Magic, the art of a true gentleman, its secrets lost in the mists of time. An evil man, cast from this world to the world of the dead for using the magic of life to kill another human. A true Earth Wand, born on All Hallows' Eve, and cut during the chimes of midnight. Mr Slive finally has one of the great, lost Earth Wands, and has returned to destroy those who stood against him, and take all of the world's power for himself. Only a circle of magic has any chance of stopping him, and only two teenagers and a cat now stand between him and domination of mankind. For Holly, Alec and Charlie, it is a race, between worlds to the secret caves of a lost civilisation, and through time to ancient, haunted forests and a strange land lost between sea and cliffs. From dragons, ghosts and deadly shadow creatures, to magic tunnels that can trap a person within them forever. It can only end in a confrontation between one of the most powerful magicians who ever lived, and two children and a cat who know they must not fail!

For eleven year old Holly, the last six weeks have been the worst of her young life. Her mother lies in a coma following a car accident, the doctors unable to say when, if ever, she might regain consciousness. With Christmas just one week away, Holly's one wish is to have her mother home with her on Christmas Day - a wish she knows is unlikely to be fulfilled. Then, on the eve of her twelfth birthday, her dad buys her a magician's set from a strange old man he bumps into by accident in town. The set proves to be very special; a spell book and a real wand, and suddenly Holly finds that magic exists everywhere - even in the saddest moments of her life. Under the guidance of Charlie, Holly learns to do the sort of magic we can only dream about, with hilarious and sometimes dangerous results! As Holly's life begins to brighten, she still holds onto her one true wish - to have her mother home again, and muses over the opening words in the spell book: This book is for the use of Holly Jackson Congratulations on being chosen All is yours until your wishes are fulfilled With Christmas fast approaching and an evil character trying to take the wand for himself, can Holly find it in herself to rise to the challenges that face her and get back the one thing she wants most of all?

Detective Nick McCallister investigates a rash of suicides-three on the south end and three on the west end, his own son Justin among them. Something evil is happening in the city. McCallister comes face to face with that evil when Satan's personal assistant Nathan appears in his living room late one night and asks if he's ready for the truth. While an escape from reality is actually what he wants, McCallister knows Nathan must be stopped-but he has no idea how to proceed.

McCallister is already being sucked downward by the emotional undercurrent from a failing marriage, Justin's suicide, and the investigation of his own police force over the grim murder of a local African American civil rights activist.

He's drawn into the ugliest corners of a truth he never could have imagined, a world where the myths of civilization are exposed, the Inquisition analyzed, and the Holy Bible rewritten. McCallister is challenged to determine what is truly good and what is truly evil after he realizes his son and his wife have made their own informed and untimely decisions.

This book contains all refereed papers that were accepted to the first edition of the Asia-Pacific conference on " Complex Systems Design & Management " (CSD&M Asia 2014) that took place in Singapore from December 10 to December 12, 2014 (Website: http://www.2014.csdm-asia.net/). These proceedings cover the most recent trends in the emerging field of Complex Systems, both from an academic and a professional perspective. A special focus is put on Designing Smart cities. The CSD&M Asia 2014 conference is organized under the guidance of the Center of Excellence on Systems Architecture, Management, Economy and Strategy, CESAMES, non-profit organization, address: CESAMES, 8 rue de Hanovre, 75002 Paris, France ( Website : http://www.cesames.net/en).

Using a unique analytical framework based on host-stranger relations, this book explores the response of cities to the arrival and settlement of labour immigrants. Comparing the local policies of four cities - Paris, Amsterdam, Rome and Tel Aviv - Michael Alexander charts the development of migrant policies over time and situates them within the broader social context. Grounded in multi-city, multi-domain empirical findings, the work provides a fuller understanding of the interaction between cities and their migrant populations. Filling a gap in existing literature on migrant policy between national-level theorizing and local-level study, the book will provide an important basis for future research in the area.

Michele Alexandre defines sexploitation as the perpetuation of myths and stereotypical notions regarding men and women in order to further an agenda of oppression and subordination in certain spheres of society. The most popular means through which this sexploitation is achieved is through a method Alexandre coins as sexual profiling. Alexandre argues that sexual profiling ultimately stifles the growth of our society by creating inefficient as well as oppressive systems, and that its eradication can help increase the productivity as well as the morale of society. Alexandre opens the book by exploring in detail the various ways in which normative views of gender are constructed and perpetuated through media and societal norms. She then focuses on the ways in which recent legal opinions and developments contribute to perpetuate these restrictive and oppressive norms. Finally, Alexandre outlines a plan to help eliminate the presence of these destructive norms and attitudes from different sectors of society.Sexploitation from the Newsroom to the Courtroom examines how sexual profiling represses, oppresses, and hinders various aspects of life for both genders, and explores the ways in which the law and the community can help eradicate the practice of sexual profiling.

