springer aug 1988 (11 Ergebnisse)

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - Decisions twenty years ago during the fIrst generation of modern traffIc safety policymaking were easier than today. Afterall, the mandate for specifIc mandatory motor vehicle safety standards was dermed rather clearly during legislative hearings. Since the initial standards, decisions have been based on the more general guidelines of 'practicality' and avoiding 'unreasonable risks. ' Now, with more diffIcult decisions pending, the demand for analysis is greater. My purpose in writing this book is to promote second generation policymaking in traffic safety. The dominant theme is that an 'individual net benefIt approach' is useful in the design, evaluation and improvement of traffic safety policy. Hopefully, this book provides some guidance for today's tougher decisions. Evaluative review of modern traffic safety policy, especially automobile safety standards, yields several results. The technological approach, the basis for the 1966 legislation, is shown to produce mistakes. Benefits are overestimated and endangerment of nonoccupants is ignored. The risk homeostatic approach, the devil's idea to some in the safety community, is shown to be a limiting case of the more general individual net benefIt approach. Rationality and competency in travelers' safety decisions are reviewed in a broad context. Evidence beyond the realm of behavioral ix x The Regulation of Motor Vehicle and Traffic Safety psychology indicates considerable, albeit imperfect, competency in traffic safety decisions. Conventional benefit-cost analysis is critiqued. Existing studies of passive restraints are shown to overestimate net benefits because travelers' responses and costs are ignored.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - Renal stone disease remains a common clinical problem. Patients m a y attend either medical or surgical clinics and n o t infrequently present as acute abdominal emergencies to general practitioners, physicians, surgeons and even gynaecologists. Recent urinary calculi continue to cause considerable morbidity despite the recent advances in our understanding of the pathogenesis of the different types of stones involved and despite improvements in t reatment- by appropriate drug therapy, by ultrasound techniques and by lithotripsy. This volume discusses the investigation and management o f patients with calculus disease. Each chapterhas been written by a n experienced clinician and provides information of considerable relevance and importance for all doctors engaged in clinical practice. The technical developments o f the last few years have clearly demonstrated that renal stone disease, even when recurrent, should be an uncommon cause of chronic renal failure. Knowledge o f the recent developments in this field is important for all practising doctors and even more important for their patients.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - The work presented in this text relates to research work in the general area of adaptive filter theory and practice which has been carried out at the Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Edinburgh since 1977. Much of the earlier work in the department was devoted to looking at the problems associated with the physical implementation of these structures. This text relates to research which has been undertaken since 1984 which is more involved with the theoretical development of adaptive algorithms. The text sets out to provide a coherent framework within which general adaptive algorithms for finite impulse response adaptive filters may be evaluated. It further presents one approach to the problem of finding a stable solution to the infinite impulse response adaptive filter problem. This latter objective being restricted to the communications equaliser application area. The authors are indebted to a great number of people for their help, guidance and encouragement during the course of preparing this text. We should first express our appreciation for the support given by two successive heads of department at Edinburgh, Professor J. H. Collins and Professor J. Mavor. The work reported here could not have taken place without their support and also that of many colleagues, principally Professor P. M. Grant who must share much of the responsibility for instigating this line of research at Edinburgh.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - This book introduces a theory, Naive Semantics (NS), a theory of the knowledge underlying natural language understanding. The basic assumption of NS is that knowing what a word means is not very different from knowing anything else, so that there is no difference in form of cognitive representation between lexical semantics and ency clopedic knowledge. NS represents word meanings as commonsense knowledge, and builds no special representation language (other than elements of first-order logic). The idea of teaching computers common sense knowledge originated with McCarthy and Hayes (1969), and has been extended by a number of researchers (Hobbs and Moore, 1985, Lenat et aI, 1986). Commonsense knowledge is a set of naive beliefs, at times vague