Saving Sebastian


Book Description

Time is running out for four-year-old Sebastian Zair. A rare blood disorder means that a stem-cell transplant is his only hope of surviving past childhood. His mother places her trust in the Pemberton Fertility Centre and a controversial IVF procedure which will allow her to select an embryo that is the same tissue type as Sebastian - to create a saviour sibling. But what she doesn't know is that the sword of Damocles is hanging over the Pemberton. A Nigerian couple, the Opakanjos, have just given birth to twins through IVF, but only one is their biological child. Someone has made a monumental mistake. With a major enquiry under way and pro-life campaigners on the warpath, both families are faced with agonising personal choices as well as the intrusions of an unscrupulous journalist. Will they break under the strain? Will Sebastian survive? REVIEWS: There are very few novels which deal with the issues of contemporary medical ethics in the lively and intensely readable way which Hazel McHaffie's books do. ALEXANDER McCALL SMITH McHaffie's books are skillfully written to bring out the complex ethical issues we as doctors, nurses, patients, or relatives, may face in dealing with difficult issues... These books are a welcome development of what has been called the narrative turn in medical ethics. THE BRITISH MEDICAL JOURNAL




Saving Sebastian


Book Description

Time is running out for four-year-old Sebastian Zair. A rare blood disorder means that a stem-cell transplant is his only hope of surviving past childhood. His mother places her trust in the Pemberton Fertility Centre and a controversial IVF procedure which will allow her to select an embryo that is the same tissue type as Sebastian - to create a saviour sibling. But what she doesn't know is that the sword of Damocles is hanging over the Pemberton. A Nigerian couple, the Opakanjos, have just given birth to twins through IVF, but only one is their biological child. Someone has made a monumental mistake.With a major enquiry under way and pro-life campaigners on the warpath, both families are faced with agonising personal choices as well as the intrusions of an unscrupulous journalist. Will they break under the strain? Will Sebastian survive?




Days Without End


Book Description

COSTA BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD WINNER LONGLISTED FOR THE 2017 MAN BOOKER PRIZE "A true leftfield wonder: Days Without End is a violent, superbly lyrical western offering a sweeping vision of America in the making."—Kazuo Ishiguro, Booker Prize winning author of The Remains of the Day and The Buried Giant From the two-time Man Booker Prize finalist Sebastian Barry, “a master storyteller” (Wall Street Journal), comes a powerful new novel of duty and family set against the American Indian and Civil Wars Thomas McNulty, aged barely seventeen and having fled the Great Famine in Ireland, signs up for the U.S. Army in the 1850s. With his brother in arms, John Cole, Thomas goes on to fight in the Indian Wars—against the Sioux and the Yurok—and, ultimately, the Civil War. Orphans of terrible hardships themselves, the men find these days to be vivid and alive, despite the horrors they see and are complicit in. Moving from the plains of Wyoming to Tennessee, Sebastian Barry’s latest work is a masterpiece of atmosphere and language. An intensely poignant story of two men and the makeshift family they create with a young Sioux girl, Winona, Days Without End is a fresh and haunting portrait of the most fateful years in American history and is a novel never to be forgotten.




Machine Learning with PyTorch and Scikit-Learn


Book Description

This book of the bestselling and widely acclaimed Python Machine Learning series is a comprehensive guide to machine and deep learning using PyTorch s simple to code framework. Purchase of the print or Kindle book includes a free eBook in PDF format. Key Features Learn applied machine learning with a solid foundation in theory Clear, intuitive explanations take you deep into the theory and practice of Python machine learning Fully updated and expanded to cover PyTorch, transformers, XGBoost, graph neural networks, and best practices Book DescriptionMachine Learning with PyTorch and Scikit-Learn is a comprehensive guide to machine learning and deep learning with PyTorch. It acts as both a step-by-step tutorial and a reference you'll keep coming back to as you build your machine learning systems. Packed with clear explanations, visualizations, and examples, the book covers all the essential machine learning techniques in depth. While some books teach you only to follow instructions, with this machine learning book, we teach the principles allowing you to build models and applications for yourself. Why PyTorch? PyTorch is the Pythonic way to learn machine learning, making it easier to learn and simpler to code with. This book explains the essential parts of PyTorch and how to create models using popular libraries, such as PyTorch Lightning and PyTorch Geometric. You will also learn about generative adversarial networks (GANs) for generating new data and training intelligent agents with reinforcement learning. Finally, this new edition is expanded to cover the latest trends in deep learning, including graph neural networks and large-scale transformers used for natural language processing (NLP). This PyTorch book is your companion to machine learning with Python, whether you're a Python developer new to machine learning or want to deepen your knowledge of the latest developments.What you will learn Explore frameworks, models, and techniques for machines to learn from data Use scikit-learn for machine learning and PyTorch for deep learning Train machine learning classifiers on images, text, and more Build and train neural networks, transformers, and boosting algorithms Discover best practices for evaluating and tuning models Predict continuous target outcomes using regression analysis Dig deeper into textual and social media data using sentiment analysis Who this book is for If you have a good grasp of Python basics and want to start learning about machine learning and deep learning, then this is the book for you. This is an essential resource written for developers and data scientists who want to create practical machine learning and deep learning applications using scikit-learn and PyTorch. Before you get started with this book, you’ll need a good understanding of calculus, as well as linear algebra.










