Hands-On Machine Learning with scikit-learn and Scientific Python Toolkits. A practical guide to implementing supervised and unsupervised machine learning algorithms in Python

Tarek Amr

Machine learning is applied everywhere, from business to research and academia, while scikit-learn is a versatile library that is popular among machine learning practitioners. This book serves as a practical guide for anyone looking to provide hands-on machine learning solutions with scikit-learn and Python toolkits.The book begins with an explanation of machine learning concepts and fundamentals, and strikes a balance between theoretical concepts and their applications. Each chapter covers a different set of algorithms, and shows you how to use them to solve real-life problems. You’ll also learn about various key supervised and unsupervised machine learning algorithms using practical examples. Whether it is an instance-based learning algorithm, Bayesian estimation, a deep neural network, a tree-based ensemble, or a recommendation system, you’ll gain a thorough understanding of its theory and learn when to apply it. As you advance, you’ll learn how to deal with unlabeled data and when to use different clustering and anomaly detection algorithms.By the end of this machine learning book, you’ll have learned how to take a data-driven approach to provide end-to-end machine learning solutions. You’ll also have discovered how to formulate the problem at hand, prepare required data, and evaluate and deploy models in production.

Generative AI Application Integration Patterns. Integrate large language models into your applications

Juan Pablo Bustos, Luis Lopez Soria, Dr. Ali Arsanjani

Explore the transformative potential of GenAI in the application development lifecycle. Through concrete examples, you will go through the process of ideation and integration, understanding the tradeoffs and the decision points when integrating GenAI.With recent advances in models like Google Gemini, Anthropic Claude, DALL-E and GPT-4o, this timely resource will help you harness these technologies through proven design patterns.We then delve into the practical applications of GenAI, identifying common use cases and applying design patterns to address real-world challenges. From summarization and metadata extraction to intent classification and question answering, each chapter offers practical examples and blueprints for leveraging GenAI across diverse domains and tasks. You will learn how to fine-tune models for specific applications, progressing from basic prompting to sophisticated strategies such as retrieval augmented generation (RAG) and chain of thought.Additionally, we provide end-to-end guidance on operationalizing models, including data prep, training, deployment, and monitoring. We also focus on responsible and ethical development techniques for transparency, auditing, and governance as crucial design patterns.

Professional Cloud Architect - Google Cloud Certification Guide. A handy guide to designing, developing, and managing enterprise-grade GCP cloud solutions

Konrad Cłapa, Brian Gerrard

Google Cloud Platform (GCP) is one of the leading cloud service suites and offers solutions for storage, analytics, big data, machine learning, and application development. It features an array of services that can help organizations to get the best out of their infrastructure. This comprehensive guide covers a variety of topics specific to Google's Professional Cloud Architect official exam syllabus and guides you in using the right methods for effective use of GCP services.You'll start by exploring GCP, understanding the benefits of becoming a certified architect, and learning how to register for the exam. You'll then delve into the core services that GCP offers such as computing, storage, and security. As you advance, this GCP book will help you get up to speed with methods to scale and automate your cloud infrastructure and delve into containers and services. In the concluding chapters, you'll discover security best practices and even gain insights into designing applications with GCP services and monitoring your infrastructure as a GCP architect.By the end of this book, you will be well versed in all the topics required to pass Google's Professional Cloud Architect exam and use GCP services effectively.

Arduino BLINK Blueprints. Get the most out of your Arduino to develop exciting and creative LED-based projects

Samarth Shah, Utsav Shah

Arduino is an open-source prototyping platform based on easy-to-use hardware and software. Arduino has been used in thousands of different projects and applications by a wide range of programmers and artists, and their contributions have added up to an incredible amount of accessible knowledge that can be of great help to novices and experts alike.Want to build exciting LED projects with Arduino? This book will be your companion to bring out the creative genius in you. To begin with, you will get introduced to the maker movement and the open source hardware development Arduino boards. You will then move on to develop a mood lamp and a remote-controlled TV backlight. As you progress through the book, you will develop an LED cube and will learn to use sound visualization to develop a sound-controlled LED Christmas tree. You will then move on to build a persistence of vision wand.At the end of each chapter, you’ll see some common problems, their solutions, and some workarounds.

