The Anthony-nominated collection of crime stories without guns—the collection we didn't want to be necessary—is back for Volume 2. Two dozen more crime writers have come together to raise their voices and take pen in hand to call for a sensible and reasoned debate about guns in America. As the mass shootings continue, the avoidable accidents, the suicides, the gun violence that consumes our country rolls on unabated and unaddressed by our leadership other than to say, “Now is not the time to discuss it,” these crime writers have chosen to start the dialogue. In stories of crime, mystery and suspense these authors have left the guns out to show for a short while that we can do without them and the plot doesn’t fall apart. Maybe, in a small way, we can show that the American way of life doesn’t cease to be, either. Not anti-gun, Unloaded Vol. 2 is pro-reason. These authors comprise gun owners and non-owners, voters on both sides of the political aisle. The cause that unites us all is the desire to see the senseless killing stop and to be able to have the discussion without the divisive language, vitriol and name calling that too often accompanies this debate. The top priority in these stories is to entertain with thrilling action and suspense that readers know and love about a crime story. To do so without guns leads to some creative leaps from writers who spin tales of simians on the loose, androids with buried secrets, punk rock shows and tattoo shops. Bestselling authors like Chris Holm, Lori Rader-Day, Bill Crider, Laura McHugh, James Ziskin and John Rector along with many more join together to call for an end to the needless violence and a start to a reasoned debate. With a forward by legendary Sara Paretsky, Unloaded Vol. 2 is a book we wish wasn’t needed. But staying silent is no longer an option. Proceeds go to the non-profit States United To Prevent Gun Violence. Praise for UNLOADED VOLUME 2: “[A collection of] entertaining and often thought-provoking stories.” —Publishers Weekly

This Research Topic is Volume II of a series. The previous volume can be found here: Physico-Mechanical Properties and Treatment Technology of Hazardous Geomaterials New materials and technologies are emerging in every branch of geotechnical engineerings, such as high-speed railway subgrade, soil improvement and remediation, underground space structure, ground energy storage, energy pile, energy geostructure, energy tunnel, tunnel waterproof engineering, and marine engineering. In addition to the common infrastructure construction materials, it also includes the treatment of hazardous geomaterials, resource utilization of industrial wastes, geopolymer materials, contaminated soils related to geoenvironmental engineering as well as other newly developed materials. In recent years, the advancement of new materials has promoted the development of geotechnical engineering and its close intersection with other disciplines. Scholars have done fruitful work, but the understanding of many new materials is not very clear. Moreover, the external environment (e.g., heat, water, external force) borne by various materials is becoming more and more complex. The newly developed geotechnical materials involve the coupling actions of multiple fields such as physics, mechanics, chemistry and even biology. Some new technologies and specifications are still developing. For this purpose, it is necessary to investigate the mineral composition and micro-structures, physico-mechanical properties, deformation and strength evolution process, and constitutive characteristics of various geotechnical materials. The research methods include theoretical description, numerical simulation, laboratory experiments and field tests. The Research Topic aims to bring together Original Research and Review articles on the recent developments in natural geotechnical material improvement, hazardous geomaterials, synthetic materials, geopolymer, energy geotechnical materials and contaminated soil treatment.

The Collected Works of Witness Lee, 1980, volume 2, contains messages given by Brother Witness Lee from January 10 through November 30. Some of the messages were given in 1981 and in 1984. Until the end of January 1980, Brother Lee ministered in Anaheim, California. On the last weekend in January he visited San Diego, California, and then returned to Anaheim. On a weekend in the middle of February he traveled to San Francisco, California. He returned to Anaheim and remained there until the middle of March, at which time he visited Denver, Colorado, and Albuquerque, New Mexico, for four days. During the entire month of April Brother Lee traveled to Stuttgart, Germany, and Copenhagen, Denmark, after which he visited Boston, Massachusetts, and New York City before returning to Anaheim. Brother Lee ministered in Seattle, Washington, over the Memorial Day weekend near the end of May, and he returned to Anaheim and remained there, except for a one-day visit to Fullerton, until the end of August. He then held a weekend conference in Cleveland, Ohio, after which he returned to Anaheim and ministered there until the middle of September. On the third weekend in September Brother Lee ministered in Spokane, Washington, and returned to Anaheim. On the first weekend in October he visited Berkeley, California, for two days, and then he returned to Anaheim, where he remained until the middle of October. He ministered in Miami, Florida, on the third weekend in October, and he remained there for rest through the second weekend in November. He returned to Anaheim and ministered there until the end of the year. The contents of this volume are divided into seven sections, as follows: 1. Sixteen messages given to the serving ones in the Living Stream Ministry office in Anaheim, California, on January 10 through November 13. These messages are included in this volume under the title Fellowship with Serving Ones. 2. Ten messages given in Stuttgart, Germany, on April 4 through 13. They were previously published in a book entitled The Heavenly Ministry of Christ and are included in this volume under the same title. 3. Twelve messages given in Stuttgart, Germany, on April 5 through 13, 1980, and in Anaheim, California, on April 17 and 18, 1981. They were previously published in a book entitled The Completing Ministry of Paul and are included in this volume under the same title. 4. Sixteen messages given in three conferences: five messages given in Copenhagen, Denmark, on April 18 through 20; five messages given in New York City on April 25 through 27; and six messages given in Seattle, Washington, on May 23 through 26. These messages were arranged into a seventeen-chapter book and were previously published under the title The Mending Ministry of John. They are included in this volume under the same title. 5. Five messages given in an elders' training in Anaheim, California, on June 23 and 24. They are included in this volume under the title The Experience of Christ Revealed in Philippians Meeting the Present Need of the Churches. 6. Four messages given to a group of leading brothers in Cleveland, Ohio, on August 29 through September 1. These messages are included in this volume under the title Presenting the Truth to Others, Responding to Opposition, and Fighting for the Lord's Recovery. 7. Eleven messages given in two conferences: seven messages were given in Tokyo, Japan, on October 14 through 17, 1984, and four messages were given in Anaheim, California, on November 27 through 30, 1980. These messages were previously published in a book entitled The Secret of Experiencing Christ and are included in this volume under the same title.

