Crossroads After 50: Improving Choices in Work and Retirement (Transitions After 50)

Book Description

Frequently, people who want to advance in their careers or to change careers need assistance. To meet this need, the authors of The Principal Portfolio have expanded one of its chapters into The Career Advancement Portfolio—a powerful marketing tool for the educator seeking better job opportunities.

If you are about to begin a job search, perhaps you are not looking forward to developing a portfolio. Perhaps it appears to be an overwhelming task, and if you are not certain of just how to go about it, trying to create a portfolio can be a frustrating and intimidating experience. The Career Advancement Portfolio is designed to make developing your portfolio manageable and rewarding. The step-by-step process outlined in the book will enable you to create, in a sequential and stress-free manner, a Career Advancement Portfolio which highlights your abilities and accomplishments and enhances your professional image.

Professional portfolios for school administrators: Documenting performance for evaluation and career advancement

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Professional portfolios for school administrators: Documenting performance for evaluation and career advancement
Sandra M Evans
Manufacturer: Teachers' Little Secrets
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding
ASIN: B0006QVX6S

Book Description

How are human capital investments allocated between women and men? What are the returns to investments in women's nutrition, health care, education, mobility, and training? In thirteen wide-ranging and innovative empirical analyses, Investment in Women's Human Capital explores the nature of human capital distributions to women and their effect on outcomes within the family.

Section I considers the experiences of high-income countries, examining the limitations of industrialization for the advancement of women; returns to secondary education for women; and state control of women's education and labor market productivity through the design of tax systems and the public subsidy of children.

The remaining four sections investigate health, education, household structure and labor markets, and measurement issues in low-income countries, including the effect of technological change on transfers of wealth to and from children in India; women's and men's responses to the costs of medical care in Kenya; the effects of birth order and sex on educational attainment in Taiwan; wage returns to schooling in Indonesia and in Cote d'Ivoire; and the increasing prevalence of female-headed households and the correlates of gender differences in wages in Brazil.

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Center discussion paper
T. Paul Schultz
Manufacturer: Yale University, Economic Growth Center
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

A dynamic analysis of household decision-making in Latin America: Changes in household structure, female labor force participation, human capital and its returns (Research Network Working paper)

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A dynamic analysis of household decision-making in Latin America: Changes in household structure, female labor force participation, human capital and its returns (Research Network Working paper)
Orazio Attanasio
Manufacturer: Inter-American Development Bank, Research Dept., Latin American Research Network
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

Labor & Industrial Relations | Economics | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

General | Investing | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Fertility | Parenting & Families | Subjects | Books

Human capital investments in women and fertility in a developing country: Extensions to include health and nutrition and to deal with incomplete data problems ... Institute for Research on Poverty)

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Human capital investments in women and fertility in a developing country: Extensions to include health and nutrition and to deal with incomplete data problems ... Institute for Research on Poverty)
Jere R Behrman
Manufacturer: University of Wisconsin-Madison, Institute for Research on Poverty
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

Fertility | Parenting & Families | Subjects | Books

Human capital investments of married female college graduates (Program in applied social studies)

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Human capital investments of married female college graduates (Program in applied social studies)
Glenna D Spitze
Manufacturer: Dept. of Sociology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding
ASIN: B0006X3SX2

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Investment in Women's Human Capital
T. Paul Schultz
Manufacturer: University Of Chicago Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OPAPBK

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Investment in Women's Human Capital
University Of Chicago Press
Manufacturer: University Of Chicago Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OPCL8U

Investments in the schooling and health of women and men: Quantities and returns (Center discussion paper)

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Investments in the schooling and health of women and men: Quantities and returns (Center discussion paper)
T. Paul Schultz
Manufacturer: Economic Growth Center, Yale University
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

Investments in the shooling and health of women and men: Quantities and returns (Center paper)

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Investments in the shooling and health of women and men: Quantities and returns (Center paper)
T. Paul Schultz
Manufacturer: Yale University, Economic Growth Center
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

Development & Growth | Economics | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
ASIN: B0006PB9T0

Average customer rating:

definitely a mixed bag

I loved it

Great book...a book of style...and more..much more...

Great book...a book of style...and more..much more...

not for the average Joe

Paisley Goes with Nothing: A Man's Guide to Style
Hal Rubenstein
Manufacturer: Main Street Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Humor | Entertainment | Subjects | Books
Men | Gender Studies | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0385483937
Release Date: 1997-05-19

Book Description

The best shoes to dance in are sneakers with no tread left.

