springer springer jul 2008 (580 resultados)

Taschenbuch. Condición: Neu. Neuware -The Funk Era and Beyond is the first scholarly collection to discuss the significance of funk music in America. Contributors employ a multitude of methodologies to examine this unique musical genre's relationship to African American culture and to music, literature, and visual art as a whole. 262 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condición: Neu. Neuware - Conceptualization and measurement of poverty have traditionally relied on purely economic approaches, with income or consumption as the only indicator. Multidimensional approaches have increasingly been used to understand poverty, but have yet to be fully operationalized. This book uses factor analysis and structural equations modelling to develop a multidimensional framework that integrates capability and social inclusion as additional poverty indicators. The empirical relevance of this methodological contribution is demonstrated through its application in the United States and Nepal.The proposed approach not only helps to identify different categories of the poor, but also to more accurately target resources and policies of poverty alleviation. The book will therefore be an important reference for professionals in development agencies as well as for poverty and policy researchers.

Buch. Condición: Neu. Neuware - Sponsored by the American Real Estate Society (ARES), Indigenous Peoples and Real Estate Valuation addresses a wide variety of timely issues relating to property ownership, rights, and use, including: ancestral burial, historical record of occupancy, treaty implementation problems, eminent domain, the effects of large governmental change, financing projects under formal and informal title or deed document systems, exclusive ownership vs. non-exclusive use rights, public land ownership, tribal or family land claims, insurgency and war, legal systems of ownership, prior government expropriation of lands, moral obligation to indigenous peoples, colonial occupation, and common land leases. These issues can also be broadly grouped into topics, such as conflict between indigenous and western property rights, communal land ownership, land transfer by force, legacy issues related to past colonization and apartheid, and metaphysical/indigenous land value.

Taschenbuch. Condición: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -Barrie Jones addresses the question 'are we alone ', which is one of the most frequently asked questions by scientists and non-scientists alike. In The Search for Life Continued, this question is addressed scientifically, and the author is not afraid to include speculation. Indeed, the author believes beyond reasonable doubt that we are not alone and this belief is based firmly on frontier science of the most imaginative kind.Theauthor concentrates on planetary systems beyond our own but starts with life on Earth, which is the only life we know to exist, and which provides guidance on how best to search for life elsewhere. Planets are the most likely abode of life and so we start the quest with the search for planets beyond the Solar System - exoplanets. The methods of searching are outlined and the nature ofhundreds ofexoplanetary systems so far discovered described. In the near future we expect to discover habitable Earth-like planets. But are they actually inhabited How could we tell All will be revealed.This full color book is written for everybody who wants to stay inclose contactwith the latest on possible life on other planets. 277 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condición: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -Artificial systems that think and behave intelligently are one of the most exciting and challenging goals of Artificial Intelligence. Action Programming is the art and science of devising high-level control strategies for autonomous systems which employ a mental model of their environment and which reason about their actions as a means to achieve their goals. Applications of this programming paradigm include autonomous software agents, mobile robots with high-level reasoning capabilities, and General Game Playing. These lecture notes give an in-depth introduction to the current state-of-the-art in action programming. The main topics are knowledge representation for actions, procedural action programming, planning, agent logic programs, and reactive, behavior-based agents. The only prerequisite for understanding the material in these lecture notes is some general programming experience and basic knowledge of classical first-order logic. Table of Contents: Introduction / Mathematical Preliminaries / Procedural Action Programs / Action Programs and Planning / Declarative Action Programs / Reactive Action Programs / Suggested Further Reading 100 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condición: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -This book provides an introduction to narrowband array signal processing, classical and subspace-based direction of arrival (DOA) estimation with an extensive discussion on adaptive direction of arrival algorithms. The book begins with a presentation of the basic theory, equations, and data models of narrowband arrays. It then discusses basic beamforming methods and describes how they relate to DOA