springer apr 2006 (126 Ergebnisse)

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -A new approach is presented for modelling multi-body systems, which constitutes a substantial enhancement of the Rigid Finite Element method. The new approach is based on homogeneous transformations and joint coordinates, and it yields the advantage that equations of motion are automatically generated for systems consisting of alternate rigid and flexible links. Apart from its simple physical interpretation and easy computer implementation, the method is also valuable for educational purposes since it impressively illustrates the impact of mechanical features on the mathematical model. This novel modelling approach is then applied to systems such as offshore-cranes and telescopic rapiers.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 236 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -After years of apparent dormancy, once again companies are paying more att- tion to information management. IT departments and CIOs are confronted with a number of new challenges, which force them to reconsider past information m- agement strategies and solutions. Recently cited as positive trends in IT are only those developments concerning stronger customer service and process orientation or pertaining to new forms of IT governance. Questions about the efficiency and effectiveness of company IT utilization are once again taking center stage. More and more IT departments are under pressure to perform with regard to quality, functionality, and transparency, especially when performance does not mirror customers¿ requirements. The intensity with which discussions are taking place about costs, outsourcing, or offshoring between IT and other business units epi- mizes this pressure. This text addresses the challenges to information management. Using the model for integrated information management, this book presents a framework for the management of IT services and a tangible organization of information mana- ment. In defining the model we were guided by two principles.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 172 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Communication is a crucial basis for the development of each individual¿s social identity as well as for intellectual and commercial exchange and economic development. Therefore, the question is not whether telecommunications industries have a future but what kind of future old and new players will have, given the dynamic changes in technologies and markets with various opportunities, challenges, and discontinuities. This book contains the results of a Transatlantic Symposium organized by the MÜNCHNER KREIS and supported by Georgetown University and its BMW Center for German and European Studies. The symposium combined perspectives from industrial practice and academic research originating from North America and Europe. Key issues were the technological drivers of change, changing market structures and business models, and the nature of future regulation on telecom markets.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 204 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Many of problems of the natural sciences lead to nonlinear partial differential equations. However, only a few of them have succeeded in being solved explicitly. Therefore different methods of qualitative analysis such as the asymptotic methods play a very important role. This is the first book in the world literature giving a systematic development of a general asymptotic theory for nonlinear partial differential equations with dissipation. Many typical well-known equations are considered as examples, such as: nonlinear heat equation, KdVB equation, nonlinear damped wave equation, Landau-Ginzburg equation, Sobolev type equations, systems of equations of Boussinesq, Navier-Stokes and others.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 576 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Object detection and recognition is a topic of significant interest in computer and robot vision. It is required in most applications of computational vision, for example, biometric systems, medical imaging, intelligent cars, factory automation, and image databases.One of the major challenges in designing object recognition systems is to construct methods that are fast and capable of operating on standard computer platforms. The more developed such systems become, the more urgent becomes the need for a pre-selection system that enables subsequent processing to focus only on relevant data. One mechanism to achieve this is visual attention: it selects regions in a visual scene that are most likely to contain objects of interest. The field of visual attention is currently the focus of much research for both biological and artificial systems.This monograph presents a complete computational system for visual attention and object detection: VOCUS (Visual Object detection with a CompUtational attention System) is a system capable of automatically selecting regions of interest in images and detecting specific objects. It represents a major step forward on integrating data-driven and model-driven information into a single framework. Additionally, the volume contains an extensive review of the literature on visual attention, detailed evaluations of VOCUS in different settings, and applications of the system in the context of object recognition and robotics. 236 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -At the QMath9 meeting, young scientists learn about the state of the art in the mathematical physics of quantum systems. Based on that event, this book offers a selection of outstanding articles written in pedagogical style comprising six sections which cover new techniques and recent results on spectral theory, statistical mechanics, Bose-Einstein condensation, random operators, magnetic Schrödinger operators and much more. For postgraduate students, Mathematical Physics of Quantum Systems serves as a useful introduction to the research literature. For more expert researchers, this book will be a concise and modern source of reference.