For decades, pit bulls have been demonized by society and portrayed as hellhounds. They've become the most feared, hated, and abused of all companion animals. Some cities and even entire countries ban them, while the media persist in associating them with viciousness. This unjust reputation has sealed the fate of millions of dogs, who face prejudice around the world and languish in shelters, where they are the most euthanized. In America alone, hundreds of thousands of pit bulls are put to sleep every year. Since 2014, French photographer Sophie Gamand has been composing portraits of adoptable pit bulls from more than thirty shelters and rescues throughout the United States. Many had been waiting for years for a home. Adorning her models with handmade flower-crowns, Gamand tells each dog's story and celebrates their inherent personality, vulnerability, and individuality. Posted and shared widely on social media, the portraits--at once charming, candid, and deeply affecting--have not only led to hundreds of dogs finding loving, forever homes, but have also spurred efforts to destigmatize an animal whose reputation for violence says more about us than it does the character of the dogs themselves. Full of moving, honest, and inspiring stories of individual dogs and their lives (and deaths), Pit Bull Flower Power presents a vivid, beautifully composed cross-section of Gamand's extraordinary work. The book also serves as a testament to the caring people who work in animal rescue, the passion and dedication of those who provide homes for these animals, and the dignity, forbearance, and love of these dogs, who are at the mercy of humans.
Promising accountant Lacy Pondwater never wanted to own the Mistletoe Motel. However, when Lacy's mother passes away and her dad grows too old to readjust roof tiles, she scrambles, with the help of her younger sister Stacy, to keep the family business afloat. Worse, the motel has been in desperate need of an update since the '80s and is overlooked by travelers thanks to GPS maps routing away potential customers. On a constantly shrinking shoestring budget, Lacy's maxed out every credit card and is at the end of her rope. After a few too many glasses of wine and paranormal crime shows, Lacy embellishes the description of the Mistletoe Motel online to include Victorian era haunts and the occasional ghost encounter. Business rapidly picks up and after a few days, Stacy tells Lacy that guests have been finding their belongings in the strangest of places, like inside of the chimney. A question slowly circles around the back of Lacy's mind. Did she inadvertently invite a haunting to Mistletoe Motel, or are her eager guests merely manifesting their own adventures? Of course, white lies always come back to bite, and when a ghost hunting television show asks to film, the sisters reluctantly agree. Only a Christmas miracle can save the motel from bankruptcy and Lacy from a life of fraud.
Vols. for 1871-76, 1913-14 include an extra number, The Christmas bookseller, separately paged and not included in the consecutive numbering of the regular series.
“We finally have the definitive treatise on PyTorch! It covers the basics and abstractions in great detail. I hope this book becomes your extended reference document.” —Soumith Chintala, co-creator of PyTorch Key Features Written by PyTorch’s creator and key contributors Develop deep learning models in a familiar Pythonic way Use PyTorch to build an image classifier for cancer detection Diagnose problems with your neural network and improve training with data augmentation Purchase of the print book includes a free eBook in PDF, Kindle, and ePub formats from Manning Publications. About The Book Every other day we hear about new ways to put deep learning to good use: improved medical imaging, accurate credit card fraud detection, long range weather forecasting, and more. PyTorch puts these superpowers in your hands. Instantly familiar to anyone who knows Python data tools like NumPy and Scikit-learn, PyTorch simplifies deep learning without sacrificing advanced features. It’s great for building quick models, and it scales smoothly from laptop to enterprise. Deep Learning with PyTorch teaches you to create deep learning and neural network systems with PyTorch. This practical book gets you to work right away building a tumor image classifier from scratch. After covering the basics, you’ll learn best practices for the entire deep learning pipeline, tackling advanced projects as your PyTorch skills become more sophisticated. All code samples are easy to explore in downloadable Jupyter notebooks. What You Will Learn Understanding deep learning data structures such as tensors and neural networks Best practices for the PyTorch Tensor API, loading data in Python, and visualizing results Implementing modules and loss functions Utilizing pretrained models