Best Selling Books by Ryan W

The heart of a Northman beats only for more blood. Heir to the Bear Clan of Valheim, young Raknar anticipates the day he will become chief and lead his clan across the sea to pillage foreign shores. When his village is sacked, his clan put to the sword, Raknar must forge a new destiny, alone. Captured during a raid on the Kingdom of Acheron, Raknar is enslaved by the diabolical Queen Zakara. She forces him to fight as a gladiator in the pits, but her true interest in Raknar lies in the fulfillment of a dark prophecy that will provide her an heir and unlock unworldly power. Escaping to the exotic land of Byzantia, Raknar steals to survive, captures the heart of Princess Yabala, and is banished by the emperor for his impudence. Unable to win Yabala''s hand, he becomes a raider on the steppes, certain he will never see her again. But the gods have other plans for him. When Raknar learns that Queen Zakara has kidnapped Princess Yabala, Raknar must return to the dungeons of Acheron to face the queen and her fell sorceries once and for all. Raknar: The Northman is the first stand-alone novel set in the gritty Hystoria fantasy world. Warning: This book contains graphic violence, profanity, and sexual content. It is intended for a mature audience. Reader discretion is advised.

Disclaimer Please note that this book is an unauthorized game guide and is not affiliated with, endorsed by or connected to the original production of "Prison Architect" Are you struggling to design and manage your prison efficiently in Prison Architect 2? Do you find yourself constantly facing setbacks, unable to overcome the challenges thrown your way? Are you worried about not reaching your full potential in the game? Prison Architect 2 presents players with a myriad of challenges, from maintaining security and managing resources to keeping prisoners content and preventing riots. Understanding the intricate mechanics and optimizing your strategies can be daunting, especially for newer players. In this comprehensive guide, you can expect detailed insights into every aspect of Prison Architect 2 gameplay. From planning and constructing your prison layout to implementing effective security measures and managing inmate needs, each chapter is packed with valuable information and advanced strategies to help you excel. Discover proven tactics for maximizing efficiency in your prison operations, including tips for optimizing staff deployment, streamlining prisoner intake procedures, and mitigating potential risks. Learn how to design secure facilities, allocate resources wisely, and maintain a balance between punishment and rehabilitation to foster a stable and prosperous prison environment. Don''t let frustration hold you back from enjoying Prison Architect 2 to its fullest potential. With the strategies and insights provided in this guide, you''ll gain the confidence and skills needed to master the game and build the ultimate correctional facility. Take control of your prison, overcome every challenge, and become a true architect of justice!

A modern, fully-illustrated bestiary, and a mixed-genre anthology all-in-one! Join the time-traveling Mythologist as he explores world-wide legendary birds throughout history. Birds of Lore is the closest you can get to mythological bird watching (without losing a finger).

A woman flees the hospital even as her infant son is breathing his last breaths. An aging construction worker comes to grips with the end of the only life he''s ever known. A deadbeat father meets his son for the first time, only to be blindsided by the boy''s birth defect. A man steals a corpse in order to give his father the burial he wanted. In Nothing but the Dead and Dying, Ryan W. Bradley takes listeners into the world of blue-collar Alaska, reflecting on all that is unique about the rough and untamed state while touching on the basic truths about what it means to be human. The twenty-plus stories in this collection are tied together by the Alaskan landscape, exploring the diverse ways in which people manage life''s difficulties. The characters are laborers in a harshly beautiful environment, something that is echoed in their relationships with friends, family, and lovers.

