springer springer feb 2012 (Over 3,800 results)

Taschenbuch. Condition: Neu. Neuware -This book is for the most part made up of the invited papers presented at the International Conference on Applica tions of the Kdssbauer effect, held at Aye1eth Hashahar, Israel, in August 1972. The purpose of the conference was to review perspec tives in MHssbauer spectroscopy from the point of view of applications in various fields of science - mainly physics, chemistry, and biology. It was hoped that the bringing together of scientists who work in different disciplines but use a common tool would encourage interdisciplinary re search and widen the horizon of the individual researcher. Both these features have been an important and unique characteristic of Kdssbauer research in the past decade. Accordingly, the main papers were presented in the following areas: magnetic properties of solids, applications to in organic chemistry, biochemical studies, amorphous systems, metal alloys, advances in high-resolution studies, and the new techniques for studying recoil-free spectra from isolated atoms in inert materials. A special panel discussion was devoted to the subject of phase transitions. Recent years have witnessed a rapid growth in the use of X-ray photoelec tron spectroscopy for the study of the physics and chemistry of solids. A report on this area of research and its rela tion to Kdssbauer studies has been included.

Taschenbuch. Condition: Neu. Neuware -Recently, much progress has been made with echocardiography and Doppler techniques and these ultrasound methods have grown in importance and reliability as non-invasive diagnostic procedures for many cardiovascular disorders. The objective of this t~xtbook is to offer a detailed yet concise overview of the echocardiographic diagnosis of the various cardiovascular diseases. The book focuses upon the practical echocardiographic (including Doppler) exam ination. Accordingly, the fundamental principles of echocardiography and the Doppler techniques (pulsed and continuous wave and color flow mapping are covered briefly but comprehensively). A copious amount of representative figures and illustrations is included so that the reader is able to understand the clinical application of each modality in the various cardiovascular pathologies and the echocardiographic diagnosis. In keeping with the concept of an integrated echocardiographic examination, the two-dimensional, M-mode and Doppler echocardiographic findings are included in many of the diseases. Usually, the echocardiographic examination is approached first by two-dimensional imag ing to give an understanding of the anatomical correlations, if necessary adding M-mode to clarify the time course of intracardiac movements, and secondly by each Doppler technique to evaluate the hemodynamic conditions. When familiar with these approaches, one can make not only the diagnosis of many cardiovascular diseases with echocardiography alone, but also the rational and expeditious management of patients. Today, some of the cardiac diseases (Atrial Myxoma, Atrial Septal Defect, Infective endocarditis and so forth) have been oper ated based only on echocardiographic findings.

Taschenbuch. Condition: Neu. Neuware -The Buccaneer Gas and Oil Field Study has been the most comprehensive research project to date concerned with assessing the ecological effects of offshore production activities. It took nearly five years to complete and involved almost 30 individual research groups. All of the raw data have been archived with NOAA's Environmental Data and Information Services, and detailed technical reports have been deposited with the National Technical Information Service so the interested investigator should be able to gain access to them. However, we felt that it would be desirable to present a distillation of our more significant findings in a form that was more readily available to the scientific and lay community. Thus, we conducted a symposium. on the study during EXPOCHEM '80 at the Astrohall, Houston, Texas during October, 1980. This volume comprises the proceedings of that symposium. All but two of the papers presented are included in this book. Manuscripts were not received from Dr. D. A. Wiesenburg (Texas A&M University: Volatile Hydrocarbons) or Dr. J. Tillery (Southwest Research Institute: Trace Metals), but these topics are adequately covered by other authors. An introductory chapter was added to place the study in its proper perspective and to provide some background material on the Buccaneer Field, a brief chapter on biocides was inserted since this topic generated much dis cussion at the symposium, and a bibliography is provided to direct the interested reader to sources of additional published infor mation on the Study.

