Most Popular Books by Ryan Murphy

Formed in the early years after the Great Wars, the Champions are a group dedicated to the safety of Jardenia and its people. Aldron, an unassuming young man will quickly learn they are the force that stands between him and his certain demise at the hands of a once sworn Champion, Elian. Elian and his forces have vowed to never allow humans to once more rule the world. Through might or magic they are determined to end the current bloodline. Aldron, the last of his bloodline must face the perils of Jardenia and Elian''s forces in order to take his place in history among the kings of Jardenia. Aldron, with the Champions at his side, learns the truth of his being and that he must return to Rodan to take his proper place amongst his people, as their king. As preparations are made for their departure to Rodan evil arrives in Aldron''s home, the Black Glade. From the outset Aldron, the only human alive with innate magic, is hunted by Elian and Karan who are intent on his demise. The two are determined to destroy any chance the humans may come to hold magic and regain their foothold upon the world and have searched endlessly for Aldron since his disappearance as an infant. They believe the world has been caused enough grief by the humans and their greed. Aldron flees to the safety of Rodan and as quickly as he becomes king he learns there is much to be done to prevail over the evil brothers and their summoned horde of followers. .

Buy the paperback version of this book and get the kindle version FREE !!! The Enneagram of Personality, or simply the Enneagram is a model of the human psyche which is principally understood and taught as a typology of nine interconnected personality types. The book wants to guide the reader through the process of using the Enneagram tool to discover personality types and use the information for self-improvement. Each of the six chapters takes on different aspects of the Enneagram and its uses. It starts by explaining the Enneagram in detail and moves on to the practical application. Since the Enneagram does have some psychological roots, there are brief sections that examine various scientific theories. The main goal of the book, however, is to apply it to self-understanding and improving quality of life. This book includes: A comprehensive break down of the nine Enneagram types, including strengths and weaknesses and examples of famous Types 1-9 A couple of different methods to use in ascertaining your personality type A brief look into self-understanding (defining what "self" is, psychological theories, and how to use the Enneagram to understand "self" better) A section on emotional intelligence and how to use the enneagram model to improve EQ (it also includes some psychological theories and explanations to define emotional intelligence better) A chapter on understanding others using the Enneagram (the majority of the book, up to this point, is geared towards the self - this is most useful after taking the quiz because it deals directly with the Enneagram types and how they relate to other models in work, personal, and romantic relationships) A final chapter on actual integration of what was learned throughout the book: how to build stronger relationships, how to grow spiritually, and how to deal with our own brokenness in order to heal our relationships with others This book contains a lot of information, from scientific to emotional, objective to subjective. It is an excellent tool for anyone who wants to know more about the Enneagram and how to use it to enhance their personal lives in every aspect. What are you waiting for? Click "Buy Now" and start immediately this beautiful journey inside your knowledge of Enneagram!!!

A look back at the first 100 years of Langley Air Force Base, once Langley Field, and its impact on Hampton, Virginia. The articles orginally appeared in the Daily Press of Newport News, Virginia.

At the conclusion of 2017, to the dismay of journalists, pundits, and academics, large numbers of adolescents began consuming Tide Pods, a form of laundry detergent that is candy-like in appearance. This paper argues that purposeful consumption of laundry detergent may in fact be individually rational for adolescents, although with negative externalities. The consumption of Tide Pods may allow adolescents to successfully signal status in accordance with the Handicap Principle, which explains the beauty of a peacock''s tail and the practice of stotting by gazelles in the wild. The Handicap Principle is also a common explanation of adolescents'' willingness to engage in dangerous activities such as drug use. Public policy implications of this theoretic argument would include discouraging Tide Pod consumption, although this would follow from the negative externalities associated with positional goods, as opposed to paternalistic concern for the health of adolescents.

This paper discusses what evolutionary psychology can contribute to modern political economy.