This paper presents various topics that contribute to understanding Sue Klebold, Monique Lépine, Terri Roberts, Laurel Harper, and Parvinder Sandhu as secondary victims of school shooting homicides. With the application of Becker''s (1963) labelling theory, there is an opportunity to examine the potential ramifications these secondary victims suffer as the result of the shootings, in addition to examining if they are subjected to social labels. By studying secondary victims of crime and the labels imposed on them, this study may be able to understand why such individuals suffer from mental illness and/or sociological drawbacks. The results of this study indicate that the social labelling of secondary victims is a social reaction to the victim''s behaviour and relationship with the offender. These victims are more likely to suffer from anxiety disorders such as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

Researchers have associated agenesis of the corpus callosum (ACC) with a range of mild cognitive deficits, especially involving higher order executive functions. In this study, I investigated the self-understanding of executive functions in individuals with ACC by comparing laboratory-controlled, self-report, and observer-report measures. I achieved this by gathering self- and observer-reported data of executive functions and comparing these data to each other and to a normative distribution. I also examined how strongly observer-perceptions of executive functions correlate with laboratory measurement. My results indicated (a) individuals with ACC self-report fewer problems with executive functions in their daily life than observers on the Behavioral Rating Inventory of Executive Function–Adult Version (BRIEF-A), (b) several significant correlations exist between observer ratings on the BRIEF-A Metacognition Index and the performance of individuals with ACC on aspects of the Delis-Kaplan Executive Function System (D-KEFS), and (c) the BRIEF-A appears to demonstrate greater sensitivity for poor executive functions associated with complex novel problems than the D-KEFS. These findings raise questions about the ecological validity of executive function instruments used for clinical assessment in the ACC population, provide evidence for a lack of self-understanding or insight in individuals with ACC, and support previous research demonstrating higher-order cognitive deficits in the clinical profile of ACC.

This paper documents the effects of last place aversion in queues and its implications for customer experiences and behaviors, as well as for operating performance. An observational analysis of customers queuing at a grocery store, and four online field studies in which participants waited in virtual queues, revealed that waiting in last place diminishes wait satisfaction while increasing the probabilities of switching and abandoning queues, with detrimental implications for service capacity. The research suggests that last place aversion can lead to maladaptive customer behaviors—switching behaviors that increase wait times and abandoning when the benefits of waiting are most pronounced. The results indicate that this behavior is partially explained by the inability to make a downward social comparison; namely, when no one is behind a queuing individual, that person is less certain that continuing to wait is worthwhile. Furthermore, this paper provides evidence that queue transparency is an effective service design lever that managers can use to reduce the deleterious effects of last place aversion in queues. When people can’t see that they’re in last place, the behavioral effects of last place aversion are nullified, and when they can see that they’re not in last place, the tendency to renege is greatly diminished. Finally, a system-level experiment, in which pairs of queues were created and analyzed, reveals that when the effects of last place aversion are addressed, overall abandonment decreases, such that with equivalent arrival and service rates, total service capacity can be increased.

As Americans'' trust in government nears historic lows, frustration with government performance approaches record highs. One explanation for this trend is that citizens may be unaware of both the services provided by government and the impact of those services on their lives. In an experiment, Boston-area residents interacted with a website that visualizes both service requests submitted by the public (e.g., potholes and broken streetlamps) and efforts by the City of Boston to address them. Some participants observed a count of new, open, and recently closed service requests, while others viewed these requests visualized on an interactive map that included details and images of the work being performed. Residents who experienced this "operational transparency" in government services--seeing the work that government is doing--expressed more positive attitudes toward government and greater support for maintaining or expanding the scale of government programs. The effect of transparency on support for government programs was equivalent to a roughly 20% decline in conservatism on a political ideology scale. We further demonstrate that positive attitudes about government partially mediate the relationship between operational transparency and support for maintaining and expanding government programs. While transparency is customarily trained on elected officials as a means of ethical oversight, our research documents the benefits of increased transparency into the delivery of government services.

When does increased service quality competition lead to customer defection, and which customers are most likely to defect? Our empirical analysis of 82,235 customers exploits the varying competitive dynamics in 644 geographically isolated markets in which a nationwide retail bank conducted business over a five-year period. We find that customers defect at a higher rate from the incumbent following increased service quality (price) competition only when the incumbent offers high (low) quality service relative to existing competitors in a local market. We provide evidence that these results are due to a sorting effect, whereby firms trade-off service quality and price, and in turn, the incumbent attracts service (price) sensitive customers in markets where it has supplied relatively high (low) levels of service quality in the past. Furthermore, we show that it is the high quality incumbent''s most profitable customers who are the most attracted by superior quality alternatives. Our results appear to have long-run implications whereby sustaining a high level of service quality is associated with the incumbent attracting and retaining more profitable customers over time.

