This book features 15 chapters based on the Numerical and Evolutionary Optimization (NEO 2017) workshop, held from September 27 to 29 in the city of Tijuana, Mexico. The event gathered researchers from two complimentary fields to discuss the theory, development and application of state-of-the-art techniques to address search and optimization problems. The lively event included 7 invited talks and 64 regular talks covering a wide range of topics, from evolutionary computer vision and machine learning with evolutionary computation, to set oriented numeric and steepest descent techniques. Including research submitted by the NEO community, the book provides informative and stimulating material for future research in the field.

'This is the definitive book on philanthropy - its history, contradictions and future' - John Gray, Emeritus Professor of European Thought, London School of Economics 'Good books lay out the lie of the land. Important books change it. This book is both' - Giles Fraser, priest, journalist and broadcaster The super-rich are silently and secretly shaping our world. In this groundbreaking exploration of historical and contemporary philanthropy, bestselling author Paul Vallely reveals how this far-reaching change came about. Vivid with anecdote and scholarly insight, this magisterial survey - from the ancient Greeks to today's high-tech geeks - provides an original take on the history of philanthropy. It shows how giving has, variously, been a matter of honour, altruism, religious injunction, political control, moral activism, enlightened self-interest, public good, personal fulfilment and plutocratic manipulation. Its narrative moves from the Greek man of honour and Roman patron, via the Jewish prophet and Christian scholastic - through the Elizabethan machiavel, Puritan proto-capitalist, Enlightenment activist and Victorian moralist - to the robber-baron philanthropist, the welfare socialist, the celebrity activist and today's wealthy mega-giver. In the process it discovers that philanthropy lost an essential element as it entered the modern era. The book then embarks on a journey to determine where today's philanthropists come closest to recovering that missing dimension. Philanthropy explores the successes and failures of philanthrocapitalism, examines its claims and contradictions, and asks tough questions of top philanthropists and leading thinkers - among them Richard Branson, Eliza Manningham-Buller, Jonathan Ruffer, David Sainsbury, John Studzinski, Bob Geldof, Naser Haghamed, Lenny Henry, Jonathan Sacks, Rowan Williams, Ngaire Woods, and the presidents of the Rockefeller and Soros foundations, Rajiv Shah and Patrick Gaspard. In extended conversations they explore the relationship between philanthropy and family, faith, society, art, politics, and the creation and distribution of wealth. Highly engaging and meticulously researched, Paul Vallely's authoritative account of philanthropy then and now critiques the excessive utilitarianism of much modern philanthrocapitalism and points to how philanthropy can rediscover its soul.

This book features 15 chapters based on the Numerical and Evolutionary Optimization (NEO 2017) workshop, held from September 27 to 29 in the city of Tijuana, Mexico. The event gathered researchers from two complimentary fields to discuss the theory, development and application of state-of-the-art techniques to address search and optimization problems. The lively event included 7 invited talks and 64 regular talks covering a wide range of topics, from evolutionary computer vision and machine learning with evolutionary computation, to set oriented numeric and steepest descent techniques. Including research submitted by the NEO community, the book provides informative and stimulating material for future research in the field.

Blood for our future, a Military/Political thriller whose stakes could not be higher, follows President Harlan Andrews as he prepares to launch a joint preemptive first strike with Israel against the world's Islamist terrorists. The strike must be ruthless and carried out with overwhelming lethal force, because a top secret Mossad report proves there are just months left before Mohammed Waleed, the Iranian leader, constructs a series of atomic weapons. Waleed believes he can bring about an end of days that will send Islamist to paradise and infidels to hell. The tension builds as time runs out. The plan is to trick the terrorist into an attack on Israel. Then they will be fighting America's and Israel's war on America and Israel's timetable. Only this strike can save the free world. If the plan works Waleed and his allies will be annihilated in this "all in" winner-takes-all war. If the plan fails, America's President and Israel's Prime Minister will be tried as war criminals.

A wise and perceptive portrait of Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the newly elected Bishop of Rome and 266th Pope, now in a revised and greatly expanded new edition 'An exhaustive look at the newest pope ... a highly worthwhile resource for Catholics and non-Catholics alike.' Kirkus 'a superb guide into one of the most pivotal personalities of the 21st century' Publishers Weekly Pope Francis has enchanted and bewildered the world in equal measure with his compassion and his contradictions. Expanding greatly on his acclaimed earlier book Pope Francis: Untying the Knots, Paul Vallely reexamines the complex past of Jorge Mario Bertoglio and adds nine new chapters, revealing many untold, behind-the-scenes stories from his first years in office that explain this Pope of paradoxes. Vallely lays bare the intrigue and in-fighting surrounding Francis's attempt to cleanse the scandal-ridden Vatican Bank. He unveils the ambition and arrogance of top bureaucrats resisting the Pope's reform of the Roman Curia, as well as the hidden opposition at the highest levels that is preventing the Church from tackling the sex abuse crisis. He explains the ambivalence of Pope Francis towards the role of women in the Church, which has frustrated American Catholic women in particular. And Vallely charts the battle lines that are being drawn between Francis and conservatives and traditionalists talking of schism in this struggle for the soul of the Catholic Church. Consistently Francis has show a willingness to discuss issues previously considered taboo, such as the ban on those who divorce and remarry receiving Communion, his liberal instincts outraging traditionalists in the Vatican and especially in the Church hierarchy in the United States. At the same time, many of his statements have reassured conservative elements that he is not, in fact, as radical as he might appear. Behind the icon of simplicity that Pope Francis projects is a steely and sophisticated politician who has learned from the many mistakes of his past. The Pope with the winning smile was previously a bitterly divisive figure. In his decade as leader of Argentina's Jesuits left that religious order deeply split. His behavior during Argentina's Dirty War, when military death squads snatched innocent people from the streets, raised serious questions. Yet after a period of exile and what he has revealed as 'a time of great interior crisis' he underwent an extraordinary transformation - on which Vallely sheds new and fascinating light. The man who had been a strict conservative authoritarian was radically converted into a listening participative leader who became Bishop of the Slums, making enemies among Argentina's political classes in the process. Charting Francis's remarkable journey to the Vatican and his first years at work there, Paul Vallely has produced a deeply nuanced and insightful portrait of perhaps the most influential person in the world today. 'Pope Francis,' he writes, 'has not just demonstrated a different way of being a pope. He has shown the world a different way of being a Catholic.'

For more than a century the Catholic Church has closely scrutinized the economic certainties of capitalism and communism. As a result, it has slowly developed an entirely new position from which today to survey the capitalist leviathan. What this book sets out to do is to chronicle that development and highlight the insights it has formed which have a particular resonance for the world as it enters the . twenty-first century. Michael Walsh describes developments from Rerum Novarum to Vatican II, and Brian Davies the work of John XXIII and Vatican II itself. Julian Filochowski looks at the early social doctrine of Paul VI, and the encyclicals of John Paul II are discussed by Ian Linden, Clifford Langley and Julie Clague. Finally, Paul Vallely looks into the new millennium beyond John Paul II. The book is an important contribution to political and social thought at the beginning of the new millennium. Authoritative, positive and open, its appeal is far from restricted to Catholics or even Christians. Its distinguished contributors offer suggestions for a thought which might combine economic efficiency with social concerns to create a more compassionate community. The tools are there for those with the foresight and courage to take them up. Paul Vallely writes on current social, ethical and political issues for The Independent. He is also the Chair of the Catholic Institute for International Relations and of Traidcraft Exchange.