springer us okt 2001 (99 results)

Buch. Condition: Neu. Neuware - This volume contains refereed papers based on the lectures presented at the XIV International Conference on Mathematical Programming held at Matrahaza, Hungary, between 27-31 March 1999. This conference was organized by the Laboratory of Operations Research and Deci sion Systems at the Computer and Automation Institute, Hungarian Academy of Sciences. The editors hope this volume will contribute to the theory and applications of mathematical programming. As a tradition of these events, the main purpose of the confer ence was to review and discuss recent advances and promising research trends concerning theory, algorithms and applications in different fields of Optimization Theory and related areas such as Convex Analysis, Complementarity Systems and Variational Inequalities. The conference is traditionally held in the Matra Mountains, and housed by the resort house of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. This was the 14th event of the long lasting series of conferences started in 1973. The organizers wish to express their thanks to the authors for their contributions in this volume, and the anonymous referees for their valu able comments. Special thanks are directed to our sponsors, the Hun garian Academy of Sciences, the National Committee for Technological Development, the Hungarian National Science Foundation, and last but not least, the Hungarian Operational Research Society. We would like to thank John Martindale from Kluwer Academic Publishers for helping us produce this volume, Eva Nora Nagy for cor rections and proof-readings, and Peter Dombi for his excellent work on typesetting and editing the manuscript.

Buch. Condition: Neu. Neuware - The 1980s and 1990s have seen a growing interest in research and practice in the use of methodologies within problem contexts characterised by a primary focus on technology, human issues, or power. During the last five to ten years, this has given rise to challenges regarding the ability of a single methodology to address all such contexts, and the consequent development of approaches which aim to mix methodologies within a single problem situation. This has been particularly so where the situation has called for a mix of technological (the so-called 'hard') and human centred (so-called 'soft') methods. The approach developed has been termed mixed-mode modelling. The area of mixed-mode modelling is relatively new, with the phrase being coined approximately four years ago by Brian Lehaney in a keynote paper published at the 1996 Annual Conference of the UK Operational Research Society. Mixed-mode modelling, as suggested above, is a new way of considering problem situations faced by organisations. Traditional technological approaches used in management science have suffered criticisms relating to their adequacy in the past few decades, and these hard approaches have been replaced by soft methods, which consider process more relevant than outcome. However, the sole use of human centred approaches to organisational problems has also proved to be inadequate. Mixed-mode modelling accepts the importance of both process and outcome, and provides enabling mechanisms for hard and soft investigation to be undertaken.

Buch. Condition: Neu. Neuware - In recent years, there has been considerable interest in highly integrated, low power, portable wireless devices. There are three primary areas to be addressed when higher performance and lower power is desired. The first area is the device technology. Scaling of devices has realized steady improvements for many years. The second area is improved circuit design techniques. The final area is at the architectural level. This monograph focuses on the problem of low power GFSK/GMSK modulation and presents an architectural approach for improved performance. The new architecture is a modulated S-D fractional-N frequency synthesizer. The key innovation is an automatic calibration technique, which operates in the background. The availability of the calibration circuit makes high data rate, low power modulation possible. From the Foreword: 'The key contribution of the work presented in this monograph is a technique for in service automatic calibration of the modulated frequency synthesizer by ensuring that the digital emphasis filter and analog loop filter characteristics are matched. The automatic calibration circuit operates while the transmitter is in service and compensates for process and temperature variation. GFSK and 4-GFSK modulation was demonstrated at data rates of 2.5 Mb/s and 5 Mb/s respectively at an RF output carrier frequency of 1.8 GHz. . In addition, he presents some valuable tools for the practicing engineer in this field.' by Charles G. Sodini.

