Groundbreaking research based on a national database of over 200,000 churches shows that the overall United States population is growing faster than the church. The director of the American Church Research Project, Dave Olson, has worked to analyze church attendance, showing that it is virtually unchanged from fifteen years ago while our population has grown by fifty-two million people.What does this mean for you, your church, and the future of Christianity in North America? The American C...

This book presents data mining methods in the field of healthcare management in a practical way. Healthcare quality and disease prevention are essential in today’s world. Healthcare management faces a number of challenges, e.g. reducing patient growth through disease prevention, stopping or slowing disease progression, and reducing healthcare costs while improving quality of care. The book provides an overview of current healthcare management problems and highlights how analytics and knowl...

This book is devoted to presenting models that have been applied in project management. There are a variety of project domains. We discuss engineering/construction projects, software development projects, massive projects to include governmental undertakings, and pharmaceutical product development. Chapter 1 gives an overview of projects, and discusses the difficulties in completing projects on time, within budget, and at designed functionality. While the successful completion of a project...

Enterprise Risk Management in Finance is a guide to measuring and managing Enterprise-wide risks in financial institutions. Financial institutions operate in a unique manner when compared to other businesses. They are, by the nature of their business, highly exposed to risk at every level, and indeed employ their own risk management functions to manage many of these risks. However, financial firms are also highly exposed at enterprise level. Traditional approaches and frameworks for ERM ar...

Risk is inherent in business. Without risk, there would be no motivation to conduct business. But a key principle is that organizations should accept risks that they are competent enough to deal with, and “outsource” other risks to those who are more competent to deal with them (such as insurance companies). Enterprise Risk Management (2nd Edition) approaches enterprise risk management from the perspectives of accounting, supply chains, and disaster management, in addition to the core pers...

The rapid growth in computer technology provides supply chain managers with valuable tools to better coordinate and control their operations. This book seeks to describe systems available to give supply chains information system support, demonstrating key tasks with demonstrated analytic techniques. This second edition provides you with newer cases to demonstrate concepts that will allow to better manage your supply chain management position in one of the fastest growing fields in our econ...

Information Systems Project Management addresses project management in the context of information systems. It deals with general project management principles, with focus on the special characteristics of information systems. It is based on an earlier text, but shortened to focus on essential project management elements.This updated version presents various statistics indicating endemic problems in completing information system projects on time, within budget, at designed functionality. Wh...

This book reviews forecasting data mining models, from basic tools for stable data through causal models, to more advanced models using trends and cycles. These models are demonstrated on the basis of business-related data, including stock indices, crude oil prices, and the price of gold. The book’s main approach is above all descriptive, seeking to explain how the methods concretely work; as such, it includes selected citations, but does not go into deep scholarly reference. The data sets...

"The Cretaceous Birds of New Jersey" by Storrs L. Olson and David C. Parris explores the fascinating avian life that existed during the Cretaceous period in what is now New Jersey. This work delves into the fossil evidence of birds from this era, providing insights into their anatomy, behavior, and ecological roles. The authors meticulously analyze the fossil records, offering a comprehensive overview of the diversity of bird species that thrived in prehistoric environments, contributing s...

We sit at the doorstep of multiple revolutions in robotic, genetic, information, and communication technologies, whose powerful interactions promise social and environmental transformations we are only beginning to understand. How can we anticipate their impacts and ensure that these new technologies help move us in a more sustainable direction?Environmentalism and the Technologies of Tomorrow is a collection of essays by leading scientists, technologists, and thinkers that examine...

“Breathtakingly inspiring.” —Laurence H. Tribe, Professor of Constitutional Law, Harvard Law SchoolWhen advocates for marriage equality sought to challenge California’s notorious Proposition 8, they were fortunate to have the support of two of the nation’s preeminent lawyers, David Boies and Theodore B. Olson. Despite the fact that they had argued against one another in the landmark Bush v. Gore case, their commitment to the marriage issue led them to join...

Suicide? Murder? Or maybe a political assassination?When Special Prosecutor Alberto Nisman was found dead in his Buenos Aires apartment mere hours before his testimony before Congress about linkages between the Argentine President and the Islamic Republic of Iran, his death was initially ruled a suicide. But as facts emerged in the days after Nisman's death, the public outcry for justice grew into a roar.Death of a Pawn, a companion short story to the full-...