Taschenbuch. Condition: Neu. Neuware -To any professional concerned with exceptional children, it would be the greatest understatement to say that the courts and legislatures have had a tremendous impact on the field of speeial education. Especially in the last decade, a flood of litigation filed to develop and define the right to education of previously unserved handicapped children has left no special education teacher, school adminis trator, nurse, educational psychologist, or pediatrician unaffected-either be cause these professionals are daily called upon to help children, or because they may come forward as witnesses on behalf of children who are the subjects of special education meetings, individualized education programs, placement hear ings, or judicial proceedings. Thus, for these people, questions regarding a student's legal rights are immediate and pervasive. This book developed out of the need to provide nonlegal professionals with a lawyer's view of the huge body of court cases and federal laws and regulations that affect their practice as well as their students and clients. An introductory chapter provides the historical basis of the current interface between law and special education. The Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975 and Sec tion 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, and their regulations promulgated in 1977, are the major national laws in the field ~nd are therefore described in Chapters 2 and 3.

Taschenbuch. Condition: Neu. Neuware -The discipline of stream ecology has grown exponentially along with most other areas of science in the last three decades. The field has changed from a fish management-dominated poor-sister of limnology to a discipline with theoretical constructs and ecological insights as rich as those in any area of ecology. A focus on energy transformations, nutrient turnover and the storage and processing of organic substrates has greatly enhanced the development of current paradigms. For example, the data base on microbial-biochemical invertebrate interactions in streams is now very extensive. A survey of the stream ecology literature reveals the central role played by H.B. Noel Hynes, whom I believe to be the world's premier lotic ecologist. Professor Hynes produced the major text in the field ('The Ecology of Running Waters') which has served both as an integrative review and as a bridge between the fish-water quality orientation of the fifties and sixties to the process oriented, nutritional resource-watershed perspectives of the seventies. It should also be noted that Professor Hynes' book, 'The Biology of Polluted Waters', served as a basic reference for the earlier period and he has published over 150 research papers, the great majority in stream ecology, spanning four decades.

Taschenbuch. Condition: Neu. Neuware -This book explores both non parametric and general statistical ideas by developing non parametric procedures in simple situations. The major goal is to give the reader a thorough intuitive understanding of the concepts underlying nonparametric procedures and a full appreciation of the properties and operating characteristics of those procedures covered. This book differs from most statistics books by including considerable philosophical and methodological discussion. Special attention is given to discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of various statistical methods and approaches. Difficulties that often arise in applying statistical theory to real data also receive substantial attention. The approach throughout is more conceptual than mathematical. The 'Theorem-Proof' format is avoided; generally, properties are 'shown,' rather than 'proved.' In most cases the ideas behind the proof of an im portant result are discussed intuitively in the text and formal details are left as an exercise for the reader. We feel that the reader will learn more from working such things out than from checking step-by-step a complete presen tation of all details.

Taschenbuch. Condition: Neu. Neuware -A 'New Looking Glass' for Behavioral Medicine In 1984, John Briggs, a science writer and specialist in interdisciplinary studies teaching at the New School for Social Research, and F. David Peat, a physicist who was for many years a fellow with the National Research Council of Canada, published a book about the revolutions that were taking place in physics, mathematics, chemistry, biology, and neu rophysiology and about the scientists whose new theories were changing our understanding about the nature of the universe. The title of their book was Looking Glass Universe, after Lewis Carroll's classic story of Alice and her friends, Through the Looking Glass. Briggs and Peat's book is a well-written, challenging volume about human beings and how they think about old problems in new and sometimes startling ways. I mention Briggs and Peat's book only partially because I happen to have a personal interest in the potential applications of new ways of looking at and thinking about nature and data derived from modern physics and systems theory for health psychology and behavioral medi cine (e. g. , Schwartz, 1984). In a letter Wolfgang Linden wrote to me on January 23,1987, he shared with me (at my request) his rough thoughts about his personal goals for this book.