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 512 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -The International Diagnostic Course in Davos (IDKD) offers a unique learning experience for imaging specialists in training as well as for experienced radio- gists and clinicians wishing to be updated on the current state of the art and the latest developments in the fields of imaging and image-guided interventions. This annual course is focused on organ systems and diseases rather than on modalities. This year¿s program deals with diseases of the abdomen and pelvis. During the course, the topics are discussed in group seminars and in plenary s- sions with lectures by world-renowned experts and teachers. While the seminars present state-of-the-art summaries, the lectures are oriented towards future dev- opments. Accordingly, this Syllabus represents a condensed version of the contents p- sented under the 20 topics dealing with imaging and interventional therapies in - dominal and pelvic diseases. The topics encompass all the relevant imaging mod- ities including conventional X-rays, computed tomography, nuclear medicine, - trasound and magnetic resonance angiography, as well as image-guided interventional techniques. The Syllabus is designed to be an ¿aide-mémoire¿for the course participants so that they can fully concentrate on the lecture and participate in the discussions without the need of taking notes.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 244 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - Geomaterials consist of a mixture of solid particles and void space that may be lled with uid and gas. The solid particles may be di erent in sizes, shapes, and behavior; and the pore liquid may have various physical and chemical properties. Hence, physical, chemical or electrical interaction - tween the solid particles and pore uid or gas may take place. Therefore, the geomaterials in general must be considered a mixture or a multiphase material whose state is described by physical quantities in each phase. The stresses carried by the solid skeleton are typically termed e ective stress while the stresses carried by the pore liquid are termed pore pressure. The summation of the e ective stress and pore pressure is termed total stress (Terzaghi, 1943). For a free drainage condition or completely undrained c- dition, the pore pressure change is zero or depends only on the initial stress condition; it does not depend on the skeleton response to external forces. Therefore, a single phase description of soil behavior is adequate. For an intermediate condition, however, some ow (pore pressure leak) may take place while the force is applied and the skeleton is under deformation. Due to the leak of pore pressure, the pore pressure changes with time, and the e ective stress changes and the skeleton deforms with time accordingly. The solution of this intermediate condition, therefore, requires a multi-phase c- tinuum formulations that may address the interaction of solid skeleton and pore liquid interaction.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - Linear programming attracted the interest of mathematicians during and after World War II when the first computers were constructed and methods for solving large linear programming problems were sought in connection with specific practical problems-for example, providing logistical support for the U.S. Armed Forces or modeling national economies. Early attempts to apply linear programming methods to solve practical problems failed to satisfy expectations. There were various reasons for the failure. One of them, which is the central topic of this book, was the inexactness of the data used to create the models. This phenomenon, inherent in most pratical problems, has been dealt with in several ways. At first, linear programming models used 'average' values of inherently vague coefficients, but the optimal solutions of these models were not always optimal for the original problem itself. Later researchers developed the stochastic linear programming approach, but this too has its limitations. Recently, interest has been given to linear programming problems with data given as intervals, convex sets and/or fuzzy sets. The individual results of these studies have been promising, but the literature has not presented a unified theory. Linear Optimization Problems with Inexact Data attempts to present a comprehensive treatment of linear optimization with inexact data, summarizing existing results and presenting new ones within a unifying framework.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - Finiteelementmethodhasbeenthedominanttechniqueincomputationalmech- icsinthepastdecades,andithasmadesigni cantcontributionstothedevelopments in engineering and science. Nevertheless, FEM is not well suited to problems h- ing severe mesh distortion owing to extremely large deformations of materials, encountering moving discontinuities such as crack propagation along arbitrary and complex paths, involving considerable meshings and remeshings in structural optimization problems, or having multidomain of in uence in multiphenomena physical problems. It is impossible to completely overcome those mesh-related dif culties by a mesh-based method. The highly structured nature of nite e- ment approximations imposes severe penalties in seeking the solutions of those problems. Distinguishing with nite element, nite difference, and nite volume methods, meshless method discretizes the continuum body only with a set of nodal points andtheapproximationisconstructedentirelyintermsofnodes.Thereisnoneedof mesh or elements in this method. It does not possess the mesh-related dif culties and provides an approach with more exibility in the applications in engineering and science. The meshless method started to capture the interest of a broader community of researchers only several years ago, and now it becomes a growing and evolving eld. It is showing that this is a very rich area to be explored, and has great promise for many very challenging computational problems. On the one hand, great advances of meshless methods have been achieved. On the other hand, there are many aspects of meshless methods that could bene t from improvements. A broadercommunityofresearcherscanbringdiverseskillsandbackgroundstobear on the task of improving this method.