springer berlin heidelberg aug 2004 (92 Ergebnisse)

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Internationales Wirtschaftsrecht - schnell erfasst behandelt in einem Allgemeinen Teil zunächst die Rechtsquellen und -gebiete einschließlich des Verhältnisses zu nationalen Rechtsordnungen, sodann Grundlagen, nämlich wichtige Akteure (vor allem Staaten, Internationale Organisationen), die Einbindung in die allgemeine internationale Ordnung, einen Überblick über wesentliche Sektoren (Investitionen, geistiges Eigentum, Wettbewerb etc.), Fragen der Implementierung, schließlich der Streitbeilegung und des Rechtsschutzes. Der Besondere Teil befasst sich mit ausgewählten materiell-rechtlichen Problemen, wie dem (Völker-)Recht des Warenhandels, des internationalen Dienstleistungs-, Kapital- und Zahlungsverkehrs sowie des wirtschaftsrelevanten Personenverkehrs und abschließend mit Aspekten öffentlicher Aufträge. Das Werk verbindet zudem das Sachverzeichnis mit einem Glossar und bereitet die einzelnen Kapitel durch Fragen vor, die am jeweiligen Ende (den Text ergänzend) beantwortet werden.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 328 pp. Deutsch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Der Band fasst die Referate zusammen, die auf einem wissenschaftlichen Symposium zum Ausscheiden Albrecht Randelzhofers aus dem aktiven Hochschuldienst gehalten wurden. Inhaltlich orientieren sich die einzelnen Beiträge an den Forschungsschwerpunkten Randelzhofers. So findet sich ein Beitrag zum Stand des völkerrechtlichen Gewaltverbots nach dem Irak-Krieg 2003. Die Auswirkungen der Europäisierung auf die Demokratietheorie werden ebenso untersucht wie das Haftungsrecht der Europäischen Union im Zusammenhang mit WTO-Entscheidungen. Sodann werden die Freizügigkeit des Unionsbürgers sowie die Untersuchungsmaxime im Asylrecht einer Bestandsaufnahme unterzogen. Eine persönliche Würdigung Randelzhofers als Verfassungsrichter rundet den Band ab.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 132 pp. Deutsch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Das brisante Thema 'Sterbehilfe' wirft wie derzeit kein anderes schwierige und komplexe Fragestellungen auf. In der kontrovers in Öffentlichkeit und Fachwelt geführten Diskussion stehen sich die Argumente diametral gegenüber. Das vorliegende Buch beleuchtet die einzelnen Facetten der Thematik. Während in Deutschland die 'aktive Sterbehilfe' nach wie vor strafbar sein soll, werden in der Politik Überlegungen angestellt, die 'passive Sterbehilfe' straffrei zu machen. Auch die Änderung des Betreuungsrechts steht in diesem Zusammenhang zur Diskussion. Vorsorgevollmacht und Patientenverfügung sind hier die zentralen Begriffe, mit denen argumentiert wird. Ethische, soziologische, rechtliche und medizinische Betrachtungen laden den Leser ein, sich einen umfassenden Überblick über das 'Tabuthema im Wandel ' zu verschaffen.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 164 pp. Deutsch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Der Bericht 2004 bringt die Analysen des ersten Benchmarking-Berichts von 2001 auf den neuesten Stand. Er untersucht anhand einer breiten Zusammenstellung von Zahlen und Fakten die Entwicklung von Beschäftigung und Arbeitslosigkeit in Deutschland im Vergleich zu den OECD-Ländern und geht der Frage nach, inwieweit konjunkturelle, in erster Linie aber institutionelle Faktoren hierauf einwirken. Konkret stellt der Bericht die wesentlichen Kennziffern aus den Bereichen Arbeitsmarkt- und Sozialpolitik, Arbeitszeit- und Arbeitsmarktregulierung, Unternehmertätigkeit, Lohn- und Tarifpolitik, Bildung sowie Innovation und Makroökonomie dar. Insbesondere zeigt er auf, inwieweit die jüngsten Reformen in Deutschland zur Behebung von Schwächen im deutschen Beschäftigungssystem beigetragen haben oder entsprechende Effekte zu erwarten sind und wo weiterhin Handlungsbedarf besteht. Darüber hinaus weist er auf bewährte Praktiken im Ausland hin, die als Anregungen in die deutsche Reformdiskussion einfließen könnten.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 372 pp. Deutsch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -This is the first book to provide a systematic exposition of promising techniques for the reconstruction of small inhomogeneities from boundary measurements. In particular, theoretical results and numerical procedures for the inverse problems for the conductivity equation, the Lamé system, as well as the Helmholtz equation are discussed in a readable and informative manner. The general approach developed in this book is based on layer potential techniques and modern asymptotic analysis of partial differential equations. The book is particularly suitable for graduate students in mathematics.