Seldom does a book have the impact of Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow. Since it was first published in 2010, it has been cited in judicial decisions and has been adopted in campus-wide and community-wide reads; it has been the winner of numerous prizes, including the NAACP Image Award; and it has spent nearly 250 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. Most important of all, it has spawned a whole generation of criminal justice reform activists motivated by Michelle Alexander's unforgettable argument that 'we have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it.'

Transnational Migration to Israel in Global Comparative Context explores both how and why the recent influx of approximately 200,000 non-Jewish migrants from dozens of countries across the globe has led state officials to declare in definitive terms that Israel "is not an immigration country" despite its unwavering commitment to welcoming unlimited numbers of "homeward-bound" Jewish immigrants. As this innovative volume illustrates, the arrival of these economically motivated migrants, about half of whom are defined by the state as "legal" and half as "illegal," has dramatically transformed the local labor economy of Israel/Palestine. Moreover, the presence of labor migrants, along with smaller groups of asylum seekers and victims of trafficking in women, has also generated a wide array of complicated legal, policy-related, cultural, and ideological questions and dilemmas for the Israeli state, local municipalities, and civil society.Taking both the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and Israel's newfound embeddedness in globalizing labor markets as backdrop, this multidisciplinary collection investigates the causes as well as the consequences of these new waves of transnational migration to Israel both in comparison to other world regions and in terms of three interrelated levels of analysis: first, the micro-level of migrants' everyday experience; second, the meso-level of state and institutional policies and practices; and finally, the macro-level of global political economic trends and processes. Bringing together a dynamic array of pioneering senior researchers along with more junior scholars, the volume is distinctive not only in its incisive comparisons between Israel and other "destination countries," but also in its multifaceted analysis of how the Israeli migration regime has shaped, constrained, and on occasion been challenged by the arrival of these largely unanticipated migrants. Among the themes analyzed are the relationship between transnational migration processes and the simmering Israeli

Using a unique analytical framework based on host-stranger relations, this book explores the response of cities to the arrival and settlement of labour immigrants. Comparing the local policies of four cities - Paris, Amsterdam, Rome and Tel Aviv - Michael Alexander charts the development of migrant policies over time and situates them within the broader social context. Grounded in multi-city, multi-domain empirical findings, the work provides a fuller understanding of the interaction between cities and their migrant populations. Filling a gap in existing literature on migrant policy between national-level theorizing and local-level study, the book will provide an important basis for future research in the area.

This book gathers all papers presented at the third edition of the international conference "Complex Systems Design & Management Asia" (CSD&M Asia 2018), which was held at the National University of Singapore (NUS) on December 6-7, 2018. Mastering complex systems requires an integrated understanding of industrial practices as well as sophisticated theoretical techniques and tools. This vision was the inspiration for creating an annual forum in the Asia-Pacific region dedicated to bringing together academic researchers & industrial actors working on architecture, modeling & engineering of complex technical & organizational systems. These proceedings cover the latest trends in the emerging field of complex systems, both from an academic and a professional perspective. Special emphasis is placed on "Smart Transportation." The CSD&M Asia 2018 conference is organized under the guidance of CESAM Community which is managed by the non-profit organization CESAMES. The goal of CESAM Community is to structure the sharing of good practices in enterprise and systems architecture, and to certify the level of knowledge and proficiency in this field by means of CESAM certification.

This book contains all refereed papers that were accepted to the first edition of the Asia-Pacific conference on « Complex Systems Design & Management » (CSD&M Asia 2014) that took place in Singapore from December 10 to December 12, 2014 (Website: http://www.2014.csdm-asia.net/). These proceedings cover the most recent trends in the emerging field of Complex Systems, both from an academic and a professional perspective. A special focus is put on Designing Smart cities. The CSD&M Asia 2014 conference is organized under the guidance of the Center of Excellence on Systems Architecture, Management, Economy and Strategy, CESAMES, non-profit organization, address: CESAMES, 8 rue de Hanovre, 75002 Paris, France ( Website : http://www.cesames.net/en).

