springer berlin heidelberg springer berlin heidelberg jun 2010 (56 Ergebnisse)

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Manufacturing and operations management paradigms are evolving toward more open and resilient spaces where innovation is driven not only by ever-changing customer needs but also by agile and fast-reacting networked structures. Flexibility, adaptability and responsiveness are properties that the next generation of systems must have in order to successfully support such new emerging trends. Customers are being attracted to be involved in Co-innovation Networks, as - proved responsiveness and agility is expected from industry ecosystems. Renewed production systems needs to be modeled, engineered and deployed in order to achieve cost-effective solutions. BASYS conferences have been developed and organized as a forum in which to share visions and research findings for innovative sustainable and knowledge-based products-services and manufacturing models. Thus, the focus of BASYS is to discuss how human actors, emergent technologies and even organizations are integrated in order to redefine the way in which the val- creation process must be conceived and realized. BASYS 2010, which was held in Valencia, Spain, proposed new approaches in automation where synergies between people, systems and organizations need to be fully exploited in order to create high added-value products and services. This book contains the selection of the papers which were accepted for presentation at the BASYS 2010 conference, covering consolidated and emerging topics of the conference scope.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 324 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Agile software development has become an umbrella term for a number of changes in how software developers plan and coordinate their work, how they communicate with customers and external stakeholders, and how software development is organized in small, medium, and large companies, from the telecom and healthcare sectors to games and interactive media. Still, after a decade of research, agile software development is the source of continued debate due to its multifaceted nature and insufficient synthesis of research results.Dingsøyr, Dybå, and Moe now present a comprehensive snapshot of the knowledge gained over many years of research by those working closely with or in the industry. It shows the current state of research on agile software development through an introduction and ten invited contributions on the main research fields, each written by renowned experts. These chapters cover three main issues: foundations and background of agile development, agile methods in practice, and principal challenges and new frontiers. They show the important results in each subfield, and in addition they explain what these results mean to practitioners as well as for future research in the field.The book is aimed at reflective practitioners and researchers alike, and it also can serve as the basis for graduate courses at universities.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 256 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -As modern society relies on the fault-free operation of complex computing systems, system fault-tolerance has become an indispensable requirement. Therefore, we need mechanisms that guarantee correct service in cases where system components fail, be they software or hardware elements. Redundancy patterns are commonly used, for either redundancy in space or redundancy in time.Wolter¿s book details methods of redundancy in time that need to be issued at the right moment. In particular, she addresses the so-called 'timeout selection problem', i.e., the question of choosing the right time for different fault-tolerance mechanisms like restart, rejuvenation and checkpointing. Restart indicates the pure system restart, rejuvenation denotes the restart of the operating environment of a task, and checkpointing includes saving the system state periodically and reinitializing the system at the most recent checkpoint upon failure of the system. Her presentation includes a brief introduction to the methods, their detailed stochastic description, and also aspects of their efficient implementation in real-world systems.The book is targeted at researchers and graduate students in system dependability, stochastic modeling and software reliability. Readers will find here an up-to-date overview of the key theoretical results, making this the only comprehensive text on stochastic models for restart-related problems.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 288 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -An Ingredient Brand is exactly what the name implies: an ingredient or component of a product that has its own brand identity. This is the first comprehensive book that explains how Ingredient Branding works and how brand managers can successfully improve the performance of component marketing.The authors have examined more than one hundred examples, analyzed four industries and developed nine detailed case studies to demonstrate the viability of this marketing innovation. The new concepts and principles can easily be applied by professionals. In the light of the success stories of Intel, GoreTex, Dolby, TetraPak, Shimano, and Teflon it can be expected that component suppliers will increasingly use Ingredient Branding strategies in the future.