Gamified training is a novel management control system in which companies use gamification techniques to engage and motivate employees to learn. This study empirically examines the performance consequences of gamified training by conducting a field experiment in a professional services firm. We find that the main effect of adopting the gamified training platform on performance is not statistically significant at conventional levels. However, we also find that the effect is moderated by employee engagement, such that the gamified training platform improved performance in offices with high employee engagement and worsened performance in offices with low employee engagement. In offices with high levels of employee engagement—with above-median rates of employee retention and willingness to log onto the training platform—each additional minute of average platform engagement per employee led to an additional 0.28 new clients per month. In offices with below-median rates of employee retention and willingness to log onto the training platform, each additional minute of average platform engagement per employee resulted in 0.78 fewer new clients per month. Taken together, these results suggest that gamified training, which, in part, is intended to help engage and motivate employees to learn, may only yield performance benefits among those who are already highly engaged and motivated.

Stream Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP) is a connection-oriented, reliable, messaged-based, general purpose transport protocol with congestion control similar to that used by TCP, supporting advanced features not available in TCP or UDP, such as multistreaming and multihoming capabilities. To encourage developers and end users to begin adopting SCTP and build momentum for more widespread SCTP deployment, we have developed a shim layer which translates application-level system calls to TCP into corresponding calls to SCTP, allowing legacy TCP applications to communicate using SCTP as the end-to-end transport protocol without any modifications to the applications themselves. This translation occurs transparently, so legacy TCP applications are unaware translation to SCTP is occurring. If the shim detects that translation from TCP to SCTP is not possible for a particular endpoint or service, the shim will fall back to using a normal TCP connection, ensuring backwards compatibility. (Abstract shortened by UMI.).

In Chapter 1, protein structure calculation approaches are introduced.

Base level lowering often leads to the migration of knickpoints up the fluvial network as the channel profile adjusts to the new lower boundary condition. In steep terrain, the passage of a knickpoint can oversteepen valley walls and trigger a wave of erosion up the hillslopes. As soil is stripped from hillslopes, the previously diffusive hillslopes are transformed to landslide-dominated. Soils in diffusive landscapes are well developed until erosion exposes the underlying saprolite by shortening the soil residence times. During base level adjustments, the erosion of hillslopes can leave relict patches of the original landscape juxtaposed with the newly evolving landscape. Recent incision in central Idaho has produced large channel-to-ridge relief along the Salmon River and has resulted in the propagation of large knickpoints into many of its tributaries. These knickpoints mark the boundaries between pre-uplifted terrain (relict landscapes) and freshly eroded terrain (refreshed landscapes). In this study I aimed to analyze the hillslope response to the passage of a knickpoint by comparing morphological characteristics between relict and refreshed landscapes. A transect situated on both relict and refreshed landscapes was established to measure soil properties and ridgecrest morphology. The spatial analysis used the National Elevation Datatset (NED) and high resolution Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) elevation data. Soil analysis showed 1) higher percentage of gravel in the refreshed landscape, 2) a higher percentage of carbon in the relict landscape, and 3) similar average soil depths in both landscape types (~18 cm). Spatial analysis showed the mean slope angle in the relict landscape is 18±7° and 33±7° in the refreshed landscape. Prospect Ridge has three distinct values of curvature: 0.0033±0.001 (relict), 0.0219±0.008 (refreshed), and 0.0668±0.009 (close to Salmon River). Three sets of increasing relative levels of erosion were therefore inferred from these curvature values. The erosion rate corresponding to the refreshed landscape is responsible for the formation of the large knickpoints within the site. Hillslopes downstream of the large knickpoints are subject to rapid oversteepening and complete landscape transformation from diffusive to landslide-dominated. Conversely, a less dramatic hillslope response was observed upstream of the knickpoint based on evidence of slight channel lowering, partially oversteepened valley walls, and pockets of hillslope steepening in tributary sub-basins. Reconstruction of relict hillslopes and the pre-incisional relict channel suggest that a much smaller, extinct knickpoint preceded the larger knickpoint and rapidly diffused into the headwaters.

