springer international publishing springer international publishing jul 2013 (124 risultati)

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -Digital technology has become a defining characteristic of modern life. Almost everyone uses it, we all rely on it, and many of us own a multitude of devices. What is more, we all expect to be able to use these technologies 'straight out the box.' This lecture discusses how we are able to do this without apparent problems. We are able to use digital technology because we have learned to cope with it. 'To cope' is used in philosophy to mean 'absorbed engagement,' that is, we use our smart phones and tablet computers with little or no conscious effort. In human-computer interaction this kind of use is more often described as intuitive. While this, of course, is testament to improved design, our interest in this lecture is in the human side of these interactions. We cope with technology because we are familiar with it. We define familiarity as the readiness to engage with technology which arises from being repeatedly exposed to it¿often from birth. This exposure involves the frequent useof it and seeing people all around us using it every day. Digital technology has become as common a feature of our everyday lives as the motor car, TV, credit card, cutlery, or a dozen other things which we also use without conscious deliberation. We will argue that we cope with digital technology in the same way as we do these other technologies by means of this everyday familiarity. But this is only half of the story. We also regularly support or scaffold our use of technology. These scaffolding activities are described as 'epistemic actions' which we adopt to make it easier for us to accomplish our goals. With digital technology these epistemic actions include appropriating it to more closer meet our needs. In summary, coping is a situated, embodied, and distributed description of how we use digital technology. Table of Contents: Introduction / Familiarity / Coping / Epistemic Scaffolding / Coping in Context / Bibliography / Author BiographySpringer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 112 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -Many of us have implemented oral communication instruction in our design courses, lab courses, and other courses where students give presentations. Others have students give presentations without instruction on how to become a better presenter. Many of us, then, could use a concise book that guides us on what instruction on oral communication should include, based on input from executives from different settings. This instruction will help our students get jobs and make them more likely to move up the career ladder, especially in these hard economic times. Oral Communication Excellence for Engineers and Scientists: Based on Executive Input is the tool we need. It is based on input from over 75 executives with engineering or science degrees, leading organizations that employ engineers and scientists. For the presentation chapter, the executives described what makes a ¿stellar presentation.¿ And for every other chapter, they gave input¿on, for example, how to effectively communicate in meetings and in teams, how to excel at phone communication, how to communicate electronically to supplement oral communication, and how to meet the challenges of oral communication. They also provided tips on cross-cultural communication, listening, choosing the appropriate medium for a communication, elevator pitches, and posters; and using oral communication to network on the job. Oral Communication Excellence for Engineers and Scientists includes exercises and activities for students and professionals, based on instruction that has improved Georgia Tech¿s students¿ presentation skills at a statistically significant level. Slides demonstrating best practices are included from Capstone Design students around the country. Table of Contents: Introduction / Background Preparation / Presentation: Customizing to your Audience / Presentation: Telling your Story / Presentation: Displaying Key Information / Delivering the Presentation / Other Oral Communication Skills / Advanced Oral Communication Skills / ReferencesSpringer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 136 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -Planning is the model-based approach to autonomous behavior where the agent behavior is derived automatically from a model of the actions, sensors, and goals. The main challenges in planning are computational as all models, whether featuring uncertainty and feedback or not, are intractable in the worst case when represented in compact form. In this book, we look at a variety of models used in AI planning, and at the methods that have been developed for solving them. The goal is to provide a modern and coherent view of planning that is precise, concise, and mostly self-contained, without being shallow. For this, we make no attempt at covering the whole variety of planning approaches, ideas, and applications, and focus on the essentials. The target audience of the book are students and researchers interested in autonomous behavior and planning from an AI, engineering, or cognitive science perspective. Table of Contents: Preface / Planning and Autonomous Behavior / Classical Planning: Full Information and Deterministic Actions / Classical Planning: Variations and Extensions / Beyond Classical Planning: Transformations / Planning with Sensing: Logical Models / MDP Planning: Stochastic Actions and