Most Popular Books by Brendan James

This book describes several enlightening and heartwarming occurrences experienced by young Ned Bradford one Christmas Eve, as well as some of the life changing results for the people involved.

Information divulged during a seemingly innocent conversation on board an overnight ferry to Spain results in a situation which snowballs out of control, especially when greed rears its ugly head. But who polices crime at sea? And why does a policeman from the Metropolitan Police become involved?

Any task requires a strategy and learning a foreign language is no exception. By following the advice in The Second Language Learner''s Handbook, you should be able to achieve your objectives faster.

A widower struggling to come to terms with the passing of his beloved spouse is confronted with a serious dilemma when a handwritten letter containing sensitive information about his late wife arrives out of the blue. A full-length play for 5 actors.

This book is a collector''s guide for all Pink Floyd fans around the world. Included you will find track listings on more than 800 vinyl albums, vinyl singles, CD albums, CD singles, some promos, 8-Track tapes, Cassette tapes. Most release dates and catalog numbers are listed, with recordings released from more than 25 countries included. B & W cover art illustrations throughout the book. is a must have guide for any Pink Floyd Fan!

After yet another failed relationship, and heading towards middle age, John is left wondering why he has so much bad luck with women. He begins to look back over his life and realizes that it could be him that is the problem, and not his girlfriends. After much deliberation, he reaches a conclusion and decides to make a drastic change to his personal life. He goes to visit his gay friend Bob to make an announcement and to ask if he can help in some way.

Stephen and Claire have decided to live in a caravan while their new house is being built by Stickings, a local builder. Everything appears normal until Stickings makes a gruesome discovery during the excavation works

In recent years scholars have discussed the role of communication in the Roman political system. These studies have focused mostly on major public events like votes and contiones. This study will add to that discussion by looking at word-of-mouth communication. Rome’s political elite formed information networks to spread news and took great care that their public events like contiones and ludi were well attended and made news. Rome’s non-elite lived in a thriving city that encouraged the movement of people and information. Using theories taken from communications studies, sociology and the spatial turn of archeology, this study will examine the way information was spread after public events. The Roman elite relied on word-of-mouth to ensure that their reputations grew and their agendas received public support. They took great care to ensure that their public events would become news by encouraging favorable audiences to share accounts of the events with their peers. Sharing news, therefore, would have been an integral way from Romans to participate in politics.

The importance of sustainable financial management of water and wastewater pipeline infrastructure has grown in recent years due to the increasing backlog of maintenance, renewal and replacement of aging water and wastewater infrastructure. As the water and wastewater infrastructure age, the condition of the water and wastewater infrastructure will continue to deteriorate increasing the cost for renewal and replacement. In response to the aging and deteriorating potable water and wastewater infrastructure Public Sector Accounting Board PS3150 and Regulation 453/07 under the Ontario Safe Drinking Water Act were established. PS3150 requires local governments to report their tangible capital assets along with their depreciation on financial statements. One key component of this reporting is determining the need for and cost of the replacement of these assets. Ontario Regulation 453/07 requires public utilities to prepare and submit long term financial plans for water systems. One key principle of the financial plans is that the expenses of operating water systems should be paid by revenues generated from providing the water systems. A crucial aspect of PS3150, Ontario regulation 453/07 and the financial management of water and wastewater infrastructure are accurate estimates of future capital works construction prices. Historically, construction indices are used to forecast construction prices. Engineering New Record (ENR) Construction Cost Index (CCI), Federal Highway Administration (FWHA) composite National Highway Construction Cost Index (NHCCI) and Consumer Price Index (CPI) have been used to estimate future construction prices of water and wastewater infrastructure in Canada. However, these indices do not accurately represent the circumstance of the water and wastewater infrastructure construction sector, which can lead to errors and inaccuracies in construction price forecasts. It is recommended sector specific construction indices be used to forecast construction prices. However, there are few construction indices available for the water and wastewater infrastructure sector and available indices are not based on actual construction data. This thesis presents a methodology to accurately estimate future construction prices for water and wastewater pipeline capital works based on actual construction price data. The methodology contains three components: construction data processing, development of unit price indices for watermain and sanitary sewer construction, and estimation of inflation in watermain and sanitary sewer construction. The data processing component cleans and transforms actual construction price data from the City of Niagara Falls from 1981 to 2014 into a centralized, organized and auditable construction price dataset. Based on the construction price dataset, unit price indices specific to the watermain and sanitary sewer construction sector were developed. Unit price indices were developed and calculated for watermain projects, pipes, valves, and hydrants, and sanitary sewer projects, pipes, and maintenance holes. Geometric Brownian Motion was used to estimate inflation in and forecast future construction prices for watermain and sanitary sewer capital works construction based on the developed unit price indices. A Microsoft Access relational database containing the data processing function, calculation of watermain and sanitary sewer unit price indices, and estimation of inflation was developed to improve the accuracy, efficiency and consistency of the methodology. Additionally, the methodology allows contractor markup in watermain and sanitary sewer construction and factors influencing watermain and sanitary sewer unit price indices to be examined. The inflation of watermain reference project construction is 5.79% per annum from 1982-2014, while the inflation of sanitary sewer reference project capital works construction is 4.66% per annum from 1981-2014. The inflation rates of watermain pipe, valve and hydrant construction from 1982-2014 are 6.36%, 5.09%, and 2.81% per annum, respectively. The inflation rates of sanitary sewer pipe and maintenance hole construction from 1981-2014 are 7.41% and 5.25% per annum, respectively. Inflation of watermain and sanitary sewer reference projects is above inflation of CPI, NRBCPI and LDCCT at 2.25%, 3.17% and 3.77% per annum, respectively, but below inflation of S&P/TSX composite index at 6.90% per annum. This indicates when forecasting future prices within a construction sector, the use of a proxy index will result in inaccurate estimates of future construction prices. In the water and wastewater pipeline construction sector the use of CPI, NRBCPI or LDCCT will result in significant underestimation of future construction prices. To obtain accurate estimates of future construction prices it is important to use sector specific indices which the developed unit price indices represent for the water and wastewater pipeline construction sector. In this thesis contractor markup is defined as a financial premium in excess of market inflation in the form of a per annum interest rate surcharge. Contractor markup includes risk premiums, overhead and profit. The contractor markups for watermain and sanitary sewer projects are 3.54% and 2.41%, respectively. As the number of tender bids submitted for a project increase, the unit price of reference projects generally decreases. This is caused by an increase in the competition among contractors resulting in a decrease in the unit prices of the reference projects as bidders attempt to win the project. The Infrastructure Stimulus Fund increased the total number of projects and the total value of projects in 2009 and 2010 but did not significantly alter the watermain and sanitary sewer unit price indices.