Taschenbuch. Condition: Neu. Neuware -Mobile platform development has lately become a technological war zone with extremely dynamic and fluid movement, especially in the smart phone and tablet market space. This Synthesis lecture is a guide to the latest developments of the key mobile platforms that are shaping the mobile platform industry. The book covers the three currently dominant native platforms -- iOS, Android and Windows Phone -- along with the device-agnostic HTML5 mobile web platform. The lecture also covers location-based services (LBS) which can be considered as a platform in its own right. The lecture utilizes a sample application (TwitterSearch) that the authors show programmed on each of the platforms. Audiences who may benefit from this lecture include: (1) undergraduate and graduate students taking mobile computing classes or self-learning the mobile platform programmability road map; (2) academic and industrial researchers working on mobile computing R&D projects; (3) mobile app developers for a specific platform who may be curious about other platforms; (4) system integrator consultants and firms concerned with mobilizing businesses and enterprise apps; and (5) industries including health care, logistics, mobile workforce management, mobile commerce and payment systems and mobile search and advertisement. Table of Contents: From the Newton to the iPhone / iOS / Android / Windows Phone / Mobile Web / Platform-in-Platform: Location-Based Services (LBS) / The Future of Mobile Platforms / TwitterSearch Sample ApplicationSpringer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 140 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condition: Neu. Neuware -The Second Edition of this popular book on practical mathematics for engineers includes new and expanded chapters on perturbation methods and theory. This is a book about linear partial differential equations that are common in engineering and the physical sciences. It will be useful to graduate students and advanced undergraduates in all engineering fields as well as students of physics, chemistry, geophysics and other physical sciences and professional engineers who wish to learn about how advanced mathematics can be used in their professions. The reader will learn about applications to heat transfer, fluid flow and mechanical vibrations. The book is written in such a way that solution methods and application to physical problems are emphasized. There are many examples presented in detail and fully explained in their relation to the real world. References to suggested further reading are included. The topics that are covered include classical separation of variables and orthogonal functions, Laplace transforms, complex variables and Sturm-Liouville transforms. This second edition includes two new and revised chapters on perturbation methods, and singular perturbation theory of differential equations. Table of Contents: Partial Differential Equations in Engineering / The Fourier Method: Separation of Variables / Orthogonal Sets of Functions / Series Solutions of Ordinary Differential Equations / Solutions Using Fourier Series and Integrals / Integral Transforms: The Laplace Transform / Complex Variables and the Laplace Inversion Integral / Solutions with Laplace Transforms / Sturm-Liouville Transforms / Introduction to Perturbation Methods / Singular Perturbation Theory of Differential Equations / Appendix A: The Roots of Certain Transcendental EquationsSpringer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 200 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condition: Neu. Neuware -'Astronauts For Hire' is a comprehensive and authoritative study of the increasing need for commercial astronauts. Erik Seedhouse provides unique insights into the burgeoning new field of commercial space operation and the individuals who will run these missions.Section I begins by describing how Astronauts for Hire (A4H) was created in 2010 by Brian Shiro, a highly qualified NASA astronaut candidate, and a group of other astronaut candidates. Erik introduces A4H's vision for opening the space frontier to commercial astronauts and describes the tantalizing science opportunities offered when suborbital and orbital trips become routine.Section II describes the vehicles astronauts will use. Anticipation is on the rise for the new crop of commercial suborbital and orbital spaceships that will serve the scientific and educational market. These reusable rocket-propelled vehicles are expected to offer quick, routine, and affordable access to the edge of space, along with the capability to carry research and educational crew members. The quick turnaround of these vehicles is central to realizing the profit-making potential of repeated sojourns by astronauts to suborbital and orbital heights.Section III describes the various types of missions this new corps of astronauts will fly and who will hire them. For example, suborbital flights may be used to do high altitude astronomy, life science experiments, and microgravity physics. This section continues with an examination of the types of missions that will accelerate human expansion outward, to Exploration Class missions through lunar bases, the establishment of interplanetary spaceports, and outposts on the surface of Mars. Along the way it describes the tasks commercial astronauts will perform, ranging from mining asteroids to harvesting helium.