Full Feedback / POMDP Planning: Stochastic Actions and Partial Feedback / Discussion / Bibliography / Author's BiographySpringer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 144 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -The aim of this book is to supply valid and reasonable parameters in order to guide the choice of the right model of industrial evaporative tower according to operating conditions which vary depending on the particular industrial context: power plants, chemical plants, food processing plants and other industrial facilities are characterized by specific assets and requirements that have to be satisfied. Evaporative cooling is increasingly employed each time a significant water flow at a temperature which does not greatly differ from ambient temperature is needed for removing a remarkable heat load; its aim is to refrigerate a water flow through the partial evaporation of the same.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 124 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 148 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -Information Retrieval (IR) models are a core component of IR research and IR systems. The past decade brought a consolidation of the family of IR models, which by 2000 consisted of relatively isolated views on TF-IDF (Term-Frequency times Inverse-Document-Frequency) as the weighting scheme in the vector-space model (VSM), the probabilistic relevance framework (PRF), the binary independence retrieval (BIR) model, BM25 (Best-Match Version 25, the main instantiation of the PRF/BIR), and language modelling (LM). Also, the early 2000s saw the arrival of divergence from randomness (DFR). Regarding intuition and simplicity, though LM is clear from a probabilistic point of view, several people stated: 'It is easy to understand TF-IDF and BM25. For LM, however, we understand the math, but we do not fully understand why it works.' This book takes a horizontal approach gathering the foundations of TF-IDF, PRF, BIR, Poisson, BM25, LM, probabilistic inference networks (PIN's), and divergence-basedmodels. The aim is to create a consolidated and balanced view on the main models. A particular focus of this book is on the 'relationships between models.' This includes an overview over the main frameworks (PRF, logical IR, VSM, generalized VSM) and a pairing of TF-IDF with other models. It becomes evident that TF-IDF and LM measure the same, namely the dependence (overlap) between document and query. The Poisson probability helps to establish probabilistic, non-heuristic roots for TF-IDF, and the Poisson parameter, average term frequency, is a binding link between several retrieval models and model parameters. Table of Contents: List of Figures / Preface / Acknowledgments / Introduction / Foundations of IR Models / Relationships Between IR Models / Summary & Research Outlook / Bibliography / Author's Biography / IndexSpringer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 164 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -Today's wireless communications and networking practices are tightly coupled with economic considerations, to the extent that it is almost impossible to make a sound technology choice without understanding the corresponding economic implications. This book aims at providing a foundational introduction on how microeconomics, and pricing theory in particular, can help us to understand and build better wireless networks. The book can be used as lecture notes for a course in the field of network economics, or a reference book for wireless engineers and applied economists to understand how pricing mechanisms influence the fast growing modern wireless industry.This book first covers the basics of wireless communication technologies and microeconomics, before going in-depth about several pricing models and their wireless applications. The pricing models include social optimal pricing, monopoly pricing, price differentiation, oligopoly pricing, and network externalities, supported by introductory discussions of convex optimization and game theory. The wireless applications include wireless video streaming, service provider competitions, cellular usage-based pricing, network partial price differentiation, wireless spectrum leasing, distributed power control, and cellular technology upgrade. More information related to the book (including references, slides, and videos) can be found at ncel.ie.cuhk.edu.hk/content/wireless-network-pricing.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 180 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -In the last few years, a number of NLP researchers have developed and participated in the task of Recognizing Textual Entailment (RTE). This task encapsulates Natural Language Understanding capabilities within a very simple interface: recognizing when the meaning of a text snippet is contained in the meaning of a second piece of text. This simple abstraction of an exceedingly complex problem has broad appeal partly because it can be conceived also as a component in other NLP applications, from Machine Translation to Semantic Search to Information Extraction. It also avoids commitment to any specific meaning representation and reasoning framework, broadening its appeal within the research community. This level of abstraction also facilitates evaluation, a crucial component of any technological advancement program. This book explains the RTE task formulation adopted by the NLP research community, and gives a clear overview of research in this area. It draws out commonalities in this research, detailing the intuitions behind dominant approaches and their theoretical underpinnings. This book has been written with a wide audience in mind, but is intended to inform all readers about the state of the art in this fascinating field, to give a clear understanding of the principles underlying RTE research to date, and to highlight the short- and long-term research goals that will advance this technology.