Since I was a child, I've been communicating with the angelic realm. They've revealed their presence in many ways, warning me through dreams of events to come and guiding my footsteps along the way. As I grew older, I learned that I could "tune in" to their frequency, allowing me to receive their messages more clearly. Their presence led me on a journey to self-discovery, allowing me to recognize and break repetitive and harmful patterns, to trust in myself again, and to discover my soul's purpose as a healer. It is a story of inner strength and faith, and as I continue on my journey, I know that I am not alone, and that the angels walk with me.

The concept of virtual worlds is strongly related to the current innovations of new media communication. As such, it is increasingly imperative to understand the criteria for creating virtual worlds as well as the evolution in system architecture, information visualization and human interaction. Meta-plasticity in Virtual Worlds: Aesthetics and Semantics Concepts provides in-depth coverage of the state-of-the-art among the best international research experiences of virtual world concept creations from a wide range of media culture fields, at the edge of artistic and scientific inquiry and emerging technologies. Written for professionals, researchers, artists and designers, this text is a perfect companion for those who want to improve their understanding of the strategic role of virtual worlds within the development of digital communication.

This book explores the ontologies, epistemologies, methodologies, and methods that inform tourism qualitative research conducted either by Asian scholars or non-Asian scholars focusing on Asia. In addition to providing a platform for researchers to publish their qualitative journeys, it aims to encourage further Asian qualitative tourism research production. The book not only includes chapters from Asian scholars but also non-Asian tourism researchers with a focus on Asia, as their chapters are crucial to represent the multiplicity of realities constituting 'Asia'. It is of interest to the whole tourism academic community as it provides novel methodological insights from a non-Western perspective, which at the moment are often silenced by dominant (Western) voices.

This book discusses the history of environmental science and climate change, and the initiation and development of different parameters determining climate changes. The account of the history of such changes and turmoil in India and abroad starts in the prehistoric period, long before the emergence of "Rigveda", the first human written work. The book describes the writings of Aristotle and Theophrastus on climatic disasters and their impact on the vegetation and society in Greek and Roman history, and addresses different studies related to climate change during the prehistoric period and their chronological development. The first book of its kind, it enhances our understanding the origin of research on climate change and climate related problems, and as such is a valuable resource for postgraduate students of agriculture and environment sciences, research scholars, scientists, environmentalists and policy planners.

Manuela Mura's thesis is devoted to ab initio studies of self-assembled organic molecules on a gold surface. This area of research is particularly vibrant because of the various applications such studies have in nanoscience and surface chemistry and physics. In this thesis Manuela Mura uses theory to suggest atomistic models for the observed assembled and she proposes an assembly mechanism. The methods and results developed as part of this work will be of wide interest to physicists and chemists working on the assemblies of organic molecules on crystal surfaces.

Advanced Laser Diode Reliability focuses on causes and effects of degradations of state-of-the-art semiconductor laser diodes. It aims to provide a tool for linking practical measurements to physical diagnostics. To this purpose, it reviews the current technologies, addressing their peculiar details that can promote specific failure mechanisms. Two sections will support this kernel: a) Failure Analysis techniques, procedures and examples; b) Device-oriented laser modelling and parameter extraction.

Technological advancements have influenced many fields of study, and the visual arts are no exception. With the development of new creative software and computer programs, artists and designers are free to create in a digital context, equipped with precision and efficiency. Analyzing Art, Culture, and Design in the Digital Age brings together a collection of chapters on the digital tools and processes impacting the fields of art and design, as well as related cultural experiences in the digital sphere. Including the latest scholarly research on the application of technology to the study, implementation, and culture of creative practice, this publication is an essential reference source for researchers, academicians, and professionals interested in the influence of technology on art, design, and culture. This publication features timely, research-based chapters discussing the connections between art and technology including, but not limited to, virtual art and design, the metaverse, 3D creative design environments, cultural communication, and creative social processes.

Computational Systems Biology: Inference and Modelling provides an introduction to, and overview of, network analysis inference approaches which form the backbone of the model of the complex behavior of biological systems. This book addresses the challenge to integrate highly diverse quantitative approaches into a unified framework by highlighting the relationships existing among network analysis, inference, and modeling. The chapters are light in jargon and technical detail so as to make them accessible to the non-specialist reader. The book is addressed at the heterogeneous public of modelers, biologists, and computer scientists.