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - This book collects all the papers that appeared in 2005 in Kno- edge, Rationality and Action (KRA), a journal published as a s- cial section of Synthese, which addresses contemporary issues in epistemic logic, belief revision, game and decision theory, rational agency, planning and theories of action. As such, the special section appeals to researchers from Computer Science, Game Theory, Ar- cial Intelligence, Philosophy, Knowledge Representation, Logic and Agents, addressing issues in arti cial systems that have to gather information, reason about it and then make a sensible decision about what to do next. It will be clear already from the contents pages, that this book indeed re ects the core of KRA: the papers in this volume address degrees of belief or certainty, and rational agency. The latter has several manifestations: often constraints on the agent's belief, behaviour or decision making. Moreover, this book shows that KRA indeed represents a 'loop' in the behaviour of the agent: after having made a decision, the life of the agent does not end, rather, it will do some sensing or collect otherwise the outcome of its decision, to update its beliefs or knowledge accordingly and make up its mind about the next decision task.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - Robert B. Taylor, MD, has edited this book that introduces physicians and clinicians to an academic career in the health professions. Written from the clinician's viewpoint, it guides readers who are considering or who have recently embarked upon such a career through the essentials. Taylor's approach is practical and well rounded. He integrates evidence-based information from the medical literature with anecdotes from contributors noted for their success in a spectrum of disciplines at top academic medical centers. Taylor addresses the career decision-making process, job hunting, and life in academia. He also focuses on skills for success-from teaching to grant writing. Advice on clinical practice, career management, and the work/life balance is plentiful. The book dispels common myths and outlines errors to avoid. Differences in expectations and culture among teaching hospitals, medical schools, and academic medical centers are considered throughout. Sources for more information are provided as well.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - Automatic Autocorrelation and Spectral Analysis gives random data a language to communicate the information they contain objectively. It takes advantage of greater computing power and robust algorithms to produce enough candidate models of a given group of data to be sure of providing a suitable one. Improved order selection guarantees that one of the best (often the best) will be selected automatically. Written for graduate signal processing students and for researchers and engineers using time series analysis for applications ranging from breakdown prevention in heavy machinery to measuring lung noise for medical diagnosis, this text offers: tuition in how power spectral density and the autocorrelation function of stochastic data can be estimated and interpreted in time series models; extensive support for the MATLAB ARMAsel toolbox; applications showing the methods in action; appropriate mathematics for students to apply the methods with references for those who wish to develop them further.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - Conventional model-based data processing methods are computationally expensive and require experts' knowledge for the modelling of a system. Neural networks are a model-free, adaptive, parallel-processing solution. This textbook provides a powerful and universal paradigm for information processing; it reviews the most popular neural-network methods and their associated techniques.Each chapter has a systematic survey of each neural-network model. Computational intelligence topics like fuzzy logic and genetic algorithms (tools for neural-network learning) are introduced. Array signal processing problems are used to show the applications of each model.This is an ideal textbook for graduate students and researchers; as well as introducing the basics, the exhaustive list of references included will aid their future research. It is also a valuable reference for scientists and practitioners working in pattern recognition, signal processing, speech and image processing, data analysis and A.I.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -This book is designed to give the reader a solid understanding of the physics and instrumentation aspects of PET, including how PET data are collected and formed into an image. Topics include basic physics, detector technology used in modern PET scanners, data acquisition, and 3D reconstruction. A variety of modern PET imaging systems are also discussed, including those designed for clinical services and research, as well as small-animal imaging. Methods for evaluating the performance of these systems are also outlined.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 140 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Mobile devices allow users to access information resources and services over many different distribution channels ¿ anywhere, anytime, anyhow. Technical and usage characteristics of mobile systems are highly variable with respect to user capabilities and context characteristics, therefore an immense level of flexibility is required.Barbara Pernici - with contributions by the research groups involved in the project - presents here a framework for mobile information systems, focussing on quality of service and adaptability at all architectural levels, ranging from adaptive applications to e-services, middleware, and infrastructural elements, as it was developed in the 'Multichannel Adaptive Information Systems (MAIS)' project. The design models, methods, and tools developed in the project allow the realization of adaptive mobile information systems in a variety of different architectures.The book is divided into three parts: core technologies for mobile information systems (e.g., adaptive middleware and flexible e-services), enabling technologies (like data management on small devices or adaptive low-power hardware architectures or wireless networks), and methodological aspects of mobile information systems design (such as service profiling or user interface and e-service design for context-aware applications). It provides researchers in academia and industry with a comprehensive vision on innovative aspects which can be used as a basis for the development of new frameworks and applications.