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 252 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -We welcome you to the proceedings of the 5t International Conference on E- CommerceandWebTechnology(EC-Web2004)heldinconjunctionwithDEXA 2004 in Zaragoza, Spain. This conference, rst held in Greenwich, United Ki- dom in 2000, now is in its fth year and very well established. As in the four previous years, it served as a forum to bring together researchersfrom academia and commercial developers from industry to discuss the current state of the art in e-commerce and Web technology. Inspirations and new ideas emerged from intensive discussions during formal sessions and social events. Keynote addresses, research presentations and discussions during the c- ference helped to further develop the exchange of ideas among the researchers, developers and practitioners present. The conference attracted 103 paper submissions and almost every paper was reviewed by three program committee members. The program committee - lected 37 papers for presentationand publication, a task which was not easy due to the high quality of the submitted papers. We would like to express our thanks to our colleagues who helped with putting together the technical program: the program committee members and external reviewers for their timely and rigorous reviews of the papers, and the organizing committee for their help in the administrative work and support. We owe special thanks to Gabriela Wagner, Mirella Köster, and Birgit Hauer for their helping hands concerning the administrative and organizational tasks of this conference. Finally,wewouldliketothankalltheauthorswhosubmittedpapers,authors who presented papers, and the participants who together made this conference an intellectually stimulating event through their active contributions.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 388 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -¿How often we recall, with regret¿, wrote Mark Twain about editors, ¿that Napoleon once shot at a magazine editor and missed him and killed a publisher. But we remember with charity, that his intentions were good. ¿ Fortunately, we live in more forgiving times, and are openly able to express our pleasure at being the editors of this volume containing the papers selected for presentation at the 14th International Conference on Inductive Logic Programming. ILP 2004 was held in Porto from the 6th to the 8th of September, under the auspices of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computing of the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto (FEUP), and the Laborat¿ orio de Intelig¿ encia Arti cial e Ci¿ encias da Computä c¿ ao (LIACC). This annual me- ing of ILP practitioners and curious outsiders is intended to act as the premier forum for presenting the most recent and exciting work in the eld. Six invited talks¿three from elds outside ILP, but nevertheless highly relevant to it¿ and 20 full presentations formed the nucleus of the conference. It is the full-length papersofthese20presentationsthatcomprisethebulkofthisvolume. Asisnow common with the ILP conference, presentations made to a ¿Work-in-Progress¿ track will, hopefully, be available elsewhere. We gratefully acknowledge the continued support of Kluwer Academic P- lishers for the ¿Best Student Paper¿ award on behalf of the Machine Lea- ing journal; and Springer-Verlag for continuing to publish the proceedings of these conferences.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 376 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -The 7th International Conference on Principles of Distributed Systems (OPODIS2003)washeldduringDecember10¿13,2003atLaMartinique,French WestIndies,andwasco-organizedbytheUniversit¿ edesAntillesetdelaGuyane, La Martinique, French West Indies and by Chalmers University of Techn- ogy, Sweden. It continued a tradition of successful conferences with friendly and pleasant atmospheres. The earlier organizations of OPODIS were held in Luzarches (1997), Amiens (1998), Hanoi (1999), Paris (2000), Mexico (2001) and Reims (2002). OPODIS is an open forum for the exchange of state-of-the-art knowledge on distributed computing and systems among researchers from around the world. Following the tradition of the previous organizations, its program is composed of high-quality contributed and invited papers by experts of international caliber in this scienti c area. The topics of interest are theory, speci cations, design and implementation of distributed systems, including distributed and multiproc- sor algorithms; communication and synchronization protocols; coordination and consistency protocols; stabilization, reliability and fault-tolerance of distributed systems; performance analysis of distributed algorithms and systems; speci - tion and veri cation of distributed systems; security issues in distributed c- puting and systems; and applications of distributed computing, such as emb- ded distributed systems, real-time distributed systems, distributed collaborative environments, peer-to-peer systems, cluster and grid computing.