The German 88 mm was by far the most famous and versatile artillery weapon of World War II. It was first used as an anti-aircraft weapon by the Condor Legion during the Spanish Civil War and saw further service in the German invasions of Poland and France, where it was first used in its anti-tank role. This role was particularly successful and the 88 became feared by tank crews from North Africa to Russia. Apart from these two main roles the 88 mm was used as the main weapon on late-war German tanks, as a self-propelled gun, and even as an aerial weapon. This book covers all these variants, explaining their design, development and operational use.

When using GUI-based software, we often focus so much on the interface that we forget about the general concepts required to use the software effectively. Access Database Design & Programming takes you behind the details of the interface, focusing on the general knowledge necessary for Access power users or developers to create effective database applications. The main sections of this book include: database design, queries, and programming.

This book can be presented in two different ways. Firstly, it introduces a particular methodology to build adaptive Web sites and secondly, it presents the main concepts behind Web mining and then applying them to adaptive Web sites. In this case, Adaptive Web Sites is the case study to exemplify the tools introduced in the text. The authors start by introducing the Web and motivating the need for adaptive Web sites. The second chapter introduces the main concepts behind a Web site: its operation, its associated data and structure, user sessions, etc. Chapter three explains the Web mining process and the tools to analyze Web data, mainly focused in machine learning. The fourth chapter looks at how to store and manage data. Chapter five looks at the three main and different mining tasks: content, links and usage. The following chapter covers Web personalization; a crucial topic if we want to adapt our site to specific groups of people. Chapter seven shows how to use information extraction techniques to find user behavior patterns. The subsequent chapter explains how to acquire and maintain knowledge extracted from the previous phase. Finally, chapter nine contains the case study where all the previous concepts are applied to present a framework to build adaptive Web sites. In other words, the authors have taken care of writing a self-contained book for people that want to learn and apply personalization and adaptation in Web sites. This is commendable considering the large and increasing bibliography in these and related topics. The writing is easy to follow and although the coverage is not exhaustive, the main concepts and topics are all covered.

This book does not provide any defined solutions or silver bullets. Integrating J2EE Platform applications with legacy systems is a difficult task that requires a thorough understanding of both legacy system applications and object-oriented design. We have tried to find a practical approach to applying the J2EE integration tier patterns in real-world situations, the main design principle being that of separation of concerns. Some of the designs described in this book are currently running in production, while others represent theoretical work that has not yet been tested in a full-scale production environment. We hope, however, that in reading this book you will gain valuable tools with which to start the long journey toward application integration.

Formidable and sophisticated, triremes were the deadliest battleship of the ancient world, and at the height of their success, the Athenians were the dominant exponents of their devastating power. Primarily longships designed to fight under oar power, the trireme was built for lightness and strength; ship-timber was mostly softwoods such as poplar, pine and fir, while the oars and mast were made out of fir. Their main weapon was a bronze-plated ram situated at the prow. From the combined Greek naval victory at Salamis (480 BC), through the Peloponnesian War, and up until the terrible defeat by the Macedonians at Amorgos, the Athenian trireme was an object of dread to its enemies. This book offers a complete analysis and insight into the most potent battleship of its time; the weapon by which Athens achieved, maintained, and ultimately lost its power and prosperity.

The C# & VB.NET Conversion Pocket Reference helps you easily make the switch from C# to Visual Basic .NET and vice versa. Differences between the two languages occur in three main areas: syntax, object-oriented principles, and the Visual Studio .NET IDE. A perfect companion for documents and books that don't have examples using your mastered language, this guide expects that you know one of the two languages, but does not make an assumption about which one.

It is well recognised that company law is a large and complex subject which has expanded rapidly in volume in recent years. Added to this is the continual reform to the existing law. This is partly due to the need to comply with obligations imposed on the United Kingdom from Brussels, but partly because of the increasing complexity of commercial life generally. There is no sign that the growth and reform is at an end. In addition, there are now two established series of specialist company law reports (Butterworths Company Law Cases and British Company Cases) which have obviously resulted in many more cases reaching the public domain for comment and analysis. Further, no work on Company Law can now ignore the extra-legal controls and influences on director’s conduct contained in the recent reports on corporate governance nor the proposals for reform put forward, in particular, by the Law Commission. This edition deals with the main features of both the Law Commission’s Report on Shareholder Remedies and the Law Commission’s Consultation Paper on the reform of director’s duties.