Long recognized as a master teacher at writing programs like VONA, the Loft, and the Stonecoast MFA, with A Stranger's Journey, David Mura has written a book on creative writing that addresses our increasingly diverse American literature. Mura argues for a more inclusive and expansive definition of craft, particularly in relationship to race, even as he elucidates timeless rules of narrative construction in fiction and memoir. His essays offer technique-focused readings of writers such as Junot Diaz, ZZ Packer, Maxine Hong Kingston, Mary Karr, and Sherman Alexie, while making compelling connections to Mura's own life and work as a Japanese American writer. In A Stranger's Journey, Mura poses two central questions. The first involves identity: How is writing an exploration of who one is and one's place in the world? Mura examines how the myriad identities in our changing contemporary canon have led to new challenges regarding both craft and pedagogy. Here, like Toni Morrison's Playing in the Dark or Jeff Chang's Who We Be, A Stranger's Journey breaks new ground in our understanding of the relationship between the issues of race, literature, and culture. The book's second central question involves structure: How does one tell a story? Mura provides clear, insightful narrative tools that any writer may use, taking in techniques from fiction, screenplays, playwriting, and myth. Through this process, Mura candidly explores the newly evolved aesthetic principles of memoir and how questions of identity occupy a central place in contemporary memoir.

Bruno de Finetti (1906-1985) is the founder of the subjective interpretation of probability, together with the British philosopher Frank Plumpton Ramsey. His related notion of "exchangeability" revolutionized the statistical methodology. This book (based on a course held in 1979) explains in a language accessible also to non-mathematicians the fundamental tenets and implications of subjectivism, according to which the probability of any well specified fact F refers to the degree of belief actually held by someone, on the ground of her whole knowledge, on the truth of the assertion that F obtains.

In "Angels for the Burning," David Mura examines the experience of contemporary Asian-Americans and the various aspects of familial history between first-, second-, and third-generation Japanese-Americans. Mura believes one of poetry's tasks is to explore the challenges to our identities as we encounter various "others" and other visions of ourselves and our world. Mura's new collection of poems attempts to accomplish this task.

David Mura is a poet, nonfiction writer, critic, playwright and performance artist. His numerous awards include a Lila Wallace Readers Digest Writer's Award and two NEA fellow-ships. He has been featured in a number of PBS shows on literature, art and identity. He lives in Minneapolis, MN.

The Symbolic Scenarios of Islamism initiates a dialogue between the discourse of three of the most discussed figures in the history of the Sunni Islamic movement-Hasan al-Banna, Sayyid Qutb, and Osama bin Laden-and contemporary debates across religion and political theory, providing a crucial foundation upon which to situate current developments in world politics. Redressing the inefficiency of the terms in which the debate on Islam and Islamism is generally conducted, the book examines the role played by tradition, modernity, and transmodernity as major "symbolic scenarios" of Islamist discourses, highlighting the internal complexity and dynamism of Islamism. By uncovering forms of knowledge that have hitherto gone unnoticed or have been marginalised by traditional and dominant approaches to politics, accounting for central political ideas in non-Western sources and in the Global South, the book provides a unique contribution towards rethinking the nature of citizenship, antagonism, space, and frontiers required today. While offering valuable reading for scholars of Islamic studies, religious studies and politics, it provides a critical perspective for academics with an interest in discourse theory, post-colonial theory, political philosophy, and comparative political thought.

Oriko, a magical girl with the gift of foresight, knows the fate that awaits all who accept Kyubey's offer of supernatural powers. But when she is struck with a terrible vision of the future' of the devastation caused by a single, powerful witch' she decides to prevent that witch from becoming a magical girl in the first place. Instead, Oriko directs Kyubey to Yuma, an orphan who is all too eager to gain powers that will enable her to protect herself' powers that will ultimately lead to her own destruction. Explore the first three volumes of Oriko's magical adventure in this eye-catching, deluxe omnibus edition!

Award-winning poet David Mura's critically acclaimed memoir Turning Japanese chronicles how a year in Japan transformed his sense of self and pulled into sharp focus his complicated inheritance. Mura is a sansei, a third-generation Japanese-American who grew up on baseball and hot dogs in a Chicago suburb, where he heard more Yiddish than Japanese. Turning Japanese chronicles his quest for identity with honesty, intelligence, and poetic vision and it stands as a classic meditation on difference and assimilation and is a valuable window onto a country that has long fascinated our own. Turning Japanese was a New York Times Notable Book and winner of an Oakland PEN Josephine Miles Book Award. This edition includes a new afterword by the author.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Biomimetic and Biohybrid Systems, Living Machines 2019, held in Nara, Japan, in July 2019. The 26 full and 16 short papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 45 submissions. They deal with research on novel life-like technologies inspired by the scientific investigation of biological systems, biomimetics, and research that seeks to interface biological and artificial systems to create biohybrid systems.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Biomimetic and Biohybrid Systems, Living Machines 2018, held in Paris, France, in July 2018.The 40 full and 18 short papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 60 submissions. The theme of the conference targeted at the intersection of research on novel life-like technologies inspired by the scientific investigation of biological systems, biomimetics, and research that seeks to interface biological and artificial systems to create biohybrid systems.

