springer aug 2007 (497 risultati)

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -Ventuno storie, ventuno autori, ventun frammenti di vita camminando di fianco alla scienza, nel modo più libero e sfacciato che si possa immaginare. Abbandonandosi alle digressioni, alle emozioni, alle intuizioni del cuore, alle immagini, alle sensazioni che affiancano la pratica quotidiana delle scienza, ma che dalla scienza codificata non fanno parte. In alcuni racconti la scienza è metodo, strumento, modo di mettersi in relazione con cose e persone; in altri diventa idee, pensieri, comportamenti, atteggiamenti. Ogni racconto possiede una voce che emerge dal profondo della cultura scientifica dell¿autore, ma anche dai suoi pregiudizi, dal suo modo di essere persona, dalla sua visione della società, del mondo.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 300 pp. Italienisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -Amateur astronomers ¿ particularly deep-sky observers ¿ are always on the lookout for new observing challenges. The Herschel Objects, and How to Observe Them offers the exciting opportunity of retracing the steps of the greatest visual observer and celestial explorer that ever lived. This is a practical guide to seeing the most impressive of Herschel¿s star clusters, nebulae and galaxies.There has never been ¿ and as of the time of submitting this proposal there still isn¿t ¿ an observer¿s book devoted to the Herschel objects. The US-based Astronomical League has for several years sponsored a 'Herschel Club', reflecting the interest amateur astronomers have in this important but less widely known listing. The Herschel Objects, and How to Observe Them covers more than 600 of the brightest of the objects that Herschel saw, with detailed descriptions and images of 150 to 200 of the very best for viewing with amateur telescopes.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 184 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -Agent-based computational modeling with its intrinsic multidisciplinary approach is gaining increasing recognition in the social sciences, particularly in economics, business and finance. The methodology is now widely used to compute analytical models numerically and test them for departures from theoretical assumptions, and to provide stand-alone simulation models for problems that are analytically intractable.This volume is devoted to recent contributions to the field from both the social sciences and computer sciences. It presents applications of agent-based computational methodologies and tools in the social sciences, focusing strongly on the uses, requirements and constraints of agent-based models employed by social scientists. Topics include agent-based macroeconomics, the emergence of norms and conventions, the dynamics of social and economic networks, and behavioral models in financial markets.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 296 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -¿If necessity is the mother of invention, then deregulation is the father, and r- enue management (also known as yield management) is the couple¿s golden child ¿ at least as far as operations research is concerned.¿ (Horner, 2000, p. 47) Deregulation had a signi cant impact on the U.S. airline industry in the late 1970s. Charter and low-cost airlines such as People Express and Southwest wereabletoo erseatsatafractionofthepricechargedbyestablishedcarriers like Pan Am and American Airlines. Due to their di erent cost structure, it seemed to be impossible for the big carriers to o er tickets at the same low price. Yet they had to nd a way to compete. Robert L. Crandall from American Airlines is widely credited with the - lution to the problem:yield management ¿ today calledrevenue management, since it maximizes revenue earned on a ight rather than yield (revenue per passenger mile). The idea was simple: American Airlines ights were only half full on - erage. O ering the empty seats at a discount price would not only enable the carriers to compete with the low-cost airlines but even create additional r- enue, if (1) it were possible to prevent cannibalization, i.e. the sale of discount tickets to consumers who would otherwise be willing to pay full fare, and if (2) it could be assured that only the seats that would otherwise y empty were sold at the low price.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 180 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -For the benefits offered by outsourcing and offshoring, organisations outsourcing to India must however recognise that there are real risks involved, and allocating such risk through a well constructed contract is a crucial step in minimizing such risk. As is the case with respect to any material agreement, the structure of an outsourcing agreement is important because it embodies the rights, remedies, duties and obligations of the parties and provides a blueprint for the parties' relationship.When contracts transcend national boundaries, the national legal regime of any single country becomes inadequate. When the parties to the contract are located in different countries, at least two systems of law impinge upon the transaction and the rules of International Law come into play. Clauses however addressing certain issues can only be governed by Indian Law.Specific legal factors around Data Processing, Intellectual Property and staffing implications (TUPE) must also be given careful consideration.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 232 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Electronic Commerce and Web Technologies, EC-Web 2007, held in Regensburg, Germany, September 3-7, 2007 in conjunction with Dexa 2007.The 22 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 67 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on recommender systems, business process / design aspects, mobile commerce, security and e-payment, Web services computing / semantic Web, e-negotiation and agent mediated systems, and issues in Web advertising. 