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Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware - M.A.Bramer University of Portsmouth, UK This volume comprises the refereed application papers presented at AI-2003, the Twenty-third SGAI International Conference on Innovative Techniques and Applications of Artificial Intelligence, held in Cambridge in December 2003. The conference was organised by SGAI, the British Computer Society Specialist Group on Artificial Intelligence. The papers present new and innovative developments in the field, divided into sections on Personalisation, E-Commerce and Resource Management, Hazard Prediction, Fault Diagnosis and Design, Medical and Social Services and Image Recognition, Knowledge Bases and Attribute Selection. This year's prize for the best refereed application paper, which was sponsored by the Department of Trade and Industry, was won by a paper entitled Design-a-Trial: A Rule-Based Decision Support System for Clinical Trial Design, which has no fewer than nine authors: K Nammuni, C Pickering (lnferMed Ltd), S Modgil (University College, London), A Montgomery (lnferMed Ltd), P Hammond (University College, London), IC Wyatt (National Institute for Clinical Excellence), DG Altman (Centre for Statistics in Medicine), R Dunlop (lnferMed Ltd) and H Potts (Kings College, London). This is the eleventh volume in the Applications and Innovations series. The Technical Stream papers are published as a companion volume under the title Research and Development in Intelligent Systems XX. On behalf of the conference organising committee I should like to thank all those who contributed to the organisation of this year's application programme, in particular the programme committee members, the referees and our administrators Fiona Hartree and Linsay Turbert.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware - Solar sailing offers the possibility of low-cost long-distance missions, impossible for any other type of conventional spacecraft. The book provides a detailed account of solar sailing, at a high technical level but in a way accessible to the scientifically informed layman. Solar sail orbital dynamics and solar radiation pressure form the foundations of the book, but the engineering design of solar sails is also considered, along with potential mission applications. This book introduces the subject and at the same time provides a technical reference source.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware - This volume of new research papers marks the 20th anniversary of the New York Number Theory Seminar (NYNTS). Since 1982, NYNTS has presented a range of research in number theory and related fields of mathematics, from physics to geometry to combinatorics and computer science. The speakers have included Field medalists as well as promising lesser known mathematicians whose theorems are significant. The papers presented here are all previously unpublished.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware - The morality of capital punishment has been debated for a long time. This however has 1 not resulted in the settlement of the question either way. Philosophers are still divided. In this work I am not addressing the morality of capital punishment per se. My question is different but related. It is this. Whether or not capital punishment is morally right, is it moral or immoral for medical doctors to be involved in the practice To deal with this question I start off in Chapter One delineating the sort of involvement the medical associations consider to be morally problematic for medical doctors in capital punishment. They make a distinction between what they call 2 'medicalisation' of and 'involvement' in capital punishment, and argue that there is a moral distinction between the two. Whilst it is morally acceptable for doctors to be 'involved' in capital punishment, according to the medical associations, it is immoral to medicalise the practice. I clarify this position and show what moral issues arise. I then suggest that there should not be a distinction between the two. The medical associations argue that the medicalisation of capital punishment, especially the use by medical doctors of lethal injection to execute condemned prisoners is immoral and therefore should be prohibited, because it involves doctors in doing what is against the aims of medicine.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware - Problems with high stakes, involving human perceptions and judgements, and whose resolutions have long-term repercussions, call for a rational approach to their solution. Strategic Decision Making provides an effective, formal methodology that gives assistance to such strategic level decision making problems. Focusing on applying the AHP to decision-making problems in engineering, Strategic Decision Making explores the three main endeavours of human existence: business, defence and governance. Many years of successfully applying Strategic Decision Making in these domains have created extensive results covering many complex planning, resource, allocation and priority setting problems throughout industry and business.Case studies drawn from years of successful, practical application experience.Discusses applications of decision making for real life problems.Worked examples and solutions to problems throughout. The reader will gain comprehensive exposure to the extent of assistance that a formal methodology, such as AHP, can provide to the decision maker in evolving decisions in complex and varied domains. Decision makers, in business and industry around the world, will find this valuable for practical use as a working tool.