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 416 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -strategy, but we also focus on execution. We talk about organizational design, and also refect on leadership practices. Our assumption is that in a dynamic world, leaders at all levels, have to constantly switch gears, wear different hats, and na- gate at different altitudes. They have to think about the ¿total¿ enterprise, not in terms of compartmentalized silos or felds of functional expertise. Much like a g- eral contractor, they have to draw on specialized expertise, as and when needed, yet keep the big picture in mind. Our hope is that our diagnostic tools can help teams develop a shared frame of reference and generate cross-functional dialogue. The third driving force behind this second edition is the gradual convergence between the worlds of entrepreneurial start-ups and challenges facing established corporations. Innovation, agility, and initiative are no longer the exclusive preserve of start-ups. Established companies are looking for ways to re-invent themselves, to innovate, to think creatively, and to make their enterprises more fexible, agile and entrepreneurial. We have had the good fortune to sit at the intersection of these two worlds. We hope our ideas can beneft both groups. We set out to provide a ¿buffet table¿, a menu of options that can be helpful for the two ends of the spectrum.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 232 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -A crucial step during the design and engineering of communication systems is the estimation of their performance and behavior; especially for mathematically complex or highly dynamic systems network simulation is particularly useful.This book focuses on tools, modeling principles and state-of-the art models for discrete-event based network simulations, the standard method applied today in academia and industry for performance evaluation of new network designs and architectures.The focus of the tools part is on two distinct simulations engines: OmNet++ and ns-3, while it also deals with issues like parallelization, software integration and hardware simulations. The parts dealing with modeling and models for network simulations are split into a wireless section and a section dealing with higher layers. The wireless section covers all essential modeling principles for dealing with physical layer, link layer and wireless channel behavior. In addition, detailed models for prominent wireless systems like IEEE 802.11 and IEEE 802.16 are presented.In the part on higher layers, classical modeling approaches for the network layer, the transport layer and the application layer are presented in addition to modeling approaches for peer-to-peer networks and topologies of networks. The modeling parts are accompanied with catalogues of model implementations for a large set of different simulation engines.The book is aimed at master students and PhD students of computer science and electrical engineering as well as at researchers and practitioners from academia and industry that are dealing with network simulation at any layer of the protocol stack.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 568 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -inginstimulatingdiscussionsintheclasswetaughtcalled¿Earthquakehydrology¿. In particular, we wish to thank Emily Brodsky, Yeeping Chia, Douglas Dreger, Shemin Ge, Fu-qiong Huang, Tom Holzer, Chris Huber, Joel Rowland, Martin Saar, Yaolin Shi, Chung-Ho Wang, Kelin Wang, Pei-ling Wang and Alex Wong forenlighteningexchanges.HunterPhilsonhelpedwith guresandtheindex.We v vi Preface alsothanktheNationalScienceFoundation,theMillerInstituteforBasicResearch inScience,andNASAforsupportingtheresearchandsynthesisinthisvolume.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 236 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -The International Conference on Information Processing and Management of Uncertainty in Knowledge-Based Systems, IPMU, is organized every two years with the aim of bringing together scientists working on methods for the m- agement of uncertainty and aggregation of information in intelligent systems. Since 1986, this conference has been providing a forum for the exchange of ideas th between theoreticians and practitioners working in these areas. The 13 IPMU conference took place in Dortmund, Germany, June 28-July 2, 2010. This volumecontains77papersselectedthrougharigorousreviewingprocess among 320 submissions from 36 countries. The contributions re ect the richness of research in the eld of computational intelligence and represent several - portant developments, speci cally focused on the following sub elds: (a) machine learning, data mining, and pattern recognition, (b) uncertainty handling, (c) aggregation and fusion of information, (d) logic and knowledge processing. We were delighted that Melanie Mitchell (Portland State University, USA), NihkilR.Pal(IndianStatisticalInstitute),BernhardSch¿ olkopf(MaxPlanckI- titute for Biological Cybernetics, Tubing ¿ en, Germany) and Wolfgang Wahlster (German Research Center for Arti cial Intelligence, Saarbruc ¿ ken) accepted our invitationstopresentkeynotelectures.JimBezdekreceivedtheKamp¿edeF¿ eriet Award,grantedeverytwo yearsonthe occasionofthe IPMUconference,in view ofhiseminentresearchcontributionstothehandlingofuncertaintyinclustering, data analysis and pattern recognition.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 792 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Deeply rooted in fundamental research in Mathematics and Computer Science, Cellular Automata (CA) are recognized as an intuitive modeling paradigm for Complex Systems. Already very basic CA, with extremely simple micro dynamics such as the Game of Life, show an almost endless display of complex emergent behavior. Conversely, CA can also be designed to produce a desired emergent behavior, using either theoretical methodologies or evolutionary techniques. Meanwhile, beyond the original realm of applications - Physics, Computer Science, and Mathematics ¿ CA have also become work horses in very different disciplines such as epidemiology, immunology, sociology, and finance.In this context of fast and impressive progress, spurred further by the enormous attraction these topics have on students, this book emerges as a welcome overview of the field for its