248 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -Advances in technology have enabled the collection of data from scientific observations, simulations, and experiments at an ever-increasing pace. For the scientist and engineer to benefit from these enhanced data collecting capabilities, it is becoming clear that semi-automated data analysis techniques must be applied to find the useful information in the data. Computational scientific discovery methods can be used to this end: they focus on applying computational methods to automate scientific activities, such as finding laws from observational data. In contrast to mining scientific data, which focuses on building highly predictive models, computational scientific discovery puts a strong emphasis on discovering knowledge represented in formalisms used by scientists and engineers, such as numeric equations and reaction pathways.This state-of-the-art survey provides an introduction to computational approaches to the discovery of scientific knowledge and gives an overview of recent advances in this area, including techniques and applications in environmental and life sciences. The 15 articles presented are partly inspired by the contributions of the International Symposium on Computational Discovery of Communicable Knowledge, held in Stanford, CA, USA in March 2001. More representative coverage of recent research in computational scientific discovery is achieved by a significant number of additional invited contributions.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 344 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -This book contains the best papers from the first two instances of the International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies (WEBIST 2005 and 2006), organized by the Institute for Systems and Technologies of Information, C- trol and Communication (INSTICC) in collaboration with the OMG (Object M- agement Group), held in Miami (USA) and Setúbal (Portugal) respectively. The purpose of WEBIST is to bring together researchers, engineers and practit- ners interested in the technological advances and business applications of web-based information systems. It has four main topic areas, covering different aspects of Web Information Systems, including Internet Technology, Web Interfaces and Appli- tions, Society, e-Business, e-Government and e-Learning. WEBIST received submissions from more than 40 countries in all continents. We are happy to note that from 110 submissions in 2005 WEBIST grew to 218 paper submissions in 2006, an increase of practically 100%. After a double-blind review process, with the help of more than 120 experts from the international program c- mittee, and also after presentation at the conference, 25 papers were finally selected to be published and presented in this book. 436 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -Here are the refereed proceedings of the 10th International Symposium on Recent Advances in Intrusion Detection. The 17 full papers were carefully reviewed. Each one represents an important contribution to the study of intrusion detection. Papers cover anomaly detection, attacks, system evaluation and threat assessment, malware collection and analysis, anomaly- and specification-based detection, and network intrusion detection. 352 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Artificial Immune Systems, ICARIS 2007, held in Santos, Brazil, August 2007. The papers are organized in topical sections on search and optimization, classification and clustering, anomaly detection and negative selection, robotics, control and electronics. Modeling papers, conceptual papers, and technical papers and general applications are also included.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 452 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -This volume constitutes the proceedings of the 13th International Workshop on Groupware (CRIWG 2007). The conference was held in Spain (Medina del Campo) in 2006, Brazil (Porto de Galinhas) in 2005, Costa Rica (San Carlos) in 2004, France (Autrans) in 2003, Chile (La Serena) in 2002, Germany (Darmstadt) in 2001, Portugal (Madeira Island) in 2000, Mexico (Cancun) in 1999, Brazil (Buzios) in 1998, Spain (El Escorial) in 1997, Chile (Puerto Varas) in 1996, and Portugal (Lisbon) in 1995. The CRIWG workshops have been motivated by advances in computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW), and by the need for CSCW to meet the challenges of new application areas. This workshop aims at providing a forum for academic researchers and professionals to exchange their experiences and their ideas about problems and solutions related to the design, development and use of groupware applications. - searchers report their ideas, models, designs and experiences to CRIWG submitting full-paper contributions to present achieved or mature works, and shorter papers to report work in progress.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 372 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -This volume features the refereed proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Trust and Privacy in Digital Business. The 28 papers were all carefully reviewed. They cover privacy and identity management, security and risk management, security requirements and development, privacy enhancing technologies and privacy management, access control models, trust and reputation, security protocols, and security and privacy in mobile environments.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 308 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -Anticipatory behavior in adaptive learning systems is steadily gaining the - terest of scientists, although many researchers still do not explicitly consider the actual anticipatory capabilities of their systems. Similarly to the previous two workshops, the third workshop on anticipatory behavior in adaptive lea- ing systems (ABiALS 2006) has shown yet again that the similarities between di erent anticipatory mechanisms in diverse cognitive systems are striking. The discussions and presentations on the workshop day of September 30th, 2006, during the Simulation of Adaptive Behavior Conference (SAB 2006), con rmed that the investigations into anticipatory cognitive mechanisms for behavior and learning strongly overlap among researchers from various disciplines, including the whole interdisciplinary cognitive science area. Thus, further conceptualizations of anticipatory mechanisms seem man- tory. The introductory chapter of this volume therefore does not only provide an overview of the contributions included in this volume but also proposes a taxonomy of how anticipatory mechanisms can improve adaptive behavior and learning in cognitive systems. During the workshop it became clear that ant- ipations are involved in various cognitive processes that range from individual anticipatory mechanisms to social anticipatory behavior. This book re ects this structure by rst providing neuroscienti c as well as psychological evidence for anticipatorymechanismsinvolvedinbehavior,learning,language,andcognition. Next,individualpredictivecapabilitiesandanticipatorybehaviorcapabilitiesare investigated. Finally, anticipation relevant in social interaction is studied.