estimation. Several of the most common classical and subspace-based direction of arrival methods are discussed. The book concludes with an introduction to subspace tracking and shows how subspace tracking algorithms can be used to form an adaptive DOA estimator. Simulation software and additional bibliography are given at the end of the book.Table of Contents: Introduction / Background on Array Processing / Nonadaptive Direction of Arrival Estimation / Adaptive Direction of Arrival Estimation / Appendix 84 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condición: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -This book is about relations between three different areas of mathematics and theoretical computer science: combinatorial group theory, cryptography, and complexity theory. It is explored how non-commutative (infinite) groups, which are typically studied in combinatorial group theory, can be used in public key cryptography. It is also shown that there is a remarkable feedback from cryptography to combinatorial group theory because some of the problems motivated by cryptography appear to be new to group theory, and they open many interesting research avenues within group theory.Then, complexity theory, notably generic-case complexity of algorithms, is employed for cryptanalysis of various cryptographic protocols based on infinite groups, and the ideas and machinery from the theory of generic-case complexity are used to study asymptotically dominant properties of some infinite groups that have been applied in public key cryptography so far. Its elementary exposition makes the book accessible to graduate as well as undergraduate students in mathematics or computer science. 183 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condición: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -Representations are at the heart of artificial intelligence (AI). This book is devoted to the problem of representation discovery: how can an intelligent system construct representations from its experience Representation discovery re-parameterizes the state space - prior to the application of information retrieval, machine learning, or optimization techniques - facilitating later inference processes by constructing new task-specific bases adapted to the state space geometry. This book presents a general approach to representation discovery using the framework of harmonic analysis, in particular Fourier and wavelet analysis. Biometric compression methods, the compact disc, the computerized axial tomography (CAT) scanner in medicine, JPEG compression, and spectral analysis of time-series data are among the many applications of classical Fourier and wavelet analysis. A central goal of this book is to show that these analytical tools can be generalized from their usual setting in (infinite-dimensional) Euclidean spaces to discrete (finite-dimensional) spaces typically studied in many subfields of AI. Generalizing harmonic analysis to discrete spaces poses many challenges: a discrete representation of the space must be adaptively acquired; basis functions are not pre-defined, but rather must be constructed. Algorithms for efficiently computing and representing bases require dealing with the curse of dimensionality. However, the benefits can outweigh the costs, since the extracted basis functions outperform parametric bases as they often reflect the irregular shape of a particular state space. Case studies from computer graphics, information retrieval, machine learning, and state space planning are used to illustrate the benefits of the proposed framework, and the challenges that remain to be addressed. Representation discovery is an actively developing field, and the author hopes this book will encourage other researchers to explore this exciting area of research. Table of Contents: Overview / Vector Spaces / Fourier Bases on Graphs / Multiscale Bases on Graphs / Scaling to Large Spaces / Case Study: State-Space Planning / Case Study: Computer Graphics / Case Study: Natural Language / Future Directions 160 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condición: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -As new displays and cameras offer enhanced color capabilities, there is a need to extend the precision of digital content. High Dynamic Range (HDR) imaging encodes images and video with higher than normal 8 bit-per-color-channel precision, enabling representation of the complete color gamut and the full visible range of luminance.However, to realize transition from the traditional toHDRimaging, it is necessary to develop imaging algorithms that work with the high-precision data. Tomake such algorithms effective and feasible in practice, it is necessary to take advantage of the limitations of the human visual system by aligning the data shortcomings to those of the human eye, thus limiting storage and processing precision. Therefore, human visual perception is the key component of the solutions we discuss in this book.This book presents a complete pipeline forHDR image and video processing fromacquisition, through compression and quality evaluation, to display. At the HDR image and video acquisition stage specialized HDR sensors or multi-exposure techniques suitable for traditional cameras are discussed. Then, we present a practical solution for pixel values calibration in