and inaccurate, about the way the world is structured. Traditionally, word meanings have been viewed as criterial, as giving truth conditions for membership in the classes words name. The theory of NS, in identifying word meanings with commonsense knowledge, sees word meanings as typical descriptions of classes of objects, rather than as criterial descriptions. Therefore, reasoning with NS represen tations is probabilistic rather than monotonic. This book is divided into two parts. Part I elaborates the theory of Naive Semantics. Chapter 1 illustrates and justifies the theory. Chapter 2 details the representation of nouns in the theory, and Chapter 4 the verbs, originally published as 'Commonsense Reasoning with Verbs' (McDowell and Dahlgren, 1987). Chapter 3 describes kind types, which are naive constraints on noun representations.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - This volume represents the proceedings of the third in a series of annual inter national symposia. The first, The Neuroregulation of Autonomic, Endocrine, and Immune Systems, was held in Indianapolis in the fall of 1985. The second, Psychological and Biological Approaches to the Understanding of Human Disease, was held in Bielefeld, Germany in the fall of 1986. The theme of this series concerns the communication between the central nervous system and the other major systems of the body, and the purpose is to monitor the frontiers of research into these neuronal/hormonal regulatory interactions and their application to medicine. The present volume deals with the role of peptides and amino acids in these information transfer processes. Great strides have been made in exploring the important role of amino acids and pep tides in neuroregulation, and the ongoing biotechnology revolution promises signi ficant scientific and medical advances throughout the next decade and beyond. The work described in this volume captures the great excitement and pro mise of this biomedical renaissance. This meeting was cosponsored by Searle/ Monsanto and Washington University and held in St. Louis in the early fall of 1986. A major contributor to these proceedings was Dr. Thomas O'Donohue whose chapter deals with his work in characterizing the endogenous ligands for the PCP and sigma opioid receptors. Tom's personality and career personi fied the dedication of this series to the principle of a broad multidisciplinary approach to scientific problems.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - The papers collected here are, with three exceptions, those presented at a conference on probability and causation held at the University of California at Irvine on July 15-19, 1985. The exceptions are that David Freedman and Abner Shimony were not able to contribute the papers that they presented to this volume, and that Clark Glymour who was not able to attend the conference did contribute a paper. We would like to thank the National Science Foundation and the School of Humanities of the University of California at Irvine for generous support. WILLIAM HARPER University of Western Ontario BRIAN SKYRMS University of California at Irvine Vll INTRODUCTION PART I: DECISIONS AND GAMES Causal notions have recently corne to figure prominently in discussions about rational decision making. Indeed, a relatively influential new approach to theorizing about rational choice has come to be called 'causal decision theory'. 1 Decision problems such as Newcombe's Problem and some versions of the Prisoner's Dilemma where an act counts as evidence for a desired state even though the agent knows his choice of that act cannot causally influence whether or not the state obtains have motivated causal decision theorists.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - For the last two decades, the topic of chronic renal failure has been dominated by discussions on dialysis and transplantation. As facilities for treating patients with end-stage renal failure have become more readily available, at least in Europe and North America, attention has once again been drawn to conservative measures which may improve both the overall prognosis and the quality of life of patients with renal impairment. Although severe renal failure may be progressive and many patients will ultimately require some form of renal replacement therapy, it is now widely appreciated that distressing symptoms can often be ameliorated by judicious medical treatment. Children as well as, and perhaps to a greater extent than, adults may benefit from such therapy. This volume examines relevant trends in the conservative man agement of both adults and children with chronic renal failure. Each chapter has been written by recognized experts and provides infor mation of clinical relevance for the average clinician. As the overall prognosis for patients with end-stage renal failure improves it is clear the management of patients with relatively stable chronic renal failure is an important topic not only for nephrologists but for all practising clinicians.