springer nature apr 2011 (142 risultati)

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -Science fiction is the playground of the imagination. If you are interested in science or fascinated with the future then science fiction is where you explore new ideas and let your dreams and nightmares duke it out on the safety of the page or screen. But what if we could use science fiction to do more than that What if we could use science fiction based on science fact to not only imagine our future but develop new technologies and products What if we could use stories, movies and comics as a kind of tool to explore the real world implications and uses of future technologies today Science Fiction Prototyping is a practical guide to using fiction as a way to imagine our future in a whole new way. Filled with history, real world examples and conversations with experts like best selling science fiction author Cory Doctorow, senior editor at Dark Horse Comics Chris Warner and Hollywood science expert Sidney Perkowitz, Science Fiction Prototyping will give you the tools you need tobegin designing the future with science fiction.The future is Brian David Johnson¿s business. As a futurist at Intel Corporation, his charter is to develop an actionable vision for computing in 2021. His work is called ¿future casting¿¿using ethnographic field studies, technology research, trend data, and even science fiction to create a pragmatic vision of consumers and computing. Johnson has been pioneering development in artificial intelligence, robotics, and reinventing TV. He speaks and writes extensively about future technologies in articles and scientific papers as well as science fiction short stories and novels (Fake Plastic Love and Screen Future: The Future of Entertainment, Computing and the Devices We Love). He has directed two feature films and is an illustrator and commissioned painter.Table of Contents: Preface / Foreword / Epilogue / Dedication / Acknowledgments / 1. The Future Is in Your Hands / 2. Religious Robots and Runaway Were-Tigers: A Brief Overview ofthe Science and the Fiction that Went Into Two SF Prototypes / 3. How to Build Your Own SF Prototype in Five Steps or Less / 4. I, Robot: From Asimov to Doctorow: Exploring Short Fiction as an SF Prototype and a Conversation With Cory Doctorow / 5. The Men in the Moon: Exploring Movies as an SF Prototype and a Conversation with Sidney Perkowitz / 6. Science in the Gutters: Exploring Comics as an SF Prototype and a Conversation With Chris Warner / 7. Making the Future: Now that You Have Developed Your SF Prototype, What¿s Next / 8. Einstein¿s Thought Experiments and Asimov¿s Second Dream / Appendix A: The SF Prototypes / Notes / Author BiographySpringer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 244 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -In the history of modern computation, large mechanical calculators preceded computers. A person would sit there punching keys according to a procedure and a number would eventually appear. Once calculators became fast enough, it became obvious that the critical path was the punching rather than the calculation itself. That is what made the stored program concept vital to further progress. Once the instructions were stored in the machine, the entire computation could run at the speed of the machine. This book shows how to do the same thing for DNA computing. Rather than asking a robot or a person to pour in specific strands at different times in order to cause a DNA computation to occur (by analogy to a person punching numbers and operations into a mechanical calculator), the DNA instructions are stored within the solution and guide the entire computation. We show how to store straight line programs, conditionals, loops, and a rudimentary form of subroutines.To achieve this goal, the book proposes a complete language for describing the intrinsic topology of DNA complexes and nanomachines, along with the dynamics of such a system. We then describe dynamic behavior using a set of basic transitions, which operate on a small neighborhood within a complex in a well-defined way. These transitions can be formalized as purely syntactical functions of the string representations.Building on that foundation, the book proposes a novel machine motif which constitutes an instruction stack, allowing for the clocked release of an arbitrary sequence of DNA instruction or data strands. The clock mechanism is built of special strands of DNA called ''tick'' and ''tock.'' Each time a ''tick'' and ''tock'' enter a DNA solution, a strand is released from an instruction stack (by analogy to the way in which as a clock cycle in an electronic computer causes a new instruction to enter a processing unit). As long as there remain strands on the stack, the next cycle will release a new instruction strand. Regardless of the actual strand or component to be released at any particular clock step, the ''tick'' and ''tock'' fuel strands remain the same, thus shifting the burden of work away from the end user of a machine and easing operation. Pre-loaded stacks enable the concept of a stored program to be realized as a physical DNA mechanism.A conceptual example is given of such a stack operating a walker device. The stack allows for a user to operate such a clocked walker by means of simple repetition of adding two fuel types, in contrast to the previous mechanism of adding a unique fuel -- at least 12 different types of strands -- for each step of the mechanism.We demonstrate by a series of experiments conducted in Ned Seeman's lab that it is possible to ''initialize'' a clocked stored program DNA machine. We end the book with a discussion of the design features of a programming language for clocked DNA programming. There is a lot left to do.Table of Contents:Introduction / Notation / A Topological Description of DNA Computing / Machines and Motifs / Experiment: Storing Clocked Programs in DNA / A Clocked DNA Programming LanguageSpringer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 76 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -This book provides an overview of systems engineering, its important elements, and aspects of management that will lead in the direction of building systems with a greater likelihood of success. Emphasis is placed upon the following elements: How the systems approach is defined, and how it guides the systems engineering processes How systems thinking helps in combination with the systems approach and systems engineering Time lines that define the life cycle dimensions of a system System properties, attributes, features, measures