Over time, the delivery of services has become increasingly co-productive (customers participate materially in the production of service outcomes) and inseparable from customer view. As a result, a distinctive aspect of service operations is that they feature production processes in which the experience of production influences customer behavior. In particular, operational choices intended to maximize firm profits may backfire if they diminish customer experiences and, in the process, alter whether and how customers choose to perform their role in the firm''s operating system. In three studies, my dissertation empirically explores how two specific operational choices - 1) whether and how a firm automates service, and 2) the level of service quality a firm chooses to provide relative to its competitors - affect the experiences and behaviors of its customers, and in turn, the firm''s performance

Welcome to the world of Dominic Eden, a laidback, ruthless PSIA agent also known as Agent Pinstrike. In the first ever Eden adventure, Agent Pinstrike goes up against a powerful, corrupt, real-estate magnate called Zack Justinsin. When Ben Nelson, a friend and colleague of Eden who''s investigating Justinsin''s company, is framed for the attempted murder of Eden''s boss, General Snell, Dominic goes after Justinsin. He uncovers a plot that could destroy a large portion of New Hampshire and make Justinsin the richest and most powerful businessman in the region.

Small satellites, particularly CubeSats, have become popular platforms for a wide variety of scientific, commercial and military remote sensing applications. Inexpensive commercial o the shelf (COTS) hardware and relatively low launch costs make these platforms candidates for deployment in large constellations that can offer unprecedented temporal and geospatial sampling of the entire planet. However, productivity for both individual and constellations of CubeSats in low earth orbit (LEO) is limited by the capabilities of the communications subsystem. Generally, these constraints stem from limited available electrical power, low-gain antennas and the general scarcity of available radio spectrum. In this thesis, we assess the ability of free space optical communication (lasercom) to address these limitations, identify key technology developments that enable its application in small satellites, and develop a functional prototype that demonstrates predicted performance. We first establish design goals for a lasercom payload archi- tecture that offers performance improvements (joules-per-bit) over radio-frequency (RF) solutions, yet is compatible with the severe size, weight and power (SWaP) constraints common to CubeSats. The key design goal is direct LEO-to-ground downlink capability with data rates exceeding 10 Mbps, an order of magnitude better than COTS radio solutions available today, within typical CubeSat SWaP constraints on the space terminal, and with similar COTS and low-complexity constraints on the ground terminal. After defining the goals for this architecture, we identify gaps in previous implementations that limit their performance: the lack of compact, power-efficient optical transmitters and the need for pointing capability on small satellites to be as much as a factor of ten better than what is commonly achieved today. One approach is to address these shortcomings using low-cost COTS components that are compatible with CubeSat budgets and development schedules. In design trade studies we identify potential solutions for the transmitter and pointing implementation gaps. Two distinct transmitter architectures, one based on a high-power laser diode and another using an optical amplifier, are considered. Analysis shows that both configurations meet system requirements, however, the optical amplifier offers better scalability to higher data rates. To address platform pointing limitations, we dene a staged control framework incorporating a COTS optical steering mechanism that is used to manage pointing errors from the coarse stage (host satellite body-pointing). A variety of ne steering solutions are considered, and microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) tip-tilt mirrors are selected due to their advantage in size, weight and power. We experimentally validate the designs resulting from the trade studies for these key subsystems. We construct a prototype transmitter using a modified COTS fiber amplifier and a directly-modulated seed laser capable of producing a 200mW average power, pulse position modulated optical output. This prototype is used to confirm power consumption predictions, modulation rate scalability (10 Mbps to 100 Mbps), and peak transmit power (e.g., 24.6W for PPM-128). The transmitter optical output, along with a simple loopback receiver, is used to validate the sensitivity of the avalanche photodiode receiver used for the ground receiver in the flight experiment configuration. The MEMS fine steering mechanisms, which are not rated for space use, are characterized using a purpose-built test apparatus. Characterization experiments of the MEMS devices focused on ensuring repeatable behavior (+/-0:11 mrad, 3-[sigma]) over the expected operating temperature range on the spacecraft (0°C to 40°C). Finally, we provide an assessment of the work that remains to move from the prototype to flight model and into on-orbit operations. Space terminal packaging and integration needs, as well as host spacecraft interface requirements are detailed. We also describe the remaining ground station integration tasks and operational procedures. Having developed a pragmatic COTS-based lasercom architecture for CubeSats, and having addressed the need for a compact laser transmitter and optical ne steering mechanisms with both analysis and experimental validation, this thesis has set the stage for the practical use of lasercom techniques in resource-constrained CubeSats which can yield order-of-magnitude enhancements in communications link eciency relative to existing RF technologies currently in use.

