The Dead Zone

Set in the fictional town of Castle Rock, Maine A #1 New York Times bestseller about a man who wakes up from a five-year coma able to see people’s futures and the terrible fate awaiting mankind—a “compulsive page-turner” (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution). Johnny Smith awakens from a five-year coma after his car accident and discovers that he can see people’s futures and pasts when he touches them. Many consider his talent a gift; Johnny feels cursed. His fiancée married another man during his coma and people clamor for him to solve their problems. When Johnny has a disturbing vision after he shakes the hand of an ambitious and amoral politician, he must decide if he should take drastic action to change the future. With “powerful tension that holds the reader to the story like a pin to a magnet” (The Houston Post), The Dead Zone is a “faultlessly paced…continuously engrossing” (Los Angeles Times) novel of second sight.

'An honest, compelling and important account, and a critical plea for a fusion of farming, food and nature to provide global ecological security' CHRIS PACKHAM Why are so many animals facing extinction? Climate change and poaching are not the only culprits. The impact of consumer demand for cheap meat is equally devastating, and it is vital that we confront this problem if we are to stand a chance of reducing its effect on the world around us. · We are falsely led to believe that squeezing animals into factory farms and cultivating crops in vast, chemical-soaked prairies is a necessary evil, an efficient means of providing for an ever-expanding global population while leaving land free for wildlife · Our planet's resources are reaching breaking point: awareness is slowly building that the wellbeing of society depends on a thriving natural world From the author of the internationally acclaimed Farmageddon, Dead Zone takes us on an eye-opening journey across the globe, focussing on a dozen iconic species - from elephants to bumblebees to penguins - and looking at the role that industrial farming is playing in their plight.

Times are tough for shrimpers and fishers in the Gulf of Mexico. The animals they rely on for their livelihood are harder to find. Every summer a dead zone—a region of low oxygen—emerges in the waters along the Gulf Coast. Where oxygen is low, fish and others animals cannot survive. Currently the world has more than 400 identified dead zones, up dramatically from the 49 dead zones identified in the 1960's.The good news is that people can eliminate dead zones by changing agricultural practices and reducing pollution. Using real-world examples, this book looks at the impact of pollution on global water resources, and discusses the interconnectedness of ecosystems and organisms.

Dead zones are on the rise... Human activity has caused an increase in uninhabitable, oxygen-poor zones--also known as "dead zones"--in our waters. Oxygen is the third most abundant element in the universe, and it is a necessity for nearly all life on Earth. Yet many rivers, estuaries, coastal waters, and parts of the open ocean lack enough of it. In this book, David L. Kirchman explains the impacts of dead zones and provides an in-depth history of oxygen loss in water. He details the role the agricultural industry plays in water pollution, showcasing how fertilizers contaminate water supplies and kickstart harmful algal blooms in local lakes, reservoirs, and coastal oceans. Algae decomposition requires so much oxygen that levels drop low enough to kill fish, destroy bottom-dwelling biota, reduce biological diversity, and rearrange food webs. We can't undo the damage completely, but we can work together to reduce the size and intensity of dead zones in places like the Gulf of Mexico, Chesapeake Bay, and the Baltic Sea. Not only does Kirchman clearly outline what dead zones mean for humanity, he also supplies ways we can reduce their deadly impact on human and aquatic life. Nutrient pollution in some regions has already begun to decline because of wastewater treatment, buffer zones, cover crops, and precision agriculture. More needs to be done, though, to reduce the harmful impact of existing dead zones and to stop the thousands of new ones from cropping up in our waters. Kirchman provides insight into the ways changing our diet can reduce nutrient pollution while also lowering greenhouse gasses emitted by the agricultural industry. Individuals can do something positive for their health and the world around them. The resulting book allows readers interested in the environment--whether students, policymakers, ecosystem managers, or science buffs--to dive into these deadly zones and discover how they can help mitigate the harmful effects of oxygen-poor waters today.

Johnny Smith is an ordinary young man with an engaging grin, a talent for teaching, and a new girl. As he takes Sarah to a carnival, life looks very good. But is his bizarre run of luck on the Wheel of Fortune really a blessing?

The poetry compilation is that of an amateur's works from years of misleading and misguided endeavors and pursuits of love and happiness. It is a self-published disaster waiting to be shared and hated or loved by the masses. It is a truly unpolished raw re-telling of one's horrific bad luck and broken memories. There are some doses of happy, however, in order to remedy the rocking of the boat.

