springer aug 2004 (372 resultados)

Taschenbuch. Condición: Neu. Neuware - In October 2003 Yang Liwei made history as the first Chinese citizen in space, orbiting the globe 14 times in the Shenzhou 5. The Chinese space program has sometimes been called the last of the secret space programs. Although it is far less secretive now than formerly, fascinating revelations are still being made. Brian Harvey examines the history of the Chinese space program, from it's earliest times to the historic breakthrough of manned flight.

Buch. Condición: Neu. Neuware - As K. Nomizu has justly noted [K. Nomizu, 56], Differential Geometry ever will be initiating newer and newer aspects of the theory of Lie groups. This monograph is devoted to just some such aspects of Lie groups and Lie algebras. New differential geometric problems came into being in connection with so called subsymmetric spaces, subsymmetries, and mirrors introduced in our works dating back to 1957 [L.V. Sabinin, 58a,59a,59b]. In addition, the exploration of mirrors and systems of mirrors is of interest in the case of symmetric spaces. Geometrically, the most rich in content there appeared to be the homogeneous Riemannian spaces with systems of mirrors generated by commuting subsymmetries, in particular, so called tri-symmetric spaces introduced in [L.V. Sabinin, 61b]. As to the concrete geometric problem which needs be solved and which is solved in this monograph, we indicate, for example, the problem of the classification of all tri-symmetric spaces with simple compact groups of motions. Passing from groups and subgroups connected with mirrors and subsymmetries to the corresponding Lie algebras and subalgebras leads to an important new concept of the involutive sum of Lie algebras [L.V. Sabinin, 65]. This concept is directly concerned with unitary symmetry of elementary par- cles (see [L.V. Sabinin, 95,85] and Appendix 1). The first examples of involutive (even iso-involutive) sums appeared in the - ploration of homogeneous Riemannian spaces with and axial symmetry. The consideration of spaces with mirrors [L.V. Sabinin, 59b] again led to iso-involutive sums.

Buch. Condición: Neu. Neuware - There has been a great upsurge in interest in light microscopy in recent years due to the advent of a number of significant advances in microscopy, one of the most important of which is confocal microscopy. Confocal microscopy has now become an important research tool, with a large number of new fluorescent dyes becoming available in the past few years, for probing your pet structure or molecule within fixed or living cell or tissue sampies. Many of the people interested in using confocal microscopy to further their research do not have a background in microscopy or even cell biology and so not only do they find considerable difficulty in obtaining satisfactory results with a confocal microscope, but they may be mislead by how data is being presented. This book is intended to teach you the basic concepts ofmicroscopy, fluorescence, digital imaging and the principles of confocal microscopy so that you may take full advantage ofthe excellent confocal microscopes now available. This book is also an excellent reference source for information related to confocal microscopy for both beginners and the more advanced users. For example, do you need to know the optimal pinhole size for a 63x 1. 4 NA lens Do you need to know the fluorescence emission spectrum of Alexa 568 Access to the wealth of practical information in this book is made easier by using both the detailed index and the extensive glossary.

Buch. Condición: Neu. Neuware - My rst encounter with the world of crime and punishment was more than two decades ago, and it has since undergone vast changes. No one could have foreseen that crime-related problems would occupy such a prominent position in cultural awareness. Crime is on the rise, the public attention devoted to it has increased even more, and its political importance has mushroomed. The major change in the 1990s was perhaps the transformation of crime into a safety issue. Crime is no longer a matter involving offenders, victims, the police and the courts, it involves everyone and any number of agencies and institutions from security companies to the local authorities and from schools to pub and restaurant owners. Crime has become a much larger complex than the judicial system-a complex organized mentally and institutionally around this one concept of safety. In this book I make an effort to get to the bottom of this complex. It is the sequel to my dissertation Crime and Morality-The Moral Signi cance of Criminal Justice in a Postmodern Culture (2000), where I hold that the victim became the essence of crime in Western culture, and that this in turn shaped public morality. In the second half of the twentieth century, a personal morality based on an awareness of our own and other people's vulnerability, i. e. potential victimhood, succeeded the ethics of duty.