Stay Hungry


Book Description

From comedian and actor Sebastian Maniscalco—star of the film About My Father with Robert DeNiro—an inspiring, honest, uproarious collection of essays tracing his career from playing boxing rings and bowling alleys to reaching the pinnacles of comedy success. At twenty-four, Sebastian Maniscalco arrived in LA with a suitcase and saved up minimum wages. He knew no one and nothing about standup comedy, but he was determined to go for it anyway. Two decades later, he’s on the Forbes’ list of highest earning comedians, selling out arenas, and starring in numerous hit comedy specials including Why Would You Do That? and Is It Me?. Stay Hungry tells the story of the twenty years in between. On the way from clueless rube to standup superstar, Seb was booed off stages; survived on tips and stolen food; got advice from mentors Andrew Dice Clay, Vince Vaughn, Tony Danza, and Jerry Seinfeld; fell in love; and stayed true to his Italian-immigrant roots. The one code that always kept him going: stay hungry, keep focused, never give up, and one day, you’ll make it.




The Ice Maiden's Tale


Book Description

Every town has an old lady all the children just know is a witch. When Johanna and Casper must spend the afternoon at her house, there’s nothing to do, except listen to a story. While the siblings await their mother’s return from the hospital where she’s visiting their ailing father, Mrs. Kinder reads them a story of adventure, magic and music. Mrs. Kinder’s mysterious golden book tells an intertwined tale of two young men—the sensitive Sculptor who carves a beautiful woman from ice and the thieving Sorcerer searching for a spell that will bring the statue to life. The story twists and turns, from the Frozen Forest, to the land of the Lemon Trees, to the home of the Swamp Witch, as the Sculptor’s and Sorcerer’s adventures circle each other. Their inevitable confrontation reveals buried memories that force each of them to confront the true cost of love and redemption. The Ice Maiden's Tale the perfect story-within-a-story with magic, adventure and romance reminiscent of The Princess Bride for a new generation of readers. Excerpt: Mrs. Kinder settled herself in the chair across from the children and cracked open the book. She adjusted her spectacles, ever so slightly, then caressed the page with her wrinkled fingers. “In our world, when magic happens outside of a storybook, we call it a miracle. And miracles are considered so rare and special that lifetimes can go by without so much as a hint of one. But there are faraway places where our kind of miracles are as common as blades of grass in an open field. In the northern region of one of these worlds, in the top far east corner, past green forests, swamps, lakes, and even an ocean, there lived a young artist named Gabriel.” .... “This isn’t a very good story.” Casper complained. "Casper!” Johanna exclaimed in embarrassment. Mrs. Kinder laughed. “That’s because I’m not even at the story part yet, but it’s high time we get started. This story doesn’t begin, the way you think it might and the way most stories do. It doesn’t begin with a big adventure or a journey, or even pirate treasure. It starts with a tiny choice—one that seems unremarkable at the time, but that changes the course of destiny. One crisp morning, our Gabriel decided to search for firewood—and it’s with that simple decision that our tale begins.”




Sebastian’s Way


Book Description

HE'S FOUGHT FOR HIS LANDS, HIS MARRIAGE, AND HIS KING. THE FIGHT FOR HIS SOUL IS JUST BEGINNING. "He's alive." With these two words, the world as Sebastian knows it will never be the same. The news that his cousin Konrad—his sworn enemy and abusive first husband of his beloved wife Adela—means that his marriage is no longer valid. Even the high king Charlemagne cannot challenge the decision of a powerful emerging Church. Sebastian can do nothing but watch as the love of his life enters a convent. This epic tale of love and honor sweeps the reader back into the fascinating 9th century world of the incomparable Charlemagne. No mere military account of conquests and battles, this is a rich, well-rounded period drama and an authentic recreation of the early medieval world. Book I of this three-volume series was highly recommended by the Historical Novel Society. The second novel does not disappoint, as the hero is sent from the king’s Rhineland court to three preeminent capitals of the 9th-century medieval world: Constantinople, Jerusalem, and Baghdad. Through his courage under pressure, original ideas, and steadfast service to the king Sebastian has become one of Charlemagne’s twelve paladins, a high honor, but the cost is also high. He loses his beloved wife and family, becomes entangled with other beautiful women, and is submerged into a foreign world of intrigue and betrayal. Becoming a paladin changes Sebastian from a young man of faith and character into a hard-bitten warrior in a ruthless world. Thus the latter part of the novel presents a swirling adventure but also a parable of the ruin and redemption of a professional soldier.




Tribe


Book Description

We have a strong instinct to belong to small groups defined by clear purpose and understanding--"tribes." This tribal connection has been largely lost in modern society, but regaining it may be the key to our psychological survival. Decades before the American Revolution, Benjamin Franklin lamented that English settlers were constantly fleeing over to the Indians-but Indians almost never did the same. Tribal society has been exerting an almost gravitational pull on Westerners for hundreds of years, and the reason lies deep in our evolutionary past as a communal species. The most recent example of that attraction is combat veterans who come home to find themselves missing the incredibly intimate bonds of platoon life. The loss of closeness that comes at the end of deployment may explain the high rates of post-traumatic stress disorder suffered by military veterans today. Combining history, psychology, and anthropology, Tribe explores what we can learn from tribal societies about loyalty, belonging, and the eternal human quest for meaning. It explains the irony that-for many veterans as well as civilians-war feels better than peace, adversity can turn out to be a blessing, and disasters are sometimes remembered more fondly than weddings or tropical vacations. Tribe explains why we are stronger when we come together, and how that can be achieved even in today's divided world.