This text is an introduction to Simulink, a companion application to MATLAB. It is written for students at the undergraduate and graduate programs, as well as for the working professional. Although some previous knowledge of MATLAB would be helpful, it is not absolutely necessary; Appendix A of this text is an Introduction to MATLAB to enable the reader to begin learning both MATLAB and Simulink to perform graphical computations and programming.Chapters 2 through 18 describe the blocks of all Simulink libraries. Their application is illustrated with practical examples through Simulink models, some of which are supplemented with MATLAB functions, commands, and statements. Chapters 1 and 19 contain several Simulink models to illustrate various applied math and engineering applications. Appendix B is an introduction to difference equations as they apply to discrete?{time systems, and Appendix C introduces the reader to random generation procedures.This text supplements our Numerical Analysis with MATLAB and Spreadsheet Applications, ISBN 0-9709511-1-6. It is self-contained; the blocks of each library are described in an orderly fashion that is consistent with Simulink!|s documentation. This arrangement provides insight into how a model is used and how its parts interact with each another.Like MATLAB, Simulink can be used with both linear and nonlinear systems, which can be modeled in continuous time, sample time, or a hybrid of these. Examples are provided in this text.Most of the examples presented in this book can be implemented with the Student Versions of MATLAB and Simulink. A few may require the full versions of these outstanding packages, and can be skipped. Some add?{ons, known as Toolboxes and Blocksets can be obtained from The MathWorks, Inc., 3 Apple Hill Drive, Natick, MA 01760?{2098, USA, www.mathworks.com.

This text describes the design and implementation of high-performance feedback controllers for engineering systems. It emphasizes the frequency-domain design and methods based on Bode integrals, loop shaping and nonlinear dynamic compensation. The book also supplies numerous problems with practcal applications, illustrations and plots, together with MATLAB simulation and design examples.

Automatic Control of Atmospheric and Space Flight Vehicles is perhaps the first book on the market to present a unified and straightforward study of the design and analysis of automatic control systems for both atmospheric and space flight vehicles. Covering basic control theory and design concepts, it is meant as a textbook for senior undergraduate and graduate students in modern courses on flight control systems. In addition to the basics of flight control, this book covers a number of upper-level topics and will therefore be of interest not only to advanced students, but also to researchers and practitioners in aeronautical engineering, applied mathematics, and systems/control theory.

Sigma delta modulation has become a very useful and widely applied technique for high performance Analog-to-Digital (A/D) conversion of narrow band signals. Through the use of oversampling and negative feedback, the quantization errors of a coarse quantizer are suppressed in a narrow signal band in the output of the modulator. Bandpass sigma delta modulation is well suited for A/D conversion of narrow band signals modulated on a carrier, as occurs in communication systems such as AM/FM receivers and mobile phones. Due to the nonlinearity of the quantizer in the feedback loop, a sigma delta modulator may exhibit input signal dependent stability properties. The same combination of the nonlinearity and the feedback loop complicates the stability analysis. In Bandpass Sigma Delta Modulators, the describing function method is used to analyze the stability of the sigma delta modulator. The linear gain model commonly used for the quantizer fails to predict small signal stability properties and idle patterns accurately. In Bandpass Sigma Delta Modulators an improved model for the quantizer is introduced, extending the linear gain model with a phase shift. Analysis shows that the phase shift of a sampled quantizer is in fact a phase uncertainty. Stability analysis of sigma delta modulators using the extended model allows accurate prediction of idle patterns and calculation of small-signal stability boundaries for loop filter parameters. A simplified rule of thumb is derived and applied to bandpass sigma delta modulators. The stability properties have a considerable impact on the design of single-loop, one-bit, high-order continuous-time bandpass sigma delta modulators. The continuous-time bandpass loop filter structure should have sufficient degrees of freedom to implement the desired (small-signal stable) sigma delta modulator behavior. Bandpass Sigma Delta Modulators will be of interest to practicing engineers and researchers in the areas of mixed-signal and analog integrated circuit design.

