springer dez 2001 (98 Ergebnisse)

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Managing projects involves being able to deal with uncertainty andcomplexity in the workplace, but traditional management models havesevere limitations under these circumstances. We require new paradigmsto help us make sense of the world in which we live and work.This book is the result of many workshops and courses for projectleaders working in a variety of settings in low- and middle-incomecountries. It brings together some of the thoughts of leading managementwriters in an accessible form, using fictitious case studies toillustrate important points. The various activities described can beused in workshops, by project leaders and managers. The book is ofinterest to project leaders both in the governmental (public) andvoluntary sector as well as members of non-governmental organisationsfrom a wide range of disciplines, e.g. health, agriculture and communitydevelopment. 224 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -The engineering life cycle for complex systems design and development, where partners are dispersed in different locations, requires the set-up of adequate and controlled processes involving many different disciplines. The ¿design integration¿ and the final ¿system physical/functional integration and qualification¿ imply a high degree of cross-interaction among the partners. The - place technical information systems supporting the life cycle activities are specialized with respect to the needs of each actor in the process chain and are highly heterogeneous between them. To globally innovate in-place processes, specialists must be able to work as a unique team, in a virtual enterprise model. To this aim, it is necessary to make interoperable the different technical information systems and to define co-operative engineering processes, which take into account ¿distributed roles¿, ¿shared activities¿, and ¿distributed process controls¿. In this frame an innovative study, aimed at addressing this process with the goal of identifying proper solutions ¿ in terms of design, implementation, and deployment ¿ has been carried out with the support of the European Community and the participation of major industrial companies and research centers.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 296 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -The term ¿agent¿ is one of those catchwords that mean widely differing things to different people. To telecommunications people it is little more than a mobile piece of code that may be executed at any place. At the other extreme, AI people often associate with agents human-like traits such as social behavior. In between, software people view agents as fairly self-contained pieces of software that, at the low end, pretty much act like objects and, at the high end, more or less auto- mously decide when and how to react to stimuli or proactively initiate effects that can be observed from their environment. Software agents are particularly important when it comes to distributed en- ronments. There, much of the communication takes place asynchronously, that is the sequence of events cannot be planned ahead in all detail. Instead, agents are given rules as to how to interpret the current situation and, given a common goal, so that they adjust their response accordingly.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 228 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -The notion of amenability has its origins in the beginnings of modern measure theory: Does a finitely additive set function exist which is invariant under a certain group action Since the 1940s, amenability has become an important concept in abstract harmonic analysis (or rather, more generally, in the theory of semitopological semigroups). In 1972, B.E. Johnson showed that the amenability of a locally compact group G can be characterized in terms of the Hochschild cohomology of its group algebra L^1(G): this initiated the theory of amenable Banach algebras. Since then, amenability has penetrated other branches of mathematics, such as von Neumann algebras, operator spaces, and even differential geometry. Lectures on Amenability introduces second year graduate students to this fascinating area of modern mathematics and leads them to a level from where they can go on to read original papers on the subject. Numerous exercises are interspersed in the text.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 316 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Themultiset (a set with multiplicities associated with its elements, in the form of natural numbers) is a notion which has appeared again and again in many areas of mathematics and computer science, sometimes called abag (some h- torical information appears in the enclosed paper by A. Syropoulos). As a data structure, this notion stands ¿in-between¿strings/lists, where a linear ordering of symbols/items is present, andsets, where no ordering and no multiplicity is considered;inamultiset,onlythemultiplicityofelementsmatters,no ttheir ordering. Actually, in between lists and multisets we also havepomsets, partially ordered multisets. Con ning ourselves to computer science, we may mention many areas where multisets are used: formal power series, Petri nets, data bases, logics, formal language theory (in relation with Parikh mapping, commutative grammars, etc), concurrency, and so on. In the last few years, the notion has occurred in a rather natural way in the molecular computing area. An aqueous solution of chemical compounds, swimming together in a given space, without any given spatial relation between individual elements, is just a multiset. Actually, this chemical metaphor was used several years before the occurrence of what is now called molecular computing, as the basic ingredient of the Gamma language and the Chemical Abstract Machine (a comprehensive survey of these ideas is provided by J. -P. Ban¿ atre, P. Fradet, D. Le Metayer).Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 372 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -In this amazing tour d'horizon, D. Allan Bromley uses the occasion of the centenary of the American Physical Society to reflect upon the growth of physics over the past 100 years, its fragmentation into numerous subdisciplines, the impact physics has had upon modern technology, and the re-emergence of the fundamental unity of the discipline in recent years. Hundreds of historical illustrations accompany the text. Bromley conveys much of the excitement and wonder that research in physics generated in the 20th century and asks what new things are in store in the next century. He covers such topics as relativity and quantum mechanics, the Manhattan project, superconductivity, transistors and the revolution brought about by solid-state electronics, protein folding, the uses of nuclear and atomic physics in biology and medicine, plate tectonics, the expansion of the universe and the Big Bang, and gravitational radiation. Bromley, the Sterling Professor of the Sciences and Dean of Yale University, served as Assistant to the President for Science and Technology Policy 1989-1993 and was president of the American Physical Society in 1997. One of the World's leading nuclear scientists, he was founder and director of Yale's nuclear structure laboratory and has received numerous medals and awards, including the National Medal of Science.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 128 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -The book series on the ethics of science and technology assessment edited by the Europ ische Akademie is devoted to the publication of the work-reports of its project groups, works on the foundations of ethics, the philosophy science, and other issues related to the work of the Europ ische Akademie. In addition, the series comprises the proceedings of conferences organized by the academy. The 13th volume documents the proceeding of the academy's spring symposium in 2000 on Rationing in Medicine which was held in Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler on March 23-25, 2000. An intense discussion on the future of health care in Europe has been stimulated by increasing difficulties of securing adequate and needs orientated medical care in the face of scarce resources and medical progress. Un fortunately, quite of ten a rational discussion of rationing is drowned out by the politic al talk of the day. But only an open and well-informed debate, if anything at ali, can lead to transparent and just rationing procedures which eventually might be acceptable to the public at large. For this debate much can be learnt from observing the experiences other countries have made with their health care arrangements. What kinds of mistakes should be avoided and what might be useful in the different states and perhaps also in the supra-national context of an emerging Europe are interesting and important issues.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 152 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -This book is designed to teach introductory computer programming using Maple. It aims to infuse more mathematically oriented programming exercises and problems than those found in traditional programming courses while reinforcing and applying concepts and techniques of calculus. All the important, basic elements of computer programming can be easily learned within the interactive and user friendly environment of a Computer Algebra System (CAS) such as Maple. Most chapters feature case studies that provide greater depth on some topics and also serve to illustrate the methodology of analysis and design of code for more complex problems. This book is directed at undergraduates in the fields of math, science, or secondary education.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 428 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -The information received from BeppoSAX, Chandra and other instruments in the last two years has more than doubled the number of samples of Gamma-Ray Bursts localized and followed up for afterglow search. This has also increased the interest of astronomers in GRBs. This book reviews the research of the last two years and covers the global properties of GRBs, GRB afterglows, GRB host galaxies, cosmology using GRBs, and theories for GRBs and their afterglows. Theoretical and observational aspects are presented as well as tools for the analysis of the data.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 484 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Since their introduction nearly 40 years ago, research on Petri nets has diverged in many different directions. Various classes of Petri net, motivated either by theory or applications, with its own specific features and methods of analysis, have been proposed and studies in depth.These successful developments have led to a very heterogeneous landscape of diverse models, and this, in turn, has stimulated research on concepts and approaches that contribute to unifying and structuring the diverse landscape. This state-of-the-art survey presents the most relevant approaches to unifying Petri nets in a systematic and coherent way. The 14 chapters written by leading researchers are organized in topical sections on application-oriented approaches, unifying frameworks, and theoretical approaches.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 500 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Like the movie 'Apollo 13' and the book on which it was based, Neptune: The Planets, Rings and Satellites tells the real story of the Voyager Mission to the outer planets from the point of view of the people who were there. It shows clearly the planning, excitement and major advances in our knowledge of Neptune and its system associated with the highly successful Voyager Mission and will remain a definitive description of Neptune for decades to come.