springer us aug 2001 (77 resultados)

Buch. Condición: Neu. Neuware - The evolution of modern computers began more than 50 years ago and has been driven to a large extend by rapid advances in electronic technology during that period. The first computers ran one application (user) at a time. Without the benefit of operating systems or compilers, the application programmers were responsible for managing all aspects of the hardware. The introduction of compilers allowed programmers to express algorithms in abstract terms without being concerned with the bit level details of their implementation. Time sharing operating systems took computing systems one step further and allowed several users and/or applications to time share the computing services of com puters. With the advances of networks and software tools, users and applications were able to time share the logical and physical services that are geographically dispersed across one or more networks. Virtual Computing (VC) concept aims at providing ubiquitous open computing services in analogous way to the services offered by Telephone and Elec trical (utility) companies. The VC environment should be dynamically setup to meet the requirements of a single user and/or application. The design and development of a dynamically programmable virtual comput ing environments is a challenging research problem. However, the recent advances in processing and network technology and software tools have successfully solved many of the obstacles facing the wide deployment of virtual computing environments as will be outlined next.

Buch. Condición: Neu. Neuware - Optical networks, employing Wavelength-Division Multiplexing (WDM) and wavelength routing, are believed to be the answer for the explosion in IP traffic and the emergence of real-time multimedia applications. These networks offer quantum leaps in transmission capacity as well as eliminate the electronic bottleneck in existing metropolitan and backbone networks. During the last decade, we witnessed a tremendous growth in the theoretical and experimental studies focusing on the cost-effective deployment of wavelength routed networks. The majority of these studies, however, assumed ideal behavior of optical devices. In this book, we argue that for the successful deployment of optical networks, design algorithms and network protocols must be extended to accommodate the non-ideal behavior of optical devices. These extensions should not only focus on maintaining acceptable signal quality (e.g., 12 maintaining BER above 10- ), but should also motivate the development of optimization algorithms and signaling protocols which take transmission impairments into consideration. In addition, the design of enabling technologies, such as optical cross-connects, should be transmission-efficient. This book is a comprehensive treatment of the impact of transmission impairments on the design and management of wavelength-routed networks. We start with transparent networks, focusing on power implications such as cross-connect design, device allocation problems, and management issues. In this all-optical model, we propose a design space based on reduction in overall cost and ease of network management. This design concept, motivates various switch architectures and different optimization problems.

Buch. Condición: Neu. Neuware - Deformable avatars are virtual humans that deform themselves during motion. This implies facial deformations, body deformations at joints, and global deformations. Simulating deformable avatars ensures a more realistic simulation of virtual humans. The research requires models for capturing of geometrie and kinematic data, the synthesis of the realistic human shape and motion, the parametrisation and motion retargeting, and several appropriate deformation models. Once a deformable avatar has been created and animated, the researcher must model high-level behavior and introduce agent technology. The book can be divided into 5 subtopics: 1. Motion capture and 3D reconstruction 2. Parametrie motion and retargeting 3. Musc1es and deformation models 4. Facial animation and communication 5. High-level behaviors and autonomous agents Most of the papers were presented during the IFIP workshop 'DEFORM '2000' that was held at the University of Geneva in December 2000, followed by 'A V AT ARS 2000' held at EPFL, Lausanne. The two workshops were sponsored by the 'Troisü!me Cycle Romand d'Informatique' and allowed participants to discuss the state of research in these important areas. x Preface We would like to thank IFIP for its support and Yana Lambert from Kluwer Academic Publishers for her advice. Finally, we are very grateful to Zerrin Celebi, who has prepared the edited version of this book and Dr. Laurent Moccozet for his collaboration.