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware - Knowledge Intensive Design Technology is a collection of papers presented at the Fifth Workshop on Knowledge Intensive CAD, which was sponsored by the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) Working Group 5.2 and hosted by the Department of Manufacturing Engineering at the University of Malta in July 2002. The book chapters progressively take the reader through the following sequential sections; -Part One - KIC Development Approaches, -Part Two - Knowledge Systematization, -Part Three - Prototype KIC Systems.Knowledge Intensive Design Technology makes essential reading for practicing engineers/scientists involved in R&D as well as for relevant Masters and Ph.D. students. The book is also pertinent to those in industry concerned with capturing and structuring company-specific knowledge for proactive reuse to increase product development efficiency, and also to those involved in the development of CAD systems.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware - Since the volume may be of interest to a broad variety of people, it is arranged in parts that require different levels of mathematical background. Part I can be assessed by those interested in the application of visualization methods in decision making. In Part II computational methods are introduced in a relatively simple form. Part III is written for readers in applied mathematics interested in the theoretical basis of modern optimization.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware - Continuous update in critical care medicine is a real challenge due to the growing dimensions of its contents; these elements are the result of new research acquisitions, and of those clinical situations where the physician is able to intervene at a given moment, with the use of effective prevention techniques. They are also the result of new technologies able to define complex sub-clinical diagnostic aspects; lastly, they are the result of effective therapeutic techniques available, and of treatment strategies able to influence radically and positively the patient's clinical course. Critical care medicine is playing a key role in the most advanced environments, as it represents a cross-sectional field of action, involving several specialties, such as anesthesiology, general medicine, surgery, pediatrics.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware - A teacher may get good, even astounding, results from his pupils while he is teaching them and yet not be a good teacher; because it may be that, while his pupils are directly under his influence, he raises them to a height which is not natural to them, without fostering their own capacities for work at this level, so that they immediately decline again as soon as the teacher leaves the classroom. Ludwig Wittgenstein, 1889 - 1951. It is difficult to measure effectiveness in not-for-profit organisations like schools, colleges and universities. There is no 'bottom-line' against which to gauge performance, they have limited technical development and managers struggle to make meaningful comparisons between outcomes and targets. In education, well-publicised attempts have been made to establish - some would say impose - a set of criteria by which organisations judge success or failure. These have been largely subjective - the percentage of inspected classes regarded as good, the extent to which staff is involved in decision making, the appropriateness of the leadership shown by senior managers, and so on - if occasionally peppered with quantitative measures, like the percentage of students achieving certain grades in public examinations, to sustain the illusion of objectivity. This is not to fault the aspiration necessarily, though initially at least it created a surveillance culture in schools that did justice to neither the inspected nor the argument for inspection. Happily, this is changing.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware - There is now evidence that irreversible brain damage accumulates very early in the course of multiple sclerosis. This book reviews the main neurobiological, magnetic resonance imaging, and clinical aspects of the early phases of the dis ease. Mechanisms ofirreversible axonal damage and the role played by the inter action of glia and the axon are highlighted. In contrast to what was believed for a long time, the sufficient availability of oligodendrocyte precursor cells to promote remyelination in acute lesions has now been demonstrated. For reasons not understood, this remyelination process fails or does not start, particularly in the chronic stages ofthe disease. These findings emphasize the importance of the 'milieu' changes induced by an inflammatory process in limiting remyelination. However, first indications are that part of this inflammatory process may have a neuroprotective effect. Pathological studies in multiple sclerosis have now clearly demonstrated that destructive processes may be followed by recovery phases in such a way that myelin may be morphologically and functionally reconstituted. These findings provide the rationale for early treatment and emphasize the importance of clinical trials in early multiple sclerosis. Early treatment is one of the most important aspects in multiple sclerosis today.