One earth-shattering secret will change Montovia forever… In the explosive conclusion to the Royal Surrogate trilogy, Renae's harrowing ordeal at the hands of the treacherous Stephan is finally revealed. Just when she thought she could embrace her new life as a royal with Caspar and their newborn son, shocking truths come to light that threaten to tear their family apart forever, and the entire future of Montovia hangs in the balance. Brace yourself for a mind-blowing finish where no one is above suspicion, shocking secrets are finally laid bare, and love is put to the ultimate test. You'll never see the ending coming in this page-turning, turbulent conclusion to the Royal Surrogate series!
A tortured playboy. His librarian surrogate. A slow-burn romance that will leave you breathless. When librarian Renae Foster meets Lord Caspar, heir to the title of Wintervale, the connection between them is instantly electric. But while charismatic Caspar sets Renae's heart on fire, she soon realizes his intentions aren't romantic. Amid desperate circumstances, Renae reluctantly agrees to his shocking proposition—to act as his surrogate. As their staged relationship becomes headline news, Renae is swept away into a life of glamour and wealth. But no amount of luxury can erase the stipulations of their strictly business arrangement... or the growing desire that threatens to complicate everything. A steamy, tortured romance full of secrets, sacrifice, glitz, and yearning, Royal Surrogate is the first of three books and the latest in the Royal Heartbreakers series.
Surrogate models expedite the search for promising designs by standing in for expensive design evaluations or simulations. They provide a global model of some metric of a design (such as weight, aerodynamic drag, cost, etc.), which can then be optimized efficiently. Engineering Design via Surrogate Modelling is a self-contained guide to surrogate models and their use in engineering design. The fundamentals of building, selecting, validating, searching and refining a surrogate are presented in a manner accessible to novices in the field. Figures are used liberally to explain the key concepts and clearly show the differences between the various techniques, as well as to emphasize the intuitive nature of the conceptual and mathematical reasoning behind them. More advanced and recent concepts are each presented in stand-alone chapters, allowing the reader to concentrate on material pertinent to their current design problem, and concepts are clearly demonstrated using simple design problems. This collection of advanced concepts (visualization, constraint handling, coping with noisy data, gradient-enhanced modelling, multi-fidelity analysis and multiple objectives) represents an invaluable reference manual for engineers and researchers active in the area. Engineering Design via Surrogate Modelling is complemented by a suite of Matlab codes, allowing the reader to apply all the techniques presented to their own design problems. By applying statistical modelling to engineering design, this book bridges the wide gap between the engineering and statistics communities. It will appeal to postgraduates and researchers across the academic engineering design community as well as practising design engineers. Provides an inclusive and practical guide to using surrogates in engineering design. Presents the fundamentals of building, selecting, validating, searching and refining a surrogate model. Guides the reader through the practical implementation of a surrogate-based design process using a set of case studies from real engineering design challenges. Accompanied by a companion website featuring Matlab software at http://www.wiley.com/go/forrester
Computational optimization is an important paradigm with a wide range of applications. In virtually all branches of engineering and industry, we almost always try to optimize something - whether to minimize the cost and energy consumption, or to maximize profits, outputs, performance and efficiency. In many cases, this search for optimality is challenging, either because of the high computational cost of evaluating objectives and constraints, or because of the nonlinearity, multimodality, discontinuity and uncertainty of the problem functions in the real-world systems. Another complication is that most problems are often NP-hard, that is, the solution time for finding the optimum increases exponentially with the problem size. The development of efficient algorithms and specialized techniques that address these difficulties is of primary importance for contemporary engineering, science and industry. This book consists of 12 self-contained chapters, contributed from worldwide experts who are working in these exciting areas. The book strives to review and discuss the latest developments concerning optimization and modelling with a focus on methods and algorithms for computational optimization. It also covers well-chosen, real-world applications in science, engineering and industry. Main topics include derivative-free optimization, multi-objective evolutionary algorithms, surrogate-based methods, maximum simulated likelihood estimation, support vector machines, and metaheuristic algorithms. Application case studies include aerodynamic shape optimization, microwave engineering, black-box optimization, classification, economics, inventory optimization and structural optimization. This graduate level book can serve as an excellent reference for lecturers, researchers and students in computational science, engineering and industry.
An account of the childhoods and early adulthoods of Queen Elizabeth and Princess Margaret, as told by one of their primary caregivers, offers insight into early twentieth-century British royal life.
This book delves deeply into modern surrogacy arrangements, responding to both practical and ethical critiques by offering a radically new model for surrogate motherhood. Current practice distinguishes between two models of surrogacy – the altruistic (unpaid) model and the commercial (paid) model, both of which present social, ethical, and conceptual challenges. This book proposes a novel arrangement for surrogate motherhood – the professional model. Inspired by professions, such as nursing, teaching, and social work, the professional model acknowledges the caring motives that surrogate mothers have while at the same time compensating them for their work. Walker and Van Zyl adopt an evidence-based approach to explain that the professional model enables trust between intended parents and surrogates, provides professional support at every stage of the relationship, affords legal protections against exploitation and commodification, and recognizes the rights and interests of all parties, including the intended baby. The model applies to both transnational and domestic surrogacy and will be of great interest to policy makers, social researchers, bioethicists, legal scholars, fertility professionals, clinicians, and graduate students in psychology, philosophy, medicine and ethics.
"... offers readers profound insights and useful information on the power of the word in African societies... " -- Research in African Literatures "I would recommend Speaking for the Chief not only to students of West African culture, by whom it should be greatly welcomed, but also to anyone intersted in issues surrounding specific genres of discourse in relation to cultural organization." -- Journal of American Folklore "Drawing on the interdisciplinary modes of sociolinguistics, political anthropology, and the ethnography of speech, Yankah allows the reader to hear a little-known and even less studied 'voice' integral to Akan chiefly power. This book deserves the serious attention of Akan and Africanist scholars alike." -- Choice "... an unprecedented opportunity to understand West African oratory from the point of view of a native Akan speaker who is also a gifted linguist and ethnographer.... [Yankah] shows with elegance the connections between verbal strategies and the cultural organization of West African social systems." -- Alessandro Duranti "This study is clearly important in ethnographic terms... But it equally throws new light on more general aspects of verbal and political processes.... will stimulate both specialists and students far beyond the confines of its specific ethnographic setting." -- American Anthropologist "... an immensely valuable book which deserves a wide and appreciative readership." -- Journal of African History
'We should have brought a gift.' 'We've brought a gift. It's called twenty-two thousand pounds.' Purchased from Russia. Developed in India. Delivered to the UK. A global transaction over nine months that offers 'a lifetime of happiness' for all involved. Vivienne Franzmann's play Bodies explores the human cost of surrogacy, and what we'll overlook to get what we want. The play premiered at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in the Jerwood Theatre Upstairs, on 5 July 2017, in a production directed by Jude Christian.