terms of photometric or radiometric quantities, which are required in some technically oriented applications. Also, we cover the problem of efficient image and video compression and encoding either for storage or transmission purposes, including the aspect of backward compatibility with existing formats. Finally, we review existing HDR display technologies and the associated problems of image contrast and brightness adjustment. For this purpose tone mapping is employed to accommodate HDR content to LDR devices. Conversely, the so-called inverse tone mapping is required to upgrade LDR content for displaying on HDR devices. We overview HDR-enabled image and video quality metrics, which are needed to verify algorithms at all stages of the pipeline. Additionally, we cover successful examples of the HDR technology applications, in particular, in computer graphics and computer vision.The goal of this book is to present all discussed components of the HDR pipeline with the main focus on video. For some pipeline stages HDR video solutions are either not well established or do not exist at all, in which case we describe techniques for single HDR images. In such cases we attempt to select the techniques, which can be extended into temporal domain. Whenever needed, relevant background information on human perception is given, which enables better understanding of the design choices behind the discussed algorithms and HDR equipment.Table of Contents: Introduction / Representation of an HDR Image / HDR Image and Video Acquisition / HDR Image Quality / HDR Image, Video, and Texture Compression / Tone Reproduction / HDR Display Devices / LDR2HDR: Recovering Dynamic Range in Legacy Content / HDRI in Computer Graphics / Software 172 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condición: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -Interactive display and visualization of large geometric and textured models is becoming a fundamental capability. There are numerous application areas, including games, movies, CAD, virtual prototyping, and scientific visualization. One of observations about geometric models used in interactive applications is that their model complexity continues to increase because of fundamental advances in 3D modeling, simulation, and data capture technologies.As computing power increases, users take advantage of the algorithmic advances and generate even more complex models and data sets. Therefore, there are many cases where we are required to visualize massive models that consist of hundreds of millions of triangles and, even, billions of triangles. However, interactive visualization and handling of such massive models still remains a challenge in computer graphics and visualization. In this monograph we discuss various techniques that enable interactive visualization of massive models.These techniques include visibility computation, simplification, levels-of-detail, and cache-coherent data management.We believe that the combinations of these techniques can make it possible to interactively visualize massive models in commodity hardware.Table of Contents: Introduction / Visibility / Simplification and Levels of Detail / Alternative Representations / Cache-Coherent Data Management / Conclusions / Bibliography 124 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condición: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -Many products are designed with aesthetic sculptured surfaces to enhance their appearance, an important factor in customer satisfaction, especially for automotive and consumer electronics products. In other cases, products have sculptured surfaces to meet functional requirements. Functional surfaces interact with the environment or with other surfaces. Because of this, functional surfaces can also be called dynamic surfaces. Functional surfaces do not possess the property to slide over itself, which causes significant complexity in machining of sculptured surfaces. The application of multiaxis numerically controlled (NC) machines is the only way for an efficient machining of sculptured surfaces. Reduction of machining time is a critical issue when machining sculptured surfaces on multiaxis NC machines. To reduce the machining cost of a sculptured surface, the machining time must be as short as possible.Table of Contents: Introduction / Analytical Representation of Scupltured Surfaces / Kinematics of Sculptured-Surface Machining / Analytical Description of the Geometry of Contact of the Sculptured Surface and of the Generating Surface of the Form-Cutting Tool / Form-Cutting Tools of Optimal Design / Conditions of Proper Sculptured-Surface Generation / Predicted Accuracy of the Machined Sculptured Surface / Optimal Sculptured-Surface Machining 124 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condición: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -A comprehensive, highly readable account of complex, technical, political and human endeavor and a worthy successor to Creating the International Space Station (Springer Praxis, January 2002) by David Harland and John Catchpole. This volume details for the first time the construction and occupation of the International Space Station from 2002 through to 2008, when it should reach American 'Core Complete'. 