springer jun 2008 (435 risultati)

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -Over the last two decades, globalization has had a profound impact on how we view the world and its sustainability. One group of professionals that lies at the heart of sustainability is the engineers. Engineers are trained problem solvers, required to implement technical solutions and are at the forefront of the development of new technologies. Although engineers play a critical role in sustainability, traditional engineering programs typically only focus on the technocentric and ecocentric dimensions of sustainability, providing little training on the sociocentric dimension. With more and more interest in sustainability, it is becoming increasingly important to also provide engineers with an awareness of sociocentric issues and the necessary skills to address them.The aim of this book is to provide engineering educators with a real-life case study that can be brought into existing courses to help bridge the gap between engineering and the global world. The case study focuses on how our engineering study of different natural plant fibers for soil erosion control led us to small villages in Kerala, India, where marginalized women workers often stand waste deep in water several hours a day, clean and beat coconuts by hand, and separate and spin coconut (coir) fibers into yarn by hand, for very low wages. The case study provides insight into the three dimensions of sustainability (technocentric, ecocentric, and sociocentric) and how they come together in a typical engineering problem.Table of Contents: Reinforcing the Classroom / Natural Plant Fibers for Engineering Applications: Technocentric and Ecocentric Dimensions of Sustainability / The Coir Fiber Industry in Kerala, India: Sociocentric Dimension of Sustainability / Case Study / Conclusion / BibliographySpringer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 68 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -In this book we explore a sea change occurring in leadership for academic women in the sciences and engineering. Our approach is a two-pronged one: On the one hand, we outline the nature of the changes and their sources, both in various literatures and from program research results. On the other hand, we specify and provide detail about the persistent problems and obstacles that remain as barriers to women¿s full participation in academic science and engineering, their career advancement and success, and, most important, their role as leaders in making change. At the heart of this book is our goal to give some shape to the research, practice, and programs developed by women academic leaders making institutional change in the sciences and engineering.Table of Contents: Women in a New Era of Academic Leadership / Background: Academic Leadership for Women in Science and Engineering / Gender and Leadership: Theories and Applications / Women in Engineering Leadership Institute: Critical Issues for Women Academic Engineers as Leaders / From Success Stories to Success Strategies: Leadership for Promoting Diversity in Academic Science and Engineering / ConclusionSpringer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 116 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -The profession of engineering in the United States has historically served the status quo, feeding an ever-expanding materialistic and militaristic culture, remaining relatively unresponsive to public concerns, and without significant pressure for change from within. This book calls upon engineers to cultivate a passion for social justice and peace and to develop the skill and knowledge set needed to take practical action for change within the profession. Because many engineers do not receive education and training that support the kinds of critical thinking, reflective decision-making, and effective action necessary to achieve social change, engineers concerned with social justice can feel powerless and isolated as they remain complicit. Utilizing techniques from radical pedagogies of liberation and other movements for social justice, this book presents a roadmap for engineers to become empowered and engage one another in a process of learning and action for social justice and peace.Table of contents: What Do we Mean by Social Justice / Mindsets in Engineering / Engineering and Social Injustice / Toward a More Socially Just Engineering / Turning Knowledge into Action: Strategies for Change / Parting Lessons for the Continuing StruggleSpringer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 164 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -Game theory is the mathematical study of interaction among independent, self-interested agents. The audience for game theory has grown dramatically in recent years, and now spans disciplines as diverse as political science, biology, psychology, economics, linguistics, sociology, and computer science, among others. What has been missing is a relatively short introduction to the field covering the common basis that anyone with a professional interest in game theory is likely to require. Such a text would minimize notation, ruthlessly focus on essentials, and yet not sacrifice rigor. This Synthesis Lecture aims to fill this gap by providing a concise and accessible introduction to the field. It covers the main classes of games, their representations, and the main concepts used to analyze them.