The antibiogram is a fundamental component of antimicrobial stewardship programs. It serves to guide empiric therapy as well as track antimicrobial susceptibilities and resistance development over time. Currently, UCSD publishes a quarterly antibiogram that combines information from all units at both the Thornton and Hillcrest hospitals. While such information provides a global view of susceptibility rates, it masks potentially important differences among units and between hospitals that could be useful in determining appropriate empiric therapy. This project analyzed antibiogram data from 2009-2010 for eight different organisms (Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Streptococcus pneumoniae, Escherichia coli, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Enterobacter, Enterococcus, Staphylococcus aureus, and Acinetobacter) and stratified them according to hospital (Thornton vs. Hillcrest), patient setting (inpatient vs. outpatient) and unit (general ward, ICU, ED, BMT service, Cancer Center and Owen Clinic). The results provide insight into how antimicrobial susceptibility rates differ within our own institution and justify institutional antimicrobial therapies.

This work is devoted to comparing two integral bases for the integral cohomology of the Hilbert scheme of points in the projective plane. Let X be a smooth complex projective surface. One of the more interesting moduli spaces parameterizing objects associated with X is the Hilbert scheme of points, denoted X[superscript [n]], which parameterizes all 0-dimensional closed subschemes of length n in X.W. Wang, Z. Qin and W.P. Li used Heisenberg algebra operators to construct an integral basis of the integral cohomology of X[superscript [n]] whenever X is a smooth projective surface with vanishing odd Betti numbers. On the other hand, a work by G. Ellingsrud and S.A. Strømme gives a cellular decomposition of the Hilbert scheme of points on the projective plane. From this work, we have a second integral basis for the integral cohomology of X[superscript [n]] when X = P2. We compare the elements of these two bases and ultimately give the upper triangular transition matrix from one basis to the other.

An expanding literature explores the size of the fiscal multiplier at the state and local level. Often, these papers ignore the “general equilibrium” effects of fiscal policy. That is, they ignore the overall impact on a country like the United States and only focus on the effect on the economy of the individual locality. When general equilibrium effects are discussed, they are often thought of as “spillovers” affecting nearby localities. However, this interpretation is only valid on its own terms in specific macroeconomic conditions or with specific assumptions regarding the policy function of the central bank. It may not be useful generally to view these multipliers as policy-relevant unless localities are interested in beggaring thy neighbor by shifting aggregate demand from other localities to themselves.

The paradigm of liberalism - the preeminence of some form of universal human rights - has taken hold in much of the developed world, with obvious exceptions. Prior to liberalism, certain subgroups in society were not accorded full moral status and were considered morally as part of the outgroup. With many now professing the belief in universal human rights across all creeds, races, ethnicities, citizenship, gender, and sexuality, to whom is the psychology of the outgroup applied? This paper observes the rhetoric and moral sentiments that have historically been invoked when making ingroup-outgroup distinctions now invoked to characterize large corporations. This characterization, when applied to all businesses in competitive markets, is actually approximately correct, but its most important implication is merely the accuracy of the profit-maximizing assumption already found in all of neoclassical microeconomics. The analysis here may have some implications for the literature on corporate social responsibility, as consumer sovereignty implies that ethical actions by businesses not already demanded by consumers are violations of consumer sovereignty.

The application of research-based methods of skill development has enabled people across a variety of fields to reach extraordinary levels of achievement. Among the various fields where superior achievement might be attained, training individuals to recognize the dignity of others and strive for remarkable accomplishment in humanitarian service would be an area that would greatly affect our schools, society and world.

This paper explores the relationship between country membership in major intergovernmental organizations and economic freedom. While claiming no broad theoretically-bound robust causal mechanism, I use fixed effects models to find baseline results finding a correspondence between economic freedom and membership in the EU, NATO, WTO, UN, OECD, World Bank, and IMF. While the results are not simple, the strongest findings are negative effects of the UN, IMF, and WTO, and positive effects of the World Bank and possibly the EU. I make no claims of causality. However, whatever the relationship could be endogenous to, for example the international openness of governments, is yet of interest.