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 272 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condition: Neu. Neuware -This paper looks at the current status and role of specific commercial contract law both national and international in view of recent European contract law reform. It reviews the value and necessity of a special and separate contract law for merchants in a global market and discusses critically the terminology, doctrine and objectives which this law is based upon. For a long time the choice of transnational law rules which are often non-state law has been marginalised and made impossible in state court proceedings. The new Common European Sales Law circumvents this problem by proposing to be used as national law. International practice in commercial dispute settlement may therefore still remain at the forefront of promoting and modelling the use of transnational contract law.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 84 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condition: Neu. Neuware -The Web has become a rich source of personal information in the last few years. People twitter, blog, and chat online. Current feelings, experiences or latest news are posted. For instance, first hints to disease outbreaks, customer preferences, or political changes could be identified with this data.Surveillance or early warning systems enable such detection of changes and support humans in getting information on changing situations. However, the variety of data that could be considered for surveillance is immense, ranging from sensor-measured values to collected counts and information extracted from natural language documents.Denecke¿s objective is to introduce the multiple possibilities and facets of surveillance and its applications. She first introduces the task of surveillance and provides an overview on surveillance in various domains. Next, the various information sources that are available and could already be used by surveillance systems are summarized. In the main part of the book, her focus is on unstructured data as a source for surveillance. An overview on existing methods as well as methods to be developed in order to process this kind of data with respect to surveillance is presented. As an example application, she introduces disease surveillance using Web 2.0, including corresponding methods and challenges to be addressed. The book closes with remarks on new possibilities for surveillance gained by recent developments of the Internet and mobile communication, and with an outline of future challenges.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 88 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condition: Neu. Neuware -This short book, geared towards undergraduate students of computer science and mathematics, is specifically designed for a first course in mathematical logic.A proof of Gödel's completeness theorem and its main consequences is given using Robinson's completeness theorem and Gödel's compactness theorem for propositional logic. The reader will familiarize himself with many basic ideas and artifacts of mathematical logic: a non-ambiguous syntax, logical equivalence and consequence relation, the Davis-Putnam procedure, Tarski semantics, Herbrand models, the axioms of identity, Skolem normal forms, nonstandard models and, interestingly enough, proofs and refutations viewed as graphic objects. The mathematical prerequisites are minimal: the book is accessible to anybody having some familiarity with proofs by induction. Many exercises on the relationship between natural language and formal proofs make the book also interesting to a wide range of students of philosophy and linguistics.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 144 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condition: Neu. Neuware -Discrete-Time Linear Systems: Theory and Design with Applications combines system theory and design in order to show the importance of system theory and its role in system design. The book focuses on system theory (including optimal state feedback and optimal state estimation) and system design (with applications to feedback control systems and wireless transceivers, plus system identification and channel estimation).Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 468 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condition: Neu. Neuware -Distributed-order differential equations, a generalization of fractional calculus, are of increasing importance in many fields of science and engineering from the behaviour of complex dielectric media to the modelling of nonlinear systems.This Brief will broaden the toolbox available to researchers interested in modeling, analysis, control and filtering. It contains contextual material outlining the progression from integer-order, through fractional-order to distributed-order systems. Stability issues are addressed with graphical and numerical results highlighting the fundamental differences between constant-, integer-, and distributed-order treatments. The power of the distributed-order model is demonstrated with work on the stability of noncommensurate-order linear time-invariant systems. Generic applications of the distributed-order operator follow: signal processing and viscoelastic damping of a mass¿spring set up.A new general approach to discretization of distributed-order derivatives and integrals is described. The Brief is rounded out with a consideration of likely future research and applications and with a number of MATLAB® codes to reduce repetitive coding tasks and encourage new workers in distributed-order systems.