springer new york springer new york dez 2011 (904 results)

Buch. Condition: Neu. Neuware - The center of our Solar System is a star, one among billions of stars in our own galaxy. This star, which we call the Sun, gives rise to all life on Earth, is the driver of the photosynthesis in plants, and is the source of all food, energy, and fossil fuels on Earth.For us humans, the Sun as seen with the naked eye appears as a static and quiet yellow disk in the sky. However, it is in fact a stormy and variable star and contributes much more than only light and heat. It is the source of the beautiful northern and southern lights and can affect our technology-based society in many ways.The Sun is, like astronomy in general, a good entrance to natural science, since it affects us in so many ways and connects us to many other fields of science, such as physics, chemistry, biology, and meteorology.The book includes additional material on Springer Extras, a large number of animations and video material. A PowerPoint presentation of the book is also included there as a useful resource for teachers.

Taschenbuch. Condition: Neu. Neuware -Features 25 different scientists and the ideas which may not have made them famous, but made history¿Typically, we remember our greatest scientists from one single invention, one new formula or one incredible breakthrough. This narrow perspective does not give justice to the versatility of many scientists who also earned a reputation in other areas of science. James Watt, for instance, is known for inventing the steam engine, yet most people do not know that he also invented the copier. Alexander Graham Bell of course invented the telephone, but only few know that he invented artificial breathing equipment, a prototype of the ¿iron lung¿. Edmond Halley, whose name is associated with the comet that visits Earth every 75 years, produced the first mortality tables, used for life insurances. This entertaining book is aimed at anyone who enjoys reading about inventions and discoveries by the most creative minds. Detailed illustrations of the forgotten designs and ideas enrich the work throughout.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 180 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condition: Neu. Neuware - Art, or Science Which of these is the right way to think of the field of visualization This is not an easy question to answer, even for those who have many years experience in making graphical depictions of data with a view to help people understand it and take action. In this book, Graham Wills bridges the gap between the art and the science of visually representing data. He does not simply give rules and advice, but bases these on general principles and provide a clear path between them This book is concerned with the graphical representation of time data and is written to cover a range of different users. A visualization expert designing tools for displaying time will find it valuable, but so also should a financier assembling a report in a spreadsheet, or a medical researcher trying to display gene sequences using a commercial statistical package.

Taschenbuch. Condition: Neu. Neuware -Where were the amino acids, the molecules of life, created: perhaps in a lightning storm in the early Earth, or perhaps elsewhere in the cosmos This book argues that at least some of them must have been produced in the cosmos, and that the fact that the Earthly amino acids have a specific handedness provides an important clue for that explanation. The book discusses several models that purport to explain the handedness, ultimately proposing a new explanation that involves cosmic processing of the amino acids produced in space. The book provides a tour for laypersons that includes a definition of life, the Big Bang, stellar nucleosynthesis, the electromagnetic spectrum, molecules, and supernovae and the particles they produce.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 228 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condition: Neu. Neuware -'Interplanetary Outpost' follows the mission architecture template of NASA's plan for Human Outer Planet Exploration (HOPE), which envisions sending a crew to the moon Callisto to conduct exploration and sample return activities. To realize such a mission, the spacecraft will be the most complex interplanetary vehicle ever built, representing the best technical efforts of several nations. A wealth of new technologies will need to be developed, including new propulsion systems, hibernation strategies, and revolutionary radiation shielding materials. Step by step, the book will describe how the mission architecture will evolve, how crews will be selected and trained, and what the mission will entail from launch to landing. However, the focus of 'Interplanetary Outpost' is on the human element. The extended duration, logistical challenges, radiation concerns, communication lag times, isolation, and deleterious effects on the human body will conspire to not only significantly impair human performance but also affect the behavior of crewmembers. This book addresses each of these issues in detail while still providing the reader with a background to the necessary elements comprising such a mission.