A Bolivian cactus smaller than a fingernail; a massive cardon that stands more than seventy feet tall; a warty specimen resembling a large toad; a Melocactus that looks as if it is wearing a bristly red hat. Some shrink below ground level to conserve water, others spiral toward the sky, grow along in the sand like snakes, or are draped in flowing white hair. From the people behind Cactus Store comes Xerophile, a photographic collection of these improbable desert wonders in the wild. Drawing on the archives of twenty-five cactus obsessives-from PhD botanist to banker, art teacher to cancer researcher-this revised edition spans eighty years and features new and expanded descriptive notes for all 350+ photos. Fuelled by whispers of ancient plants on forgotten hilltops in Brazil, legends of fields of living fossils deep in the arid deserts of Chile, these explorers' relentless drive to find and document cactus in some of the most remote landscapes on earth has created an extraordinary collective body of photographic work, one which has rarely, if ever, been seen by the general public.

Xerophile

Variant: Xerophile

Warehouse 200

In his debut novel author Eddy Clark masterfully weaves a traumatic real-life experience of an overseas money-wiring scheme gone terribly awry. The Bourne Identity meets American Gangster in this gripping narrative of international money fraud, betrayal, and survival. A young man leaves the streets to embark on a verve of financial security. This promise of a better life skims the surface of a criminal underworld that he unknowingly enters, and instead, he finds himself fighting to stay alive. Raphael Waters grew up accustomed to being in a constant state of survival. When he becomes the muscle for known street figure, Rah, he believes his life has taken a turn for the better. That is until a string of unfortunate circumstances leaves Rah missing and Raphael grasping for answers in the streets of the concrete jungle once again. A chance encounter with the exquisite and intriguing Alex Gatts promises to be the life-changing turnaround he needs. Alex Gatts is the perfect mixture of beauty and brawn. She rules the nightlife of South Bend with every click of her sky-high stilettos. When she hires Raphael as her personal bodyguard, an unexpected friendship develops, sparking a more lucrative business proposition that could give Alex the edge she desires. Together they embark on a series of real estate deals which solidifies their standing amongst the country's most powerful and elite. When an international business deal of a lifetime goes awry, Raphael is left holding the bag in enemy territory and wondering who he can trust.

American Gunner

Variant: American Gunner

Kindness Will Save the World inspires reflection on one's own life, how to find the positive in little moments, and how to radiate kindness to those around you. Read one of the 100 uplifting essays each morning or night and gain inspiration for the new day ahead. With journaling prompts throughout and highlighted Kindness Practices, you are provided the tools to integrate the life-changing practice of kindness into your own life.

Kindness Will Save the World

Variant: Kindness Will Save the World

Tina Lugo's action-packed fantasy manga continues in this heart-wrenching second volume. Luth is a lycan half human, half wolf - ostracized from her clan. In order to prove herself, she enters the trials to become Heketi, an elite warrior hand-picked to serve as defender and peacekeeper. But in the grueling challenge of the trials, she discovers something else entirely. She is the Dark Star, destined to bring ruin to her land. Can she fight against the demon lurking inside her, or will tragedy win out?

The Changeling. Volume 2

Variant: The changeling. Volume 2

New series of discovery books features high-contrast illustrations and Pantone colours: simple black-and-white illustrations with coloured felt flaps to attract baby's attention and develop their visual skills. The child will also develop its fine motor skills and sense of touch by interacting with the baize flaps.

Small Animals

Variant: Small animals

Big Animals

Variant: Big animals

Hornstrandir

Variant: Hornstrandir

Hailsham seems like a pleasant English boarding school, far from the influences of the city. Its students are well tended and supported, trained in art and literature, and become just the sort of people the world wants them to be. But, curiously, they are taught nothing of the outside world and are allowed little contact with it. Within the grounds of Hailsham, Kathy grows from schoolgirl to young woman, but it's only when she and her friends Ruth and Tommy leave the safe grounds of the school (as they always knew they would) that they realize the full truth of what Hailsham is. Never Let Me Go breaks through the boundaries of the literary novel. It is a gripping mystery, a beautiful love story, and also a scathing critique of human arrogance and a moral examination of how we treat the vulnerable and different in our society. In exploring the themes of memory and the impact of the past, Ishiguro takes on the idea of a possible future to create his most moving and powerful book to date.

