Lap lambert academic publishing jan 2010 (Oltre 1000 risultati)

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -Interest in subjective well-being has led to a plethora of literature in recent years but there remains some debate about what precisely is meant by the term, and how it differs from a broader notion of well-being. This book examines these debates, alongside the methodological question of how one might attempt to empirically measure such concepts. In doing so, it takes us to Ukraine and roots these questions within the specific experience of transition which, research suggests, has not made people happier. Using new empirical evidence, it explores how our well-being is shaped by our relationships and shows how it differs from the specific notion of happiness, ultimately suggesting why it has been somewhat lacking in contemporary Ukraine. 240 pp. Englisch.…

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -The incidence of chronic pain is common among older people and often disabling. The experience of chronic pain is complex, highly individual and the manner in which it is expressed is varied. Styles adapting to chronic pain conditions are diverse, ranging from positive adjustment ('coping') to less functional adaptations, with the latter being referred to as 'stoicism' and 'catastrophising'. This research was undertaken to investigate how the experience of chronic pain is constructed by older people who are coping and by nurses working with older people. The implications for nursing practice were pivotal to the project. Interviews and questionnaires were conducted to identify, through content and thematic analysis, the constructs used. Older people also completed questionnaires that presented a range of assessment tools, which were trialed and commented on. Nurses'' attitudes towards older people experiencing pain were also surveyed.…

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -The grammaticality of a sentence has conventionally been treated in a binary way: either a sentence is grammatical or not. Yet, it is commonly acknowledged that a natural language, in its everyday use, is uttered along various degrees of grammatical acceptability, with utterances being more grammatical than others. A growing body of academic work focuses on studying intermediate levels of acceptability, sometimes referred to as ''gradience''. To date, the bulk of this work has concerned itself with the exploration of human assessments of syntactic gradience. This book explores the possibility to build a robust computational model that accords with these human judgements. A solution is presented to make an optimal use of the linguistic knowledge about a grammatical or non-canonical sentence, and rate that sentence according to grammatical judgements. This book should be of interest to linguists and computer scientists, whether academics or professionals in the Natural Language Processing industry, who are interested in the robust processing of syntactic knowledge about unrestricted language.…

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware - Educational systems of developing countries ought to be evaluated using appropriate analytical and methodological criteria, determined within a local context. This study attempts to challenge the dominant paradigm that links education to 'Western' ideas of development. In doing so it analyzes the relationship between endogenous development and indigenous models of schooling. It attempts a comparative case-study analysis of two indigenous models of schooling in former colonies: Fe y Alegría of Venezuela and Servol of Trinidad and Tobago. These models are studied because they reflect local, cultural, social, and economic conditions. Attention is paid to community involvement, indigenous ideas about curriculum and programming, the link between education and work, and the link between local epistemologies and education outcomes. The study involves qualitative methods of analysis with particular emphasis on ethnographic methods. Documentary analysis is used to complement field research and participatory observation.…

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware - The grammaticality of a sentence has conventionally been treated in a binary way: either a sentence is grammatical or not. Yet, it is commonly acknowledged that a natural language, in its everyday use, is uttered along various degrees of grammatical acceptability, with utterances being more grammatical than others. A growing body of academic work focuses on studying intermediate levels of acceptability, sometimes referred to as 'gradience'. To date, the bulk of this work has concerned itself with the exploration of human assessments of syntactic gradience. This book explores the possibility to build a robust computational model that accords with these human judgements. A solution is presented to make an optimal use of the linguistic knowledge about a grammatical or non-canonical sentence, and rate that sentence according to grammatical judgements. This book should be of interest to linguists and computer scientists, whether academics or professionals in the Natural Language Processing industry, who are interested in the robust processing of syntactic knowledge about unrestricted language.…

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware - The incidence of chronic pain is common among older people and often disabling. The experience of chronic pain is complex, highly individual and the manner in which it is expressed is varied. Styles adapting to chronic pain conditions are diverse, ranging from positive adjustment ('coping') to less functional adaptations, with the latter being referred to as 'stoicism' and 'catastrophising'. This research was undertaken to investigate how the experience of chronic pain is constructed by older people who are coping and by nurses working with older people. The implications for nursing practice were pivotal to the project. Interviews and questionnaires were conducted to identify, through content and thematic analysis, the constructs used. Older people also completed questionnaires that presented a range of assessment tools, which were trialed and commented on. Nurses' attitudes towards older people experiencing pain were also surveyed.…