Seldom does a book have the impact of Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow. Since it was first published in 2010, it has been cited in judicial decisions and has been adopted in campus-wide and community-wide reads; it has been the winner of numerous prizes, including the NAACP Image Award; and it has spent nearly 250 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. Most important of all, it has spawned a whole generation of criminal justice reform activists motivated by Michelle Alexander's unforgettable argument that 'we have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it.'

This book contains all refereed papers that were accepted to the second edition of the Asia-Pacific conference on " Complex Systems Design & Management Asia" (CSD&M Asia 2016) that took place in Singapore from February 24 to February 26, 2016 (Website: http://www.2016.csdm-asia.net/). These proceedings cover the most recent trends in the emerging field of Complex Systems, both from an academic and a professional perspective. A special focus is put on Smart Nations: Designing and Sustaining. The CSD&M Asia 2016 conference is organized under the guidance of the Singapore division of the Center of Excellence on Systems Architecture, Management, Economy and Strategy (CESAMES) - Legal address: C.E.S.A.M.E.S. Singapore - 16 Raffles Quay - #38-03 Hong Leong Building - Singapore 048581 (website : http://www.cesames.net/en - email: [email protected]).

This book constitutes thoroughly refereed post-conference proceedings of the workshops of the 19th International Conference on Parallel Computing, Euro-Par 2013, held in Aachen, Germany in August 2013. The 99 papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 145 submissions. The papers include seven workshops that have been co-located with Euro-Par in the previous years: - Big Data Cloud (Second Workshop on Big Data Management in Clouds) - Hetero Par (11th Workshop on Algorithms, Models and Tools for Parallel Computing on Heterogeneous Platforms) - HiBB (Fourth Workshop on High Performance Bioinformatics and Biomedicine) - OMHI (Second Workshop on On-chip Memory Hierarchies and Interconnects) - PROPER (Sixth Workshop on Productivity and Performance) - Resilience (Sixth Workshop on Resiliency in High Performance Computing with Clusters, Clouds, and Grids) - UCHPC (Sixth Workshop on Un Conventional High Performance Computing) as well as six newcomers: - DIHC (First Workshop on Dependability and Interoperability in Heterogeneous Clouds) - Fed ICI (First Workshop on Federative and Interoperable Cloud Infrastructures) - LSDVE (First Workshop on Large Scale Distributed Virtual Environments on Clouds and P2P) - MHPC (Workshop on Middleware for HPC and Big Data Systems) -PADABS ( First Workshop on Parallel and Distributed Agent Based Simulations) - ROME (First Workshop on Runtime and Operating Systems for the Many core Era) All these workshops focus on promotion and advancement of all aspects of parallel and distributed computing.

This book constitutes thoroughly refereed post-conference proceedings of the workshops of the 18th International Conference on Parallel Computing, Euro-Par 2012, held in Rhodes Islands, Greece, in August 2012. The papers of these 10 workshops BDMC, CGWS, HeteroPar, HiBB, OMHI, Paraphrase, PROPER, UCHPC, VHPC focus on promotion and advancement of all aspects of parallel and distributed computing.

From the people who brought you the bestselling Confessions of a GP. After sixteen years of high-pressure nursing, Michael Alexander has traded in his hospital uniform for the fresh air, comfort and routine of an International private school in the French Alps. Bliss! But it's not long before he discovers that school nursing is not all permission slips, sniffles and gift baskets. Disastrous school trips; after hours dorm sleepovers; awkward sex education classes; culture clashes; swine flu panic; and kids with six-figure bank balances and a taste for bribery. This is nursing as you've never seen it before. What goes on behind the gates of one of the world's most elite boarding schools? What happens when kids from all over the world - Russia, Africa, America, Saudi Arabia - live, learn and grow under one roof? What happens when it's left to school staff to teach children the facts of life, and lust? Following on from the hugely successful Confessions of a Male Nurse, Michael Alexander is back with more touching, shocking and often laugh-out-loud funny tales of nursing. In Confessions of a School Nurse, Alexander tells all on boarding school life - as a nurse, parent, and Average Joe, he offers a unique perspective on this strange world.

This book constitutes thoroughly refereed post-conference proceedings of the workshops of the 17th International Conference on Parallel Computing, Euro-Par 2011, held in Bordeaux, France, in August 2011. The papers of these 12 workshops CCPI, CGWS, HeteroPar, HiBB, HPCVirt, HPPC, HPSS HPCF, PROPER, CCPI, and VHPC focus on promotion and advancement of all aspects of parallel and distributed computing.