Buch. Condition: Neu. Neuware - This work began in 1995 as an outgrowth of the InfoPad project which showed us that in order to reduce the energy consumption of a portable multimedia terminal that something had to be done about the consumption of the microprocessor subsystem. The design of the InfoPad attempted to reduce the requirements of this general pur pose processor by moving the computation into the network or by the use of highly optimized integrated circuits, but in spite of these efforts it still was a major consumer of energy. The reasons for this became apparent as we determined that the energy required to perform a function in dedicated hardware could be several orders of magnitude lower than that consumed in the InfoPad microprocessor. We therefore set out on a full fledged attack on all aspects of the microprocessor energy consumption [1 J. After considerable analysis it became clear that though better circuit design and a stream lined architecture would assist in our goal of energy reduction, that the biggest gains were to be found by operating at reduced voltages. For the busses and VO this could be accomplished without significant degradation of the processor performance, but this was not a straightforward solution when applied to the core of the processor sub system (CPU and memory).

Buch. Condition: Neu. Neuware - The first Annual Working Conference ofWG11.4oftheInter nationalFederationforInformation Processing (IFIP),focuseson variousstate of the art concepts in the field of Network and Dis tributedSystemsSecurity. Oursocietyisrapidly evolvingand irreversibly set onacourse governedby electronicinteractions. Wehave seen thebirthofe mail in the early seventies, and are now facing new challenging applicationssuchase commerce, e government,.Themoreour societyrelies on electronicforms ofcommunication,themorethe securityofthesecommunicationnetworks isessentialforitswell functioning. Asaconsequence,researchonmethodsandtechniques toimprove network security iso fparam ount importance. ThisWorking Conference bringstogetherresearchersandprac tionersofvariousdisciplines,organisationsandcountries,todiscuss thelatestdevelopmentsinsecurity protocols, secure software engin eering,mobileagentsecurity,e commercesecurityandsecurityfor distributedcomputing. Wearealsopleasedtohaveattractedtwointernationalspeakers topresenttwo case studies,one dealing withBelgium sintentionto replacetheidentity card ofitscitizensbyanelectronicversion,and theotherdiscussingtheimplicationsofthesecuritycertificationin amultinationalcorporation. ThisWorking Conference s houldalsobeconsideredasthekick off activity ofWG11.4, the aimsof which can be summarizedas follows: topromoteresearch on technical measures forsecuringcom puternetworks, including bothhardware andsoftware based techniques. to promote dissemination of research results in the field of network security in real lifenetworks in industry, academia and administrative ins titutions. viii topromoteeducationintheapplicationofsecuritytechniques, andtopromotegeneral awarenessa boutsecurityproblems in thebroadfieldofinformationtechnology. Researchers and practioners who want to get involved in this Working Group, are kindlyrequestedtocontactthechairman. MoreinformationontheworkingsofWG11.4isavailable from the officialIFIP website:Finally,wewish toexpressour gratitudetoallthosewho have contributedtothisconference in one wayoranother. Wearegr ate fultothe internationalrefereeboard whoreviewedallthe papers andtotheauthorsandinvitedspeakers,whosecontributionswere essential to the successof the conference. We would alsoliketo thanktheparticipantswhosepresenceand interest, togetherwith thechangingimperativesofsociety,willprovea drivingforce for futureconferencestocome.

Buch. Condition: Neu. Neuware - In these exciting times of quotidianly progressing developments in communication techniques, where more than ever in the history of a technological progress, society's reliance on communication networks for medicine, education, data transfer, commerce, and many other endeavours dominates the human's everyday life, the optical networks are certainly one of the most promising and challenging networking options. Since their commercial arrival in the nineties, they have fundamentally changed the way of dealing with traffic engineering by removing bandwidth bottlenecks and eliminating delays. Today, after the revolutionary bandwidth expansion, the networking functionality migrates more and more to the optical layer, and the need to establish fast wavelength circuits and capacity-on-demand for the higher-layer networks, in particular data networks based on Internet Protocol (IP), has become one of the central networking issues for the new century. The unifying trends toward configurable all-optical network infrastructure open up a wide range of new network engineering and design choices dealing with networks' interoperability and common platforms for control and management. The Fifth Working Conference on Optical Network Design and Modelling, held in the Austrian capital Vienna, February 5-7, 2001, aims at presenting the most recent progress in optical communication techniques, new technologies, standardisation process, emerging markets and carriers. A short look at the Table of Contents of this book tells us, in fact, that this year's conference program reflects the current state of the art precisely.