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 108 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -. . . that departed from the traditional dry-as-dust mathematics textbook. (M. Kline, from the Preface to the paperback edition of Kline 1972) Also for this reason, I have taken the trouble to make a great number of drawings. (Brieskom & Knorrer, Plane algebraic curves, p. ii) . . . I should like to bring up again for emphasis . . . points, in which my exposition differs especially from the customary presentation in the text books: 1. Illustration of abstract considerations by means of figures. 2. Emphasis upon its relation to neighboring fields, such as calculus of dif ferences and interpolation . . . 3. Emphasis upon historical growth. It seems to me extremely important that precisely the prospective teacher should take account of all of these. (F. Klein 1908, Eng. ed. p. 236) Traditionally, a rigorous first course in Analysis progresses (more or less) in the following order: limits, sets, '\* continuous '\* derivatives '\* integration. mappings functions On the other hand, the historical development of these subjects occurred in reverse order: Archimedes Cantor 1875 Cauchy 1821 Newton 1665 . ;::: Kepler 1615 Dedekind . ;::: Weierstrass . ;::: Leibniz 1675 Fermat 1638 In this book, with the four chapters Chapter I. Introduction to Analysis of the Infinite Chapter II. Differential and Integral Calculus Chapter III. Foundations of Classical Analysis Chapter IV. Calculus in Several Variables, we attempt to restore the historical order, and begin in Chapter I with Cardano, Descartes, Newton, and Euler's famous Introductio.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 392 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -The problem of solving nonlinear equations and systems of equations ranks among the most signi cant in the theory and practice, not only of applied mathematicsbutalsoofmanybranchesofengineeringsciences,physics,c- puter science, astronomy, nance, and so on. A glance at the bibliography and the list of great mathematicians who have worked on this topic points to a high level of contemporary interest. Although the rapid development of digital computers led to the e ective implementation of many numerical methods, in practical realization, it is necessary to solve various problems such as computational e ciency based on the total central processor unit time, the construction of iterative methods which possess a fast convergence in the presence of multiplicity (or clusters) of a desired solution, the control of rounding errors, information about error bounds of obtained approximate solution, stating computationally veri able initial conditions that ensure a safe convergence, etc. It is the solution of these challenging problems that was the principal motivation for the present study. In this book, we are mainly concerned with the statement and study of initial conditions that provide the guaranteed convergence of an iterative method for solving equations of the form f(z) = 0. The traditional approach to this problem is mainly based on asymptotic convergence analysis using some strong hypotheses on di erentiability and derivative bounds in a rather wide domain.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 228 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -Queueing networks constitute a large family of stochastic models, involving jobs that enter a network, compete for service, and eventually leave the network upon completion of service. Since the early 1990s, substantial attention has been devoted to the question of when such networks are stable.This volume presents a summary of such work. Emphasis is placed on the use of fluid models in showing stability, and on examples of queueing networks that are unstable even when the arrival rate is less than the service rate.The material of this volume is based on a series of nine lectures given at the Saint-Flour Probability Summer School 2006.Lectures were also given by Alice Guionnet and Steffen Lauritzen.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 208 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -This book is concerned with the study of continuum mechanics applied to biological systems, i.e., continuum biomechanics. This vast and exciting subject allows description of when a bone may fracture due to excessive loading, how blood behaves as both a solid and fluid, down to how cells respond to mechanical forces that lead to changes in their behavior, a process known as mechanotransduction. We have written for senior undergraduate students and first year graduate students in mechanical or biomedical engineering, but individuals working at biotechnology companies that deal in biomaterials or biomechanics should also find the information presented relevant and easily accessible. Table of Contents: Tensor Calculus / Kinematics of a Continuum / Stress / Elasticity / Fluids / Blood and Circulation / Viscoelasticity / Poroelasticity and Thermoelasticity / Biphasic TheorySpringer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 220 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -In the last few years, power dissipation has become an important design constraint, on par with performance, in the design of new computer systems. Whereas in the past, the primary job of the computer architect was to translate improvements in operating frequency and transistor count into performance, now power efficiency must be taken into account at every step of the design process. While for some time, architects have been successful