The foundations of functional programming languages are examined from both historical and technical perspectives. Their evolution is traced through several critical periods: early work on lambda calculus and combinatory calculus, Lisp, Iswim, FP, ML, and modern functional languages such as Miranda1 and Haskell. The fundamental premises on which the functional programming methodology stands are critically analyzed with respect to philosophical, theoretical, and pragmatic concerns. Particular attention is paid to the main features that characterize modern functional languages: higher-order functions, lazy evaluation, equations and pattern matching, strong static typing and type inference, and data abstraction. In addition, current research areas—such as parallelism, nondeterminism, input/output, and state-oriented computations—are examined with the goal of predicting the future development and application of functional languages.

As an Economic Hitman (EHM), John Perkins helped further American imperial interests in countries such as Ecuador, Panama, Indonesia and Saudi Arabia. As Chief Economist for the international consulting firm Chas. T. Main, he convinced underdeveloped countries to accept massive loans for infrastructure development and ensured that the projects were contracted to multinational corporations. The countries acquired enormous debt, and the US and international aid agencies were able to control their economies. He tried to write this book four times but was threatened or bribed each time to halt. The events of 9/11 - a direct result of the activities of EHMs in the 1970s - finally forced him to confront the role he played himself, and to reveal the truth to the rest of the world. Confessions of an Economic Hit Man has become a word-of-mouth bestseller in the US. It has been called the book that finally 'connects the dots, the book that best explains what is really going on in the world'.

Contemporary Peace Making draws on recent experience to identify and explore the essential components of peace processes. Each chapter examines a different element in recent peace processes. The collection is organized around five main themes: planning for peace during periods of violence, the process of negotiations (including pre-negotiation), the effects of violence on peace processes, peace accords—constitutional and political options—and securing the settlement and building the peace

Aiming “to offer a comprehensive view of how an author’s work fits within the context of the author’s life, historical events, and the literary world,” this title includes some 500 writers. Authors traditionally studied in literature classes as well as those whose works currently top the best-seller lists are among the wordsmiths found in the set. Entries are organized into three main sections: “Works in Biographical and Historical Context,” “Works in Literary Context,” and “Works in Critical Context.” Additional features are a “Key Facts” segment that lists birth and death dates and major works; “Responses to Literature,” with suggestions for discussion and writing assignments; and “Further Reading,” providing a brief bibliography. There are also sidebars entitled “Literary and Historical Contemporaries” and “Common Human Experience,” the latter listing works similar in technique or theme to those of the entrant’s. Gale Contextual Encyclopedia of World Literature covers a multitude of writers from Kobo Abe to Mikhail Zoschenko. It is worth noting that a number of authors of books for young people, such as Kenneth Grahame and J. K. Rowling, are included. Glossaries of literary terms, general indexes, and indexes by nationality or ethnicity complete the set. With its breadth of coverage and wealth of information, the encyclopedia will be a useful addition to academic and public library reference collections. Gale Contextual Encyclopedia of American Literature (2009) applies similar treatment to American authors. --Carolyn Mulac

This volume from the Essentials in Ophthalmology series presents recent developments in the diagnosis and treatment of corneal disease. Its intention is not to replace the relevant textbooks, but to serve as a bridge between the primary and tertiary literature. This well-structured volume covers the following main topics: Confocal microscopy of the cornea.- Treatment of adenoviral corneal opacities.- Conservative treatment of severe surface disorders.- Amniotic membrane transplantation.- Limbal stem cell transplantation.- Techniques in penetrating keratoplasty.- Deep anterior lamellar keratoplasty.- Corneal allograft rejection.- Infective complications following LASIK. All topics have direct clinical importance and will not only keep ophthalmologists up-to-date, but will inform them how to treat their cornea patients with optimal (or best possible) diagnostic and therapeutic procedures.