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 224 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -InhaltsangabeCharacteristics of Low-Power Links.- External Radio Interference.- Overview of Link Quality Estimation.- Performance evaluation of link quality estimators.- On the use of link quality estimation for improving higher layer protocols and mechanisms.- Conclusions.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 164 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -Explores the practical applicability ofthe philosophy of science to scientific research, but also considers its relevance to practice within the realms of technology, design, crafts, and even within the world of arts and the humanities. The attempt to engage working scientists with the issues raised by the philosophy of science may profitably be extended to examine its applicability to any other fields of knowledge that encompass a problem-solving dimension. Drawing on his experience as a research and development scientist in the biomedical device industry, the author shows how the principles of the philosophy of science illuminate the research process. The book is structured on the concept of the inspirational text; it consists of short chapters, each of which provides an accessible discussion of an aspect of the philosophy of science. Each chapter concludes with a list of practical pointers towards the development of attitudes and skills which will benefit the student researcher. ¿Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 112 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -With the proliferation of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) offerings, it is becoming increasingly important for individual SaaS providers to operate their services at a low cost. This book investigates SaaS from the perspective of the provider and shows how operational costs can be reduced by using ¿multi tenancy,¿ a technique for consolidating a large number of customers onto a small number of servers.Specifically, the book addresses multi tenancy on the database level, focusing on in-memory column databases, which are the backbone of many important new enterprise applications. For efficiently implementing multi tenancy in a farm of databases, two fundamental challenges must be addressed, (i)workload modeling and (ii)data placement. The first involves estimating the (shared) resource consumption for multi tenancy on a single in-memory database server. The second consists in assigning tenants to servers in a way that minimizes the number of required servers (and thus costs) based on the assumed workload model. This step also entails replicating tenants for performance and high availability. This book presents novel solutions to both problems.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 144 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -This book describes the shortage of girls and women in present day China and focuses on two important features: the sex imbalance in childhood and youth, and the excess mortality of women at various stages of their life. The author analyzes the causes and the processes of a strong preference for sons, which generates discrimination toward females and results in a shortage of girls and women. Chinäs higher proportion of men than women is a population characteristic that is shared by very few countries in the world. This demographic masculinity is unprecedented in the documented history of human populations, both in scale and its lasting impact on the numbers and the structure of the population. Despite the economic boom of recent years, many families in China still consider girls to be less important than boys. Although Chinese women have become largely emancipated since the 1950s, they still do not have the same opportunities for social achievement as men, and Chinese society remains fundamentally rooted in highly gendered social and family roles. As a consequence, Chinese girl babies who have the misfortune to be born instead of a long-awaited son go by various names, such as Pandi (literally 'awaiting a son'), Laidi ('a son will follow'), or Yehao ('she'll do too'). The book provides a comprehensive review of the situation of women in Chinäs society and shows that discrimination against girls and women is part of a system of norms and values that traditionally favours males.