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware - This book has been quite long in the making. In its original format, but with some different chapters, and with the then publisher, it foundered (as did other volumes in the planned series). At the in press stage, when we obviously thought it was going ahead, it was suddenly canned. Quite distraught I closed it away in a desk drawer for a year or so. But then Joy Carp of Kluwer Academic Publishers expressed an interest in it, and we were in business again. Most of the contributors to the original volume have stayed with it, only to be delayed by myself, for a variety of reasons (but see the dedication). I had been writing on Michel Foucault for a number of years but had become concerned about mis-appropriations of his ideas and works in educational literature. I was also concerned about the increasingly intemperate babble in that literature of the notion of postmodernism. Indeed at one major educational conference in North America I listened to a person expounding postmodernism in terms of 'Destroy, Destroy, Destroy'. Like Michel Foucault I am not quite sure what postmodernism is, but following Mark Poster's account of poststructuralism - as merely a collective term to catch a number of French thinkers - I thought that what we had to do in education was to look at what particular thinkers had said, and not become involved in vapid discussion at an abstract level on '-isms'. Thus the book was conceived.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware - Appendices 133 A Mathematical Results 133 A.1 Singularities of the Displacement Error Covariance Matrix 133 A.2 A Class of Matrices and their Eigenvalues 134 A.3 Inverse of the Power Spectral Density Matrix 134 A.4 Power Spectral Density of a Frame 136 Glossary 137 References 141 Index 159 Preface This book aims to capture recent advances in motion compensation for - ficient video compression. It investigates linearly combined motion comp- sated signals and generalizes the well known superposition for bidirectional prediction in B-pictures. The number of superimposed signals and the sel- tion of reference pictures will be important aspects of the discussion. The application oriented part of the book employs this concept to the well known ITU-T Recommendation H.263 and continues with the improvements by superimposed motion-compensated signals for the emerging ITU-T R- ommendation H.264 and ISO/IEC MPEG-4 (Part 10). In addition, it discusses a new approach for wavelet-based video coding. This technology is currently investigated by MPEG to develop a new video compression standard for the mid-term future.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware - After a brief introduction to low-power VLSI design, the design space of ASIP instruction set architectures (ISAs) is introduced with a special focus on important features for digital signal processing. Based on the degrees of freedom offered by this design space, a consistent ASIP design flow is proposed: this design flow starts with a given application and uses incremental optimization of the ASIP hardware, of ASIP coprocessors and of the ASIP software by using a top-down approach and by applying application-specific modifications on all levels of design hierarchy. A broad range of real-world signal processing applications serves as vehicle to illustrate each design decision and provides a hands-on approach to ASIP design. Finally, two complete case studies demonstrate the feasibility and the efficiency of the proposed methodology and quantitatively evaluate the benefits of ASIPs in an industrial context.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware - The physics of transition metal oxides has become a central topic of interest to condensed-matter scientists ever since high temperature superconductivity was discovered in hole-doped cuprates with perovskite-like structures. Although the renewed interest in hole-doped perovskite manganites following the discovery of their colossal magnetoresistance (CMR) properties, began in 1993 about a decade after the discovery of high temperature superconductivity, their first investigation started as early as 1950 and basic theoretical ideas were developed during 1951-1960. Experience in sample preparation and characterization, and in growth of single crystals and epitaxial thin films, gained during the research on high temperature superconductors, and the development of theoretical tools, were very efficiently used in research on CMR manganites. In early nineties it appeared to many condensed matter physicists that although the problem of high temperature superconductivity is a difficult one to solve, a quantitative understanding of CMR phenomena might be well within reach. This book is intended to be an account of the latest developments in the phys ics of CMR manganites. When I planned this book back in 2000, I thought that research on the physics of CMR manganites would be more or less consolidated by the time this would be published. I was obviously very optimistic indeed. We are now in 2003 and we still do not have a quantitative understanding of the central CMR effect. Meanwhile the field has expanded. It is still a very active field of research on both the experimental and theoretical fronts.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware - For the first time experts in the area of signalling research with a focus on the ARF family have contributed to the production of a title devoted to ARF biology. A comprehensive phylogenetic analysis of the ARF family, tables of the ARF GEFs and ARF GAPs, and more than a dozen chapters describing them in detail are provided. The impact of the ARF proteins on widely diverse aspects of cell biology and cell signalling can be clearly seen from the activities described; including membrane traffic, lipid metabolism, receptor desensitization, mouse development, microtubule dynamics, and bacterial pathogenesis. Anyone interested in understanding the complexities of cell signalling and the integration of signalling networks will benefit from this volume.