Rule Of Fire

Five women at critical crossroads in their lives come together in this gem of a novel set on an island off the coast of Vancouver After the Fire introduces a quintet of very different women as they struggle with abandonment, loss, and new beginnings—both together and alone. There is Karen Tasuki, who recently separated from her partner and wonders if she’ll ever get used to being alone . . . until she befriends Red, who cleans houses for the island’s privileged inhabitants. Miss James is the eccentric Southern spinster born at the turn of the century. Milly Forbes is a woman whose husband “went scot free after stealing twenty years of her life.” And the sensible Henrietta “Hen” Hawkins yearns for her absent, ill husband. On a rural island that they dub a “used-wife lot,” the five heroines nurture one another as they cope with loneliness, death, and renewed life. Imbued with wit and compassion, After the Fire is a novel about women loving women and women helping women—and the bond that transcends age, race, and even gender.

The idea of Business Rules has been around for a while. Simply put, a Business Rule is a statement that defines or constrains some aspect of the business. In practice they are meant to reduce or eliminate the delays, waste, and frustration associated with the IT department having to be involved with almost every action affecting an organization's information systems. The advent of Web services has created renewed interest in them. There are now several well established rules-based products that have demonstrated the effectiveness of their use. But until now there has not been a definitive guide to Business Rules. Ron Ross, considered to be the father of Business Rules, will help organizations apply this powerful solution to their own computer system problems. This book is intended to be the first book that anyone from an IT manager to a business manager will read to understand what Business Rules are, and what how they can be applied to their own situation.

Scattered across a continent and scarred by their harsh experiences on the path to adulthood, the three dragon siblings are among the last of a dying breed—the final hope for their species’ survival. Wistala, sister to the Copper who is now Emperor of the Upper World, has long thought humans the equal of dragons. She leads the Firemaids, fierce female fighting dragons who support the Hominids of Hypatia. Which puts her at odds with both her brothers, for the Copper has no use for the humans he now dominates and AuRon, the rare scaleless grey, would isolate himself and his family from both the world of men and the world of dragons. But as the Copper’s empire roils with war, greed and treachery, the time is fast approaching when Wistala will have to choose who to stand with—and fight for...

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 10th International RuleML Symposium, RuleML 2016, held in New York, NY, USA during July 2016. The 19 full papers, 1 short paper, 2 keynote abstracts, 2 invited tutorial papers, 1 invited standard paper, presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 36 submissions. RuleML is a leading conference aiming to build bridges between academia and industry in the field of rules and its applications, especially as part of the semantic technology stack. It is devoted to rule-based programming and rule-based systems including production rule systems, logic programming rule engines, and business rule engines and business rule management systems, Semantic Web rule languages and rule standards and technologies, and research on inference rules, transformation rules, decision rules, and ECA rules.

Rule-Based Programming is a broad presentation of the rule-based programming method with many example programs showing the strengths of the rule-based approach. The rule-based approach has been used extensively in the development of artificial intelligence systems, such as expert systems and machine learning. This rule-based programming technique has been applied in such diverse fields as medical diagnostic systems, insurance and banking systems, as well as automated design and configuration systems. Rule-based programming is also helpful in bridging the semantic gap between an application and a program, allowing domain specialists to understand programs and participate more closely in their development. Over sixty programs are presented and all programs are available from an ftp site. Many of these programs are presented in several versions allowing the reader to see how realistic programs are elaborated from `back of envelope' models. Metaprogramming is also presented as a technique for bridging the `semantic gap'. Rule-Based Programming will be of interest to programmers, systems analysts and other developers of expert systems as well as to researchers and practitioners in artificial intelligence, computer science professionals and educators.