local governments and donors to take proactive, effective steps to combat persistent poverty in Africa. This book was previously published as a special issue of the Journal of Development Studies.

Operations Research: A Practical Introduction is just that: a hands-on approach to the field of operations research (OR) and a useful guide for using OR techniques in scientific decision making, design, analysis and management. The text accomplishes two goals. First, it provides readers with an introduction to standard mathematical models and algorithms. Second, it is a thorough examination of practical issues relevant to the development and use of computational methods for problem solving. Highlights: All chapters contain up-to-date topics and summaries A succinct presentation to fit a one-term course Each chapter has references, readings, and list of key terms Includes illustrative and current applications New exercises are added throughout the text Software tools have been updated with the newest and most popular software Many students of various disciplines such as mathematics, economics, industrial engineering and computer science often take one course in operations research. This book is written to provide a succinct and efficient introduction to the subject for these students, while offering a sound and fundamental preparation for more advanced courses in linear and nonlinear optimization, and many stochastic models and analyses. It provides relevant analytical tools for this varied audience and will also serve professionals, corporate managers, and technical consultants.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-workshop proceedings of the Second International Conference on the Practice and Theory of Automated Timetabling, PATAT'97, held in Toronto, Canada, in August 1997.
The 17 revised full papers presented were carefully selected for presentation at the conference and then had to pass a second round of reviewing. The book is divided into topical sections on surveys, tabu search and simulated annealing, evolutionary computation (population-based methods), constraint-based methods, graph theory, and practical issues.

Vienna's 'respectable' antisemites offers a radical challenge to conventional accounts of one of the darkest periods in the city's history: the rise of organised, politically directed antisemitism between the late-nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries. Drawing on original research into the Christian Social movement, the book analyses how issues such as nationalism, mass poverty and social unrest enabled the gestation in 'respectable' society of antisemitism, an ideology that seemed to be dying in the 1860s, but which was given new strength from the 1880s. It delivers a riposte to portrayals of the lower clergy as a marginalised group that was driven to defend itself from liberal attacks by turning to anti-liberal, antisemitic action, as well as exposing the nurturing role played by senior clergy. As the book reveals, the Church in Vienna as a whole was determined to counter liberalism, to the point of welcoming any authoritarian regime that would do so. -- .

A mother, having suffered two cot deaths, was wrongly accused of murdering her babies. "What if I had been on the jury...?" Things heat up in the courtroom when a juror is invited by the judge to cross examine the expert witness, a professor who says the chances of cot deaths are only one in seventy-two million. "Thus, it has to be murder." But, there's more to this case than meets the eye... Readers must depict fact from fiction in this compelling venture into the inner workings of a courtroom. Inspired by the teachings of Nassim Taleb, it is also an entertaining layman's introduction to probability and the use and misuse of mathematical evidence in a court of law.

This book provides a comprehensive introduction to the mathematical foundations of economics, from basic set theory to fixed point theorems and constrained optimization. Rather than simply offer a collection of problem-solving techniques, the book emphasizes the unifying mathematical principles that underlie economics. Features include an extended presentation of separation theorems and their applications, an account of constraint qualification in constrained optimization, and an introduction to monotone comparative statics. These topics are developed by way of more than 800 exercises. The book is designed to be used as a graduate text, a resource for self-study, and a reference for the professional economist.

Information technology (IT) use has become essential to how individuals interact with the world. From ordering meals to taking classes or consulting a physician, so many aspects of daily life are bound up with IT that effective participation in the world demands IT use. The ubiquity of IT in work and personal lives has created a shift from IT as a tool to IT as a basis of identity formation and verification, making it fundamental to how we see ourselves and act in the world. The essential role of IT use in all aspects of daily life and social interactions has drawn information systems (IS) researchers' focus to identity issues. In this stream, IS scholars have examined IT implementation and usage as a determinant of identity, a medium for communicating and protecting identities, and how identities influence IT use. In recent years, IT use as identity has garnered interest. The IS literature on identity is rich and varied. There is substantial research interest in understanding the complex and constantly changing relationship between people and IT. To facilitate new theorizing, this monograph provides a review of diverse perspectives on IT use and identity. This work reviews 90 conceptual and empirical IS studies and identifies major themes, examines their theoretical foundations, and suggests an agenda for future research on IT use and identity.

As the Modernist dream of a world purged of archaic decor and ornamentation recedes we should remember that the diet of a raw, umediated universe has always unsettled Homo Sapiens. This books looks at some of these mediations: How do we transform the stuff of the world and impart it with familiarity? How do pets come to be invested with pleasing form? How did provocative woman? And why is oil paint the ultimate 'plastic' material, capable of mimicking everything under the sun -- and a few other things besides? Taking its inspiration from Gaston Bachelard's idea of a material imagination, this book looks beyond the labour that ensures physical survival to the elaboration of the world into forms that accommodate our collective desires.

Michael Carter is an honorary associate of the Art History and Theory Department at the University of Sydney Australia. His previous book is "Framing Art: Introducing Theory and the Visual Image. "

What circumstances or behaviors turn poverty into a cycle that perpetuates across generations? The answer to this question carries especially important implications for the design and evaluation of policies and projects intended to reduce poverty. Yet a major challenge analysts and policymakers face in understanding poverty traps is the sheer number of mechanisms--not just financial, but also environmental, physical, and psychological--that may contribute to the persistence of poverty all over the world. The research in this volume explores the hypothesis that poverty is self-reinforcing because the equilibrium behaviors of the poor perpetuate low standards of living. Contributions explore the dynamic, complex processes by which households accumulate assets and increase their productivity and earnings potential, as well as the conditions under which some individuals, groups, and economies struggle to escape poverty. Investigating the full range of phenomena that combine to generate poverty traps--gleaned from behavioral, health, and resource economics as well as the sociology, psychology, and environmental literatures--chapters in this volume also present new evidence that highlights both the insights and the limits of a poverty trap lens. The framework introduced in this volume provides a robust platform for studying well-being dynamics in developing economies.

You've grown your business, reached a plateau and are now struggling to grow. Each time you try something new or add a new customer, something else goes awry - leaving you spinning the same plates, under the glass ceiling that's blocking your progress. You need a plateau buster to put yourself back on the growth trajectory! This book is the inspiration you're looking for. In three major sections it shows you how to: STOP doing many of the things that were once right but are no longer appropriate, freeing up resources, allowing you to; CHANGE what you are doing for better results today and then to; GROW the business for a future that will excite you. As you turn the pages, you will find real life examples together with easily implemented ideas and suggestions to provide an immediate impact on your thinking and your business.