At the tail end of the 1960s, the thirteen-year-old Michelino spends his summers at his grandparents' modest estate in Nasca, near Lake Maggiore, losing himself in the tales of horror, adventure, and mystery shelved in his grandfather's library. The greatest mystery he's ever encountered, however, doesn't come from a book - it's the groundskeeper, Felice, a sometimes frightening, sometimes gentle, always colourful man of uncertain age who speaks an enchanting dialect and whose memory gets worse with each passing day. When Michelino volunteers to help the old man by providing him with clever mnemonic devices to keep his memory alive, the boy soon finds himself obsessed with piecing together the eerie hodgepodge of Felice's biography . . . a quest that leads to the uncovering of skeletons in Nazi uniforms in the attic, to Felice's admission that he can hear the voices of the dead, and to a new perspective on Felice's endless war against the insatiable local slugs, who are by no means merely a horticultural threat. And yet nothing could be more fascinating to Michelino than Felice's own secret origins. Where did he come from? Is he the victim or the villain of his story? Is he a noble hero, a holy fool, or perhaps the very thing that Michelino most wants and fears: a real-life monster.

Italy's great chronicler of the macabre and hilarious terrors of growing up geeky arrives in English at last. Long before the latest vogue for autofiction, Michele Mari, one of Italy's most beloved authors, cast his mind back to the days of his own childhood, and found it crawling with monsters. Raised on comic books and science fiction, the young Mari constructed an alternate universe for himself untouched by uncomprehending grownups or sadistic peers. Compared to the horrors of real life, Long John Silver and Cthulhu made for positively cuddly company; but little boys raised by beasts may well grow up beastly-or never grow up at all. Waking or sleeping, the obsessions of Mari's youth seem to color his every adult thought. You, Bleeding Childhood stands as his first attempt to catalog this cabinet of wonders. Cult classics since their first publication, these loosely connected stories stand as the ideal introduction to an encyclopedic fantasist on a par with Kafka, Poe, and Borges.

This British crime drama set in London's East End is the cinematic debut of TV director Alex Pillai. Ashley Madekwe stars as Tia, a middle class girl from the Home Counties who becomes caught up in a world of crime when she goes to stay in the London council flat of her cousin, Davina (Anna Nightingale). Much to her cousin's displeasure, Tia becomes increasingly involved with one of her friends, Tyson (Ashley Chin). As she becomes closer to Tyson, Tia discovers that he has his own complex and very personal reasons for turning to a life of crime.

This 4-th edition of the leading reference volume on distance metrics is characterized by updated and rewritten sections on some items suggested by experts and readers, as well a general streamlining of content and the addition of essential new topics. Though the structure remains unchanged, the new edition also explores recent advances in the use of distances and metrics for e.g. generalized distances, probability theory, graph theory, coding theory, data analysis. New topics in the purely mathematical sections include e.g. the Vitanyi multiset-metric, algebraic point-conic distance, triangular ratio metric, Rossi-Hamming metric, Taneja distance, spectral semimetric between graphs, channel metrization, and Maryland bridge distance. The multidisciplinary sections have also been supplemented with new topics, including: dynamic time wrapping distance, memory distance, allometry, atmospheric depth, elliptic orbit distance, VLBI distance measurements, the astronomical system of units, and walkability distance. Leaving aside the practical questions that arise during the selection of a 'good' distance function, this work focuses on providing the research community with an invaluable comprehensive listing of the main available distances. As well as providing standalone introductions and definitions, the encyclopedia facilitates swift cross-referencing with easily navigable bold-faced textual links to core entries. In addition to distances themselves, the authors have collated numerous fascinating curiosities in their Who's Who of metrics, including distance-related notions and paradigms that enable applied mathematicians in other sectors to deploy research tools that non-specialists justly view as arcane. In expanding access to these techniques, and in many cases enriching the context of distances themselves, this peerless volume is certain to stimulate fresh research.

This 4-th edition of the leading reference volume on distance metrics is characterized by updated and rewritten sections on some items suggested by experts and readers, as well a general streamlining of content and the addition of essential new topics. Though the structure remains unchanged, the new edition also explores recent advances in the use of distances and metrics for e.g. generalized distances, probability theory, graph theory, coding theory, data analysis. New topics in the purely mathematical sections include e.g. the Vitanyi multiset-metric, algebraic point-conic distance, triangular ratio metric, Rossi-Hamming metric, Taneja distance, spectral semimetric between graphs, channel metrization, and Maryland bridge distance. The multidisciplinary sections have also been supplemented with new topics, including: dynamic time wrapping distance, memory distance, allometry, atmospheric depth, elliptic orbit distance, VLBI distance measurements, the astronomical system of units, and walkability distance. Leaving aside the practical questions that arise during the selection of a 'good' distance function, this work focuses on providing the research community with an invaluable comprehensive listing of the main available distances. As well as providing standalone introductions and definitions, the encyclopedia facilitates swift cross-referencing with easily navigable bold-faced textual links to core entries. In addition to distances themselves, the authors have collated numerous fascinating curiosities in their Who's Who of metrics, including distance-related notions and paradigms that enable applied mathematicians in other sectors to deploy research tools that non-specialists justly view as arcane. In expanding access to these techniques, and in many cases enriching the context of distances themselves, this peerless volume is certain to stimulate fresh research.

The central theme of the present book is zigzags and central-circuits of three- or four-regular plane graphs, which allow a double covering or covering of the edgeset to be obtained. The book presents zigzag and central circuit structures of geometric fullerenes and several other classes of graph of interest in the fields of chemistry and mathematics. It also discusses the symmetries, parameterization and the Goldberg-Coxeter construction for those graphs. It is the first book on this subject, presenting full structure theory of such graphs. While many previous publications only addressed particular questions about selected graphs, this book is based on numerous computations and presents extensive data (tables and figures), as well as algorithmic and computational information. It will be of interest to researchers and students of discrete geometry, mathematical chemistry and combinatorics, as well as to lay mathematicians.