practitioners, as well as a good starting point for detailed study on the graduate and post-graduate level.The book contains three parts, two major parts on theory and applications, and a smaller part on software. The theory part contains fundamental chapters on how to design and/or apply CA for many different areas. In the applications part a number of representative examples of really using CA in a broad range of disciplines is provided - this part will give the reader a good idea of the real strength of this kind of modeling as well as the incentive to apply CA in their own field of study. Finally, we included a smaller section on software, to highlight the important work that has been done to create high quality problem solving environments that allow to quickly and relatively easily implement a CA model and run simulations, both on the desktop and if needed, on High Performance Computing infrastructures.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 408 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -The Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) was established on 17th December, 1931 by a great visionary Prof. Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis to promote research in the theory and applications of statistics as a new scienti c discipline in India. In 1959, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, the then Prime Minister of India introduced the ISI Act in the parliament and designated it as an Institution of National Importance because of its remarkable achievements in statistical work as well as its contribution to economic planning. Today, the Indian Statistical Institute occupies a prestigious position in the a- demic rmament. It has been a haven for bright and talented academics working in a number of disciplines. Its research faculty has done India proud in the arenas of Statistics, Mathematics, Economics, Computer Science, among others. Over s- enty ve years, it has grown into a massive banyan tree, like the institute emblem. The Institute now serves the nation as a uni ed and monolithic organization from different places, namely Kolkata, the Headquarters, Delhi, Bangalore, and Chennai, three centers, a network of ve SQC-OR Units located at Mumbai, Pune, Baroda, Hyderabad and Coimbatore, and a branch ( eld station) at Giridih. The platinum jubilee celebrations of ISI have been launched by Honorable Prime Minister Prof. Manmohan Singh on December 24, 2006, and the Govt. of India has declared 29th June as the ¿Statistics Day¿ to commemorate the birthday of Prof. Mahalanobis nationally.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 148 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -In this book, a generic model in as far as possible mathematical closed-formis developed that predicts the behavior of large self-organizing robot groups (robot swarms) based on their control algorithm. In addition, an extensive subsumption of the relatively young and distinctive interdisciplinary research field of swarm robotics is emphasized. The connection to many related fields is highlighted and the concepts and methods borrowed from these fields are described shortly.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 160 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -This book is an introduction to the dynamics of reaction-diffusion systems, with a focus on fronts and stationary spatial patterns. Emphasis is on systems that are non-standard in the sense that either the transport is not simply classical diffusion (Brownian motion) or the system is not homogeneous. A important feature is the derivation of the basic phenomenological equations from the mesoscopic system properties.Topics addressed include transport with inertia, described by persistent random walks and hyperbolic reaction-transport equations and transport by anomalous diffusion, in particular subdiffusion, where the mean square displacement grows sublinearly with time. In particular reaction-diffusion systems are studied where the medium is in turn either spatially inhomogeneous, compositionally heterogeneous or spatially discrete.Applications span a vast range of interdisciplinary fields and the systems considered can be as different as human or animal groups migrating under external influences, population ecology and evolution, complex chemical reactions, or networks of biological cells. Several chapters treat these applications in detail.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 480 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Variable speed is one of the important requirements in most of the electric drives. Earlier dc motors were the only drives that were used in industries requiring - eration over a wide range of speed with step less variation, or requiring fine ac- racy of speed control. Such drives are known as high performance drives. AC - tors because of being highly coupled non-linear devices can not provide fast dynamic response with normal controls. However, recently, because of ready availability of power electronic devices, and digital signal processors ac motors are beginning to be used for high performance drives. Field oriented control or vector control has made a fundamental change with regard to dynamic perfo- ance of ac machines. Vector control makes it possible to control induction or s- chronous motor in a manner similar to control scheme used for the separately - cited dc motor. Recent advances in artificial intelligence techniques have also contributed in the improvement in performance of electric drives. This book presents a comprehensive view of high performance ac drives. It may be considered as both a text book for graduate students and as an up-to-date monograph. It may also be used by R & D professionals involved in the impro- ment of performance of drives in the industries. The book will also be beneficial to the researchers pursuing work on sensorless and direct torque control of electric drives as up-to date references in these topics are provided.