This revised edition puts the most current information about gas-handling systems and facilities at your fingertips. The authors channeled their classroom and field experience into this volume, which features many new sections such as:* Heat recovery units* Kinetic inhibitors and anti-agglomerators* Trays and packing for distillation and absorption towers* Compressor valves* Foundation design considerations for reciprocating compressors* Pressure vessel issues and components * Nox reduction in engines and turbines* Safety management systemsThis book walks you through the equipment and processes used in gas-handling operations to help you design and manage a production facility. Production engineers will keep this volume on the desktop for the latest information on how to DESIGN, SPECIFY, and OPERATE gas-handling systems and facilities. The book allows engineers with little or background in production facility design to easily locate details about equipment, processes, and design parameters. With this volume, you will more completely comprehend the techniques of handling produced fluids from gas wells so your facility can be more efficient and productive.* Revised edition puts the most current information about gas-handling systems at your fingertips* Features brand new sections!

This fifth volume on Advances and Applications of DSmT for Information Fusion collects theoretical and applied contributions of researchers working in different fields of applications and in mathematics, and is available in open-access. The collected contributions of this volume have either been published or presented after disseminating the fourth volume in 2015 (available at fs.unm.edu/DSmT-book4.pdf or www.onera.fr/sites/default/files/297/2015-DSmT-Book4.pdf) in international conferences, seminars, workshops and journals, or they are new. The contributions of each part of this volume are chronologically ordered. First Part of this book presents some theoretical advances on DSmT, dealing mainly with modified Proportional Conflict Redistribution Rules (PCR) of combination with degree of intersection, coarsening techniques, interval calculus for PCR thanks to set inversion via interval analysis (SIVIA), rough set classifiers, canonical decomposition of dichotomous belief functions, fast PCR fusion, fast inter-criteria analysis with PCR, and improved PCR5 and PCR6 rules preserving the (quasi-)neutrality of (quasi-)vacuous belief assignment in the fusion of sources of evidence with their Matlab codes. Because more applications of DSmT have emerged in the past years since the apparition of the fourth book of DSmT in 2015, the second part of this volume is about selected applications of DSmT mainly in building change detection, object recognition, quality of data association in tracking, perception in robotics, risk assessment for torrent protection and multi-criteria decision-making, multi-modal image fusion, coarsening techniques, recommender system, levee characterization and assessment, human heading perception, trust assessment, robotics, biometrics, failure detection, GPS systems, inter-criteria analysis, group decision, human activity recognition, storm prediction, data association for autonomous vehicles, identification of maritime vessels, fusion of support vector machines (SVM), Silx-Furtif RUST code library for information fusion including PCR rules, and network for ship classification. Finally, the third part presents interesting contributions related to belief functions in general published or presented along the years since 2015. These contributions are related with decision-making under uncertainty, belief approximations, probability transformations, new distances between belief functions, non-classical multi-criteria decision-making problems with belief functions, generalization of Bayes theorem, image processing, data association, entropy and cross-entropy measures, fuzzy evidence numbers, negator of belief mass, human activity recognition, information fusion for breast cancer therapy, imbalanced data classification, and hybrid techniques mixing deep learning with belief functions as well. We want to thank all the contributors of this fifth volume for their research works and their interests in the development of DSmT, and the belief functions. We are grateful as well to other colleagues for encouraging us to edit this fifth volume, and for sharing with us several ideas and for their questions and comments on DSmT through the years. We thank the International Society of Information Fusion (www.isif.org) for diffusing main research works related to information fusion (including DSmT) in the international fusion conferences series over the years. Florentin Smarandache is grateful to The University of New Mexico, U.S.A., that many times partially sponsored him to attend international conferences, workshops and seminars on Information Fusion. Jean Dezert is grateful to the Department of Information Processing and Systems (DTIS) of the French Aerospace Lab (Office National d’E´tudes et de Recherches Ae´rospatiales), Palaiseau, France, for encouraging him to carry on this research and for its financial support. Albena Tchamova is first of all grateful to Dr. Jean Dezert for the opportunity to be involved during more than 20 years to follow and share his smart and beautiful visions and ideas in the development of the powerful Dezert-Smarandache Theory for data fusion. She is also grateful to the Institute of Information and Communication Technologies, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, for sponsoring her to attend international conferences on Information Fusion.