OpenCL Programming by Example. A comprehensive guide on OpenCL programming with examples with this book and

Koushik Bhattacharyya, Ravishekhar Banger

Research in parallel programming has been a mainstream topic for a decade, and will continue to be so for many decades to come. Many parallel programming standards and frameworks exist, but only take into account one type of hardware architecture. Today computing platforms come with many heterogeneous devices. OpenCL provides royalty free standard to program heterogeneous hardware.This guide offers you a compact coverage of all the major topics of OpenCL programming. It explains optimization techniques and strategies in-depth, using illustrative examples and also provides case studies from diverse fields. Beginners and advanced application developers will find this book very useful.Beginning with the discussion of the OpenCL models, this book explores their architectural view, programming interfaces and primitives. It slowly demystifies the process of identifying the data and task parallelism in diverse algorithms.It presents examples from different domains to show how the problems within different domains can be solved more efficiently using OpenCL. You will learn about parallel sorting, histogram generation, JPEG compression, linear and parabolic regression and k-nearest neighborhood, a clustering algorithm in pattern recognition. Following on from this, optimization strategies are explained with matrix multiplication examples. You will also learn how to do an interoperation of OpenGL and OpenCL.OpenCL Programming by Example explains OpenCL in the simplest possible language, which beginners will find it easy to understand. Developers and programmers from different domains who want to achieve acceleration for their applications will find this book very useful.

Raspberry Pi Essentials. Get up and running with the Raspberry Pi to develop captivating projects

Jack Creasey

Spring 2.5 Aspect Oriented Programming. Create dynamic, feature-rich, and robust enterprise applications using the Spring framework

Massimiliano Dess?É?íÂ!¨, Brian Fitzpatrick, Massimiliano Dessi

Developing powerful web applications with clean, manageable code makes the maintenance process much easier. Aspect-Oriented Programming (AOP) is the easiest and quickest way to achieve such results. Spring is the only Java framework to offer AOP features. The combined power of Spring and AOP gives a powerful and flexible platform to develop and maintain feature-rich web applications quickly.This book will help you to write clean, manageable code for your Java applications quickly, utilizing the combined power of Spring and AOP. You will master the concepts of AOP by developing several real-life AOP-based applications with the Spring Framework, implementing the basic components of Spring AOP: Advice, Joinpoint, Pointcut, and Advisor.This book will teach you everything you need to know to use AOP with Spring. It starts by explaining the AOP features of Spring and then moves ahead with configuring Spring AOP and using its core classes, with lot of examples. It moves on to explain the AspectJ support in Spring. Then you will develop a three-layered example web application designed with Domain-Driven Design (DDD) and built with Test-Driven Development methodology using the full potential of AOP for security, concurrency, caching, and transactions.

Building Multicopter Video Drones. Build and fly multicopter drones to gather breathtaking video footage

Ty Audronis

Microservices with Spring Boot 3 and Spring Cloud. Build resilient and scalable microservices using Spring Cloud, Istio, and Kubernetes - Third Edition

Magnus Larsson

Looking to build and deploy microservices but not sure where to start? Check out Microservices with Spring Boot 3 and Spring Cloud, Third Edition.With a practical approach, you'll begin with simple microservices and progress to complex distributed applications. Learn essential functionality and deploy microservices using Kubernetes and Istio.This book covers Java 17, Spring Boot 3, and Spring Cloud 2022. Java EE packages are replaced with the latest Jakarta EE packages. Code examples are updated and deprecated APIs have been replaced, providing the most up to date information. Gain knowledge of Spring's AOT module, observability, distributed tracing, and Helm 3 for Kubernetes packaging.Start with Docker Compose to run microservices with databases and messaging services. Progress to deploying microservices on Kubernetes with Istio. Explore persistence, resilience, reactive microservices, and API documentation with OpenAPI. Learn service discovery with Netflix Eureka, edge servers with Spring Cloud Gateway, and monitoring with Prometheus, Grafana, and the EFK stack.By the end, you'll build scalable microservices using Spring Boot and Spring Cloud.

