Navigating the space between dreams and reality. The word "Lacuna" is Latin in origin and means "an unfilled space or gap". The Lacuna Effect is the impact that the unfilled spaces and gaps between our dreams and reality have on our lives, and specifically on our identity, purpose and belonging. This book is about hope when our identity, purpose and belonging is being challenged, threatened and questioned. The stories and insights shared in its pages are raw, emotional and real. My aim in sharing the pain, struggles and challenges of others is to inspire hope, encourage dreams and offer up some fresh perspectives on navigating through life's challenges. The truth is, we will all face a Lacuna experience of some description, at some point in our life, if we haven't already.

**NOW INCLUDING THE FIRST CHAPTER OF DEMON COPPERHEAD** TWICE WINNER OF THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION FROM THE WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR FICTION THE MULTI-MILLION COPY BESTSELLING AUTHOR 'Lush.' Sunday Times 'Superb.' Daily Mail 'Elegantly written.' Sunday Telegraph From award-winning and internationally bestselling author of Demon Copperhead and Flight Behaviour, The Lacuna is the heartbreaking story of a man torn between the warm heart of Mexico and the cold embrace of 1950s America in the shadow of Senator McCarthy. Born in America and raised in Mexico, Harrison Shepherd is a liability to his social-climbing flapper mother, Salome. When he starts work in the household of Mexican artists Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo - where the Bolshevik leader, Lev Trotsky, is also being harboured as a political exile - he inadvertently casts his lot with art, communism and revolution. A compulsive diarist, he records and relates his colourful experiences of life with Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo and Trotsky in the midst of the Mexican revolution. A violent upheaval sends him back to America; but political winds continue to throw him between north and south, in a plot that turns many times on the unspeakable breach - the lacuna - between truth and public presumption.

Every two seconds a person is displaced, caught in one of the more than 40 active conflicts around the world that show no sign of ending. Since 1994, there has been ongoing war in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which has uprooted millions of people and resulted in the deaths of millions more. In the West, we have entered a political era where our border policies are underpinned by unending wars. At this critical juncture, how can journalists, especially those engaged in foreign correspondence, tell these stories? How can they make connections across time and space, and across politics, economics, environments, and crucially, people? Given its colonial history, are these connections possible for the profession of foreign correspondence? In Borderland, Chrisanthi Giotis argues that decolonization is possible and necessary for the development of a truly global, public sphere. New global narratives need to meaningfully include the voices, and knowledge, of those with the least power who are caught in resource-fuelled wars. Drawing on insights from postcolonial studies, international relations, development studies, and philosophy, which are brought to life through auto-ethnographic descriptions and analysis of "behind-the-scenes" events, Giotis introduces new reporting techniques for foreign correspondents. Borderland argues that decolonized reporting techniques will help journalists--and their audiences--move beyond the sociohistorical and political myopia that prevents us from communicating and understanding the reality of a complex world.

The United States spends more than 17% of its gross domestic product (GDP) on health care, while other developed countries throughout the world average 8.7% of GDP on healthcare expenditures. By 2028, that percentage in the United States is projected to be 19.7% of GDP. Yet all this spending apparently doesn’t equate to value, quality, or performance. Among 11 high-income countries, the U.S. healthcare industry ranked last during the past seven years in four key performance categories: administrative efficiency, access to care, equity, and healthcare outcomes. This book centers on ways to bring down skyrocketing healthcare costs and improve comparatively low patient outcomes by focusing on the second-highest cost after staffing in U.S. healthcare: the supply chain. The authors present strategies for aligning the healthcare supply chain, leadership, physicians, and department budget owners to achieve evidence-based value analysis (EVA) and effective strategic sourcing. The key to bringing alignment to where it needs to be is understanding the art and science of EVA and strategic sourcing and reorienting the health systems toward productively and gainfully accomplishing them both. Within healthcare, the biggest opportunities for a quantum leap in affordability and quality directly tie to improving the product and service selection process through EVA and greatly advancing hospital and health system supply chain sourcing strategies. The book outlines what the authors call the Lacuna Triangle—three lacunas (or gaps) that occur in hospitals and health systems that prevent them from pursuing effective EVA and strategic sourcing. The authors explore the three effects of those gaps, which keep the Lacuna Triangle walls tightly closed so that the oligopolies, irrational markets, and irrational pricing that those gaps create can continue to thrive, and where many healthcare organizations remain trapped. The goal with this book is to pluck the supply chain and health system executive and clinical leadership out of the chaos and irrationality they are caught in and give them tactics and strategies for reengineering the alignment of these processes to serve their enterprises’ needs. The book does this by a deep exploration into strategic sourcing, a way of doing business that has been embraced and employed effectively for decades in supply chain management in various industries and in healthcare supply chain in other countries.

The Language of Surrealism explores the revolutionary experiments in language and mind undertaken by the surrealists across Europe between the wars. Highly influential on the development of art, literary modernism, and current popular culture, surrealist style remains challenging, striking, resonant and thrilling – and the techniques by which surrealist writing achieves this are set out clearly in this book. Stockwell draws on recent work in cognitive poetics and literary linguistics to re-evaluate surrealism in its own historical setting. In the process, the book questions later critical theoretical views of language that have distorted our ideas about both surrealism and language itself. What follows is a piece of literary criticism that is fully contextualised, historically sensitive, and textually driven, and which sets out in rich and readable detail this most intriguing and disturbing literature.