Never Let Me Go

Variant: Never Let Me Go

A PARENTS magazine Best Book of 2019 * An Association of Booksellers for Children Best Book A triangular board book may seem unusual, but Peek-A-Who? , with its cleverly shaped lift-the-flaps, garnered fans from across the children's book world. This follow-up to the acclaimed original is full of hidden animals, each making different sounds. Can you figure out who each one is? Lift the unique shaped flaps to see who peeks out!

Peek-a-Who Too?

Variant: Peek-a-Who Too?

Transfer learning is one of the most important technologies in the era of artificial intelligence and deep learning. It seeks to leverage existing knowledge by transferring it to another, new domain. Over the years, a number of relevant topics have attracted the interest of the research and application community: transfer learning, pre-training and fine-tuning, domain adaptation, domain generalization, and meta-learning.     This book offers a comprehensive tutorial on an overview of transfer learning, introducing new researchers in this area to both classic and more recent algorithms. Most importantly, it takes a "student's" perspective to introduce all the concepts, theories, algorithms, and applications, allowing readers to quickly and easily enter this area. Accompanying the book, detailed code implementations are provided to better illustrate the core ideas of several important algorithms, presenting good examples for practice.

Introduction To Transfer Learning

Variant: Introduction to transfer learning

This book provides a novel in-depth study of the early pandemic response policy at the intersection of political economy and law. It explores: (1) whether the responses to COVID-19 were democratically accountable; (2) the ways in which new surveillance and enforcement techniques were adopted; (3) the new monetary and fiscal policies which were implemented; (4) the ways in which employed and unemployed persons were differently impacted by the new policies; and (5) how companies were economically sustained through the pandemic. A compelling look at what happens to societies when disaster strikes, this book will be of interest to legal scholars, political scientists and economists.

The First 100 Days of COVID-19

Variant: The first 100 days of COVID-19

This book argues that law has a vital role in shaping the electricity system to enable a more active role for consumers in liberalizsed electricity industries. To do that, this book offers a unique legal perspective of the Netherlands, New Zealand and Colombia to help understand some of the current legal approaches to prosumers and therefore the legal challenges and opportunities facing. Law and regulation have the role of creating a level playing field for emerging participants, such as prosumers, to participate and compete in the market together with traditional actors, bringing not only more competition but also representing a more sustainable, environmental and democratic way to supply energy. Furthermore, law and regulation have the role of responding to innovation and creating space for technological advances to procure the changes in the industry without delay.   This book examines some of the legal barriers for the raise of energy prosumers. The traditional role of the distributor when responding to increasing distributed generation in the network; prosumers unable to decide to whom they can sell their electricity to; the price of the energy or even whether to participate more actively in demand response programs. A further issue is the lack of clarity about whether small prosumers are entitled to consumer protection rights and legal challenges regarding configuration, access to the network, access to markets and strict unbundling rules for community energy projects.  This book provides a clear, analytical, and informed approach to understanding the regulatory framework around energy prosumers. It will appeal to policy makers, lawyers, individuals, business entrepreneurs or communities wanting to engage in energy projects, as well as academics, researchers and students

The Law For Energy Prosumers

Variant: The law for energy prosumers

Explore the environmental impact and other effects of consuming cattle on our planet and health. In our Mindful Consumption collection, consider different ways of sustainably consuming animal proteins as we strive towards a brighter and cleaner world!

Cattle

Variant: Cattle

From schooling fish to fatty species, we explore various angles of the aquatic animal - fish. In our Mindful Consumption collection, consider different ways of sustainably consuming animal proteins as we strive towards a brighter and cleaner world!

Fish

Variant: Fish

In the first book of our Digital Native collection, navigate the fascinating world of emerging technologies like blockchain, cryptocurrencies and NFTs! In this introductory book, we break down complex terms through beautiful illustrations in a virtual world called Metaverse.

Blockchain, Cryptocurrency, NFT

Variant: Blockchain, cryptocurrency, NFT

Have you heard the enchanting sounds of the harp? Have you ever wondered where this musical instrument comes from and how it is made? Come along as we take a peek into the magical world of the harp inDiscovering Music: Harp! TheDiscovering Musiccollection is a wonderful gift for music lovers and to cultivate a passion for music in children.Guiding questions, a glossary, reflections and activity pagesencourage conversations between parent and child.

Discovering Music: Harp

Variant: Discovering Music: Harp

Dive into the fascinating world of coffee!Discover its origin and catch a glimpse of different coffee cultures around the world. Join us on an eye-opening journey to uncover how coffee is transformed from bean to cup! This book is a perfectcoffee conversation withchildren and coffee lovers.