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 104 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condition: Neu. Neuware -This book provides an analysis of transmission power and network performance in different wireless communication networks. It presents the latest research and techniques for power and interference control and performance modeling in wireless communication networks with different network topologies, air interfaces, and transmission techniques. While studying the power distributions and resource management, the reader will also learn basic methodology and skills for problem formulations, can ascertain the complexity for designing radio resource management strategies in modern wireless communication networks, thus keeping pace with state-of-the-art research progress in radio transmission technologies.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 112 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condition: Neu. Neuware -The rapidly growing area of nuclear medicine imaging receives only limited attention in broad-based medical dictionaries. This encyclopedic dictionary is intended to fill the gap. More than 400 entries of between one and three paragraphs are included, defining and carefully explaining terms in an appropriate degree of detail. The dictionary encompasses concepts used in planar, SPECT, and PET imaging protocols and covers both scanner operations and popular data analysis approaches. In spite of the mathematical complexities in the acquisition and analysis of images, the explanations given are easy to understand and many helpful concrete examples are provided. The book will be ideal for those who wish to obtain a rapid grasp of a concept beyond a definition of a few words but do not have the time to search the reference literature. The almost tutorial-like style accommodates the needs of students, nuclear medicine technologists, and varieties of other medical professionals.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 168 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condition: Neu. Neuware -This book examines the discourse surrounding the wireless, created by the Anglo-Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi. The wireless excited early twentieth-century audiences before it even became a viable black box technology. The wireless adhered to modernist values¿speed, efficiency, militarization, and progress. Language surrounding the wireless is a form of technical communication, overlooked by today¿s practitioners. This book establishes a broader definition for technical communication by examining a selection of the discourse surrounding Marconi's wireless. The book¿s main themes are the following: 1) technical communication is all discourse surrounding technology, 2) the field of technical communication (or technical writing) should incorporate analyses of discourse surrounding technologies into its epistemology, 3) the wireless is a product of the society from which it comes (early twentieth-century Western civilization), and 4) the discourse surrounding the wireless is infused with tropes of progress¿speed, efficiency, evolution, and ahistoricity.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 168 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condition: Neu. Neuware -Rainbow connections are natural combinatorial measures that are used in applications to secure the transfer of classified information between agencies incommunication networks. Rainbow Connections of Graphs covers this new and emerging topicin graph theory and brings together a majority of the results that deal with the concept of rainbow connections, first introduced by Chartrand et al. in 2006.The authors begin with an introduction to rainbow connectedness, rainbow coloring,and rainbow connection number. The work is organized into the followingcategories,computation of the exact valuesof the rainbow connection numbers for some special graphs, algorithms and complexity analysis, upper bounds in terms of other graph parameters,rainbow connection for dense and sparse graphs, for some graph classes andgraph products, rainbow k-connectivity and k-rainbow index, and, rainbow vertex-connection number.Rainbow Connections of Graphs appeals to researchers and graduate students in the field of graph theory. Conjectures, open problems and questions are given throughout the text with the hope for motivating young graph theorists and graduate students to do further study in this subject.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 112 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condition: Neu. Neuware -This work is the first monograph devoted solely to Bombax ceiba, popularly known as the Red Silk Cotton Tree. Consisting of seven chapters, it covers all relevant aspects of this plant, from its historical and spiritual importance, to its botanical characterization, pharmacognostical details and ethnobiological uses, to its scientific validation in various animal and human studies. Each part of the tree is of medicinal value and possesses many novel chemical constituents such as shamimicin, bombasin, bombamalone, bombamaloside etc. along with other bioactive secondary metabolites. The book presents the chemical structures of the most important constituents and highlights various pharmacological activities, predominantly antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, anti-mutagenic, hypoglycemic, hypotensive, hepatoprotective and fibrinolytic, which may prove to be a source for the development of a novel phyto-pharmaceutical agent to treat diabetes, heart disease and cancer. In addition, separate chapters deal with the commercial and ecological significance of B. ceiba, as well as a case study on its conservation. Numerous color illustrations are included to identify the plant and to justify its nickname, the ¿Little Bird¿s Cafeteriä.