Buch. Condición: Neu. Neuware - In the last few years, increasing effort has been devoted to better define the characteristics of tissue damage occurring outside MRI-visible lesions in patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) and, as a consequence, to improve our understanding of the disease pathobiology and of the mechanisms leading to the accumulation of irreversible disability. This book provides an updated review of the results obtained by leading research groups in this field. The potential clinical applications of what has been shown so far, as well as the areas for future research in the study of normal-appearing white and gray matter damage in MS are extensively discussed, making this book a valuable tool for clinical neurologists who are involved in the daily-life care of MS patients and for neuroscientists involved in MS research.

Buch. Condición: Neu. Neuware - The world in which we learn is changing rapidly. That rapidity is driven by a range of influences, conveniently, but inadequately, clustered under the rubric of globalisation. . The context in which globalisation and education is often linked is that of progression, progression realisable through technology, the free movement of finances and the optimum utilisation of human capital. To fuel this progression, formal educational institutions have grown, adapted and changed to provide highly skilled 'outputs' to satisfy demand. Along the way, I will argue, the questioning, learning, reflecting and worthiness of formal education has been sacrificed for instrumentality, compliance and self-interest. This is seen throughout the educational system but this book concentrates on higher education and, more importantly, higher educational institutions that are known as universities. I will try to argue for a distinctive place for universities that does not resist progression but defines it differently from that allowable by the market. I propose a university system where students and faculty are together allowed to 'let learn' who they might become, rather than realise their being as the artefact of economic imperatives. I accept from the very beginning that this might be incompatible with universities being in the world of commerce and industry, in fact, I demand that they are not! However, my text is not a polemic against the capitalist entrapment of education per se but for the development of centres that question whilst engaging with the realities of our existence.

Buch. Condición: Neu. Neuware - Quasars, and the menagerie of other galaxies with 'unusual nuclei', now collectively known as Active Galactic Nuclei or AGN, have, in one form or another, sparked the interest of astronomers for over 60 years. The only known mechanism that can explain the staggering amounts of energy emitted by the innermost regions of these systems is gravitational energy release by matter falling towards a supermassive black hole --- a black hole whose mass is millions to billions of times the mass of our Sun. AGN emit radiation at all wavelengths. X-rays originating at a distance of a few times the event horizon of the black hole are the emissions closest to the black hole that we can detect; thus, X-rays directly reveal the presence of active supermassive black holes. Oftentimes, however, the supermassive black holes that lie at the centers of AGN are cocooned in gas and dust that absorb the emitted low energy X-rays and the optical and ultraviolet light, hiding the black hole from view at these wavelengths. Until recently, this low-energy absorption presented a major obstacle in observational efforts to map the accretion history of the universe. In 1999 and 2000, the launches of the Chandra and XMM-Newton X-ray Observatories finally broke the impasse. The impact of these observatories on X-ray astronomy is similar to the impact that the Hubble Space Telescope had on optical astronomy. The astounding new data from these observatories have enabled astronomers to make enormous advances in their understanding of when accretion occurs.

Buch. Condición: Neu. Neuware - Children live in a world of ever-increasing stress factors, including global terrorism, pervasive exposure to violence, increasing substance use, and economic and social instability. To help them maneuver successfully through such a challenging world to adulthood, community-based resilience interventions are becoming more important than ever. Currently, resilience-based interventions are expanding to examine not only the internal strengths children and adolescents bring to a variety of situations, but also to explore how to leverage community and family resources in the context of a culturally diverse world. Community Planning to Foster Resilience in Children reviews a variety of innovative approaches and actions that can be used at the community level to promote resilience in children and adolescents. Key themes throughout the book focus on how to:Shift the paradigm from illness to strengths and health. Assess and improve environments to minimize harmful influences and increase protection. Adapt to and build on strengths of cultural and linguistic variation in an increasingly diverse society. Move toward collaborative approaches that involve youth, families, schools, and community members who partner at all levels of program conception, implementation, evaluation, and improvement. For researchers, clinicians, and students, Community Planning to Foster Resilience in Children will be an essential tool in their efforts to promote the health and success of youth.

