Maiden Flight is the true-life story of the Wright sister who in 1926 left her world-famous and intensely possessive older brother to marry newspaper editor Harry Haskell, the man she loved, and suffered the unhappy consequences. An international celebrity in her own right, Katharine embodied the worldly, independent, and self-fulfilled New Woman of the early twentieth century. Yet she remained in many ways a Victorian. Torn between duty and love, she agonized for months before making her devastating break with Orville at age fifty-two. Cast in the form of three interwoven first-person memoirs, Maiden Flight is imaginatively reconstructed from personal letters, newspaper reports, and other documents of the period—in particular, Katharine’s lively and extraordinarily revealing love letters to Harry. In allowing Katharine to step outside of Wilbur and Orville’s shadow, it sheds new light on the central role she played in their private lives, as well as on her often misunderstood contribution to their scientific work. Above all, Maiden Flight celebrates Katharine’s abundant store of what she called “human nature”—her lively and perceptive outlook on life, her great capacity for both love and indignation, and her acute and sometimes crippling self-awareness.

War is coming for the dragon knights…but love may find them first. A chance meeting with a young male dragon seals the fate of one adventurous female poacher. The dragon’s partner, a ruggedly handsome knight named Gareth, takes one look at the shapely woman and decides to do a little poaching of his own. Sir Gareth both seduces and falls deeply in love with the girl who is not only unafraid of dragons but also possesses a rare gift—she can hear the beasts’ silent speech. He wants her for his mate, but mating with a knight is no simple thing. To accept a knight, a woman must also accept the dragon, the dragon’s mate…and her knight, Lars, too. She is at first shocked, then intrigued by the lusty life in the Lair. But war is in the making and only the knights and dragons have a chance at ending it before it destroys their land and their lives. Note: Contains dragons, their sexy knights and a damsel who is not quite in distress. Sizzling hot m/f/m scenes may leave you breathing fire. The Dragon Knights series contains: Daughters of the Dragon 1. Maiden Flight 2. Border Lair 3. The Ice Dragon 4. Prince of Spies The Novellas 5. The Dragon Healer (novella) 6. Master at Arms (novella) 7 Wings of Change (novella) Sons of Draconia 8. FireDrake 9. Dragon Storm 10. Keeper of the Flame 11. Hidden Dragons The Sea Captain’s Daughter Trilogy 12. Sea Dragon 13. Dragon Fire 14. Dragon Mates 15. The Captain’s Dragon

From nature, we observe swarming behavior in the form of ant colonies, bird flocking, animal herding, honey bees, swarming of bacteria, and many more. It is only in recent years that researchers have taken notice of such natural swarming systems as culmination of some form of innate collective intelligence, albeit swarm intelligence (SI) - a metaphor that inspires a myriad of computational problem-solving techniques. In computational intelligence, swarm-like algorithms have been successfully applied to solve many real-world problems in engineering and sciences. This handbook volume serves as a useful foundational as well as consolidatory state-of-art collection of articles in the field from various researchers around the globe. It has a rich collection of contributions pertaining to the theoretical and empirical study of single and multi-objective variants of swarm intelligence based algorithms like particle swarm optimization (PSO), ant colony optimization (ACO), bacterial foraging optimization algorithm (BFOA), honey bee social foraging algorithms, and harmony search (HS). With chapters describing various applications of SI techniques in real-world engineering problems, this handbook can be a valuable resource for researchers and practitioners, giving an in-depth flavor of what SI is capable of achieving.

Strategic Financial Management Casebook strategically uses integrative case studies—cases that do not emphasize specific subjects such as capital budgeting or value based management—to provide a framework for understanding strategic financial management. By featuring holistic presentations, the book puts readers into the shoes of those responsible for the world's largest wealth creators. It covers strategies of growth, mergers and acquisitions, financial performance analysis over the past decade, wealth created in terms of stock returns since its listing in stock market, investment and financial decisions, cost of capital, and corporate valuation. In addition, the casebook also discusses corporate restructuring activities undertaken by each company. Each chapter follows a template to facilitate learning, and each features an Excel-based case analysis worksheet that includes a complete data set for financial analysis and valuation. - Introduces a conceptual framework for integrating strategy and finance for value creation - Emphasizes the roles of corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, and risk management in value creation - Encourages an analysis of investment, financing, and dividend decisions - Examines non-financial factors that contribute to value

The first and only official book from Britain's biggest heavy-metal band. IRON MAIDEN are a global phenomenon. On board their customised Boeing 757 plane named Ed Force One, and piloted by lead singer and airline captain Bruce Dickinson, the band, crew and 12 tonnes of equipment traversed the planet and broke the mould of traditional touring forever by playing concerts in every continent except Antarctica! Setting off in early 2008 on the Somewhere Back In Time world tour, through to the epic Final Frontier tour, Maiden finally played two sold-out shows in their native London. The Final Frontier tour celebrated their 15th and most successful studio album to date, hitting the No.1 spot in at least 28 countries. The band's official photographer John McMurtrie accompanied them on the tours and his unrestricted access allowed him to capture exclusive images and moments both onstage and off, in over 600 spectacular photographs annotated with individual insights and anecdotes. ON BOARD FLIGHT 666 provides an unprecedented insight into one of the most adventurous rock tours ever undertaken; and into what makes this band so special.

Aviation safety and astronautics safety are taught as technical subjects informed, for the most part, by quantitative methods. Here, as in other fields, safety is often framed as an engineering problem requiring mathematics-informed solutions. This book argues that the socio-technical approach, encompassing theories grounded in sociology and psychology – such as active learning, high-reliability organising, mindfulness, leadership, followership and empowerment – has much to contribute to the safety performance of these vital industries. It sets out to inspire professionals to embed the whole-system approach into design and operation regimen and describes the reputational and financial benefits to manufacturers and operators that accrue from adopting a whole-system approach to design and operation. The book defines the socio-technical approach to risk assessment and management in aviation and astronautics (astronautics is taken to mean "the design and operation of vehicles for use beyond the earth’s atmosphere"), then demonstrates the strengths and weaknesses of this approach through case studies of, for example, the Boeing 737MAX-8 accidents and the loss of the SpaceShipTwo orbiter. Grounding the discourse in familiar case studies engages busy aviation and astronautics professionals. The book’s arguments are explained in such a way that they are readily comprehensible to non-experts. Key concepts are defined within a glossary. Photographs, charts and diagrams illustrate key points. Written for a practitioner audience, specifically aviation and astronautics professionals, this book provides a valuable and accessible social sciences perspective on safety that will be directly relevant to their roles.

Using a historical sociology approach, this book illustrates the formation of the technological state in Indonesia during the New Order period (1966-1998). It explores the nexus between power, high technology, development, and authoritarianism situated in the Southeast Asian context. The book discusses how the New Order regime shifted from the developmental state to the technological state, which was characterized by desire for technological supremacy. The process resulted in the establishment of a host of technological institutions and the undertaking of large-scale high-tech programs. Shedding light on the political dimension of socio-technological transformation, this book looks at the relationship between authoritarian politics and high technology development, and examines how effectively technology serves to sustain legitimacy of an authoritarian power. It explores into multiple features of the Indonesian technological state, covering the ideology of development, the politics of technocracy, the institutional structure, and the material and symbolic embodiments of high technology, and goes on to discuss the impact of globalization on the technological state. The book is an important contribution to studies on Southeast Asian Politics, Development, and Science, Technology, and Society (STS).