The U.S. government is in crisis. The real power in America has shifted to a vast network of unelected officials whose authority has grown wildly out of control. In his latest blockbuster book, acclaimed defense and national-security reporter Bill Gertz exposes this group of astonishingly powerful leaders–and their enablers in the political class–and its devastating effect on America’s national security. Gertz names names of those who actively subvert official U.S. policy–including not only liberal Democrats but also a number of so-called Republicans who have joined this insidious “Blame America First” crowd. Based on scores of exclusive interviews and displaying the groundbreaking reporting that has made Bill Gertz’s previous books smash bestsellers, The Failure Factory offers a chilling look at the threats to our national security that exist within our own government. “Mr. Gertz makes some extremely important points.” –The Washington Times “The hottest reporter in town . . . [Gertz] breaks dozens of stories every year.” –The Washington Post

Americans worry continually about their schools with frequent discussions of the "crisis" in American education, of the "failures" of the public school systems, and of the inability of schools to meet the current challenges of contemporary life. Such concerns date back at least to the nineteenth century. A thread that weaves its way through the critiques of American elementary and secondary schools is that the educational system is not serving its children well, that more should be done to enhance achievement and higher performance. These critiques first began when the United States was industrializing and were later amplified when the Soviets and Japan were thought to be grinding down the competitive position of America. At the start of the twenty-first century, as we discuss globalization and maintaining our leadership position in the world economy, they are being heard again. The Urban School: A Factory for Failure challenges these assumptions about American education. Indeed, a basic premise of the book is that the American school system is working quite well-doing exactly what is expected of it. To wit, that the schools in the United States affirm, reflect, and reinforce the social inequalities that exist in the social structures of the society. Stated differently, the schools are not great engines for equalizing the existing social inequalities. Rather, they work to reinforce the social class differences that we have had in the past and continue to have in more pronounced ways at present. Rist uses both sociological and anthropological methods to examine life in one segregated African-American school in the mid-western United States. A classroom of some thirty children were followed from their first day of kindergarten through the second grade. Detailed accounts of the day-by-day process of sorting, stratifying, and separating the children by social class backgrounds demonstrates the means of ensuring that both the poor and middle-class students soon learned their appropriate place in the social hierarchy of the school. Instructional time, discipline, and teacher attention all varied by social class of the students, with those at the bottom of the ladder consistently receiving few positive rewards and many negative sanctions. When The Urban School was first published in 1973, the National School Boards Association called it one of the ten most influential books on American education for the year. It remains essential reading for educators, sociologists, and economists.

The International Conference on Production Research has a good tradition: The fIrst Conference was held in Birmingham 1971 with 61 participants. With respect to the decision that the Conference should be held every second year, by this time the Conference has been held in the following countries: Birmingham (1971, UK), Copenhagen (1973, Denmark), Amhurst (1975, USA), Tokyo (1977, Japan), Amsterdam (1979, The Netherlands), Novi Sad (1981, Yugoslavia), Windsor (1983, Canada), Stuttgart (1985, Germany), and the next Conference will take place in Cincinnatti (1987, USA). The number of submitted abstracts and papers was continuously increas ing such that the Programme Committee of this actual 8th Conference on Production Research has been forced to introduce a further refereeing procedure. Each submitted abstract was presented to at least two referees. This resulted not only in a reduction of the number of presented full papers and poster contributions but, as the Programme Committee and the Editiors hope, it led also to a considerable increase in the scientifIc quality of this 8th International Conference on Production Research. The preceeding conference in Windsor, Canada, was dedicated to the topic: Production Research as a Means of Productivity Improvement. We don't believe that this statement has become untrue in the meanwhile.

The two-volume set IFIP AICT 566 and 567 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the International IFIP WG 5.7 Conference on Advances in Production Management Systems, APMS 2019, held in Austin, TX, USA. The 161 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 184 submissions. They discuss globally pressing issues in smart manufacturing, operations management, supply chain management, and Industry 4.0. The papers are organized in the following topical sections: lean production; production management in food supply chains; sustainability and reconfigurability of manufacturing systems; product and asset life cycle management in smart factories of industry 4.0; variety and complexity management in the era of industry 4.0; participatory methods for supporting the career choices in industrial engineering and management education; blockchain in supply chain management; designing and delivering smart services in the digital age; operations management in engineer-to-order manufacturing; the operator 4.0 and the Internet of Things, services and people; intelligent diagnostics and maintenance solutions for smart manufacturing; smart supply networks; production management theory and methodology; data-driven production management; industry 4.0 implementations; smart factory and IIOT; cyber-physical systems; knowledge management in design and manufacturing; collaborative product development; ICT for collaborative manufacturing; collaborative technoloy; applications of machine learning in production management; and collaborative technology.