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -The grammaticality of a sentence has conventionally been treated in a binary way: either a sentence is grammatical or not. Yet, it is commonly acknowledged that a natural language, in its everyday use, is uttered along various degrees of grammatical acceptability, with utterances being more grammatical than others. A growing body of academic work focuses on studying intermediate levels of acceptability, sometimes referred to as ''gradience''. To date, the bulk of this work has concerned itself with the exploration of human assessments of syntactic gradience. This book explores the possibility to build a robust computational model that accords with these human judgements. A solution is presented to make an optimal use of the linguistic knowledge about a grammatical or non-canonical sentence, and rate that sentence according to grammatical judgements. This book should be of interest to linguists and computer scientists, whether academics or professionals in the Natural Language Processing industry, who are interested in the robust processing of syntactic knowledge about unrestricted language. 252 pp. Englisch.…

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -The incidence of chronic pain is common among older people and often disabling. The experience of chronic pain is complex, highly individual and the manner in which it is expressed is varied. Styles adapting to chronic pain conditions are diverse, ranging from positive adjustment ('coping') to less functional adaptations, with the latter being referred to as 'stoicism' and 'catastrophising'. This research was undertaken to investigate how the experience of chronic pain is constructed by older people who are coping and by nurses working with older people. The implications for nursing practice were pivotal to the project. Interviews and questionnaires were conducted to identify, through content and thematic analysis, the constructs used. Older people also completed questionnaires that presented a range of assessment tools, which were trialed and commented on. Nurses'' attitudes towards older people experiencing pain were also surveyed. 232 pp. Englisch.…

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -Having been a bedside nurse for sixteen years, I have always been fascinated by the complexity of nursing in the acute care setting. We have been trained all along as healers and end-of-life care has been one of the most controversial topics in the hospital setting. This thesis was designed to uncover the nurses thoughts and feelings, when caring for the older adult meant cure wasn t the expected outcome. This research has truly brought into perspective the dynamics and versatility of the acute care nurse, not only as a professional but as a human being caring for another. 68 pp. Englisch.…

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -Healthcare industry is ever increasing the use of new information and communication technology. The use of wireless information communication technology offers a successful adoption in healthcare for developing countries with relatively poor communication infrastructure.In Uganda some healthcare centres have deliberately deployed wireless information communication technologies like PDAs, Mobile phones, and teleradiology to improve healthcare. About 50 percent of new capital investments in organisations are on IT, yet they have to be accepted and used by employees to improve productivity. This is a concern to IT managers. 104 pp. Englisch.…

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -E-government case studies in Saudi Arabia have been investigated with the application of content analysis technique and then evaluated against the Diffusion of Innovation (DoI) theory. The results of this research suggest that there are four factors that would substantially affect the outcomes of adopting and diffusing e-government applications. These factors are: Relative Advantage or Usefulness, Image, Compatibility, and Complexity or Lack of Ease of Use. In order for e-government projects to succeed in Saudi Arabia or in similar developing countries, it is recommended that the government take into account these factors when planning, designing and implementing e-government initiatives. The study also suggests directions for further research in this area. 92 pp. Englisch.…

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -This book is a reproduction of my thesis work. An iterative hillclimbing optimization technique was introduced in this thesis. It was used to tackle many index assignment problems, i.e. transform image encoding, noisy image decoding, and image segmentation. We introduced an iterative algorithm which has a hillclimbing property on the cost function. We then extended the algorithm to hyperspectral image coding. We realized that the algorithm can be generalized to other applications as well. We applied the iterative hillclimbing idea to noisy channel image decoding. We also investigated a Turbo-like joint source channel decoding technique, which is another kind of iterative decoding. Lastly, we re-investigated the image segmentation application, using the iterative hillclimbing algorithm. The hillclimbing method inspired development of another iterative algorithm which is an extension to mean-field annealing, with applications both to image decoding and image segmentation. The hillclimbing algorithm at the heart of this thesis thus yielded several promising offshoot directions for continuing research. 104 pp. Englisch.…