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 284 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condition: Neu. Neuware -We are at the dawn of a new era in the study of space, all thanks to the Galileo space probe. Mission Jupiter brings us the exciting story of the Galileo mission to investigate Jupiter. The noted astronomer Daniel Fischer, co-author of Hubble: A New Window to the Universe and Hubble Revisited: New Images from the Discovery Machine, weaves together the many disparate facts learned about Jupiter and its satellites into a coherent description of this most fascinating planet, after stepping back to review the history of planetary exploration. Mission Jupiter tells the entire story of Galileo: a behind-the-scenes look at its difficult course from idea to reality; its launch; the problems it encountered early on and how these were resolved; and finally, what will become of the probe. Along the way, the author describes what wee learned about Jupiter, including what the Jovian atmosphere is really like, and the peculiar reality of the planet's magnetic field. The story of the journey to Jupiter is combined with interesting details about Galileo's capacities and a graphic description of the solar system, with an entertaining episode on how Galileo would judge the chances of finding life on Earth. The book concludes with a look to the future, closing on the Cassini probe to Saturn, launched just last year. Beautifully illustrated and well written, Mission Jupiter shows us space exploration at its best and conveys the essential science clearly and vividly. 'Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 368 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condition: Neu. Neuware -Before the arrival of penicillin in the 1940s, phage therapy was one of the few weapons doctors had against bacterial infections. It saved the life of Hollywood legend Tom Mix before being abandoned by Western science. Now, researchers and physicians are rediscovering the treatment, which pits phage viruses against their natural bacterial hosts, as a potential weapon against antibiotic-resistant infections.The Forgotten Cure traces the story of phages from Paris, where they were discovered in 1917; to Tbilisi, Georgia, where one of phage therapy¿s earliest proponents died at the hands of Stalin; to the Nobel podium, where prominent scientists have been recognized for breakthroughs stemming from phage research. Today, a crop of biotech startups and dedicated physicians is racing to win regulatory approval for phage therapy before superbugs exhaust the last drug in the medical arsenal. Will they clear the hurdles in time Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 148 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condition: Neu. Neuware -Topology is a relatively young and very important branch of mathematics. It studies properties of objects that are preserved by deformations, twistings, and stretchings, but not tearing. This book deals with the topology of curves and surfaces as well as with the fundamental concepts of homotopy and homology, and does this in a lively and well-motivated way. There is hardly an area of mathematics that does not make use of topological results and concepts. The importance of topological methods for different areas of physics is also beyond doubt. They are used in field theory and general relativity, in the physics of low temperatures, and in modern quantum theory. The book is well suited not only as preparation for students who plan to take a course in algebraic topology but also for advanced undergraduates or beginning graduates interested in finding out what topology is all about. The book has more than 200 problems, many examples, and over 200 illustrations.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 156 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condition: Neu. Neuware -For anyone artistically inclined, observing the Moon and attempting to sketch or paint it can easily become a passion. The Moon presents a broad array of tone, texture, and form. Capturing this in a painting or sketch at the eyepiece of a telescope ¿ or even with binoculars ¿ develops observational skills, leaves a record of the observation, and can also be a delightful and rewarding pastime. However, the choice of media available is extensive (acrylic paint, oils, pen, charcoal, etc., and even computer art programs), and there is no existing text that fully explains all lunar sketching and painting techniques in each respective medium. This beautiful and graphically rich book fulfills this requirement. It presents detailed step-by-step instructions, in the form of illustrated tutorials for every major medium employed to represent the Moon. It also provides practical advice on how to sketch outdoors at night (not ideal conditions for an artist!).This is easily the most extensive book on the subject of lunar art for amateur astronomers, particularly those observing through a telescope. The diverse features of the lunar surface will attract and entice readers to review the number of different media presented, exciting and inspiring them with the possibilities of learning to depict all of the fascinating aspects of Earth's very own satellite.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 268 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condition: Neu. Neuware -I wrote this book because I wanted to learn more about interstel lar flight. Not the Star Trek notion of tearing around the Galaxy in a huge spaceship-that was obviously beyond existing tech nology-but a more realistic mission. In 1989 I had videotaped Voyager 2's encounter with Neptune and watched the drama of robotic exploration over and over again. I started to wonder whether we could do something similar with Alpha Centauri, the nearest star to the Sun. Everyone seemed to agree that manned flight to the stars was out of the question, if not permanently then for the indefinitely foreseeable future. But surely we could do something with robotics. And if we could figure out a theoretical way to do it, how far were we from the actual technology that would make it happen In other words, what was the state of our interstellar technology today, those concepts and systems that might translate into a Voyager to the stars Finding answers meant talking to people inside and outside of NASA. I was surprised to learn that there is a large literature of interstellar flight. Nobody knows for sure how to propel a space craft fast enough to make the interstellar crossing within a time scale that would fit the conventional idea of a mission, but there are candidate systems that are under active investigation. Some of this effort begins with small systems that we'll use near the Earth and later hope to extend to deep space missions.