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 396 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -This book contains the thoroughly refereed post-proceedings of the 14th International Workshop on Fast Software Encryption, FSE 2007, held in Luxembourg, Luxembourg, March 2007. It addresses all current aspects of fast and secure primitives for symmetric cryptology, covering hash function cryptanalysis and design, stream ciphers cryptanalysis, theory, block cipher cryptanalysis, block cipher design, theory of stream ciphers, side channel attacks, and macs and small block ciphers.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 484 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -This volume features contributions from participants of the ESRF symposium on Immunotherapy in 2020¿Visions and Trends for Targeting Inflammatory Diseases held in Potsdam near Berlin, Germany, in October 2006. The symposium presentations covered the main mechanisms of immunoregulation.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 124 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -Data Warehousing and Knowledge Discovery have been widely accepted as key te- nologies for enterprises and organizations to improve their abilities in data analysis, decision support, and the automatic extraction of knowledge from data. With the exponentially growing amount of information to be included in the decision-making process, the data to be processed become more and more complex in both structure and semantics. Consequently, the process of retrieval and knowledge discovery from this huge amount of heterogeneous complex data constitutes the reality check for research in the area. During the past few years, the International Conference on Data Warehousing and Knowledge Discovery (DaWaK) has become one of the most important international scientific events bringing together researchers, developers and practitioners. The DaWaK conferences served as a prominent forum for discussing latest research issues and experiences in developing and deploying data warehousing and knowledge d- covery systems, applications, and solutions. This year¿s conference, the Ninth Inter- tional Conference on Data Warehousing and Knowledge Discovery (DaWaK 2007), built on this tradition of facilitating the cross-disciplinary exchange of ideas, expe- ence and potential research directions. DaWaK 2007 sought to disseminate innovative principles, methods, algorithms and solutions to challenging problems faced in the development of data warehousing, knowledge discovery and data mining applications.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 500 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 536 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -analysis. Their results show that interoperability is the most indispensable element to a successful utilization of Grid infrastructures in enterprises. In the third contribution, Altmann and colleagues formulate a taxonomical - proach to Grid business models. They survey the development and origin of Grid technologies and focus on the importance of business-directed values when trying to commercialize today¿s Grids. Therein, they identify the reduction of costs, the - provement of efficiency, the creation of novel products and services as well as the quality and collaboration between companies as key factors for the differentiation of Grid business models. The paper concludes by applying the proposed taxonomy to a utility computing scenario and a software-as-a-service scenario in practice. Stanoevska-Slabeva and Zsigri propose a generic value chain for the Grid industry. In their contribution, they suggest a case study on aggregating results from different Grid middleware modules into a generic Grid value chain. In their contribution, McKee and coauthors propose a set of strategies for acting in future service-oriented markets. The costs of negotiations are put in relation to the value of the offer under negotiation. Hence, the contribution adds to the state of the art by extending the vision of service level agreements (SLAs) within service fra- works. Sandholm and Lai propose a novel, prediction-based enforcement of performance contracts. Their approach aims at controllable quality of service (QoS) within Grid computing platforms. The proposed mechanism is based on a hybrid resource allo- tion system using both proportional shares and reservations.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 216 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Machines, Computations, and Universality, MCU 2007, held in Orleans, France, September 2007. The 18 revised full papers presented together with nine invited papers cover Turing machines, register machines, word processing, cellular automata, tiling of the plane, neural networks, molecular computations, BSS machines, infinite cellular automata, real machines, and quantum computing.