Buch. Condición: Neu. Neuware - Remote Sensing image analysis is mostly done using only spectral information on a pixel by pixel basis. Information captured in neighbouring cells, or information about patterns surrounding the pixel of interest often provides useful supplementary information. This book presents a wide range of innovative and advanced image processing methods for including spatial information, captured by neighbouring pixels in remotely sensed images, to improve image interpretation or image classification. Presented methods include different types of variogram analysis, various methods for texture quantification, smart kernel operators, pattern recognition techniques, image segmentation methods, sub-pixel methods, wavelets and advanced spectral mixture analysis techniques. Apart from explaining the working methods in detail a wide range of applications is presented covering land cover and land use mapping, environmental applications such as heavy metal pollution, urban mapping and geological applications to detect hydrocarbon seeps. The book is meant for professionals, PhD students and graduates who use remote sensing image analysis, image interpretation and image classification in their work related to disciplines such as geography, geology, botany, ecology, forestry, cartography, soil science, engineering and urban and regional planning.

Buch. Condición: Neu. Neuware - Many organizations have an urgent need of mining their multiple databases inherently distributed in branches (distributed data). In particular, as the Web is rapidly becoming an information flood, individuals and organizations can take into account low-cost information and knowledge on the Internet when making decisions. How to efficiently identify quality knowledge from different data sources has become a significant challenge. This challenge has attracted a great many researchers including the au thors who have developed a local pattern analysis, a new strategy for dis covering some kinds of potentially useful patterns that cannot be mined in traditional multi-database mining techniques. Local pattern analysis deliv ers high-performance pattern discovery from multiple databases. There has been considerable progress made on multi-database mining in such areas as hierarchical meta-learning, collective mining, database classification, and pe culiarity discovery. While these techniques continue to be future topics of interest concerning multi-database mining, this book focuses on these inter esting issues under the framework of local pattern analysis. The book is intended for researchers and students in data mining, dis tributed data analysis, machine learning, and anyone else who is interested in multi-database mining. It is also appropriate for use as a text supplement for broader courses that might also involve knowledge discovery in databases and data mining.

Buch. Condición: Neu. Neuware - Magnetic recording is expected to become core technology in a multi-billion dollar industry in the in the very near future. Some of the most critical discoveries regarding perpendicular write and playback heads and perpendicular media were made only during the last several years as a result of extensive and intensive research in both academia and industry in their fierce race to extend the superparamagnetic limit in the magnetic recording media. These discoveries appear to be critical for implementing perpendicular magnetic recording into an actual disk drive.This book addresses all the open questions and issues which need to be resolved before perpendicular recording can finally be implemented successfully, and is the first monograph in many years to address this subject.This book is intended for graduate students, young engineers and even senior and more experienced researchers in this field who need to acquire adequate knowledge of the physics of perpendicular magnetic recording in order to further develop the field of perpendicular recording.