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 268 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -It was 1999 when Extreme Programming Explained was rst published, making this year¿s event arguably the fth anniversary of the birth of the XP/Agile movement in software development. Our fourth conference re ected the evolution and the learning that have occurred in these exciting ve years as agile practices have become part of the mainstream in software development. These pages are the proceedingsof XP Agile Universe 2004, held in beautiful Calgary, gateway to the Canadian Rockies, in Alberta, Canada. Evidentintheconferenceis thefactthatourlearningis still inits earlystages. While at times overlooked,adaptation has beena core principleof agile software development since the earliest literature on the subject. The conference and these proceedings re- force that principle. Although some organizations are able to practice agile methods in the near-pure form, most are not, re ecting just how radically innovativethese methods areto thisday. Anyinnovationmustcoexistwithan existingenvironmentandagileso- ware development is no different. There are numerous challenges confronting IT and software development organizations today, with many solutions pitched by a cadre of advocates. Be it CMM, offshoring, outsourcing, security, or one of many other current topics in the industry, teams using or transitioning to Extreme Programming and other agile practices must integrate with the rest of the organization in order to succeed. The papers here offer some of the latest experiences that teams are having in those efforts. XP Agile Universe 2004consisted of workshops,tutorials, papers, panels, the Open Space session, the Educators¿ Symposium, keynotes, educational games and industry presentations.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 252 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Welcome to NLDB04, the Ninth International Conference on the Application of Natural Language to Information Systems, held at the University of Salford, UK d- ing June 23-25, 2004. NLDB04 follows on the success of previous conferences held since 1995. Early conferences then known as Application of Natural Language to Databases, hence the acronym NLDB, were used as a forum to discuss and disse- nate research on the integration of natural language and databases and were mainly concerned with natural language based queries, database modelling and user int- faces that facilitate access to information. The conference has since moved to enc- pass all aspects of Information Systems and Software Engineering. Indeed, the use of natural language in systems modelling has greatly improved the development process and benefited both developers and users at all stages of the software development process. The latest developments in the field of natural language and the emergence of new technologies has seen a shift towards storage of large semantic electronic dictionaries, their exploitation and the advent of what is now known as the semantic web. Inf- mation extraction and retrieval, document and content management, ontology dev- opment and management and natural language conversational systems are becoming regular tracks in the last NLDB conferences. NLDB04 has seen a 50% increase in the number of submissions and has est- lished itself as one of the leading conferences in the area of applying natural language to information systems in its broader sense. 452 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -We are delighted to present the proceedings of DAGM 2004, and wish to - press our gratitude to the many people whose e orts made the success of the conference possible. We received 146 contributions of which we were able to - cept 22 as oral presentations and 48 as posters. Each paper received 3 reviews, upon which decisions were based. We are grateful for the dedicated work of the 38 members of the program committee and the numerous referees. The careful review process led to the exciting program which we are able to present in this volume. Among the highlights of the meeting were the talks of our four invited spe- ers, renowned experts in areas spanning learning in theory, in vision and in robotics: ¿ William T. Freeman, Arti cial Intelligence Laboratory, MIT: Sharing F- tures for Multi-class Object Detection ¿ PietroPerona,Caltech:TowardsUnsupervisedLearningofObjectCategories ¿ StefanSchaal,DepartmentofComputerScience,UniversityofSouthernC- ifornia: Real-Time Statistical Learning for Humanoid Robotics ¿ Vladimir Vapnik, NEC Research Institute: Empirical Inference WearegratefulforeconomicsupportfromHondaResearchInstituteEurope, ABW GmbH, Transtec AG, DaimlerChrysler, and Stemmer Imaging GmbH, which enabled us to nance best paper prizes and a limited number of travel grants. Many thanks to our local support Sabrina Nielebock and Dagmar Maier, who dealt with the unimaginably diverse range of practical tasks involved in planning a DAGM symposium. Thanks to Richard van de Stadt for providing excellent software and support for handling the reviewing process. A special thanks goes to Jeremy Hill, who wrote and maintained the conference website.