QUEER WE GO AGAIN! Fans of Becky Albertelli, Adam Silvera and Nina LaCour will eat up this delicious anthology of romantic and adventurous contemporary and speculative stories featuring LGBTQ+ teens. A follow-up to the critically acclaimed All Out anthology, Out Now features seventeen new short stories from amazing queer YA authors. Vampires crash prom…aliens run from the government…a president’s daughter comes into her own…a true romantic tries to soften the heart of a cynical social media influencer…a selkie and the sea call out to a lost soul. Teapots and barbershops…skateboards and VW vans…Street Fighter and Ares’s sword: Out Now has a story for every reader and surprises with each turn of the page! This essential and beautifully written modern-day collection features an intersectional and inclusive slate of authors and stories. With original stories from: Fox Benwell Tanya Boteju Kate Hart Kosoko Jackson Will Kostakis CB Lee Katherine Locke Saundra Mitchell Hillary Monahan Candice Montgomery Mark Oshiro Caleb Roerig Meredith Russo Eliot Schrefer Jessica Verdi Julian Winters Read the entire set of companion anthologies featuring queer teens in the past, present, and future! All Out: The No-Longer-Secret Stories of Queer Teens throughout the Ages Out Now: Queer We Go Again! Out There: Into the Queer New Yonder (coming soon!)

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-conference proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Computers and Games, CG 2013, held in Yokohama, Japan, in August 2013, in conjunction with the 17th Computer and Games Tournament and the 20th World Computer-Chess Championship. The 21 papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected for inclusion in this book. They cover a wide range of topics which are grouped into five classes: Monte Carlo Tree Search and its enhancements; solving and searching; analysis of game characteristic; new approaches; and serious games.

Prima has the intel you need to fight hard, stay strong, and cash in. •Battle-tested tactics •Co-op combat strategies for becoming an army of two •Tips to make the most of Aggro and the full range of tactics at your disposal •Stats on all weapons and upgrades •Detailed mission walkthroughs for single and co-op play •Preview of theArmy of Two: Dirty Moneygraphic novel

Detailed “how to's” of threat assessment—from the initial contact to the sharing of results! Risk management can be an organizational nightmare, but it is an essential part of your operations. Recent events have shown us that organizations need to know how to respond swiftly and effectively in emergencies and that companies need to protect their employees from internal and external threats. This book provides you with the tools you need to protect both your employees and yourself from a variety of threats. Threat Assessment: A Risk Management Approach examines the factors that human resource, security, legal, and behavioral professionals need to understand in work violence and threat situations that disrupt the working environment, revealing the best ways to reduce risk and manage emergencies. It includes case studies and hypothetical examples that show recommended practices in action and provides detailed interviewing methods that can increase the efficiency of current strategies. Helpful appendices provide sample forms for identification cards, stay-away letters, workplace behavior improvement plans for problem employees, questions for health care providers, and announcements for employees regarding security changes. An extensive bibliography points the way to other useful material on this subject. Threat Assessment: A Risk Management Approach explores: the role of the multidisciplinary threat management team corporate liaisons with law enforcement agencies cyberthreats and stalking insider threats category classification of offending behaviors Risk management is a constantly evolving field, and Threat Assessment provides you with access to the latest updates. Staying up-to-date on risk management innovations will help you increase corporate sensitivity to possible threats and provide the safest possible working environment to your employees. The authors of Threat Assessment are seasoned professionals with extensive experience in risk management. You can learn from their expertise and adapt it to your situation, improving workplace safety and contributing to security in your own community.

Three years ago Conquest was released, redefining virtual reality and gaming. ‘An entire world on a server. Dive in and play the RPG to end all others; explore, create, conquer. LIVE!’ It became an overnight phenomena worldwide. Dave Ruster grew up without a family to speak of, he had few friends and fewer prospects. He lives in the same small town where he graduated from high school, and works long hours at a low-paying job that barely pays for rent and the food on his table. He can’t afford college, but at least he is not out on the streets. His life is going nowhere, stuck on a treadmill. Until chance, karma, or providence, call it whatever you believe in, intervenes. Suddenly, David’s circumstances change. Injured and unable to work, he’s about to lose what little he has. His fate balances where crisis and opportunity go hand in hand. He can risk it all, seizing the opportunity to make circumstances work for him, potentially going further and higher than he ever dreamed. Or he can accept his fate and watch life from the sidelines Join Dave as he puts all his aspirations and hopes, all that he is, into the game he always wanted to play, Conquest! It will be a journey of adventure and discovery, victory and loss, as he strives to create a new future for himself, in-the-game and In Real Life. **** Story is currently being proofed by our Lord Sambraga! (chapters 54+) so please bear with the mediocre quality of writing in the first chaps, it gets much better later on!****

Gamer Ren Takashiro loves nothing more than taking junk job classes and turning them into the new meta. So when he enrolls at a special school that incorporates online gaming into their curriculum at the invitation of his longtime gaming buddy, Akira, Ren of course decides to be a symbologist—supposedly the weakest class of all. He quickly gets to work making it a force to be reckoned with, but little does he know he’s in for a surprise he never expected... It turns out that his pal Akira is actually a cute girl!

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-conference proceedings of the 13th Advances in Computer Games Conference, ACG 2011, held in Tilburg, The Netherlands, in November 2011. The 29 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous submissions. The papers cover a wide range of topics such as Monte-Carlo tree search and its enhancement, temporal difference learning, optimization, solving and searching, analysis of a game characteristic, new approaches, and serious games.

Sol Rock plays the role of support in Black Tiger, an up-and-coming party of prodigies known as the Miracle Children. His party sees him as deadweight and he’s expelled by the leader, but the truth is that he has a special talent that gives him the godlike power to bestow incredibly OP skills and stats upon his companions! Only two members of his party, “Iron Wall” Reen and “Saint of Healing” Julia, realize that Sol is the source of their amazing powers, and they choose to leave with him. With no one holding him back, Sol can finally unleash his true potential, and he decides to use it to create the world’s most powerful party. When Sol is offered five cards, each depicting a monster powerful enough to take on the world on its own, he begins a journey to gather them all to his side and fulfill his dream!

Advances in Computer Chess 3 focuses on the mechanics involved in playing chess on computer. This book features an extensive discussion of the game wherein it is played in a different setting. The selection, which is composed of 13 chapters, features the extensive contributions of researchers who continuously search for ways to improve playing chess on computer. This book starts with the discussion of the basic principles and concepts that can impose changes on how the game is played. A discussion is devoted to the Belle chess hardware. What is clearly pointed out in this section is the speed of the program relative to responses made while playing. A comparison is made between the performance of human and computer in playing chess. The complexity of various computer moves are then elaborated by highlighting how these moves can alter the pace as well as the result of the game. The development of a program that is aimed at solving problems on how chess is played is also noted. This book is a sure hit for those who are fond of playing chess in any playing field.

Performance is why organizations exist. Through performance organizations meet the needs of internal and external stakeholders as defined by their mission, goals and objectives. This is true for all organizations. This title presents the events that effect organizations and the fundamental structure for organizations.