Taschenbuch. Condición: Neu. Neuware - I was a Medical Student in 1966 when the Millis Report on the training of the generalist physician was published,de ning the concept of primary care. According to the Report, the primary provider has four major responsib- ities or roles. The rst role is that of initial contact care of the undiffer- tiated patient. The second is to provide comprehensive care based on the belief that the primary provider should be able to manage the overwhe- ing majority of problems with which patients present. Equally important is the third role-continuity and coordination of care within the health care system. Finally,the primary provider is responsible for demonstrating le- ership in the community. This Report's description of a primary provider seems as relevant today as it was when it was written. In 1994,the Institute of Medicine's assessment of primary care added the responsibility of family and community integration of care to the Millis Report description. Without question there are many challenges to a contemporary imp- mentation of this comprehensive description of primary care, beginning with the level of individual patients who so often suffer from complex pr- lems, such as mental disorders and obesity. Treating these conditions in a brief primary care visit is dif cult. At the level of the larger system, re- bursement is often inadequate and can represent policies that are uns- portive of primary care, such as those that compromise payment for preventive services that help patients to quit smoking or lose weight.; Despite a well publicized shift away from the traditional family structure, the family remains the most basic relational unit in society and the physician's most potent ally. A family orientation in health care can provide a wider understanding of illness and broader range of solutions than the classic biomedical model. Family-Oriented Primary Care: A Manual for Medical Providers offers practical guidance for the physician who would like to take greater advantage of this resource. The result is a readable guide, structured around step by step protocols that are vividly illustrated with case studies drawn from the authors' extensive collaboration at the University of Rochester School of Medicine. The preliminary chapters give a common sense grounding to family systems theory, family research, and family assessment. The family conference is carefully examined with step-by-step instructions on when and how to call and conduct one. The majority of the book offers practical guidelines for family oriented approaches to transitional events in the life cycle, such as pregnancy or nursing home placement, as well as specific medical problems, such as chronic illness and somatization of the family systems approach in the office or in the hospital. This manual is an indispensable and unique resource for all primary care physicians and residents as well as nurses, family therapists, social workers and other members of the 'helping professions.'.

Buch. Condición: Neu. Neuware - During the last 20 years interest in high-resolution x-ray diffractometry and reflectivity has grown as a result of the development of the semiconductor industry and the increasing interest in material research of thin layers of magnetic, organic, and other materials. For example, optoelectronics requires a subsequent epitaxy of thin layers of different semiconductor materials. Here, the individuallayer thicknesses are scaled down to a few atomic layers in order to exploit quantum effects. For reasons of electronic and optical confinement, these thin layers are embedded within much thicker cladding layers or stacks of multilayers of slightly different chemical composition. It is evident that the interface quality of those quantum weHs is quite important for the function of devices. Thin metallic layers often show magnetic properties which do not ap pear for thick layers or in bulk material. The investigation of the mutual interaction of magnetic and non-magnetic layers leads to the discovery of colossal magnetoresistance, for example. This property is strongly related to the thickness and interface roughness of covered layers.

Taschenbuch. Condición: Neu. Neuware - Most recent publications on spin-related phenomena focus on technological aspects of spin-dependent transport, with emphasis on the specific needs of spintronics. The present publication targets rather fundamental problems related to the physics of spin in solids, such as: (1) manifestation of spin and orbital polarization in spectroscopy, including valence and X-ray photoemission, magneto-optics, low-energy electron scattering on the surface; (2) application of new methods for interpretation and determination of magnetic low-lying excitations in the bulk and on the surface; (3) recent progress in evaluation of different type of magnetic forces including spin-orbit and exchange interaction, with subsequent determination of anisotropy and spin-ordering structure; (4) general problems of spin-dependent transport in semiconductors and metals, such as current-caused torque effect on spins at interfaces and spin injection in quantum dot systems; (5) problems in understanding the spin-dependent trends in unconventional superconductors; (6) many-body problems in solid state physics and recent progress in evaluation of self-energy effects; (7) fabrication of new magnetic materials with pre-programmed properties based on assembly from nano-particles, etc.

Buch. Condición: Neu. Neuware - Every two years since 1989, an international colloquium on cognitive science is held in Donostia - San Sebastian, attracting the most important researchers in that field. This volume is a collection of the invited papers to the Sixth International Colloquium on Cognitive Science (ICCS-99), written from a multidisciplinary, cognitive perspective, and addressing various essential topics such as self-knowledge, intention, consciousness, language use, learning and discourse. This collection reflects not only the various interdisciplinary origins and standpoints of the participating researchers, but also the richness, fruitfulness, and exciting state of research in the field of cognitive science today. A must-read for anyone interested in philosophy, linguistics, psychology, and computer science, and in the perception of these topics from the perspective of cognitive science.