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 200 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -telecommunications industry. There were 148 valid (out of 163 in total) submissions to RSCTC 2010. Every paper was examined by at least two reviewers. Out of the papers initially selected,somewereapprovedsubjecttorevisionandthenadditionallyevaluated.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 772 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Agent based evolutionary search is an emerging paradigm in computational int- ligence offering the potential to conceptualize and solve a variety of complex problems such as currency trading, production planning, disaster response m- agement, business process management etc. There has been a significant growth in the number of publications related to the development and applications of agent based systems in recent years which has prompted special issues of journals and dedicated sessions in premier conferences. The notion of an agent with its ability to sense, learn and act autonomously - lows the development of a plethora of efficient algorithms to deal with complex problems. This notion of an agent differs significantly from a restrictive definition of a solution in an evolutionary algorithm and opens up the possibility to model and capture emergent behavior of complex systems through a natural age- oriented decomposition of the problem space. While this flexibility of represen- tion offered by agent based systems is widely acknowledged, they need to be - signed for specific purposes capturing the right level of details and description. This edited volume is aimed to provide the readers with a brief background of agent based evolutionary search, recent developments and studies dealing with various levels of information abstraction and applications of agent based evo- tionary systems. There are 12 peer reviewed chapters in this book authored by d- tinguished researchers who have shared their experience and findings spanning across a wide range of applications.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 300 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Intelligent Information Access techniques attempt to overcome the limi- tions of current search devices by providing personalized information items and product/service recommendations. They normally utilize direct or in- rect user input and facilitate the information search and decision processes, according to user needs, preferences and usage patterns. Recent devel- ments at the intersection of Information Retrieval, Information Filtering, MachineLearning,UserModelling,NaturalLanguageProcessingandHuman- Computer Interaction o er novel solutions that empower users to go beyond single-sessionlookuptasksandthataimatservingthemorecomplexrequi- ment: ¿Tell me what I don¿t know that I need to know¿. Information ltering systems,speci callyrecommendersystems,havebeenrevolutionizingtheway information seekers nd what they want, becausethey e ectively prune large informationspacesandhelpusersinselectingitemsthatbestmeettheirneeds and preferences. Recommender systems rely strongly on the use of various machine learning tools and algorithms for learning how to rank, or predict user evaluation, of items. Information Retrieval systems, on the other hand, also attempt to address similar ltering and ranking problems for pieces of information such as links, pages, and documents. But they generally focus on the development of global retrieval techniques, often neglecting individual user needs and preferences. The book aims to investigate current developments and new insights into methods, techniques and technologies for intelligent information access from a multidisciplinary perspective. It comprises six chapters authored by part- ipants in the research event Intelligent Information Access,heldinCagliari (Italy) in December 2008.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 152 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Roboticsis undergoingamajortransformationinscopeanddimension.From a largelydominantindustrialfocus,roboticsis rapidly expandinginto human environments and vigorouslyengaged in its new challenges. Interacting with, assisting, serving, and exploring with humans, the emerging robots will - creasingly touch people and their lives. Beyond its impact on physical robots, the body of knowledge robotics has produced is revealing a much wider range of applications reaching across - verse research areas and scienti c disciplines, such as: biomechanics, haptics, neurosciences, virtual simulation, animation, surgery, and sensor networks among others. In return, the challenges of the new emerging areas are pr- ing an abundant source of stimulation and insights for the eld of robotics. It is indeed at the intersection of disciplines that the most striking advances happen. TheSpringerTractsinAdvancedRobotics(STAR)isdevotedtobringingto the research community the latest advances in the robotics eld on the basis of their signi cance and quality. Through a wide and timely dissemination of critical research developments in robotics, our objective with this series is to promotemoreexchangesandcollaborationsamongtheresearchersinthec- munity and contributeto further advancements inthis rapidlygrowing eld. The monographwritten byAlejandro DizanVasquez Goveafocusesonthe practicalproblem of moving in a cluttered environment with pedestrians and vehicles. A frameworkbased on Hidden Markov models is developed to learn typical motion patterns which can be used to predict motion on the basis of sensor data. All the theoretical results have been implemented and validated with experiments, using both real and simulated data.