Manuela Mura's thesis is devoted to ab initio studies of self-assembled organic molecules on a gold surface. This area of research is particularly vibrant because of the various applications such studies have in nanoscience and surface chemistry and physics. In this thesis Manuela Mura uses theory to suggest atomistic models for the observed assembled and she proposes an assembly mechanism. The methods and results developed as part of this work will be of wide interest to physicists and chemists working on the assemblies of organic molecules on crystal surfaces.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the First International Conference on Biomimetic and Biohybrid Systems, Living Machines 2012, held in Barcelona, Spain, in July 2012. The 28 full papers and 33 extended abstracts presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected for inclusion in this book. The conference addresses themes related to the development of future real-world technologies which will depend strongly on our understanding and harnessing of the principles underlying living systems and the flow of communication signals between living and artificial systems.

Bruno de Finetti (1906-1985) is the founder of the subjective interpretation of probability, together with the British philosopher Frank Plumpton Ramsey. His related notion of "exchangeability" revolutionized the statistical methodology. This book (based on a course held in 1979) explains in a language accessible also to non-mathematicians the fundamental tenets and implications of subjectivism, according to which the probability of any well specified fact F refers to the degree of belief actually held by someone, on the ground of her whole knowledge, on the truth of the assertion that F obtains.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Biomimetic and Biohybrid Systems, Living Machines 2022, in Genoa, Italy, held in July 19–22, 2022. The 44 full papers and 14 short papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 67 submissions. They deal with research on novel life-like technologies inspired by the scientific investigation of biological systems, biomimetics, and research that seeks to interface biological and artificial systems to create biohybrid systems. The conference aims to highlight the most exciting research in both fields united by the theme of “Living Machines.�

This book stems from a course on Micromechanics that I started about fifteen years ago at Northwestern University. At that time, micromechanics was a rather unfamiliar subject. Although I repeated the course every year, I was never convinced that my notes have quite developed into a final manuscript because new topics emerged constantly requiring revisions, and additions. I finally came to realize that if this is continued, then I will never complete the book to my total satisfaction. Meanwhile, T. Mori and I had coauthored a book in Japanese, entitled Micromechanics, published by Baifu-kan, Tokyo, in 1975. It received an extremely favorable response from students and re searchers in Japan. This encouraged me to go ahead and publish my course notes in their latest version, as this book, which contains further development of the subject and is more comprehensive than the one published in Japanese. Micromechanics encompasses mechanics related to microstructures of materials. The method employed is a continuum theory of elasticity yet its applications cover a broad area relating to the mechanical behavior of materi als: plasticity, fracture and fatigue, constitutive equations, composite materi als, polycrystals, etc. These subjects are treated in this book by means of a powerful and unified method which is called the 'eigenstrain method. ' In particular, problems relating to inclusions and dislocations are most effectively analyzed by this method, and therefore, special emphasis is placed on these topics."

This book sterns from a course on Micromechanics that I started about fifteen years ago at Northwestern University. At that time, micro mechanics was a rather unfamiliar subject. Although I repeated the course every year, I was ne ver convinced that my notes have quite developed into a final manuscript because new topics emerged con stantly requiring revisions, and additions. I finally came to realize that if this is continued, then I will never complete the book to my total satisfaction. Meanwhile, T. Mori and I had coauthored a book in Micromechanics, published by Baifu-kan, Tokyo, in Japanese, entitled 1975. It received an extremely favorable response from students and researchers in Japan. This encouraged me to go ahead and publish my course notes in their latest version, as this book, which contains further development of the subject and is more comprehensive than the one published in Japanese. Micromechanics encompasses mechanics related to microstructures of materials. The method employed is a continuum theory of elasticity yet its applications cover a broad area relating to the mechanical behavior of materials: plasticity, fracture and fatigue, constitutive equa tions, composite materials, polycrystals, etc. These subjects are treated in this book by means of a powerful and unified method which is called the 'eigenstrain method. ' In particular, problems relating to inclusions and dislocations are most effectively analyzed by this method, and therefore, special emphasis is placed on these topics."