For fans of Jonathan Tropper, Amy Tan, and Kevin Kwan, this “sharp, smart, and gloriously extra” (Nancy Jooyoun Kim, author of The Last Story of Mina Lee) novel follows a family of estranged Vietnamese women—cursed to never know love or happiness—as they reunite when a psychic makes a startling prediction. Everyone in Orange County’s Little Saigon knew that the Duong sisters were cursed. It started with their ancestor, Oanh, who dared to leave her marriage for true love—so a fearsome Vietnamese witch cursed Oanh and her descendants so that they would never find love or happiness, and the Duong women would only give birth to daughters. Oanh’s current descendant Mai Nguyen knows this curse well. She’s divorced, and after an explosive disagreement a decade ago, estranged from her younger sisters, Minh Pham (the middle and the mediator) and Khuyen Lam (the youngest who swears she just runs humble coffee shops and nail salons, not Little Saigon’s underground). Though Mai’s three adult daughters, Priscilla, Thuy, and Thao, are successful in their careers (one of them is John Cho’s dermatologist!), the same can’t be said for their love lives. Mai is convinced they might drive her to an early grave. Desperate for guidance, she consults Auntie Hua, her trusted psychic in Hawaii, who delivers an unexpected prediction: this year, her family will witness a marriage, a funeral, and the birth of a son. This prophecy will reunite estranged mothers, daughters, aunts, and cousins—for better or for worse. A multi-narrative novel brimming with levity and candor, “The Fortunes of Jaded Women pulls off the magic trick of being a heartfelt, multi-generational epic as well as a fast-paced, hilarious romp. It is your good fortune to have this novel in your hands” (Camille Perri, author of When Katie Met Cassidy).

This title is part of a two-volume set that constitute the refereed proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Medical Image Computing and Computer-Assisted Intervention, MICCAI 2007. Coverage in this second volume includes computer assisted intervention and robotics, visualization and interaction, neuroscience image computing, computational anatomy, innovative clinical and biological applications, general biological imaging computing, computational physiology.

The area of physics involving muons and neutrinos has become exciting in particle physics. Using their high intensity sources, physicists undertake, in various ways, extensive searches for new physics beyond the Standard Model, such as tests of supersymmetric grand unification (SUSY-GUT) and precision measurements of the muon and neutrino properties, which will in future extend to ambitious studies such as determination of the three-generation neutrino mixing matrix elements and CP violation in the lepton sector. The physics of this field is advancing, with potential improvements of the sources. Many R&D projects, such as those concerning high intensity, low energy muon sources or a neutrino factory, are being carried out or planned at various places. Some of those topics are included in this book.

These proceedings cover the latest results in low energy antiproton physics. The volume consists of invited talks and invited contributions on the following subjects: nucleon-antinucleon interactions, antiprotons in astrophysics, meson spectroscopy, strangeness and charm production, antinucleon-nucleus interactions, fundamental symmetries, antiproton facilities, atomic physics with antiprotons, antihydrogen-facilities and experiments.