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 176 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Multi-agent systems are claimed to be especially suited to the development of software systems that are decentralized, can deal flexibly with dynamic conditions, and are open to system components that come and go. This is why they are used in domains such as manufacturing control, automated vehicles, and e-commerce markets.Danny Weyns' book is organized according to the postulate that 'developing multi-agent systems is 95% software engineering and 5% multi-agent systems theory.' He presents a software engineering approach for multi-agent systems that is heavily based on software architecture - with, for example, tailored patterns such as 'situated agent', 'virtual environment', and 'selective perception' - and on middleware for distributed coordination ¿ with programming abstractions such as 'views' and 'roles.' Next he shows the feasibility and applicability of this approach with the development of an automated transportation system consisting of a number of automatic guided vehicles transporting loads in an industrial setting.Weyns puts the development of multi-agent systems into a larger perspective with traditional software engineering approaches. With this, he opens up opportunities to exploit the body of knowledge developed in the multi-agent systems community to tackle some of the difficult challenges of modern-day software systems, such as decentralized control, location-awareness, self-adaption, and large-scale. Thus his book is of interest for both researchers and industrial software engineers who develop applications in areas such as distributed control systems and mobile applications where such requirements are of crucial importance.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 244 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -This book focuses on motions of incompressible uids of a freely moving surface being in uenced by both the Earth¿s rotation and density strati cation. In contrast to traditional textbooks in the eld of geophysical uid dynamics, such as those by by Cushman-Roisin (1994) and Gill (1982), this book uses the method of proce- oriented hydrodynamic modelling to illustrate a rich variety of uid phenomena. To this end, the reader can adopt the model codes, found on the Springer server accompanying this book, to reproduce most graphs of this book and, even better, to create animation movies. The reader can also employ the codes as templates for own independent studies. This can be done by a lay person as a hobby activity, undergraduate or postgraduate students as part of their education, or professional scientists as part of research. Exercises of this book are run with open-source software that can be freely downloaded from the Internet. This includes the FORTRAN 95 compiler ¿G95¿ used for execution of model simulations, the data visualisation program ¿SciLab¿, and ¿ImageMagick¿ for the creation of graphs and GIF animations, which can be watched with most Internet browsers.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 196 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Research in multi-agent systems offers a promising technology for problems with networks, online trading and negotiations but also social structures and communication. This is a book on agent and multi-agent technology for internet and enterprise systems. The book is a pioneer in the combination of the fields and is based on the concept of developing a platform to share ideas and presents research in technology in the field and application to real problems. The chapters range over both applications, illustrating the possible uses of agents in an enterprise domain, and design and analytic methods, needed to provide the solid foundation required for practical systems.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 360 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Mixed-Signal Embedded Microcontrollers are commonly used in integrating analog components needed to control non-digital electronic systems. They are used in automatically controlled devices and products, such as automobile engine control systems, wireless remote controllers, office machines, home appliances, power tools, and toys. Microcontrollers make it economical to digitally control even more devices and processes by reducing the size and cost, compared to a design that uses a separate microprocessor, memory, and input/output devices. In many undergraduate and post-graduate courses, teaching of mixed-signal microcontrollers and their use for project work has become compulsory.Students face a lot of difficulties when they have to interface a microcontroller with the electronics they deal with. This book addresses some issues of interfacing the microcontrollers and describes some project implementations with the Silicon Lab C8051F020 mixed¿signal microcontroller. The intended readers are college and university students specializing in electronics, computer systems engineering, electrical and electronics engineering; researchers involved with electronics based system, practitioners, technicians and in general anybody interested in microcontrollers based projects.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 228 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Semiconducting and Insulating Crystals details how absorption spectroscopy provides information on the nature, concentration, charge state and configuration of impurities in crystals and also on their kinetics and transformations under annealing. After an introduction of the bulk optical properties of semiconductors and insulators and of impurities in crystals, this book presents the physical bases necessary for the understanding of impurity spectra. The description of various set-ups and accessories used in absorption spectroscopy is followed by a presentation of experimental results on specific impurities and classes of impurities and their relation with those obtained by various computation and by other experimental techniques.