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 604 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Welcome to the proceedings of UbiComp 2004. In recent years the ubiquitous computing community has witnessed a sign- cant growth in the number of conferences in the area, each with its own disti- tive characteristics. For UbiComp these characteristics have always included a high-quality technical program and associated demonstrations and posters that cover the full range of research being carried out under the umbrella of ubiq- tous computing. Ours is a broaddiscipline andUbiComp aims to be aninclusive forum that welcomes submissions from researchers with many di erent ba- grounds. This year we received 145 submissions. Of these we accepted 26, an acceptance rate of just under 18%. Of course acceptance rate is simply a m- sure of selectivity rather than quality and we were particularly pleased this year to note that we had a large number of high-quality submissions from which to assemble the program for 2004. The broad nature of ubiquitous computing research makes reviewing Ubi- Comp submissions a particular challenge. This year we adopted a new process for review and selection that has, we hope, resulted in all authors obtaining - tremely detailed feedback on their submission whether or not it was accepted for publication. We believe the process enabled us to assemble the best pos- ble program for delegates at the conference. If you submitted a paper, we hope that you bene ted from the feedback that your peers have provided, and if you attended UbiComp 2004 we hope that you enjoyed the technical program.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 476 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -This introductory text provides undergraduate and graduate students with a concise and practical introduction to the primary concepts and techniques of optimization. Practicing engineers and managers will also find useful its concentration on problems and examples relevant to them. With a strong emphasis on basic concepts and techniques throughout, the book explains the theory behind each technique as simply as possible, along with illustrations and worked examples. It gives a balanced treatment of both the linear and nonlinear programming, plus search techniques, geometric programming, and game theory. Some typical problems varying in difficulty level are solved so readers can appreciate intricacies of the underlying concepts useful for practical problem solving. Suitable for individual or group learning, the book also includes numerous end-of-chapter problems for study and review.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 596 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Process Management, with its key concepts of internal customer and process ownership, is becoming one of the most important competitive weapons for firms and can determine a strategic change in the way business is carried out (Business Process Reengineering - B.P.R.). In this context, the flow of information increases, passes through the internal departments, to then extend beyond the traditional boundaries of the enterprise and form operational and knowledge networks with other business units, selected suppliers and clients, etc. These (internal and external) networks harness the great power offered by Web technologies (Internet, Intranet, Extranet) and create the Extended Enterprise.This book explores innovative themes that will trace the business paths for many firms in the near future. It is based on research and experience in several major companies, in particular the Snaidero Group (Europe¿s leading company in the kitchen sector), with contributions by leading Information & Communication Technologies (ICT) companies.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 288 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -The Europaische Akademie zur Erforschung von Folgen wissenschaftlich-techni scher Entwicklungen Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler GmbH (european academy) is con cerned with the scientific study of the consequences of scientific and technological advance for the individual and social life and for the natural environment. The main focus is to examine foreseeable mid-and long-term processes that are especially influenced by natural-and engineering sciences and the medical disciplines. The academy fulfills this task by organizing interdisciplinary expert discussions. Another important issue of the work of the Europaische Akademie concerns the methodology of Technology Assessment as a general issue. This is the main reason that the european academy organized during the past two years a project funded by the European Commission on Technology Assessment. Methods and Impact (TAMI). Together with partners from all over Europe a common understanding of what Tech nology Assessment (TA) is supposed to do was developed. Most importantly it was acknowledged that the core of any TA activity has to be a sound scientific under standing of the relevant phenomena. Communication then is of cordial importance to reach the relevant decision makers as well as the general public. It is true that this phase of the TA process has been treated with too little attention for many years. The communication processes between scientific advisers and policy makers have hence to be further scrutinized.