This remarkable new guide is the first hybrid text of its kind that adopts the traditional method of medical education and fuses it with an evidence-based approach. It covers, in great detail, all of the common conditions seen in primary and secondary paediatrics. Skilfully designed for easy revision and reference, each chapter is devoted to a symptom, commencing with the objectives and essential relevant background material followed by history and examination. In the management section specific questions are posed and evidence based responses are offered, ensuring both patients and their parents are satisfied. Uniquely, in the majority of cases, evidence from randomized controlled trials is given. To facilitate comprehension, revision and examination preparation, chapter includes a series of multiple choice questions and meticulous answers. It also includes an invaluable clinical slide and X-ray collection outlining key radiological features of many of the clinical conditions described to further aid understanding, recognition and diagnosis. Diagnosing and Treating Common Problems in Paediatrics is a highly comprehensive primer of how to learn and evaluate knowledge and then translate that knowledge into practice. It provides paediatric consultants and students with the confidence, professionalism and unique communication skill required to work effectively with both children and parents, ensuring successful treatment and outcomes.

These powerful, contemporary monologues share the courage, conflicts and joys of characters facing difficult decisions. Developed through consultation with young people, they offer a range of authentic, memorable voices to stimulate discussion and participatory drama work.

Cuts and metrics are well-known objects that arise - independently, but with many deep and fascinating connections - in diverse fields: in graph theory, combinatorial optimization, geometry of numbers, combinatorial matrix theory, statistical physics, VLSI design etc. This book offers a comprehensive summary together with a global view, establishing both old and new links. Its treatment ranges from classical theorems of Menger and Schoenberg to recent developments such as approximation results for multicommodity flow and max-cut problems, metric aspects of Delaunay polytopes, isometric graph embeddings, and matrix completion problems. The discussion leads to many interesting subjects that cannot be found elsewhere, providing a unique and invaluable source for researchers and graduate students.

Sounds Irish, Acts Global critically examines both the history of Ireland's popular music industry as well as the current music scene in the country. By placing recent industry developments in the context of that history, the authors present a new way of examining any nation state's music industry - to understand the industry, the local scene must be examined. This approach highlights the multiple and changing ways by which the local scene prepares artists for both domestic and international success. In Ireland's case the scene, with its supportive network of friends, families and fans, has developed the artists who then sign with the major transnational music firms. This book is of interest to business students as well as popular music scholars in addition to non-academic readers.

An in-depth look at some of the best and most influential French films of all time, "The Cinema of France" contains 24 essays, each on an individual film. The book features works from the silent period and poetic realism, through the stylistic developments of the New Wave, and up to more contemporary challenging films, from directors such as Abel Gance, Jean Renoir, Marcel Carn?, Fran?ois Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Alain Resnais, Agn's Varda and Luc Besson. Set in chronological order, "The Cinema of France" provides an illuminating history of this essential national cinema and includes in-depth studies of films such as "Un Chien Andalou" (1929), "Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot" (1953), "Le Samoura?" (1967), "Shoah" (1985), "Jean de Florette" (1986), "Les Visiteurs" (1993) and "La Haine" (1995).

This book comes out of need and urgency (expressed especially in areas of Information Retrieval with respect to Image, Audio, Internet and Biology) to have a working tool to compare data.
The book will provide powerful resource for all researchers using Mathematics as well as for mathematicians themselves. In the time when over-specialization and terminology fences isolate researchers, this Dictionary try to be "centripedal" and "oikoumeni," providing some access and altitude of vision but without taking the route of scientific vulgarisation. This attempted balance is the main philosophy of this Dictionary which defined its structure and style.
Key features:
- Unicity: it is the first book treating the basic notion of Distance in whole generality.
- Interdisciplinarity: this Dictionary is larger in scope than majority of thematic dictionaries.
- Encyclopedicity: while an Encyclopedia of Distances seems now too difficult to produce, this book (by its scope, short introductions and organization) provides the main material for it and for future tutorials on some parts of this material.
- Applicability: the distances, as well as distance-related notions and paradigms, are provided in ready-to-use fashion.
- Worthiness: the need and urgency for such dictionary was great in several huge areas, esp. Information Retrieval, Image Analysis, Speech Recognition and Biology.
- Accessibility: the definitions are easy to locate by subject or, in Index, by alphabetic order; the introductions and definitions are reader-friendly and maximally independent one from another; still the text is structured, in the 3D HTML style, by hyperlink-like boldfaced references to similar definitions.
* Covers a large range of subjects in pure and applied mathematics
* Designed to be easily applied--the distances and distance-related notions and paradigms are ready to use
* Helps users quickly locate definitions by subject or in alphabetical order; stand-alone entries include references to other entries and sources for further investigation

An in-depth look at some of the best and most influential French films of all time, "The Cinema of France" contains 24 essays, each on an individual film. The book features works from the silent period and poetic realism, through the stylistic developments of the New Wave, and up to more contemporary challenging films, from directors such as Abel Gance, Jean Renoir, Marcel Carn?, Fran?ois Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Alain Resnais, Agn's Varda and Luc Besson. Set in chronological order, "The Cinema of France" provides an illuminating history of this essential national cinema and includes in-depth studies of films such as "Un Chien Andalou" (1929), "Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot" (1953), "Le Samoura?" (1967), "Shoah" (1985), "Jean de Florette" (1986), "Les Visiteurs" (1993) and "La Haine" (1995).