in delivering 40% to 50% annual improvement in processor performance, costs that were previously brushed aside eventually caught up. The most critical of these costs is the inexorable increase in power dissipation and power density in processors. Power dissipation issues have catalyzed new topic areas in computer architecture, resulting in a substantial body of work on more power-efficient architectures. Power dissipation coupled with diminishing performance gains, was also the main cause for the switch from single-core to multi-core architectures and aslowdown in frequency increase. This book aims to document some of the most important architectural techniques that were invented, proposed, and applied to reduce both dynamic power and static power dissipation in processors and memory hierarchies. A significant number of techniques have been proposed for a wide range of situations and this book synthesizes those techniques by focusing on their common characteristics. Table of Contents: Introduction / Modeling, Simulation, and Measurement / Using Voltage and Frequency Adjustments to Manage Dynamic Power / Optimizing Capacitance and Switching Activity to Reduce Dynamic Power / Managing Static (Leakage) Power / ConclusionsSpringer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 220 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -Model checking technology is among the foremost applications of logic to computer science and computer engineering. The model checking community has achieved many breakthroughs, bridging the gap between theoretical computer science and hardware and software engineering, and it is reaching out to new challenging areas such as system biology and hybrid systems. Model checking is extensively used in the hardware industry and has also been applied to the verification of many types of software. Model checking has been introduced into computer science and electrical engineering curricula at universities worldwide and has become a universal tool for the analysis of systems.This Festschrift volume, published in celebration of the 25th Anniversary of Model Checking, includes a collection of 11 invited papers based on talks at the symposium '25 Years of Model Checking', 25MC, which was part of the 18th International Conference on Computer Aided Verification (CAV 2006), which in turn was part of the Federated Logic Conference (FLoC 2006) held in Seattle, WA, USA, in August 2006.Model checking is currently attracting considerable attention beyond the core technical community, and the ACM Turing Award 2007 was given in recognition of the paradigm-shifting work on this topic initiated a quarter century ago. Here we honor that achievement with the inclusion of facsimile reprints of the visionary papers on model checking by Edmund Clarke and Allen Emerson, and by Jean-Pierre Queille and Joseph Sifakis.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 248 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -L¿urgenza vascolare è la vera urgenza. Data la variabilità delle presentazioni cliniche, il radiologo è sempre più spesso chiamato in causa per problemi diagnosticodifferenziali e a lui sono demandati l¿inquadramento nosologico e le scelte terapeutiche dei casi dubbi. Se il tempo è l¿unica variabile determinante, la diagnosi deve essere tempestiva ed accurata perché si possano attuare le scelte terapeutiche idonee. Pertanto è necessario che il radiologo sappia agire con sollecitudine e ¿precisione chirurgicä. Lo scopo del volume è fornire, attraverso la presentazione di un¿ampia casistica, un mezzo facile, veloce e stimolante, attraverso cui il lettore possa confrontarsi. 412 pp. Italienisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -La diagnostica per immagini ha subìto in questi anni una notevole trasformazione legata in primo luogo al rapido sviluppo tecnologico. Di pari passo con il miglioramento delle metodologie di acquisizione in tomografia computerizzata e risonanza magnetica, si sono affermate nella pratica clinica le tecniche di elaborazione bidimensionale e tridimensionale delle immagini diagnostiche.Concepito come riferimento per gli studenti del corso di Laurea in Tecniche di Radiologia Medica per Immagini e Radioterapia, per la preparazione dell¿esame di 'Produzione e trattamento delle immagini diagnostiche', il volume si rivolge anche ai medici specializzandi in radiodiagnostica e in medicina-nucleare, i quali non possono non conoscere le basi tecniche della formazione ed elaborazione delle immagini. 200 pp. Italienisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -Die Juristenausbildung verändert sich. Nicht mehr nur juristisches Fachwissen und Klausurtechnik sind examensrelevant, sondern zu den bekannten Anforderungen kommt in vielen Ländern der Nachweis so genannter 'Schlüsselqualifikationen' in der mündlichen Pflichtfachprüfung hinzu. Auf diese neuen Examensanforderungen bereitet das vorliegende Werk in optimaler Weise vor. Das Buch lehrt und vermittelt sowohl den nötigen theoretischen Hintergrund von Schlüsselqualifikationen und die erforderlichen Kenntnisse auf den Feldern der Rhetorik, der Vortragskunst, der Gesprächsführung und der Selbstorganisation als auch die examensrelevanten praktischen Fertigkeiten zur Präsentation eines Vortrags. Anhand examenstypischer 'Schlüsselqualifikationsaufgaben' erlernen die Studierenden die wesentlichen 'Schlüsselqualifikationstechniken'. Auf diese Weise werden sie bestmöglich in die Lage versetzt, im mündlichen Examen ihre Befähigung auf dem Gebiet der Schlüsselqualifikationen mit Erfolg nachzuweisen.