Buch. Condition: Neu. Neuware - Researches and developers of simulation models state that the Java program ming language presents a unique and significant opportunity for important changes in the way we develop simulation models today. The most important characteristics of the Java language that are advantageous for simulation are its multi-threading capabilities, its facilities for executing programs across the Web, and its graphics facilities. It is feasible to develop compatible and reusable simulation components that will facilitate the construction of newer and more complex models. This is possible with Java development environments. Another important trend that begun very recently is web-based simulation, i.e., and the execution of simulation models using Internet browser software. This book introduces the application of the Java programming language in discrete-event simulation. In addition, the fundamental concepts and prac tical simulation techniques for modeling different types of systems to study their general behavior and their performance are introduced. The approaches applied are the process interaction approach to discrete-event simulation and object-oriented modeling. Java is used as the implementation language and UML as the modeling language. The first offers several advantages compared to C++, the most important being: thread handling, graphical user interfaces (QUI) and Web computing. The second language, UML (Unified Modeling Language) is the standard notation used today for modeling systems as a collection of classes, class relationships, objects, and object behavior.

Buch. Condition: Neu. Neuware - Optimum envelope-constrained filter design is concerned with time-domain synthesis of a filter such that its response to a specific input signal stays within prescribed upper and lower bounds, while minimizing the impact of input noise on the filter output or the impact of the shaped signal on other systems depending on the application. In many practical applications, such as in TV channel equalization, digital transmission, and pulse compression applied to radar, sonar and detection, the soft least square approach, which attempts to match the output waveform with a specific desired pulse, is not the most suitable one. Instead, it becomes necessary to ensure that the response stays within the hard envelope constraints defined by a set of continuous inequality constraints. The main advantage of using the hard envelope-constrained filter formulation is that it admits a whole set of allowable outputs. From this set one can then choose the one which results in the minimization of a cost function appropriate to the application at hand. The signal shaping problems so formulated are semi-infinite optimization problems. This monograph presents in a unified manner results that have been generated over the past several years and are scattered in the research literature. The material covered in the monograph includes problem formulation, numerical optimization algorithms, filter robustness issues and practical examples of the application of envelope constrained filter design. Audience: Postgraduate students, researchers in optimization and telecommunications engineering, and applied mathematicians.

Buch. Condition: Neu. Neuware - Software architectures have gained wide popularity in the last decade. They generally play a fundamental role in coping with the inherent difficulties of the development of large-scale and complex software systems. Component-oriented and aspect-oriented programming enables software engineers to implement complex applications from a set of pre-defined components. Software Architectures and Component Technology collects excellent chapters on software architectures and component technologies from well-known authors, who not only explain the advantages, but also present the shortcomings of the current approaches while introducing novel solutions to overcome the shortcomings. The unique features of this book are: evaluates the current architecture design methods and component composition techniques and explains their shortcomings; presents three practical architecture design methods in detail; gives four industrial architecture design examples; presents conceptual models for distributed message-based architectures; explains techniques for refining architectures into components; presents the recent developments in component and aspect-oriented techniques; explains the status of research on Piccola, Hyper/J®, Pluggable Composite Adapters and Composition Filters. Software Architectures and Component Technology is a suitable text for graduate level students in computer science and engineering, and as a reference for researchers and practitioners in industry.

Buch. Condition: Neu. Neuware - Geometric modelling has been an important and interesting subject for many years from the purely mathematical and computer science viewpoint, and also from the standpoint of engineering and various other applications, such as CAD/CAM, entertainment, animation, and multimedia. This book focuses on the interaction between the theoretical foundation of geometric modelling and practical applications in CAD and related areas. Geometric Modelling: Theoretical and Computational Basis towards Advanced CAD Applications starts with two position papers, discussing basic computational theory and practical system solutions. The well-organized seven review papers give a systematic overview of the current situation and deep insight for future research and development directions towards the reality of shape representation and processing. They discuss various aspects of important issues, such as geometric computation for space search and shape generation, parametric modelling, feature modelling, user interface for geometric modelling, geometric modelling for the Next Generation CAD, and geometric/shape standard. Other papers discuss features and new research directions in geometric modelling, solid modeling, free-form surface modeling, intersection calculation, mesh modeling and reverse engineering. They cover a wide range of geometric modelling issues to show the problem scope and the technological importance. Researchers interested in the current status of geometric modelling research and developments will find this volume to be an essential reference.