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 108 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condition: Neu. Neuware -Identifying and customizing suitable control strategies is a challenging task, especially when production systems have to cope with variable demands, forecast error, and unstable processes. The focus of this book lies on helping companies with complex and discrete production systems to tailor a production control strategy to their needs. Thereby, the mutual merits of ¿push¿ and ¿pull¿ systems are taken into account, leading to hybrid strategies. Consequently, the book addresses practitioners who are interested in looking behind the scenes and into the physics of production control. A real-life case study demonstrates the practical applicability of the presented framework.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 188 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condition: Neu. Neuware -This book contains the refereed proceedings of the Third International Conference on Exploring Services Science (IESS)which was held in Geneva, Switzerland, in February 2012.At the conference, researchers from all over the world presented innovative ideas, research, and applications in the design, management, and evaluation of services. This year, the main theme was the interdisciplinary aspect of services. The 22 full papers accepted for IESS were selected from 46 submissions and presented ideas and results related to innovation, services discovery, services engineering, and services management as well as the application of services in information technology, business, e-learning and public administration.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 384 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condition: Neu. Neuware -From the Preface: 'The theory of optimal design of experiments as we know it today is built on asolid foundation developed by Jack Kiefer, who formulated and resolved some of the major problems of data collection via experimentation. A principal ingredient in his formulation was statistical efficiency of a design. Kiefer's theoretical contributions to optimal designs can be broadly classified into several categories: He rigorously defined, developed, and interrelated statistical notions of optimality. He developed powerful tools for verifying and searching for optimal designs; this includes the 'averaging technique'. for approximate or exact theory, and 'patchwork'. for exact theory. Kiefer and Wolfowitz provided a theorem now known as the Equivalence Theorem. This result has become a classical theorem in the field. One important feature of this theorem is that it provides a measure of how far a given design is from the optimal design. He characterized and constructed families ofoptimal designs. Some of the celebrated ones are balanced block designs, generalized Youden designs, and weighing designs. He also developed combinatorial structures of these designs.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 748 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condition: Neu. Neuware -This path-breaking book liberates management thinking from a century of Western subjugation. It is a comparative exposition of culture and management styles in India, Japan, China and major Western countries.There is a need to protect and sustain each country¿s identity and positive strengths in values while interlinking global business with cross cultural empathy. The book explores profiles of culture-management axis through secondary literature study in various languages of the East, empirical research conducted with nearly one thousand managers and 375 organizations in India.The effective management in the next millennium will be mission-based strategic integration of the team, combined with people-sensitive approach. In spite of growth of hi-tech, the emotional human issues will dominate the coming decades. Happiness and health in institutions will largely depend on successive sacrifice of greed and possessiveness in creation of wealth for human development. The meltdown in the US and its repercussions in the world are direct outcome of failure to learn these lessons.Already the world is witnessing acute consciousness of interdependence and universal linkages. This is the quintessence of Vedanta, Zen-Buddhism and Sufi order in the Eastern globe. West-dominated management technology must now synthesize with Eastern intuition and values.The book is divided into three parts: First part delves into East-West psyche; second part presents Integration-Affection Model as potential approach to effective Management. Third part shows the author¿s successful applications of the approach in different organizations while working as Chief Executive or Consultant.