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 268 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Sincerely welcome to proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Trust and Privacy in Digital Business, Zaragoza, Spain, held from August 30th to September 1st, 2004. This conference was an outgrowth of the two successful TrustBus inter- tional workshops, held in 2002 and 2003 in conjunction with the DEXA conferences in Aix-en-Provence and in Prague. Being the first of a planned series of successful conferences it was our goal that this event would initiate a forum to bring together researchers from academia and commercial developers from industry to discuss the state of the art of technology for establishing trust and privacy in digital business. We thank you all the attendees for coming to Zaragoza to participate and debate the new emerging advances in this area. The conference program consisted of one invited talk and nine regular technical papers sessions. The invited talk and keynote speech was delivered by Ahmed Patel from the Computer Networks and Distributed Systems Research Group, University College Dublin, Ireland on ¿Developing Secure, Trusted and Auditable Services for E-Business: An Autonomic Computing Approach¿. A paper covering his talk is also contained in this book. The regular paper sessions covered a broad range of topics, from access control - sues to electronic voting, from trust and protocols to digital rights management. The conference attracted close to 100 submissions of which the program committee - cepted 29 papers for presentation and inclusion in the conference proceedings. 316 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Das schonste GlUck des denkenden M ens chen ist, das Erforschliche erforscht zu haben und das Unerforschliche ruhig zu verehren JOHANN WOLFGANG VON Gm~THE In the sense of Goethe, I hope this book helps to shift the fine line between the inaccessible and the explorable a little bit in the direction of the latter. It has been accepted as a doctoral dissertation at the Faculty of Business Admin istration and Economics of the Catholic University of Eichstatt-Ingolstadt, Germany, and has been a great pleasure to write~at least most of the time. At the other times, the following people helped me to get around the moun tains that seemed too high to climb: First of all, these were my parents, whom I thank for their continuing support. This 'thank you' is extended to my brothers Marcel and Dominik and of course to Angelika, who has strengthened me with love through the sometimes arduous campaign. Further, I thank my academic advisor Prof. Dr. Heinrich Kuhn and my colleagues Dr. Georg N. Krieg and Florian Defregger for many fruitful discussions and helpful thoughts. I also thank Prof. Dr. Klaus D. Wilde for refereeing the thesis.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 252 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Due to the scarcity of reliable data, the existing literature on default risk still displays an imbalance between theoretical and empirical contributions. Consequently, the focus of this book is on empirical work. Within an intensity based modelling framework a broad range of promising specifications is tested using corporate bond data. The book provides one of the most comprehensive empirical studies in the field, from Kalman filtration of affine term structure models to the use of Efficient Method of Moments estimation of dynamic term structure models in a default risky context. Filling another gap in empirical research, the book devotes special attention to the identification factors that can explain credit default swap premia.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 152 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Research with radioactive ion beams has entered a new era with the advent of energetic beams of radioactive nuclei able to induce nuclear reactions. The present book is the first volume of edited lectures based on material presented at the Euroschool on Exotic Beams over the past years. It introduces the graduate student and nonspecialist scientist from related areas to various topics encompassing theoretical, experimental as well as application-related aspects of this growing field of research.