This is the extension of project involving educating a local corporation on Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard compliance, widely known as "PCI compliance." PCI compliance is a matter of adhering to the pseudo-regulatory standard of a consortium of payment card companies. Any company which accepts payment cards - including the ubiquitous credit card - must be compliant or face fines from the payment card companies and liability in the event of a data breach. This is the written result of this project, made anonymous. It makes the business case for PCI compliance, and then explains the mechanics of attaining compliance. This article is suitable for any organization that has an eCommerce front that they outsource. Doing so significantly reduces their exposure, as is explained.

Glycosaminoglycans are linear polysaccharides that decorate the surfaces of all animal cells. The heterogeneity of the polysaccharide, especially the pattern of sulfation on the distal end of the chain, endows these glycans with diverse biological functions including essential roles in signaling during animal development. Thus, glycosaminoglycans represent an extremely important and interesting class of glycans to probe using metabolic labeling in concert with bioorthogonal chemistry. This thesis describes the extension of the metabolic labeling strategy to glycosaminoglycans (GAGs). Prior to the work described herein, GAGs could not be metabolically labeled because xylose, the monosaccharide specific to these glycans, lacks a salvage or biosynthetic pathway capable of converting xylose derivatives, or other simple sugars, to the ultimate sugar donor UDP-xylose. In order to label GAGs, the UDP-xylose derivative itself must be delivered to cells. However, the charged nature of nucleotide sugars prevents passive diffusion through hydrophobic membranes, and eukaryotic cells lack a plasma membrane nucleotide sugar transporter to provide facilitated or active transport. Prior research in our lab, however, had demonstrated that unnatural nucleotide sugars could be delivered to cells by microinjection into the yolk sacs of developing zebrafish embryos. In addition to providing a tractable solution to deliver nucleotide sugars, zebrafish are a well-established vertebrate development model organism with excellent properties for molecular imaging. It was hypothesized that GAGs could be metabolically labeled by microinjecting unnatural variants of UDP-xylose into zebrafish embryos. To this end, three analogs of UDP-xylose were synthesized, microinjected into zebrafish embryos, and analyzed for incorporation onto zebrafish embryo cell surfaces by reaction with fluorescent cyclooctyne probes. Two of the analogs, UDP-2-XylAz and UDP-3-XylAz, did not provide azide-dependent labeling. UDP-4-XylAz did provide azide-dependent labeling, and the azide replacing the C-4 hydroxyl group inhibits extension of the GAG polysaccharide beyond the initial xylose unit. Therefore, UDP-4-XylAz functions as a selective metabolic inhibitor of GAG biosynthesis. The phenotypic consequences of aberrant GAG production were ascertained and these results add to our understanding of the importance of GAGs during normal vertebrate development.

Currently, virtual world governance is the product of end user license agreements, contracts which attempt to provide a complete legal and enforcement system to the virtual world. This method of governance is flawed, however, and results in participant frustration. Alternative approaches that have been advanced so far include governmental regulation, which has begun in some countries. However, numerous pressures and precedent resist such an application in the United States. The following argues against keeping just the license agreements as the body of law, and also against a wholesale shift toward governmental regulation.Instead, a compromise -- establishing a standards-setting body of developers, referred to here as a virtual world council -- is the most efficient solution. This is a daunting task; however, numerous examples exist for the developers of virtual worlds to follow and they are explained below. The final proposed result is a two-tier system that retains EULAs with modifications as appropriate, and supports a common law approach rooted in standardization for resolving what EULAs cannot.