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 320 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condition: Neu. Neuware -The ancient Chinese scholars are fond of applying theYinandYangdiagram to correlate almost everything.This bookcontinues that tradition and uses the modelto study other non-¿dialectical¿ theories and models.The major findingquacontribution in this publication is to point out that the four diagrams are equivalent to theBaGuaorBaGuaTu(BG),a set ofeightancient China symbolic notations/gossip.Another finding is thatdialectical/crab and frog motion remark is just the opposite of a non-dialectical/crab and frog motion (usually deductive, linear, or cause and effect) remark, or, at best, they must meet half-way.The two major tasks of this book are to,first, apply the author'sone-dot theory, which is shored up by the crab and frog motion model, to convert other theories and models as well as studies and,second, apply his theory and model to reinvent some well-known western-derived theories and models and studies, such as game theory.The attempt is to narrow down the gap between the East and the West scholarship/XueShu, broadly defined, making the book of interest to Eastern and Western philosophers and scholars alike.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 128 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condition: Neu. Neuware -¿¿The trend is your friend¿is a practical principle often used by business managers, who seek to forecast future sales, expenditures, and profitability in order to make production and other operational decisions. The problem is how best to identify and discover business trends and utilize trend information for attaining objectives of firms.This book contains an Excel-based solution to this problem, applying principles of the authors¿ ¿profit system model¿ of the firm that enables forecasts of trends in sales, expenditures, profits and other business variables. The program, called FIRM, which runs on Windows with Microsoft Excel 2010, useshistorical time series of total sales, total costs, and total assets of the firm from its financial statements (income statements and balance sheets), estimates relationships among these variables, and then employs the estimated relationships to forecasts trends in these vital business variables. Featuring step-by-step case examples, the goalis to equip business managers and students with easy-to-use tools for understanding and forecasting trends in important business variables, thereby empowering them to make better business decisions.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 60 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condition: Neu. Neuware -In most developed countries, the epidemiological disease profile has changed from infectious to degenerative, causing major alterations in epidemiological thinking and public health policies. Less developed nations have to deal with a more complex situation, because social disparities create highly unequal health conditions, the affluent being afflicted by degenerative conditions, whereas the poorer social segments continue to suffer infectious diseases, but also begin to feel the effects of chronic illness. At the turn of the 21st century, equity in health care is not being served, and social justice has lost credibility as a conceptual driving force of public health policies. Rampant injustice confirms that theories, reality and suggested practices of just social orders are flawed, leaving the needy without help or hope in a world of flagrant ethical inadequacy. And yet, mainstream bioethics loses meaning and relevance as it clings to the principle of justice and hails such concepts as global justice and universal health-care equity, misleadingly focusing on justice as a desideratum. This book pleads for an urgent turn towards directly addressing injustice as a reality that requires pressingly needed arguments and proposals to inspire realistic public health policies and programs based on an ethics of protection. Ever since Hobbes, all shades of political philosophy accept that the basic obligation of the ruling power is to protect its subjects. The ethics of protection emphasizes aiding the needy and the disempowered in obtaining access to basic goods and services related to health-care. Public health is called upon to fulfill protective obligations to guarantee disease prevention and medical services to the population, taking special care to safeguard those unable to cover their health-care needs in market-oriented medical services and institutions. The bioethics of protection developed in this text presents specific and explicit guide-lines to assure that protective public health actions be efficacious (problem-solving), efficient (sustainable cost/benefit relation) and ethically sound (respecting human rights and the common weal). These guide-lines are designed to give ethical support and justification to public health policies even when they require some unavoidable limitations of individual autonomy to promote social health benefits.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 116 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condition: Neu. Neuware -Creating New Medical Ontologies for Image Annotation focuses on the problem of the medical images automatic annotation process, which is solved in an original manner by the authors. All the steps of this process are described in detail with algorithms, experiments and results. The original algorithms proposed by authors are compared with other efficient similar algorithms.In addition, the authors treat the problem of creating ontologies in an automatic way, starting from Medical Subject Headings (MESH). They have presented some efficient and relevant annotation models and also the basics of the annotation model used by the proposed system: Cross Media Relevance Models. Based on a text query the system will retrieve the images that contain objects described by the keywords.