Buch. Condición: Neu. Neuware - Dynamic/interactive assessment has been a long time coming! It has been almost a century since Alfred Binet suggested that assessment of the processes of learn ing should constitute a priority in the mental testing movement, and over 60 years since Andre Rey made the same suggestion. An important model that supports many contemporary approaches to 'flexible' or 'process' assessment was offered by Vygotsky in the 1920s. The ground breaking work by Reuven Feuerstein and his Swiss colleagues on process assessment of North African Jewish children was done in the early 1950s. In the intervening years almost every serious psy chometrist has, at one time or another, called for emphasis on assessment of the of learning, rather than an exclusive emphasis on assessment of the processes products of prior opportunities to learn. One has to wonder why we have had to wait so long for formalization and instrumentation of the methods for doing just that! Of course, we psychologists like to do what we do well, and we have learned to do static, normative assessment, especially of 'intelligence,' very well indeed. Unfortunately, it is also true that dynamic/interactive assessment has not attracted or fueled the volume of high-quality research that is still going to be necessary if it is to survive as a widely used supplement to static, normative testing. This volume, incorporating a strong research base, goes a long way toward remedia tion of that situation.

Buch. Condición: Neu. Neuware - Distributed applications are a necessity in most central application sectors of the contemporary information society, including e-commerce, e-banking, e-learning, e-health, telecommunication and transportation. This results from a tremendous growth of the role that the Internet plays in business, administration and our everyday activities. This trend is going to be even further expanded in the context of advances in broadband wireless communication. New Developments in Distributed Applications and Interoperable Systems focuses on the techniques available or under development with the goal to ease the burden of constructing reliable and maintainable interoperable information systems providing services in the global communicating environment. The topics covered in this book include: Context-aware applications; Integration and interoperability of distributed systems; Software architectures and services for open distributed systems; Management, security and quality of service issues in distributed systems; Software agents and mobility; Internet and other related problem areas. The book contains the proceedings of the Third International Working Conference on Distributed Applications and Interoperable Systems (DAIS'2001), which was held in September 2001 in Kraków, Poland, and sponsored by the International Federation on Information Processing (IFIP). The conference program presents the state of the art in research concerning distributed and interoperable systems. This is a topical research area where much activity is currently in progress. Interesting new aspects and innovative contributions are still arising regularly. The DAIS series of conferences is one of the main international forums where these important findings are reported.

Buch. Condición: Neu. Neuware - Policy makers around the globe will find that Restructuring Regulation and Financial Institutions offers a cogent assessment of the contemporary regulatory environment in the U.S. financial markets, and a blueprint for action in evolving global financial markets. Financial markets are among the most highly-regulated markets in the world. Nevertheless, financial crises still occur, witness the U.S. savings-and-loan fiasco of the late 1980s and early 1990s, and the Mexican and East Asian Financial implosions of 1994 and 1997. What role does regulation play in stabilizing-or-destabilizing financial markets Restructuring Regulation and Financial Institutions answers this question with incisive analysis of financial market regulation in the United States. Each paper considers how regulation enhances or impedes the efficiency of a particular financial sector, and is followed by comments by two or three noted experts. The result of this approach is a wealth of useful information that may be applied by policy makers contemplating the restructuring of regulations and financial institutions. The contributors to this volume are distinguished economists, many of whom have careers not just in business, government, or academia, but have held influential positions in all three. Such varied backgrounds enable the contributors to offer remarkable insights based on the best of theory and practice. Never before has understanding the workings of U.S. financial market regulation been so important to the development of world financial markets. The ramifications of financial regulation in the United States extend far beyond the nation's borders. World financial markets are undergoing dramatic change, driven by the rapid development and deployment of new technology that enables information-and money-to travel farther, faster. However, a Byzantine array of regulatory structures in the international arena hinders the development of efficient global financial markets. Policy makers around the world are attempting to address the issues by emulating the financial markets of the United States.