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 492 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -It is our pleasure to contribute the forewordto this book on symbiotic mul- robot organisms, which is largely based on the scienti c ndings and exp- rations of two major EU research projects, Symbrion and Replicator, funded under the Seventh Framework Programme for Research and Technological 1 development (FP7) . FP7 emphasises consortia of European partners, tra- national collaboration, open coordination, exibility and excellence of - search and plays a leading role in multidisciplinary research and cooperative activities in Europe and beyond. Its impact is major in terms of integrating and structuring research communities across national borders to achieve a critical mass, providing the leverage for high-potential elds to take o , and encouraging healthy competition at European level while avoiding unn- essary duplication of research capacities. Research proposals are evaluated through a demanding peer-review process and only the best are selected to be funded bythe EuropeanCommission(EC). The InformationandCom- nication Technologies(ICT) theme has set out a number of challengeswithin this context, which cover topics such as cognitive systems, modular robotics, adaptive systems and societies of artefacts. ¿ Symbrion was selected following the Call ¿Pervasive Adaptation¿ of the 2 ¿Future and Emerging Technologies (FET)¿ programme area. Itstarted on 1 February 2008 and will run for 5 years. FET Proactive addresses evolutionary and revolutionary approaches through multidisciplinary - operation and investigates new future technology options in response to emerging societal and industrial needs and identi es new drivers for - search.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 496 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Wireless Sensor Network Technologies for Information Explosion Era The amount and value of information available due to rapid spread of information technology is exploding. Typically, large enterprises have approximately a petabyte of operational data stored in hundreds of data repositories supporting thousands of applications. Data storage volumes grow in excess of 50% annually. This growth is expected to continue due to vast proliferation of existing infor- tion systems and the introduction of new data sources. Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) represent one of the most notable examples of such new data sources. In recent few years, various types of WSNs have been deployed and the amount of information generated by wireless sensors increases rapidly. The information - plosion requires establishing novel data processing and communication techniques for WSNs. This volume aims to cover both theoretical and practical aspects - lated to this challenge, and it explores directions for future research to enable ef- cient utilization of WSNs in the information-explosion era. The book is organized in three main parts that consider (1) technical issues of WSNs, (2) the integration of multiple WSNs, and (3) the development of WSNs systems and testbeds for conducting practical experiments. Each part consists of three chapters.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 284 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Rapid environmental change calls for individuals and societies with an ability to transform our interactions with each other and the ecosystems upon which we depend. Adaptive capacity - the ability of a social-ecological system (or the components of that system) to be robust to disturbances and capable of responding to changes - is increasingly recognized as a critical attribute of multi-level environmental governance. This unique volume offers the first interdisciplinary and integrative perspective on an emerging area of applied scholarship, with contributions from internationally recognized researchers and practitioners. It demonstrates how adaptive capacity makes environmental governance possible in complex social-ecological systems. Cutting-edge theoretical developments are explored and empirical case studies offered from a wide range of geographic settings and natural resource contexts, such as water, climate, fisheries and forestry.¿ Of interest to researchers, policymakers and resource managers seeking to navigate and understand social-ecological change in diverse geographic settings and resource contextsSpringer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 320 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -The fundamental concept of quantum coherence plays a central role in quantum physics, cutting across disciplines of quantum optics, atomic and condensed matter physics. Quantum coherence represents a universal property of the quantum s- tems that applies both to light and matter thereby tying together materials and p- nomena. Moreover, the optical coherence can be transferred to the medium through the light-matter interactions. Since the early days of quantum mechanics there has been a desire to control dynamics of quantum systems. The generation and c- trol of quantum coherence in matter by optical means, in particular, represents a viable way to achieve this longstanding goal and semiconductor nanostructures are the most promising candidates for controllable quantum systems. Optical generation and control of coherent light-matter states in semiconductor quantum nanostructures is precisely the scope of the present book. Recently, there has been a great deal of interest in the subject of quantum coh- ence. We are currently witnessing parallel growth of activities in different physical systems that are all built around the central concept of manipulation of quantum coherence. The burgeoning activities in solid-state systems, and semiconductors in particular, have been strongly driven by the unprecedented control of coherence that previously has been demonstrated in quantum optics of atoms and molecules, and is now taking advantage of the remarkable advances in semiconductor fabrication technologies. A recent impetus to exploit the coherent quantum phenomena comes from the emergence of the quantum information paradigm.