Winner of the Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction, 2008. Most of the nine stories in Last Known Position were written upon James Mathews' return from combat deployment to the Middle East with the D.C. Air National Guard. Life under fire provided the author with both dramatic events and a heightened sense of observation, allowing him to suggest the stress of combat as the driving factor behind extreme yet believable characterization and action. Military experiences and settings cause certain human elements and truisms to emerge more profoundly and dramatically. These stories portray desperate characters driven to make desperate choices. Always on the edge of a dark and unpleasant reality, Mathews' characters survive by embracing fantasy, humor, violence, and sometimes redemption. Each story bears its own brand of hopeless quirkiness. Four teenagers on an army base steal a grenade and are stalked by a parade horse. A drifter returns home to rob the grandparents who raised him. A national guardsman faces a homicidal superior officer in Iraq on the eve of war. An elderly man worries that his wife's new house guests are unrepentant cannibals. Always tense, sometimes ridiculous, and never dull, Last Known Position brings the reader to places unknown before and unforgettable after.

The naval aviation safety review.

The first guide to developing user location applications You are walking down a street and suddenly, your cell phone display flashes the news that you are 70 feet from a Starbuck's and that you are entitled to a dollar off your next purchase. You have just witnessed an example of user location services, one of the exciting new generations of cell phone and handheld services. This book describes the architecture and operation of this technology. It also familiarizes readers with the new location services development standard, shows how to programming with GIS, provides GUI design guidelines, and uses real-world examples to teach valuable lessons on how to successfully develop and deploy user location applications for the wireless Web. CD-ROM contains a host of tools for developing positioning and location services.

The Reeds Skipper's Handbook is the essential pocket-sized reference to everything you need to know at sea, packed with a wide range of information in a concise and quick to read form. A useful aide-memoire for all sailors and powerboaters, it is also frequently recommended by instructors as a revision aid for anyone taking their Day Skipper and Yachtmaster certificates. Now in its revised and updated 8th edition, it covers: - Essential navigation skills, manual and electronic - Tides, tidal streams and curves - The rules of the road, and buoyage - Safety and distress - Communications - Weather - Anchoring and mooring - Sails and wind - Knots, bends and hitches - Inland waterways/CEVNI It also includes handy facts, figures, formulae and tables for instant reference, including an at-a-glance guide to International Port Traffic Signals. Over 100,000 boaters worldwide have a copy of the invaluable Reeds Skipper's Handbook in their pocket, on the chart table or on their shelf at home. It is a must for anyone going to sea, whether skipper or crew.

The only sailing manual you will ever need, covering everything from sailing basics to making repairs and mastering navigation. The undisputed market leader in sailing guides, this fully revised and updated sailing manual, with a foreword by quadruple Olympic gold medallist Sir Ben Ainslie, answers questions about any sailing situation, with thorough coverage of all aspects of sailing and boat ownership. In DK's The Complete Sailing Manual, former British national champion Steve Sleight offers a wealth of expert advice and guidance in the form of a complete course on seamanship, which is brought to life with breathtaking action photography and clear instructions. Fully revised, this new edition features all of the latest developments in sailing--including foiling, long-distance cruising, and high-speed apparent-wind sailing--and navigation, with technology such as modern performance systems and electronic navigation. It also highlights the latest rules, regulations, and best practices necessary for every avid sailor, from the novice to the seasoned seaperson. Includes essential information, handy diagrams, and step-by-step illustrations, The Complete Sailing Manual is the ultimate sailing ebook to keep by your side when you're out on the waves.

This book is a tribute to 40 years of contributions by Professor Mo Jamshidi who is a well known and respected scholar, researcher, and educator. Mo Jamshidi has spent his professional career formalizing and extending the field of large-scale complex systems (LSS) engineering resulting in educating numerous graduates specifically, ethnic minorities. He has made significant contributions in modeling, optimization, CAD, control and applications of large-scale systems leading to his current global role in formalizing system of systems engineering (SoSE), as a new field. His books on complex LSS and SoSE have filled a vacuum in cyber-physical systems literature for the 21st Century. His contributions to ethnic minority engineering education commenced with his work at the University of New Mexico (UNM, Tier-I Hispanic Serving Institution) in 1980 through a NASA JPL grant. Followed by several more major federal grants, he formalized a model for educating minorities, called VI-P Pyramid where K-12 students(bottom of pyramid) to doctoral (top of pyramid) students form a seamless group working on one project. Upper level students mentor lower ones on a sequential basis. Since 1980, he has graduated over 114 minority students consisting of 62 Hispanics, 34 African Americans., 15 Native Americans, and 3 Pacific Islanders. This book contains contributed chapters from colleagues, and former and current students of Professor Jamshidi. Areas of focus are: control systems, energy and system of systems, robotics and soft computing.