Most Popular Books by Michael Todd

It takes a man a while to walk in his shoes... Damian is finishing up many things in his life, including Max's training - if they survive. Should he continue to allow secrets to run his life? The clues are starting to track back to some influential players, but where is the proof? Not that Ravi, in Damian's mind, cares a wit about hard proof. Those in charge have secrets, and perhaps it is time to find them out. Except, Damian has never been good at following orders or dealing with limitations placed on him, will Heaven accept his decisions? Scroll back to the top and click "Read for Free" or "Buy Now," and kick back for a fun supernatural action-packed adventure that will have you yelling for the good guys and laughing at the arguments between Damian and his protégé. --- NOTE: This book contains cursing. Perhaps humorous cursing, but cursing nonetheless. If this offends you, I suggest you don't read this book.

A young man's journey of finding out who he is in the midst of his incarceration.

The old ways of fighting on Earth are rapidly coming to a close. Have the backstabbing ways of demons changed the future of hell on Earth? Or did Katie have something to do with it? Pandora reveals more than just a little to Katie. And together both of them have a huge decision to make. Sometimes, evil does something so raw, even those scared to step up shoulder the responsibility of revenge. This time, T'Chezz is sending hundreds of demons and the Enlightened to take Katie and Pandora down to Hell, so he can stay up on Earth. Scroll back to the top and click "Read for Free" or "Buy Now," and kick back for a fun supernatural action-packed adventure that will have you yelling for the good guys and laughing at the arguments between Katie and...her. --- NOTE: This book contains cursing. Perhaps humorous cursing, but cursing nonetheless. If this offends you, I suggest you don't read this book.

Some vows are meant to be broken. Luke is a reluctant relic hunter, bound by a cosmic vow he never wanted. When the mysterious Myxellis demands he collect powerful relic shards from the most dangerous places imaginable, Luke has no choice but to comply. With each artifact he recovers, he edges closer to freedom-if he can survive long enough to complete his task. The ruthless Ebony Cloaks, a criminal gang who will stop at nothing to seize the relics for themselves. They shadow his every move, setting deadly traps and deadly ambushes. With the help of his loyal companions, Luke must outwit his pursuers and deliver the final pieces to fulfill his vow. The stakes couldn't be higher. Should he fail, he'll remain forever chained to Myxellis's whims, forced to hunt ever more dangerous relics until one finally claims his life. Will Luke finally break free from the bonds that have controlled him for so long? Or will the Ebony Cloaks claim both the relics and his life in their relentless pursuit of power?

College counseling centers struggle to accommodate the number of students seeking mental health services today. For the last decade, the leading problem among college students has been anxiety, including social anxiety. Studies indicate that group counseling is a practical solution to address these concerns. This mixed methods replication study explored the use of the Creative Exposure Intervention – Group Version (CEI-GV) with social anxiety. The CEI-GV is a brief, integrative approach that incorporates art with anchoring skills, cognitive-behavioral interventions, and mindfulness with self-compassion. Descriptive statistics, a paired t test, and Moustakas’s methods were used to analyze the data in this study. Results indicated that CEI-GV impacted group participants (N = 8) as described by three themes: emotion regulation, helpful, and difficult. Participants also reported several positive changes in their physical sensations/feelings, thoughts and emotions, and social behavior and experience as a result of attending the group. These changes included: less physical tension, more awareness of their feelings and physical sensations, more control over their sensations, more skill and control in managing their thoughts and emotions, more objectivity in their thoughts and emotions, and more control and comfortability in social behavior and experience. Overall, participant social anxiety severity decreased from severe to mild as indicated by the Social Phobia Inventory. This dissertation study concludes with implications, limitations, and recommendations for future research as they pertain to college counseling and clinical practice.

Information on critical drawdown dates for establishing emergent vegetation, as well as flood tolerances of seedlings recruited from the seedbank during one-season drawdowns, is lacking. Vegetation establishment was determined from seedbank samples for four drawdown dates (15 May, 15 June, 15 July, and 15 August 1988). On each of the four treatment dates, 24 samples were drawn down from a submersed (50cm flood) treatment and kept at drawdown level. The highest shoot densities (shoots/m2) and highest percentage of flowering shoots for alkali bulrush (Scirpus maritimus) and hardstem bulrush (Scirpus lacustris)were recorded in the 15 May drawdown. Shoot densities of cattail (Typha ssp.) and purple loosestrife (Lythrum salicaria) were highest in the 15 June drawdwn. The 15 July and 15 August drawdowns resulted in reduced shoot densities for all species, except red goosefoot (Chenopodium rubrum), which had maximum densities in the 15 July drawdown. Plants recruited in the 15 July and 15 A.