This paper investigates the impact of customer compatibility - the degree of fit between the needs of customers and the capabilities of the operations serving them - on customer experiences and firm performance. We use a variance decomposition analysis to quantify the relative importance of customer, employee, process, location, and market-level effects on customer satisfaction. In our models, which explain roughly a quarter of the aggregate variance, differences among customers account for 96-97% of the explainable portion. Further analysis of interaction-level data from banking and quick service restaurants reveals that customers report relatively consistent satisfaction across transactions with particular firms, but that some customers are habitually more satisfied than others. A second set of empirical studies provides evidence that these customer-level differences are explained in part by customer compatibility. Customers whose needs, proxied by differences in demographics and product choices, diverge more starkly from those of their bank''s average customers report significantly lower levels of satisfaction. Consistently, banks that serve customer bases with more dispersed needs receive lower satisfaction scores than banks serving customer bases with less dispersed needs. Finally, a longitudinal analysis of the deposit and loan growth of all federally insured banks in the United States from 2006-2017 reveals that customer compatibility affects a firm''s financial performance. Branches with more divergent customers grow more slowly than branches with less divergent customers. Institutions serving customer bases with more dispersed needs have branches that exhibit slower growth than those of institutions serving customer bases with less dispersed needs.

ABSTRACT: Uracil is removed from DNA by the highly conserved uracil-DNA glycosylase (UDG), which hydrolyzes the N-glycosidic bond of deoxyuridine (dU), starting the base excision and repair pathway. This specific and powerful catalyst can lower the activation barrier of deoxyuridine (dU) cleavage by almost 16 kcal/mol, yet UDG exhibits no detectable N-glycosidic bond cleavage of other structurally similar bases.

The size-weight illusion (SWI) occurs when the smaller of equally weighted objects is judged to feel heavier than the larger object. Experiment 1 compared the SWI generated in a natural versus augmented-reality environment while grasping and lifting three differently sized cubes of equal weight. Both environments induced the SWI for all twenty participants. Lift kinematics covaried with cube size in both environments. Experiment 2 investigated the influence of incongruent visual size information on the SWI in an augmented environment. Physical cubes were paired with three graphical representations: a smaller, an equal-sized, and a larger cube. The SWI was influenced by both haptic and visual size information. Kinematics covaried with physical size throughout the experiment. Results suggest that vision significantly impacts the bimodal SWI when haptic and visual size information is not redundant. Results have implications for theories of heaviness perception, multimodal interaction, and perception and action in augmented environments.

This thesis will analyze structural adjustment programs that the International Monetary Fund entered into arrangements with through three States: Indonesia, Nigeria, and Venezuela. All three States have fairly large populations and land areas, are major oil exporters, and have experienced good economic growth in the past. Specifically, I will examine the conditions in each State that led to the structural adjustment programs, the content of each program, and the socio-economic consequences of those programs and how their political economics were re-structured post-implementation. It is hoped that from my analysis, I may make suggestions for improvement of these programs, as well as assess, analyze, and understand the neoliberal model of restructuring a State''s political economy.