Buch. Condición: Neu. Neuware - FORTE 2001, formerly FORTE/PSTV conference, is a combined conference of FORTE (Formal Description Techniques for Distributed Systems and Communication Protocols) and PSTV (Protocol Specification, Testing and Verification) conferences. This year the conference has a new name FORTE (Formal Techniques for Networked and Distributed Systems). The previous FORTE began in 1989 and the PSTV conference in 1981. Therefore the new FORTE conference actually has a long history of 21 years. The purpose of this conference is to introduce theories and formal techniques applicable to various engineering stages of networked and distributed systems and to share applications and experiences of them. This FORTE 2001 conference proceedings contains 24 refereed papers and 4 invited papers on the subjects. We regret that many good papers submitted could not be published in this volume due to the lack of space. FORTE 2001 was organized under the auspices of IFIP WG 6.1 by Information and Communications University of Korea. It was financially supported by Ministry of Information and Communication of Korea. We would like to thank every author who submitted a paper to FORTE 2001 and thank the reviewers who generously spent their time on reviewing. Special thanks are due to the reviewers who kindly conducted additional reviews for rigorous review process within a very short time frame. We would like to thank Prof. Guy Leduc, the chairman of IFIP WG 6.1, who made valuable suggestions and shared his experiences for conference organization.

Buch. Condición: Neu. Neuware - Pneumonia (along with influenza) is the sixth leading cause of death in adults. About 4 million adults develop pneumonia each year in the US, resulting in 64 million days of restricted activity, 39 million days of bed confinement, and 10 million days of lost work. Yet the admission rates to hospital, length of stay, investigations, antimicrobial therapy and prevention strategies vary greatly from one geographic area to the next, and the scientific basis for many of our management strategies for pneumonia is weak to nonexistent. There are over 100 microbial agents that can cause pneumonia and many of these, especially Streptococcus pneumoniae, Group A streptococcus, and Staphylococcus aureus, are in a state of flux in terms of changing antimicrobial resistance. This book is designed to provide new information about pneumonia and identify critical research questions that will come to the fore as we enter the 21st century.

Buch. Condición: Neu. This item is printed on demand - Print on Demand Titel. Neuware -The aim of the book is to represent a new object-oriented methodology called Tabular Application Development (TAD). The book is designed to approach the subject of Business Process Reengineering and Information Systems Development from a new prospective, which is unique to this methodology. TAD methodology has six phases and develops the information system using several tables. The concept of the methodology discussed first translates the information about the behavior of the system into different tables and then uses the information collected in the tables to develop the information system. In addition to this, the methodology covers Business Process Reengineering. In recent years BPR became a very important way of assuring changes in an organization's structure and functioning to create a better, more competitive and successful enterprise. The book is organized in three parts: introduction, methodology, and applications/case studies.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 208 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condición: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -Over the past 25 years, applied econometrics has undergone tremen dous changes, with active developments in fields of research such as time series, labor econometrics, financial econometrics and simulation based methods. Time series analysis has been an active field of research since the seminal work by Box and Jenkins (1976), who introduced a gen eral framework in which time series can be analyzed. In the world of financial econometrics and the application of time series techniques, the ARCH model of Engle (1982) has shifted the focus from the modelling of the process in itself to the modelling of the volatility of the process. In less than 15 years, it has become one of the most successful fields of 1 applied econometric research with hundreds of published papers. As an alternative to the ARCH modelling of the volatility, Taylor (1986) intro duced the stochastic volatility model, whose features are quite similar to the ARCH specification but which involves an unobserved or latent component for the volatility. While being more difficult to estimate than usual GARCH models, stochastic volatility models have found numerous applications in the modelling of volatility and more particularly in the econometric part of option pricing formulas. Although modelling volatil ity is one of the best known examples of applied financial econometrics, other topics (factor models, present value relationships, term structure 2 models) were also successfully tackled. 200 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condición: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -Communications markets have made much progress towards competition and deregulation in recent years. However, it is increasingly clear, in the age of the Internet and the digital revolution, that much more needs to be done, and that new approaches, both at the Federal Communications Commission and in Congress, will be required to complete the task. In this volume, the Progress and Freedom Foundation presents nine papers by communications policy experts and government policymakers that show how to finish the job of deregulating communications markets and reforming the FCC. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 was a landmark piece of legislation for an industry moving from a monopoly orientation towards competition, but additional steps are needed to complete the process of implementing the pro-competitive, deregulatory vision of the act. Bringing together a group of the caliber represented in this book makes possible the best recommendations about the exact nature of those necessary changes. In this volume, the most difficult and politically-charged hot-button issues involving local and long distance competition, universal service, spectrum allocation, program content regulation, and the public interest doctrine are confronted head-on. As importantly, the authors recommend specific reform proposals to be considered by the Federal Communications Commission and Congress. The ideas contained in the experts' essays were presented and debated at a conference hosted by The Progress & Freedom Foundation, which was held in Washington, DC, on December 8, 2000. The Progress & Freedom Foundation studies the impact of the digital revolution and its implications for public policy. It conducts research in fields such as electronic commerce, telecommunications and the impact of the Internet on government, society and economic growth. It also studies issues such as the need to reform government regulation, especially in technology-intensive fields such as medical innovation, energy and environmental regulation. 252 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condición: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -Learning disabilities is a subject that is usually associated with school-aged children where the research and intervention strategies are well known. Much less research has been done for assessing and diagnosing older adolescents and adults in this area. This work is an effort to provide a comprehensive review of what we know about certain of these disorders, specifically: language-based learning disorders; nonverbal learning disorders; high-functioning autism; attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder; and mathematics disorders and how they manifest themselves in the later years of development and maturity. A chapter addresses each one of these disorders of learning. Included in each chapter is a discussion of historical perspectives, definitions and diagnostic criteria, incidence and prevalence data, comorbidity studies, pertinent research from all relevant fields of study, reasonable accommodations in academia as well as the workplace, and outcome data. This much-needed review will be of interest to clinicians in neuropsychology, educational psychology, and psychopharmacology. 260 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condición: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -Th e vari a t i on al s p li ne t heo ry w h ic h orig i na t es from th e w ell-kn own p ap er b y J. e . Hollid a y ( 1957) i s t od a y a we ll- deve lo pe d fi eld in a p pr o x - mat i o n t he o ry . T he ge ne ra l d efinition of s p l i nes in t he Hilb er t s pace , - i st ence , uniquen e s s , and ch ar a c t eriz a tion t he o re ms w ere obt ain ed a b o ut 35 ye a r s ago b y M . A t t ei a , P . J . Laur en t , a n d P . M. An selon e , bu t in r e cent y e a r s important n e w r esult s h a v e b e en ob t ain ed in th e a bst ract va r i a t i o n a l s p l i ne theor y . 308 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condición: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -Divided into four parts, this book covers recent developments in topics pertaining to gravity theories, including discussions on the presence of scalar fields. Part One is devoted to exact solutions in general relativity, and is mainly concerned with the results of rotating null dust beams and fluids. Also included is a panoramic vision of new research directions in this area, which would require revising certain theorems and their possible extensions within gravity theories, new aspects concerning the Ernst potentials, double Kerr spacetimes, and rotating configurations. In particular, there is a detailed discussion of totally symmetric and totally geodesic spaces, in which a method for generating (2+1)-dimensional solutions from (3+1)-dimensional solutions is given. Part Two deals with alternative theories of gravity, all of which include scalar fields and gauge fields. Here, quantum and cosmological effects, which arise from both gravity theories in four and higher dimensions and from metric-affine theories, are investigated. Part Three is devoted to cosmological and inflationary scenarios. Local effects, such as the influence of scalar fields in protogalactic interactions, numerical studies of the collapse of molecular cores, as well as the inverse inflationary problem and the blue eigenvalue spectrum of it, are considered. Moreover, the role of scalar fields as dark matter and quantum cosmology in the Bergman-Wagoner and Gowdy theories, together with the relation of the conformal symmetry and deflationary gas universe, are likewise presented. The last part of the book includes some mixed topics which are still in the experimental stage. Among them are the foundation of the Maxwell theory, a discussion