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 360 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Morphometrics is concerned with the study of variations and change in the form (size and shape) of organisms or objects adding a quantitative element to descriptions and thereby facilitating the comparison of different objects and organisms. This volume provides an introduction to morphometrics in a clear and simple way without recourse to complex mathematics and statistics. This introduction is followed by a series of case studies describing the variety of applications of morphometrics from paleontology and evolutionary ecology to archaeological artifacts analysis. This is followed by a presentation of future applications of morphometrics and state of the art software for analyzing and comparing shape.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 380 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -RecentyearshaveseentheapplicationofvariousNaturalComputing algorithms for the purposes of nancial modelling. In this context Natural Computing - gorithms can be broadly de ned as computer algorithms whose design draws inspirationfromphenomena in the naturalworld. Particularfeatures of nancial markets, including their dynamic and interconnected characteristics, bear p- allels with processes in the natural world and prima facie, this makes Natural Computingmethods¿interesting¿for nancialmodellingapplications. Inaddition to the problem-solving potential of natural processes which Natural computing seeks to embody in its algorithms, we can also consider Natural Computing in terms of its potential to understand the natural processes which themselves serve as inspiration. For example, nancial and biological systems exhibit the phenomenon of emergence, or the activities of multiple individual agents c- bining to co-evolve their own environment, and a stream of work has emerged which applies learning mechanisms drawn from Natural Computing algorithms for the purposes of agent-based modelling in nance and economics. This book consists of eleven chapters each of which was selected following a rigorous,peer-reviewed,selectionprocess. Thechaptersillustratetheapplication of a range of cutting-edge natural computing and agent-based methodologies in computational nance and economics. While describing cutting edge appli- tions, the chapters are written so that they are accessible to a wide audience. Hence, they should be of interest to academics,students and practitionersin the elds of computational nance and economics.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 228 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Since the concept of allelopathy was introduced almost 100 years ago, research has led to an understanding that plants are involved in complex communicative interactions. They use a battery of different signals that convey plant-relevant information within plant individuals as well as between plants of the same species or different species. The 13 chapters of this volume discuss all these topics from an ecological perspective. Communication between plants allows them to share physiological and ecological information relevant for their survival and tness. It is obvious that in these very early days of ecological plant communication research we are illuminating only the ¿tip of iceberg¿ of the communicative nature of higher plants. Nevertheless, knowledge on the identity and informative value of volatiles used by plants for communication is increasing with breath-taking speed. Among the most spectacular examples are sit- tions where plant emitters warn neighbours about a danger, increasing their innate immunity, or when herbivore-attacked plants attract the enemies of the herbivores (¿cry for help¿ and ¿plant bodyguards¿ concepts). It is becoming obvious that plants use not only volatile signals but also diverse water soluble molecules, in the case of plant roots, to safeguard their evolutionary success and accomplish self/non-self kin rec- nition. Importantly, as with all the examples of biocommunication, irrespective of whether signals and signs are transmitted via physical or chemical pathways, plant communication is a rule-governed and sign-mediated process.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 260 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Many plants produce enzymes collectively known as ribosome-inactivating proteins (RIPs). RIPs catalyze the removal of an adenine residue from a conserved loop in the large ribosomal RNA. The adenine residue removed by this depurination is crucial for the binding of elongation factors. Ribosomes modified in this way are no longer able to carry out protein synthesis. Most RIPs exist as single polypeptides (Type 1 RIPs) which are largely non-toxic to mammalian cells because they are unable to enter them and thus cannot reach their ribosomal substrate. In some instances, however, the RIP forms part of a heterodimer where its partner polypeptide is a lectin (Type 2 RIPs). These heterodimeric RIPs are able to bind to and enter mammalian cells. Their ability to reach and modify ribosomes in target cells means these proteins are some of the most potently cytotoxic poisons found in nature, and are widely assumed to play a protective role as part of the host plant¿s defenses. RIPs are able to further damage target cells by inducing apoptosis. In addition, certain plants produce lectins lacking an RIP component but which are also cytotoxic. This book focuses on the structure/function and some potential applications of these toxic plant proteins.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 280 pp. Englisch.