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 216 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -Inhaltsangabe1. Background 1.1 Pollution problems of pulp and paper industry 2. Pulp and Paper making process 2.1 Pulp making Process 2.2 Stock preparation and paper making process 3. Pulp Bleaching and Bleaching effluents 3.1 Pulp Bleaching 3.2 Bleaching effluents 4. Environmental effects of bleach plant effluents 4.1 Environmental Fate and effects 4.2 Environmental issues 4.3 Environmental regulations 5. Stratgies used for reducing the generation of pollutants 5.1 Pollution reduction through Process modification 5.1.1 Nonconventional Pulping Technologies Organosolvent Pulping Organic acid Pulping Biopulping 5.1.2 Internal Process Modifications Extended delignification and Oxygen delignification Improved pulp washing Oxidative alkali extraction stage Substitution of elemental chlorine with chlorine dioxide Ozone ECF, Totally Chlorine-free Bleaching and Chloride Removal Processes Bleach filtrate recovery Enzyme pretreatment Fungal pretreatment 5.2 External treatment 5.2.1 Physico-chemical processes 5.2.2 Electro-chemical processes 5.2.3 Advanced oxidation technologies 5.2.4 Treatment with Enzymes 5.2.5 Treatment with Bacteria Aerobic treatment Anaerobic treatment Sequential aerobic/anaerobic treatment 5.2.6 Treatment with Fungi 6. Conclusions and future perspectives 7. ReferencesSpringer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 96 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -The book describes a development concept called abulecentrism. The Yoruba word abule (pronounced: a-boo-lay) literarily means ¿the village¿. abulecentrism seeks to achieve rapid and sustainable development of a given society by the strategic execution of projects and the provision of critical services at the local community level. The village has always been the traditional unit of communal living in many societies around the world. The typical village is small, comprising close-knit social groups and individuals that number in the tens, or at most, low hundreds. In a village, people live close to one another, and derive strength in their communal methods of living, working and protecting their society. Furthermore, the management and governance of the community is simpler than in urban areas because the village requires smaller administrative systems. abulecentrism is built on the philosophy of using small, modular systems, such as a village, as building blocks for developing the greater society. The ultimate goal of abulecentrism is for the larger society to be significantly impacted by the dividends of the aggregated development attained within the different communities. Development projects will typically be executed by starting with a few local communities and progressing organically until all the communities that make up the larger society have been impacted.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 188 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -Starting with novel algorithms for optimally updating bounding volume hierarchies of objects undergoing arbitrary deformations, the author presents a new data structure that allows, for the first time, the computation of the penetration volume. The penetration volume is related to the water displacement of the overlapping region, and thus corresponds to a physically motivated and continuous force. The practicability of the approaches used is shown by realizing new applications in the field of robotics and haptics, including a user study that evaluates the influence of the degrees of freedom in complex haptic interactions. New Geometric Data Structures for Collision Detection and Haptics closes by proposing an open source benchmarking suite that evaluates both the performance and the quality of the collision response in order to guarantee a fair comparison of different collision detection algorithms.Required in the fields of computer graphics, physically-based simulations, computer animations, robotics and haptics, collision detection is a fundamental problem that arises every time we interact with virtual objects. Some of the open challenges associated with collision detection include the handling of deformable objects, the stable computation of physically-plausible contact information, and the extremely high frequencies that are required for haptic rendering. New Geometric Data Structures for Collision Detection and Haptics presents new solutions to all of these challenges, and will prove to be a valuable resource for researchers and practitioners of collision detection in the haptics, robotics and computer graphics and animation domains.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 256 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -The dimension theory of dynamical systems has progressively developed, especially over the last two decades, into an independent and extremely active field of research. Its main aim is to study the complexity of sets and measures that are invariant under the dynamics. In particular, it is essential to characterizing chaotic strange attractors. To date, some parts of the theory have either only been outlined, because they can be reduced to the case of maps, or are too technical for a wider audience. In this respect, the present monograph is intended to provide a comprehensive guide. Moreover, the text is self-contained and with the exception of some basic results in Chapters 3 and 4, all the results in the book include detailed proofs.The book is intended for researchers and graduate students specializing in dynamical systems who wish to have a sufficiently comprehensive view of the theory together with a working knowledge of its main techniques. The discussion of some open problems is also included in the hope that it may lead to further developments. Ideally, readers should have some familiarity with the basic notions and results of ergodic theory and hyperbolic dynamics at the level of an introductory course in the area, though the initial chapters also review all the necessary material.