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 508 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -On behalf of the AH 2004 Program Committee, we were pleased to welcome att- dees to Eindhoven for the 3rd International Conference on Adaptive Hypermedia and Adaptive Web-Based Systems. Similar to previous years, the number of research groups involved in research and innovative applications of personalization and adaptation functionalities has continued to grow, resulting in a further increase of 33% in the number of papers submitted to the conference, compared to the previous conference. From the 138 submissions we received, the program committee, in a rigorous review process, accepted 27 submissions (i.e., 20%) as full papers and 18 (i.e., 13%) as short papers. The large number of papers submitted generated a tremendous amount of work for the program committee members and the external reviewers, and we are immensely greatful for the effort they put into the process of selecting the very best papers. Together with three invited talks (by Emile Aarts, Philips Research, Candy Sidner, Mitsubishi Research, and Eric Horvitz, Microsoft Research), the AH 2004 - pers provide an excellent view on the successful approaches for innovative person- ization and adaptation functionalities in a variety of areas, including eLearning, eC- merce, mobile tourist guides and many more. They also show the integration of pers- alization functionalities being employed in Web environments, in ambient intelligence and intelligent agent contexts, and building upon adaptive hypermedia and Semantic Web technologies, Web search, Web services, social and peer-to-peer networks, and recommender systems, among others.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 464 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -approximation and rand- ness. The volumecontains19+18contributed papers,selected by the two program committees from 54+33 submissions received in response to the call for papers.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 444 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -This volume constitutes the proceedings of the 10th International Workshop on Groupware (CRIWG 2004). The conference was held in San Carlos, Costa Rica, and followed the traditional CRIWG spirit: a relatively small number of attendees, lively discussions and participation during and between paper p- sentations, and a constructive and friendly environment, which promoted a high level of learning and collaboration. The previous nine CRIWG workshops were organized in Lisbon, Portugal (1995), Puerto Varas, Chile (1996), El Escorial, Spain (1997), Buzios, Brazil (1998),Cancun,Mexico (1999),Madeira,Portugal(2000),Darmstadt,Germany (2001), La Serena, Chile (2002), and Autrans, France (2003). This 10th anniversary CRIWG exempli ed the continuing interest in the groupwareresearcharea.Groupwareresearchersfrom 14 di erent countriess- mitted a total of 71 papers. Each of the 71 papers was reviewed by two to three members of an international Program Committee, using a double-blind revi- ing process. Reviewers were carefully matched to paper submissions as much as possible to ensure expert assessments of the submitted research while avo- ing potential con icts of interest. Reviews were usually extensive and contained many constructive suggestions for improvement. Based on the reviewers¿ rec- mendations 29 papers were nally accepted: 16 long papers presenting mature work,and13shortpapersdescribingworkinprogress.Theacceptedpaperswere grouped into seven themes that represent current pockets of interest in gro- wareresearch:knowledgemanagement,awareness,supportforcollaborationp- cesses,collaborativeapplications,groupwareinfrastructure,computer-supported collaborative learning, and mobile collaborative work.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 396 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Modern database systems enhance the capabilities of traditional database systems by their ability to handle any kind of data, including text, image, audio, and video. Today, databasesystemsareparticularlyrelevanttotheWeb,astheycanprovideinputtocontent generators for Web pages, and can handle queries issued over the Internet. The eXtensible Markup Language (XML) is used in applications running the gamut from content management through publishing to Web services and e-commerce. It is used as the universal communication language for exchanging music and graphics as well as purchase orders and technical documentation. As database systems increasingly talk to each other over the Web, there is a fa- growingdesiretouseXMLasthestandardexchangeformat.Asaresult,manyrelat ional database systems can export data as XML documents and import data from XML d- uments and provide query and update capabilities for XML data. In addition, so called native XML database and integration systems are appearing on the database market, whose claim is to be especially tailored to storing, maintaining, and easily accessing XML documents. After the huge success of the rst XML Database Symposium (XSym 2003) last year in Berlin (already then in conjunction withVLDB) it was decided to establish this symposiumasanannualeventthatissupposedtotakeplaceasanintegralpartofVLDB. Thegoalofthissymposiumistoprovideahigh-qualityplatformforthepresentation and discussion of new research results and system developments. It is targeted at scientists, practitioners, vendors and users of XML and database technologies.