and parameters Approaches to architecting systems Dealing with requirements, synthesis, analysis and cost effectiveness considerations Life cycle costing of systems Modeling, simulation and other analysis methods Technology and its interplay with risk and its management Systems acquisition and integration Systems of systems Thinking outside the box Success and failure factors Software engineering Standards Systems engineering managementTogether, these top-level aspects of systems engineering need to be understood and mastered in order to improve the way we build systems, as they typically become larger and more complex.Table of Contents: Definitions and Background / The Systems Approach / Systems Thinking / Key Elements of Systems Engineering / The Life Cycle Dimension / System Properties, Attributes and Features (PAFs) / Measures and Parameters / Architecting / Functional Decomposition / Requirements Engineering / Synthesis / Analysis / Cost-Effectiveness / Life Cycle Costing / Modeling and Simulation / Other Analysis Relationships / The Role of Technology / Risk Management / Testing, Verification, and Validation / Integration / Systems Engineering Management / Project Management / Software Engineering / Systems Acquisition / Systems of Systems / Thinking Outside the Box / Ten Failure Factors / A Success Audit / StandardsSpringer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 140 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -The visual recognition problem is central to computer vision research. From robotics to information retrieval, many desired applications demand the ability to identify and localize categories, places, and objects. This tutorial overviews computer vision algorithms for visual object recognition and image classification. We introduce primary representations and learning approaches, with an emphasis on recent advances in the field. The target audience consists of researchers or students working in AI, robotics, or vision who would like to understand what methods and representations are available for these problems. This lecture summarizes what is and isn't possible to do reliably today, and overviews key concepts that could be employed in systems requiring visual categorization. Table of Contents: Introduction / Overview: Recognition of Specific Objects / Local Features: Detection and Description / Matching Local Features / Geometric Verification of Matched Features / Example Systems: Specific-Object Recognition / Overview: Recognition of Generic Object Categories / Representations for Object Categories / Generic Object Detection: Finding and Scoring Candidates / Learning Generic Object Category Models / Example Systems: Generic Object Recognition / Other Considerations and Current Challenges / ConclusionsSpringer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 184 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -The book contains research results obtained by applying Bejan's Constructal Theory to the study and therefore the optimization of fins, focusing on T-shaped and Y-shaped ones. Heat transfer from finned surfaces is an example of combined heat transfer natural or forced convection on the external parts of the fin, and conducting along the fin. Fin's heat exchange is rather complex, because of variation of both temperature along the fin and convective heat transfer coefficient. Furthermore possible presence of more fins invested by the same fluid flow has to be considered.Classical fin theory tried to reduce the coupled heat transfer problem to a one-dimensional problem by defining an average temperature of the fin and writing equations using this parameter. However, it was shown that this approach cannot be used because of the effects of two-dimensional heat transfer, especially in the presence of short fins. CFD codes offer the possibility to consider bi-dimensional (and more generally, three-dimensional) effects and then a more real approach to the physic phenomena of finned surface's heat exchange.A commercial CFD code was used to analyse the case of heat exchange in presence of T-shaped fins, following an approach suggested by Bejan's Constructal Theory. The comparative results showed a significant agreement with previous research taken as a reference, and this result allows for the application of this approach to a wider range of systems. T-shaped optimized fin geometry is the starting point for further research.Starting from the optimal results (T-shape optimized fins), we show the trend of the assessment parameter (the dimensionless conductance) in function of the angle a between the two horizontal arms of the fin. A value for a, 90°Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 220 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -The global financial and economic crisis has brought about many effects that are still difficult to interpret univocally. This book studies the consequences of the crisis on Europe by examining the effects on the European institutional setup, governance and architecture and by studying in detail the different member countries. 282 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -With a Foreword by Prof. Asbjørn Eide, a former Chairman of the UN Working Group on Indigenous Populations, Chairman of the UN Working Group on Minorities, President of the Advisory Committee on National Minorities of the Council of EuropeFollowing the internationalization of the indigenous rights movement, a growing number of African hunter-gatherers, pastoralists and other communities have channelled their claims for special legal protection through the global indigenous rights movement. Their claims as the indigenous peoples of Africa are backed by many (international) actors such as indigenous rights activists, donors and some academia. However, indigenous identification is contested by many African governments, some members of non-claimant communities and a number of anthropologists who have extensively interacted with claimant indigenous groups.This book explores the sources as well as the legal and political implications of indigenous identification in Africa. By highlighting the quasi-inexistence of systematic and discursive - rather than activist - studies on the subject-matter, the analysis questions the appropriateness of this framework in efforts aimed at empowering claimant communities in inherently multiethnic African countries. The book navigates between various disciplines in trying to better capture the phenomenon of indigenous rights advocacy in Africa.The book is valuable reading for academics in law and all (other) social sciences such as anthropology, sociology, history, political science, as well as for economists. It is also a useful tool for policy-makers, legal practitioners, indigenous rights activists, and a wide range of NGOs.Dr. Felix Mukwiza Ndahinda is Associate Professor at the International Victimology Institute Tilburg (INTERVICT), Tilburg University, The Netherlands. 