Two thousand years ago, Ovid asked his readers to imagine metamorphoses in which men and women became flowers and beasts. Today, before our cinema-savvy eyes, people melt and re-form as altogether new creatures: they "morph." This volume explores what digital morphing means -- both as a cultural practice specific to our times and as a link to a much broader history of images of human transformation. Meta-Morphing ranges over topics that include turn-of-the-century "quick-change" artists, Mesoamerican shamanic transformation, and cosmetic surgery; recent works such as Terminator 2, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Heavenly Creatures, and Forrest Gump; and the transformations imagined by Kafka, Proust, and Burroughs. The contributors look not only at the technical wizardry behind digital morphing, but also at the history and cultural concerns it expresses.

Ages 5 to 9 years. Murphy likes his life just the way it is -- swimming in his weedy pond, slurping up algae and rotting water plants. But then things begin to change... and he's not the only one caught by surprise!

As the United States marks its first presidential election of a new century, Witcover shows us how professional mercenaries -- with little party loyalty and diminished political principles, driven by an insatiable need for money -- are poisoning public life. At the same time, politicians themselves have condoned and even encouraged these developments, responding to the demands of a media-driven age in which the press corps pursues its own quest for celebrity and financial reward. Sharp, revealing, and rich with anecdotes, No Way to Pick a President offers a wealth of presidential history, from the role of the vice president's office to campaign funds, television and the electoral college.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 24th Annual Conference Towards Autonomous Robotic Systems, TAROS 2023, held in Cambridge, UK, during September 13–15, 2023. The 40 full papers presented in this book were carefully reviewed and selected from 70 submissions. They cover a wide range of different topics such as: agri-food robotics; autonomy; collaborative and service robotics; locomotion and manipulation; machine vision; multi-robot systems; soft robotics; tactile sensing; and teleoperation.

One of the most feared terrorists in the world, known as the Scorpion, presents a plan to the Grand Ayatollah of Iran for a terrorist attack against the United States. No terrorist ever captured has seen or spoken directly to the Scorpion. The plan will take many years to develop, but it is beyond anything the U.S. has prepared for or thought possible. The Ayatollah believes that the success of the attack will so cripple The Great Satan that he will be able to mobilize the worlds one billion Muslims into a world-wide Holy War against a weakened America. John Murphy, the director of the New York office of Homeland Security, while following up intelligence leads regarding the Scorpion, enlists the help of his life-long friend, Tim Shannon, a seasoned covert operative, to help track him down. Shannon follows the Scorpions trail from Istanbul through the Middle East and Europe as the Scorpion initiates his attack against the United States. Shannon and Murphy must find the Scorpion and stop the terrorist attack before it destroys the heart and soul of America. Their best lead comes in the form of a cryptic note from an unlikely source outside the intelligence community.

From New York Times bestselling author Tamara Rose Blodgett comes the 4th installment in the Alpha Claim world featuring Dark Paranormal Romance + Dystopian Fantasy = a yummy standalone novel. ☞ Now at the top [of the description] as well: While FS is technically a standalone, reading the preceding ALPHA CLAIM WORLD novels is highly recommended. The Mutables debauched plan of capturing females with rare genetics to perpetuate their species is challenged when the First Species stakes a claim of protection. Paige I didn't tell anyone my secret. But in the end, it didn't help me recognize the Mutables when they came for me. The First Species who's been assigned my transition is arrogant and demanding. I'm independent and stubborn. When the prehistoric joins forces with Drest - will I be able to resist them both? Drest That bounty enforcer female tears my arm off, mistaking me for a Mutable - leaving my transition wide open for target from the Mutables. Jac the prehistoric, is a pain in my ass but affords Paige extra protection. Can I trust a prehistoric- or is he angling for inclusion with a female I don't plan on sharing? Jael and Casek barely escape the catacomb of the Mutable colony. Seiger sends the worst players of the Mutables to retrieve the female who can give him chimera offspring. Can they find sanctuary among Casek's kind - or will a surprise Mutable destroy their plan? Camille Becker is a special needs teacher who doesn't need a man in her life. When a renegade First Species is assigned her transition, she refuses him. Kiel scares her. For obvious reasons... and ones she won't admit. When a Mutable attack leaves Camille helpless - will she trust Kiel's "healing?" Or will Camille be led down a path she doesn't want to travel? FIRST SPECIES is app. 386 paperback pages/66,000 word standalone volume in the ALPHA CLAIM world serial. While FS is technically a standalone, reading the preceding ALPHA CLAIM WORLD novels is highly recommended. Search Terms: love and life, contemporary romance, new adult, romance, billionaire, Alpha male romance, Alpha Bad Boy, bad boy, hot doctores, hot romance, hot and steamy, famos actor, happily ever after, true love, billionaire romanc, billionaire romance, melody anne billionaire bachelors series, swe, steamy, hot alpha male, bad boy obsession, fantasy, paranormal shifter romance, romance paranormal werewolves and shifters, shifters romance, shifter mysteries, werewolf shifters romance, shifter reverse harem, free, free book, free ebook, free novel, bully dark romance fairy tale action romance novel, shifter audio shifter comedy shifter girl wolf and, rh free menage romance goddesses psychics, romantic and comedy romance shifter magic, over 40 paranormal alpha hero witch thriller, free dragon mate books romantic angst majic queen, Metaphysical Visionary suspenseful shapeshifter, paranormal womens books free

At twenty-three Murphy White had his life all planned out. He knew what he wanted and how to get it. Then duty called and blew that life to hell. Fleeing from the fall-out, Murphy lands in Australia, doing whatever he can to forget the innocent lives lost and the guilty life he took. But no amount of partying can wipe away the horror. Sitting in a café one morning, he looks up ... into the eyes of evil, the eyes of a man he sentenced to death. Terrified, Murphy calls the police but, as soon as they arrive, the shooting starts and his life goes to hell all over again. Thirty-five-year-old Remus Mazarin comes from a family of nightmares. But he is determined to better than them all. His family have put hits out on innocent people. People whose only crime was to do their duty. Remus won’t stand for it. He will be the one to save the beautiful man he’s only ever seen from a distance, a man he was instantly drawn to. Hiding out in small town rural Australia, Murphy and Remus discover common ground and a growing love between them. But Remus’ family will not rest until Murphy is dead. When duty costs you everything you wanted, can fate repay you by giving you who you need?

Coevolution—reciprocal evolutionary change in interacting species driven by natural selection—is one of the most important ecological and genetic processes organizing the earth's biodiversity: most plants and animals require coevolved interactions with other species to survive and reproduce. The Geographic Mosaic of Coevolution analyzes how the biology of species provides the raw material for long-term coevolution, evaluates how local coadaptation forms the basic module of coevolutionary change, and explores how the coevolutionary process reshapes locally coevolving interactions across the earth's constantly changing landscapes. Picking up where his influential The Coevolutionary Process left off, John N. Thompsonsynthesizes the state of a rapidly developing science that integrates approaches from evolutionary ecology, population genetics, phylogeography, systematics, evolutionary biochemistry and physiology, and molecular biology. Using models, data, and hypotheses to develop a complete conceptual framework, Thompson also draws on examples from a wide range of taxa and environments, illustrating the expanding breadth and depth of research in coevolutionary biology.