A very good officer, but a drunken dog as ever lived.Such was the Duke of Wellington’s alleged assessment of Sir Nicholas Trant. But this book provides a complete reappraisal of Trant’s career, contrasting all too vividly with Wellington’s dismissive remark.At the outbreak of the French Revolution, Trant, who had originally enlisted in the army of Louis XVI, volunteered for the Duke of Brunswick’s coalition army that fought at Valmy in 1792. Trant later served in F...

Optimization techniques are at the core of data science, including data analysis and machine learning. An understanding of basic optimization techniques and their fundamental properties provides important grounding for students, researchers, and practitioners in these areas. This text covers the fundamentals of optimization algorithms in a compact, self-contained way, focusing on the techniques most relevant to data science. An introductory chapter demonstrates that many standard problems ...

This book focuses on ways to better manage and prevent aircraft-based homicide events while in flight using alternate technology to replace the Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR) and/or Digital Flight Data Recorder (DFDR) functions. While these events are infrequent, the implementation of real-time predictive maintenance allows aircraft operators to better manage both scheduled and unscheduled maintenance events. Aviation Safety and Security: Utilizing Technology to Prevent Aircraft Fata...

How the death of a childless monarch sparked a bloody conflict that raged across Europe and beyond.The War of the Spanish Succession, fought between 1701 and 1714 to decide who should inherit the Spanish throne, was a conflict on an unprecedented scale, stretching across most of western Europe, the high seas, and the Americas. Yet this major subject is not well known and little understood. James Falkner's absorbing new study fills that gap.In a clear and pe...

In this compelling book, Richard Holmes tells the exhilarating story of the Duke of Wellington, Britain's greatest ever soldier.Seeing Wellington as a remarkable figure, Holmes follows his career from the ruins of his family seat in Ireland to the plains of India where Wellesley first gained his reputation as a brilliant commander, to the horrors of the Peninsular War and Waterloo.Combining his astute historical analysis with semi-biographical examination, Holmes artfully i...

In 1812 two mighty armies manoeuvred across the Spanish plains. They were finely balanced, under skilful leaders. Each struggled to gain an advantage. Wellington knew that if he defeated the French, he could turn the tide of the war. Good intelligence was paramount, but the French were using a code of unrivalled complexity - the 'Great Paris Cipher'. It was an unprecedented challenge, and Wellington looked to one man to break the code: Major George Scovell. Using a network of Spanish guerr...

Algebraic & geometry methods have constituted a basic background and tool for people working on classic block coding theory and cryptography. Nowadays, new paradigms on coding theory and cryptography have arisen such as: Network coding, S-Boxes, APN Functions, Steganography and decoding by linear programming. Again understanding the underlying procedure and symmetry of these topics needs a whole bunch of non trivial knowledge of algebra and geometry that will be used to both, evaluate thos...

Illustrated with 14 maps and 5 portraitsThe 1807-14 war in the Iberian Peninsula was one of the most significant and influential campaigns of the Napoleonic Wars. Arising from Napoleon's strategic need to impose his rule over Portugal and Spain, it evolved into a constant drain on his resources. Sir Charles Oman's seven-volume history of the campaign is an unrivalled and essential work. His extensive use and analysis of French, Spanish, Portuguese and British participants' accounts ...

This rigorous, self-contained book describes mathematical and, in particular, stochastic and graph theoretic methods to assess the performance of complex networks and systems. It comprises three parts: the first is a review of probability theory; Part II covers the classical theory of stochastic processes (Poisson, Markov and queueing theory), which are considered to be the basic building blocks for performance evaluation studies; Part III focuses on the rapidly expanding new field of netw...

Illustrated with 16 maps and 5 portraitsThe 1807-14 war in the Iberian Peninsula was one of the most significant and influential campaigns of the Napoleonic Wars. Arising from Napoleon's strategic need to impose his rule over Portugal and Spain, it evolved into a constant drain on his resources. Sir Charles Oman's seven-volume history of the campaign is an unrivalled and essential work. His extensive use and analysis of French, Spanish, Portuguese and British participants' accounts ...

This beginning graduate textbook describes both recent achievements and classical results of computational complexity theory. Requiring essentially no background apart from mathematical maturity, the book can be used as a reference for self-study for anyone interested in complexity, including physicists, mathematicians, and other scientists, as well as a textbook for a variety of courses and seminars. More than 300 exercises are included with a selected hint set. The book starts with a bro...

Illustrated with 18 maps and illustrationsThe 1807-14 war in the Iberian Peninsula was one of the most significant and influential campaigns of the Napoleonic Wars. Arising from Napoleon's strategic need to impose his rule over Portugal and Spain, it evolved into a constant drain on his resources. Sir Charles Oman's seven-volume history of the campaign is an unrivalled and essential work. His extensive use and analysis of French, Spanish, Portuguese and British participants' account...