Oracle BAM 11gR1 Handbook. Your essential BAM sidekick for monitoring, alerting, and application best practices with Oracle Business Activity Monitoring with this book and

Pete Wang

An integral component of Oracle SOA and BPM Suite, Oracle BAM (Business Activity Monitoring) ultimately empowers business executives to react quickly to changing business situations. BAM enables business service and process monitoring through real-time data streaming and operational reports, and this book helps you to take advantage of this vital tool with best practice guidance for building a BAM project.Oracle BAM 11gR1 Handbook is an essential companion for advancing your BAM knowledge, with troubleshooting and performance tuning tips to guide you in building BAM applications. The book uses step-by-step instructions alongside a real world demo project to steer you through the pitfalls of report and application development. Packed with best practices, you'll learn about BAM migration, HA configuration and much more.Oracle BAM 11gR1 Handbook comprises a myriad of best practices for building real-time operational dashboards, reports and alerts. The book dives straight into the architecture of Oracle BAM 11g, before moving swiftly onto concepts like managing BAM server securities, populating Data Objects and performing load testing. Later on you'll also learn about BAM migration and building an ADF-based report, plus much more that you won't want to miss. For focusing in on best practices for this integral tool within Oracle SOA and BPM Suite, Oracle BAM 11gR1 Handbook is the perfect guide for the job.

Hyper-V Security. Secure your Hyper-V hosts, their guests, and critical services from intruders and malware

Eric Siron, Andrew Syrewicze

CryENGINE 3 Cookbook. Over 90 recipes written by Crytek developers for creating third-generation real-time games

Sean Tracy, Dan Tracy, Sean P Tracy (USD)

With every successive console generation, the cost, time, and complexity of developing games has grown. Meet CryENGINE3, a middleware engine that is the perfect fit for most developers allowing users to exceed current generation quality standards while using less people and time than ever thought possible.The CryENGINE3 CookBook is packed full of recipes for junior and senior developers alike. It covers everything from creating photo realistic architectural visualizations to implementing advanced physics such as ragdoll and tornado effects. Topics covered include the sandbox, level layout, environment creation, AI, character creation, creating vehicles, and game logic. Every recipe is designed to add AAA quality to your games. The CryENGINE3 SDK has many tools immediately available to developers of all disciplines. For designers the book has recipes for building up your own levels and populating your levels with intelligent AI and photo realistic assets. For artists we have recipes for practical workflow tools and techniques used when working with the advanced CryENGINE shaders and materials. For animators we have recipes that will bring your creations to life using skinned characters and advanced animation systems like locomotion groups. Finally for programmers we have recipes that show how to employ the core mechanics behind entities such as vehicles and weapons while also utilizing the strengths of the physics engine to create a unique and exciting game.

BPEL PM and OSB operational management with Oracle Enterprise Manager 10g Grid Control. Manage the operational tasks for multiple BPEL and OSB environments centrally

Narayan Bharadwaj

In the SOA world, managing distributed services and service infrastructures is critical. Oracle Enterprise Manager – an all-encompassing management product – facilitates increased management capabilities for databases, application servers, and packaged applications. BPEL PM and OSB are two compelling, market leading products that are driving Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) implementation across enterprises.There is a lack of clarity around real-world operational use cases that would help operational administrators in their day-to-day tasks. Further, the documentation available online does not provide much information on administering BPEL PM and OSB with Enterprise Manager Grid Control efficiently.This book will help you set up the framework for managing operational tasks from a central location using Oracle Enterprise Manager Grid Control in a step-by-step functional approach. You will learn to automate various operational tasks that are essential for the smooth running of Oracle SOA products in production, thus increasing the efficiency of your SOA projects.This book shows how top-drawer management capabilities from Oracle Enterprise Manager Grid Control can be used to effectively manage your Oracle SOA environment. You start by discovering one or more BPEL and OSB components centrally. The book then explains how to monitor BPEL processes and OSB services, and how to get alerts on service availability and performance problems. It covers the management of BPEL and OSB infrastructure components and how to manage their configurations in a central repository. It follows a hands-on approach, showing you how to use an automated approach for deploying BPEL processes and OSB projects.By the end of this book, you will have learned several techniques to set up a framework that will help you manage your SOA environment from a central location.

