While scholars have been studying the short story cycle for some time now, this book discusses a form that has never before been identified and named, let alone analyzed: the mini-cycle. A mini-cycle is a short story cycle made up, in most cases, of only two or three stories. This study looks at mini-cycles spanning the period from Anton Chekhov’s "little trilogy" (1898) to the "Alphinland" stories in Margaret Atwood’s Stone Mattress (2014), including texts by such authors as Stephen Leacock, Alice Munro, Robert Olen Butler, and Clark Blaise. Consideration is also given to marginal examples, like Sherwood Anderson’s "Godliness—A Tale in Four Parts" (1919), which can be seen as one story or four distinct texts unified under one title, and to what is called the "exploded" mini-cycle: one whose component stories are published with intervening stories between them rather than consecutively. For each mini-cycle, the analysis is based on close reading of both the linking elements—character, imagery, symbolism, and so forth—and the rhetorical and aesthetic effects of the mini-cycle’s being made up of distinct stories rather than constructed as one long narrative.

This book is for the beginner to intermediate powerlifter, along with the person thinking about getting into the sport. It will present sound training, competition, dietary, and supplement advice. It will also help the reader to wade through the maze of federations, divisions, and supportive gear in powerlifting. Plus, it will detail some of the personal difficulties the writer has encountered in hope that doing so will help the reader to avoid the same problems. So this book is truly a compressive guide to powerlifting. The author has a degree in Nutrition Science and was a state and na-tional collegiate champion and record holder back in 1979-82. Starting in 2003, he began to compete again. He is currently a top-ranked master powerlifter, holding 39 records set in four different powerlifting federations. He is also the founder and director of Fitness for One and All, which is dedicated to helping people attain their heath, fitness, and per-formance goals, with an emphasis on powerlifting.

An authoritative introduction to the roles of switching and transmission in broadband integrated services networks Principles of Broadband Switching and Networking explains the design and analysis of switch architectures suitable for broadband integrated services networks, emphasizing packet-switched interconnection networks with distributed routing algorithms. The text examines the mathematical properties of these networks, rather than specific implementation technologies. Although the pedagogical explanations in this book are in the context of switches, many of the fundamental principles are relevant to other communication networks with regular topologies. After explaining the concept of the modern broadband integrated services network and why it is necessary in today’s society, the book moves on to basic switch design principles, discussing two types of circuit switch design—space domain and time domain—and packet switch design. Throughput improvements are illustrated by some switch design variations such as Speedup principle, Channel-Grouping principle, Knockout principle, and Dilation principle. Moving seamlessly into advanced switch design principles, the book covers switch scalability, switch design for multicasting, and path switching. Then the focus moves to broadband communications networks that make use of such switches. Readers receive a detailed introduction on how to allocate network resources and control traffic to satisfy the quality of service requirements of network users and to maximize network usage. As an epilogue, the text shows how transmission noise and packet contention have similar characteristics and can be tamed by comparable means to achieve reliable communication. Principles of Broadband Switching and Networking is written for senior undergraduate and first-year postgraduate students with a solid background in probability theory.

This book deals with issues related to the efficient utilization of available energy in industrial sites. It also provides a recipe for minimizing the Global Warming Potential (GWP) and reducing the impact of Ozone Depletion Potential (ODP) on nature, and presents a variety of insights into thermodynamics, heat transfer, and energy management for teaching purposes. The book will assist beginner and senior engineers to deal with energy issues from a more global perspective.