Old ski lift tickets are not a fashion accessory.

Nothing is "fun for the whole family" unless the parents are under ten.

There's no such thing as classy luggage as long as you have to carry it.

With an irresistible combination of sharp wit, shrewd insight, and great common sense, Paisley Goes with Nothing offers men an invaluable arsenal of survival tactics for thriving in a modern world, including "Two Easy Pieces (Buying a Suit)", "Father Knew Zip (How to Shave)", "A Medium Is the Message--But So Is an Extra Large (What Your Wardrobe Says About You)", "Geeks Bearing Gifts (Buying Presents)", "House by You (Entertaining on Your Turf)", and dozens more that are as useful and enlightening as they are ingeniously, universally funny. An indispensable resource for every man (and a godsend for those in search of a perfect gift), it's society's last hope for keeping the word gentleman from becoming obsolete.

Customer Reviews:

definitely a mixed bag.......2002-04-13

The book consists of a few chapters of prose (about picking out a suit, shoes, etc) sandwiched in between numerous lists. Some of the information is good, some is decent, some is bad, some is wrong, and some is just plain out of place. For instance, there is a brief section on being single and a longer section on travelling; several of the topics seemed out of place in a book about "style". There is good information in this book but unfortunately you have to wade through a lot of chaff to get to the wheat: "10 Musts to Have in the Car -- a detailed map covering a 50-mile radius from your house." The book is also targetted at a slightly older demographic. Of the fifty things that every man must know one of them is, "That Philip Roth, and not Norman Mailer, is the conscience of his generation." Does anyone under 35 care about either of those people?

There is certainly enough useful information in this book (and it is mercifully brief) that you should spend a day or two reading it should the opportunity avail itself. Just don't spend any actual money on this book. Check it out from the library.

I loved it.......2002-03-26

Yes - this book is written with wit and humor. If you're incapable of understanding a joke, then it might not be for you. Some people think it's *about* New York. Far from it - instead, it uses NY as a reference for many tired cliches and how to break them. Quite literate and very engaging.

Aside from the author's writing style, the information presented in the book is outstanding. Much of it is common sense stuff that people just don't think about. The rest is highly informative - allowing the reader to pick and choose what tips they want to incorporate into their own personal sense of style.

I seriously feel that every man sould read through it at least once.

Great book...a book of style...and more..much more..........2001-12-29

I loved this book! One of the best things about this book is Rubensteins great wit....from subtle to hilarious! When something makes you laugh, you tend to remember it! Rubenstein provides useful, pertinent information for buying and wearing suits, pants, shoes, underwear, hats, gloves, belts, etc. He goes beyond this with much information on equally important items such as skin care, hair care, shaving, choosing eyeglasses, choosing scents, your posture and more. Other related information about your look and, more importantly, your style, comes into play with chapters on buying gifts, entertaining at your place, being entertained elsewhere, travelling, resaurants, things a man must know and things a man must have.
The information is presented not only in familiar paragraph fashion but also in refreshingly candid, informative one-liners and short bullet-paragraphs ...no wading through droning, rambling paragraphs to eek out a few nuggets of useful information....no fluff. A tremendous amount of useful information in a small book...This is actually a handbook on how to be a guy...with style!

Great book...a book of style...and more..much more..........2001-12-29

not for the average Joe.......2001-08-04

If you are a well-off, self-possessed fashionista living in New York, you may like this book. If you are a businessman living in Spokane, WA like me who wants to dress nicely for work and social events, this book is a waste of money. Snobery and one-liners do not help me have style.

Paisley Goes With Nothing: A Man's Guide To Style

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Paisley Goes With Nothing: A Man's Guide To Style
Hal Rubenstein
Manufacturer: Doubleday c1995
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000OO28PM

Book Description

Comedy screenplay. "True Bums" transports you into a fantasy world where only true to heart railroad bums reside. Why do these guys ride dirty filthy trains? If you only knew the "real truth" you would quit your job and climb aboard. Three very wealthy and frustrated high-society movie executives did just that! Imagine the freedom of leaving job, wife and home to live the absolute freedom of Tom Sawyer. Every man's inner dream come true! Freedom at last! No responsibilities, no nagging wife, no bills to pay, no guests to entertain just do and go as you please. Once they defect from society the executives unexpectedly discover a fabulous New World. These ragtag "railroad bums" are filthy rich men who frequent secret "whistle stop" fantasy worlds dreams are made of: Ancient Rome, Gold Rush era, Pilgrim camp, Santa's Village, etc. They relive history as they wish. Money is no option. Life is great. A hidden world. A secret society of fun. Tragedy and comedy strike when the wives pursue the vagrant bums. Plenty of steam and diesel powered train action, very funny and a perfect happy-ever-after Christmas story. If you love trains, you'll love "True Bums." Order your copy today!