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware - Static and Dynamic Performance Limitations for High Speed D/A Converters discusses the design and implementation of high speed current-steering CMOS digital-to-analog converters. Starting from the definition of the basic specifications for a D/A converter, the elements determining the static and dynamic performance are identified. Different guidelines based on scientific derivations are suggested to optimize this performance. Furthermore, a new closed formula has been derived to account for the influence of the transistor mismatch on the achievable resolution of the current-steering D/A converter. To allow a thorough understanding of the dynamic behavior, a new factor has been introduced. Moreover, the frequency dependency of the output impedance introduces harmonic distortion components which can limit the maximum attainable spurious free dynamic range. Finally, the last part of the book gives an overview on different existing transistor mismatch models and the link with the static performance of the D/A converter.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware - The syntactic periphery has become one of the most important areas of research in syntactic theory in recent years, due to the emergence of new research programmes initiated by Rizzi, Kayne and Chomsky. However research has concentrated on the empirical nature of clausal peripheries. The purpose of this volume is to explore the question of whether the notion of periphery has any real theoretical bite. An important consensus emerging from the volume is that the edges of certain syntactic expressions appear to be the locus of the connection between phrase structure, prosody, and information structure. This volume contains 16 papers by researchers in this area. The book: - contains an extensive introduction setting out the research questions addressed and setting the contributions in an overall theoretical context, - has a distinct comparative slant, - brings together work from a range of theoretical perspectives, while maintaining a unity of purpose, - could serve as the basis for a graduate course on peripheral positions, - contains papers addressing: = the question of the fine-grainedness of syntactic representations, = the relevance of syntactic edges to locality and semantic interpretation, = the nature of the dependencies connecting peripheral elements to the syntactic core. Audience: Academics and graduate students interested in syntax and its interfaces with semantics and prosody, acquisition of syntax, cross-linguistic comparison.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware - This book, the proceedings of a Falk Workshop on `Topical Steroids in Gastroenterology and Hepatology', held in Berlin, Germany, on 14 June 2003, critically discusses the current role of budesonide in gastroenterology, hepatology, surgery and oncology and focuses especially on potential new indications for the use of budesonide. A number of smaller clinical studies and anecdotal case reports with impressive clinical effects are reported in patients with gastrointestinal, hepatic, oncological and surgical problems. In addition, the use of budesonide for the treatment of distal ulcerative colitis and ileocolonic Crohn's disease is evaluated with respect to its role in an evidence-based management of IBD. Finally, as clinical experience with the use of budesonide is increasing, safety issues and the side-effect profile of budesonide is addressed.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware - Chromosomes Today volume 14 records the plenary proceedings of the 14th International Chromosome Conference, presenting an overview of the current concerns in plant, animal and human cytogenetics. This volume provides up-to-date information regarding relevant aspects on structure, function and evolution of chromosomes, meiosis, sex chromosomes, and cancer cytogenetics. It contains invited contributions from some of the world's leading experts in the field.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware - The researchers in Aerodynamics know that there is not a unitary method of investigation in this field. The first mathematical model of the air plane wing, the model meaning the integral equation governing the phe nomenon, was proposed by L. Prandtl in 1918. The integral equation deduced by Prandtl, on the basis of some assumptions which will be specified in the sequeL furnishes the circulation C(y) (see Chapter 6). U sing the circulation, one calculates the lift and moment coefficients, which are very important in Aerodynamics. The first hypothesis made by Prandtl consists in replacing the wing by a distribution of vortices on the plan-form D of the wing (i. e. the projection of the wing on the plane determined by the direction of the uniform stream at infinity and t he direction of the span of the wing). Since such a distribution leads to a potential flow in the exterior of D and the experiences show that downstream the flow has not this character, Prandtl introduces as a sup plementary hypothesis another vortices distribution on the trace of the domain D in the uniform stream. The first kind of vortices are called tied vortices and the second kind of vortices are called free vortices.