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 340 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -It is now more than fifty years since the first paper on formal specifications of an information system was published by Young and Kent. Even if the term ¿conceptual model¿ was not used at that time, the basic intention of the abstract specification was to a large extent the same as for developing conceptual models today: to arrive at a precise, abstract, and hardware - dependent model of the informational and time characteristics of a data processing problem. The abstract notation should enable the analyst to - ganize the problem around any piece of hardware. In other words, the p- pose of an abstract specification was for it to be used as an invariant basis for designing different alternative implementations, perhaps even using different hardware components. Research and practice of abstract modeling of information systems has since the late fifties progressed through many milestones and achie- ments. In the sixties, pioneering work was carried out by the CODASYL Development committee who in 1962 presented the ¿Information Al- brä. At about the same time Börje Langefors published his elementary message and e-file approach to specification of information systems. The next decade, the seventies, was characterized by the introduction of a large number of new types of, as they were called, ¿data models¿. We saw the birth of, for instance, Binary Data Models, Entity Relationship Models, Relational Data Models, Semantic Data Models, and Temporal Deductive Models.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 484 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -In introducing his essays on the study and understanding of nature and e- lution, biologist Stephen J. Gould writes: [W]e acquire a surprising source of rich and apparently limitless novelty from the primary documents of great thinkers throughout our history. But why should any nuggets, or even akes, be left for int- lectual miners in such terrain Hasn¿t the Origin of Species been read untold millions of times Hasn¿t every paragraph been subjected to overt scholarly scrutiny and exegesis Letmeshareasecretrootedingeneralhumanfoibles. . . . Veryfew people, including authors willing to commit to paper, ever really read primary sources¿certainly not in necessary depth and completion, and often not at all. . . . I can attest that all major documents of science remain cho- full of distinctive and illuminating novelty, if only people will study them¿in full and in the original editions. Why would anyone not yearn to read these works; not hunger for the opportunity [99, p. 6f] It is in the spirit of Gould¿s insights on an approach to science based on p- mary texts that we o er the present book of annotated mathematical sources, from which our undergraduate students have been learning for more than a decade. Although teaching and learning with primary historical sources require a commitment of study, the investment yields the rewards of a deeper understanding of the subject, an appreciation of its details, and a glimpse into the direction research has taken. Our students read sequences of primary sources.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 352 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -An outgrowth of a workshop held by the Community of European Solar Radio Astronomers (CESRA), this volume collects reviews on current research and perspectives on the variable solar corona: high-energy particles, large-scale disturbances such as mass ejections and waves, and radio diagnostics of the coronal plasma. Multiwavelength observations of the Sun with radio instruments and recent space missions are drawn on extensively, as well as input from neighbouring fields e.g. solar wind, Earth's bow shock. Recent developments are discussed alongside key developments in this rapidly evolving field.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 296 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -th Welcome to the proceedings of PATMOS 2007, the 17 in a series of international workshops. PATMOS 2007 was organized by Chalmers University of Technology with IEEE Sweden Chapter of the Solid-State Circuit Society technical - sponsorship and IEEE CEDA sponsorship. Over the years, PATMOS has evolved into an important European event, where - searchers from both industry and academia discuss and investigate the emerging ch- lenges in future and contemporary applications, design methodologies, and tools - quired for the development of the upcoming generations of integrated circuits and systems. The technical program of PATMOS 2007 consisted of state-of-the-art te- nical contributions, three invited talks and an industrial session on design challenges in real-life projects. The technical program focused on timing, performance and power consumption, as well as architectural aspects with particular emphasis on m- eling, design, characterization, analysis and optimization in the nanometer era. The Technical Program Committee, with the assistance of additional expert - viewers, selected the 55 papers presented at PATMOS. The papers were organized into 9 technical sessions and 3 poster sessions. As is always the case with the PATMOS workshops, full papers were required, and several reviews were received per manuscript. 600 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -This work systematically investigates a large number of oscillatory network configurations that are able to describe many real systems such as electric power grids, lasers or even the heart muscle, to name but a few. The book is conceived as an introduction to the field for graduate students in physics and applied mathematics as well as being a compendium for researchers from any field of application interested in quantitative models.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 388 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -Anyone who has ever bought a car, rented an apartment, had a job or conversation that they would rather not see in their employee review may find this book of interest. There is a collision occurring in identity management. Identity technologies are problematic, and many see light at the end of the identity theft tunnel. Yet the innovation is driven by individual tendencies to seek convenience and business imperatives to minimize risk with maximized profit. The light is an oncoming identity train wreck of maximum individual exposure, social risk and minimal privacy. The primary debate over identity technologies is happening on the issue of centralization. RealID is effectively a centralized standard with a slightly distributed back-end (e.g., fifty servers). RealID is a national ID card. Many mechanisms for federated identities, such as OpenID or the Liberty Alliance, imagine a network of identifiers shared on an as-needed or ad-hoc process. These systems accept the limits of human information processing, and thus use models that work on paper. Using models that work on paper results in systematic risk of identity theft in this information economy. There are alternatives to erosions of privacy and increasing fraud. There is an ideal where individuals have multiple devices, including computers, smart cards, and cell phones. Smart cards are credit card devices that are cryptographically secure. This may be shared and misused, or secure and privacy enhancing. Yet such a system requires coordinated investment.