Customer Reviews:

Very Funny Book!.......1999-11-26

An incredibly action-oriented and funny feature film script. If you love the railroad and trains, this is the funniest of them all!

Average customer rating:

indispensible

Excellent resource - thorough and well-written

Simply the best on modern rendering algorithms and code

Six stars out of five

A Graphics Must Have

Physically Based Rendering : From Theory to Implementation (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Interactive 3D Technology) (The Interactive 3d Technology Series)
Matt Pharr , and Greg Humphreys
Manufacturer: Morgan Kaufmann
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Rendering & Ray Tracing | Graphic Design | Computers & Internet | Subjects | Books
General | Graphic Design | Computers & Internet | Subjects | Books
General | Computers & Internet | Subjects | Books
General | Software | Computers & Internet | Subjects | Books
All Titles | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books
Computers & Internet | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books
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Realistic Image Synthesis Using Photon Mapping

Real-Time Collision Detection (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Interactive 3-D Technology)

Advanced Global Illumination

GPU Gems 2: Programming Techniques for High-Performance Graphics and General-Purpose Computation (Gpu Gems)

Physics Based Animation (Graphics Series)

ASIN: 012553180X

Book Description

"Computer graphics, and rendering in particular, is full of beautiful theory. The theory covers physical concepts, such as light fields and the interaction of light with different materials, and mathematical concepts, such as integral equations and Monte Carlo integration. The great thing about computers is that they allow us to build rendering systems based on the best theory. This book turns the theory of image-making into a practical method for creating images." from the foreword by Pat Hanrahan, Canon USA Professor, Stanford University

From movies to video games, computer-rendered images are pervasive today. Physically Based Rendering introduces the concepts and theory of photorealistic rendering hand in hand with the source code for a sophisticated renderer. By coupling the discussion of rendering algorithms with their implementations, Matt Pharr and Greg Humphreys are able to reveal many of the details and subtleties of these algorithms. But this book goes further; it also describes the design strategies involved with building real systemsthere is much more to writing a good renderer than stringing together a set of fast algorithms. For example, techniques for high-quality antialiasing must be considered from the start, as they have implications throughout the system. The rendering system described in this book is itself highly readable, written in a style called literate programming that mixes text describing the system with the code that implements it. Literate programming gives a gentle introduction to working with programs of this size. This lucid pairing of text and code offers the most complete and in-depth book available for understanding, designing, and building physically realistic rendering systems.

* Winner of an Honorable Mention in the Computer and Information Science category from The Professional and Scholarly Publishing Division (PSP) of the Association of American Publishers (AAP)
* Finalist for the 15th Annual Jolt Awards
* Companion CD-ROM includes the source code for a complete rendering system for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linuxwith many of the features found in high-quality commercial systems.
* The system's plug-in architecture makes its basic structure transparent and allows for new features to be added easily.
* The rendering system implements a number of newer or difficult-to-implement algorithms and techniques, including subdivision surfaces, Monte Carlo light transport, and volumetric scattering.

Customer Reviews:

indispensible.......2007-05-12

I do ray tracing and GI for a living. When I got started on my ray tracer I was struggling with several basic issues. Even though I tried to locate all the published material on those subject there was still significant gaps. Issues like 'how to shot photons', what about all these 'cosines'. How do you actually implement a kd-tree. I read Shirley's, Jansen's, Glassner's and Advanced Global Illumination and a lot of the older Siggraph papers. PBRT came out just in time to rescue me. It contains the only complete implementation of a photonmap.

It's strong point is a complete running GI engine. However the literate programming style used in the book meant a lot of time I cannot read a subject by itself. The use of abstract interfaces sort of force you to use the class browser to follow the logic. You pretty much have to read it from the beginning. The quality of the code contained goes beyond the usual standard of code published as examples. It contains a rather sophiscated random number generator. Its treatment of LDS plus sampling and recontruction in general is excellent. It is the only source that shows how to implement Li's algorithm to generate random rays to sample a sphere. Same goes for Malley's. Shirley and Chui's concentric sampling method is hidden in the appendix of a old Siggraph paper.

The book also has code to sample and model most of the common light sources. Which is surprisingly non-trivial.