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware - Brain Damage and Repair aims to attract the interest of neuroscientists and clinical neurologists by building a novel bridge from molecular research to clinical therapy. This novel approach reveals the functional features of neurons and glia in the particular context of vulnerability and self-protection, intracellular properties and extracellular matrix. Arising from this platform, this volume unfolds the molecular and systemic processes underlying migration disorders, axonal injury, repair and regeneration. Comprehensive chapters on neurological diseases, such as M. Alzheimer, M. Parkinson, ALS, stroke or trauma, take this knowledge, apply it at the clinical level to provide a basis for novel therapeutic strategies. Brain Damage and Repair is completed with chapters on imaging techniques, viral gene transfer or legal international handling of stem cell transfer and patents of DNA/proteins.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware - The Eighth Rochester Conference on Coherence and Quantum Optics was held on the campus of the University of Rochester during the period June 13-16,2001. This volume contains the proceedings of the meeting. The meeting was preceded by an affiliated conference, the International Conference on Quantum Information, with some overlapping sessions on June 13. The proceedings of the affiliated conference will be published separately by the Optical Society of America. A few papers that were presented in common plenary sessions of the two conferences will be published in both proceedings volumes. More than 268 scientists from 28 countries participated in the week long discussions and presentations. This Conference differed from the previous seven in the CQO series in several ways, the most important of which was the absence of Leonard Mandel. Professor Mandel died a few months before the conference. A special memorial symposium in his honor was held at the end of the conference. The presentations from that symposium are included in this proceedings volume. An innovation, that we believe made an important contribution to the conference, was the inclusion of a series of invited lectures chaired by CQO founder Emil Wolf, reviewing the history of the fields of coherence and quantum optics before about 1970. These were given by three prominent participants in the development of the field, C. Cohen-Tannoudji, 1. F. Clauser, and R. I. Glauber.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware - The aim of this book is to review recent achievements in the theoretical investigations of the electronic structure, optical, magneto-optical (MO), and x-ray magnetic circular dichroism (XMCD) properties of compounds and Multilayered structures. Chapter 1 of this book is of an introductory character and presents the theoretical foundations of the band theory of solids such as the density functional theory for ground state properties of solids including local density approximation (LDA). It also presents some modifications to the LDA, such as gradient correction, self-interaction correction, LDA+U method, orbital polarization correction, GW approximation, and dynamical mean-field theory. The description of the magneto-optical effects and linear response theory are also presented.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -In Life in the Solar System and Beyond, Professor Jones has written a broad introduction to the subject, addressing important topics such as, what is life , the origins of life and where to look for extraterrestrial life. The chapters are arranged as follows: Chapter 1 is a broad introduction to the cosmos, with an emphasis on where we might find life. In Chapters 2 and 3 Professor Jones discusses life on Earth, the one place we know to be inhabited. Chapter 4 is a brief tour of the Solar system, leading us in Chapters 5 and 6 to two promising potential habitats, Mars and Europa. In Chapter 7 the author discusses the fate of life in the Solar system, which gives us extra reason to consider life further afield. Chapter 8 focuses on the types of stars that might host habitable planets, and where in the Galaxy these might be concentrated. Chapters 9 and 10 describe the instruments and techniques being employed to discover planets around other stars (exoplanetary systems), and those that will be employed in the near future. Chapter 11 summarizes the known exoplanetary systems, together with an outline of the systems we expect to discover soon, particularly habitable planets. Chapter 12 describes how we will attempt to find life on these planets, and the final chapter brings us to the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, and the question as to whether we are alone. 360 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -The geometric approach to the algebraic theory of quadratic forms is the study of projective quadrics over arbitrary fields. Function fields of quadrics have been central to the proofs of fundamental results since the 1960's. Recently, more refined geometric tools have been brought to bear on this topic, such as Chow groups and motives, and have produced remarkable advances on a number of outstanding problems. Several aspects of these new methods are addressed in this volume, which includes an introduction to motives of quadrics by A. Vishik, with various applications, notably to the splitting patterns of quadratic forms, papers by O. Izhboldin and N. Karpenko on Chow groups of quadrics and their stable birational equivalence, with application to the construction of fields withu-invariant 9, and a contribution in French by B. Kahn which lays out a general framework for the computation of the unramified cohomology groups of quadrics and other cellular varieties. 212 pp. Englisch, Französisch.