elsevier bv jul 2004 (6 Ergebnisse)

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - Time-to-contact is the visual information that observers use in fundamental tasks such as landing an airplane or hitting a ball. Time-to-contact has been a hot topic in perception and action for many years and although many articles have been published on this topic, a comprehensive overview or assessment of the theory does not yet exist. This book fills an important gap and will have appeal to the perception and action community. The book is divided into four sections. Section one covers the foundation of time-to-contact, Section two covers different behavioral approaches to time-to-contact estimation, Section three focuses on time-to-contact as perception and strategy, and Section four covers time-to-contact and action regulation.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - As a byproduct of historical development, there are different, unrelated systems of nomenclature for 'inorganic chemistry', 'organic chemistry', 'polymer chemistry', 'natural products chemistry', etc. With each new discovery in the laboratory, as well as each new theoretical proposal for a chemical, the lines that traditionally have separated these 'distinct' subsets of matter continually grow more blurred. This lack of uniformity in characterizing and naming chemicals increases the communication difficulties between differently trained chemists, as well as other scientists, and greatly impedes progress. With the set of known chemicals numbering over 42,000,000 (in Chemical Abstracts' data base) and continually growing (about 2,000 new additions every day), the desirability for a unified system for naming all chemicals simultaneously grows. Moreover, in order to meet the requirements of disparate groups of scientists, and of society in general, the name assigned to a given chemical should, not only uniquely describe that substance, but also should be a part of a readily recognizable order for the entire field. For these purposes, a topology-based 'bi-parametric' system of nomenclature is herein proposed.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - Traffic congestion affects towns and cities everywhere and in some places it is regarded as one of the most urgent and important problems in need of a solution. Road pricing is undoubtedly recognised as an effective traffic demand management tool. The recent London congestion charging scheme seems to be showing that public and political opposition is not insurmountable. Thus, the ghost that prevented the introduction of a policy supported by transport economists for over 80 years seems to have disappeared or at least, weakened.The book contains twelve papers useful to different types of audience, such as researchers and postgraduate students, civil servants, policy makers and consultants. The first part is mainly theoretical and concentrates on second-best congestion pricing including pricing in urban contexts, the impact on the performance of the road network, optimal locations and charge levels, dynamic aspects such as time variation of tolls, potential impacts of road pricing on costs and service quality of public transport buses, and efficiency costs and transport sector effects of different types of pricing when they guarantee a balanced budget per mode.The second part contains chapters that describe the schemes in place around the world such as Singapore, Norway, London, and the US. The volume is an update of the state of the art on the subject and the first one to have been written and appear after the London scheme was implemented and to contain an assessment of its preliminary impacts.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - There has been a common perception that computational complexity is a theory of 'bad news' because its most typical results assert that various real-world and innocent-looking tasks are infeasible. In fact, 'bad news' is a relative term, and, indeed, in some situations (e.g., in cryptography), we want an adversary to not be able to perform a certain task. However, a 'bad news' result does not automatically become useful in such a scenario. For this to happen, its hardness features have to be quantitatively evaluated and shown to manifest extensively.The book undertakes a quantitative analysis of some of the major results in complexity that regard either classes of problems or individual concrete problems. The size of some important classes are studied using resource-bounded topological and measure-theoretical tools. In the case of individual problems, the book studies relevant quantitative attributes such as approximation properties or the number of hard inputs at each length.One chapter is dedicated to abstract complexity theory, an older field which, however, deserves attention because it lays out the foundations of complexity. The other chapters, on the other hand, focus on recent and important developments in complexity. The book presents in a fairly detailed manner concepts that have been at the centre of the main research lines in complexity in the last decade or so, such as: average-complexity, quantum computation, hardness amplification, resource-bounded measure, the relation between one-way functions and pseudo-random generators, the relation between hard predicates and pseudo-random generators, extractors, derandomization of bounded-error probabilistic algorithms, probabilistically checkable proofs, non-approximability of optimization problems, and others.The book should appeal to graduate computer science students, and to researchers who have an interest in computer science theory and need a good understanding of computational complexity, e.g., researchers in algorithms, AI, logic, and other disciplines.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - There are unique complexities associated with the economic valuation of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) and telematics. Traditional methods of quantitative analysis may not be appropriate in accurately and reliably assessing the economic impacts of these technologies. Although advanced transportation and related technologies are being planned and deployed at an increasingly rapid pace, many of the technologies are still relatively new, and their use may not be widespread. Much of the initial information and statistics gathered have been anecdotal and have focused more on benefits rather than costs. Therefore, difficulties arise due to the lack of historical data and 'lessons learned' from which to draw upon. In addition, compared with traditional transportation infrastructure, ITS technologies have different life cycles, cost structures, and a number of interrelated elements. This book addresses these concerns and proposes new economic assessment techniques as well as modifications to existing ones. Included are case studies from a multitude of North American, European, and Asian nations and major metropolitan areas covering a wide range of ITS technologies including freeway management, electronic toll collection, advanced driver assistance systems, and traveller information systems.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - Since the first date of publication of this book in 1991, the subject of phosphors and luminescence has assumed even more importance in the overall scheme of technological development. Many new types of displays have appeared which depend upon phosphors in their operation. Some of these were pure conjecture in 1991 but are a reality in 2004. Descriptions have been included of the newer (as well as the older) types of displays in this edition along with an annotated portrait of the phosphors used in each category. Many of these new light sources promise to displace and make obsolete our current light sources, such as incandescent lamps, fluorescent lamps and the ubiquitous colour Cathode Ray Tube now used in TV and computer monitors. The importance of solid state science are summarized in the introductory chapters of this edition, and many of the chapters have been completely rewritten or revised. Each chapter has a special contribution to make in the overall understanding of the solid state science of phosphors and luminescence.