Software Architecture with Kotlin. Combine various architectural styles to create sustainable and scalable software solutions

Jason (Tsz Shun) Chow

Software Architecture with Kotlin explores the various styles of software architecture with a focus on using the Kotlin programming language. The author draws on their 20+ years of industry experience in developing large-scale enterprise distributed systems to help you grasp the principles, practices, and patterns that shape the architectural landscape of modern software systems.The book establishes a strong foundation in software architecture, explaining key concepts such as architectural qualities and principles, before teaching you how architectural decisions impact the quality of a system, such as scalability, reliability, and extendability. The chapters address modern architecture topics such as microservices, serverless, and event-driven architectures, providing insights into the challenges and trade-offs involved in adopting these architectural styles. You’ll also discover practical tools that’ll help you make informed decisions and mitigate risks. All architectural patterns in this book are demonstrated using Kotlin.By the end of this book, you’ll have gained practical expertise by using real-world examples, along with a solid understanding of Kotlin, to become a more proficient and impactful software architect.

Apache Tomcat 7 Essentials. This book takes you from beginner to expert in logical stages, covering all the essentials of Tomcat 7 from trouble-free installation to building your own middleware servers. Packed with examples and illustrations

Tanuj Khare

Apache Tomcat (or simply Tomcat) is an open source servlet container developed by the Apache Software Foundation (ASF). The latest major stable release, Apache Tomcat version 7 implements the Servlet 3 and JavaServer Pages 2 specifications from the Java Community Process, and includes many additional features that make it a useful platform for developing and deploying web applications and web services.Apache Tomcat 7 Essentials follows a practical approach to teach installing, configuring, and maintaining Tomcat. It helps you to understand the middle architecture for hosting multiple websites and also provides the confidence to implement middleware support. It imparts to you the capacity to resolve migration issues and also provides regular maintenance solutions. This is the first and only book to cover upgrading to Tomcat 7 from previous versions.The journey of the reader starts at the beginner level and ends at the expert level. The content is designed in such a way that it balances the theory and practical approach for understanding concepts related to handling middle ware and web issues.In this book, you will go through a three-phase life cycle. The first cycle consists of installation, configuration of Tomcat 7 on different OS, and other configurations related to JDBC, port, deployment etc. The second phase deals with the building of enterprise application setup and high availability architecture (clustering load balancing). The third and critical phase will teach you to handle critical issues, performance tuning, and best practices for various environment stacks like dev/QA/stage/production.This book gives you a wider vision of using Tomcat 7 in web technologies and the skill to optimize their performance using Apache Tomcat 7.

Programming Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2013. Experienced programmers and developers will find this the definitive guide to programming Microsoft Dynamics NAV. Both a reference book and a comprehensive hands-on tutorial, it will expand your knowledge dynamically. - Third Edition

Christopher D. Studebaker, David Studebaker, CHRISTOPHER D. STUDEBAKER, David A. Studebaker, ...

Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2013 is a complete and robust ERP system that is accompanied by a comprehensive set of development tools. You will learn how to master these tools and tailor Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2013 to meet your customer's specific business needs.Programming Microsoft Dynamics® NAV 2013 will lead you from start to finish, teaching you how to use this incredible ERP software whilst simultaneously making you a more productive developer. You'll learn how to implement your solutions, as well as evaluating, managing and appraising Dynamics NAV 2013 productions and projects.You will be empowered with the skills and knowledge that you need to get the job done and exceed your client's expectations. Step by step, you will learn how to use NAV, master the C/AL programming language, as well as the construction and uses of each object type. Ultimately, you will be able to bring your NAV 2013 solution together with fantastic efficiency.Hands-on development examples and additional material teach you by example and uncover the insider knowledge that only years of experience can provide, truly unleashing your productivity and potential.

PostgreSQL 16 Administration Cookbook. Solve real-world Database Administration challenges with 180+ practical recipes and best practices

Gianni Ciolli, Boriss Mejías, Jimmy Angelakos, Vibhor Kumar, ...

PostgreSQL has seen a huge increase in its customer base in the past few years and is becoming one of the go-to solutions for anyone who has a database-specific challenge. This PostgreSQL book touches on all the fundamentals of Database Administration in a problem-solution format. It is intended to be the perfect desk reference guide.This new edition focuses on recipes based on the new PostgreSQL 16 release. The additions include handling complex batch loading scenarios with the SQL MERGE statement, security improvements, running Postgres on Kubernetes or with TPA and Ansible, and more. This edition also focuses on certain performance gains, such as query optimization, and the acceleration of specific operations, such as sort. It will help you understand roles, ensuring high availability, concurrency, and replication. It also draws your attention to aspects like validating backups, recovery, monitoring, and scaling aspects. This book will act as a one-stop solution to all your real-world database administration challenges.By the end of this book, you will be able to manage, monitor, and replicate your PostgreSQL 16 database for efficient administration and maintenance with the best practices from experts.