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 120 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condition: Neu. Neuware -Inequalities of Ostrowski and Trapezoidal Type for Functions of Selfadjoint Operators on Hilbert Spaces presents recent results concerning Ostrowski and Trapezoidal type inequalities for continuous functions of bounded Selfadjoint operators on complex Hilbert spaces.The first chapter recalls some fundamental facts concerning bounded Selfadjoint operators on complex Hilbert spaces. The generalized Schwarz¿s inequality for positive Selfadjoint operators as well as some results for the spectrum of this class of operators are presented. The author also introduces and explores the fundamental results for polynomials in a linear operator, continuous functions of selfadjoint operators that will play a central role throughout the book. The following chapter is devoted to the Ostrowski¿s type inequalities, which provide sharp error estimates in approximating the value of a function by its integral mean and can be used to obtain a priory error bounds for different quadrature rules in approximating the Riemann integral by different Riemann sums. The author also presents recent results extending Ostrowski inequality in various directions for continuous functions of selfadjoint operators in complex Hilbert spaces. The final chapter illustrates recent results obtained in extending trapezoidal type inequality in various directions for continuous functions of selfadjoint operators in complex Hilbert spaces. Applications for mid-point inequalities and some elementary functions of operators as also provided.This book is intended for use by researchers in various fields of Linear Operator Theory and Mathematical Inequalities. As well as postgraduate students and scientists applying inequalities in their specific areas.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 124 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condition: Neu. Neuware -The multivariate normal distribution has played a predominant role in the historical development of statistical theory, and has made its appearance in various areas of applications. Although many of the results concerning the multivariate normal distribution are classical, there are important new results which have been reported recently in the literature but cannot be found in most books on multivariate analysis. These results are often obtained by showing that the multivariate normal density function belongs to certain large families of density functions. Thus, useful properties of such families immedi ately hold for the multivariate normal distribution. This book attempts to provide a comprehensive and coherent treatment of the classical and new results related to the multivariate normal distribution. The material is organized in a unified modern approach, and the main themes are dependence, probability inequalities, and their roles in theory and applica tions. Some general properties of a multivariate normal density function are discussed, and results that follow from these properties are reviewed exten sively. The coverage is, to some extent, a matter of taste and is not intended to be exhaustive, thus more attention is focused on a systematic presentation of results rather than on a complete listing of them.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 288 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condition: Neu. Neuware -Developed and developing economies alike face increased resource scarcity and competitive rivalry. In this context, science and technology appear as an essential source of competitive and sustainable advantage at national and regional levels. However, the key determinant of their efficacy is the quality and quantity of entrepreneurship-enabled innovation that unlocks and captures the benefits of the science enterprise in the form of private, public or hybrid goods. Linking basic and applied research with the market, via technology transfer and commercialization mechanisms, including government-university-industry partnerships and capital investments, constitutes the essential trigger mechanism and driving force of sustainable competitive advantage and prosperity. In this volume, the authors define the terms and principles of knowledge creation, diffusion, and use, and establish a theoretical framework for their study. In particular, they focus on the ¿Quadruple Helix¿ model, through which government, academia, industry, and civil society are seen as key actors promoting a democratic approach to innovation through which strategy development and decision making are exposed to feedback from key stakeholders, resulting in socially accountable policies and practices.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 72 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condition: Neu. Neuware -Personality and Roles: Sources of Regularities in Social Behavior For behavioral scientists, whether they identify primarily with the science of psychology or with that of sociology, there may be no challenge greater than that of discovering regularities and consistencies in social behavior. After all, it is such regularities and consistencies that lend predictability to the behavior of individuals in social contexts-in particular, to those events that constitute dyadic interactions and group processes. In the search for behavioral consistencies, two theoretical constructs have emerged as guiding principles: personality and roles. The theoretical construct of personality seeks to understand regularities and consistencies in social behavior in terms of relatively stable traits, enduring dispositions, and other propensities (for example, needs, motives, and attitudes) that are thought to reside within individuals. Because it focuses primarily on the features of individuals, the construct of personality is fundamentally psychological in nature. By contrast, the theoretical construct of roles seeks to understand regularities and consistencies in social behavior in terms of the directive influence of coherent sets of rules and prescriptions that are provided by the interpersonal, occupational, and societal categories of which individuals are continuing members. Because it focuses primarily on features of social structures, the construct of roles is fundamentally sociological in nature.