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 160 pp. Deutsch.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -Das Buch ist eine unterhaltsame und formelfreie Darstellung der modernen Physik vom 19. Jahrhundert bis zur Gegenwart. Das Leben Albert Einsteins und seine wissenschaftlichen Leistungen ziehen sich als roter Faden durch den Text. Der Autor erläutert zentrale Begriffe und Ergebnisse der modernen Physik in populärwissenschaftlicher Form aus der historischen Perspektive. Der Leser erfährt auf amüsante Weise, wie sich die moderne Physik entwickelt hat.Wir begegnen Poincaré, Lorentz und Hilbert, Boltzmann und Bohr, Minkowski, Planck, de Broglie, Hubble und Weyl, Gamow, Hahn und Meitner, Kapiza und Landau, Fermi und vielen anderen berühmten Wissenschaftlern. Was hatte Eddington gegen Chandrasekhar und was hatte Einstein gegen Schwarze Löcher Warum sollten Raumtouristen, Traumtouristen und Weltraumtraumtouristen nicht am Loch Ness, sondern auf der sicheren Seite eines Schwarzen Loches Urlaub machen Warum wetterte Pauli gegen Einstein Stimmt die Sache mit der Atombombenformel Vermatschte Materie, Urknall und kosmische Hintergrundstrahlung, Gravitationswellen und Doppelpulsare, die kosmologische Konstante und die Expansion des Universums sind weitere Themen, die den Leser in Atem halten und kein geistiges Vakuum aufkommen lassen.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 196 pp. Deutsch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware - Comprehensive in its coverage, the text examines the core areas of childcare practice, considering the various strengths and weaknesses of both policy and practice. With an emphasis on reflective practice, this text is insightful reading for all those studying childcare from advanced undergraduate level upwards.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -With great pleasure we would like to present the rst volume of a new journal, Transactions on Edutainment. This journal, part of the Springer series L- tureNotesinComputerScience, is devoted to research and development in the eld of edutainment. Edutainment, also known as educational entertainment or entertainment-education,denotes allforms ofentertainmentdesignedto educate as well as to provide fun. This approachis motivated by the increasing demands on individuals for life-long learning and the need to integrate e ective learning opportunities throughout life. As such, edutainment has attracted increasing interest in the last few years. The rst 12 articles of this rst issue represent a selection of outstanding contributions from Edutainment 2008, the Third International Conference on E-Learning and Games held in Nanjing, China, in June 2008. These papers are complemented by individual contributions from international experts in this eld. The rst six articles provide an introduction into the eld of edutainment by presenting di erent application examples. In their article ¿Designing an Ed- ucational Game: Case Study of Euope 2045,¿ Sisler and Brom discuss their experiences in the design of an on-line multi-player strategy game on political, economic, and social issues in contemporary Europe. The following examples point out the crucial role of interaction design and technolgies in the devel- ment of a successful edutainment application.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 324 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 4th International Symposium on Biomedical Simulation, ISBMS 2008, held in London, UK, in July 2008. The 19 revised full papers and 7 poster papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous submissions. The papers are organized in four different sections corresponding to key areas and techniques of this constantly expanding field: finite element modeling, mass spring and statistical shape modeling, motion and fluid modeling and implementation issues. An additional section covers the posters presented at the meeting.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 248 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -The papers contained in this volume were presented at the 19th Annual S- posium on Combinatorial Pattern Matching (CPM 2008) held at the University of Pisa, Italy, June 18¿20, 2008. All the papers presented at the conference are originalresearchcontributions on computational pattern matching and analysis. They were selected from 78 submissions. Each submission was reviewed by at least three reviewers. The committee decided to accept 25 papers. The programme also includes three invited talks by Daniel M. Gus eld from the University of California, Davis, USA, J. Ian Munro from the University of Waterloo, Canada, and Prabhakar Raghavan from Yahoo! Research, USA. The objective of the annual CPM meetings is to provide an international forum for research in combinatorial pattern matching and related applications. It addresses issues of searching and matching strings and more complicated p- terns such as trees, regular expressions, graphs, point sets, and arrays. The goal is to derive non-trivialcombinatorialproperties of suchstructures and to exploit these properties in order to either achieve superior performance for the cor- sponding computational problems or pinpoint conditions under which searches cannotbeperformede ciently. Themeeting also dealswith problems incom- tational biology, data compression, data mining, coding, information retrieval, natural language processing and pattern recognition.