My Journey With Coffee

Variant: My Journey with Coffee

People live in indoor environment about 90% of lifetime and an adult inhales about 15 kg air each day, over 75% of the human body's daily mass intake (air, food, water). Therefore, indoor air quality (IAQ) is very important to human health. This book provides the basic knowledge of IAQ and highlights the research achievements in the past two decades. It covers the following 12 sections: introduction, indoor air chemicals, indoor air particles, measurement and evaluation, source/sink characteristics, indoor chemistry, human exposure to indoor pollutants, health effects and health risk assessment, IAQ and cognitive performance, standards and guidelines, IAQ control, and air quality in various indoor environments. It provides a combination of an introduction to various aspects on IAQ studies, the current state-of-knowledge, various advances and the perspective of IAQ studies. It will be very helpful for the researchers and technicians in the IAQ and the related fields. It is also useful for experts in other fields and general readers who want to obtain a basic understanding of and research advances in the field of IAQ. A group of experts in IAQ research have been recruited to write the chapters. Their research interests and experience cover the scope of the book. In addition, some experienced experts in IAQ field have been invited as advisors or reviewers to give their comments, suggestions and revisions on the handbook framework and the chapter details. Their contribution guarantees the quality of the book. We are very grateful to them. Last but not least, we express our heartfelt thanks to Prof. Spengler, Harvard University, for writing the foreword of the current Handbook of Indoor Air Quality both as a pioneer scientist who contributed greatly to indoor air science and as an Editor-in-chief of Handbook of Indoor Air Quality 2001, 1st ed. New York: McGraw-Hill. In addition to hard copies, the book is also published online and will be updated by the authors as needed to keep it aligned with current knowledge. These salient features can make the handbook fresh with the research development.

Handbook of Indoor Air Quality

Variant: Handbook of indoor air quality

This ground-breaking book is the first to bring an ecological focus to theatre and performance design, both in scholarship and in practice. Ecoscenography weaves environmental philosophies and practices across genres and fields to provide a captivating vision for the future of sustainable theatre production. The book forefronts leading designers that are driving this emerging field into the mainstream through their relational and reciprocal engagement with place, audiences, materials, and processes. Beyond its radical philosophy and framework, Ecoscenography makes a compelling case for pursuing an ecological ethic in theatre and performance design, not only as a moral imperative, but for the extraordinary possibilities that it offers for more-than-human engagement. Based on her personal insights as a leading ecological researcher and practitioner, Beer offers a rich resource for scholars, students and practitioners alike, opening up new processes and aesthetics of theatrical design that enhance the environmental and social advocacy of the field.

Ecoscenography

Variant: Ecoscenography

In today's workplace, computer and cybersecurity professionals must understand both hardware and software to deploy effective security solutions. This book introduces readers to the fundamentals of computer architecture and organization for security, and provides them with both theoretical and practical solutions to design and implement secure computer systems. Offering an in-depth and innovative introduction to modern computer systems and patent-pending technologies in computer security, the text integrates design considerations with hands-on lessons learned to help practitioners design computer systems that are immune from attacks.    Studying computer architecture and organization from a security perspective is a new area. There are many books on computer architectures and many others on computer security. However, books introducing computer architecture and organization with security as the main focus are still rare. This book addresses not only how to secure computer components (CPU, Memory, I/O, and network) but also how to secure data and the computer system as a whole. It also incorporates experiences from the author's recent award-winning teaching and research.   The book also introduces the latest technologies, such as trusted computing, RISC-V, QEMU, cache security, virtualization, cloud computing, IoT, and quantum computing, as well as other advanced computing topics into the classroom in order to close the gap in workforce development.     The book is chiefly intended for undergraduate and graduate students in computer architecture and computer organization, as well as engineers, researchers, cybersecurity professionals, and middleware designers.

Computer Architecture and Organization

Variant: Computer Architecture and Organization

A fun and colorful read-aloud book on Austrian artist Gustav Klimt. Exploring Art with Gustav Klimt travels through the decorative motifs and figures in Gustav Klimt's paintings, and the inspirations he took from Italian mosaics and ancient art forms. TheExploring Artcollectioninvites young readers to open their minds to the depth and breadth of global art history. Each book explores the key concepts of an artists oeuvre, their inspirations and important artworks. Guiding questions, a glossary, reflections and activity pagesencourage conversations between parent and child.