Bill Blazer is a hard-charging young guy with a quick head and a suspicious mind. He drops out of U.C.L.A. to develop his novel idea for a high-speed, supercomputer. With cunning, guile and little else, he puts together a start-up company. His competitors and a large Japanese conglomerate are snapping at his heels. He needs money to keep his company going. In a deal with the devil, he accepts financing from a New York banker who he believes is now double-crossing him. His girlfriend Jennie Silvers tells him he is paranoid, but he is convinced everyone is trying to steal his technology. He soon catches one of his employees red-handed. Federal agents move in. Then the whole thing takes an unexpected turn that even Bill Blazer's distrustful mind could not have anticipated.

In this first serious study of the economics of the black market, S. K. Ray looks in-depth at profiteering, black money, fraud, smuggling, government corruption, and the overall structure of the black market.

Every nuclear weapons program for decades has relied extensively on illicit imports of nuclear-related technologies. This book offers the most detailed public account of how states procure what they need to build nuclear weapons, what is currently being done to stop them, and how global efforts to prevent such trade could be strengthened. While illicit nuclear trade can never be stopped completely, effective steps to block illicit purchases of nuclear technology have sometimes succeeded in slowing nuclear weapons programs and increasing their costs, giving diplomacy more chance to work. Hence, this book argues, preventing illicit transfers wherever possible is a key element of an effective global non-proliferation strategy.

This journal subline serves as a forum for stimulating and disseminating innovative research ideas, theories, emerging technologies, empirical investigations, state-of-the-art methods, and tools in all different genres of edutainment, such as game-based learning and serious games, interactive storytelling, virtual learning environments, VR-based education, and related fields. It covers aspects from educational and game theories, human-computer interaction, computer graphics, artificial intelligence, and systems design. The 19 papers presented in the 15th issue were organized in the following topical sections: multimedia; simulation; cybersecurity; and e-learning.

"In Blue Helmets and Black Markets, Peter Andreas traces the interaction between these formal front-stage and informal backstage activities, arguing that this created and sustained a criminalized war economy and prolonged the conflict in a manner that served various interests on all sides. Although the vast majority of Sarajevans struggled for daily survival and lived in a state of terror, the siege was highly rewarding for some key local and international players. This situation also left a powerful legacy for postwar reconstruction: new elites emerged via war profiteering and an illicit economy flourished partly based on the smuggling networks built up during wartime." "Andreas shows how and why the internationalization of the siege changed the repertoires of siege-craft and siege defenses and altered the strategic calculations of both the besiegers and the besieged. The Sarajevo experience dramatically illustrates that just as changes in weapons technologies transformed siege warfare through the ages, so too has the arrival of CNN, NGOs, satellite phones, UN peacekeepers, and aid convoys. Drawing on interviews, reportage, diaries, memoirs, and other sources, Andreas documents the business of survival in wartime Sarajevo and the limits, contradictions, and unintended consequences of international intervention."--BOOK JACKET.

Part II of the Marian Publication series, "The Conflict Between the North and the South." The issue of slavery is examined from a Catholic perspective of authority and servitude, and how both are misunderstood in this post-Enlightenment age. What were the origins of slavery in America? Were only blacks enslaved? Were whites the only slave holders? Who primarily financed and ran the slave trade from America? Did all, or most, slaves despise their masters? Are all forms of slavery intrinsically evil? Author Adam Miller provides a jaw-dropping, eye-opening myth-destroyer concerning slavery in the United States of America. Written from a most unique perspective when it comes to this emotional topic: not neccessarily from a pro-Southern perspective, but from a traditional Catholic historical approach. "The North, the South, and Slavery" was written as a remedy to the numerous distortions, misrepresentations, and out-right falsehoods concerning slavery, the South, and the North's connection with the slave-trade.