on electromagnetic Thirring problems, a note on the staticity of black holes with non-minimally coupled scalar fields, and a study of the Lorentz force free charged fluids in general relativity. Thus, this book is the most up-to-date, comprehensive collection of papers on the subject of exact solutions and scalar fields in gravity and is a valuable tool for researchers in the area. 356 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condición: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -Scientists from many disciplines require making observations which are dependent upon the behavior of compounds in solution. This ranges from areas in geography, such as oceanography, to areas in chemistry, such as chromatography, to areas in biology, such as pharmacology. Historically, information would be obtained by observing a response for a given set of conditions and then the conditions would be changed and a new response obtained. In this approach there would be little effort made to actually understand how a compound was behaving in solution but rather just the response was noted. Understanding the behavior of compounds in solution is critical to understanding their behavior in biological systems. This has become increasingly important during the last twenty years as an understanding of the biochemistry related to human illness has become better understood. The development of the pharmaceutical industry and the need to rapidly screen large numbers of compounds has made scientists in the area of drug development aware that the pharmacological activity of compounds can be predicted by knowing their solution physical chemical properties. This is not to say that a specific drug-active site interaction can be predicted but rather a prediction can be made whether or not a compound will be absorbed, transported, or distributed within a physiological system in such a way that an interaction can occur. 300 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condición: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -There is not an extensive literature on street sweeping. Much of the research that has been completed exists in the 'gray' area of technical reports and government documents. Furthermore, a great deal of this research is locally based, and has not been widely published. Indeed, our review of the scientific literature, revealed that, while storm water quality has received a lot of attention, few academicians have been involved in street sweeping research per se. Thus, throughout our research into street we sweeper effectiveness, sweeping protocols, and sweeping practices, wished that there had been a book summarizing some of the important issues associated with street sweeping. As our frustration grew, we realized that we were uniquely poised to write such a book as our research had encompassed a variety of different projects including sweeper testing, waste management, and related storm water quality. Also, early on in this exercise, we recognized that there was a growing demand for information about street sweeping policies and management, especially for studies focusing on the effectiveness of different sweeping schedules, on waste management operations, and on non-point, pollution reduction practices associated with storm water runoff. It was abundantly clear that there was a profound lack of research on street sweeping that could assist with developing local, regional, or national policies. There was, in effect, little guidance for city managers on these issues. 188 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condición: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -Traditionally, scientific fields have defined boundaries, and scientists work on research problems within those boundaries. However, from time to time those boundaries get shifted or blurred to evolve new fields. For instance, the original goal of computer vision was to understand a single image of a scene, by identifying objects, their structure, and spatial arrangements. This has been referred to as image understanding. Recently, computer vision has gradually been making the transition away from understanding single images to analyzing image sequences, or video understanding. Video understanding deals with understanding of video sequences, e. g. , recognition of gestures, activities, facial expressions, etc. The main shift in the classic paradigm has been from the recognition of static objects in the scene to motion-based recognition of actions and events. Video understanding has overlapping research problems with other fields, therefore blurring the fixed boundaries. Computer graphics, image processing, and video databases have obvious overlap with computer vision. The main goal of computer graphics is to gener ate and animate realistic looking images, and videos. Researchers in computer graphics are increasingly employing techniques from computer vision to gen erate the synthetic imagery. A good example of this is image-based rendering and modeling techniques, in which geometry, appearance, and lighting is de rived from real images using computer vision techniques. Here the shift is from synthesis to analysis followed by synthesis. 