Fifty-year-old Marcia, a resident of the small, unexciting town of Haystack, Wisconsin, sells scalp massagersalso known as scalp whisksfor a living. With the help of her friend Betty, Marcia spends her free time engaged in an endless search for a man. Unfortunately, her hunt for the man of her dreams has become as challenging as finding a needle in a haystack. In her quest for true love, Marcia endures blind dates, hires a dating service, attends singles events, and attempts online datingall to no avail. Despite enduring endless disaster dates that include wacky characters like Crack Head Bob and Farmer Tony, Marcia still holds on to the slim hope that she will someday find a man who will treat her like the queen she isand maybe even gently whisk her tired scalp on cold Wisconsin nights. Left with few options, Marcia turns to a social networking site. What she finds there will change her destiny forever. In this delightfully witty romantic tale, a middle-aged woman must learn to not only survive, but blossom into who she was always meant to be as she embarks on a hilarious roller coaster journey through the unpredictability of romance.

"This book covers theoretical, social, and practical issues related to educational games and simulations, contributing to a more effective design and implementation of these activities in learning environments"--Provided by publisher.

Presenting the latest technological developments in arts and culture, this volume demonstrates the advantages of a union between art and science. Electronic Visualisation in Arts and Culture is presented in five parts: Imaging and Culture New Art Practice Seeing Motion Interaction and Interfaces Visualising Heritage Electronic Visualisation in Arts and Culture explores a variety of new theory and technologies, including devices and techniques for motion capture for music and performance, advanced photographic techniques, computer generated images derived from different sources, game engine software, airflow to capture the motions of bird flight and low-altitude imagery from airborne devices. The international authors of this book are practising experts from universities, art practices and organisations, research centres and independent research. They describe electronic visualisation used for such diverse aspects of culture as airborne imagery, computer generated art based on the autoimmune system, motion capture for music and for sign language, the visualisation of time and the long term preservation of these materials. Selected from the EVA London conferences from 2009-2012, held in association with the Computer Arts Society of the British Computer Society, the authors have reviewed, extended and fully updated their work for this state-of-the-art volume.

Summary Big Data teaches you to build big data systems using an architecture that takes advantage of clustered hardware along with new tools designed specifically to capture and analyze web-scale data. It describes a scalable, easy-to-understand approach to big data systems that can be built and run by a small team. Following a realistic example, this book guides readers through the theory of big data systems, how to implement them in practice, and how to deploy and operate them once they're built. Purchase of the print book includes a free eBook in PDF, Kindle, and ePub formats from Manning Publications. About the Book Web-scale applications like social networks, real-time analytics, or e-commerce sites deal with a lot of data, whose volume and velocity exceed the limits of traditional database systems. These applications require architectures built around clusters of machines to store and process data of any size, or speed. Fortunately, scale and simplicity are not mutually exclusive. Big Data teaches you to build big data systems using an architecture designed specifically to capture and analyze web-scale data. This book presents the Lambda Architecture, a scalable, easy-to-understand approach that can be built and run by a small team. You'll explore the theory of big data systems and how to implement them in practice. In addition to discovering a general framework for processing big data, you'll learn specific technologies like Hadoop, Storm, and NoSQL databases. This book requires no previous exposure to large-scale data analysis or NoSQL tools. Familiarity with traditional databases is helpful. What's Inside Introduction to big data systems Real-time processing of web-scale data Tools like Hadoop, Cassandra, and Storm Extensions to traditional database skills About the Authors Nathan Marz is the creator of Apache Storm and the originator of the Lambda Architecture for big data systems. James Warren is an analytics architect with a background in machine learning and scientific computing. Table of Contents A new paradigm for Big Data PART 1 BATCH LAYER Data model for Big Data Data model for Big Data: Illustration Data storage on the batch layer Data storage on the batch layer: Illustration Batch layer Batch layer: Illustration An example batch layer: Architecture and algorithms An example batch layer: Implementation PART 2 SERVING LAYER Serving layer Serving layer: Illustration PART 3 SPEED LAYER Realtime views Realtime views: Illustration Queuing and stream processing Queuing and stream processing: Illustration Micro-batch stream processing Micro-batch stream processing: Illustration Lambda Architecture in depth

State-of-the-art analytic and quantitative methods for using big data to craft effective real-time, dynamic customer-centric marketing plans. The revolution in big data has enabled a game-changing approach to marketing. The asynchronous and continuous collection of customer data carries rich signals about consumer preferences and consumption patterns. Use of this data can make marketing adaptive, dynamic, and responsive to changes in individual customer behavior. This book introduces state-of-the-art analytic and quantitative methods for customer-centric marketing (CCM). Rather than using a snapshot from the data to plot a single campaign-centric marketing plan, these methods draw on cutting-edge research in optimization and interactive marketing with the goal of maximizing long-term profit from data collected over time. The aim is to teach readers to apply optimization tools to derive analytical solutions leading to customized, dynamic, proactive, and real-time marketing decisions. The book develops the CCM framework and illustrates it with four cases that span the life cycle of marketing: pricing, win-back, cross-sales, and customer service allocation. The text walks the reader through real-world examples of applying the framework (supported by spreadsheet models available online), then explains the key concepts: modeling consumer choice; segmenting customers into latent classes based on sensitivity; computing customer lifetime value (CLV); and dynamic optimization. The reader then learns to incorporate the continuous learning of customer preference into an adaptive feedback loop for marketing decisions. The book can be used as a text for MBA students or as a professional reference. This book is based on joint research developed at Carnegie Mellon University when both authors were on the faculty at the Tepper School of Business.

'Face Processing' seeks to answer questions such as how we recognise familiar faces, and which factors determine facial attractiveness. Drawing on a wealth of studies and research, it is an essential companion for undergraduates studying face processing as part of a psychology degree.