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 384 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condition: Neu. Neuware -This text is designed to provide a comprehensive guide to students, researchers, or consultants who wish to carry out and to interpret analyses of economic performance, with an emphasis on productivity growth. The text includes an overview of standard productivity growth measurement techniques and adaptations, and data construc tion procedures. It goes further, however, by expanding the tradition al growth accounting (index number) framework to allow consider ation of how different aspects of firm behavior underlying productivity growth are interrelated, how they can be measured con sistently in a parametric model, and how they permit a well-defined decomposition of standard productivity growth measures. These ideas are developed by considering in detail a number of underlying theoretical results and econometric issues. The impacts of various production characteristics on productivity growth trends are also evaluated by overviewing selected methodological extensions and em pirical evidence. More specifically, in the methodological extensions, emphasis is placed on incorporation of cost and demand characteristics, such as fixity and adjustment costs, returns to scale, and the existence of market power, into analyses of productivity growth. These character istics, generally disregarded in such analyses, can have very important impacts on production structure and firm behavior, and thus on economic performance. They also provide the conceptual basis for vii viii PREFACE measures that are often used independently as indicators of economic performance, such as investment, capacity utilization, and profit measures.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 316 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condition: Neu. Neuware -Communication satellites are a $144 billion industry. Is there any space-based industry that could possibly beat that market 'Solar Power Satellites' shows why and how the space satellite industry will soon begin expanding its market from relaying signals to Earth to generating energy in space and delivering it to the ground as electricity. In all industrialized nations, energy demand is growing exponentially. In the developing world, the need for energy is as basic as food and water. The Sun's energy is available everywhere, and it is non-polluting. As business plans demonstrate its technical feasibility, commercial potential, and environmental acceptability, every country on Earth will look to space for the power it needs.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 120 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condition: Neu. Neuware -One of the basic tenets of science is that deterministic systems are completely predictable-given the initial condition and the equations describing a system, the behavior of the system can be predicted 1 for all time. The discovery of chaotic systems has eliminated this viewpoint. Simply put, a chaotic system is a deterministic system that exhibits random behavior. Though identified as a robust phenomenon only twenty years ago, chaos has almost certainly been encountered by scientists and engi neers many times during the last century only to be dismissed as physical noise. Chaos is such a wide-spread phenomenon that it has now been reported in virtually every scientific discipline: astronomy, biology, biophysics, chemistry, engineering, geology, mathematics, medicine, meteorology, plasmas, physics, and even the social sci ences. It is no coincidence that during the same two decades in which chaos has grown into an independent field of research, computers have permeated society. It is, in fact, the wide availability of inex pensive computing power that has spurred much of the research in chaotic dynamics. The reason is simple: the computer can calculate a solution of a nonlinear system. This is no small feat. Unlike lin ear systems, where closed-form solutions can be written in terms of the system's eigenvalues and eigenvectors, few nonlinear systems and virtually no chaotic systems possess closed-form solutions.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 368 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condition: Neu. Neuware -Induced Pluripotent Stem (iPS) cells are mature cells that have been genetically reprogrammed so that they return to their embryonic state. It is not yet known if iPS stem cells and embryonic stem cells differ significantly. Today many fundamental belief systems in biology are shifting towards accepting that mature body cells can be reverted to an embryonic state without the help of eggs or embryos. With their changed identities, iPS cells are then ready to serve as new tools for research in the fields of disease pathogenesis, drug discovery, oncology, and cell transplantation. One example of this would be using iPS from a patient¿s mature cells to repair damaged tissue; it is thought that there would be very low incidence of rejection of the ¿new¿ tissue in these cases. For the last four years, this therapeutic promise has been studied by hundreds of researchers worldwide in an effort to understand the ability of these cells to reverse their biological clocks.