On a flight from Sacramento to Denver, Professor Ken O’Neal discovers he has a telepathic and loving connectedness with flight attendant Michelle Kolberg. Believing that other “sensitives” probably exist in their midst, they embark on the formation of a group of “like” minds they call the Omega Project at a University of California campus. The Omega Project’s benevolent communication is suddenly threatened by powerful people in San Francisco – older men in secret Covens who use ancient mind-control techniques to trap their telepathic victims and perform horrific deadly “feedings” on their brains to strengthen their own powers of domination. A “feeding” on the brain of a university student named Bonny ignites warfare between the Covens and Omega members, with gruesome fatalities. Ken and Michelle learn more about the frightening control of the leaders of the Covens’ organization in Europe, forcing Omega to go underground. Fearing the growing capabilities of the Omega members, the Covens call upon their Gypsy allies, some of whom they casually sacrifice as part of their strategy to frighten and execute Omega members. Furious, the Gypsies reluctantly realize they must reconsider their alliances. The battle spills over into Europe, and some innocent bystanders who become aware of the Coven monsters in their midst pay an awful price. Eventually acknowledging the compassionate intentions of the Omega Project, the Gypsy clans cautiously develop trust and agree to help Omega launch a counterattack against the Covens, despite knowing they must face the evil Emil, who is powerful enough to kill by thoughts alone.

Annals of Cases on Information Technology provides 37 case studies, authored by over 50 world-renowned academicians and practitioners in information technology each offering insight into how to succeeed in IT projects and how to avoid costly failures. These case studies describe private and public organizations including educational institutions, electronic businesses and governmental organizations ranging in size from small businesses to large organizations. Additionally, they focus on a variety of technology projects including electronic commerce and electronic business initiatives, enterprise resource planning and reengineering efforts, data mining projects and the human factors relating to IT projects.

Project management has become a widespread instrument enabling organizations to efficiently master the challenges of steadily shortening product life cycles, global markets and decreasing profit margins. With projects increasing in size and complexity, their planning and control represents one of the most crucial management tasks. This is especially true for scheduling, which is concerned with establishing execution dates for the sub-activities to be performed in order to complete the project. The ability to manage projects where resources must be allocated between concurrent projects or even sub-activities of a single project requires the use of commercial project management software packages. However, the results yielded by the solution procedures included are often rather unsatisfactory. Scheduling of Resource-Constrained Projects develops more efficient procedures, which can easily be integrated into software packages by incorporated programming languages, and thus should be of great interest for practitioners as well as scientists working in the field of project management. The book is divided into two parts. In Part I, the project management process is described and the management tasks to be accomplished during project planning and control are discussed. This allows for identifying the major scheduling problems arising in the planning process, among which the resource-constrained project scheduling problem is the most important. Part II deals with efficient computer-based procedures for the resource-constrained project scheduling problem and its generalized version. Since both problems are NP-hard, the development of such procedures which yield satisfactory solutions in a reasonable amount of computation time is very challenging, and a number of new and very promising approaches are introduced. This includes heuristic procedures based on priority rules and tabu search as well as lower bound methods and branch and bound procedures which can be applied for computing optimal solutions.

From the Preface: This festschrift is devoted to recognize the career of a man who not only witnessed the growth of operations research from its inception, but also contributed significantly to this growth. Dr. Salah E. Elmaghraby received his doctorate degree from Cornell University in 1958, and since then, his scholarly contributions have enriched the fields of production planning and scheduling and project scheduling. This collection of papers is contributed in his honor by his students, colleagues, and acquaintances. It offers a tribute to the inspiration received from his work, and from his guidance and advice over the years, and recognizes the legacy of his many contributions. Dr. Elmaghraby is a pioneer in the area of project scheduling (in particular, project planning and control through network models, for which he coined the term ‘activity networks’.) In his initial work in this area, he developed an algebra based on signal flow graphs and semi-Markov processes for analyzing generalized activity networks involving activities with probabilistic durations. This work led to the development of what was later known as the Graphical Evaluation and Review Technique (GERT), and GERT simulation models. He has made fundamental contributions in determining criticality indices for activities, in developing methodologies for project compression and time/cost analysis, and in the use of stochastic and chance-constrained programming and Petri Nets for the analysis of activity networks. This volume brings together fourteen contributions, which can be viewed under the following three main themes: operations research and its application in production planning; project scheduling, and production scheduling, inspired by, and in many cases based on, Dr. Elmaghraby’s work in these areas. The first five chapters are devoted to the first theme, followed by four chapters each devoted to the other two, respectively. An additional chapter is devoted to the vulnerability of multimodal freight systems.

This Handbook was the first APM Body of Knowledge Approved title for the Association for Project Management. Over the course of five editions, Gower Handbook of Project Management has become the definitive desk reference for project management practitioners. The Handbook gives an introduction to, and overview of, the essential knowledge required for managing projects. The team of expert contributors, selected to introduce the reader to the knowledge and skills required to manage projects, includes many of the most experienced and highly regarded international writers and practitioners. The Fifth Edition has been substantially restructured. All but two of the authors are new, reflecting the fast-changing and emerging perspectives on projects and their management. The four sections in the book describe: ¢ Projects, their context, value and how they are connected to organizational strategy; ¢ Performance: describing how to manage the delivery of the project, covering scope, quality, cost, time, resources, risk and sustainability ¢ Process: from start up to close down ¢ Portfolio: the project and its relationship to the organization The discrete nature of each chapter makes this Handbook a wonderful source of advice and background theory that is easy to consult. Gower Handbook of Project Management is an encyclopaedia for the discipline and profession of project management; a bible for project clients, contractors and students.

A near-death experience (NDE) is a phenomenon whereby powerful physical and emotional sensations and visions are experienced by someone who is either close to death or has been declared clinically dead. This is a guide to the theory and evidence underlying the phenomenon of NDEs.

Organizations of all types are consistently working on new initiatives, product lines, or implementation of new workflows as a way to remain competitive in the modern business environment. No matter the type of project at hand, employing the best methods for effective execution and timely completion of the task at hand is essential to project success. Project Management: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications presents the latest research and practical solutions for managing every stage of the project lifecycle. Emphasizing emerging concepts, real-world examples, and authoritative research on managing project workflows and measuring project success in both private and public sectors, this multi-volume reference work is a critical addition to academic, government, and corporate libraries. It is designed for use by project coordinators and managers, business executives, researchers, and graduate-level students interested in putting research-based solutions into practice for effective project management.