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - From my B.E.E degree at the University of Minnesota and right through my S.M. degree at M.I.T., I had specialized in solid state devices and microelectronics. I made the decision to switch to computer-aided design (CAD) in 1981, only a year or so prior to the introduction of the simulated annealing algorithm by Scott Kirkpatrick, Dan Gelatt, and Mario Vecchi of the IBM Thomas 1. Watson Research Center. Because Prof. Alberto Sangiovanni-Vincentelli, my UC Berkeley advisor, had been a consultant at IBM, I re ceived a copy of the original IBM internal report on simulated annealing approximately the day of its release. Given my background in statistical mechanics and solid state physics, I was immediately impressed by this new combinatorial optimization technique. As Prof. Sangiovanni-Vincentelli had suggested I work in the areas of placement and routing, it was in these realms that I sought to explore this new algorithm. My flJ'St implementation of simulated annealing was for an island-style gate array placement problem. This work is presented in the Appendix of this book. I was quite struck by the effect of a nonzero temperature on what otherwise appears to be a random in terchange algorithm.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - I: Origins of Analytic Philosophy.- A Puzzle in Plato: Theaetetus 189b - 190e.- Russell's Early Views on Denoting.- II: Analyses of Belief, Knowledge and Sensation: Ancient, Modern and Contemporary.- An Analysis of Thirteen Epistemic Categories.- Why Solve the Gettier Problem .- Two Questions about Pleasure.- Having Evidence.- The Fourth Condition.- Against Simplicity.- Chisholmian Internalism.- The Problem of Old Evidence.- III: Analysis of Mind and Language.- Negations, Imperatives, Colors, Indexical Properties, Non-existence, and Russell's Paradox.- De Re and De Se Belief.- Taking the Fregean Seriously.- The Millian Theory of Names and the Problems of Negative Existentials and Non-referring Names.- Omniscience and Knowledge De Se et DePraesenti.- IV: Analysis of Modalities.- The Impossibility of Certain Higher-Order Non-classical Logics with Extensionality.- The Nature of Singular Propositions.- Problems with Possible Worlds.- Quantified Subjunctives, Modality and Natural Law.- Vague Identity.- Index of Names.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - The Geo-Sciences Panel is a synonym for the Special Programme on Global Transport Mechanisms in the Geo-Sciences. This Programme is one of the special programs established by the NATO Science Committee to promote the study of a specific topic using the usual NATO structures, namely, Advanced Research Workshops, Advanced Study Institutes, Conferences, Collaborative Research Grants, Research-Studies and Lecture Visits. The aim of the Programme is to stimulate and facilitate international col laboration among scientists of the member countries in selected areas of global transport mechanisms in the Earth's atmosphere, hydrosphere, lithosphere and asthenosphere, and the interactions between these global transport processes. Created in 1982, the Geo-Sciences Panel followed the Air Sea Interactions Panel which was very successful in reviewing mechanisms at the air-sea-ice interface. Initially the Geo-Sciences Panel recognized the importance of magma chambers, ore deposits, geochemical cycles, seismic activity and hydrological studies. However, the Panel was rap idly convinced that the climate system is one of the most important sys tems in which to promote research on global transport mechanisms. Consequently, the Panel welcomed the organization of a course on Physically Based Modelling and Simulation of Climate and Climatic Change. This course was launched in Belgium in 1984 during both the Liege colloquium on Coupled Ocean-Atmosphere tlodels and the Louvain-Ia Neuve General Assembly of the European Geophysical Society. Rapidly scientists recognized that this course was timely and would be well received by the climate community, especially by junior researchers in this multi- and inter-disciplinary field.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - In December, 1966, two patients dying of months after the transplants had been per uremia as a result of diabetic kidney disease formed. This was long enough, however, to were offered a small chance of survival. Ac establish unequivocally in both patients cording to the thinking of the time, it was that an endocrine organ, the pancreas, could inappropriate-and perhaps even unethical function normally and for many days as a to offer them either chronic hemodialysis or human-to-human graft. The patients had kidney transplantation. These were considered become normoglycemic independent of insulin a waste of effort because it was believed that injections. scarce medical resources should not be spent The possible long-term benefits of restoring on patients, uremic or not, whose chances of insulin function were hotly argued then, and surviving for more than a few months were they have not been fully determined 20 years thought to be very small. Reduced to its later. It seems to me now, however, that the essence, the idea was that diabetic patients basic premise is sounder than I realized in were terrible risks and would remain so even if 1966: if one could restore an effective, norm the uremia were corrected.