Data Engineers guide to solve real-world problems encountered while building and transforming data pipelines using Azure's data integration tool Key Features Solve real-world data problems and create data-driven workflows with ease using Azure Data Factory Build an ADF pipeline that operates on pre-built ML model and Azure AI Get up and running with Fabric Data Explorer and extend ADF with Logic Apps and Azure functions Book DescriptionThis new edition of the Azure Data Factory book, fully updated to reflect ADS V2, will help you get up and running by showing you how to create and execute your first job in ADF. There are updated and new recipes throughout the book based on developments happening in Azure Synapse, Deployment with Azure DevOps, and Azure Purview. The current edition also runs you through Fabric Data Factory, Data Explorer, and some industry-grade best practices with specific chapters on each. You’ll learn how to branch and chain activities, create custom activities, and schedule pipelines, as well as discover the benefits of cloud data warehousing, Azure Synapse Analytics, and Azure Data Lake Gen2 Storage. With practical recipes, you’ll learn how to actively engage with analytical tools from Azure Data Services and leverage your on-premises infrastructure with cloud-native tools to get relevant business insights. You'll familiarize yourself with the common errors that you may encounter while working with ADF and find out the solutions to them. You’ll also understand error messages and resolve problems in connectors and data flows with the debugging capabilities of ADF. By the end of this book, you’ll be able to use ADF with its latest advancements as the main ETL and orchestration tool for your data warehouse projects.What you will learn Build and Manage data pipelines with ease using the latest version of ADF Configure, load data, and operate data flows with Azure Synapse Get up and running with Fabric Data Factory Working with Azure Data Factory and Azure Purview Create big data pipelines using Databricks and Delta tables Integrate ADF with commonly used Azure services such as Azure ML, Azure Logic Apps, and Azure Functions Learn industry-grade best practices for using Azure Data Factory Who this book is for This book is for ETL developers, data warehouse and ETL architects, software professionals, and anyone else who wants to learn about the common and not-so-common challenges faced while developing traditional and hybrid ETL solutions using Microsoft's Azure Data Factory. You’ll also find this book useful if you are looking for recipes to improve or enhance your existing ETL pipelines. Basic knowledge of data warehousing is a prerequisite.

If you want your startup to succeed, you need to understand why startups fail. “Whether you’re a first-time founder or looking to bring innovation into a corporate environment, Why Startups Fail is essential reading.”—Eric Ries, founder and CEO, LTSE, and New York Times bestselling author of The Lean Startup and The Startup Way Why do startups fail? That question caught Harvard Business School professor Tom Eisenmann by surprise when he realized he couldn’t answer it. So he launched a multiyear research project to find out. In Why Startups Fail, Eisenmann reveals his findings: six distinct patterns that account for the vast majority of startup failures. • Bad Bedfellows. Startup success is thought to rest largely on the founder’s talents and instincts. But the wrong team, investors, or partners can sink a venture just as quickly. • False Starts. In following the oft-cited advice to “fail fast” and to “launch before you’re ready,” founders risk wasting time and capital on the wrong solutions. • False Promises. Success with early adopters can be misleading and give founders unwarranted confidence to expand. • Speed Traps. Despite the pressure to “get big fast,” hypergrowth can spell disaster for even the most promising ventures. • Help Wanted. Rapidly scaling startups need lots of capital and talent, but they can make mistakes that leave them suddenly in short supply of both. • Cascading Miracles. Silicon Valley exhorts entrepreneurs to dream big. But the bigger the vision, the more things that can go wrong. Drawing on fascinating stories of ventures that failed to fulfill their early promise—from a home-furnishings retailer to a concierge dog-walking service, from a dating app to the inventor of a sophisticated social robot, from a fashion brand to a startup deploying a vast network of charging stations for electric vehicles—Eisenmann offers frameworks for detecting when a venture is vulnerable to these patterns, along with a wealth of strategies and tactics for avoiding them. A must-read for founders at any stage of their entrepreneurial journey, Why Startups Fail is not merely a guide to preventing failure but also a roadmap charting the path to startup success.