Buch. Condition: Neu. Neuware - This book is a collection of articles studying various Steiner tree prob lems with applications in industries, such as the design of electronic cir cuits, computer networking, telecommunication, and perfect phylogeny. The Steiner tree problem was initiated in the Euclidean plane. Given a set of points in the Euclidean plane, the shortest network interconnect ing the points in the set is called the Steiner minimum tree. The Steiner minimum tree may contain some vertices which are not the given points. Those vertices are called Steiner points while the given points are called terminals. The shortest network for three terminals was first studied by Fermat (1601-1665). Fermat proposed the problem of finding a point to minimize the total distance from it to three terminals in the Euclidean plane. The direct generalization is to find a point to minimize the total distance from it to n terminals, which is still called the Fermat problem today. The Steiner minimum tree problem is an indirect generalization. Schreiber in 1986 found that this generalization (i.e., the Steiner mini mum tree) was first proposed by Gauss.

Buch. Condition: Neu. Neuware - The Jordan River has attracted the attention of people around the world. The natives call it 'the Shari'a,' or the Code [of God.] The religious importance of the river is known to mankind. Travelers and explorers sailed down its course from north to south. All have noted that its waters are turbulent, its path windy, and its meandering course steep. Old civilizations flourished in the Jordan River basin. The territories surrounding it were known to have been ruled by the same political authority for centuries. Riparian States came to exist in its basin only after the First World War, when Britain and France shared the spoils of the eclipsed Ottoman Empire. Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Palestine were created as separate political entities and became riparian parties on the Jordan. Palestine became the target of the Zionist Movement for the establishment of a national home for the Jews. They were supported by Britain, who issued the Balfour Declaration in 1917 pledging support for their objective. The Jewish State, Israel, was established in part of Palestine in 1948, and became another riparian party on the Jordan River.

Buch. Condition: Neu. Neuware - Digital Enterprise Challenges comprises the proceedings of the Eleventh International PROLAMAT conference, which was sponsored by the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) and held in Budapest, Hungary in November 2001. This volume contains case studies, theoretical papers and project development reports on one of the greatest challenges facing the new digital enterprises: Life Cycle Approach to Management and Production. In an increasingly environment-conscious world, manufacturing and production are seen as part of a larger picture: the product life cycle (production - use - disposal), and are looked at from three different aspects: technology, economy and ecology (environmental impact). The PROLAMAT conference focuses on technology while also embracing the other two aspects; various solutions for the different activities are presented in the papers. Main issues discussed in the book are CAD/CAM/CIM/CAE, Reverse Engineering; SCM, ERP, Networking, Web Based Applications; Decision Support Systems, Intelligent Manufacturing; Modelling and Simulation; Virtual and Real Enterprises, Life-Cycle Approach, Management; Control and Robotics Applications. This volume is essential reading for academics, students, managers and industrial experts working in these areas.

Taschenbuch. Condition: Neu. Neuware - This book is a revision and extension of my 1995 Sourcebook of Control Systems Engineering. Because of the extensions and other modifications, it has been retitled Handbook of Control Systems Engineering, which it is intended to be for its prime audience: advanced undergraduate students, beginning graduate students, and practising engineers needing an understandable review of the field or recent developments which may prove useful. There are several differences between this edition and the first. - Two new chapters on aspects of nonlinear systems have been incorporated. In the first of these, selected material for nonlinear systems is concentrated on four aspects: showing the value of certain linear controllers, arguing the suitability of algebraic linearization, reviewing the semi-classical methods of harmonic balance, and introducing the nonlinear change of variable technique known as feedback linearization. In the second chapter, the topic of variable structure control, often with sliding mode, is introduced. - Another new chapter introduces discrete event systems, including several approaches to their analysis. - The chapters on robust control and intelligent control have been extensively revised. - Modest revisions and extensions have also been made to other chapters, often to incorporate extensions to nonlinear systems.

