My first experience with Amazon Web Services was on March 14, 2006. I had seen a press release announcing a new web-based storage service called Simple Storage Service (S3), and I remember thinking how strange it seemed that Amazon would be offering such a service. Nevertheless, I signed up for an account and started reading the documentation. I was blown away by S3. The simple, affordable pric…
With the invention of the steamship and the opening of the Suez Canal, the time was reduced to a month or two. Air mail reduced the time further to a week or two, and eventually to a few days (“when it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight”). The deployment of commercial email systems introduced us to wait times of only a few minutes (depending on how often you polled your server…
This book is a practical guide to learning enterprise build systems with Gradle. This book helps you to master the core concepts of the tool and to quickly apply the knowledge to real-life projects. Throughout the book, all the chapters are supported by sufficient examples so that the reader can easily follow and absorb the concepts. The book is divided into 10 chapters. The first six chapters …
Node.js and MongoDB are quickly becoming very popular tech stacks for the Web. Powered by Google's V8 engine, Node.js caters to easily building fast, scalable network applications while MongoDB is the perfect fit as a scalable, high-performance, open source NoSQL database solution. Using these two technologies together, web applications can be built quickly and easily and deployed to the clou…
businesses move more toward cloud computing, one important factor for success is adopting multi-tenant software-defined networking (SDN) solutions in data centers. Hyper-V Network Virtualization (HNV) is a key enabler for a multi-tenant SDN solution and is essential for implementing a hybrid cloud environment where tenants can bring not only their own IPs, but their entire network topology sinc…
Taxes have a pervasive impact on our lives. They affect every individual in the United States from birth to death, and even beyond death (through taxation of an individual’s estate). Taxes likewise affect every business from formation of the business entity to its operations, distribution of profits to owners, and ultimate disposition or liquidation. Despite the wide-ranging impact of taxes,…
Statistical distances have two very important uses in statistical analysis. Firstly, they can be applied naturally to the case of parametric statistical inference. The idea of minimum distance estimation has been around for a while and there are many nice properties that the minimum distance estimators enjoy. Minimum distance estimation was pioneered by Wolfowitz in the 1950s (1952, 1953, 195…
There are many good reasons to reach for this book. If you have been plagued by moodiness, stress, anxiety, or depression, this is the book for you. If you are looking for a more action-based approach to mood management than that afforded by medications or psychotherapy, this is the book to read. If you have tried to exercise regularly and have failed, then this is your book. Why? Because this …
As distance education continues to grow in its popularity, so does the use of social networking. Hindered by concerns associated with privacy and safety, social networking sites (SNSs) are frequently banned from educational settings. The following article presents the implementation of an alternative social networking site in distance education. Findings from this study highlight the benefits…
Distance education as a primary means of instruction is expanding significantly at the college and university level. Simultaneously, the growth of social networking sites (SNS) including Facebook, LinkedIn, and MySpace is also rising among today’s college students. An increasing number of higher education instructors are beginning to combine distance education delivery with SNSs. However, …
Since the first case was recognized in the early 1980’s, the spread of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), which causes acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS), has achieved pandemic proportions (CDC, 1981; UNAIDS, 2006). According to the latest report from the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) and the World Health Organization (WHO) (2009), HIV/AIDS continues to be a…
For nearly 50 years, the United States has led the world in the scientific exploration of space. U.S. spacecraft have circled Earth, landed on the Moon and Mars, orbited Jupiter and Saturn, and traveled beyond the orbit of Pluto and out of the ecliptic. These spacecraft have sent back to Earth images and data that have greatly expanded human knowledge, though many important questions remain una…
In response to a request from Congress, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) convened a committee to conduct an analysis of the federal government’s quality enhancement processes in six government programs—Medicare, Medicaid, the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, the Department of Defense TRICARE and TRICARE for Life programs, the Veterans Health Administration program, and the Indian…
Adverse weather has a major impact on aviation safety and efficiency. During 1988–1992, one-fourth of all aircraft accidents and one-third of fatal accidents were related to weather (Salottolo, 1994). In addition, 41 percent of air traffic delay time during 1990 was attributable to weather. These delays accounted for approximately $4.1 billion of direct costs to the airline industry—not inc…
Over the last few years, corporations have been under incre- ased pressure to optimize resource utilization while at the same time adapting more quickly to changes required by the business. This pressure has direct impact on IT organizati- ons faced with more complex installations that need to be implemented, enhanced and managed with fewer allocated resources. Most organizations have invested…
“When deploying and administering large infrastructures, it is still common to think in terms of individual machines rather than view an entire infrastructure as a combined whole. This standard practice creates many problems, including labor-intensive admin- istration, high cost of ownership, and limited generally available knowledge or code usa- ble for administering large infrastructures.…
After decades of outstanding contributions to the nation’s naval capability, the U.S. shipbuilding industry is in crisis. During the 1980s, at the behest of the Reagan administration, U.S. shipbuilders turned to constructing many new naval vessels. Following these achievements and with the ensuing defense builddown, U.S. shipbuilders lost significant parts of their business and work force, ha…
The bursting of the dot-com bubble in 2001 coincided with an abrupt and so far lasting change in the development of entrepreneurial venture-backed firms in the United States. Previously, entrepreneurs and investors commonly took viable young firms public through initial public offerings (IPOs). In some well-known cases, these firms subsequently grew into major, globally competitive corporatio…
Our experience of health and illness is shaped by our personal background, social networks, cultural context, and community affiliations. We undertook this edited volume because we believe communication processes are a link between personal, social, cultural, and institutional factors and various fac- ets of health and illness. For example, social networks and the social support they can prov…