This volume of LNICST is a collection of the papers of the 4th International Conference on Bio-Inspired Models of Network, Information, and Computing Systems (Bionetics). The event took place in the medieval city of Avignon, known also as the City of the Popes, during December 9 to 11, 2009. Bionetics main objective is to bring b- inspired paradigms into computer engineereing and networking, and to enhance the fruitful interactions between these fields and biology. The program of the conference indeed includes applications of various paradigms that have their origin in biology: population...

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-conference proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Bio-Inspired Models of Network, Information, and Computing Systems (Bionetics). The event took place in the city of York, UK, in December 2011. Bionetics main objective is to bring bio-inspired paradigms into computer engineering and networking, and to enhance the fruitful interactions between these fields and biology. The papers of the conference were accepted in 2 categories: full papers and work-in progress. Full papers describe significant advances in the Bionetics field, while...

Charleston, South Carolina, was the largest city in the American South in the colonial era. From 1700 to 1775 its growth rate was exceeded in the New World only by that of Philadelphia. The first comprehensive study of this crucial colonial center, Building Charleston charts the rise of one of early America's great cities, revealing its importance to the evolution of both South Carolina and the British Atlantic world during the eighteenth century.
In many of the southern colonies, plantation agriculture was the sole source of prosperity, shaping the destiny of nearly all inhabitants, both...

"I'm an Italian-Texan woman in a family full of cops. I'm passionate and shoot before I think. You only f*ck with me if you're stupid." Photograph cheating spouses. Hand over the evidence. Cash my check. That was my plan when I returned home to Holly Woods, Texas, and became a private investigator. Finding the dead body in my dumpster? Yeah... Given the choice, I think I would have opted out of that little discovery, especially since all three of my brothers are cops. And my Italian grandmother is sure the reason I'm single is because of my job. Of course, my connection to the victim is...

She's a high class call girl. He's taking over his father's business. Seven years ago, they fell in love in Paris. They walked away at the end of the summer, never imagining they'd meet again. Now he's her client.

Holly Woods is going to hell in a handbasket-but this time, Satanists aren't to blame. Halloween is. Nonna doesn't understand why there are skeletons and demons everywhere. Mom is threatening to stitch a devil into Nonna's pillowcase if she doesn't shut up. Bek is bumbling over a date with Jason, the handsome FBI agent who conveniently got himself relocated to Austin, and I... Well. I'm considering running away to a town without the crazies. Nothing new here. Everything is going smoothly-too smoothly-and I can't shake the feeling that something is about to happen. Drake insists I'm being...

"Sometimes the past becomes the present... And he's hot, cocky, and British." Leila Burke expected a lot of things when she joined her brothers on tour in Europe. He wasn't one of them. Jase Masters had no idea what to expect when he agreed to support Dirty B. on tour. She definitely wasn't it. It's been eighteen months. He remembers that night a little too well. She insists she has no idea who he is. He's rugged and determined. She's wild and free. Together, they're a tornado. Keeping it from touching down is the least of their worries.

If I thought Holly Woods was crazy before, I was wrong. Devin is finally married. Nonna's on the wedding warpath. Drake might be getting ideas. His mom just dropped a bombshell, and Bek is caught between a hot as hell FBI agent and my super-sweet little brother. And I still don't have the shoe closet Drake promised me when he moved in six months ago. At least there's one positive: the old, abandoned Holly Woods Theater is about to reopen, and there's nothing like a theater opening to bring people together... And make crazy grandmothers forget proposal agendas. Until that theater comes with a...

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Parallel Problem Solving from Nature, PPSN 2016, held in Edinburgh, UK, in September 2016.

The total of 93 revised full papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 224 submissions.
The meeting began with four workshops which offered an ideal opportunity to explore specific topics in intelligent transportation Workshop, landscape-aware heuristic search, natural computing in scheduling and timetabling, and advances in multi-modal optimization.

PPSN XIV also included sixteen free...

One date with the sexier-than-sin Detective Drake Nash. Simple. Until you take into account that my brother finally proposed to his girlfriend, so Nonna is on a warpath-and the crazy old bat has Cupid by the balls. The upcoming mayoral elections has everyone running on full speed, and while I couldn't give any less craps about the corrupt Holly Woods mayor's office, a dead body in the middle of a campaign speech has me thrown right into the middle of it. The victim is close to the mayor, but all he cares about is minimizing the damage to his campaign, so he hires me to work alongside Drake to...