416 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condición: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -This remarkable book is a unique insight into the people involved in the development of the Salyut space station and the crews assigned to operate it. It describes the rotation between the crews, analyses the decision to send the back-up crew on Soyuz 11 and recounts the intrigues and difficult relationships between all the personalities involved - politicians, CKBEM managers, designers, generals and cosmonauts. Biographies of the Soyuz 11 cosmonauts are published for the first time in English and the longest manned space mission of the time is described before Grujica Ivanovich gives a unique summary of the most tragic day in the Soviet/Russian manned space program. An investigation into the cause of the tragic deaths of the Soyuz 11 cosmonauts precedes a description of the post-Salyut era, showing how the legacy of the first space station has survived for decades. The first two chapters provide the history of the first Soviet space station projects Almaz, Soyuz-R, MKS and DOS from 1964 to1970 and cover the selection of DOS-1 crews in 1971, their training and crew rotations. Chapter 3 launches the Salyut space station with its first crew to occupy the first space station, while Chapter 4 portrays the drama of the Soyuz 10 mission in April 1971, which failed to dock with Salyut due to a broken docking probe element, culminating a dramatic night return to the Earth. The following two chapters describe the State Commission's decision to replace the original crew of Soyuz 11 two days before the launch in June 1971 and introduce cosmonauts Dobrovolysky, Volkov and Patcayev. The launch of Soyuz 11, its docking with Salyut and the first days aboard the space station are described in Chapter 7 and the fire which almost curtailed the mission and led to Dobrovolsky and Volkov's deteriorating relationship is then covered. The final stages of the mission, including the problems with the hatch before Soyuz 11 separated from the Salyut space station, areexplained before the author details the separation of the orbital and service modules and the tragic mistake made by the cosmonauts. Chapter 10 describes the normal landing of Soyuz 11, the discovery of and attempts to revive the dead cosmonauts.and includes the first interview with one of the rescuers. The author then demonstrates how detailed analysis found that, after separation from the orbital module, the internal pressure in the descent module dropped from 920mm to zero in 112 seconds due to the premature opening of one of the valves. Without spacesuits, the cosmonauts had only 15-20 seconds to close the valve and save their lives. An attempt by Dobrovolsky sadly failed. Further investigation identified numerous problems which contributed to the tragedy, including the valve technology, leaking of personal protection equipment, problems with the hatch and omissions in crew training, as well as confusion between the cosmonauts. The last chapters describe the Post-Salyut era. After three single modular stations, in 1986 the USSR launched the base module of the third generation space station Mir, which has six docking probes. In the following years, Mir grew rapidly and was extended with five additional scientific modules to become a true space outpost continually occupied by humans, the dream of space pioneers. The service module Zvezda, a modified Salyut/DOS-1, currently serves as a core for the International Space Station. The book ends with memories of all those affected by the DOS program and the tragedy of the heroic Soyuz 11 crew and looks forward to a continuation of the historic mission of Salyut. 456 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condición: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -In this new textbook, acclaimed author John Stillwell presents a lucid introduction to Lie theory suitable for junior and senior level undergraduates. In order to achieve this, he focuses on the so-called 'classical groups'' that capture the symmetries of real, complex, and quaternion spaces. These symmetry groups may be represented by matrices, which allows them to be studied by elementary methods from calculus and linear algebra.This naive approach to Lie theory is originally due to von Neumann, and it is now possible to streamline it by using standard results of undergraduate mathematics. To compensate for the limitations of the naive approach, end of chapter discussions introduce important results beyond those proved in the book, as part of an informal sketch of Lie theory and its history.John Stillwell is Professor of Mathematics at the University of San Francisco. He is the author of several highly regarded books published by Springer, including The Four Pillars of Geometry (2005), Elements of Number Theory (2003), Mathematics and Its History (Second Edition, 2002), Numbers and Geometry (1998) and Elements of Algebra (1994). 232 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condición: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -How important is the notion of community to skilled social work Thisbook explores how the concept relates to policy, theory and professional practice. With analysis of contemporary social problems throughout a variety of community settings, this book demonstrates how important community-based approaches are to all social workers today. Englisch.