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 252 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Concepts like ubiquitous computing and ambient intelligence that exploit - creasingly interconnected networks and mobility put new requirements on data management. An important element in the connected world is that data will be accessible anytime anywhere. This also has its downside in that it becomes easier to get unauthorized data access. Furthermore, it will become easier to collect, store, and search personal information and endanger people¿s privacy. As a result security and privacy of data becomes more and more of an issue. Therefore, secure data management, which is also privacy-enhanced, turns out to be a challenging goal that will also seriously in uence the acceptance of ub- uitous computing and ambient intelligence concepts by society. With the above in mind, we organized the SDM 2004 workshop to initiate and promote secure data management as one of the important interdisciplinary - search elds that brings together people from the security research community and the data management research community. The call for papers attracted 28 submissions both from universities and industry. The program committee selected 15 researchpapers for presentation at the workshop.The technical c- tributions presented at the SDM workshop are collected in this volume, which, wehope,willserveasavaluableresearchandreferencebookinyourprofessional life. 232 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Thisvolumecontainspapersselectedforpresentationatthe6thIAPRWorkshop on Document Analysis Systems (DAS 2004) held during September 8¿10, 2004 at the University of Florence, Italy. Several papers represent the state of the art in a broad range of ¿traditional¿ topics such as layout analysis, applications to graphics recognition, and handwritten documents. Other contributions address the description of complete working systems, which is one of the strengths of this workshop. Some papers extend the application domains to other media, like the processing of Internet documents. The peculiarity of this 6th workshop was the large number of papers related to digital libraries and to the processing of historical documents, a taste which frequently requires the analysis of color documents. A total of 17 papers are associated with these topics, whereas two yearsago (in DAS 2002) only a couple of papers dealt with these problems. In our view there are three main reasons for this new wave in the DAScommunity. From the scienti c point of view, several research elds reached a thorough knowledge of techniques and problems that can be e ectively solved, and this expertise can now be applied to new domains. Another incentive has been provided by several research projects funded by the EC and the NSF on topics related to digital libraries. 580 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Statistical learning theory is aimed at analyzing complex data with necessarily approximate models. This book is intended for an audience with a graduate background in probability theory and statistics. It will be useful to any reader wondering why it may be a good idea, to use as is often done in practice a notoriously 'wrong'' (i.e. over-simplified) model to predict, estimate or classify. This point of view takes its roots in three fields: information theory, statistical mechanics, and PAC-Bayesian theorems. Results on the large deviations of trajectories of Markov chains with rare transitions are also included. They are meant to provide a better understanding of stochastic optimization algorithms of common use in computing estimators. The author focuses on non-asymptotic bounds of the statistical risk, allowing one to choose adaptively between rich and structured families of models and corresponding estimators. Two mathematical objects pervade the book: entropy and Gibbs measures. The goal is to show how to turn them into versatile and efficient technical tools, that will stimulate further studies and results.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 292 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -It is with great pleasure that we present to you this tutorial volume entitled Validation of Stochastic Systems.ItisoneoftheresultsoftheDutch-German- lateral cooperation project ¿Validation of Stochastic Systems¿ (VOSS), nanced by NWO and DFG (the Dutch and German science foundations, respectively). In the early days of 2002, the idea emerged to organize a seminar at Schloss Dagstuhl, not the usual Dagstuhl seminar with primarily invited participants, but a seminar aimed at young(er) people, and for which the organizers assign themes to be worked upon and presented on. Following an open call announced via the Internet in the spring of 2002, we received many applications for part- ipation. After a selection procedure, we decided to assign (mostly) teams of two researchers to work on speci c topics, roughly divided into the following four theme areas: ¿Modelling of Stochastic Systems,¿ ¿Model Checking of Stochastic Systems,¿ ¿Representing Large State Spaces,¿ and ¿Deductive Veri cation of Stochastic Systems.