198 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condición: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -Evolutionary Theory and Human Nature is an original, highly theoretical work dealing with the transition from genes to behavior using general principles of evolution, especially those of sexual selection. It seeks to develop a seamless transition from genes to human motivations as bio-electric brain processes (emotional-cognitive processes), to human nature propensities (various constellations of emotional-cognitive forces, desires and fears) to species typical patterns of behavior. This work covers two often antagonistic fields: biology and the social sciences. It should be of strong interest to anthropologists, sociologists, sociobiologists, psychobiologists and psychologists who are interested in the question of human nature influences on social behavior. 276 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condición: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -As the pastPresident ofthe Israel Society forAutism, it gives me great pleasure to c- gratulate Professor Schopler and his colleagues on the publication of their new book concerning the relationship between scientific research and treatment. When we in Israel began our specifically structured education program for young children with autism, our work was based on slim to scarceknow-how andinformation, and with no experience whatsoever. Whatever information we could gather was mostly from psychological educational centers in the U.S. One of the most important and significant connections was established between the TEACCH program of North Carolina, led and conducted by the two important scholars, Professor Eric Schopler and Professor Lee Marcus, and our Israel Society for Autism. During our many encounters, seminars, and conferences, we profited enormously from all their accumulated expertise and scientific research, while perhaps it was also an important experience for them to see how a young society with very limited means was eventually shaping its educational program and arriving at some excellent results. We, ofcourse, have the highest esteem for Governor Hunt who has been following this program with so much attention and support, and we still remember his visit to Israel with distinguished representatives of the TEACCH Program. I wish the new book every success. I know it will be an enormous contribution to all those who must cope with a difficult and painful issue-autism-for whom there is no end to the need for research and continuously improving methods of care and education. 268 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condición: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -MOVING THE YOUTH DEVELOPMENT MESSAGE: TURNING A VAGUE IDEA INTO A MORAL IMPERATIVE Peter L. Benson and Karen Pittman THE CONTAGION OF AN IDEA In the past fifteen years, countless programs, agencies, funding initiatives, profes sionals, and volunteers have embraced the term 'youth development. ' Linked more by shared passion than by formal membership or credentials, these people and places have contributed to a wave of energy and activity not unlike that of a social movement, with a multitude of people 'on the ground' connecting to a set of ideas that give sustenance, support, and value to increasingly innovative efforts to build competent, successful, and healthy youth. There are several particularly interesting dimensions to this movement. First, the youth development idea has the potential to draw people and organizations to gether across many sectors. Conferences and initiatives using youth development language attract increasingly eclectic audiences, bringing together national youth organizations, schools, city, county, and state agencies, police and juvenile jus tice workers, clergy, and committed citizens. Perhaps embedded in the youth de velopment idea is a philosophy or a 'way' that has created an intellectual and/or spiritual home for actors across many settings. However this happens, it is clear that one of the powerful social consequences of the youth development idea is a connecting of the dots-the weaving within and across city, county, state, and of a tapestry of new relationships. 332 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condición: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -This volume, the first in the series, explores the high-functioning group of people within the spectrum of autism disorders. It is the culmination of over a decade of clinical work and research, including the most current information available about this group. Written in a style that is accessible to both seasoned clinicians and concerned lay persons, this volume is a unique resource. 136 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condición: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -Implementing Management Innovations: Lessons Learned from Activity Based Costing in the U.S. Automobile Industry is the result of a long-term study of the implementation of activity based costing (ABC) inside two of America's largest automobile companies. The research advances our theoretical and practical understanding of the implementation of management innovations by tracing the evolution of ABC from the corporate level down to its eventual rollout at the plants. Another distinguishing feature of the study is the blend of field research methods and hypothesis testing to determine the factors that led to implementation success for managers and ABC development teams. Many of the findings of the study have implications for the implementation of other types of management innovations. 