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -This text is a preliminary look at logistic regression model-building with respect to determine whether the constructed regression model accurately describes the data, whether the regression model significantly describes the outcome variable given the explanatory variables. A brief background of logistic regression is given, including the mathematical derivations for the regression model. A look at various goodness-of-fit tests in the development of logistic regression models with an accompanied example using Matlab to examine the strengths and weaknesses of goodness-of-fit statistics. The text compares goodness-of-fit statistics as to which is appropriate given the conditions of the data, and examines the strengths and weakness of these statistics. The Matlab programs and codes used for the examples in the text are included in the appendix, along with all necessary tables. 68 pp. Englisch.…

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -Optical flow is possibly the most used method for motion segmentation. However its application is often restricted to off-line processing as it requires extensive computational resources and time. In this work, we explore an optical flow method derived from research on the vision system of diptereous insects. The proposed method, Biological Optical Flow (BioOF) was implemented using a series of filters, and therefore is much faster than any existing machine-coded optical flow algorithm. Like other optical flow methods, the output of the BioOF has two components: horizontal and vertical optical flows -- both of them are combined in order to get a better final result in terms of motion segmentation. The result is a framework that can extract an excellent contour of the moving objects segmented out from the images. Finally the object contour is projected onto a Fourier feature space, leading to a representation of the object that is rotational and translational invariant. Over the Fourier feature space, various classification algorithms are investigated for object recognition. 72 pp. Englisch.…

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -Clustering is important problem that must be solved as a part of more complicated task in pattern recognition, image analysis and many other fields of science and engineering. The pairwise nearest neighbor method, also known as Ward's method belongs to the class of agglomerative clustering methods. The PNN method generates hierarchical clustering using a sequence of merge operations until the designed number of clusters is obtained. This method selects the cluster pair to be merged so that it increases the given objective function value least. We consider several speed-up methods for the PNN method, e.g., we utilize a k-neighborhood graph for reducing distance calculations. The PNN method can also be adapted for multilevel thresholding, which can be seen as a 1-dimensional special case of the clustering problem. The merge philosophy is also extended, by using the iterative shrinking method. In this way, we get better clustering results. The proposed method is also used as a crossover method in a genetic algorithm, which produces the best clustering results. The PNN algorithm can also be applied to generating optimal clustering. 68 pp. Englisch.…

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -This book looks into different procedures to produce single phase TiC0.67. TiC is an extremely hard and light material, with applications like cutting tools, wear parts and resistant coatings. It has been shown experimentally that TiC0.67 can be produced by mechanically alloying Ti and C powders. The aim of the project is to find a commercially viable option of producing TiC0.67. With this in mind, we try alternate methods like self propagating high temperature synthesis (SHS) and high temperature sintering in a controlled furnace atmosphere as options of interest. The precursor is then subjected to X-Ray diffraction (XRD) and Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) to check the phase of the advanced material. The second part of this book would focus on producing other precursors of interest such as Ti3AlC2, V2C and VC0.67 using the same methods. A detailed study of the different precursors is again done to check compatibility and commercial viability 64 pp. Englisch.…

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -Materials in smaller scales exhibit promising properties that are useful for wide variety of applications. Semiconductor quantum wells and quantum dots are two main examples of low-dimensional systems, where the quantum wells act as two-dimensional systems and the quantum dots act as zero-dimensional systems. Alternatively, semiconductor nanowires act as one-dimensional materials, and they exhibit promising and device applicable properties. These semiconductor nanowires are expected to be the building blocks for future nanoelectronic and nano-optoelectronic device technology. Compositional modulation within an individual nanowire (heterostructure) enables the designing of band structure of a nanowire and thereby allows the fabrication of single nanowire devices. These nanowire heterostructures show many potential properties and consequent applications. However, the fundamental growth mechanisms nanowire heterostructures have not been explored sufficiently due to their complex nature of the growth. In this regard, this book addresses the fundamental issues associated with the growth of epitaxial axial and radial nanowire heterostructures. 120 pp. Englisch. …

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -AUTOMATED BEER FERMENTATION CONTROLLER. The fermentation of beer is a biological and chemical process that involves many variables. Alcohol fermentation is the process by which yeast consumes sugars, producing alcohol and carbon dioxide. This process can be optimized if the environmental conditions surrounding the fermenting beer are carefully controlled. In this project, many of the variables involved with this process will be monitored, and the temperature of the fermentation environment will be controlled with both heating and cooling capabilities. The system designed for this project will be remotely manageable and report data to the system user through a web-based interface. 64 pp. Englisch. …

