springer feb 2005 (163 Ergebnisse)

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -In Deutschland erkranken jährlich 47.500 Frauen neu an Brustkrebs, 10.000 Frauen an Eierstockkrebs. Dies sind die häufigsten Krebserkrankungen der Frau. Ein Teil dieser Fälle geht auf bekannte ererbte Gendefekte zurück (BRCA 1 und BRCA 2, Mutationen treten bei ca. 115.000 Frauen auf). Frauen mit diesen Gendefekten tragen ein sehr hohes Risiko, schon in jungen Jahren an Brust- oder Eierstockkrebs zu erkranken. Außerdem haben Sie ein hohes Rezidivrisiko.Ein interdisziplinäres Autorenteam hat für den Bundesverband der AOK ein so genanntes 'Health Technology Assessment' zur Diagnostik und Beratung des erblichen Brust- und Eierstockkrebses erstellt. Das Buch bietet einen kompakten Überblick über: die genetische Beratung die verschiedenen molekulargenetischen Testverfahren ihre diagnostische Treffsicherheit und Verlässlichkeit und die KostenEs soll als Grundlage für alle weiteren einzuführenden Testprogramme für erblich bedingte Krebserkrankungen in Deutschland dienen.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 212 pp. Deutsch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - In the 1960s, it became increasingly clear that more and more information was going to be stored on computers, not on pieces of paper. With these changes in technology and the ways it was used came a need to protect both the systems and the information. For the next ten years, encryption systems of varying strengths were developed, but none proved to be rigorous enough. In 1973, the NBS put out an open call for a new, stronger encryption system that would become the new federal standard. Several years later, IBM responded with a system called Lucifer that came to simply be known as DES (data encryption standard).The strength of an encryption system is best measured by the attacks it is able to withstand, and because DES was the federal standard, many tried to test its limits. (It should also be noted that a number of cryptographers and computer scientists told the NSA that DES was not nearly strong enough and would be easily hacked.) Rogue hackers, usually out to steal as much information as possible, tried to break DES. A number of 'white hat' hackers also tested the system and reported on their successes. Still others attacked DES because they believed it had outlived its effectiveness and was becoming increasingly vulnerable. The sum total of these efforts to use all of the possible keys to break DES over time made for a brute force attack.In 1996, the supposedly uncrackable DES was broken. In this captivating and intriguing book, Matt Curtin charts DES's rise and fall and chronicles the efforts of those who were determined to master it.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Digitalfotografie wird in der aktuellen Literatur stets als DIGITALfotografie verstanden. Dieses Buch versucht bewusst, zu einem besseren Verständnis der modernen Fotografie zu führen, indem das erfolgreiche Zusammenwirken von klassischer mit digitaler Technologie genauso im Fokus steht wie Techniken und Besonderheiten der Digitalfotografie selbst. Die Grundlagen werden dabei theoretisch erläutert und an Bildbeispielen gezeigt. Hinzu kommen besondere Themen der Digitalfotografie wie Farbe und Schwarzweiß, Rausch- und Staubkorrektur, Internetpublikation, Urheberrechtsfragen und die Möglichkeiten des 'digitalen Negativs', der raw-Datei. Neben Photoshop wird weitere einschlägige Software wie GIMP und C1 behandelt.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 332 pp. Deutsch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Die beiden Bände Technische Informatik bieten einen verständlichen Einstieg in dieses wichtige Teilgebiet der Informatik. Leser mit unterschiedlichen Vorkenntnissen gewinnen schrittweise einen Überblick über die benötigten elektrotechnischen und elektronischen Grundlagen. Auf dieser Basis werden die Komponenten und Strukturen von heutigen Computersystemen eingeführt.Aufgrund des großen Erfolges des Werkes liegt nun auch der Band 2 in fünfter, neu bearbeiteter Auflage vor. Er schließt mit dem Kapitel 'Komplexe Schaltwerke' an den Band 1, Grundlagen der digitalen Elektronik, an. Ausgehend vom Operationsprinzip des von-Neumann-Rechners werden sowohl CISC- als auch RISC-Architekturen, aktuelle Prozessorarchitekturen, Kommunikationskanäle, Speicherorganisation und Peripheriegeräte behandelt.Das Übungsbuch zur Technischen Informatik 1 und 2 bietet ergänzend einprägsame Lernhilfen an. 420 pp. Deutsch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Der vorliegende Band ist eine Zusammenfassung der Beiträge, die auf einem Symposium mit dem Titel 'Von der Wahrnehmung zur Erkenntnis' am 7. Februar 2004 in Berlin stattfand. Anlass war der sechzigste Geburtstag von Professor Dr. Dr. h.c. Günter Stock, Vorstand der Schering AG im Bereich Forschung und Begründer der Schering Forschungsgesellschaft. In dieser Publikation laden Sie international führende Wissenschaftler zu einer Reise ein, die von der Wahrnehmung zur Erkenntnis von einem evolutionären Rückblick 'Woher kommen wir, was macht uns erkenntnisfähig' bis hin zur Philosophie des Erkennens führt. Im Zentrum der Betrachtung steht dabei der Mensch und seine Wahrnehmung.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 168 pp. Deutsch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Statistical Physics bridges the properties of a macroscopic system and the microscopic behavior of its constituting particles, otherwise impossible due to the giant magnitude of Avogadro's number. Numerous systems of today's key technologies - such as semiconductors or lasers - are macroscopic quantum objects; only statistical physics allows for understanding their fundamentals. Therefore, this graduate text also focuses on particular applications such as the properties of electrons in solids with applications, and radiation thermodynamics and the greenhouse effect.