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 340 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -A. The Outer Limits of the Continental Shelf The 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (herein- ter the ¿Convention¿) marks the beginning of a new era in the law of 1 the sea. The negotiations for this treaty at the Third United Nations Conference for the Law of the Sea (hereinafter ¿UNCLOS III¿), lasted for nine years, from 1973 to 1982. The Convention regulates the principal aspects of international oceans affairs. It establishes and fixes the limits of maritime zones, provides for the rights and duties of states in these zones, establishes the law app- cable in the international seabed area on the basis of the principle of common heritage of mankind, imposes obligations on states to protect the marine environment, and provides for the means of dispute sett- ment. One of the most contentious and divisive issues at UNCLOS III were the outer limits of the continental shelf. Previously, in the 1958 Con- 2 vention on the Continental Shelf (hereinafter the ¿1958 Convention¿), no limits were established for the continental shelf. States were allowed to claim areas of continental shelves based on their capacity to exploit the mineral resources of the shelf. The legal framework in the 1958 Convention would obviously conflict with the principle of the common heritage of mankind. Delegates realized that limits have to be est- lished, but up to where and on the basis of which principles, was a c- tentious question.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 300 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -The objective of this two-volume book is the systematic and comprehensive description of the most competitive time-domain computational methods for the efficient modeling and accurate solution of contemporary real-world EMC problems. Intended to be self-contained, it performs a detailed presentation of all well-known algorithms, elucidating on their merits or weaknesses, and accompanies the theoretical content with a variety of applications. Outlining the present volume, the analysis covers the theory of the finite-difference time-domain, the transmission-line matrix/modeling, and the finite integration technique. Moreover, alternative schemes, such as the finite-element, the finitevolume, the multiresolution time-domain methods and many others, are presented, while particular attention is drawn to hybrid approaches. To this aim, the general aspects for the correct implementation of the previous algorithms are also exemplified. At the end of every section, an elaborate reference on theprominent pros and possible cons, always in the light of EMC modeling, assists the reader to retrieve the gist of each formulation and decide on his/her best possible selection according to the problem under investigation. Table of Contents: Fundamental Time-Domain Methodologies for EMC Analysis / Alternative Time-Domain Techniques in EMC Modeling / Principal Implementation Issues of Time-Domain EMC SimulationSpringer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 236 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -The objective of this two-volume book is the systematic and comprehensive description of the most competitive time-domain computational methods for the efficient modeling and accurate solution of modern real-world EMC problems. Intended to be self-contained, it performs a detailed presentation of all well-known algorithms, elucidating on their merits or weaknesses, and accompanies the theoretical content with a variety of applications. Outlining the present volume, numerical investigations delve into printed circuit boards, monolithic microwave integrated circuits, radio frequency microelectromechanical systems as well as to the critical issues of electromagnetic interference, immunity, shielding, and signal integrity. Biomedical problems and EMC test facility characterizations are also thoroughly covered by means of diverse time-domain models and accurate implementations. Furthermore, the analysis covers the case of large-scale applications and electrostatic discharge problems, whilespecial attention is drawn to the impact of contemporary materials in the EMC world, such as double negative metamaterials, bi-isotropic media, and several others. Table of Contents: Introduction / Printed Circuit Boards in EMC Structures / Electromagnetic Interference, Immunity, Shielding, and Signal Integrity / Bioelectromagnetic Problems: Human Exposure to Electromagnetic Fields / Time-Domain Characterization of EMC Test Facilities / Large-Scale EMC and Electrostatic Discharge Problems / Contemporary Material Modeling in EMC ApplicationsSpringer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 252 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed proceedings of the 46th International Conference on Objects, Components, Models and Patterns, TOOLS EUROPE 2008, held in Zurich, Switzerland, in June/July 2008. The 21 papers presented in this book were carefully reviewed and selected from 58 submissions. TOOLS played a major role in the spread of object-oriented and component technologies. It has now broadened its scope beyond the original topics of object technology and component-based development to encompass all modern, practical approaches to software development. At the same time, TOOLS kept its traditional spirit of technical excellence, its acclaimed focus on practicality, its well-proven combination of theory and applications, and its reliance on the best experts from academia and industry.