Powerful Devices studies spiritual warfare performances as an apparatus for disestablishing structures of power and knowledge, and establishing righteousness in their stead. Drawing on performance studies’ emphasis on radicality and breaking of social norms as devices of social transformation, the book demonstrates how Christian groups with dominant cultural power but who perceive themselves as embattled wield the ideas of performance activism. Combining religious studies with ethnography, Powerful Devices explores Nigerian Pentecostals and US Evangelicals’ praxis of transnational spiritual warfare. By closely studying spiritual warfare prayers as a “device,” Powerful Devices shows how the rituals of prayer enable an apprehension of time, paradigms of self-enhancement, and the subversion of politics and authority. A critical intervention, Powerful Devices explores charismatic Christianity’s relationship to science and secular authority, technology and temporality, neoliberalism, and reactionary ideology.

Student-friendly, engaging, and accessible, Contemporary Business, 19e equips students with the skills to assess and solve today's global business challenges and succeed in a fast-paced environment. Designed to drive interest in business, our newest edition offers a comprehensive approach to the material, including a variety of resources to support today's students. Its modern approach, wealth of videos, relevant and up-to-date content, and career readiness resources keep your course current and engaging.

Destiny is a Double-Edged Sword Breyik has made it this far in the Devicing world on the strength of his parents' legacy, but now he has to live up to it. In the Irongate Kingdom, Devicing is everything, just don't call it magic. Selected apprentices go on to futures of glory, creating new and powerful artifacts for the wealth and future of the isolated, underground lands. Breyik's parents were the greatest Devicers in history - the King said so, himself. Made apprentice underage by Master Takkri, his parents' own teacher, Apprentice Breyik must earn promotion to Journeyman, the first true step to becoming a Master in his own right. Now is his moment. He has studied the Journeyman Projects of the past. He has secretly researched skills beyond what any apprentice ought to know. He has put it all on display for Master Takkri's judgement and left nothing to change. But there's one thing he forgot to research: The Master, himself. When Master Takkri flips Breyik's understanding of Devicing on its head, his promotion and his family legacy are at stake. The outcome will shape the future of not just a single apprentice, but all of Tal Deorai. Lose Yourself, but Not Your Family Breyik the Apprentice is an epic fantasy novelette. That means rich but tight world-building, a unique magic (no, wait, can't use that word: Devicing) system and characters whose actions and decisions could shatter or shape societies. But it's also relatively short. If you're like me, you can get lost in a story for hours at a time. You might forget to sleep, eat, or acknowledge the existence of other human beings (or kobi). Well, with Breyik the Apprentice, you can do that safely. It's a short read that will introduce you to Breyik and the Irongate Kingdom of Tal Deorai, but also let you finish by dinner time, or the end of your flight. And this is just a beginning. The next Breyik novel - a full-length novel that may just put your relationships at risk - is already in progress. If you join the reader's club at the end, you'll be the first to know when it's ready. Are you still reading this? I promise the book is more interesting than this description. Download it now to start reading!

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Internet and Distributed Systems held in Naples, Italy, in October 2019. The 47 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 145 submissions. This conference desires to look for inspiration in diverse areas (e.g. infrastructure & system design, software development, big data, control theory, artificial intelligence, IoT, self-adaptation, emerging models, paradigms, applications and technologies related to Internet-based distributed systems) to develop new ways to design and manage such complex and adaptive computation resources.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Second Mexican International Conference on Artificial Intelligence, MICAI 2002, held in Mérida, Yucatán, Mexico in April 2002. The 56 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from more than 85 submissions from 17 countries. The papers are organized in topical sections on robotics and computer vision, heuristic search and optimization, speech recognition and natural language processing, logic, neural networks, machine learning, multi-agent systems, uncertainty management, and AI tools and applications.

This book discusses the applications, challenges, and future trends of machine learning in medical domain, including both basic and advanced topics. The book presents how machine learning is helpful in smooth conduction of administrative processes in hospitals, in treating infectious diseases, and in personalized medical treatments. The authors show how machine learning can also help make fast and more accurate disease diagnoses, easily identify patients, help in new types of therapies or treatments, model small-molecule drugs in pharmaceutical sector, and help with innovations via integrated technologies such as artificial intelligence as well as deep learning. The authors show how machine learning also improves the physician’s and doctor’s medical capabilities to better diagnosis their patients. This book illustrates advanced, innovative techniques, frameworks, concepts, and methodologies of machine learning that will enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of the healthcare system. Provides researchers in machine and deep learning with a conceptual understanding of various methodologies of implementing the technologies in medical areas; Discusses the role machine learning and IoT play into locating different virus and diseases across the globe, such as COVID-19, Ebola, and cervical cancer; Includes fundamentals and advances in machine learning in the medical field, supported by significant case studies and practical applications.