212 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condición: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -According to R.H. Crabtree, Metal Dihydrogen and sigma-Bond Complexes is described as `the definitive account of twentieth-century work in the area of sigma complexation'. It covers not only Kubas' discovery of dihydrogen coordination and the study of its structure and general properties but also discusses both the theoretical beliefs and experimental results of bonding and activation of dihydrogen on metal centers and the coordination and activation of C-H, B-H, X-H, and X-Y bonds, giving an overview of `one of the hottest areas in chemistry'. 492 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condición: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -Constrained Coding and Soft Iterative Decoding is the first work to combine the issues of constrained coding and soft iterative decoding (e.g., turbo and LDPC codes) from a unified point of view. Since constrained coding is widely used in magnetic and optical storage, it is necessary to use some special techniques (modified concatenation scheme or bit insertion) in order to apply soft iterative decoding. Recent breakthroughs in the design and decoding of error-control codes (ECCs) show significant potential for improving the performance of many communications systems. ECCs such as turbo codes and low-density parity check (LDPC) codes can be represented by graphs and decoded by passing probabilistic (a.k.a. `soft') messages along the edges of the graph. This message-passing algorithm yields powerful decoders whose performance can approach the theoretical limits on capacity. This exposition uses `normal graphs,' introduced by Forney, which extend in a natural manner to block diagram representations of the system and provide a simple unified framework for the decoding of ECCs, constrained codes, and channels with memory. Soft iterative decoding is illustrated by the application of turbo codes and LDPC codes to magnetic recording channels. For magnetic and optical storage, an issue arises in the use of constrained coding, which places restrictions on the sequences that can be transmitted through the channel; the use of constrained coding in combination with soft ECC decoders is addressed by the modified concatenation scheme also known as `reverse concatenation.' Moreover, a soft constraint decoder yields additional coding gain from the redundancy in the constraint, which may be of practical interest in the case of optical storage. In addition, this monograph presents several other research results (including the design of sliding-block lossless compression codes, and the decoding of array codes as LDPC codes). Constrained Coding and Soft Iterative Decoding will prove useful to students, researchers and professional engineers who are interested in understanding this new soft iterative decoding paradigm and applying it in communications and storage systems. 284 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condición: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -Headspace gas analysis is an analytical technique that has been successfully applied to food flavors for over 20 years but has experienced a resurgence of interest and innovation in recent years. In its truest form, headspace analysis represents the direct collection and analysis of the mixture of vapors in the space immediately above a food or beverage. The technique offers several advantages for workers interested in how a product smells and ultimately tastes. It offers the advantages of speed, simplicity, and, more importantly, represents the aroma profile a consumer is likely to experience just before consuming the product. Since only volatile components are collected, the sample is totally free of nonvolatile residues which commonly plague comparison liquid-liquid extracts of the same product. This is the first book devoted to headspace analysis in foods and beverages in more than 20 years. The publication contains chapters on the basic theory of headspace analysis, as well as the theory and application of newly developed headspace techniques, such as solid phase micro extraction, SPME and electronic noses. New concentrating and desorption techniques are described in addition to a raft of food applications including tomato and citrus juices, alcoholic beverages, baguettes, dairy products, lipids, grill flavoring, baked potato, and meat. Chapters on off-flavors as well as aroma-food matrix interactions are also included. 'This is the bible of headspace analysis. If you are involved in, or planning on becoming involved, or want to learn more about, this incredible subject , then buy this book immediately!' - Aubrey Parsons, governing council member, International Union for Food Science and Technology 228 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condición: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -This volume, the first in the series, explores the high-functioning group of people within the spectrum of autism disorders. It is the culmination of over a decade of clinical work and research, including the most current information available about this group. Written in a style that is accessible to both seasoned clinicians and concerned lay persons, this volume is a unique resource. 136 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condición: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -Most studies of the impacts of climate change consider impacts in the future from anthropogenic climate change. Very few consider what the impacts of past climate change have been. History and Climate: Memories of the Future contains 13 interdisciplinary chapters which consider impacts of change in different regions of the world, over the last millennium. Initial chapters assess evidence for the changes, while later chapters consider the impacts on agriculture, fisheries, health, and society. The book will be of interest to anyone working in the field of climate change and history. 