Professional Azure SQL Database Administration. Equip yourself with the skills to manage and maintain data in the cloud - Second Edition

Ahmad Osama

Despite being the cloud version of SQL Server, Azure SQL Database differs in key ways when it comes to management, maintenance, and administration. This book shows you how to administer Azure SQL Database to fully benefit from its wide range of features and functionalities.Professional Azure SQL Database Administration begins by covering the architecture and explaining the difference between Azure SQL Database and the on-premise SQL Server to help you get comfortable with Azure SQL Database. You’ll perform common tasks such as migrating, backing up and restoring a SQL Server database to an Azure database. As you progress, you’ll understand how you can reduce costs, and manage and scale multiple SQL databases using elastic pools. You’ll also implement a disaster recovery solution using standard and active geo-replication. Whether it is learning different techniques to monitor and tune an Azure SQL Database or improving performance using in-memory technology, this book will enable you to make the most out of Azure SQL database features and functionality for data management solutions.By the end of this book, you’ll be well-versed with key aspects of an Azure SQL Database instance, such as migration, backup restorations, performance optimization, high availability, and disaster recovery.

Distributed .NET with Microsoft Orleans. Build robust and highly scalable distributed applications without worrying about complex programming patterns

Bhupesh Guptha Muthiyalu, Suneel Kumar Kunani, Reuben Bond

Building distributed applications in this modern era can be a tedious task as customers expect high availability, high performance, and improved resilience. With the help of this book, you'll discover how you can harness the power of Microsoft Orleans to build impressive distributed applications.Distributed .NET with Microsoft Orleans will demonstrate how to leverage Orleans to build highly scalable distributed applications step by step in the least possible time and with minimum effort. You'll explore some of the key concepts of Microsoft Orleans, including the Orleans programming model, runtime, virtual actors, hosting, and deployment. As you advance, you'll become well-versed with important Orleans assets such as grains, silos, timers, and persistence. Throughout the book, you'll create a distributed application by adding key components to the application as you progress through each chapter and explore them in detail.By the end of this book, you'll have developed the confidence and skills required to build distributed applications using Microsoft Orleans and deploy them in Microsoft Azure.

OmniGraffle 5 Diagramming Essentials. This tutorial will help you create dazzling, professional-quality diagrams using Omnigraffle. From the fundamentals through to advanced techniques, it will have you communicating information more powerfully and visually in no time

Ruben Olsen, Ove Ruben Ranum

If a picture is worth a thousand words, why settle for anything less? Creating good visualizations to substantiate your ideas is essential in today's corporate environment. Use OmniGraffle's remarkably powerful and flexible features to get your diagrams right. Although fun to use, it can get cumbersome to find out exactly how to get what you want.This book will teach you how to make stunning diagrams without spending much time and energy. No matter if you have never used OmniGraffle, or if you are using it on a daily basis, this book will teach you how to get the most out of this splendid diagramming tool. It will first teach you the basics of the program and then extend your knowledge to a higher level.The book will teach you to make eye-popping visuals using a lot of useful, step-by-step examples. It begins with covering concepts that beef up your basics of using OmniGraffle. The earlier chapters will teach you to prepare dazzling diagrams from scratch with the many stencils, shapes, and fonts that are included in OmniGraffle. As your understanding of OmniGraffle broadens, the book will go even deeper to explain the less understood features of the software. It also covers some handy time-saving techniques such as workspaces and keyboard shortcuts.By the time you reach the end of this book, you will have mastered OmniGraffle to turn your ideas into diagrams.