When Jack was six years old, his parents were brutally slain by a serial killer. The police later found drifter Clyde Colsen driving a stolen car, his clothes soaked in blood. He was tried, convicted and executed. Jack grew up knowing the police got their man. Now a decorated homicide detective in New Rhodes, Jack arrives at the third crime scene of the “South End Killer” murders and finds his name. He will soon find out something else: thirty years ago, they got the wrong guy. And now the right guy’s come back to pay Jack and New Rhodes his bloody respects. As Jack struggles to stay on the case, his cat-and-mouse game with the killer makes him wonder if he’s the cat or the mouse. His family and everyone in his life is fair game. As the killer escalates and threatens the entire city, Jack has a question he must answer in his desperation: can he stop the monster without becoming one? Praise for WELCOME BACK, JACK: “I’ve been following Liam Sweeny’s writing career for several years. He started out pretty good and now—with Welcome Back, Jack —he’s become smokin’ good! I predict this novel will propel him to the highest ranks of novelists writing police procedurals. That may look like I’m climbing out on a limb and if so, it’s an extremely stout and solid limb. This ranks with the best of the genre and Sweeny is poised to become a writer of the highest rank. Remember his name—you’re going to be seeing it a lot.” —Les Edgerton, author of The Genuine, Imitation, Plastic Kidnapping, The Rapist, The Bitch and others “A new dark, very dark star has appeared in the noir spectrum and what a star it is. Welcome Back, Jack is the real deal, as down and deliciously dirty as it gets but with a wonderful fresh style and artistry that is as compelling as it is addictive. This is one hell of a start to what promises to be a unique series.” —Ken Bruen, author of the Jack Taylor series “When a triple homicide in New Rhodes bears worrisome similarities to one from police officer, Jack LeClere’s, childhood, nothing can stop him from following the sinewy clues to their horrific conclusion. As long as writers like Liam Sweeny can work the police procedural to such great affect, readers will follow Jack back to the gritty streets of New Rhodes gladly. Sweeny’s writes beautifully and Welcome Back, Jack is full of memorable characters. Claustrophobics beware!” —Patricia Abbot, author of Concrete Angel “Equal parts police procedural and psycho-thriller, Liam Sweeny reinvents a genre with Welcome Back, Jack. When serial killing gets personal, Jack LeClere is dragged underground into the past. Literally. With crisp, taut dialogue, fast-paced action, and more plot twists than the subterranean tunnels Jack must navigate to earn redemption, Sweeny taps into modern-day, urban paranoia, mining the best of Ellroy, Cain, and Westlake. Sweeny pays homage while tearing up some serious new ground.” —Joe Clifford, author of Lamentation and December Boys “Do yourself a favor: Before you start reading Welcome Back, Jack, clear your schedule. You’re not going to be able to stop until you’ve seen it through to the explosive finale.” —Rob Hart, author of New Yorked

The definitive guide to unsaturated soil— from the world's experts on the subject This book builds upon and substantially updates Fredlund and Rahardjo's publication, Soil Mechanics for Unsaturated Soils, the current standard in the field of unsaturated soils. It provides readers with more thorough coverage of the state of the art of unsaturated soil behavior and better reflects the manner in which practical unsaturated soil engineering problems are solved. Retaining the fundamental physics of unsaturated soil behavior presented in the earlier book, this new publication places greater emphasis on the importance of the "soil-water characteristic curve" in solving practical engineering problems, as well as the quantification of thermal and moisture boundary conditions based on the use of weather data. Topics covered include: Theory to Practice of Unsaturated Soil Mechanics Nature and Phase Properties of Unsaturated Soil State Variables for Unsaturated Soils Measurement and Estimation of State Variables Soil-Water Characteristic Curves for Unsaturated Soils Ground Surface Moisture Flux Boundary Conditions Theory of Water Flow through Unsaturated Soils Solving Saturated/Unsaturated Water Flow Problems Air Flow through Unsaturated Soils Heat Flow Analysis for Unsaturated Soils Shear Strength of Unsaturated Soils Shear Strength Applications in Plastic and Limit Equilibrium Stress-Deformation Analysis for Unsaturated Soils Solving Stress-Deformation Problems with Unsaturated Soils Compressibility and Pore Pressure Parameters Consolidation and Swelling Processes in Unsaturated Soils Unsaturated Soil Mechanics in Engineering Practice is essential reading for geotechnical engineers, civil engineers, and undergraduate- and graduate-level civil engineering students with a focus on soil mechanics.

As pharmaceutical companies strive to develop safer medicines at a lower cost, they must keep pace with the rapid growth of technology and research methodologies. Defying the misconception of process chemistry as mere scale-up work, Process Chemistry in the Pharmaceutical Industry, Vol. 2: Challenges in an Ever Changing Climate explor