Before the birth of his third son Baldwin, Armand DesMarets hires Rajeev, a Hindu with a Christian upbringing, to give his children a well-rounded education that includes foreign languages, herbology, and astronomy. Rajeev is particularly devoted to Baldwin, who has frightening dreams of a demon, remembrance of a past life, and celestial visions of Mary Magdalene. The tutor accompanies the young knight and his faithful dog, Bhaiya, as he sets sail to Jerusalem to join a newly formed group of monk warriors, known as the Knights Templar. During their travels, they meet many devout pilgrims, including the pious Bernard of Clairvaux. They also encounter raging seas, pillaging pirates, and one mysterious stranger who becomes an unlikely traveling companion. This is a dedicated religious journey for young Baldwin, but just what lies in store for him when he arrives and meets with the Knights Templar? To join, he must take an oath of poverty, chastity, and devotion. However, his life takes a turn when he is given a mysterious mission that takes him on a deeper journey of both outer and inner exploration.

The great potential of remote sensing technologies for operational use in sustainable forest management is addressed in this book, which is the reprint of papers published in the Remote Sensing Special Issue “Operationalization of Remote Sensing Solutions for Sustainable Forest Management”. The studies come from three continents and cover multiple remote sensing systems (including terrestrial mobile laser scanning, unmanned aerial vehicles, airborne laser scanning, and satellite data acquisition) and a diversity of data processing algorithms, with a focus on machine learning approaches. The focus of the studies ranges from identification and characterization of individual trees to deriving national- or even continental-level forest attributes and maps. There are studies carefully describing exercises on the case study level, and there are also studies introducing new methodologies for transdisciplinary remote sensing applications. Even though most of the authors look forward to continuing their research, nearly all studies introduced are ready for operational use or have already been implemented in practical forestry.

A book-and-video introduction to Microsoft's Business Intelligence tools If you are just starting to get a handle on Microsoft Business Intelligence (BI) tools, this book and accompanying video provides you with the just the right amount of information to perform basic business analysis and reporting. You'll explore the components and related tools that comprise the Microsoft BI toolset as well as the new BI features of Office 2010. After a basic primer on BI and data modeling, the expert team of authors provides you with step-by-step lessons in the book and videos on the accompanying DVD on how to use SQL Server Integration Services, SQL Server Analysis Services, SQL Server Reporting Services, Excel BI (including PowerPivot), and SharePoint. Integrates instructional videos with each of the lessons found in the book to enhance your learning experience Explores the Microsoft Business Intelligence (BI) toolset as well as the new BI features of Office 2010 Encourages you to practice what you've learned in "Try It Out" sections Contains video demonstrations that walk you through how to tackle each lesson featured in the book With Knight's Microsoft Business Intelligence 24-Hour Trainer, veteran authors present you with an ideal introductory book-and-video package so that you can get started working with the BI toolset immediately! Note: As part of the print version of this title, video lessons are included on DVD. For e-book versions, video lessons can be accessed at wrox.com using a link provided in the interior of the e-book.

This book makes two key contributions to empirical finance. First it provides a comprehensive analysis of the Thai stock market. Second it presents an excellent exposition ofhow modem econometric techniques can be utilised to understand a market. The increasing globalisation of the world's financial markets has made our un derstanding of the risk-return relationship in a broader range of markets critical. This is particularly so in emerging markets where market depth and liquidity are major issues. One such emerging market is Thailand. The Thai capital market isof particular interest given that it was the market in which the Asian financial crises commenced. As such an understanding ofthe Thai capital market via study of the pre and post-crisis periods enables one to shed light on one of the major financial markets events of recent times. This book provides a quantitative analysis of the Thai capital market using some very useful and recent econometric techniques. The book provides an over view of the Thai stock market in chapter 2. Descriptive statistics and time series models (moving average, exponential smoothing, ARIMA) are presented in chap ter 3 followed by market efficiency tests based on autocorrelations in chapter 4. A richer set of models is then considered in chapters 5 through 8. Chapter 5 finds a cointegrating relationship between macroeconomic factors and stock returns.

This book brings together a variety of non-Gaussian autoregressive-type models to analyze time-series data. This book collects and collates most of the available models in the field and provide their probabilistic and inferential properties. This book classifies the stationary time-series models into different groups such as linear stationary models with non-Gaussian innovations, linear stationary models with non-Gaussian marginal distributions, product autoregressive models and minification models. Even though several non-Gaussian time-series models are available in the literature, most of them are focusing on the model structure and the probabilistic properties.

The Handbook of Financial Time Series gives an up-to-date overview of the field and covers all relevant topics both from a statistical and an econometrical point of view. There are many fine contributions, and a preamble by Nobel Prize winner Robert F. Engle.

This is the first of a group of papers dealing with various aspects of Fund-supported adjustment programs. The other two, The Global Effects of Fund-supported Adjustment Programs by Morris Goldstein and Fund-Supported Programs, Fiscal Policy, and Income Distribution by the Fiscal Affairs Department, will also be published in the Fund's Occasional Paper Series.

The field of statistics not only affects all areas of scientific activity, but also many other matters such as public policy. It is branching rapidly into so many different subjects that a series of handbooks is the only way of comprehensively presenting the various aspects of statistical methodology, applications, and recent developments.The Handbook of Statistics is a series of self-contained reference books. Each volume is devoted to a particular topic in statistics, with Volume 30 dealing with time series. The series is addressed to the entire community of statisticians and scientists in various disciplines who use statistical methodology in their work. At the same time, special emphasis is placed on applications-oriented techniques, with the applied statistician in mind as the primary audience. - Comprehensively presents the various aspects of statistical methodology - Discusses a wide variety of diverse applications and recent developments - Contributors are internationally renowened experts in their respective areas

Financial econometrics has developed into a very fruitful and vibrant research area in the last two decades. The availability of good data promotes research in this area, specially aided by online data and high-frequency data. These two characteristics of financial data also create challenges for researchers that are different from classical macro-econometric and micro-econometric problems. This Special Issue is dedicated to research topics that are relevant for analyzing financial data. We have gathered six articles under this theme.