Early Readers are stepping stones from picture books to reading books. A blue Early Reader is perfect for sharing and reading together. A red Early Reader is the next step on your reading journey. Ava is sick and tired of her parents always telling her what to do. Nag nag nag. Why can't she have the kind of parents that let her eat sweets all day? Or parents who never make her go to bed, or eat vegetables? Then she sees an advert for the Parent Swap Shop, and Ava knows it's time to trade in the old ones for a new and improved Mum and Dad.

Twelve year old Danny Bell’s problems can be summed up in two simple words: dodgy parents. His mum has left home and his dad spends his days slumped in front of the television, dreaming of the past when he was a rock star. So when Danny hears about ParentSwap, a secret agency that helps kids find the parents they deserve, he's willing to give it a go. Thanks to ParentSwap, Danny’s life is transformed. It’s bye-bye to his mis-fit, loser family and hello perfect parents. Life with the Harrisons is refreshingly 'normal' until Danny discovers that he's been specially picked as the unwitting subject of a TV documentary. Rather than just get angry, Danny decides to get even and to take on the manipulating producers as their own decpetive game. This battle of wits leads to an astonishing climax at a rock concert at Buckingham Palace, where the Queen herself takes a hand in Danny's far-from-ordinary life! Terence Blacker's new children's novel is a funny, clever, fast-moving story set in a world where reality is just another TV concept.

A friendly introduction to the most useful algorithms written in simple, intuitive English The revised and updated second edition of Essential Algorithms, offers an accessible introduction to computer algorithms. The book contains a description of important classical algorithms and explains when each is appropriate. The author shows how to analyze algorithms in order to understand their behavior and teaches techniques that the can be used to create new algorithms to meet future needs. The text includes useful algorithms such as: methods for manipulating common data structures, advanced data structures, network algorithms, and numerical algorithms. It also offers a variety of general problem-solving techniques. In addition to describing algorithms and approaches, the author offers details on how to analyze the performance of algorithms. The book is filled with exercises that can be used to explore ways to modify the algorithms in order to apply them to new situations. This updated edition of Essential Algorithms: Contains explanations of algorithms in simple terms, rather than complicated math Steps through powerful algorithms that can be used to solve difficult programming problems Helps prepare for programming job interviews that typically include algorithmic questions Offers methods can be applied to any programming language Includes exercises and solutions useful to both professionals and students Provides code examples updated and written in Python and C# Essential Algorithms has been updated and revised and offers professionals and students a hands-on guide to analyzing algorithms as well as the techniques and applications. The book also includes a collection of questions that may appear in a job interview. The book’s website will include reference implementations in Python and C# (which can be easily applied to Java and C++).

This volume constitutes the proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Trust Management, held in Paris, France, during 23–26 May 2005. The conf- ence follows successful International Conferences in Crete in 2003 and Oxford in 2004. All conferences were organized by iTrust, which is a working group funded as a thematic network by the Future and Emerging Technologies (FET) unit of the Information Society Technologies (IST) program of the European Union. The purpose of the iTrust working group is to provide a forum for cro- disciplinary investigation of the applications of trust as a means of increasing security, building con?dence and facilitating collaboration in dynamic open s- tems. The notion of trust has been studied independently by di?erent academic disciplines, which has helped us to identify and understand di?erent aspects of trust. Theaimofthisconferencewastoprovideacommonforum,bringingtogether researchers from di?erent academic branches, such as the technology-oriented disciplines, law, social sciences and philosophy, in order to develop a deeper and more fundamental understanding of the issues and challenges in the area of trust management in dynamic open systems. The response to this conference was excellent; from the 71 papers submitted to the conference, we selected 21 full papers and 4 short papers for presentation. The program also included two keynote addresses, given by Steve Marsh from National Research Centre Canada, Institute for Information Technology, and Steve Kimbrough from the University of Pennsylvania; an industrial panel; 7 technology demonstrations; and a full day of tutorials.

Unified Financial Analysis arrives at the right time, in the midst of the current financial crisis where the call for better and more efficient financial control cannot be overstated. The book argues that from a technical perspective, there is no need for more, but for better and more efficiently organized information. The title demonstrates that it is possible with a single but well organized set of information and algorithms to derive all types of financial analysis. This reaches far beyond classical risk and return or profitability management, spanning all risk categories, all valuation techniques (local GAAP, IFRS, full mark-to-market and so on) and static, historic and dynamic analysis, just to name the most important dimensions. The dedication of a complete section to dynamic analysis, which is based on a going concern view, is unique, contrasting with the static, liquidation-based view prevalent today in banks. The commonly applied arbitrage-free paradigm, which is too narrow, is expanded to real world market models. The title starts with a brief history of the evolution of financial analysis to create the current industry structure, with the organisation of many banks following a strict silo structure, and finishes with suggestions for the way forward from the current financial turmoil. Throughout the book, the authors advocate the adoption of a 'unified financial language' that could also be the basis for a new regulatory approach. They argue that such a language is indispensable, if the next regulatory wave – which is surely to come – should not end in an expensive regulatory chaos. Unified Financial Analysis will be of value to CEOs and CFOs in banking and insurance, risk and asset and liability managers, regulators and compliance officers, students of Finance or Economics, or anyone with a stake in the finance industry.

Youth Ministry in the Trenches is a series of practical, tactical resources to help those doing the dirty work of ministry in one of the grittiest battlefields of human existence—adolescence.

The two-volume set LNCS 4051 and LNCS 4052 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 33rd International Colloquium on Automata, Languages and Programming, ICALP 2006, held in Venice, Italy, July 2006. In all, these volumes present more 100 papers and lectures. Volume I (4051) presents 61 revised full papers together with 1 invited lecture, focusing on algorithms, automata, complexity and games, on topics including graph theory, quantum computing, and more.