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 300 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -E-learning is still in its infancy. This can be seen both in the limited pedagogical quality and lack of portability of e-learning content, and in the lack of user-friendly tools to exploit the opportunities offered by current technologies. To be successful, e-learning must offer effective and attractive courses and programmes to learners, while at the same time providing a pleasant and effective work environment for staff members who have the task to develop course materials, plan the learning processes, provide tutoring, and assess performance.To overcome these deficiencies, the IMS Global Learning Consortium Inc. released the Learning Design Specification in 2003. With Learning Design it is possible to develop and present advanced, interoperable e-learning courses embracing educational role and game playing methods, problem-based learning, learning community approaches, adaptivity and peer coaching and assessment methods.In this handbook Koper and Tattersall have put together contributions from members of the 'Valkenburg Group', consisting of 33 experts deeply involved in e-learning and more specifically learning design. The result is a rich and lasting source of information for both e-learning course and tool developers, providing information about the specification itself, how to implement it in practice, what tools to use, and what pitfalls to avoid. The book not only reports first experiences, but also goes beyond the current state of the art by looking at future prospects and emerging applications.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 444 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -The3rdInternationalWorkshoponKnowledgeDiscoveryinInductiveDatabases (KDID 2004) was held in Pisa, Italy, on September 20, 2004 as part of the 15th European Conference on Machine Learning and the 8th European Conference onPrinciplesandPracticeofKnowledgeDiscoveryinDatabases(ECML/PKDD 2004). Ever since the start of the eld of data mining, it has been realized that the knowledge discovery and data mining process should be integrated into database technology. This idea has been formalized in the concept of inductive databases, introduced by Imielinski and Mannila (CACM 1996, 39(11)). In general, an inductive database is a database that supports data mining and the knowledge discovery process in a natural and elegant way. In addition to the usual data, it also contains inductive generalizations (e.g., patterns, models) extracted from the data. Within this framework, knowledge discovery is an - teractive process in which users can query the inductive database to gain insight to the data and the patterns and models within that data. Despite many recent developments, there still exists a pressing need to - derstandthecentralissuesininductivedatabases.Thisworkshopaimedtobring together database and data mining researchers and practitioners who are int- ested in the numerous challenges that inductive databases o ers. This workshop followed the previous two workshops: KDID 2002 held in Helsinki, Finland, and KDID 2003 held in Cavtat-Dubrovnik, Croatia.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 204 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed postproceedings of the Second International Workshop on Semantic Web and Databases, SWDB 2004, held in Toronto, Canada in August 2004 as a satellite workshop of VLDB 2004. The 14 revised full papers presented together with 2 papers by the invited keynote speakers were carefully selected during two rounds of reviewing and improvement from 47 submissions. Among the topics addressed are data semantics, semantic Web services, service-oriented computing, workflow composition, XML semantics, relational tables, ontologies, semantic Web algebra, heterogeneous data sources, context mediation, OWL, ontology engineering, data integration, semantic Web queries, database queries, and peer-to-peer warehouses. 244 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -We are happy to present to you the proceedings of the 3rd International Workshop on Digital Watermarking, IWDW 2004. Since its modern reappearance in the academic community in the early 1990s, great progress has been made in understanding both the capabilities and the weaknesses of digital watermarking. On the theoretical side, we all are now well aware of the fact that digital watermarking is best viewed as a form of communication using side information. In the case of digital watermarking the side information in question is the document to be watermarked. This insight has led to a better understanding of the limits of the capacity and robustness of digital watermarking algorithms. It has also led to new and improved watermarking algorithms, both in terms of capacity and imperceptibility. Similarly, the role of human perception, and models thereof, has been greatly enhanced in the study and design of digital watermarking algorithms and systems. On the practical side, applications of watermarking are not yet abundant. The original euphoria on the role of digital watermarking in copy protection and copyright protection has not resulted in widespread use in practical systems. With hindsight, a number of reasons can be given for this lack of practical applications.