Books by Michael Laurence

Michael Laurence delivers The Elimination Threat, the next installment in a series described as "Jack Reacher falling into a plot written by Dan Brown." -James Rollins, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Crucible For centuries, a mysterious syndicate known as the Thirteen has staged a silent coup, infiltrating governments and manipulating the course of world events. It's more powerful than any nation, deadlier than any army, and only FBI Special Agent James Mason and his longtime friends stand in its way. After narrowly preventing the release of a toxic chemical weapon, they find themselves pitted against their most terrifying adversary yet: a mass murderer with a twisted signature and a true believer in the cause of the Thirteen known only as the Dragon.With the fate of the nation's capital hanging in the balance and the threat of nuclear destruction on the horizon, Mason's team must unravel a conspiracy involving a greedy investment bank, a sadistic drug cartel, and a Russian energy company before it's too late. And the secret to doing so lies buried in the past, in a dark union between the financial sector and an apocalyptic cult hellbent on remaking the world in its own image. Can Mason expose the lethal machinations of the cabal in time, or will the Thirteen finally make good on its elimination threat?

For centuries, a mysterious syndicate known as the Thirteen has staged a silent coup, infiltrating governments and manipulating the course of world events. It's more powerful than any nation, deadlier than any army. The time has come for it to emerge from the shadows and claim the entire world as its own. And only FBI Special Agent James Mason and his longtime friends stand in its way.

Beef cows, particularly as part of seed stock and cow/calf enterprises, are farmed extensively in temperate environments in southern Australia. The fundamental premise of a productive beef enterprise is a calving interval of 365 days. However, production system efficiency can also be determined by comparing inputs, namely megajoules of energy in the form of food, to outputs, namely the number of kilograms of beef sold each year. This thesis examined two heritable and economically desirable traits and the impact that selection to improve these traits had on beef herd productivity ¿ defined in this thesis as Maternal Productivity. Selection for reduced fatness, achieved by selecting animals on the basis of low Rib Fat EBVs, can increase profitability because of consumer demand for lean meat and because sellers of cattle for slaughter are penalised if the carcasses have too much fat on them. Selection for an improvement in feed-efficiency through the trait Net Feed Intake (NFI) can improve profitability because it allows an increase in stocking rates or a reduction in the number of megajoules supplied to the herd for the same level of production.