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 84 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condition: Neu. Neuware -This book is intended for students familiar with a beginner's version of differential and integral calculus stressing only manipulation offormulas and who are now looking for a closer study of basic concepts combined with a more creative use of information. The work is primarily aimed at students in mathematics, engineering, and science who find themselves in transition from elementary calculus to rigorous courses in analysis. In addition, this book may also be of interest to those preparing to teach a course in calculus. Instead of exposing the reader to an excess of premature abstractions that so easily can degenerate into pedantry, I felt it more useful to stress instruc tive and stimulating examples. The book contains numerous worked out examples and many of the exercises are provided with helpful hints or a solution in outline. For further exercises the interested reader may want to consult a problem book by the author entitled Problems and Propositions in Analysis (New York: Marcel Dekker, 1979). For the history of calculus I recommend the book by C. B. Boyer, The Concepts of the Calculus (New York: Dover, 1949).Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 532 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condition: Neu. Neuware -Much of that which is ordinal is modeled as analog. Most computational engines on the other hand are dig- ital. Transforming from analog to digital is straightforward: we simply sample. Regaining the original signal from these samples or assessing the information lost in the sampling process are the fundamental questions addressed by sampling and interpolation theory. This book deals with understanding, generalizing, and extending the cardinal series of Shannon sampling theory. The fundamental form of this series states, remarkably, that a bandlimited signal is uniquely specified by its sufficiently close equally spaced samples. The contents of this book evolved from a set of lecture notes prepared for a graduate survey course on Shannon sampling and interpolation theory. The course was taught at the Department of Electrical Engineering at the University of Washington, Seattle. Each of the seven chapters in this book includes a list of references specific to that chapter. A sequel to this book will contain an extensive bibliography on the subject. The author has also opted to include solutions to selected exercises in the Appendix.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 344 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condition: Neu. Neuware -Optimization is the process by which the optimal solution to a problem, or optimum, is produced. The word optimum has come from the Latin word optimus, meaning best. And since the beginning of his existence Man has strived for that which is best. There has been a host of contributions, from Archimedes to the present day, scattered across many disciplines. Many of the earlier ideas, although interesting from a theoretical point of view, were originally of little practical use, as they involved a daunting amount of com putational effort. Now modern computers perform calculations, whose time was once estimated in man-years, in the figurative blink of an eye. Thus it has been worthwhile to resurrect many of these earlier methods. The advent of the computer has helped bring about the unification of optimization theory into a rapidly growing branch of applied mathematics. The major objective of this book is to provide an introduction to the main optimization tech niques which are at present in use. It has been written for final year undergrad uates or first year graduates studying mathematics, engineering, business, or the physical or social sciences. The book does not assume much mathemati cal knowledge. It has an appendix containing the necessary linear algebra and basic calculus, making it virtually self-contained. This text evolved out of the experience of teaching the material to finishing undergraduates and beginning graduates.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 520 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condition: Neu. Neuware -Computer science seeks to provide a scientific basis for the study of inform a tion processing, the solution of problems by algorithms, and the design and programming of computers. The last forty years have seen increasing sophistication in the science, in the microelectronics which has made machines of staggering complexity economically feasible, in the advances in programming methodology which allow immense programs to be designed with increasing speed and reduced error, and in the development of mathematical techniques to allow the rigorous specification of program, process, and machine. The present volume is one of a series, The AKM Series in Theoretical Computer Science, designed to make key mathe matical developments in computer science readily accessible to under graduate and beginning graduate students. Specifically, this volume takes readers with little or no mathematical background beyond high school algebra, and gives them a taste of a number of topics in theoretical computer science while laying the mathematical foundation for the later, more detailed, study of such topics as formal language theory, computability theory, programming language semantics, and the study of program verification and correctness. Chapter 1 introduces the basic concepts of set theory, with special emphasis on functions and relations, using a simple algorithm to provide motivation. Chapter 2 presents the notion of inductive proof and gives the reader a good grasp on one of the most important notions of computer science: the recursive definition of functions and data structures.