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 320 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -The 2nd Workshop on Approximation and Online Algorithms (WAOA 2004) focused on the design and analysis of algorithms for online and computationally hard problems. Both kinds of problems have a large number of applications arising from a variety of elds. WAOA 2004 took place in Bergen, Norway, from September 14 to September 16, 2004. The workshop was part of the ALGO 2004 event which also hosted ESA, WABI, IWPEC, and ATMOS. TopicsofinterestsforWAOA2004were:applicationstogametheory,appr- imation classes, coloring and partitioning, competitive analysis, computational nance, cuts and connectivity, geometric problems, inapproximability results, mechanism design, network design, routing, packing and covering, paradigms, randomization techniques, and scheduling problems. In response to our call we received 47 submissions. Each submission was reviewed by at least 3 referees, who judged the paper on originality, quality, and consistency with the topics of the conference. Based on the reviews, the Program Committee selected 21 papers. This volume contains the 21 selected papers and the two invited talks given by Yossi Azar and Klaus Jansen. We thank all the authors who submitted papers to the workshop and we also kindly thank the local organizers of ALGO 2004. 308 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -By presenting state-of-the-art research results on various aspects of formal and visual modeling of software and systems, this book commemorates the 60th birthday of Hartmut Ehrig. The 24 invited reviewed papers are written by students and collaborators of Hartmut Ehrig who are established researchers in their fields. Reflecting the scientific interest and work of Hartmut Ehrig, the papers fall into three main parts on graph transformation, algebraic specification and logic, and formal and visual modeling.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 448 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -This book is about knowledge, it is about the externalization of human kno- edge and about all the attempts we are undertaking to access what we have externalized before. Thus, the book should be of interest to a wide audience. Ontheotherhand,therear Elektronisches Buchaboutknowledge,knowledgemanagement and the like galore. There is an even larger ood of journal articles, conference papers andtechnicalreports,but it is rumoredthatmostare notreadby anyone at all. So, why read the present book or, at least, some of its papers In my opinion, it is the idea of memetics which makes these proceedings special. Not every contribution deals with memetics, but Tanakäs work and his current projects are carving out the pro le of what you nd in the book. Let¿s have a closer look. Richard Dawkins in his book The Sel sh Gene, 1976 coined the term meme; thetermisestablishednow.TheOxfordEnglish Dictionarysays:¿meme(mi:m), n. Biol. (shortened from mimeme . that which is imitated, after GENE n.) An element of a culture that may be considered to be passed on by non-genetic means, esp. imitation¿. Yuzuru Tanaka has seized upon Dawkin¿s suggestion and extended it - wardsconceptsand implementationsthat setthe stagefor non-geneticevolution in computer and network environments. He has coined the term meme media. His comprehensive book Meme Media and Meme Market Architectures, 2003 summarizes the current state of a airs from the perspecive of information and communication technologies.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 276 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -The modern eld of multiagent systems has developed from two main lines of earlier research. Its practitioners generally regard it as a form of arti cial intelligence (AI). Some of its earliest work was reported in a series of workshops in the US dating from1980,revealinglyentitled,¿DistributedArti cialIntelligence,¿andpioneers often quoted a statement attributed to Nils Nilsson that ¿all AI is distributed. ¿ The locus of classical AI was what happens in the head of a single agent, and much MAS research re ects this heritage with its emphasis on detailed modeling of the mental state and processes of individual agents. From this perspective, intelligenceisultimatelythepurviewofasinglemind,thoughitcanbeam pli ed by appropriate interactions with other minds. These interactions are typically mediated by structured protocols of various sorts, modeled on human conver- tional behavior. But the modern eld of MAS was not born of a single parent. A few - searchershavepersistentlyadvocatedideasfromthe eldofarti ciallife(ALife). These scientists were impressed by the complex adaptive behaviors of commu- ties of animals (often extremely simple animals, such as insects or even micro- ganisms). The computational models on which they drew were often created by biologists who used them not to solve practical engineering problems but to test their hypotheses about the mechanisms used by natural systems. In the ar- cial life model, intelligence need not reside in a single agent, but emerges at the level of the community from the nonlinear interactions among agents. - cause the individual agents are often subcognitive, their interactions cannot be modeled by protocols that presume linguistic competence. 