According to popular attitudes in Western democracies, the choice between right-wing and left-wing parties is a choice between socialism and unbridled free markets. In contrast, the cold and staid research of academia has frequently concluded that particular political parties do not really matter, as whichever party is elected will be closely tethered to the will of the median voter. This article considers the effects of the ideology of parties in power over the long run (1928-95) on economic freedom in subsequent periods. Right-wing governments are found to have modest, positive effects on economic freedom, but the effects are not particularly robust. The findings here are consistent with others elsewhere, which conclude that there is minor, uneven evidence of an effect. Nonetheless, historically small effects may not be indicative of the future, should these effects be poorly indicative of today''s tumultuous political landscape.

We apply System GMM and Panel Vector Autoregression (PVAR) to investigate the long run relationships between output, human capital, liberalized political institutions, and liberalized economic institutions. We find consistent evidence that economic institutions and human capital both greatly contribute to output. We also find, however, that political institutions typically have no discernable effect. We believe our methodology provides basis for the existence of causal relationships.

The Book of Mormon is a controversial text that has a lot of history and makes many claims in regards to authorship. In this study, the Book of Mormon is analyzed using latent semantic analysis to identify if the book as a whole has authorship unity and validity. Authorship unity would suggest only one author wrote the book. Authorship validity would suggest the authors within the text who claim authorship make a valid claim, in the sense that their writings within the Book of Mormon are of uniform authorship. Authorship unity and authorship validity are conflicting terms for this study, meaning both cannot be true about the Book of Mormon since it claims multi-authorship.

This research note applies previously estimated effects of immigration on housing values to urban counties in the United States. Determining the extent to which increase in urban housing values is attributable to immigration fills a gap in the economics literature. Furthermore, our findings here also help estimate how much of the increase in the net-capital share of income since 1970 as observed by Piketty (2014) is caused by immigration. We find that in most urban counties in the United States, increased levels of immigration have had a modest but non-negligible effect on the level of real estate prices. These effects explain 32.4 percent of the increases in housing prices in the 20 densest counties since 1970, which we interpret in terms of capital share, following Rognlie (2015). While not all housing is urban, the magnitudes of these results suggest that there is some link between increased levels of immigrants and a higher capital share since 1970.

One of two winners of the 2002 Aldrich Poetry Competition judged by Robert Hass.

The appropriation of the quasi-rents from firms to labor is a more persuasive interpretation of the effects of minimum wages than is generally recognized.

A handbook to guide fisheries adaptation to climate change

Vitamin A deficiency (VAD) is a major public health problem that can cause blindness and increase the risk of disease and mortality in children. VAD is particularly prevalent in children of sub-Saharan Africa, but there is little reliable information available that describes the spatial distribution of VAD below national level estimates. To target interventions that cover affected populations, a clear understanding of the geographic distribution of VAD in children is necessary. However, collection of data on VAD and other micronutrient deficiencies is often costly and difficult, resulting in large gaps in knowledge of severity of micronutrient deficiencies. In cases where available data is sparse, spatial interpolation methods may provide a way to estimate micronutrient status at un-sampled locations. This study compared the accuracy of five different spatial interpolation methods in predicting the spatial distribution of vitamin A status and deficiency in children under the age of five in Cameroon, using infection-adjusted retinol binding protein concentrations collected in a nationally representative survey in 2009. The methods compared included Inverse Distance Weighting, Thin Plate Splines, Random Forests, Ordinary and Universal Kriging, as well as a combined consensus model. Inverse distance weighting performed the best in predicting RBP concentrations, with a Pearson''s cross-validation correlation coefficient of 0.61. This prediction was then used to create an estimate of the number of Cameroonian children who were vitamin A deficient at a higher spatial resolution than was previously available. While prevalence of VAD in children appeared highest in the Northern region of Cameroon, the overall number of VAD children was higher in the Extreme North and Centre regions of the country due to higher population density in these regions. The national proportion of VAD children predicted (33%) aligned well with the estimate based on the original survey data (35%).

This paper constructs a new measure of the quality of the legal system and property rights by U.S. state, combining five pieces of data to develop a novel measure of institutional quality. It integrates this measure to the Economic Freedom of North America index to give a more complete subnational comparison of United States institutions. The quality of the legal system and property rights are measured to be strongest in the upper Midwest and northern New England, and weakest in the South and Hawaii. The integration of this data into Economic Freedom of North America has considerable implications for our understanding of economic freedom at the regional level.