Adolf Hitler enlisted in the Bavarian Army in august 1914 as a war volunteer. Fanatically devoted to the German cause, between 1914 and 1918 Hitler served with distinction and sometimes reckless bravery, winning both classes of Iron Cross. Using memoirs, military records, regimental, divisional and official war histories as well as (wherever possible) Hitler's own words, this book seeks to reconstruct a period in his life that has been neglected in the literature. It is also the story of a German regiment (16th Bavarian Reserve Infantry, or List Regiment), which fought in all the main battles on the Western Front. As a frontline soldier Hitler began his 'study' of the black art of propaganda; and, as he himself maintained, the List Regiment provided him with his 'university of life'. This is not only an account of the fighting, however. Some of the most profound influences on Hitler occurred on home leave or as a result of official wartime propaganda, which he devoured uncritically. His conversion from passive pathological anti-Semitism began while invalided in Germany in 1916-17. The language of anti-Bolshevik 'Jewish virus' propaganda became Hitler's language, confirmed, as he saw it, by the 'infected' recruits to the List Regiment in 1918. Hitler is here presented less as the product of high-cultural forces than as an avid reader and gullible consumer of state propaganda, which fed his prejudices. He was a 'good soldier' but also a 'true believer' in fact and practice. It is no exaggeration to say that every military decision made by Hitler between 1939 and 1945 was in some way influenced or coloured by his experiences with the List Regiment between 1914 and 1918.

When I was first approached in February 1996 to ask whether I would be prepared to take on a new, part-time job as the British government's Special Representative for Cyprus, I had some idea of what I was being let in for, but not that it would last for seven years. Although I had never actually set foot on the island, I had, like many other British diplomats, bumped into the Cyprus problem from time to time during the 36 years of my professional career in the Diplomatic Service, which had ended the year before with my retirement from the post of UN ambassador in New York. I had been involved in the negotiations for a trade agreement between the European Community and Cyprus when Britain joined the EC in 1973; I had subsequently participated in the negotiations that developed this agreement into a customs union and, more relevant than either of these two experiences, I had a ringside seat for the last major attempt by the United Nations to negotiate a comprehensive settlement in 1992 and the subsequent, equally abortive, effort to agree a major package of Confidence-Building Measures on the island which had finally run into the sands in 1994. So I could not be said to be unaware of the singular intractability of the problem, nor of the capacity of the main players to spin out any negotiation until the Greek Kalends, nor of their preference for playing the blame game over making any serious effort to get to grips with the core issues in an attempt to reach a settlement. Why did I say yes? Partly, I suspect, out of a reluctance to quit entirely the scene of international diplomacy in which I had spent the whole of my professional life. Partly also, like a mountain climber drawn towards an unclimbed peak, simply because it was there. The Cyprus problem was certainly an unclimbed peak, said by many - particularly by those who had tried to climb it and failed - to be un-climbable; so there was an element of irresistible challenge. And then there were less personal reasons. The commitment given by the European Union in 1995 to open accession negotiations with Cyprus, divided or not, within six months of the end of the Inter- Governmental Conference which was drawing up the Amsterdam Treaty (in 1997), meant that we were sliding towards a parting of the ways which might either consolidate the division of the island or lead to its entering reunited into the European Union. It also had the potential to lead to a serious crisis in the relations between Turkey and the European Union and thus to a threat to the peace and stability of the Eastern Mediterranean. So the case for making a further determined attempt to reach a settlement was a serious one.

The following chapters examine each of the main Celtic patterns in turn: knots, spirals, key patterns, animals and beasts, and Celtic lettering. Each chapter opens with a large colour illustration to inspire readers in ways of incorporating the design into their own work. This is followed by a short introduction to the range of patterns that fall into this design category, along with photos of Celtic artefacts. The rest of the chapter consists of 16 design pages, each containing a specially commissioned step-by-step artwork for readers to follow. Beautiful to look at, and exquisitely executed in themselves, each artwork has been carefully constructed so that readers can follow its build up from start to finish with no possibility of error. The chapter on Celtic lettering contains a specially commissioned double-page artwork of the Celtic alphabet for readers to copy, and is followed by instructions on how to embellish each of the letter forms in Celtic styles.