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 168 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -This study discusses issues of optimal water management in a complex distribution system. The main elements of the water-management system under consideration are retention reservoirs, among which water transfers are possible, and a network of connections between these reservoirs and water treatment plants (WTPs). System operation optimisation involves determining the proper water transport routes and their flow volumes from theretention reservoirs to the WTPs, and the volumes of possible transfers among the reservoirs, taking into account transport-related delays for inflows, outflows and water transfers in the system. Total system operation costs defined by an assumed quality coefficient should be minimal. An analytical solution of the optimisation task soformulated has been obtained as a result of using Pontryagin¿s maximum principle with reference to the quality coefficient assumed. Stable start and end conditions in reservoir state trajectories have been assumed. The researchers have taken into account cases of steady and transient optimisation duration. The solutions obtainedhave enabled the creation of computer models simulating system operation. In future, an analysis of the results obtained may affect decisions supporting the control of currently existing water-management systems.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 92 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -There is a diversity of ¿ethical practices¿ within medicine as an institutionalised profession as well asa need for ethical specialists both in practice as well as in institutionalised roles. ThisBrief offers a social perspective on medical ethics education.It discusses a range of concepts relevant to educational theory and thus provides a basic illumination of the subject. Recent research in the sociology of medical education and the social theory of PierreBourdieu are covered. In the end, the themes of Bourdieuan Social Theory, socio-cultural apprenticeships and the ¿characterological turn¿ in medical educationare draw togetherthe context of medical ethics education.¿Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 132 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -This book focuses on yogäs transcultural dissemination in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In the course of this process, the term ¿yogä has been associated with various distinctive blends of mental and physical exercises performed in order to achieve some sort of improvement, whether understood in terms of esotericism, fitness, self-actualization, body aesthetics, or health care. The essays in this volume explore some of the turning points in yogäs historico-spatial evolution and their relevance to its current appeal. The authors focus on central motivations, sites, and agents in the spread of posture-based yoga as well as on its successive (re-)interpretation and diversification, addressing questions such as: Why has yoga taken its various forms How do time and place influence its meanings, social roles, and associated experiences How does the transfer into new settings affect the ways in which yogic practice has been conceptualized as a system, and on what basis is it still identified as (Indian) yoga The initial section of the volume concentrates on the re-evaluation of yoga in Indian and Western settings in the first half of the twentieth century. The following chapters link global discourses to particular local settings and explore meaning production at the micro-social level, taking Germany as the focal site. The final part of the book focuses on yoga advertising and consumption across national, social, and discursive boundaries, taking a closer look at transnational and deterritorialized yoga markets, as well as at various classes of mobile yoga practitioners.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 260 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -The field of Luminescence Dating has reached a level of maturity. Both research and applications from all fields of archaeological science, from archaeological materials to anthropology and geoarchaeology, now routinely employ luminescence dating. The advent of optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) techniques and the potential for exploring a spectrum of grain aliquots enhanced the applicability, accuracy and the precision of luminescence dating. The present contribution reviews the physical basis, mechanisms and methodological aspects of luminescence dating; discusses advances in instrumentations and facilities, improvements in analytical procedures, and statistical treatment of data along with some examples of applications across continents, covering all periods (Middle Palaeolithic to Medieval) and both Old and New World archaeology. They also include interdisciplinary applications that contribute to palaeo-landscape reconstruction.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 80 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -This book is an introduction into stochastic processes for physicists, biologists and financial analysts. Using an informal approach, all the necessary mathematical tools and techniques are covered, including the stochastic differential equations, mean values, probability distribution functions, stochastic integration and numerical modeling. Numerous examples of practical applications of the stochastic mathematics are considered in detail, ranging from physics to the financial theory. A reader with basic knowledge of the probability theory should have no difficulty in accessing the book content.