I highly recommend this book but it does require a certain level of commitment to get the most out of this book. The chapters on sampling, ray differential, texture filtering, light transport I consider must reads for all graphics programmer even though you might not be working on ray tracing.

Excellent resource - thorough and well-written.......2006-08-09

I cannot praise this book more than the others already have. The book is about producing high-quality images using raytracing. It basically walks you through the creation of a fully-functional raytracer, discussing all the different algorithms and techniques that are needed along the way.

It's written in the context of their particular implementation of a working raytracer, using the fweb programming/documentation system, where basically the program source and the documentation are written as one document. I've always thought this was academic nonsense as far as writing real code in a production environment, but it turns out to be an EXCELLENT way to write a book or code intended for a learning environment.

This strikes the perfect balance between explaining the theory thoroughly and showing how the ideas can be implemented in a real, functional raytracer. They avoid the trap of many other book that focus on a particular implemention, by not getting too bogged down into pecularities of their system.

The source code itself also stands out as a strong point. There are so many books out there with poorly written and unorganized code that you'd never want to read, much less try to work in. The code is well organized, and the coding style easy to read. It's one of the few books I own that contain source code where I actually read the source code and it added something to my experience. I wish everybody who wrote about programming was actually a decent programmer and not just a mathemiticion.

This book has academic rigor and but also well-written explanations. I'm still learning a lot from it. I expect to refer to it frequently over the next years as we (in the video game industry) take more concepts from raytracers and apply them to real-time graphics, as the processors get more and more powerful.

You probably should not be an absolute newbie when it comes to basic 3D math and things like vectors and basic graphics concepts before buying this book. The authors use some calculus, too, if that scares you off.

Simply the best on modern rendering algorithms and code.......2005-11-24

This book mixes detailed algorithm descriptions with actual code in a book that never loses sight of the "big picture" of physically based ray tracing and image synthesis. Although it is very well written and is not a dry academic book at all, it would help if the reader is already familiar with basic computer graphic techniques, linear algebra, calculus, and optics in order to get the most out of this book. It was never meant to be a replacement for Foley & Van Dam's classic book on computer graphics, even though the first few chapters go over basic computer graphic material. The book includes a website where the source code of the authors' renderer can be downloaded. This code is very well organized and commented so that if you wish to lift individual pieces from the entire software package you can with just a little bit of work. I highly recommend this book to the programmer who wishes to implement physically based rendering in his/her own code or wants to know about the practical implementation of image synthesis techniques. Amazon does not show any details about the book here, so I shall explain the contents in the context of the table of contents:
CHAPTER 01. INTRODUCTION
This chapter talks briefly about all kinds of topics related to ray tracing. It also talks about how to understand the code in the book and the book website.
CHAPTER 02. GEOMETRY AND TRANSFORMATIONS
This chapter is pretty basic computer graphics stuff. It talks about coordinate systems, vectors, arithmetic, scaling, dot and cross products,etc. Applying transformations via matrices is also discussed as well as the representation of points, vectors, normals, rays, and bounding boxes.
CHAPTER 03. SHAPES
More basic computer graphics continues with discussions on spheres, differential geometry, cylinders, and disks, paraboloids, triangles and meshes, and the representation and bounding of all of these shapes.
CHAPTER 04. PRIMITIVES AND INTERSECTION ACCELERATION
This chapter is about accelerating the speed of your graphics through grid acceleration, tree construction and representation, and object instantiation.
CHAPTER 05. COLOR AND RADIOMETRY
XYZ color system is discussed along with radiometric integrals including integrals over projected solid angles, integrals over spherical coordinates, and integrals over area. Beginning in this chapter the math becomes more advanced.
CHAPTER 06. CAMERA MODELS
Projective camera models are discussed along with orthographic, perspective, and environment camera models. This information will already be familiar to students of computer vision.
CHAPTER 07. SAMPLING AND RECONSTRUCTION
Frequency domain techniques are discussed starting with the Fourier transform and ideal sampling and reconstruction. Also, antialiasing techniques are explained.
CHAPTER 08. FILM AND THE IMAGING PIPELINE
This chapter talks about topics such as luminance, photometry, bloom, and imaging pipeline stages.
CHAPTER 09. REFLECTION MODELS
The various reflection models are discussed including specular, Fresnel, Lambertian, Oren-Nayer disfuse reflection, and the Lafortune model.
CHAPTER 10. MATERIALS
Matte, plastic, bump mapping, and other material effects are explained very well.
CHAPTER 11. TEXTURE
We return to frequency models some in this chapter. The texture sampling rate, filtering functions, and mapping in spherical, cylindrical, and planar form are explained. Procedural textures are also discussed including the famous Perlin noise, marble, and windy waves.
CHAPTER 12. VOLUME SCATTERING
This chapter is considered more advanced material, and discusses volume scattering processes, absorption, emission, in and out scattering, phase functions, exponential density, and volume aggregates.
CHAPTER 13. LIGHT SOURCES
All kinds of light sources are described including point lights, spotlights, texture projection lights, distant lights, area lights, and infinite area lights.
CHAPTERS 14 and 15 both discuss Monte Carlo integration techniques including improving efficiency.
CHAPTERS 16 and 17 are about light transport. The first chapter is about surface reflection and the second is about volume rendering.
CHAPTER 18. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION includes a design retrospective, a discussion of abstraction versus reality, and design alternatives including triangles only and streaming computation.
APPENDIXES- These include sections on utilities, scene description interface, input file formats, an index of code fragments, an index of classes and their members, and finally an index of identifiers.