Buch. Condition: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -Volcanic eruptions are fascinating manifestations of the Earth's dynamic inte rior which has been cooling for the past several billion years. The planets of the solar system originated some 4.5 billion years ago from the same gas and dust cloud created by the big bang. Some of the gas collapsed by the gravitational force to form the Sun at the center, while the whirling disk of gas and dust around the Sun subsequently cooled and lumped together to form larger and larger lumps of materials or planetesimals. These planetesimals collided fre quently and violently and in the process liberated heat that melted the material in them. With time this material gradually cooled and formed the planets of the solar system. During the second half of the twentieth century the theory of plate tectonics of the Earth became established and demonstrated that our planet is covered with six large and many small plates of the lithosphere. These plates move over a highly viscous lower part of the Earth's upper mantle and contain the continental and oceanic crusts. The lower mantle extends below the upper mantle until it meets the core that is more than half the diameter of the entire globe (12,740 km). The inner core consists mostly of iron and its temperature is about 5000 kelvin, whereas the liquid outer core is turbulent, rotates faster than the mantle, consists primarily of iron, and is the source of the Earth's magnetic field. 624 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condition: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -Hon. Orrin G. Hatch United States Senate Electronic commerce will be pivotal to the United States economy in the 21 SI Century. With the advent ofelectronic commerce, some consumers have become concerned about the disclosure, transfer, and sale of information which businesses have collected about them. These concerns purportedly are slowing the rate ofexpansion ofelectronic commerce, thereby putting at risk the future growth of the New Economy. To reduce this risk, a variety of schemes have been proposed under which the government would regulate online privacy. Congress currently is in the midst ofa vigorous debate as to whether the government should regulate on-line privacy standards, and, ifso, what form such regulation should take. This succinct yet powerful book by Paul Rubin and Thomas Lenard goes to the heart of these issues. It explains that there is no evidence of actual consumer harm or market failure that could justify burdensome government regulation of online privacy. It describes the tremendous advantages consumers currently receive from the free flow of information collected on line, advantages which could be eliminated if the government unnecessarily regulates and stops this flow of information. It argues that the free market provides businesses with compelling incentives to adopt their own measures - such as seal programs and novel technologies - to assuage consumer privacy concerns. This book presents compelling evidence to support these and many other points central to the continuing debate in the halls of Congress and elsewhere concerningonline privacy. 128 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condition: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -The challenges currently facing particIpants m competitive electricity markets are unique and staggering: unprecedented price volatility, a crippling lack of historical market data on which to test new modeling approaches, and a continuously changing regulatory structure. Meeting these challenges will require the knowledge and experience of both the engineering and finance communities. Yet the two communities continue to largely ignore each other. The finance community believes that engineering models are too detailed and complex to be practically applicable in the fast changing market environment. Engineers counter that the finance models are merely statistical regressions, lacking the necessary structure to capture the true dynamic properties of complex power systems. While both views have merit, neither group has by themselves been able to produce effective tools for meeting industry challenges. The goal of this book is to convey the fundamental differences between electricity and other traded commodities, and the impact these differences have on valuation, hedging and operational decisions made by market participants. The optimization problems associated with these decisions are formulated in the context of the market realities of today's power industry, including a lack of liquidity on forward and options markets, limited availability of historical data, and constantly changing regulatory structures. 236 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condition: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -PREFACE This book deals with the new developments and applications of the geometric method to the nonlinear stability problem for thin non-elastic shells. There are no other published books on this subject except the basic ones of A. V. Pogorelov (1966,1967,1986), where variational principles defined over isometric surfaces, are postulated, and applied mainly to static and dynamic problems of elastic isotropic thin shells. A. V. Pogorelov (Harkov, Ukraine) was the first to provide in his monographs the geometric construction of the deformed shell surface in a post-critical stage and deriving explicitely the asymptotic formulas for the upper and lower critical loads. In most cases, these formulas were presented in a closed analytical form, and confirmed by experimental data. The geometric method by Pogorelov is one of the most important analytical methods developed during the last century. Its power consists in its ability to provide a clear geometric picture of the postcritical form of a deformed shell surface, successfully applied to a direct variational approach to the nonlinear shell stability problems. Until now most Pogorelov's monographs were written in Russian, which limited the diffusion of his ideas among the international scientific community. The present book is intended to assist and encourage the researches in this field to apply the geometric method and the related results to everyday engineering practice. 