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -Trust is seemingly in decline in contemporary society, yet its significance and value is undiminished. Numerous scandals afflicting business and politics, the growth of spin and a loss of faith in leaders as people with strong values have all eroded levels of trust. As trust becomes a scarcer commodity, those people and organizations that possess it have a distinct advantage. Trust matters - in fact, it is essential for: Organizational Success and Profitability Winning and Retaining Customers Effective Leadership Innovation and Creativity Motivating and Energising People Managing Risk Personal Satisfaction, Fulfilment and Success This book is about trust: What can be achieved when it's present, what can happen when it's not and how to develop it. 178 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -Constraint satisfaction and constraint programming have shown to be very simple but powerful ideas, with applications in various areas. Still, in the last ten years, the simple notion of constraints has shown some deficiencies concerning both theory and practice, typically in the way over-constrained problems and preferences are treated. For this reason, the notion of soft constraints has been introduced with semiring-based soft constraints and valued constraints being the two main general frameworks.This book includes formal definitions and properties of semiring-based soft constraints, as well as their use within constraint logic programming and concurrent constraint programming. Moreover, the author shows how to adapt existing notions and techniques such as abstraction and interchangeability to the soft constraint framework and it is demonstrated how soft constraints can be used in some application areas, such as security.Overall, this book is a great starting point for anyone interested in understanding the basics of semiring-based soft constraints. 296 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -This thesis deals with the problems of characterizing the semantics of and assuringe cient executionfor databasequery languages,wherethedatabase contains semistructured and time-varying information. This area of techn- ogy is of much interest and signi cance for databases and knowledge bases; it also presents many challenging research problems deserving an in-depth investigation.Thus, the topic of Elisa Quintarelli s dissertation is well chosen and totally appropriate to the current research trends. In her thesis, Elisa addresses a number of related problems. However, her work and contributions concentrate on two main problems. The rst is the de nition of an e ective graph-based approach to the formalization of query languages for semistructured and temporal information. In her approach, query execution is viewed as the process of matching the query graph with the database instance graph; therefore, query execution reduces to sear- ing the database for subgraphs that are similar to the given query graph. The search for such matches can be supported through the computational process of bisimulation. This approach is used to de ne the semantics of s- eral languages, including graphical languages, such as G-Log and GraphLog, semistructuredinformationlanguages,suchasLorel,andtemporallanguages, such as TSS-QL. Both graph-based approaches and bisimulation had been used by previous authors for de ning query languages and their semantics; however, this work goes well beyond previous approaches by integrating and re ning these techniques into a exible and powerful paradigm that Elisa demonstrates to be e ective on a spectrum of languages and a suite of alt- native semantics. 156 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -The lectures that comprise this volume constitute a comprehensive survey of the many and various aspects of integrable dynamical systems. The present edition is a streamlined, revised and updated version of a 1997 set of notes that was published as Lecture Notes in Physics, Volume 495. This volume will be complemented by a companion book dedicated to discrete integrable systems. Both volumes address primarily graduate students and nonspecialist researchers but will also benefit lecturers looking for suitable material for advanced courses and researchers interested in specific topics. 352 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -The Who's Who in Fluorescence 2003 volume was published in November 2002. It featured some 312 personal entries from fluorescence workers all over the world. Initially we were unsure how useful the volume would be. However, it wasn't very long before we were inundated with requests for both bulk and personal orders. In addition a significant number of copies were freely distributed at conference venues, such as at the Biophysical Society meeting in San Antonio. Texas, March 2003, and at the Methods and Applications of Fluorescence Spectroscopy conference (MAFS) in Prague, Czech Republic, August 2003, where these two venues probably host the largest gathering of Fluorescence workers anywhere. Even when we were initially taking e-mail based submissions, contributors were freely commenting on what a useful resource they saw the volume as being. We subsequently shared these comments on the back outside cover of the 2003 volume. As well as individual scientists supporting the 2003 volume, the Fluorescence based Companies also played a key role, where without their financial support, the volume probably would not have the impact it currently has. As such, the Who's Who in Fluorescence 2003 has been a much bigger success than we ever envisaged. Subsequently, we now present the Who's Who in Fluorescence 2004 volume. The new volume features 359 personal entries from 35 countries around the world. In addition we have increased company support, which should enable us to distribute more copies at targeted venues in 2004. 224 pp. Englisch.