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 352 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -Equipment to be installed in electric power-transmission and distribution systems must pass acceptance tests with standardized high-voltage or high-current test impulses which simulate the stress on the insulation caused by external lightning discharges and switching operations in the grid. High impulse voltages and currents are also used in many other fields of science and engineering for various applications. Therefore, precise impulse-measurement techniques are necessary, either to prevent an over- or understressing of the insulation or to guarantee the effectiveness and quality of the application. The target audience primarily comprises engineers and technicians but the book may also be beneficial for graduate students of high-voltage engineering and electrical power supply systems.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 280 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -This book presents and develops new reinforcement learning methods that enable fast and robust learning on robots in real-time.Robots have the potential to solve many problems in society, because of their ability to work in dangerous places doing necessary jobs that no one wants or is able to do. One barrier to their widespread deployment is that they are mainly limited to tasks where it is possible to hand-program behaviors for every situation that may be encountered. For robots to meet their potential, they need methods that enable them to learn and adapt to novel situations that they were not programmed for. Reinforcement learning (RL) is a paradigm for learning sequential decision making processes and could solve the problems of learning and adaptation on robots. This book identifies four key challenges that must be addressed for an RL algorithm to be practical for robotic control tasks. These RL for Robotics Challenges are: 1) it must learn in very few samples; 2) it must learn in domains with continuous state features; 3) it must handle sensor and/or actuator delays; and 4) it should continually select actions in real time. This book focuses on addressing all four of these challenges. In particular, this book is focused on time-constrained domains where the first challenge is critically important. In these domains, the agent¿s lifetime is not long enough for it to explore the domains thoroughly, and it must learn in very few samples.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 180 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -In this thesis, Till Cremer investigates the bulk properties of ionic liquids (IL), the IL/vacuum interface and the IL/solid interface. For these studies the author primarily uses angle-resolved X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy under ultrahigh vacuum conditions. ILs represent a class of materials with unique physico-chemical properties. Many applications take advantage of the extremely low vapor pressure of aprotic ILs to fabricate permanent, non-volatile liquid coatings on solid materials. The author focuses on issues related to thin IL coatings, in particular concerning new catalytic concepts such as the supported ionic liquid phase (SILP) and solid catalyst with ionic liquid layer (SCILL) systems. Till Cremer presents a number of fundamental contributions to the new field of 'Ionic Liquid Surface and Interface Science'. Highlights are his results concerning anion/cation-interactions and the growth of ultrathin layers of ionic liquids on various substrates in the context of supported ionic liquid catalysis. His results have significantly contributed to the present level of understanding in the field and accordingly he is author and coauthor of ten publications on the topic in high-ranked journals.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 184 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -In his thesis Fluorescence in Bio-inspired Nanotechnology, Jonas Hannestad describes the evolving field of DNA nanotechnology in a lucid and easily accessible way. A central theme in the thesis is how biological structures and mechanisms constitute a basis for the design of novel technologies.Hannestad discusses how self-assembled, nanometer-scale DNA constructs can be functionalized using fluorescent labeling. In particular, he highlights howapplications are based on fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET). Another important contribution is the development of a lipid monolayer platform for the step-by-step assembly of DNA nanoconstructs. The work in the thesis is based onfive peer-reviewed papers published in high-profile journals, all of which involve major contributions from the author.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 132 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -¿Optimization has long been a source of both inspiration and applications for geometers, and conversely, discrete and convex geometry have provided the foundations for many optimization techniques, leading to a rich interplay between these subjects. The purpose of the Workshop on Discrete Geometry, the Conference on Discrete Geometry and Optimization, and the Workshop on Optimization, held in September 2011 at the Fields Institute, Toronto, was to further stimulate the interaction between geometers and optimizers. This volume reflects the interplay between these areas.The inspiring Fejes Tóth Lecture Series, delivered by Thomas Hales of the University of Pittsburgh, exemplified this approach. While these fields have recently witnessed a lot of activity and successes, many questions remain open. For example, Fields medalist Stephen Smale stated that the question of the existence of a strongly polynomial time algorithm for linear optimization is one of the most important unsolved problems at the beginning of the 21st century. The broad range of topics covered in this volume demonstrates the many recent and fruitful connections between different approaches, and features novel results and state-of-the-art surveys as well as open problems.