Offers test-taking strategies, provides diagnostic tools, reviews key concepts, and includes six full-length practice exams with answers and explanations.

In the ancient, pagan rite of Taurobolium, the slaughtering of the sacred bull is at the center of the ritual. In those times, the practice was performed every twenty years and gave a chosen citizen a life of renewal, support, fitness and success from the animals blood. The recipient was placed under the platform of the slain bull so that the blood would slowly drip down through the platforms tiny holes. The blood would nearly cover the persons entire body. Much later in the ritual's development, people believed that the chosen person received great power. The modern bullfight came from this ancient ritual. Many changes had been made by taking it out of the ritual realm and placing it in the sports/entertainment arena. But who could imagine that modern man would practice a certain bloody descendant of Taurobolium in the forest of a midwestern town? This became a cultic, sadistic ritual for the few chosen men who changed it into a corrupt and most evil endeavor.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-conference proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Learning and Intelligent Optimization, LION 5, held in Rome, Italy, in January 2011. The 32 revised regular and 3 revised short papers were carefully reviewed and selected from a total of 99 submissions. In addition to the contributions to the general track there are 11 full papers and 3 short papers presented at the following four special sessions; IMON: Intelligent Multiobjective OptimizatioN, LION-PP: Performance Prediction Self* EAs: Self-tuning, self-configuring and self-generating evolutionary algorithms LION-SWAP: Software and Applications.

This open access book constitutes the proceedings of the 29th International Conference on Tools and Algorithms for the Construction and Analysis of Systems, TACAS 2023, which was held as part of the European Joint Conferences on Theory and Practice of Software, ETAPS 2023, during April 22-27, 2023, in Paris, France. The 56 full papers and 6 short tool demonstration papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 169 submissions. The proceedings also contain 1 invited talk in full paper length, 13 tool papers of the affiliated competition SV-Comp and 1 paper consisting of the competition report. TACAS is a forum for researchers, developers, and users interested in rigorously based tools and algorithms for the construction and analysis of systems. The conference aims to bridge the gaps between different communities with this common interest and to support them in their quest to improve the utility, reliability, flexibility, and efficiency of tools and algorithms for building computer-controlled systems.

"Last Run of the Whisperer" is a historical fiction novel based upon the Revolutionary War records of William Waterman of Norwich, Connecticut colony. The author has taken the information that William Waterman has provided to us through his own account of his service in the American Revolution, when he petitioned the United States Congress in 1832, for a pension for said service. The author has taken the information provided by William Waterman and completed extensive research on the battles and areas of service that our hero served in, embellishing and expounded upon this information, to develop an exciting and accurate historical story surrounding our hero, William Waterman. William Waterman himself, in his petition to the United States Congress identifies one severe wound received in said service, at the battle of White Plain, in the colony of New York, above New York City. This wound by itself could have cost our hero his life. That he survived this wound and the numerous other battles and action that he undoubtedly saw was extraordinary. Although William Waterman lists a number of battles and theatres of war he saw service in, he does not describe the details of these battles. The author takes his literary liberty, upon researching these battles and events to interject our hero into the battles. That William Waterman is involved in each and everyone of these battles or theatres of war in based upon William Waterman's own account. Upon his completion of service in the Continental army, William Waterman listed his next service as a privateer, that is as a licensed pirate. The author has taken the liberty to believe that William Waterman engaged as a privateer in the cause of the upstart Americans and prayed upon British shipping, as he makes no mention of serving the British in his petition to the United States Congress, and infact lists his service as a privateer in his petition for his pension, indicating that all of his papers and records of his service in the Continental army were lost when the ship he was engaged on as a privateer was sunk, leading to his subsequent imprisonment by the British on the prison ship "Jersey." Our hero, William Waterman also does not identify the name of the ship on which he was engaged as a privateer. Again the author takes his literary liberty to name the privateer ship, and thus we have the "Last Run of the Whisperer." During the course of our adventure, William Waterman looses his boyhood friend to the cause of the American Revolution, learns that his father is fighting against him on the side of the British, looses his first love to another man while he is imprisoned, and eventually finds the girl he is to marry while hiding from the British. William Waterman finds peace and contentment spending his life after the war living in the Green Mountains of Vermont.

Argues that freed slaves exerted a profound influence on the transformation of Roman values under the Principate.