Buch. Condición: Neu. Neuware - The auditory system has a remarkable ability to adjust to an ever-changing environment. The six review chapters that comprise Plasticity of the Central Auditory System cover a spectrum of issues concerning this ability to adapt, defined by the widely applicable term 'plasticity'. With chapters focusing on the development of the cochlear nucleus, the mammalian superior olivary complex, plasticity in binaural hearing, plasticity in the auditory cortex, neural plasticity in bird songs, and plasticity in the insect auditory system, this volume represents much of the most current research in this field. The volume is thorough enough to stand alone, but is closely related a previous SHAR volume, Development of the Auditory System (Volume 9) by Rubel, Popper, and Fay. The book fully addresses the difficulties, challenges, and complexities of this topic as it applies to the auditory development of a wide variety of species.

Buch. Condición: Neu. Neuware - In contrast to the prevailing tradition in epistemology, the focus in this book is on low-level inferences, i.e., those inferences that we are usually not consciously aware of and that we share with the cat nearby which infers that the bird which she sees picking grains from the dirt, is able to fly. Presumably, such inferences are not generated by explicit logical reasoning, but logical methods can be used to describe and analyze such inferences. Part 1 gives a purely system-theoretic explication of belief and inference. Part 2 adds a reliabilist theory of justification for inference, with a qualitative notion of reliability being employed. Part 3 recalls and extends various systems of deductive and nonmonotonic logic and thereby explains the semantics of absolute and high reliability. In Part 4 it is proven that qualitative neural networks are able to draw justified deductive and nonmonotonic inferences on the basis of distributed representations. This is derived from a soundness/completeness theorem with regard to cognitive semantics of nonmonotonic reasoning. The appendix extends the theory both logically and ontologically, and relates it to A. Goldman's reliability account of justified belief.

Buch. Condición: Neu. Neuware - This monograph is planned to provide the application of the soliton theory to solve certain practical problems selected from the fields of solid mechanics, fluid mechanics and biomechanics. The work is based mainly on the authors' research carried out at their home institutes, and on some specified, significant results existing in the published literature. The methodology to study a given evolution equation is to seek the waves of permanent form, to test whether it possesses any symmetry properties, and whether it is stable and solitonic in nature. Students of physics, applied mathematics, and engineering are usually exposed to various branches of nonlinear mechanics, especially to the soliton theory. The soliton is regarded as an entity, a quasi-particle, which conserves its character and interacts with the surroundings and other solitons as a particle. It is related to a strange phenomenon, which consists in the propagation of certain waves without attenuation in dissipative media. This phenomenon has been known for about 200 years (it was described, for example, by the Joule Verne's novel Les histoires de Jean Marie Cabidoulin, Éd. Hetzel), but its detailed quantitative description became possible only in the last 30 years due to the exceptional development of computers. The discovery of the physical soliton is attributed to John Scott Russell. In 1834, Russell was observing a boat being drawn along a narrow channel by a pair of horses.

Buch. Condición: Neu. Neuware - The book is the first English translation of John Wallis's Arithmetica Infinitorum (1656), a key text on the seventeenth-century development of the calculus. Accompanied with annotations and an introductory essay, the translation makes Wallis's work fully available for the first time to modern readers. It shows how Wallis drew on some of the most important new ideas from the preceding twenty years, and took them forward to lay the foundations on which Newton was to build. Above all, the book displays the crucial mid-seventeenth-century shift from geometry to arithmetic and algebra as the primary language of mathematics.

Buch. Condición: Neu. Neuware - Applied Geography, A World Perspective reviews progress in applied geography in different regions of the world. It does this through the eyes of an international panel of highly regarded academic practitioners. The book offers new prospects on the use of established approaches and explores exciting new territories. Together, the contributors provide a comprehensive picture of applied geography today. This book is of relevance to faculty and graduate students in the fields of geography, planning, public policy, regional science and other related social and behavioural sciences.