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 184 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condition: Neu. Neuware -The present volume presents a part of the results of a research project launched by the European Science Foundation (ESF) in 1977. Tribute should be paid to the late Professor Aleck Chloros, Judge in the Court of the European Community, whose belief in the European ideal and enthusiasm for European cooperation and the comparative study of legal problems made him an elo quent advocate of a large-scale ESF venture into the field of com parative law. Judge Chloros had envisaged the creation of a per manent, sizable and well-equipped European institute for compa rative legal studies. The successive working parties convoked by the Executive Council of the ESF, which I had the honour of chairing from the beginning, came to the conclusion that this am bitious vision could not be realized immediately; the financial sit uation of the member organizations of the ESF also deteriorated, making a cautious approach a necessary virtue. The solution ulti mately adopted by the last of the working parties - the Ad Hoc Committee for Comparative Law -and submitted to the General Assembly of the ESF in 1979 called for the launching of four pi lot projects. In November 1980, the Assembly approved detailed plans for two of these projects. The first of these - dealing with medical responsibility - has already been presented in an impres sive volume (E. Deutsch and H. -L. Schreiber, editors, Medical Responsibility in Western Europe.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 420 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condition: Neu. Neuware -1. Functional Biology and Plant Strategies.- A. Functional Biology.- B. The Requirements on Plants in Their Growth and Function.- C. The Abiotic Environment: Plant Autecology.- (i) Resources.- (ii)Resource Challenges Faced by Plants.- D. Adaptive Strategies.- (i) Utility of the Strategic View.- (ii) Explaining Adaptations, in Kind and in Magnitude, Primarily in Wild Growth.- (iii) Indicating Routes to Crop Improvement.- (iv) Examples of Objective Functions and Adaptations.- E. Four Principles of Adaptive Strategies.- F. The Calculation of Energetic Costs and Benefits.- (i) Three Types of Costs.- (ii) How Energy Costs Affect Growth and Yield.- (iii) Optimizing the Energetics of a Plant.- G. Toward a Quantification of Risk and Risk Management.- H. When and How Fast to Deploy Strategies.- I. Effectiveness and Limitations of Strategic Adaptations.- (i) Internal and External Limitations.- (ii) Limitations to Adaptive Strategies.- J. Additional Strategic Considerations for the Biotic Environment.- 2. Mineral Nutrition.- A. Essential Elements in the Ecosystem and Their Availability to Plants.- (i) Energetic Costs of Acquiring Nutrients.- (ii) Soil Processes.- B. Four Types of Challenges.- (i) Low Nutrient Availability in Soil.- (ii) Physiological Limitations on Internal Transport and Use.- (iii) Severe Imbalances Among Nutrients.- (iv) Toxicity of Nonnutrients.- C. Consequences of Nutritional Challenges.- (i) General and Ecological Challenges.- (ii) Agricultural Consequences.- D. Adaptive Responses, Their Costs and Benefits.- (i) Autecological Responses.- (ii) Responses Within Plant Communities.- 3. Photosynthesis.- A. CO2, Photons, and Their Availability to the Plant.- (i) The Basic Photosynthetic Reaction and Its Constraints.- (ii) CO2 and Water Exchange.- (iii) CO2 and Photon Transport in Whole Canopies.- (iv) Measures of Photosynthesis.- (v) Net Determinants of Photosynthesis.- B. Energy and Soil Resource Uses: Costs and Benefits.- (i) Costs and Benefits in Photosynthesis Alone.- (ii) Optimizing Leaf Energetics: An Example.- (iii) Use of Water and Mineral Nutrients.- (iv) Miscellaneous Costs and Benefits.- C. Challenges.- (i) Low or Erratic Availability of Resources.- (ii) Excesses and Imbalances.- (iii) Transport Limitations.- (iv) Nonresource Challenges.- D. Consequences of Challenges to Photosynthesis.- (i) Ecological Consequences.- (ii) Agricultural Consequences.- E. Adaptive Responses, Their Costs and Benefits.- (i) Responses to Low or Erratic Resource Availability.- (ii) Responses to Excesses and Imbalances.- (iii) Responses to Transport Limitations.- (iv) Responses to Nonresource Challenges.- 4. Water Relations.- A. Introduction.- (i) Water in Plant Structure and Function.- (ii) Water Potential and Terminology.- (iii) Water Transport in Soil.- (iv) Water Uptake by Roots.- (v) Water Transport from Roots to Leaves.- (vi) Water Consumption in Photosynthesis.- (vii) Cost-Benefit Analyses in Water Use.- B. Challenges.- (i) Low or Erratic Availability of Water.- (ii) Transport Limitations.- (iii) Excess Water: Flooding.- (iv) Salinity, a Nonresource Hazard.- C. Consequences of Challenges.- (i) Ecological Consequences.- (ii) Agricultural Consequences.- D. Adaptive Strategies, Their Costs and Benefits.- (i) Strategies for Low Water Availability.- (ii) Strategies of Salt Tolerance.- (iii) Strategies of Flood Tolerance.- (iv) Responses Within Ecosystems.- 5. Integrative Processes.- A. New Features in Long-Term Coordination of All Resource Uses.- B. Reproduction.- (i) The Vegetative-to-Reproductive Switch.- (ii) Seeds: Many and Small, or Few and Large .- (iii) Senescence and Resource Scavenging.- (iv) Flower and Fruit Abortion.