The authoritative reference to bone diseases and disorders of mineral metabolism, revised and updated Now in its ninth edition, The Primer on the Metabolic Bone Diseases and Disorders of Mineral Metabolism offers an updated and comprehensive guide to bone and mineral health. Since it was first published 30 years ago, the Primer has become the leading reference on the topic. With contributions from noted experts, the text explores basic biological factors of healthy development and disease states and makes the information accessible for clinical interventions. The ninth edition provides concise coverage of the widest possible spectrum of metabolic bone diseases and disorders of mineral metabolism. The new edition of this invaluable reference expands coverage and includes the most recent developments in the field that help to strengthen its usefulness and ensure that the Primer on the Metabolic Bone Diseases and Disorders of Mineral Metabolism maintains its place as the pre-eminent reference on bone and mineral health. This vital resource: Provides the most accurate, up-to-date evidence-based information on basic and clinical bone science Includes more than 10 new chapters and contributions from 300 authors from wide-ranging international research centers Captures the very cutting edge of research covering mineral homeostasis, osteoporosis and other metabolic bone diseases, skeletal measurement technologies, and genetics Presents a new companion website with useful supplementary materials at www.asbmrprimer.com Written for advanced students, clinicians, and researchers working in the field of bone health and disease, Primer on the Metabolic Bone Diseases and Disorders of Mineral Metabolism is the definitive, one-stop reference for anyone working in the field of bone health and disease.

Discourse and Creativity examines the way different approaches to discourse analysis conceptualize the notion of creativity and address it analytically. It includes examples of studies of creativity from a variety of traditions and examines the following key areas, how people interpret and use discourse, the processes and practices of discourse production, discourse in modes other than written and spoken language, and the relationship between discourse and the technologies used to produce it. Discourse and Creativity combines a forward-thinking and interdisciplinary approach to the topic of creativity; this collection will be of great value to students and scholars in applied linguistics, stylistics, and communication studies.

A fascinating guide to using the iris to discover the encoded secrets of the body and mind Is it really possible to see our hidden nature in our irises? Have the hereditary patterns of our ancestors left their genetic markers buried deep within the fibres of the iris, waiting to reveal themselves at key moments in our lifetime? In his latest book, renowned expert in behavioural iridology Andrew Mason fuses the practice of behavioural and physical iridology into one highly effective model. The eyes are generally our first contact point with another, and in that instant, we start to feel what another person might be like. With just a look, it is possible to convey despair, rage, hatred, pity, affection and happiness, and all that from a fleeting glance! This book provides a unique insight into the secret depths of the iris. Behavioural Iridology will be an essential guide for those interested in the practical application of both schools of iridology.

Although the significance of '9/11' is subject to debate, it is symbolic of a general sentiment of discontinuity whereby society is vulnerable to undefined and highly disruptive events. Recent catalysts of this sentiment are eye-catching developments such as the SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) and bird flu outbreaks, the Enron and Parmalat scandals, political assassinations in Sweden and the Netherlands, regime changes in Iraq and Afghanistan, and terrorist attacks in Bali, Istanbul, Madrid, and various parts of the Middle East. However, recent discontinuities should not be seen as evidence that discontinuities occur more frequently now than they did before. Looking back in history we see that disruptive processes are common. For example, 25 years ago few Europeans would have predicted the upcoming upheavals on their own continent: the collapse of communism, Berlin as the capital of a reunited Germany, the wars in the former Yugoslavia, the single European currency, and the near doubling of the number of European Union member states. Changes elsewhere have been no less discontinuous and unforeseen: the fall of the Asian tigers, the emergence of the Internet and mobile telecommunication, and the presidency of Nelson Mandela. Societal discontinuity is a relatively new area of concern in policy development. Since the 1970s the consideration of change and discontinuity has gained some ground over predictive forecasting, which tended to reason from continuous developments and linear processes. Rather than making forecasting the future, it has become popular to use scenarios as a manner to consider several possible futures. Scenarios are coherent descriptions of alternative hypothetical futures that reflect different perspectives on past, present, and future developments, which can serve as a basis for action. Scenario development aims to combine analytical knowledge with creative thinking in an effort to capture a wide range of possible future developments in a limited number of outlooks. Scenario development assumes that the future is uncertain and the directions in which current developments might range from the conventional to the revolutionary. In theory, scenario development is a way to consider future discontinuity. However, there are indications that the theoretical promise is not reflected in scenario practice. Research has shown that scenarios do not consider the idea of discontinuity as a matter of course. In our research, we found that a scenario study would benefit from efforts to create and foster a 'culture of curiosity' for exploring the future and the possible discontinuities rather than simply commissioning a scenario study to provide insights about the future. Only then can one read the writing on the wall of future developments.

Ortner's Identification of Pathological Conditions in Human Skeletal Remains, Third Edition, provides an integrated and comprehensive treatment of the pathological conditions that affect the human skeleton. As ancient skeletal remains can reveal a treasure trove of information to the modern orthopedist, pathologist, forensic anthropologist, and radiologist, this book presents a timely resource. Beautifully illustrated with over 1,100 photographs and drawings, it provides an essential text and material on bone pathology, thus helping improve the diagnostic ability of those interested in human dry bone pathology. - Presents a comprehensive review of the skeletal diseases encountered in archaeological human remains - Includes more than 1100 photographs and line drawings illustrating skeletal diseases, including both microscopic and gross features - Based on extensive research on skeletal paleopathology in many countries - Reviews important theoretical issues on how to interpret evidence of skeletal disease in archaeological human populations