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 328 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -This book is designed as a text for a first course on functional analysis for ad vanced undergraduates or for beginning graduate students. It can be used in the undergraduate curriculum for an honors seminar, or for a 'capstone' course. It can also be used for self-study or independent study. The course prerequisites are few, but a certain degree of mathematical sophistication is required. A reader must have had the equivalent of a first real analysis course, as might be taught using [25] or [109], and a first linear algebra course. Knowledge of the Lebesgue integral is not a prerequisite. Throughout the book we use elementary facts about the complex numbers; these are gathered in Appendix A. In one spe cific place (Section 5.3) we require a few properties of analytic functions. These are usually taught in the first half of an undergraduate complex analysis course. Because we want this book to be accessible to students who have not taken a course on complex function theory, a complete description of the needed results is given. However, we do not prove these results.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 216 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -The Complexity Theory Companion is an accessible, algorithmically oriented, research-centered, up-to-date guide to some of the most interesting techniques of complexity theory.The book's thesis is that simple algorithms are at the heart of complexity theory. From the tree-pruning and interval-pruning algorithms that shape the first chapter to the query simulation procedures that dominate the last chapter, the central proof methods of the book are algorithmic. And to more clearly highlight the role of algorithmic techniques in complexity theory, the book is - unlike other texts on complexity - organized by technique rather than by topic. Each chapter of this book focuses on one technique: what it is, and what results and applications it yields.This textbook was developed at the University of Rochester in courses given to graduate students and advanced undergraduates. Researchers also will find this book a valuable source of reference due to the comprehensive bibliography of close to five hundred entries, the thirty-five page subject index, and the appendices giving overviews of complexity classes and reductions.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 388 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Interest in marine mammals has increased dramatically in the last few decades, as evidenced by the number of books, scientific papers, and conferences devoted to these animals. Nowadays, a conference on marine mammals can attract between one and two thousand scientists from around the world. This upsurge of interest has resulted in a body of knowledge which, in many cases, has identified major conservation problems facing particular species. At the same time, this knowledge and the associated activities of environmental organisations have served to introduce marine mammals to a receptive public, to the extent that they are now perceived by many as the living icons of biodiversity conservation. Much of the impetus for the current interest in marine mammal conservation comes from 'Save the Whale' campaigns started in the 1960s by environmental groups around the world, in response to declining whale populations after over-exploitation by humans. This public pressure led to an international moratorium on whaling recommended in 1972 by the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm, Sweden, and eventually adopted by the International Whaling Commission ten years later. This moratorium largely holds sway to this day, and further protective measures have included the delimitation of extensive areas of the Indian Ocean (1979) and Southern Ocean (1994) as whale sanctuaries.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 644 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Employing both large-scale surveys and in-depth interviews, the authors document the mental health effects on workers caused by the closure of four General Motor plants. They paint a portrait of how the social context in which these workers lived played a critical role in their experiences of unemployment or of keeping their jobs when others around them lost theirs. More than simply a study of unemployment and mental health, this book is also a story of coping and resilience.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 252 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -The Bachelier Society for Mathematical Finance held its first World Congress in Paris last year, and coincided with the centenary of Louis Bacheliers thesis defence. In his thesis Bachelier introduces Brownian motion as a tool for the analysis of financial markets as well as the exact definition of options. The thesis is viewed by many the key event that marked the emergence of mathematical finance as a scientific discipline. The prestigious list of plenary speakers in Paris included two Nobel laureates, Paul Samuelson and Robert Merton, and the mathematicians Henry McKean and S.R.S. Varadhan. Over 130 further selected talks were given in three parallel sessions. .Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 536 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Inspired by the eternal beauty and truth of the laws governing the run of stars on heavens over his head, and spurred by the idea to catch, perhaps for the smallest fraction of the shortest instant, the Eternity itself, man created such masterpieces of human intellect like the Platon's world of ideas manifesting eternal truths, like the Euclidean geometry, or like the Newtonian celestial me chanics. However, turning his look to the sub-lunar world of our everyday efforts, troubles, sorrows and, from time to time but very, very seldom, also our successes, he saw nothing else than a world full of uncertainty and tem porariness. One remedy or rather consolation was that of the deep and sage resignation offered by Socrates: I know, that I know nothing. But, happy or unhappy enough, the temptation to see and to touch at least a very small por tion of eternal truth also under these circumstances and behind phenomena charged by uncertainty was too strong. Probability theory in its most sim ple elementary setting entered the scene. It happened in the same, 17th and 18th centuries, when celestial mechanics with its classical Platonist paradigma achieved its greatest triumphs. The origins of probability theory were inspired by games of chance like roulettes, lotteries, dices, urn schemata, etc. and probability values were simply defined by the ratio of successful or winning results relative to the total number of possible outcomes.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 236 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Most organic molecules retain their integrity when dissolved, and even though in such cases the effects exerted by solvents are, in the language of the coordination chemist, of the 'outer sphere' kind, the choice of solvent can be critical to the successful outcome of an operation or preparation. Solubilities of reactants and products must be taken into account, and even if the organic principals in the reactions retain their integrity, many of the reagents are electrolytes, and their state of aggregation will affect their reactivity. In testifying to the importance of understanding solute-solvent interactions I draw attention to a large class of inorganic species for which the involvement in the chemical and physical properties by the solvent is even more deeply seated. It is comprised by the large body of metal atoms in low oxidation states for which solvent molecules intervene as reagents. At the same time, because the ions carry charges, the effects arising from outer sphere interactions are usually greater than they are for neutral molecules. To cite an example: when FeCb(s) is dissolved in water to form a dilute - say O. OlO- solution there is a complete reorganization of the coordination sphere of the cation. Whereas in the solid each cation is surrounded by six chloride ions, in the solution the dominant form is [Fe(H20)6]3+ followed by [Fe(H20)sCI]2+, [Fe(H20)4CI2]+, etc. in rapidly decreasing abundance. 236 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -The discovery of fullerenes, species belonging to the electronodeficient polyalkenes with weakly conjugated double bonds, has opened novel opportunities for the radical chemistry. Pioneering study in this field was performed by P. J. Krusic, E. Wasserman, P. N. Keizer, J. R. Morton, and K. F. Preston (Science, 1991, 254, 1184). The fullerenyl radical adducts formed via addition of atoms or free radicals to fullerenes have no analogs in organic chemistry. In fact, radicals in which the unpaired electrons are delocalized over the surface of a sphere or ellipsoid have never been studied before. The unusual character of the fullerenyl radicals is also due to the fact that they occupy a sort of intermediate position between the planar and tetrahedral radicals. Thus, the elucidation of the characteristic features of fullerenyl radicals and their reactivity by EPR spectroscopy, and the comparison of the results with those of quantum-chemical studies are of fundamental importance. Isolation ofthe products from homolytic reactions of fullerenes in bulk amounts opens the door to large-scale preparation of new organic and organoelement derivatives of including biologically active ones. Radical reactions of fullerenes find wide application in the synthesis of fullere- containing polymers with valuable photophysical characteristics. Ferromagnetism of the complex of with tetra(dimethylamino)ethylene found lends impetus to a search of novel methods for preparation of biradicals one unpaired electron of those is located on the fullerene cage while the other retained by the addend.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 212 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Interdisciplinary inquiry has become more pervasive in recent decades, yet we still know little about the conduct of this type of research or the information problems associated with it. This book is one of few empirical studies of interdisciplinary knowledge practices. It examines how interdisciplinary scientists discover and exchange information and knowledge, highlighting how the boundaries between disciplines affect how information is used and how knowledge is constructed. It is written for scholars and practitioners with an interest in developing information systems and research environments to foster innovative scientific work. Target groups include researchers in information science, science studies, communication, as well as research administrators and information professionals.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 196 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Tanzania is one of the most biologically diverse nations in the world. Traveling from west to east across Tanzania, one encounters an incredible array of ecosystems and species. Beginning at Lakes Victoria, Tanganyika, and Nyasa that form much of the western boundary of Tanzania, one finds the most diverse and some of the most spectacular concentrations of endemic fish in any of the world's lakes. Moving further inland from the lakes, one meets the woodlands and plains of Serengeti, Ngorongoro, Tarangire, and Lake Manyara. The assemblages and movements of large mammals in these protected areas are unparalleled worldwide. Traveling yet further to the east, one comes to Mount Kilimanjaro, the highest mountain in Africa. Mount Kilimanjaro is of sufficient height to not only contain seven major vegetation zones, but also maintain permanent glaciers. Finally, shortly before arriving at the Indian Ocean, one encounters the Eastern Arc Mountains, a series of isolated and geologically ancient mountains, which due to their height and proximity to the Indian Ocean intercept sufficient precipitation to support, in many areas, moist tropical forest. The Eastern Arc Mountains are among the richest sites biologically in all of Africa and harbor unusually high concentrations of endemic species - species whose geographic distribution are restricted to these mountains. Unfortunately, much of Tanzania's biodiversity is threatened by habitat alteration, destruction, and exploitation. The Eastern Arc forests face some of the most severe threats to any of Tanzania's biologically unique sites.