from PyTorch Hub Methods for training networks with limited inputs Sifting through unreliable results to diagnose and fix problems in your neural network Improve your results with augmented data, better model architecture, and fine tuning This Book Is Written For For Python programmers with an interest in machine learning. No experience with PyTorch or other deep learning frameworks is required. About The Authors Eli Stevens has worked in Silicon Valley for the past 15 years as a software engineer, and the past 7 years as Chief Technical Officer of a startup making medical device software. Luca Antiga is co-founder and CEO of an AI engineering company located in Bergamo, Italy, and a regular contributor to PyTorch. Thomas Viehmann is a Machine Learning and PyTorch speciality trainer and consultant based in Munich, Germany and a PyTorch core developer. Table of Contents PART 1 - CORE PYTORCH 1 Introducing deep learning and the PyTorch Library 2 Pretrained networks 3 It starts with a tensor 4 Real-world data representation using tensors 5 The mechanics of learning 6 Using a neural network to fit the data 7 Telling birds from airplanes: Learning from images 8 Using convolutions to generalize PART 2 - LEARNING FROM IMAGES IN THE REAL WORLD: EARLY DETECTION OF LUNG CANCER 9 Using PyTorch to fight cancer 10 Combining data sources into a unified dataset 11 Training a classification model to detect suspected tumors 12 Improving training with metrics and augmentation 13 Using segmentation to find suspected nodules 14 End-to-end nodule analysis, and where to go next PART 3 - DEPLOYMENT 15 Deploying to production
Jane Willan’s The Hour of Death will be a Christmas delight for fans of G. M. Malliet, set on an island in Wales. Sister Agatha and Father Selwyn make sleuthing a work of art. But will they paint themselves into a corner when they investigate the Village Art Society president’s death? As Yuletide settles upon Gwenafwy Abbey, the rural Welsh convent’s peace is shattered when Tiffany Reese, president of the Village Art Society, is found dead on the floor of the parish hall. Sister Agatha, whose interests lie more with reading and writing mystery stories than with making the abbey’s world-renowned organic gouda, is not shy about inserting herself into the case. With the not-entirely-eager assistance of Father Selwyn, she begins her investigation. Sister Agatha has no shortage of suspects to check off her naughty-or-nice list, until finally, Tiffany’s half-brother, Kendrick Geddings, emerges as the prime suspect. There never was any love lost between Tiffany and Kendrick, and of late they had been locked in a vicious battle for control of the family estate. But if Sister Agatha thinks she has the case wrapped up, she’ll have to think again. As the days of Advent tick by, Sister Agatha is determined to crack the case by Christmas in The Hour of Death, Jane Willan’s perfectly puzzling second Sister Agatha and Father Selwyn Mystery.
Through the use of humour, fun exercises, and a plethora of innovative and interesting selections from writers such as Dave Barry, Al Franken, J.R.R. Tolkien, as well as from the film 'The Matrix', this text hones students' critical thinking skills.
An inspiring memoir about choices; some good, some not so good. This is the story of an adult's mistakes, poor choices and circumstances that developed into a series of major physical, financial and emotional losses. Her story of triumph shows incredible strength and tenacity, as well as sheer determination to become successful against all odds.
Set in late 1980s Europe at the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Black Dogs is the intimate story of the crumbling of Bernard and June Tremaine’s marriage, as witnessed by their son-in-law, Jeremy, who seeks to comprehend how their deep love could be defeated by ideological differences that seem irreconcilable. In writing June’s memoirs, Jeremy is led back to a moment, that was, for June, as devastating and irreversible in its consequences as the changes sweeping Europe in Jeremy’s own time. Ian McEwan weaves the sinister reality of civilization’s darkest moods—its black dogs—with the tensions that both create love and destroy it.
Over the past decade, Kathy Callahan’s family has taken in more than a hundred rescue puppies. This delightful photo-filled book features the wonderful stories that emerged as these foster pups were suddenly surrounded by a nurturing family complete with patient adult dogs and curious cats. With a gift for capturing the moment in both words and images, Callahan brings readers inside the poignant and ultimately uplifting work of fostering. This inspiring read is indeed about puppies, but it’s also about family and human connection. It’s about finding your own way — through that one special thing you can do to light a candle, instead of cursing the darkness.