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -Computerization has brought us so much comfort in our lives that we remain indebted to it's results. Processes are done in a most accurate and time saving way. Computerization of Payroll System has reduced errors in salary payments, bill generation and most appropriate data saving. The manipulation of data can be rectified in many cases by switching from manual to computerized systems. This project may help you having an idea of how a payroll system works and a most convenient and less time consumer way to turn it to a computerized one. 96 pp. Englisch.…

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -One crucial aspect for autonomous vehicle navigation is to have the capability of detecting the surrounding terrain in a very fast and robust manner. Recently developed 3D Time-of-Flight cameras have an enormous potential for mobile robotic applications in particular for mapping and navigation tasks. This book presents the implementation of a Swiss Ranger SR3000 TOF camera with a real time algorithm developed in LabVIEW, which was incorporated into the university Intelligent Ground Vehicle cognition software. The algorithm utilizes a new approach of programming with Dynamic Link Library nodes in LabVIEW to communicate with the camera and is capable to filter, reduce, rotate, transform, read and write the incoming data and then to perform basic feature extraction on spherical objects. After the removal of the ground plane data, spherical objects lying on the floor were successfully detected. This work will help students who are working on a robotics project majoring in disciplines such as computer science, mechanical engineering or electronics to be one step ahead at their project, or any other enthusiasts who are interested in building their own machine vision for autonomous robots 88 pp. Englisch.…

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -Since its introduction to the industry, Fuzzy Logic has evolved and become one of the main field of studies for artificial intelligence. Its parametrized formulation along with its fuzzy algorithm and system behaviour have been an inspiration to the author of this book for using a microcontroller based camera as an application to show its use. It is a book where all including conceptual, theoretical and practical phases have been gathered all under the same roof. 104 pp. Englisch.…

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -With advances in control theory and increasing capability of computers, more complicated mathematical models behind the controllers could be applied. On the other hand, a new difficulty appeared. Sophisticated controllers are more difficult to apply and commit. They are dependent on many tunable parameters, which have to be properly set up. Unfortunately, the meaning of these tuning parameters is mostly far from the user's understanding of the control task and his objective. In contrast to the case of PID controllers, only few articles about tuning of modern controllers are published. This work aims at development of the complete design algorithm for advanced controllers such as the LQG one and put them through to real applications. The system knowledge is incomplete. The Bayesian estimation delivers the parameters not as known numbers but as their probability density function. The tuning is performed for the whole class of possible models thus it takes into account the uncertainty. 96 pp. Englisch. …

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -Comprehensive monitoring of patients via wireless and mobile technologies has been proposed for early detection of anomalies, provision of prompt medical attention, and corresponding reduction in healthcare expenses. However, the sole dependence on infrastructure oriented networks is not adequate to providing reliable support for health monitoring. This book investigates the potential of leveraging mobile ad hoc network (MANET) for providing reliable network support without time and geographical dependencies. A concpetual model and four protocols for managing battery power of the monitoring devices are analytically modeled and evaluated under diverse scenarios with the goal to maximizing reliability and minimizing power consumption in signal transmission via MANET. The results prove the utility of MANET in providing reliable network support in the context of health monitoring. The assessment provided in the book should be particularly useful to professionals in Wireless Networks, IT, Healthcare, or anyone else who may be interested in innovations that hold the potential of revolutionizing the healthcare landscape in the 21st century. 148 pp. Englisch.…

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -The objective of this book is to support software decision makers in handling additional software complexity introduced by product line architectures. This book is about to discuss the scientific research and development work done in managing variable behavior of traditional and Product Line Architecture based software applications by analyzing their preprocessed source code with the use of Metrics. In order to meet the objectives an approach to analyze, visualize, and measure the Product Line specific characteristics of the C/C++ source code has been proposed i.e., Zeeshan Ahmed C-Preprocessed Source Code Analyzer (ZAC). This approach is validated by implementing into a software measurement tool and experimenting using some real time software applications. 108 pp. Englisch.…