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 424 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -On behalf of the PROFES Organizing Committee, we are proud to present to you the proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Product-Focused Software Process Improvement (PROFES 2008) held in Frascati - Monteporzio Catone, Rome, Italy. Since 1999, PROFES has established itself as one of the recognized international process improvement conferences. The main theme of PROFES is professional so- ware process improvement (SPI) motivated by product and service quality needs. Focussing on a product to be developed, PROFES 2008 addressed both quality en- neering and management topics including processes, methods, techniques, tools, - ganizations, and enabling SPI. Both solutions found in practice and the relevant research results from academia were presented. Domains such as the automotive and mobile applications industry are growing r- idly, resulting in a strong need for professional development and improvement. Nowadays, the majority of embedded software is developed in collaboration, and distribution of embedded software development continues to increase. Thus, PROFES 2008 addressed different development modes, roles in the value chain, stakeholders¿ viewpoints, collaborative development, as well as economic and quality aspects. - ile development was included again as one of the themes. Since the beginning of the series of PROFES conferences, the purpose has been to bring to light the most recent findings and novel results in the area of process - provement, and to stimulate discussion among researchers, experienced professionals, and technology providers from around the world.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 468 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -The lectures concentrate on highlights in Combinatorial (ChaptersII and III) and Number Theoretical (ChapterIV) Extremal Theory, in particular on the solution of famous problems which were open for many decades. However, the organization of the lectures in six chapters does neither follow the historic developments nor the connections between ideas in several cases. With the speci ed auxiliary results in ChapterI on Probability Theory, Graph Theory, etc., all chapters can be read and taught independently of one another. In addition to the 16 lectures organized in 6 chapters of the main part of the book, there is supplementary material for most of them in the Appendix. In parti- lar, there are applications and further exercises, research problems, conjectures, and even research programs. The following books and reports [B97], [ACDKPSWZ00], [A01], and [ABCABDM06], mostly of the authors, are frequently cited in this book, especially in the Appendix, and we therefore mark them by short labels as [B], [N], [E], and [G]. We emphasize that there are also ¿Exercises¿ in [B], a ¿Problem Section¿ with contributions by several authors on pages 1063¿1105 of [G], which are often of a combinatorial nature, and ¿Problems and Conjectures¿ on pages 172¿173 of [E].Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 332 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 4th IEEE Tutorial and Research Workshop on Perception and Interactive Technologies for Speech-Based Systems, PIT 2008, held in Kloster Irsee, Germany, in June 2008. The 37 revised full papers presented together with 1 invited keynote lecture were carefully selected from numerous submissions for inclusion in the book. The papers are organized in topical sections on multimodal and spoken dialogue systems, classification of dialogue acts and sound, recognition of eye gaze, head poses, mimics and speech as well as combinations of modalities, vocal emotion recognition, human-like and social dialogue systems, and evaluation methods for multimodal dialogue systems.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 328 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -Semantic Web services promise to automate tasks such as discovery, mediation, selection, composition, and invocation of services, enabling fully flexible automated e-business. Their usage, however, still requires a significant amount of human intervention due to the lack of support for a machine-processable description.In this book, Jos de Bruijn and his coauthors lay the foundations for understanding the requirements that shape the description of the various aspects related to Semantic Web services, such as the static background knowledge in the form of ontologies, the functional description of the service, and the behavioral description of the service. They introduce the Web Service Modeling Language (WSML), which provides means for describing the functionality and behavior of Web services, as well as the underlying business knowledge, in the form of ontologies, with a conceptual grounding in the Web Service Modeling Ontology.Academic and industrial researchers as well as professionals will find a comprehensive overview of the concepts and challenges in the area of Semantic Web services, the Web Services Modeling Language and its relation to the Web Services Modeling Ontology, and an in-depth treatment of both enabling technologies and theoretical foundations.