¿ These are the titles of the four parts of this volume. TheseminarwasheldinSchlossDagstuhlduringDecember8¿11,2002aspart of the so-called GI/Research Seminar series. This series of seminars is nancially supported by theGesellschaft fur ¿ Informatik, the German Computer Society. At that point in time the papers had already undergone a rst review round. Each of the tutorial papers was presented in a one-hour session, and on the basis of the presentations we decided to bring together a selection of them into a book.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 480 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -This volume contains the postproceedings of the 1st International Workshop on Computational Autonomy ¿ Potential, Risks, Solutions (AUTONOMY 2003), held at the 2nd International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi-agentSystems(AAMAS2003),July14,2003,Melbourne,Australia.Apart from revised versions of the accepted workshop papers, we have included invited contributions from leading experts in the eld. With this, the present volume represents the rst comprehensive survey of the state-of-the-art of research on autonomy, capturing di erent theories of autonomy, perspectives on autonomy in di erent kinds of agent-based systems, and practical approaches to dealing with agent autonomy. Agent orientation refers to a software development perspective that has evolved in the past 25 years in the elds of computational agents and multiagent systems. The basic notion underlying this perspective is that of a computational agent, that is, an entity whose behavior deserves to be called exible, social, and autonomous. As an autonomous entity, an agent possesses action choice and is at least to some extent capable of deciding and acting under self-control. Through its emphasis on autonomy, agent orientation signi cantly di ers from traditional engineering perspectives such as structure orientation or object o- entation. These perspectives are targeted on the development of systems whose behavior is fully determined and controlled by external units (e.g., by a p- grammer at design time and/or a user at run time), and thus inherently fail to capture the notion of autonomy.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 292 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -The 11th Conference ¿Artificial Intelligence: Methodology, Systems, Applications ¿ Semantic Web Challenges¿ (AIMSA 2004) continued successfully pursuing the main aim of the AIMSA series of conferences ¿ to foster the multidisciplinary community of artificial intelligence researchers, embracing both the theoretic underpinnings of the field and the practical issues involved in development, deployment, and maintenance of systems with intelligent behavior. Since the first conference in 1984 AIMSA has provided an ideal forum for international scientific exchange between Central/Eastern Europe and the rest of the world and it is even more important nowadays in the uni- ing Europe. The current AIMSA edition is focused on Semantic Web methods and technologies. The Internet is changing the everyday services landscape, and the way we do things in almost every domain of our life. Web services are rapidly becoming the enabling technology of today's e-business and e-commerce systems, and will soon transform the Web as it is now into a distributed computation and application framework. The emerging Semantic Web paradigm promises to annotate Web artefacts to enable automated reasoning about them. When applied to e-services, the paradigm hopes to provide substantial automation for activities such as discovery, invocation, assembly, and monitoring of e-services. One hundred and seventy-six interesting papers were submitted to the conference. 540 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Static analysis is a research area aimed at developing principles and tools for veri cation, certi cation, semantics-based manipulation, and high-performance implementation of programming languages and systems. The series of Static Analysis symposia has served as the primary venue for presentation and disc- sion of theoretical, practical, and application advances in the area. This volume contains the papers accepted for presentation at the 11th Int- nationalStaticAnalysisSymposium(SAS2004),whichwasheldAugust26¿28in Verona,Italy.Inresponse to the callfor papers,63contributions weresubmitted from 20 di erent countries. Following on-line discussions, the ProgramComm- tee met in Verona on May 06, and selected 23 papers, basing this choice on their scienti c quality, originality, and relevance to the symposium. Each paper was reviewed by at least 3 PC members or external referees. In addition to the contributed papers, this volume includes contributions by outstanding invited speakers: a full invited paper by Thomas Henzinger (University of Califorina at Berkeley), and abstracts of the talks given by the other invited speakers, Sheila McIlraith (University of Toronto), Ehud Shapiro (Weizmann Institute) and Yannis Smaragdakis (Georgia Institute of Technology).Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 412 pp. Englisch.