Six stars out of five.......2004-11-16

Although it is not possible here, I am fairly sure this book deserves such rating. This is truly remarkable work and is likely to become a classic text in the field of computer graphics.

It is not a survey-type book, instead of trying to describe every possible method out there, the authors have concentrated on a few selected techniques, that are not only good (modern, fast, easy to implement, etc.), but also have some pedagogical merits and can serve as a gentle introduction to the world of ray tracing and digital image synthesis. Despite focusing on selected areas, the authors managed to squeeze here in an amazing amount of material. Among other topics, this book covers: subdivision surfaces, ray-primitive intersection acceleration techniques (3D DDA and kd-tree), color and radiometry, anti-aliasing, tone mapping, physically based reflection models, texture mapping (including texture anti-aliasing using ray differentials), area lights and HDR Image Based Lighting, volume scattering and much more.

A large part of the book has been devoted to the light transport and Monte Carlo techniques. One can find there an introduction to the theory of Monte Carlo estimation (including selected methods for reducing variance and computation time, like Russian roulette, multiple importance sampling or stratified sampling) and explanation of important light transport equations (rendering and transfer equations).

Finally the authors have described (and implemented) several solutions for the rendering equation: Whitted-style recursive ray tracing, direct illumination estimation, path tracing, irradiance caching and photon mapping.

However, it is not only the vastness of the material covered in this book, that causes this volume should be praised so highly. Perhaps, the style, in which this book has been written, is even more impressive. For each of the topics, the authors start with what is usually known as "dry math and theory", and then show how it is supposed to work as an algorithm (including its dirty details) and finally they explain how to turn this algorithm into a C++ code. Each of these transitions concentrates on a small portion of the whole problem, so it is still easy to understand. Everyone, who had to turn a SIGGRAPH paper into something that works, will immediately recognize what kind of gem this book is - it actually shows how to do it!

This brilliant blend of theory and practice is one of its brightest spots, for learning the theory and math formulas is one thing, but writing a working, robust implementation is completely another.

Those, who prefer studying sources, will get source code of a very good, physically based, extensible ray tracer (called pbrt) with the best documentation one could ever imagine. Documentation that gives the rationale for almost every line of code. It shows not only how they did it, but also why they did it that way.

It is not the only book, that one will ever need - computer graphics is a vast topic - too big to be covered in a single volume, even as huge as this one. However, it is certainly one of the books that everyone interested in photorealistic rendering should buy. The price of this book is really low, if you think about it as of an excellent, first-rate computer graphics course.

Aimed at students, researchers and people interested in computer graphics algorithms, it is an indispensable book for anyone willing to write his own photorealistic (not necessarily physically based!) ray tracer and learn more about computer image synthesis.

A Graphics Must Have.......2004-11-04

This book covers everything you need to know to write a ray tracer with
advanced features like photon mapping, volume scattering, path tracing,
etc. The scope of the material it covers is stunning. It starts from the
basics of topics like 3D geometry and ray/object intersections and then
builds up to explain reflection models, advanced texturing techniques, and
then light transport algorithms.

It has excellent discussions of the theory and underlying math of physical
rendering blended (rather well) with very very useful practical
implementations of the theory. The leap from theory to implementation is
often difficult to do, and to do well or efficiently even more difficult.
(The ray acceleration code alone is worth it's weight in gold.) This is an
indispensable book for anyone who wants to write their own ray tracer or
learn more about the latest techniques used in photorealistic rendering.

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