393 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -This book develops a comprehensive understanding of the motivations and experiences of students who choose to study abroad for the whole or part of a degree. It includes case studies of students from East Asia, Europe and the UK, and considers the implications of their movement for contemporary higher education. 196 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -This collection addresses the politics of queer representation in multiple contexts. Articles cover the rise of the queer cowboy, the emergence of lesbian chic, and the expansion of representations of blackness alongside work on queer, Taiwanese, online communities; a transgender Israeli pop star; and film mimicry in Kerala, India. 262 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -Bringing together the leading future figures in ethics broadly construed with essays ranging from metaethics and normative ethics to applied ethics and political philosophy, topics include new work on experimental philosophy, feminism, and global justice incorporating perspectives informed from historical and contemporary approaches alike. 298 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -This book critically explores civic republicanism in light of contemporary republican political theory and the influence of republican models of citizenship in recent developments in civic education across a number of Western nations. 187 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -The 2010 General Election represented a pathbreaking contest in Political Communication. The TV debates changed forever the feel of the campaign. This book brings together key commentators, analysts and polling experts to present readers with a unique and valuable insight into the development of political communication in British Politics. 349 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -The 'invisible hand', Adam Smith's metaphor for the morality of capitalism, is explored in this text as being far more subtle and intricate than is usually understood, with many British realist fiction writers (Austen, Dickens, Gaskell, Eliot) having absorbed his model of ironic causality in complex societies and turned it to their own purposes. 251 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -Through the application of public opinion, interview, and print-media analyses, this book provides evidence that the state of transnational identification among citizens in the EU as a result of post-Maastricht integration measures, such as the completion of the Common Market, the introduction of the Euro, the initiation of the Common Foreign and Security Policy etc. in the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Germany had limited effects in the member states to the extent that national political cultures and mass media orientations are compatible with the goals of EU integration. Policy recommendations are derived by reviewing the complex relationship between EU policies and structural factors such as immigration, ageing and the mediatization of politics in which European integration occurs. 234 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -Relations across the Taiwan Strait were unstable for decades before May 2008. Several acknowledged 'crises' raised the possibility of war between China and the US and/or Taiwan and at times political disputes wracked the US-Taiwan relationship. Nevertheless, the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA) of 1979 helped maintain peace by deterring coercive actions by China against the island. 245 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -Bringing together the leading future figures in ethics broadly construed with essays ranging from metaethics and normative ethics to applied ethics and political philosophy, topics include new work on experimental philosophy, feminism, and global justice incorporating perspectives informed from historical and contemporary approaches alike. 298 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -This book unites research in philosophy and cognitive science with cultural history to re-examine memory in early modern religious practices. Offering an ecological approach to memory and culture, it argues that models derived from Extended Mind and Distributed Cognition can bridge the gap between individual and social models of memory. 183 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -This book recounts the rise of Kim Dae Jung from an oppressed region of Korea, beginning with his schooldays, his activities in the Korean War and his entry into politics and concluding with discussion of his Sunshine policy, his summit with North Korea's Kim Jong Il and his drive for the Nobel. 251 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -Diasporic Avant-Gardes draws into dialogue two differing traditions of poetic practice: the diasporic and the avant-garde. This interdisciplinary collection examines the unacknowledged affinities (and crucial differences) between avant-garde and diasporic formal strategies and social formations. The essays foreground the creation of experimental forms and investigate the specific contexts of cultural displacement and language use that inform their poetics. 274 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -The book is organized so as to address in separate sections first the preparatory topics of medicine (clinical and epidemiological), science in general, and statistics (mathematical); then topics of epidemiological research proper; and, finally, topics of 'meta-epidemiological' clinical research. In those two main sections, a further grouping is based on the distraction between objects and methods of study. In this framework, the particular topics are addressed both descriptively and quasi-prescriptively, commonly with a number of explicatory annotations.This book is intended to serve as a handbook for whomever is, in whatever way, concerned with epidemiological or 'meta-epidemiological' clinical research. But besides this, it is also intended to serve as a textbook for students in introductory courses on 'epidemiological' research - to which end there is a suggested hierarchy of the concepts that might reasonably be covered. 