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 232 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condition: Neu. Neuware -Since the size, shape, and microstructure of nanocrystalline materials strongly impact physical and chemical properties, the development of new synthetic routes to nanocrystals with controlled composition and morphology is a key objective of the nanomaterials community.This objective is dependent on control of the nucleation and growth mechanisms that occur during the synthetic process, which in turnrequiresa fundamental understanding ofboth classical nucleation and growth and non-classical growth processes in nanostructured materials. Recently, a novel growth process called Oriented Attachment (OA) was identified whichappears to be a fundamental mechanism during the development of nanoscale materials. OA is a special case of aggregation that provides an important route by which nanocrystals grow, defects are formed, and unique¿often symmetry-defying¿crystal morphologies can be produced. This growth mechanism involves reversible self-assembly of primary nanocrystals followed by reorientation of the assembled nanoparticles to achieve structural accord at the particle-particle interface, the removal of adsorbates and solvent molecules, and, finally, the irreversible formation of chemical bonds to produce new single crystals, twins, and intergrowths.Crystallization and Growth of Colloidal Nanocrystals provides a current understanding of the mechanisms related to nucleation and growth for use in controlling nanocrystal morphology and physical-chemical properties, and is essential reading for any chemist or materials scientist with an interest in using nanocrystals as building blocks for larger structures. This book provides a compendium for the expert reader as well as an excellent introduction for advanced undergraduate and graduate students seeking a gateway into this dynamic area of research.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 104 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condition: Neu. Neuware -The chest X-ray (CXR) or chest radiograph remains the most commonly ordered imaging study in medicine, yet paradoxically is often the most complex to learn, recall, and master effective and accurate interpretation. The chest radiograph includes all thoracic anatomy and provides a high yield, given the low cost and single source. This guide presents a structured lexicon for use by readers to reproducibly describe radiographic abnormalities of the chest detected on plain film CXRs. The lexicon is designed to provide readers with clinically significant differentiation of abnormalities detected. The content is structured to relate specific combinations of distinct radiographic findings to classes/groupings of pathological etiologies of those findings. Recognizing the individual findings and identifying their combination or lack of combination with other individual findings allows readers to create effective differential diagnoses that can then be further evaluated using other imaging procedures and/or non-radiographic clinical information. The book includes hundreds of images, including radiographs, CTs, graphics, and analogous models to help teach otherwise complex processes and radiographic principles.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 168 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condition: Neu. Neuware -This book provides extensive insight into the possibilities and challenges of XML in building new information management solutions in networked organizations. After a brief introduction to Web communication features and XML fundamentals, the book examines the benefits of adopting XML and illustrates various types of XML use: XML in document management; XML for data-centric and multimedia components; XML as a format for metadata, including metadata for the Semantic Web; and XML in support of data interchange between software applications and among organizations. The challenges of adopting XML in large-scale information management are also discussed. In addition, applications across a broad spectrum are examined and numerous case studies pertaining to the adoption of XML are presented.The book is particularly suitable for courses offered in Information Studies, Information Systems, or Information Technology. It also serves as an excellent practical guide for professionals in information management and provides important support material for courses in Computer Science and in Business.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 240 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condition: Neu. Neuware -This graduate textbook presents the basics of representation theory for finite groups from the point of view of semisimple algebras and modules over them. The presentation interweaves insights from specific examples with development of general and powerful tools based on the notion of semisimplicity. The elegant ideas of commutant duality are introduced, along with an introduction to representations of unitary groups.The text progresses systematically and the presentation is friendly and inviting. Central concepts are revisited and exploredfrom multiple viewpoints. Exercises at the end of the chapter help reinforce the material.Representing Finite Groups: A Semisimple Introduction would serve as a textbook for graduate and some advanced undergraduate courses in mathematics. Prerequisites include acquaintance with elementary group theory and some familiarity with rings and modules. A final chapter presents a self-contained account of notions and results in algebra that are used. Researchers in mathematics and mathematical physics will also find this book useful.A separate solutions manual is available for instructors.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 388 pp. Englisch.