Buch. Condición: Neu. Neuware - Biological nitrogen fixation provides more than 50% of the total annual input of the essential element nitrogen to world agriculture. Thus, it is of immense agronomic importance and critical to food supplies, particularly in developing countries. This book, with chapters authored by internationally renowned experts, provides a comprehensive and detailed account of the fascinating history of the process - including the surprising discoveries of molybdenum-independent nitrogenases and superoxide-dependent nitrogenase; a review of Man's attempts to emulate the biological process - most successfully with the commercially dominant Haber-Bosch process; and the current state of the understanding art with respect to the enzymes - called nitrogenases - responsible for biological nitrogen fixation. The initial chapters use a historical approach to the biological and industrial processes, followed by an overview of assay methodologies. The next set of chapters focuses on the classical enzyme, the molybdenum nitrogenase, and details its biosynthesis, structure, composition, and mechanism of action as well as detailing both how variants of its two component proteins are constructed by recombinant DNA technology and how computational techniques are being applied. The sophisticated chemical modelling of the metal-containing clusters in the enzyme is reviewed next, followed by a description of the two molybdenum-independent nitrogenases - first, the vanadium-containing enzyme and then the iron-only nitrogenase - together with some thoughts as to why they exist! Then follows an up-to-date treatment of the clearly 'non-classical' properties of the superoxide-dependent nitrogenase, which more closely resembles molybdenum-containing hydroxylases and related enzymes, like nitrate reductase, that it does the other nitrogenases. Each chapter contains an extensive list of references. This book is the self-contained first volume of a comprehensive seven-volumeseries. No other available work provides the up-to-date and in-depth coverage of this series and this volume. This book is intended to serve as an indispensable reference work for all scientists working in this area, including agriculture and the closely related metals-in-biology area; to assist students to enter this challenging area of research; and to provide science administrators easy access to vital relevant information.

Buch. Condición: Neu. Neuware - Our work began where the greatest classical morphologists left off; their best work was the start of ours. As our work progressed, the rigidity of basic, previous embryological principles was broken down as scientific knowledge advanced. At the same time, the molecular, biological characterization of the cell surface receptor systems progressed enormously with the invention of numerous monoclonal antibodies. Thus, thymology became once again very important because the thymus is the first and central organ of the human immunological system. Then, the question of immuno-neuroendocrine regulation arose and has only been partially answered. Our book seeks to explore what has not been explored. The topic of thymic epithelial cells is a unique one and has never been explored in any previous book as it is explored in this one.Only a handful of great thymologists remain in the world today, especially after the great loss the medical community suffered with the passing of Dr. Good, the list includes but is not limited to: Dr. Ritter and Dr. Kendall in England, Dr. Savino in Brazil, Dr. Dardenne in France, Dr. von Gaudecker in Germany, a few others in Belgium and Holland, and it is our hope that Dr. Bodey is among them. Nonetheless, a book on the thymus has not been written in the last five years and a book such as this one has never been. This book is based on a 30-year period of research and includes references from a broad range of sources spanning the globe and all sources, even those that were the beginning of thymic research. The book, thus, is uniquely well rounded, more so that previous works.

Buch. Condición: Neu. Neuware - Have you ever wondered where the safety factors come from Why is it that deterministic analysis has reached a very sophisticated level, but in the end empirical factors are still needed Is there a way to select them, rather than assigning them arbitrarily as is often done This book clearly shows that safety factors are closely related with the reliability of structures, giving yet another demonstration of Albert Einstein's maxim that 'It is incomprehensible that Nature is comprehensible'. The book shows that the safety factors are much more comprehensible if they are seen in a probabilistic context. Several definitions of the safety factors are given, analytical results on insightful numbers are presented, nonprobabilistic safety factors are shown, as well as their estimates derived by the inequalities of Bienayme, Markov, Chebushev and Camp-Meidell. A special chapter is devoted to important contributions by Japanese experts. This volume will help to critically re-think the issue of safety factors, which can create a false feeling of security. The deterministic paradigm can be enhanced by incorporating probabilistic concepts wisely where they are needed without treating all variables as probabilistic ones. The book shows that there is a need of their integration rather than separation. This book is intended for engineers, graduate students, lecturers and researchers.