This book constitutes thoroughly refereed post-conference proceedings of the workshops of the 17th International Conference on Parallel Computing, Euro-Par 2011, held in Bordeaux, France, in August 2011. The papers of these 12 workshops CCPI, CGWS, HeteroPar, HiBB, HPCVirt, HPPC, HPSS HPCF, PROPER, CCPI, and VHPC focus on promotion and advancement of all aspects of parallel and distributed computing.

This book constitutes thoroughly refereed post-conference proceedings of the workshops of the 16th International Conference on Parallel Computing, Euro-Par 2010, held in Ischia, Italy, in August/September 2010. The papers of these 9 workshops HeteroPar, HPCC, HiBB, CoreGrid, UCHPC, HPCF, PROPER, CCPI, and VHPC focus on promotion and advancement of all aspects of parallel and distributed computing.

Euro-Par is an annual series of international conferences dedicated to the p- motion and advancement of all aspects of parallel and distributed computing. th Euro-Par 2009 was the 15 edition in this conference series. Througout the years, the Euro-Par conferences have always attracted high-quality submissions and have become one of the established conferences in the area of parallel and distributed processing. Built upon the success of the annual conferences and in order to accommodate the needs of special interest groups (among the conf- ence participants), starting from 2006, a series of workshopsin conjunction with the Euro-Par main conference have been organized. This was the ?fth year in which workshops were organized within the Euro-Par conference format. The workshops focus on advanced specialized topics in parallel and d- tributed computing. These topics re?ect new scienti?c and technological dev- opments. While the community for such new and speci?c developments is still small and the topics have yet to become mature, the Euro-Par conference o?ers a platform in the form of a workshop to exchange ideas and discuss cooperation opportunities. The workshops in the past four years have been very successful. The number ofworkshopproposalsandthenumberof?nallyacceptedworkshopshavegra- ally increasedsince 2006.In 2008, nine workshopswereorganizedin conjunction with the main Euro-Par conference. In 2009, there were again nine workshop

Parallelanddistributedprocessing, althoughwithinthefocusofcomputerscience researchforalongtime, isgainingmoreandmoreimportanceinawidespectrum of applications. These proceedings aim to demonstrate the use of parallel and distributed processing concepts in di?erent application ?elds, and attempt to spark interest in novel research directions to advance the embracing model of high-performance computing research in general. The objective of these workshops is to speci?cally address researchers c- ing from university, industry and governmental research organizations and application-oriented companies, in order to close the gap between purely s- enti?c research and the applicability of the research ideas to real-life problems. Euro-Par is an annual series of international conferences dedicated to the promotionandadvancementofallaspectsofparallelanddistributedcomputing. The 2007 event was the 13th issue of the conference. Euro-Par has for a long time been eager to attract colocated events sharing the same goal of promoting the development of parallel and distributed computing, both as an industrial technique and an academic discipline, extending the frontier of both the state of the art and the state of the practice. Since 2006, Euro-Par o?ers researchersthe chance to colocate advanced technical workshops back-to-back with the main conference. This is for a mutual bene?t: the workshops can take advantage of all technical and social facilities which are set up for the conference, so that the organizational tasks are kept to a minimal level; the conference can rely on workshopstoexperimentwithspeci?careasofresearchwhicharenotyetmature enough, or too speci?c, to lead to an o?cial, full-?edged topic at the conferenc

With a new afterword from the authors, the critically praised indictment of widely embraced “alternatives to incarceration” “But what does it mean—really—to celebrate reforms that convert your home into your prison?” —Michelle Alexander, from the foreword Electronic monitoring. Locked-down drug treatment centers. House arrest. Mandated psychiatric treatment. Data driven surveillance. Extended probation. These are some of the key alternatives held up as cost effective substitutes for jails and prisons. But in a searing, “cogent critique” (Library Journal), Maya Schenwar and Victoria Law reveal that many of these so-called reforms actually weave in new strands of punishment and control, bringing new populations who would not otherwise have been subject to imprisonment under physical control by the state. Whether readers are seasoned abolitionists or are newly interested in sensible alternatives to retrograde policing and criminal justice policies and approaches, this highly praised book offers “a wealth of critical insights” that will help readers “tread carefully through the dizzying terrain of a world turned upside down” and “make sense of what should take the place of mass incarceration” (The Brooklyn Rail). With a foreword by Michelle Alexander, Prison by Any Other Name exposes how a kinder narrative of reform is effectively obscuring an agenda of social control, challenging us to question the ways we replicate the status quo when pursuing change, and offering a bolder vision for truly alternative justice practices.