175 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -No books dealing with a comprehensive illustration of the fast developing field of nonlinear analysis had been published for the mathematicians interested in this field for more than a half century until D. H. Hyers, G. Isac and Th. M. Rassias published their book, 'Stability of Functional Equations in Several Variables'. This book will complement the books of Hyers, Isac and Rassias and of Czerwik (Functional Equations and Inequalities in Several Variables) by presenting mainly the results applying to the Hyers-Ulam-Rassias stability. Many mathematicians have extensively investigated the subjects on the Hyers-Ulam-Rassias stability. This book covers and offers almost all classical results on the Hyers-Ulam-Rassias stability in an integrated and self-contained fashion. 362 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -Voice over IP (VoIP) and Internet Multimedia Subsystem technologies (IMS) are rapidly being adopted by consumers, enterprises, governments and militaries. These technologies offer higher flexibility and more features than traditional telephony (PSTN) infrastructures, as well as the potential for lower cost through equipment consolidation and, for the consumer market, new business models. However, VoIP systems also represent a higher complexity in terms of architecture, protocols and implementation, with a corresponding increase in the potential for misuse. In this book, the authors examine the current state of affairs on VoIP security through a survey of 221 known/disclosed security vulnerabilities in bug-tracking databases. We complement this with a comprehensive survey of the state of the art in VoIP security research that covers 245 papers. Juxtaposing our findings, we identify current areas of risk and deficiencies in research focus. This book should serve as a starting point for understanding the threats and risks in a rapidly evolving set of technologies that are seeing increasing deployment and use. An additional goal is to gain a better understanding of the security landscape with respect to VoIP toward directing future research in this and other similar emerging technologies. 83 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -Because statistical confidentiality embraces the responsibility for both protecting data and ensuring its beneficial use for statistical purposes, those working with personal and proprietary data can benefit from the principles and practices this book presents. Researchers can understand why an agency holding statistical data does not respond well to the demand, "Just give me the data; I'm only going to do good things with it." Statisticians can incorporate the requirements of statistical confidentiality into their methodologies for data collection and analysis. Data stewards, caught between those eager for data and those who worry about confidentiality, can use the tools of statistical confidentiality toward satisfying both groups.The eight chapters lay out the dilemma of data stewardship organizations (such as statistical agencies) in resolving the tension between protecting data from snoopers while providing data to legitimate users, explain disclosure risk and explore the types of attack that a data snooper might mount, present the methods of disclosure risk assessment, give techniques for statistical disclosure limitation of both tabular data and microdata, identify measures of the impact of disclosure limitation on data utility, provide restricted access methods as administrative procedures for disclosure control, and finally explore the future of statistical confidentiality. 200 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -Addresses issues relevant to an understanding of the innovation journeys on which public organizations have embarked. If public innovation is defined as a necessary condition for establishing meaningful interactions between the government and society what are the relevant issues that may explain successful processes and forms of public innovation 252 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -This book examines the role of nonformal education (NFE) in African languages in promoting democracy in Senegal. Using data from a survey of rural Senegalese citizens, this is the first study to empirically test the effects of NFE on political participation and attitudes. The results indicate that NFE stimulates community and political participation and appears to have a stronger effect on participation than formal education. Both NFE and formal education increase the likelihood that people will embrace democratic, tolerant attitudes. Thus, NFE could be a potent force in the promotion of civic orientations in the emerging democracies. 190 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -Feste develops a framework of terrorism termination dynamics constructed from empirical cases and applies it to the current al Qaeda problem to offer a new method for tracking development of terrorist episodes with implications for U.S. foreign policy. 276 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -The Good War tackles the issue of NATO in Afghanistan, exploring NATO's evolution in the 1990s and blending NATO's transformation from a reactive defense organization into a pro-active risk manager with the ethic of liberalism. It raises questions such as why an alliance built upon the territorial defence of Europe ended up in Afghanistan. 171 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -This volume explores African American historical fiction written by women in the last four decades of the twentieth century. Nunes' approach to the texts aims at emphasizing the narrative and thematic achievements of individual novels set in the context of the main trends and developments of the contemporary African American historical novel. 248 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -Szefel investigates the use of poetry in addressing political reform at the turn of the twentieth century. It charts the work of poets and editors - many of whom were women and minorities - who created a network of organizations to nurture writers who addressed the problems wrought by Progressive-era capitalism. 280 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -Women's inner struggle over their marital names reveal how they negotiate a specific identity location in each dimension of identity. This book tackles a complex sociological project of examining three existing theories, and will prove to be important for the study of Gender and Middle Eastern Culture. 250 pp. Englisch.