Buch. Condición: Neu. Neuware - Mobility is perhaps the most important market and technological trend within information and communication technology. With the advent of new mobile infrastructures providing higher bandwidth and constant connection to the network from virtually everywhere, the way people use information resources is predicted to be radically transformed. Over the last years, a new breed of information systems, referred to as mCommerce systems or mobile information systems, has appeared to address this emerging situation. In 2000, the IFIP 8.1 WG decided to look into establishing a task group to look closer at this area, and the idea was adopted and extended by IFIP TC8 the following year. After the arrangement of several workshop, this task group has been the driving force behind the arrangement of MOBIS (IFIP TC 8 Working Conference on Mobile Information systems) held in Oslo, Norway, 15-17 September 2004. The objective of the working conference was to provide a forum for researchers and practitioners interested in planning, analysis, design, construction, modification, implementation, utilization, evaluation, and management of mobile information systems to meet, and exchange research ideas and results. Specifically, we tried to use the working conference to - Clarify differences and similarities between the development of mobile vs. more traditional information systems - Investigate organizational impact of mobile information systems - Investigate mobile commerce applications combined with the advantages of mobile communications technologies X Mobile Information Systems - Evaluate existing and newly developed approaches for analysis, design, implementation, and evolution of mobile information systems.

Buch. Condición: Neu. Neuware - Portal hypertension is the most important complication of a great variety of both acute and chronic liver diseases. Nevertheless, hepatic cirrhosis is the most frequent cause of portal hypertension. Gastrointestinal bleeding due to rupture of oesophageal varices is, without doubt, the most severe complication of portal hypertension. At present, great advances are being made in the pathophysiology and in the development of new therapeutic tools for controlling and preventing this severe clinical event.This book contains the papers presented and discussed during the Symposium on 'Portal Hypertension in the 21st Century', held in Montréal, Canada, in April 2004, and sponsored by Axcan Pharma Inc. and NicOx S.A. There are eight sections covering basic mechanisms, new drugs, prevention and current treatment of variceal bleeding, prevention of recurrent bleeding and hepatic hemodynamic monitoring.An international faculty of authors have contributed chapters at an outstanding scientific level which will be vital reading for scientists and clinicians alike.

Buch. Condición: Neu. Neuware - Web caching and content delivery technologies provide the infrastructure on which systems are built for the scalable distribution of information. This proceedings of the eighth annual workshop, captures a cross-section of the latest issues and techniques of interest to network architects and researchers in large-scale content delivery. Topics covered include the distribution of streaming multimedia, edge caching and computation, multicast, delivery of dynamic content, enterprise content delivery, streaming proxies and servers, content transcoding, replication and caching strategies, peer-to-peer content delivery, and Web prefetching. Web Content Caching and Distribution encompasses all areas relating to the intersection of storage and networking for Internet content services. The book is divided into eight parts: mobility, applications, architectures, multimedia, customization, peer-to-peer, performance and measurement, and delta encoding.

Buch. Condición: Neu. Neuware - In the first, 1986, edition of this book, inverse problems in vibration were interpreted strictly: problems concerning the reconstruction of a unique, undamped vibrating system, of a specified type, from specified vibratory behaviour, particularly specified natural frequencies and/or natural mode shapes. In this new edition the scope of the book has been widened to include topics such as isospectral systems- families of systems which all exhibit some specified behaviour; applications of the concept of Toda flow; new, non-classical approaches to inverse Sturm-Liouville problems; qualitative properties of the modes of some finite element models; damage identification.With its emphasis on analysis, on qualitative results, rather than on computation, the book will appeal to researchers in vibration theory, matrix analysis, differential and integral equations, matrix analysis, non-destructive testing, modal analysis, vibration isolation, etc. 'This book is a necessary addition to the library of engineers and mathematicians working in vibration theory.' Mathematical Reviews.