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 348 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -Trade policy has played a vital role in the decline of European electronics business. The events that resulted in the disappearance of the European television industry, of a European and Japanese video recorder format and of other European consumer electronics are directly related to market structures in exporting countries and business practices. In this book, factual business data shows and economic models explain how restrictive trade practices result in elimination of efficient competitors in export markets. It deals with the memorable case how a videocassette recorder format was established by dumping and how politics enabled it. An innovative tariff increase for CD players was invalidated by heavy dumping, causing closure of production in Europe. European CTV industry succumbed under permanent dumping and a series of biases ¿ as the interest of a state-owned company ¿ and serious errors making trade instruments void and rules irreconcilable with international agreements. Practical and theoretical examples and explanations, some in detail, of trade rules are provided. The book sketches events ¿ carelessness, prejudice or special interests, arbitrary and false application of trade instruments and fraud ¿ resulting in disappearance of various European electronics business segments.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 480 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -The essays collected in this book address legislation from the viewpoint of legal theory and provide an overview of current research in legisprudence as a new scholarly approach to lawmaking. The overall focus of the volume is on the justification of legislation, with a special emphasis on the intricate notion of legislative rationality. With the rational justification of legislation as their central theme, the essays elaborate on the foundations and bounds of legislation and the search for a more principled lawmaking, discuss the role of legislation within the framework of democratic constitutionalism, analyze legislation as implementation of constitutional law, and explore how legislative argumentation in parliament can be construed as a source of justification of laws.¿Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 200 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -The aim of the book is to present for non-specialist researchers as well as for experts a comprehensive overview of the background, key ideas, basic methods, implementation details and a selection of solutions offered by a novel technology for the optimisation of the location of dangerous offshore activities in terms of environmental criteria, as developed in the course of the BalticWay project. The book consists of two parts. The first part introduces the basic principles of ocean modeling and depicts the long way from the generic principles to the practical modeling of oil spills and of the propagation of other adverse impacts. The second part focuses on the techniques for solving the inverse problem of the quantification of offshore areas with respect to their potential to serve as a source of environmental danger to vulnerable regions (such as spawning, nursing or also tourist areas). The chapters are written in a tutorial style; they are mostly self-contained and understandable for non-specialist researchers and students. They are carefully peer-reviewed by international experts. The goal was to produce a book that highlights all key steps, methods, models and data sets it is necessary to combine in order to produce a practically usable technology and/or decision support system for a particular sea region. Thus the book is useful not only as a description and a manual of this particular technology but also as a roadmap highlighting the complicated technical issues of ocean modeling for practical purposes. It describes the approaches taken by the authors in an understandable way and thus is useful for educational purposes, such as a course in industrially and environmentally relevant applications of ocean modeling. ¿Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 460 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -InhaltsangabeEncapsulation effects: Calixarene hosts, Concaves as hosts, Carcerands as hosts, Cyclodextrin hosts, Cucurbituril hosts, Tweezers-like hosts.- Resin-docking, surface-bound and polymer-penetration effects.- Reactions within charge-transfer complexes.- Effects of hydrogen bonding.- Effects of coordination to metals: Organic ligand isomerization within metallocomplexes, Metal-coordination assemblage.- Effects of sorption.- Micellar effects.- Solvent-cage effects.- Crystal porous, microporous and mesoporous effects.- Stereochemical outcomes of confinement: Guest-confinement effects on host configurations, Host-confinement effects on guest configurations.- Solvent role in confined organic reactions.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 208 pp. Englisch.