This book presents the proceedings of the 17th Chinese Intelligent Systems Conference, held in Fuzhou, China, on Oct 16-17, 2021. It focuses on new theoretical results and techniques in the field of intelligent systems and control. This is achieved by providing in-depth study on a number of major topics such as Multi-Agent Systems, Complex Networks, Intelligent Robots, Complex System Theory and Swarm Behavior, Event-Triggered Control and Data-Driven Control, Robust and Adaptive Control, Big Data and Brain Science, Process Control, Intelligent Sensor and Detection Technology, Deep learning and Learning Control Guidance, Navigation and Control of Flight Vehicles and so on. The book is particularly suited for readers who are interested in learning intelligent system and control and artificial intelligence. The book can benefit researchers, engineers, and graduate students.

This book presents refereed proceedings of the First International Conference on Neural Computing for Advanced Applications, NCAA 2020, held in July, 2020. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic the conference was held online. The 36 full papers and 7 short papers were thorougly reviewed and selected from a total of 113 qualified submissions. The papers present resent research on such topics as neural network theory, and cognitive sciences, machine learning, data mining, data security & privacy protection, and data-driven applications, computational intelligence, nature-inspired optimizers, and their engineering applications, cloud/edge/fog computing, the Internet of Things/Vehicles (IoT/IoV), and their system optimization, control systems, network synchronization, system integration, and industrial artificial intelligence, fuzzy logic, neuro-fuzzy systems, decision making, and their applications in management sciences, computer vision, image processing, and their industrial applications, and natural language processing, machine translation, knowledge graphs, and their applications.

These proceedings present selected research papers from CISC’16, held in Xiamen, China. The topics include Multi-agent system, Evolutionary Computation, Artificial Intelligence, Complex systems, Computation intelligence and soft computing, Intelligent control, Advanced control technology, Robotics and applications, Intelligent information processing, Iterative learning control, Machine Learning, and etc. Engineers and researchers from academia, industry, and government can get an insight view of the solutions combining ideas from multiple disciplines in the field of intelligent systems.

This text summarises current scientific methods for the assessment of human physiological fitness. The authors provide a rationale for methods of assessment, examine the limitations of some methods and provide details of alternative techniques.

ANOXIA defines the lack of free molecular oxygen in an environment. In the presence of organic matter, anaerobic prokaryotes produce compounds such as free radicals, hydrogen sulfide, or methane that are typically toxic to aerobes. The concomitance of suppressed respiration and presence of toxic substances suggests these habitats are inhospitable to Eukaryota. Ecologists sometimes term such environments 'Death Zones'. This book presents, however, a collection of remarkable adaptations to anoxia, observed in Eukaryotes such as protists, animals, plants and fungi. Case studies provide evidence for controlled beneficial use of anoxia by, for example, modification of free radicals, use of alternative electron donors for anaerobic metabolic pathways, and employment of anaerobic symbionts. The complex, interwoven existence of oxic and anoxic conditions in space and time is also highlighted as is the idea that eukaryotic inhabitation of anoxic habitats was established early in Earth history.

Erster Roman des Castle-Rock-Zyklus Johnny erwacht nach fünf Jahren aus dem Koma und besitzt auf einmal hellseherische Fähigkeiten. Als er einem Politiker die Hand schüttelt, hat er die Vision, dass dieser als zukünftiger US-Präsident den Dritten Weltkrieg auslösen wird. Johnny ringt mit seinem Gewissen und beschließt ein Attentat ...

This book showcases new theoretical findings and techniques in the field of intelligent systems and control. It presents in-depth studies on a number of major topics, including: Multi-Agent Systems, Complex Networks, Intelligent Robots, Complex System Theory and Swarm Behavior, Event-Triggered Control and Data-Driven Control, Robust and Adaptive Control, Big Data and Brain Science, Process Control, Intelligent Sensor and Detection Technology, Deep learning and Learning Control, Guidance, Navigation and Control of Aerial Vehicles, and so on. Given its scope, the book will benefit all researchers, engineers, and graduate students who want to learn about cutting-edge advances in intelligent systems, intelligent control, and artificial intelligence.

Here is a laboratory workbook filled with interesting and challenging projects for digital logic design and embedded systems classes. The workbook introduces you to fully integrated modern CAD tools, logic simulation, logic synthesis using hardware description languages, design hierarchy, current generation field programmable gate array technology, and SoPC design. Projects cover such areas as serial communications, state machines with video output, video games and graphics, robotics, pipelined RISC processor cores, and designing computer systems using a commercial processor core.