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 204 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -As well as conveying a message in words and sounds, the speech signal carries information about the speaker's own anatomy, physiology, linguistic experience and mental state. These speaker characteristics are found in speech at all levels of description: from the spectral information in the sounds to the choice of words and utterances themselves.This two volume set, LNAI 4343 and LNAI 4441, constitutes a state-of-the-art survey for the field of speaker classification. It approaches the following questions: What characteristics of the speaker become manifest in his or her voice and speaking behavior Which of them can be inferred from analyzing the acoustic realizations What can this information be used for Which methods are the most suitable for diversified problems in this area of research How should the quality of the results be evaluated The 22 articles of the second volume comprise a number of selected self-contained papers on research projects in the field of speaker classification. These include among other things a report on a gender recognition system; a study on emotion recognition; a presentation of a text-dependent speaker verification system; an account of the analysis of both speaker and verbal content information - as well as studies on accent identification.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 324 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -1 Ruby is an open source programming language that was released in 1995. th 2 Ruby is ranked 10 in the TIOBE Programming Community index . Ruby 3 on Rails is an open source web framework that was released in 2004. Ruby on Rails is being widely adopted because of its simplicity, 4 maintainability and development speed. Computerworld lists Ruby on Rails as the one of the top 5 technologies for 2007. Motivation for this Book Ruby is often compared with PHP, which is the most commonly used scripting language, and with Java, which is the most commonly used programming language. In the trends graph of TIOBE index you might notice that since the middle of 2006 Ruby shows an increase in usage 5 while PHP and Java show a decrease in usage. OReilly Radar has noted the trend towards an increased usage of Ruby on Rails. Statistics aside, Ruby on Rails has some advantages over PHP, which are discussed below. 1. Ruby on Rails is more object-oriented than PHP, thus providing all the inherent advantages of an object-oriented language such as simplicity, modularity, modifiability, extensibility, maintainability and re-usability. 2. Ruby on Rails is web framework whereas PHP is only a scripting language.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 412 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -The increasing relevance of security to real-life applications, such as electronic commerce, is attested by the fast-growing number of research groups, events, conferences, and summer schools that are studying it. This book presents thoroughly revised versions of eight tutorial lectures given by leading researchers during two International Schools on Foundations of Security Analysis and Design, FOSAD 2006/2007, held in Bertinoro, Italy, in September 2006 and September 2007. 336 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 5th RECOMB Comparative Genomics Satellite Workshop, RECOMB-CG 2007, held in San Diego, CA, USA, in September 2007. The 14 revised full papers presented address a broad variety of aspects and components of the field of comparative genomics, ranging from quantitative discoveries about genome structure to algorithms for comparative inference to theorems on the complexity of computational problems required for genome comparison. 208 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -Tobacco, alcohol, illicit drugs, and secondhand exposure are the nation¿s leading health problems. These acquired problems cause more than half of all deaths per year. First use, as well as some subsequent use, may be voluntary, but after loss of control, continued use is to be expected in an addict. So, prevention is the treatment of choice and also the treatment with the greatest ef cacy. When prevention fails, early intervention and prompt treatment are critical; oth- wise, abuse becomes dependence and with it comes a chronic life-long disease without a speci c cure. This places a great deal of responsibility on the already overburdened primary care physicians, who must identify a disease fraught with denial and whose patients are generally the last ones to know and accept the fact that they are hopelessly addicted and need help. Physician education and competency make early diagnosis more likely, but most practicing phy- cians do not have addiction education or treatment training as part of their undergraduate medical education. Among physicians, tobacco competency has improved, and a smoking history is now a part of almost every new patient assessment. A patient¿s attempts to quit and pharmacologic treatments have been incorporated into most practices in which the physician emphasizes we- ness. Most physicians have prescribed and followed patients treated with ni- tine replacement and Zyban. Progress in the treatment of alcohol abuse and dependence, cocaine and prescription misuse and dependence, and other drugs of abuse has been much slower.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 172 pp. Englisch.