268 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condition: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -In the past 10 years extensive effort has been dedicated to commercial wireless local area network (WLAN) systems. Despite all these efforts, however, none of the existing systems has been successful, mainly due to their low data rates. The increasing demand for WLAN systems that can support data rates in excess of 20 Mb/s enticed the FCC to create an unlicensed national information infrastructure (U-NII) band at 5 GHz. This frequency band provides 300 MHz of spectrum in two segments: a 200 MHz(5.15-5.35 GHz) and a 100 MHz (5.725-5.825 GHz) frequency band. This newly released spectrum, and the fast trend of CMOS scaling, provide an opportunity to design WLAN systems with high data rate and low cost. One of the existing standards at 5 GHz is the European high performance radio LAN (HIPERLAN) standard that supports data rates as high as 20 Mb/s. One of the main building blocks of each wireless system is the f- quency synthesizer. Phase-locked loops (PLLs) are universally used to design radio frequency synthesizers. Reducing the power consumption of the frequency dividers of a PLL has always been a challenge. In this book, we introduce an alternative solution for conventional flipflop based xiv MULTI-GHZ FREQUENCY SYNTHESIS & DIVISION frequency dividers. An injection-locked frequency divider (ILFD) takes advantage of the narrowband nature of the wireless systems and employs resonators to trade off bandwidth for power. 172 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condition: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -It is well known that embedded systems have to be implemented efficiently. This requires that processors optimized for certain application domains are used in embedded systems. Such an optimization requires a careful exploration of the design space, including a detailed study of cost/performance tradeoffs. In order to avoid time-consuming assembly language programming during design space exploration, compilers are needed. In order to analyze the effect of various software or hardware configurations on the performance, retargetable compilers are needed that can generate code for numerous different potential hardware configurations. This book provides a comprehensive and up-to-date overview of the fast developing area of retargetable compilers for embedded systems. It describes a large set important tools as well as applications of retargetable compilers at different levels in the design flow. Retargetable Compiler Technology for Embedded Systems is mostly self-contained and requires only fundamental knowledge in software and compiler design. It is intended to be a key reference for researchers and designers working on software, compilers, and processor optimization for embedded systems. 196 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condition: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -by Phil Moorby The Verilog Hardware Description Language has had an amazing impact on the mod em electronics industry, considering that the essential composition of the language was developed in a surprisingly short period of time, early in 1984. Since its introduc tion, Verilog has changed very little. Over time, users have requested many improve ments to meet new methodology needs. But, it is a complex and time consuming process to add features to a language without ambiguity, and maintaining consistency. A group of Verilog enthusiasts, the IEEE 1364 Verilog committee, have broken the Verilog feature doldrums. These individuals should be applauded. They invested the time and energy, often their personal time, to understand and resolve an extensive wish-list of language enhancements. They took on the task of choosing a feature set that would stand up to the scrutiny of the standardization process. I would like to per sonally thank this group. They have shown that it is possible to evolve Verilog, rather than having to completely start over with some revolutionary new language. The Verilog 1364-2001 standard provides many of the advanced building blocks that users have requested. The enhancements include key components for verification, abstract design, and other new methodology capabilities. As designers tackle advanced issues such as automated verification, system partitioning, etc., the Verilog standard will rise to meet the continuing challenge of electronics design. 156 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condition: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -This symposium was organized at the B.M. Birla Science Centre, Hyderabad, India, and provided a platform for frontier physicists to exchange ideas and review the latest work and developments on a variety of interrelated topics. A feature of the symposium, as well as the proceedings, is the B.M. Birla Memorial Lecture by Nobel Laureate Professor Gerard 't Hooft. There were participants from the USA, several European countries, Russia and CIS countries, South Africa, Japan, India and elsewhere, of whom some forty scientists presented papers. Spanning a wide range of contemporary issues in fundamental physics from string theory to cosmology, the proceedings present many of these talks and contributions. 