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 372 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Acknowledgements Section 1. Foundations 3 Chapter 1. Introduction: How to Use this Manual. . Chapter 2. How Do We Understand Difference . . 17 Section 2. Dimensions of Difference: Culture, Socioeconomic Status, Race, Ethnicity, Language, and Parental Partnership 29 Chapter 3. Cultural Values and Worldview. . Chapter 4. Socioeconomic Status. . 4 1 . 5 1 Chapter 5. Race and Ethnicity. Chapter 6. Language in the Classroom. . 67 Chapter 7. Working with Diverse Families: Parental Partnership in Education. . 8 1 viii Table of Contents Section 3 . Dimensions of Difference: Gender Chapter 8 . Gender . Chapter 9 . Sexual Orientation and Youth . Section 4 . Other Challenges to Diversity Chapter 10 . Bullying in Schools . Chapter 1 1 . Creating Community through Classroom Management . Chapter 12 . Child Abuse and Resilience . Section 5 . Understanding Exceptional Microcultures Chapter 13 . Exceptional Microcultures: Dealing with Trauma . Chapter 14 . Exceptional Microcultures: Youth with Emotional Disturbance- Childhood Depression. Eating Disorders . Chapter 15 . Exceptional Microcultures: How to Make a Referral . Section 6 . Conclusion Chapter 16 . Conclusion: The Multicultural Educator . Selected Bibliography . Glossary of Terms . Appendix A .Sample Course Syllabus . Appendix B . Educational Intervention Proposal Paper . Index . Diversity Training for Classroom Teaching: A Manual for Students and Educators is an excellent guide for preparing responsive teachers, capable of exploring the roots of a wide variety of types of diversity and acting with knowledge and sensitivity to improve student learning and self-efficacy.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 264 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -The importance of empirical economics and econometric methods has greatly in creased during the last 20 years due to the availability of better data and the improved performance of computers. In an information-driven society such as ours we need quickly to obtain complete and convincing statistical results. This is only possible if the appropriate econometric methods are applied. Traditional econometric analysis concentrates on classical methods which are far from suitable for handling actual economic problems. They can only be used as a starting point for students to learn basic econometrics and as a reference point for more advanced methods. Modern Econometrics tries to develop new approaches from an economic perspective. A consequence is that we have less of a unified econometric theory than in former times. Specific branches which require specific methods have been established. Nowadays, nobody has complete knowledge of every area of econometrics. If someone is interested to learn more about a field, relatively unknown to them, they will require support.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 240 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Classical microeconomics is intended to explain how a price system is able to coordinate the economic agents. But even if it can be extended to incomplete information and externalities, it remains grounded on very heroic assumptions. Agents are endowed with a very strong rationality, equilibrium is stated without a concrete process to achieve it, market is the unique institution considered. Evolutionary microeconomics is aimed at bypassing these limitations by considering a dynamic approach, however not biologically oriented. Agents have local information and bounded rationality, they are involved in explicit processes of interactions through time, various institutions sustain the market or substitute to it. It explains then some phenomena hardly explained by classical microeconomics: dispersion of prices, variety of industrial structures, financial bubbles.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 308 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Within contemporary society, globalization has emerged as a key concern at the centre of ethical, legal and policy debates relating to health care. Conflicts between public interests and individual rights, the challenge of regulating health professionals and access to health services, and the effects of a global market all feature prominently in these discussions. As a result of globalization, these issues can no longer be understood solely within the political boundaries that define traditional notions of individuals and communities. Rather, solutions demand a global conception of rights and obligations, which in turn requires new approaches to health policy formulation and a reevaluation of existing ethical and legal frameworks. In essence, the impact of globalization on human health is testing the robustness of modern regulatory systems, legal doctrines and ethical paradigms. PUBLIC HEALTH: DEVELOPING GLOBAL CONCERNS The interconnectedness of the global economy presents new challenges in public health. While globalization has facilitated improvements in health care, it has also created new hazards and avenues for the exploitation of vulnerable persons. It is becoming increasingly apparent that both national and international responses are required. Indeed, as the chapters in this section convey, public health is rightly a global concern. Globalization has led to a sharing of both risks and responsibilities in public health. Belinda Bennett reminds us of the ease with which infectious diseases can spread within the global community, given the speed of modern travel and trade.