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 212 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Stig Kanger (1924-1988) made important contributions to logic and formal philosophy. Kanger's dissertation Provability in Logic, 1957, contained significant results in proof theory as well as the first fully worked out model-theoretic interpretation of quantified modal logic. It is generally accepted nowadays that Kanger was one of the originators of possible worlds semantics for modal logic. Kanger's most original achievements were in the areas of general proof theory, the semantics of modal and deontic logic, and the logical analysis of the concept of rights. He also contributed to action theory, preference logic, and the theory of measurement.This is the first of two volumes dedicated to the work of Stig Kanger. The present volume is a complete collection of Kanger's philosophical papers. The second volume contains critical essays on Kanger's work, as well as biographical essays on Kanger written by colleagues and friends.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 324 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Elayne [oakes, Dianne Willis andSteve Clarke The effectiveuse of knowledge management in organisations is an essential factor in their successful operation, but knowledge management is a many faceted domain, in which there is a danger of emphasising only a limited view. The purpose of this book is therefore to present for discussion those issues which practitioners and researchers havefound to be critical to understanding and progress within the knowledge management domain. This seems to haveled quite naturally to the study of knowledge management from three perspectives: tech nology,organisationsand people,which in turn makes this the first text to present a sociotechnical view of knowledge management. Knowledgemanagement has been a major topic for managementacademics and practitioners alike in the 1990s.It may be seen as the extraction and conversion of tacit knowledge on an individual and organisational levelinto explicit knowledge, the latter often taking the form of specific electronic tools or assets which can be manipulated for competitive gain (e.g,intranets,groupware and knowledge repos itories). There is some scepticism about the extent to which this often highly sub Tacit knowledge is often described as the jective knowledge and learning can 'hunches,intuition and know-how'ofpeople;or actually be made explicit, and a feeling 'skills,routines, competencies'. that knowledge management is no more than a new form of technology. But knowledge is much more than technology: it is personal, often dormant or unconscious and closely bound up with learning and organisation theory.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 232 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -This volume, the 6th volume in the DRUMS Handbook series, is part of the after math of the successful ESPRIT project DRUMS (Defeasible Reasoning and Un certainty Management Systems) which took place in two stages from 1989-1996. In the second stage (1993-1996) a work package was introduced devoted to the topics Reasoning and Dynamics, covering both the topics of 'Dynamics of Rea soning', where reasoning is viewed as a process, and 'Reasoning about Dynamics', which must be understood as pertaining to how both designers of and agents within dynamic systems may reason about these systems. The present volume presents work done in this context. This work has an emphasis on modelling and formal techniques in the investigation of the topic 'Reasoning and Dynamics', but it is not mere theory that occupied us. Rather research was aimed at bridging the gap between theory and practice. Therefore also real-life applications of the modelling techniques were considered, and we hope this also shows in this volume, which is focused on the dynamics of reasoning processes. In order to give the book a broader perspective, we have invited a number of well-known researchers outside the project but working on similar topics to contribute as well. We have very pleasant recollections of the project, with its lively workshops and other meetings, with the many sites and researchers involved, both within and outside our own work package.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 396 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Geomorphology deals with some of the most striking patterns of nature. From mountain ranges and mid-ocean ridges to river networks and sand dunes, there is a whole family of forms, structures, and shapes that demand rationalization as well as mathematical description. In the various chapters of this volume, many of these patterns are explored and discussed, and attempts are made to both unravel the reasons for their very existence and to describe their dynamics in quantitative terms. Particular focus is placed on lava and mud flows, ice and snow dynamics, river and coastal morphodynamics and landscape formation. Combining a pedagogical approach with up-to-date reviews of forefront research, this volume will serve both postgraduate students and lecturers in search of advanced textbook material, and experienced researchers wishing to get acquainted with the various physical and mathematical approaches in a range of closely related research fields.