376 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condition: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -In the field of psychology, research areas often develop in relative isolation. Researchers in different areas are either not aware of, or seem to fail to see the relevance of findings from other areas even though it would seem that the findings are directly relevant to their own. One striking example of this is to be found in research that focuses on the effects of evaluation on performance. This volume integrates thinking from five different research traditions - Achievement Goals, Intrinsic vs. Extrinsic Motivation, Goal Setting, Social Loafing, and Social Facilitation - through the unique format of a give-and-take conversation between leading academics from each. 300 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condition: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -Published research and conference presentations on the Chinese language in the last decade have tended to focus on adult language processing. This book provides a comprehensive resource for the critical discussion of major issues in learning to read Chinese from a child acquisition perspective. The combined contributions from researchers in Asian studies, linguistics, psycholinguistics, psychology, cognitive psychology, reading, and education inform international comparative studies of literacy by making apparent the features of the Chinese culture, language, writing system, and pedagogy that may facilitate or impede the acquisition of literacy. 284 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condition: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -I would like to use this preface to thank some persons and institutions which have been important during the various stages of writing this book. First of all, I am grateful to Kluwer Academic Publishers for giving me the opportunity to write this book. I started writing the book in 1998 while I was working at the Departament d'Economia i d'Historia Economica at Universidad Autonoma de Barcelona, and continued the writing job from september 1998 to september 2000 at the Departamento de Economfa at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. The book has been completed while I was visiting the Department of Quantitative Economics at the University of Maastricht from october 2000 to august 2001. I wish to thank these three departments for their hospitality. The book has improved substantially by comments and critique from the following persons who have read parts of the manuscript: Geir Asheim, Eric van Damme, Janos Flesch, Mari-Angeles de Frutos, Diego Moreno, Hans Peters, Antonio Romero and Dries Vermeulen. I should also mention my discussions with Peter Wakker about the decision-theoretic foundations of noncooperative game theory, which have had an important impact on various parts of the book. Finally, I wish to express my warmest gratitude to my parents, my brother and my sister, and, last but not least, to Cati, to whom I dedicate this book. 252 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condition: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -Limulus in the Limelight: A Species 350 Million Years in the Making and in Peril contains 14 chapters covering the horseshoe crab's biology, ecology and evolutionary development. The book is a result of three mini-conferences held between 1996 and 2000 celebrating the populations in NY harbor. This book exposes the impacts of over fishing on this species; clarifies the future research agenda for the species worldwide and emphasizes the need for conservation of this fascinating creature's estuaries/ocean habitats. Biologists, ecologists, science educators, and conservationists will welcome this book because it is aimed at the preservation of Limulus, not only for its pharmacological interest but for the mystery related to its longevity. Limulus is a unique animal which has provided numerous uses for man over the years, from fertilizer to bait to medical research. However, if this species is not protected soon, it will be lost for the future. 196 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condition: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -Every year Earth is bombarded with about 40,000 tons of extraterrestrial material. This includes microscopic cosmic dust particles shed by comets and asteroids in outer space, meteorites, as well as large comets and asteroids that have led to catastrophic events in the geologic past. Originally considered only a curiosity, extraterrestrial matter found on Earth provides the only samples we have from comets, asteroids and other planets. Only recently mankind has started to actively collect extraterrestrial matter in space (Apollo program, Stardust mission) rather than to wait for its delivery to Earth. Still, most of our knowledge of the origin and evolution of our solar system is based on careful studies of meteorites, cosmic dust, and traces of large impact events in the geologic record such as the mass extinction that terminated the Cretaceous Period and led to the extinction of the dinosaurs. This book summarizes our current knowledge of the properties, origin, orbital evolution and accretion mechanism of extraterrestrial matter accreted on Earth and sheds light on accretion processes and fluxes in the geologic past. The chapters in the first part of the book are arranged in order to follow extraterrestrial matter from its origin in space, its orbital evolution on its way to Earth, its interaction with the Earth magnetosphere and atmosphere to its more or less violent collision with the Earth's surface. In the second part of the book several chapters deal with the present day flux of cosmic dust and meteorites to Earth. Finally, several chapters deal with the reconstruction of the accretion history of extraterrestrial matter on Earth, starting with the most recent geologic past and ending with the very early, violent accretion period shortly after the formation of Earth, Moon and other solid planets in our solar system. 