All across the frontier, other worlds have succumbed to the relentless attacks of robotic alien warships, while hundreds of light years away, the core of human civilization—those star systems closest to Earth, known as the Hallowed Vasties—have all fallen to ruins. Powerful telescopes can see only dust and debris where once there were orbital mega-structures so huge they eclipsed the light of their parent stars.No one knows for sure what caused the Hallowed Vasties to fail, but a hardened adventurer named Urban intends to find out. He has the resources to do it. He commands a captive alien starship fully capable of facing the dangers that lie beyond Deception Well.With a ship’s company of explorers and scientists, Urban is embarking on a voyage of re-discovery. They will be the first in centuries to confront the hazards of an inverted frontier as they venture back along the path of human migration. Their goal: to unravel the mystery of the Hallowed Vasties and to discover what monstrous life might have grown up among the ruins.Edges is a new entry point into the classic story world of Linda Nagata’s The Nanotech Succession.

    Today, that taboo is dead. The causal revolution, instigated by Judea Pearl and his colleagues, has cut through a century of confusion and established causality -- the study of cause and effect -- on a firm scientific basis. His work explains how we can know easy things, like whether it was rain or a sprinkler that made a sidewalk wet; and how to answer hard questions, like whether a drug cured an illness. Pearl's work enables us to know not just whether one thing causes another: it lets us explore the world that is and the worlds that could have been. It shows us the essence of human thought and key to artificial intelligence. Anyone who wants to understand either needs The Book of Why.

    The long-anticipated revision of this best-selling text offers the most comprehensive, up-to-date introduction to the theory and practice of artificial intelligence. *NEW-Nontechnical learning material-Accompanies each part of the book. *NEW-The Internet as a sample application for intelligent systems-Added in several places including logical agents, planning, and natural language. *NEW-Increased coverage of material - Includes expanded coverage of: default reasoning and truth maintenance systems, including multi-agent/distributed AI and game theory; probabilistic approaches to learning including EM; more detailed descriptions of probabilistic inference algorithms. *NEW-Updated and expanded exercises-75% of the exercises are revised, with 100 new exercises. *NEW-On-line Java software. *Makes it easy for students to do projects on the web using intelligent agents. *A unified, agent-based approach to AI-Organizes the material around the task of building intelligent agents. *Comprehensive, up-to-date coverage-Includes a unified view of the field organized around the rational decision making pa

    The stories recounts the life of times of the hero Domrudhar in colonial India. The protagonist Domrudhar is portrayed as a dishonest man who rises from a lowly shop-assistant to a land owner.

    We Follow The Ups And Downs Of Mr Starlight's Career As He Heads To The Bright Lights Of America, As Seen Through The Eyes Of Cled, His Brother.

     It's the hottest heatwave in years and as preparations for an end-of-summer concert get underway, the notes soar. But so, too, do the scandals and secrets ... Choir member Molly sees a young boy who she's convinced is her grandson, but how does she find out the truth when her son Philip ran away to New Zealand five years ago?Meanwhile Molly's daughter Emily has fallen in love for the second time in her life. Except this time it's with the wrong man ... While choir leader Christopher, who closed off his heart to love a long time ago, is making do with snatched trysts with new member Jane - who also happens to be married. But then American author Freddie moves in next door and suddenly things begin to get complicated.As performance night approaches, the heatwave breaks and members of the choir discover that their lives intertwine more than they could ever have imagined. But are the inhabitants of the town ready for what happens next?

    Freeman, Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyLearning OpenCV puts you in the middle of the rapidly expanding field of computer vision. Written by the creators of the free open source OpenCV library, this book introduces you to computer vision and demonstrates how you can quickly build applications that enable computers to "see" and make decisions based on that data. Computer vision is everywhere-in security systems, manufacturing inspection systems, medical image analysis, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, and more. It stitches Google maps and Google Earth together, checks the pixels on LCD screens, and makes sure the stitches in your shirt are sewn properly. OpenCV provides an easy-to-use computer vision framework and a comprehensive library with more than 500 functions that can run vision code in real time.Learning OpenCV will teach any developer or hobbyist to use the framework quickly with the help of hands-on exercises in each chapter. This book includes:A thorough introduction to OpenCV Getting input from cameras Transforming images Segmenting images and shape matching Pattern recognition, including face detection Tracking and motion in 2 and 3 dimensions 3D reconstruction from stereo vision Machine learning algorithms Getting machines to see is a challenging but entertaining goal. Whether you want to build simple or sophisticated vision applications, Learning OpenCV is the book you need to get started.

    Jela is a top-of-the-line of soldier who realizes the peril and persuades a talented space ship pilot named Cantra yos’Phelium to help what humans remain to escape to an alternate reality with unpopulated, but livable, star systems: the Liaden® universe!  Crystal DragonCantra is revealed to be no merely a great pilot, but a genetically engineered aelantaza, or assassin and spy whose specialty is taking on the entire personality of her “cover,” so much so that she believes it herself.  She remakes herself, as only a aelantaza can, and infiltrates the scholarly towers on the university world of Landomist where she narrowly avoids being killed in scholarly conflicts.  There she liberates the scholar Liad dea’Syl, along with the equations for escape stored inside his head.  Once in her new domain, Cantra creates a hereditary alliance to protect her child by Jela – to be known (and become legendary) as Clan Korval.Balance of TradeYoung Jethri Gobelyn is a young Terran, working on his family's trading spaceship.  Jethri has ambition, and he sets out to make a name for himself in the time-honored fashion of his family by investing in a trading scheme with what he takes to be a bona fide Liaden® master trader.  But when Jethri discovers he’s been had, Jethri must master the intricacies of Liaden society, which include many formal rules and regulations of behavior, to regain his place – and face – within the clan.   About the Liaden Universe® series:“Every now and then you come across an author, or in this case, a pair, who write exactly what you want to read, the characters and personalities that make you enjoy meeting them. . . . I rarely rave on and on about stories, but I am devoted to Lee and Miller novels and stories.” —Anne McCaffrey“These authors consistently deliver stories with a rich, textured setting, intricate plotting, and vivid, interesting characters from fully-realized cultures, both human and alien, and each book gets better.” –Elizabeth Moon“[T]he many fans of the Liad universe will welcome the latest…continuing young pilot Theo Waitley’s adventures.” – Booklist on Saltation“[A]ficionados of intelligent space opera will be thoroughly entertained. . .[T]he authors' craftsmanship is top-notch.” –Publishers Weekly on Lee and Miller’s popular Liaden® thriller, I Dare