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 228 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Optimization is a serious issue, touching many aspects of our life and activity. But it has not yet been completely absorbed in our culture. In this book the authors point out how relatively young even the word ¿model¿ is. On top of that, the concept is rather elusive. How to deal with a technology that nds applicationsinthingsasdi erentaslogistics,robotics,circuitlayout, nancial deals and tra c control Although, during the last decades, we made signi cant progress, the broad public remained largely unaware of that. The days of John von Neumann, with his vast halls full of people frantically working mechanical calculators are long gone. Things that looked completely impossible in my youth, like solving mixed integer problems are routine by now. All that was not just achieved by ever faster and cheaper computers, but also by serious progress in mathematics. But even in a world that more and more understands that it cannot a ord to waste resources, optimization remains to a large extent unknown. R It is quite logical and also fortunate that SAP , the leading supplier of enterprise management systems has embedded an optimizer in his software. The authors have very carefully investigated the capabilities and the limits of APO. Remember that optimization is still a work in progress. We do not have the tool that does everything for everybody.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 348 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Economic dimensions have been somewhat neglected in research on nature policy and management of marine ecosystem exploitation. The current book aims to ll this gap. It examines the mismatches of natural, socio-economic, and regulatory processes and regimes in time and space. This involves dealing with the complexity and uncertainty that are inherent to the interaction of marine ecosystems and economic systems. The approach adopted is based on the idea that the design of sustainability policies requires an integration of insights from resource, environmental, and ecological economics on theonehandandmarinebiologyandenvironmentalsciencesontheotherhand.Forthis purpose, use is made of integrated assessment on the basis of theoretical and applied mathematical models. The book is the result of a large project, hosted by the Department of Spatial E- nomics of the Free University in Amsterdam, under the supervision of the rst author. TheprojectreceivedfundingfromtheNetherlandsOrganisationforScienti cResearch (NWO), through a ¿priority program¿titled¿SustainableUseandConservationof- rine Living Resources,¿ which was initiated and coordinated by Prof. Wim Wolff of the University of Groningen. The work reported here has greatly bene ted from external advice given by marine biologists who participated in this research program.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 272 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -There has been a flare-up in interest in science policy and a key factor in this is the increased interest in analysing the role that research can play in informing policy making.A pioneering venture in this field was Government and Research: The Rothschild Experiment in a Government Department (1983) Heinemann. No other work had penetrated the deepest recesses of government to observe at first hand the attempts of a major department to determine its research agenda through collaboration with leading scientists in a wide range of fields, to observe how research was commissioned, and then evaluated by scientific teams, and how it began to enter the policy blood streams of the departments.This revised and augmented version updates the original text for current policy concerns and takes account of changes in science policy studies, whilst preserving its essential themes. It contains a succinct account of where matters now stand as well as an extended analysis of the themes that continue to dominate research and science policy.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 260 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Thirty years ago, I first entered the dark realm of software engineering, through a prior interest in documentation. In those days, documentation pretty much meant functional specifications. The idea that stakeholders in a system (its implementers, its end-users, its maintainers, and so forth) might want something other than an alphabetic list of function definitions was just taking hold. There was an exciting (to me) vision of stakeholders accessing and contributing to explanations of how and why aspects of a system work as they do, tradeoff analysis of concomitant downsides, and perhaps even accounts of why other possible approaches were not followed. There were many challenges to overcome in achieving this vision. The most formidable is the belief that people do not like to create or use do- mentation. This negative image of documentation is (unfortunately) more than just the bias of a few incorrigible system developers. It is more like a deep truth about human information behavior, about how human beings construe and act towards information. Humans are, by default, active users of information; they want to try things out, and get things done. When documentation is interposed as a prerequisite between people and a desired activity, they try to skip through it, circumvent it, or undermine it. Desi- ing information to suit the needs and interests of its users is an abiding challenge, but we have come a long way from functional specifications as the only answer.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 456 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Proceedings of the Baroda Workshop on Nanomaterials, Magnetic Ions and Magnetic Semiconductors studied mostly by Hyperfine Interactions (IWNMS 2004), held in Baroda, India, 10-14 February, 2004.Researchers and graduate students interested in the application of hyperfine interaction techniques, mostly Mössbauer Effect and Perturbed Angular Correlations, to the fast developing fields of magnetic nanomaterials, magnetic ions and magnetic semiconductors will find this volume indispensable. The volume also addresses to the application of synchrotron radiation and ion beams to these systems.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 276 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -This is the most comprehensive book on the basics, realization and applications of micromechanical photonics. Its purpose is to give the engineering student and the practical engineer a systematic introduction to optical MEMS (Micro electro mechanical systems) and micromechanical photonics. It does this not only through theoretical and experimental results, but also by describing various products and their fields of application.