316 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condición: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -Steiner's Problem concerns finding a shortest interconnecting network for a finite set of points in a metric space. A solution must be a tree, which is called a Steiner Minimal Tree (SMT), and may contain vertices different from the points which are to be connected. Steiner's Problem is one of the most famous combinatorial-geometrical problems, but unfortunately it is very difficult in terms of combinatorial structure as well as computational complexity. However, if only a Minimum Spanning Tree (MST) without additional vertices in the interconnecting network is sought, then it is simple to solve. So it is of interest to know what the error is if an MST is constructed instead of an SMT. The worst case for this ratio running over all finite sets is called the Steiner ratio of the space. The book concentrates on investigating the Steiner ratio. The goal is to determine, or at least estimate, the Steiner ratio for many different metric spaces. The author shows that the description of the Steiner ratio contains many questions from geometry, optimization, and graph theory. Audience: Researchers in network design, applied optimization, and design of algorithms. 260 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condición: Neu. This item is printed on demand - Print on Demand Titel. Neuware -Communications markets have made much progress towards competition and deregulation in recent years. However, it is increasingly clear, in the age of the Internet and the digital revolution, that much more needs to be done, and that new approaches, both at the Federal Communications Commission and in Congress, will be required to complete the task. In this volume, the Progress and Freedom Foundation presents nine papers by communications policy experts and government policymakers that show how to finish the job of deregulating communications markets and reforming the FCC.The Telecommunications Act of 1996 was a landmark piece of legislation for an industry moving from a monopoly orientation towards competition, but additional steps are needed to complete the process of implementing the pro-competitive, deregulatory vision of the act. Bringing together a group of the caliber represented in this book makes possible the best recommendations about the exact nature of those necessary changes. In this volume, the most difficult and politically-charged hot-button issues involving local and long distance competition, universal service, spectrum allocation, program content regulation, and the public interest doctrine are confronted head-on. As importantly, the authors recommend specific reform proposals to be considered by the Federal Communications Commission and Congress.The ideas contained in the experts' essays were presented and debated at a conference hosted by The Progress & Freedom Foundation, which was held in Washington, DC, on December 8, 2000. The Progress & Freedom Foundation studies the impact of the digital revolution and its implications for public policy. It conducts research in fields such as electronic commerce, telecommunications and the impact of the Internet on government, society and economic growth. It also studies issues such as the need to reform government regulation, especially in technology-intensive fields such as medical innovation, energy and environmental regulation.Springer-Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 252 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condición: Neu. This item is printed on demand - Print on Demand Titel. Neuware -In recent years, choice no-fault has emerged as a popular but controversial proposal for addressing the problem of high automobile insurance rates. Choice plans offer consumers the option of a lower-cost insurance policy with restrictions on filing lawsuits or a higher-cost policy with full tort rights. Some American states have implemented choice programs, and major federal choice legislation is now pending in the United States Congress.Choice no-fault has caught the attention of policy makers, the insurance industry, and academics. Until now, however, no single book has pulled together the available research on the topic. The Economics and Politics of Choice No-Fault Insurance fills that gap. Edited by scholars from different disciplines, each of whom has written extensively on automobile insurance issues, the book includes some of the best work in the area. Former Massachusetts Governor and presidential candidate Michael S. Dukakis wrote the foreword.Contributors include University of Virginia Law Professor Jeffrey O'Connell, widely considered the `father of no-fault,' as well as authors of the influential RAND study of the potential effects of choice no-fault on insurance rates. The book chapters, most of which were written especially for this volume, cover topics ranging from the impact of choice no-fault on accidents and driving behavior, to the effects of choice on medical care usage, to alternative approaches for resolving accidents involving both `no-fault' and `tort' electors, to the political feasibility of choice legislative proposals. Emphasis on the potential advantages of choice no-fault is balanced by consideration of possible ill effects.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 364 pp. Englisch.