Alma-Ata: A Guide to Soviet Modernist Architecture. 1955-1991

Almaty became the capital of Soviet modernism after it ceased to be Alma-Ata, as its former rivals in terms of architecture—Yerevan and Kyiv, Tashkent and Minsk—gradually lost the heritage of the period dating from the 1960s through the 1980s. The losses in Almaty were not so serious. In 1997, the capital moved to Astana, which took on the architectural representation of independent Kazakhstan. Almaty remained a working museum of Soviet modernism, where one can see the first transparent library in the world, the first postmodernist skyscraper in the USSR, and a dam constructed using the most powerful controlled explosion in history. Authors Anna Bronovitskaya and Nikolay Malinin present the architecture of the city within the broad context of art, culture, and social and political history. This book is the second in a series launched in 2016 with a guidebook to Moscow's Soviet modernist architecture. "From the 1960s through the 1980s, Alma-Ata saw the emergence of a unique blend of international modernism, Soviet colonialism, and attempts by architects to enrich the language of modernism with Kazakh national traditions. Thanks to this book I discovered a completely unfamiliar stratum of postwar Soviet architecture." Vladimir Paperny UCLA

Moscow: A Guide to Soviet Modernist Architecture 1955-1991 provides descriptions of almost 100 buildings from the most underrated period of Soviet architecture. This is the first guide to bring together the architecture made during the three decades between Khrushchev and Gorbachev, from the naive modernism of the "thaw" of the late 1950s through postmodernism. Buildings include the Palace of Youth, the Rossiya cinema, the Pioneer Palace, the Ostankino TV Tower, the TASS headquarters, the "golden brains" of the Academy of Sciences and less well-known structures such as the House of New Life and the Lenin Komsomol Automobile Plant Museum. The authors situate Moscow's postwar architecture within the historical and political context of the Soviet Union, while also referencing developments in international architecture of the period.

Moscow: A Guide to Soviet Modernist Architecture 1955-1991 provides descriptions of almost 100 buildings from the most underrated period of Soviet architecture. This is the first guide to bring together the architecture made during the three decades between Khrushchev and Gorbachev, from the naive modernism of the "thaw" of the late 1950s through postmodernism. Buildings include the Palace of Youth, the Rossiya cinema, the Pioneer Palace, the Ostankino TV Tower, the TASS headquarters, the "golden brains" of the Academy of Sciences and less well-known structures such as the House of New Life and the Lenin Komsomol Automobile Plant Museum. The authors situate Moscow's postwar architecture within the historical and political context of the Soviet Union, while also referencing developments in international architecture of the period.

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Since the formalization of asset allocation in 1952 with the publication of Portfolio Selection by Harry Markowitz, there have been great strides made to enhance the application of this groundbreaking theory. However, progress has been uneven. It has been punctuated with instances of misleading research, which has contributed to the stubborn persistence of certain fallacies about asset allocation. A Practitioner's Guide to Asset Allocation fills a void in the literature by offering a hands-on resource that describes the many important innovations that address key challenges to asset allocation and dispels common fallacies about asset allocation. The authors cover the fundamentals of asset allocation, including a discussion of the attributes that qualify a group of securities as an asset class and a detailed description of the conventional application of mean-variance analysis to asset allocation.. The authors review a number of common fallacies about asset allocation and dispel these misconceptions with logic or hard evidence. The fallacies debunked include such notions as: asset allocation determines more than 90% of investment performance; time diversifies risk; optimization is hypersensitive to estimation error; factors provide greater diversification than assets and are more effective at reducing noise; and that equally weighted portfolios perform more reliably out of sample than optimized portfolios. A Practitioner's Guide to Asset Allocation also explores the innovations that address key challenges to asset allocation and presents an alternative optimization procedure to address the idea that some investors have complex preferences and returns may not be elliptically distributed. Among the challenges highlighted, the authors explain how to overcome inefficiencies that result from constraints by expanding the optimization objective function to incorporate absolute and relative goals simultaneously. The text also explores the challenge of currency risk, describes how to use shadow assets and liabilities to unify liquidity with expected return and risk, and shows how to evaluate alternative asset mixes by assessing exposure to loss throughout the investment horizon based on regime-dependent risk. This practical text contains an illustrative example of asset allocation which is used to demonstrate the impact of the innovations described throughout the book. In addition, the book includes supplemental material that summarizes the key takeaways and includes information on relevant statistical and theoretical concepts, as well as a comprehensive glossary of terms.

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Service Oriented Architecture Field Guide for Executives is a fundamental breakthrough in the business and technology perspectives of service oriented architecture (SOA). A valuable resource to help you understand and realize the benefits of SOA in today's companies, this guide will show you how to plan, implement, and achieve SOA value. Use a prescriptive approach to help you clearly understand SOA and to determine its applications for your business. Applicable to all industries, technology platforms, and operating environments, this innovative book will provide you with essential strategies.

The Student’s Guide to Becoming a Nurse is an essential guide for all student nurses who want to become competent practitioners. It explores the knowledge, skills and attitudes that all pre-registration nursing students must acquire by the end of their programme of study, enabling them to become confident, successful nurses. Thoroughly re-written and updated to include the latest 2010 NMC standards for pre-registration nursing education, this invaluable textbook is divided into four key sections: Professional values Communication and interpersonal skills Nursing practice and decision making Leadership, management and team working With case studies, top tips, activities and questions throughout, The Student's Guide to Becoming a Nurse is ideal for all pre-registration nurses and those about to qualify.