Buch. Condición: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 1st IFIP Entertainment Computing Symposium held in Milan, Italy on September 7-10, 2008.The IFIP series publishes state-of-the-art results in the sciences and technologies of information and communication. The scope of the series includes: foundations of computer science; software theory and practice; education; computer applications in technology; communication systems; systems modeling and optimization; information systems; computers and society; computer systems technology; security and protection in information processing systems; artificial intelligence; and human-computer interaction. Proceedings and post-proceedings of refereed international conferences in computer science and interdisciplinary fields are featured. These results often precede journal publication and represent the most current research. The principal aim of the IFIP series is to encourage education and the dissemination and exchange of information about all aspects of computing. 138 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condición: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -This book explores the spiritual dimensions (political, racial, sexual, and violent) of Malcolm X's journey from Christianity to Islam, Julius Lester's journey from Christianity to Judaism, and Jan Willis's journey from Christianity to Buddhism. 228 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condición: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -The 37th annual edition of the leading guide to taxation in Britain. This practical and user-friendly guide is a bestseller with students, professionals, accountants and private individuals, explaining in simple terms how the UK tax system works and how best to minimise tax liabilities 418 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condición: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -Harold Wilhite makes an important new contribution to the interpretation of changing consumption in India, using an ethnographic approach to interrogate the rapid growth in the consumption of household durables, beauty and cleanliness products, exploring how the engagement of local practices with the globalizing economy result in change. 205 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condición: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -The food and beverage industry is vital to the global economy, but in a society increasingly concerned with sustainable development, it is facing new challenges. This book presents the results of a research project focused on the management challenges that sustainable development presents to presents to food and beverage companies. 254 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condición: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -As India's attempts to carve out a foreign policy that is in sync with the irrising international stature,they are having to deal with a range of issues that are controversial but central to the future of an Indian global strategy. This book examines these issues and deduces major trends in Indian foreign policy. 202 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condición: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -One path towards development taken by a number of small jurisdictions is the establishment of an offshore financial centre. This text analyses the actual economic contribution for several small Caribbean economies and the impact to continued operation arising from an international initiative for the exchange of taxpayer information. 198 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condición: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -Following a group of people as they make the transition from homeless to 'housed' , this book presents a new perspective on homelessness, the individual factors associated with it such as addiction, mental illness and traumatic life histories, and how welfare and poverty interact with these conditions. 197 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condición: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -In this volume a series of contributions look at the impact of direct democracy on those processes of representative democracy to raise - and answer - the question: Does direct democracy harm representative democracy 199 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condición: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -While diplomacy is a well-established topic for study, global governance is a relatively new arrival to the conceptual landscape of international relations. At first glance the two exist in separate worlds. This book examines the relationship between these two concepts for the first time in a comprehensive manner. 330 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condición: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -This book explores the process by which constitutions and democratic institutions are constructed. Wing focuses on how innovative constitutional dialogues involving participation, negotiation, and recognition of groups previously excluded from political decision-making may be the key to a legitimate constitution. 245 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condición: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -The Bush-Clinton families' hold on the American presidency is a danger to the presidency itself and to American democracy. This book will highlight the problems and the consequences of combining the most powerful political office in the world with family legacies. 243 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condición: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -Focusing on male-on-male rape, this book looks at the common myths surrounding this taboo issue, including the idea that 'men who rape other men must be homosexual' and that 'real men can't be raped'. It also reveals that men are not only raped in prison, as is commonly believed, and that they suffer similar trauma to female survivors of rape. 265 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condición: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -This is the first book to be primarily directed at analyzing the evolving solution to the Kurdish problem in Iraq and Turkey. Although this solution remains cautiously fragile, it does represent a strikingly positive future that until recently seemed so bleak. 179 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condición: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -This book presents the authentic Adam Smith and explores his underlying approach and radical thinking, aiming to re-establish his original intentions. The book provides a crucial reminder of how relevant Adam Smith was in his own time, and how relevant he remains as we experience the worldwide spread of opulence today. 287 pp. Englisch.