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 596 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -This volume is a textbook for a year-long graduate level course in All research universities have applied mathematics for scientists and engineers. such a course, which could be taught in different departments, such as mathematics, physics, or engineering. I volunteered to teach this course when I realized that my own research students did not learn much in this course at my university. Then I learned that the available textbooks were too introduc tory. While teaching this course without an assigned text, I wrote up my lecture notes and gave them to the students. This textbook is a result of that endeavor. When I took this course many, many, years ago, the primary references were the two volumes of P. M. Morse and H. Feshbach, Methods of Theoretical Physics (McGraw-Hill, 1953). The present text returns the contents to a similar level, although the syllabus is quite different than given in this venerable pair of books.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 384 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Do our genes determine our behavior Do education and environment have any influence at all Do humans occupy a unique position in evolution To clarify these provoking questions, the author takes the reader on an ambitious and entertaining journey through a variety of scientific disciplines. In doing so, he creates an image of human evolution that says that our entire individual knowledge is determined - to the smallest detail - by phylogeny. ' . before shocked humanists discard such radical theses as mere nonsense, they should not completely close their minds to the explanations of a biologist who says that we still know very little about the genetic determination of human behavior and that the invariance of many forms of behavior present in all cultures nourish the suspicion that the determining role of genes is probably far more comprehensive than we have ever dreamed.'Wolfgang Wieser, translated from his review in 'Merkur' (Sept./Oct. 1999)Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 364 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -The classical, phenomenological theory of plastically anisotropic materials has passed a long way: from the work of von Mises presented in 1928, and the HilI formulation given in 1948, to the latest papers on large elastic-plastic deformations of anisotropic metal sheets. A characteristic feature of this approach is a linear flow rule and a quadratic yield criterion. Mathematical simplicity of the theory is a reason of its numerous applications to the analysis of engineering structures during the onset of plastic deformations. However, such an approach is not sufficient for description of the metal forming processes, when a metal element undergoes very large plastic strains. If we take an initially isotropic piece of metal, it becomes plastically anisotropic during the forming process, and the induced anisotropy progressively increases. This fact strongly determines directions of plastic flow, and it leads to an unexpected strain localization in sheet elements. To explain the above, it is necessary to take into account a polycrystalline structure of the metal, plastic slips on slip systems of grains, crystallographic lattice rotations, and at last, a formation of textures and their evolution during the whole deformation process. In short, it is necessary to introduce the plasticity of crystals and polycrystals. The polycrystal analysis shows that, when the advanced plastic strains take place, some privileged crystallographic directions, called a crystallographic texture, occur in the material. The texture formation and evolution are a primary reason for the induced plastic anisotropy in pure metals.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 264 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Virtual reality (VR) technology has been developed commercially since the early 1990s [1]. Yet it is only with the growth of the Internet and other high-bandwidth links that VR systems have increasingly become networked to allow users to share the same virtual environment (VE). Shared YEs raise a number of interesting questions: what is the difference between face-to-face interaction and interaction between persons inside YEs How does the appearance of the 'avatar' - as the graphical representation of the user has become known - change the nature of interaction And what governs the formation of virtual communities This volume brings together contributions from social scientists and computer scientists who have conducted research on social interaction in various types of YEs. Two previous volumes in this CSCW book series [2, 3] have examined related aspects of research on YEs - social navigation and collaboration - although they do not always deal with VRIVEs in the sense that it is used here (see the definition in Chapter 1). The aim of this volume is to explore how people interact with each other in computer-generated virtual worlds.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 240 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Both the high level of activity in worldwide space exploration programmes and the discovery of extra-solar planets have spurred renewed interest in the physics and evolution dynamics of solar systems. The present book has grown out of a set of lectures by leading experts in the field within the framework of the well-known EADN summer schools. It addresses primarily graduate students and young researchers but will be equally useful for scientists in search of a comprehensive tutorial account that goes beyond the material found in standard textbooks. 280 pp. Englisch.