496 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condition: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -There is hardly any book that aims at solving problems typically encountered in the laser field, and this book intends to fill the void. Following some initial exercises related to general aspects in laser physics (Chapt. 1), the subsequent problems are organized along the following topics: (i) Interaction of radiation with matter either made of atoms or ions, weakly interacting with surrounding species, or made of more complicated elements such as molecules or semiconductors (Chapters 2 and 3). (ii) Wave propagation in optical media and optical resonators (Chapters 4 and 5). (iii) Optical and electrical pumping processes and systems (Chapter 6): (iv) Continuous wave and transient laser behaviors (Chapters 7 and 8). (v) Solid-state, dye, semiconductor, gas and X-ray lasers (Chapters 9 and 10). (vi) Proper ties of the output beam and beam transformation by amplification, frequency conversion and pulse compression or expansion (Chapters 11 and 12). Problems are proposed here and solved following the contents of Orazio Svelto's Principles of Lasers (fourth edition; Plenum Press, New York, 1998). Whenever needed, equations and figures of the book mentioned above are currently used with an appropriate reference [e. g. , Eq. (1. Ll) of the book is referred to as Eq. (Ll. 1) of PL]. One can observe, however, that the types of problems proposed and discussed are of general validity and many of these problems have actually been suggested by our own long-time experience in performing theoretical and experimental researches in the field. 328 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condition: Neu. This item is printed on demand - Print on Demand Titel. Neuware -Volcanic eruptions are fascinating manifestations of the Earth's dynamic inte rior which has been cooling for the past several billion years. The planets of the solar system originated some 4.5 billion years ago from the same gas and dust cloud created by the big bang. Some of the gas collapsed by the gravitational force to form the Sun at the center, while the whirling disk of gas and dust around the Sun subsequently cooled and lumped together to form larger and larger lumps of materials or planetesimals. These planetesimals collided fre quently and violently and in the process liberated heat that melted the material in them. With time this material gradually cooled and formed the planets of the solar system. During the second half of the twentieth century the theory of plate tectonics of the Earth became established and demonstrated that our planet is covered with six large and many small plates of the lithosphere. These plates move over a highly viscous lower part of the Earth's upper mantle and contain the continental and oceanic crusts. The lower mantle extends below the upper mantle until it meets the core that is more than half the diameter of the entire globe (12,740 km). The inner core consists mostly of iron and its temperature is about 5000 kelvin, whereas the liquid outer core is turbulent, rotates faster than the mantle, consists primarily of iron, and is the source of the Earth's magnetic field.Springer-Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 624 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condition: Neu. This item is printed on demand - Print on Demand Titel. Neuware -Hon. Orrin G. Hatch United States Senate Electronic commerce will be pivotal to the United States economy in the 21 SI Century. With the advent ofelectronic commerce, some consumers have become concerned about the disclosure, transfer, and sale of information which businesses have collected about them. These concerns purportedly are slowing the rate ofexpansion ofelectronic commerce, thereby putting at risk the future growth of the New Economy. To reduce this risk, a variety of schemes have been proposed under which the government would regulate online privacy. Congress currently is in the midst ofa vigorous debate as to whether the government should regulate on-line privacy standards, and, ifso, what form such regulation should take. This succinct yet powerful book by Paul Rubin and Thomas Lenard goes to the heart of these issues. It explains that there is no evidence of actual consumer harm or market failure that could justify burdensome government regulation of online privacy. It describes the tremendous advantages consumers currently receive from the free flow of information collected on line, advantages which could be eliminated if the government unnecessarily regulates and stops this flow of information. It argues that the free market provides businesses with compelling incentives to adopt their own measures - such as seal programs and novel technologies - to assuage consumer privacy concerns. This book presents compelling evidence to support these and many other points central to the continuing debate in the halls of Congress and elsewhere concerningonline privacy.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 128 pp. Englisch.