Instant Optimizing Embedded Systems Using BusyBox. Learn to optimize embedded systems with Busybox using practical, hands-on recipes

Wu Zhangjin, Cao Ziqiang

As hundreds of millions of people have started using Android smartphones, embedded Linux systems are becoming more and more popular. To get more market share, not only for hardware and function piling up, smartphone manufacturers gradually realized the importance of user experience. To improve user experience, the back-end Linux system must be optimized in many ways.Instant Optimizing Embedded System Using BusyBox is a practical, hands-on guide that provides you with a number of clear, step-by-step exercises to help you take advantage of the real power behind Busybox, and give you a good grounding for using it to optimize your embedded (Android Linux) systems.Moving on from the basics, this book will teach you how to configure and compile it from source code, including cross-compiling it with static linking and dynamic linking. You will also learn how to install and use Busybox on the Android emulator. You will learn to replace the simple Android mksh console with Busybox ash console and start a telnet and HTTP service provided by Busybox. You will also build embedded Linux file system from scratch and start it on Android emulator. We will take a look at how to add functionality to Busybox based system, including adding external applets to Busybox, as well as building development environments (like Bash and C) for it manually or with the automatic Buildroot system.If want to learn how to take advantage of using Busybox applets to optimize your embedded system, then this is the book for you for it will also show you how to use the powerful applets to optimize multiple aspects of an embedded (Android Linux) system.This book will teach you how to build an embedded (Android Linux) system with Busybox, enhance its functionality to meet diverse system requirements, and optimize it to provide a better user experience for embedded products.

Working Smarter with Microsoft Project. Implement effective project control techniques to maximize efficiency and drive successful outcomes

Staci Warne

Project management is filled with various challenges, such as managing unforeseen risks, balancing priorities, and shifting project scopes, which can lead to inefficiencies. This definitive guide leverages the author’s 25+ years of industry experience to take you on a hands-on journey to unlock your full potential with Microsoft Project.This book helps you grasp the fundamental aspects of project creation, before moving on to more advanced topics, covering tracking, maintenance, and collaborative aspects for any project. You’ll find out how to track progress, optimize schedules, manage budgets, and customize reports based on business requirements by using easy-to-follow instructions and illustrations. The book taps into the author’s extensive experience as a Microsoft Certified Trainer (MCT) and Project Management Professional (PMP) to provide you with invaluable insights into managing resource overallocations, mastering advanced resource management techniques, and seamlessly integrating Microsoft Project with other tools to boost productivity and achieve success with your projects.By the end of this Microsoft Project book, you’ll be able to create professional project plans, execute projects with confidence, and consistently achieve your desired outcomes.

Mastering XenApp. Master the skills required to implement Citrix® XenApp® 7.6 to deploy a complete Citrix®-hosted application from scratch

Sunny Jha

Citrix® XenApp® is one of the leading pieces of Application delivery software that delivers Windows compatible apps to users on any device, anywhere. Citrix® XenApp® also gives administrators the ability to manage and control the freedom of mobility by increasing the security and saving costs at the same time.This book will provide you with all the knowledge required to successfully deploy and master a complete Citrix® hosted application. First, it will cover essential concepts of the architecture of XenApp®. You will then learn how to set up Hypervisor and how to set up Infrastructure components. Next you will learn how to Set up Citrix® Components, XenApp® resources, PVS, and Netscaler. We will further look at how to prepare the environment for Rollout. Additionally, you will learn how to configure the Citrix® components such as Citrix® Director. Moreover, you’ll learn about shared desktop for delivery to end users and the application of policies for effective and secure delivery. Finally, you will learn how to implement provisioning services for a Citrix® XenApp® 7.6 environment.

Cinder Creative Coding Cookbook. If you know C++ this book takes your creative potential to a whole other level. The practical recipes show you how to create interactive and visually dynamic applications using Cinder which will excite and delight your audience

Rui Miguel Santos Madeira, Dawid Gorny

Cinder is one of the most exciting frameworks available for creative coding. It is developed in C++ for increased performance and allows for the fast creation of visually complex, interactive applications.Cinder Creative Coding Cookbook will show you how to develop interactive and visually dynamic applications using simple-to-follow recipes.You will learn how to use multimedia content, draw generative graphics in 2D and 3D, and animate them in compelling ways. Beginning with creating simple projects with Cinder, you will use multimedia, create animations, and interact with the user.From animation with particles to using video, audio, and images, the reader will gain a broad knowledge of creating applications using Cinder.With recipes that include drawing in 3D, image processing, and sensing and tracking in real-time from camera input, the book will teach you how to develop interesting applications.Cinder Creative Coding Cookbook will give you the necessary knowledge to start creating projects with Cinder that use animations and advanced visuals.