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 264 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -From environmental management to land planning and geo-marketing, the number of application domains that may greatly benefit from using data enriched with spatio-temporal features is expanding very rapidly. Unfortunately, development of new spatio-temporal applications is hampered by the lack of conceptual design methods suited to cope with the additional complexity of spatio-temporal data. This complexity is obviously due to the particular semantics of space and time, but also to the need for multiple representations of the same reality to address the diversity of requirements from highly heterogeneous user communities. Conceptual design methods are also needed to facilitate the exchange and reuse of existing data sets, a must in geographical data management due to the high collection costs of the data. Yet, current practice in areas like geographical information systems or moving objects databases does not include conceptual design methods very well, if at all.This book shows that a conceptual design approach for spatio-temporal databases is both feasible and easy to apprehend. While providing a firm basis through extensive discussion of traditional data modeling concepts, the major focus of the book is on modeling spatial and temporal information. Parent, Spaccapietra and Zimányi provide a detailed and comprehensive description of an approach that fills the gap between application conceptual requirements and system capabilities, covering both data modeling and data manipulation features. The ideas presented summarize several years of research on the characteristics and description of space, time, and perception. In addition to the authors' own data modeling approach, MADS (Modeling of Application Data with Spatio-temporal features), the book also surveys alternative data models and approaches (from industry and academia) that target support of spatio-temporal modeling.The reader will acquire intimate knowledge of both thetraditional and innovative features that form a consistent data modeling approach. Visual notations and examples are employed extensively to illustrate the use of the various constructs. Therefore, this book is of major importance and interest to advanced professionals, researchers, and graduate or post-graduate students in the areas of spatio-temporal databases and geographical information systems.'For anyone thinking of doing research in this field, or who is developing a system based on spatio-temporal data, this text is essential reading.' (Mike Worboys, U Maine, Orono, ME, USA)'The high-level semantic model presented and validated in this book provides essential guidance to researchers and implementers when improving the capabilities of data systems to serve the actual needs of applications and their users in the temporal and spatial domains that are so prevalent today.' (Gio Wiederhold, Stanford U, CA, USA)Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 484 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -This volume offers insight in the identification and selection procedure of marine protected areas in the German exclusive economic zones (EEZs) of the North - and Baltic Seas. EU Member States are obliged to establish a coherent network of protected areas, consisting of sites identified under the EC Habitats and Birds Directives. The goal of this Natura 2000 network is the conservation of biodiversity on land and in the sea. To fill important gaps in knowledge regarding the presence, abundance, and distribution of certain species and habitats in the German North- and Baltic Seas, the German Federal Agency for Nature Conservation (BfN) initiated a detailed research programme, involving researchers from many renowned German marine research institutes. This book contains the main results of the different projects under this research programme, which formed the basis for the identification and selection of the Natura 2000 sites. Information is given on two NATURA 2000 habitats (sandbanks and reefs), and benthic species, fish, birds and marine mammals, as well as on legal aspects and implementation procedures. Last but not least the book introduces the current status of NATURA 2000 in the German EEZ. Target audience are not only scientists, but also policymakers, environmental organisations and other stakeholders, and the book includes many illustrations.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 284 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Micrometeorites played an essential role in the formation of the atmosphere of the Early Earth and also served as a significant source of activation for organic prebiotic chemistry on mineral surfaces. The present book gives a coherent account of this scenario, embedding the more specific results within a broader framework that considers the creation and evolution of the Early Earth. It thus addresses students and nonspecialist researchers in the fields of planetary atmospheres, biogeophysics and astrobiology. The experienced researcher will find this volume to be a modern and compact reference, as well as a source of material for lectures in this field.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 348 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -2-D and 3-D anal ultrasound are among the most recent and advanced tools available for both the diagnosis and the management of anorectal diseases. They are neither expensive nor harmful for the patients and progressively replaced anal mapping with EMG electrodes for the diagnosis of sphincter's defects and anismus, which represents nearly 50% of the cases of chronic constipation. Anal US may provide the clinician with useful information for both classification, diagnosis and management of anorectal sepsis, anal incontinence and anorectal-perineal chronic pain. Almost any case presented in this Atlas shows both imaging and clinical pictures, thus allowing both the radiologist and the clinician to assess the reliability of the exam and the outcome of the selected treatment.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 104 pp. Englisch.