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 208 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -Informatics Education ¿ Supporting Computational Thinking contains papers presented at the Third International Conference on Informatics in Secondary Schools ¿ Evolution and Perspective, ISSEP 2008, held in July 2008 in Torun, Poland. As with the proceedings of the two previous ISSEP conferences (2005 in Klag- furt, Austria, and 2006 in Vilnius, Lithuania), the papers presented in this volume address issues of informatics education transcending national boundaries and, the- fore, transcending differences in the various national legislation and organization of the educational system. Observing these issues, one might notice a trend. The p- ceedings of the First ISSEP were termed From Computer Literacy to Informatics F- damentals [1]. There, broad room was given to general education in ICT. The ECDL, the European Computer Driving License, propagated since the late 1990s, had pe- trated school at this time already on a broad scale and teachers, parents, as well as pupils were rather happy with this situation. Teachers had material that had a clear scope, was relatively easy to teach, and especially easy to examine. Parents had the assurance that their children learn ¿modern and relevant stuff,¿ and for kids the c- puter was sufficiently modern so that anything that had to do with computers was c- sidered to be attractive. Moreover, the difficulties of programming marking the early days of informatics education in school seemed no longer relevant. Some colleagues had a more distant vision though. 380 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -Enterprise Modeling has been defined as the art of externalizing enterprise knowledge, i.e., representing the core knowledge of the enterprise. Although useful in product design and systems development, for modeling and model-based approaches to have a more profound effect, a shift in modeling approaches and methodologies is necessary. Modeling should become as natural as drawing, sketching and scribbling, and should provide powerful services for capturing work-centric, work-supporting and generative knowledge, for preserving context and ensuring reuse. A solution is the application of Active Knowledge Modeling (AKM).The AKM technology is about discovering, externalizing, expressing, representing, sharing, exploring, configuring, activating, growing and managing enterprise knowledge. An AKM solution is about exploiting the Web as a knowledge engineering medium, and developing knowledge-model-based families of platforms, model-configured workplaces and services.This book was written by the inventors of AKM arising out of their cooperation with both scientists and industrial practitioners over a long period of time, and the authors give examples, directions, methods and services to enable new ways of working, exploiting the AKM approach to enable effective c-business, enterprise design and development, and lifecycle management. Industry managers and design engineers will become aware of the manifold possibilities of, and added values in, IT-supported distributed design processes, and researchers for collaborative design environments will find lots of stimulation and many examples for future developments.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 460 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -A book about wikis! That¿s what people need. Because with wiki technology, lots of people can freely work - gether ¿ they can even generate very large works in the intellectual realm. See for yourself: Today, we still marvel at our massive church buildings, each c- structed over a period of centuries, requiring an immense amount of labor and often bearing the cultural stamp of all of the epochs during which it was created. Someone just has to begin by placing stone upon stone and motivating the people nearby to help out a bit. In places where such enthusiastic fellow men and women lend a hand and donate materials, great things can emerge. And where they are absent Either scant ruins remain, or the iron will of a pharaoh is required, an army of drivers, the sweat of a people and a mountain of gold. Great things can also be created in that way ¿ take the Py- mids: a clear concept, no blending of styles, pure will. Those are two very different paths. The one entails passionate people devotedly building something together for the common good; the other: A single will manages a variety of resources to achieve a set goal. Wikis are tools with which lots of people with a minimum of - ganization, planning, money and time can create something together and communicate with each other from several scattered computers or over the Internet.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 508 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -Since very early times Sirius was a point of attraction in the night sky. It served to synchronize calendars in antiquity and was the subject of many myths and legends, including some modern ones. It was perceived as a red star for more than 400 years, but such reports were relegated to the Mediterranean region. Astronomically, Sirius is a very bright star. This, and its present close distance to us, argues in favor of it being the target of detailed studies of stellar structure and evolution. Its binary nature, with a companion that is one of the more massive white dwarfs, is an additional reason for such studies. This book collects the published information on Sirius in an attempt to derive a coherent picture of how this system came to look as it does.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 236 pp. Englisch.