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -This research examined the impact of automated instructional design on instructional quality. The nature of use of automated instructional design tool by expert designers, novice designers, and non-designers functioning as instructional designers are examined in relation to their impact on producing effective instruction. The purpose of this study was to understand the role automated instructional design tools play in the instructional design process. The ultimate goal and benefit was to understand how these tools are being used and by who. The researcher used talk-aloud-protocol with individual testing to encourage the participants to discuss their design experience while designing the instruction. A questionnaire that focused on the user friendliness of the designing tool was administered at the completion of the respective design engagement. An expert review panel used evaluation rubrics developed by the researcher to evaluate the quality of the instructions designed by the study participants, which comprised of 12 graduate students and alumni. 72 pp. Englisch.…

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -Following extensive development over the past two decades, techniques of inverse simulation have led to a range of successful applications. However, the available methods still have some well-known limitations. Two new methods are developed to overcome these issues. The first one, based on sensitivity-analysis theory, allows the Jacobian matrix to be calculated by solving a sensitivity equation. The second one, based on a constrained Nelder-Mead search-based optimisation algorithm, is completely derivative-free algorithm for inverse simulation This thesis also offers new insight into the relationship between mathematically based techniques of model inversion and the inverse simulation approach. The similarities and shortcomings of both these methodologies are explored. The analysis of results for these practical applications shows that the approaches developed and presented in this thesis are of practical importance. It is believed that these developments form a useful step in moving inverse simulation methods from the status of an academic research topic to a practical and robust set of tools for engineering system design. 236 pp. Englisch.…

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -A typical enterprise uses a local area network of computers to perform its business. During the off-working hours, the computational capacities of these networked computers are underused or unused. In order to utilize this computational capacity an application has to be recoded to exploit concurrency inherent in a computation which is clearly not possible for legacy applications without any source code. This thesis presents the design an implementation of a distributed middleware which can automatically execute a legacy application on multiple networked computers by parallelizing it. A prototype implementation of this middleware has been developed as a proof of concept of the design. This implementation has been evaluated with a few typical case studies and the test results confirm that the middleware works as expected. 108 pp. Englisch.…

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -The processes of erosion and sediment transport determine the bathymetric evolution of natural beaches. The alongshore transport of sediments and pollutants in the surf zone is primarily driven by mean currents with the circulation often characterized by mean longshore flows. These flows are affected by local bathymetry, spatial, and temporal changes in incident wave energy and direction. Capturing the spatial and temporal variations in mean flows in the surf zone is key to predicting the morphological change of the nearshore topography and shoreline. Much of the field research in the nearshore zone has been accomplished with in-situ measurement techniques requiring a substantial number of instruments to adequately sample the scales associated with nearshore circulation. Remote sensors are less invasive, are generally easier to deploy and maintain, and offer wider areal coverage than typical arrays of in-situ instruments. The text presents a comparison of two remote sensing techniques, microwave radar and optical video, used to infer nearshore surface currents. It also introduces engineers and scientists to the wide variety of applications of remote sensing in the nearshore zone. 104 pp. Englisch.…

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -Geographic Information System (GIS) technology, over the years, has been utilized as a tool to resolve issues arising from the management of municipal assets. There is always the need to manage asset failures; consequences of failure, based on location; and defendable capital improvement budgets. The use of GIS provides a visual aid to administrators to make quick decisions on critical assets. Although GIS technology has undergone some metamorphosis in the last decade, and shall continue to change drastically in the coming years, its usefulness in managing assets and other problems remain the same. This book is written as a guide to the GIS project manager, with emphasis on the various ingredients needed for successful implementation. It uses case- studies to shed some light on GIS implementation in municipal asset management, and provides in-depth statistical analyses of the various factors responsible for success or failure. 104 pp. Englisch.…

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -Invented in 1979 by Bradley Efron, the relatively new topic of bootstrap approximation technique is becoming one of the most efficient and fast expanding methods of statistical analysis, used not only by statisticians, but also by other researchers in economics, finance, medical sciences, life sciences, social sciences, and business. However, the current application of bootstrap is largely focused on independent and identically distributed (iid) data and to a lesser extent on weakly dependent data structures. Very little attempt is done to analyze the performance of bootstrap to strongly dependent (long-memory) processes. This work aims at laying the mathematical foundation for the application of parametric bootstrap to regression processes whose disturbance terms are strongly dependent. It is shown that, under some sets of conditions on the regression coefficients, the spectral density function, and the parameter values, the parametric bootstrap based on the plug-in log-likelihood (PLL) function of linear regression processes with Gaussian, stationary, and long-memory errors, provides higher-order improvements over the traditional delta method. 64 pp. Englisch.…