Buch. Condición: Neu. Neuware - Environmentally compatible polymers (green polymers) are the key to sustainable developments for our rich and convenient life. In order to develop green polymers, it is essential to understand that nature constructs a variety of materials that can be used. Plant materials such as cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin are the largest organic resources. Thermal Properties of Green Polymers and Biocomposites is unique in that it introduces thermal analysis applicable to green polymers and provides fundamental thermal properties of cellulose, polysaccharides and lignin. The book includes over 370 figures concerning thermal properties of green polymers with detailed experimental conditions. It also introduces newly patented environmentally compatible green polymers. Thermal properties provided include: thermogravimetry (TG), differential thermal analysis (DTA), differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), thermomechanometry (TMA) and dynamic mechanical analysis (DMA). This book covers two domains: -Fundamentals of thermal properties of cellulose, polysaccharides and lignin (Chapters 3 to 5); -Developments of new biocompatible polymers derived from plant materials (Chapters 6 to 8). This book is aimed at advanced users and specialists who are interested in green polymers and who utilize thermal analyses for the above polymers, especially in research laboratories, both academic and industrial.

Buch. Condición: Neu. Neuware - The IUTAM Symposium on Evolutionary Methods in Mechanics was held in Cracow, Poland, September 24-27, 2002. The site of the S- posium was Cracow University of Technology. The Symposium was - tended by 50 persons from 18 countries. In addition, several Polish students, Ph. D. students and research associates participated in the meeting. The Symposium provided an excellent opportunity for scholars of - chanics, computer sciences and arti cial intelligence to interact and - change their points of view on the advanced computational and appli- tion aspects of the evolutionary methods in analysis and design of - chanical systems. Recently evolutionary methods have become the most e ective tools for solving speci c kinds of problems in mechanics, es- cially in structural and multidisciplinary optimization. The meeting was devotedtoboththeoreticalandpracticaldevelopmentsofcomputational mechanics methods drawing their inspiration from nature with part- ular emphasis on evolutionary models of computation such as genetic algorithms, evolutionary strategies, classi er systems, evolutionary p- gramming and other evolutionary computation techniques in mechanics. The objective of the Symposium was to provide an international forum forfacilitatingtheexchangeofinformationamongresearchersinvolvedin computational intelligence methods based on evolutionary nature. The Symposium put special emphasis on evolutionary optimization in va- ous eldsof mechanics. Thesubject of evolutionary optimization has- cently experienced a remarkable growth. New concepts, approaches and applicationsarebeing continually developed and exploited to provide- cient tools for solving a variety of optimization problems in mechanics.

Buch. Condición: Neu. Neuware - The Indian Society of Genetics and Plant Breeding was established in 1941 in recognition of the growing contribution of improved crop varieties to the country's agriculture. Scientific plant breeding had started inIndia soon after the rediscovery of Mendel's laws of heredity. The Indian Agricultural Research Institute set up in 1905 and a number of Agricultural Colleges in different parts of the country carried out some of the earliest work mostly inthe form of pure-line selections. In subsequent years, hybridization programmes in crops like wheat, rice, oilseeds, grain legumes, sugarcane and cotton yielded a large number of improved cultivars with significantly higher yields. A turning point came in the 1960s with the development of hybrids in several crops including inter-specific hybrids in cotton. And when new germplasm with dwarfing genes became available in wheat and rice from CIMMYT and IRRI, respectively,Indian plant breeders quickly incorporated these genes into the genetic background of the country's widely grown varieties with excellent grain quality and other desirable traits. This was to mark the beginning of modem agriculture in India as more and more varieties were developed, characterized by a high harvest index and response to modem farm inputs like the inorganic fertilizers . India's green revolution which has led to major surpluses offood grains and othercommodities like sugar and cotton has been made possible by the work of one of the largest groups of plant breeders working in a coordinated network.