African Americans have long been serious about education. Even when education was denied to black Americans through law, custom, and physical violence, blacks exerted relentless self-determination in the pursuit of literacy. The black church, because of its growth in size, power, and influence, became the logical institution for assisting blacks in their educational strivings, funding, and housing schools in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Black churches also established historically black colleges. In Louisville, Kentucky, the founder of the first school for African Americans, Henry Adams, organized black church men from areas throughout the Commonwealth of Kentucky, to form the Kentucky Normal and Theological Institute, which has come to be known as Simmons College, the oldest historically black college in Kentucky. The aim of the introductory chapter is to establish the foundation for the thesis by developing historicaly context, which involves the defining of black self-determination and the essentiality of the black church's involvement in the education of African Americans. Chapter 2 reinforces the historical context of the thesis by previewing literature pertinent to the history of black academic pursuits, especially in the face of resistance. Chapter 3 narrows the focus of black education, examining the formation of Simmons College of Kentucky, a college established by black church leaders within Kentucky who formed an association of African American Baptists. Chapter 4 discusses the need for wise black academic leadership at historically black colleges such as Simmons College. Chapter 5 reflects on the preceding chapters and suggests that there is a sad divide between the intellectually wanting black church of the present and the black church's intellectual spirit of the past.

The data transmission potential inherent in optical networks is enormous, and because of this great potential, optical networks are in dire need of fault tolerance. Recently, various fault tolerance techniques exploiting the special properties of optical data transmission have been presented, one of the most interesting being backup-multiplexing. Backup multiplexing comes in a couple of different flavors, but it basically enables connections to be backed up by allocating system resources for fault recovery upon the occurrence of a single fault in a network. Backup-multiplexing attempts to limit the amount of system resources it utilizes up by allowing backup connections to share a particular wavelength, given that their associated primary paths are link disjoint. This way, in the event of a link failure, each primary routed on that link can be assured of finding an available backup connection. Backup multiplexing is certainly a viable form of fault tolerance, but is there another way of assuring that a network can recover from a link failure, while not tying up valuable system resources in backup connection allocation? The goal of this research is to present an alternative method, known as L + l fault tolerance, and to compare the performance of that alternative to that of the backup multiplexing strategy. Each network has a set of subgraphs associated with it such that one of the links in the original network is removed. Connections in the newly proposed strategy are accepted if they can be routed in all of the subgraphs. That way, in the event of a link failure, the network state can be restored to that of the corresponding subgraph, where all connections are guaranteed restoration.

The literature suggests that sensorimotor areas of adult brain are capable of adaptive change in response to various experiences. The anatomical and functional consequences of SCI on the human cerebral cortex were examined to determine the relationship between these changes and the recovery of movement post injury. The absence of corticomotor neuronal atrophy prompted investigation of the functional organization of M1. FMRI was used to acquire functional activation maps of M1 during wrist and tongue movements. No significant difference in the size and location of wrist movement-related activation was found between the SCI and control groups. Tongue movement-related activation was located significantly more medial, posterior, and superior in the SCI group, reflecting an enlarged volume of activation. This displacement, and expansion, was related to the level of injury, the higher the injury, the greater the displacement. In the initial experiment, MRI was used to acquire structural images of human cortex to identify grey and white matter atrophy post SCI. No significant difference in either the location or grey matter area of the hand region of M1 was found between a group of individuals with SCI and a group of neurologically healthy control subjects. Voxel-based morphometric analysis of both grey and white matter density found no significant difference across the motor areas of the cortex between the two groups. These experiments demonstrate that sensorimotor regions of the adult cerebral cortex undergo plastic changes following cervical SCI which may be related to sensorimotor function post injury. The final experiment was designed to elucidate the temporal progression of cortical reorganization and determine the relationship with recovery of movement. FMRI was used to acquire functional activation maps of the cortical sensorimotor network at 3--4 time points during the first year post SCI. Shortly after the injury, movement-related M1 activation was decreased and activation in higher-order sensorimotor areas was increased compared to controls. If movement recovered, M1 activation progressively increased while higher-order activation decreased to a level similar to that found in control subjects. If movement did not return, a progressive decrease to almost no activation was seen across the entire network.

The objective of this dissertation is to test some major theories on the discourse function of the Greek indicative verb-forms in narrative. Since the publication of Stanley Porter and Buist Fanning's doctoral dissertations, verbal aspect has been a major area of research among scholars. Although the debate and research concerning the aspect of Greek verbs continues to be at the forefront of Greek grammatical studies, the question that begs to be answered is whether their answers can satisfactorily account for the varied verb-forms throughout the entirety of a historical narrative. This dissertation seeks to answer this question by testing current proposals on the discourse function of Greek indicative verb-forms within the narrative of Judith. Chapter 1 introduces the thesis of the dissertation, surveys the literature related to Greek grammar, and discusses the need to focus on discourse grammar. Chapter 2 surveys the literature related to discourse grammar, provides a methodology, and discusses the rationale for the selection of the book of Judith. Chapter 3 tests the function of the aorist and the imperfect within the book of Judith. Specifically, it tests the proposal--unless intentionally marked, the aorist is used to describe mainline events, it provides the foundation for the narrative, and thus moves it forward. Whereas the imperfect is used with non-events, giving descriptive or background information, rather than moving it forward. Chapter 4 examines the function of the present within the narrative of Judith. Namely, it evaluates Runge's rejection of Stanley Porter's claim that the present indicative verb-form is semantically marked for prominence. Chapter 5 observes the function of the perfect within the narrative of Judith. Specifically, it evaluates the thesis--the perfect is used to show the relevance of the action, idea, or situation to the current discourse. Chapter 6 provides a concluding summary of each chapter in this dissertation and suggests areas for fruitful future research.