- (v) Pollination.- C. Germination.- D. Morphogenesis, Especially Photomorphogenesis.- E. Control of Biotic Interactions.- (i) Pests and Diseases.- (ii) Symbionts.- (iii) Conspecifics and Their Gene Pool.- References.- Symbols.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 244 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condition: Neu. Neuware -This is a book about the why and how of doing experiments on rocks, minerals, magmas, and fluids. It could have as logically been subtitled 'Experimental petrology' as 'Experimental geochemistry,' but we chose geochemistry to emphasize the broad and overlapping nature of current experimental work. We have tried to aim the book at a general readership which we hope will include advanced undergraduate students, graduate students, and anyone else interested in learning something about experimental petrology. Although we hope there will be something of interest for the practicing experimentalist, our aim is at the non-experimentalist interested in learning why experiments are useful, what kind of experiments can be done, and what some of the major problems and limitations are and how they can best be avoided. The result of a journey through this book should be an ability to evaluate published experimental work critically and a knowledge of the kinds of problems an experimentalist might be able to help solve. Some details of experimental technique are included in the Appendix for those readers who want to 'get their hands dirty. ' Indeed, one of our main incentives for writing this book was to try to encourage more petrologists and geochemists to become experimentalists. In our pedagogical approach we have chosen to discuss a small number of case histories as illustrations of principles and techniques. We have tried to select studies we regard as well executed.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 208 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condition: Neu. Neuware -This book deals with the underlying theory and practical aspects of pressure gauges that are at present in general use. Because of the ever-increasing demands to provide a wider range of sophisticated and reliable vacuum equipment a good understanding of these instruments is of vital importance to all workers in the research and industrial sectors. Of the gauges considered only the mechanical types are absolute, in the sense that they measure pressure directly as a force upon a liquid column or a solid surface. Under ideal conditions it is possible to calculate their sensitiv ities, which are the same for all gases and vapours. The recent developments in the viscous or molecular damping gauges indicate that these may also be considered absolute. Other gauges are indirect in that they involve the measurement of some secondary phenomenon which is pressure-dependent and therefore these gauges can only be used for measurement after calibration against an absolute standard. The radiometer or Knudsen type gauge has been excluded from the text since these are now only of historic interest. Also no mention is made of the integration techniques involving surface changes (such as work function) although these could have application under very special circumstances. The McLeod gauge is dealt with in some detail, for even though this gauge has few practical applications, it is the most sensitive absolute gauge available and has value as a reference standard.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 212 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condition: Neu. Neuware -The use of computer-aided design (CAD) systems always involves the introduction of mathematical concepts. It is important, therefore, for any systems designer to have a good grasp of the mathematical bases used in CAD. The choice of mathematical models in a system also has an effect on the overall quality, although this effect may not always be visible to the final user. Depending on whether Bezier or B-spline functions are used for curves and surfaces, for example, the final user even if not a com puter scientist will notice a difference. If, for example, one of the control points is modified by the user, in a Bezier-type representation, the curve or surface will tend to be modified overall, but in a B-spline representation, the curve or surface will tend to be modified close to the point, and there only. More possibly harmful, however, is the effect of the mathematical model which has a number of properties invisible and unknown to the final user. In every case a model must be chosen with, it is hoped, the most appropriate characteristics and limits for the task in hand.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 168 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condition: Neu. Neuware -This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 6th IFIP WG 5.5 International Precision Assembly Seminar, IPAS 2012, held in Chamonix, France, in February 2012. The 15 revised full papers were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous submissions. The papers are organized into the following topical sections: micro processes and systems; handling and manipulation in assembly; tolerance management and error compensation methods; metrology and quality control; intelligent control of assembly systems; and process selection and modelling techniques.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 224 pp. Englisch.