296 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -This volume contains the Proceedings of ICFCA 2005, the 3rd International Conference on Formal Concept Analysis. The ICFCA conference series aims to be the premier forum for the publication of advances in applied lattice and order theory, and in particular scienti c advances related to formal concept analysis. Formal concept analysis is a eld of applied mathematics with its mat- matical root in order theory, in particular in the theory of complete lattices. Researchers had long been aware of the fact that these elds have many - tential applications. Formal concept analysis emerged in the 1980s from e orts to restructure lattice theory to promote better communication between lattice theorists and potential users of lattice theory. The key theme was the mathe- tization of concept and conceptual hierarchy. Since then, the eld has developed into a growing research area in its own right with a thriving theoretical com- nity and an increasing number of applications in data and knowledge processing, including data visualization, information retrieval, machine learning, data an- ysis and knowledge management. ICFCA2005re ectedbothpracticalbene tsandprogressinthefoundational theory of formal concept analysis. Algorithmic aspects were discussed as well as e orts to broaden the eld. All regular papers appearing in this volume were refereed by at least two, in most cases three independent reviewers. The nal decision to accept the papers was arbitrated by the Program Chairs based on the referee reports. It was the involvement of the Program Committee and the Editorial Board that ensured the scienti c quality of these proceedings.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 436 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -This volume introduces some basic theories on computational neuroscience. Chapter 1 is a brief introduction to neurons, tailored to the subsequent chapters. Chapter 2 is a self-contained introduction to dynamical systems and bifurcation theory, oriented towards neuronal dynamics. The theory is illustrated with a model of Parkinson's disease. Chapter 3 reviews the theory of coupled neural oscillators observed throughout the nervous systems at all levels; it describes how oscillations arise, what pattern they take, and how they depend on excitory or inhibitory synaptic connections. Chapter 4 specializes to one particular neuronal system, namely, the auditory system. It includes a self-contained introduction, from the anatomy and physiology of the inner ear to the neuronal network that connects the hair cells to the cortex, and describes various models of subsystems.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 184 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -This volume presents a unified approach to constructing iterative methods for solving irregular operator equations and provides rigorous theoretical analysis for several classes of these methods. The analysis of methods includes convergence theorems as well as necessary and sufficient conditions for their convergence at a given rate. The principal groups of methods studied in the book are iterative processes based on the technique of universal linear approximations, stable gradient-type processes, and methods of stable continuous approximations. Compared to existing monographs and textbooks on ill-posed problems, the main distinguishing feature of the presented approach is that it doesn¿t require any structural conditions on equations under consideration, except for standard smoothness conditions. This allows to obtain in a uniform style stable iterative methods applicable to wide classes of nonlinear inverse problems. Practical efficiency of suggested algorithms is illustrated in application to inverse problems of potential theory and acoustic scattering.The volume can be read by anyone with a basic knowledge of functional analysis.The book will be of interest to applied mathematicians and specialists in mathematical modeling and inverse problems.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 308 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Applied Fuzzy Arithmetic provides a well-structured compendium that offers both a deeper knowledge about the theory of fuzzy arithmetic and an extensive view on its applications in the engineering sciences, making it a resource for students, researchers, and practical engineers. The first part of the book gives an introduction to the theory of fuzzy arithmetic, which aims to present the subject in a well-organized and comprehensible form. The derivation of fuzzy arithmetic from the original fuzzy set theory and its evolution towards a successful implementation is presented with existing formulations of fuzzy arithmetic included and integrated in the overall context. The second part of the book presents a diversified exposition of the application of fuzzy arithmetic, addressing different areas of the engineering sciences, such as mechanical, geotechnical, biomedical, and control engineering.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 272 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Many difficult scientific discovery tasks can only be solved in interactive ways, by combining intelligent computing techniques with intuitive and adaptive user interfaces. It is inevitable to use human intelligence in scientific discovery systems: human eyes can capture complex patterns and relationships, along with detecting the exceptional cases in a data set; the human brain can easily manipulate perceptions to make decisions.Ambient intelligence is about this kind of ubiquitous and autonomous human interaction with information. Scientific discovery is a process of creative perception and communication, dealing with questions like: how do we significantly reduce information while maintaining meaning, or how do we extract patterns from massive data and growing data resources.Originating from the SIGCHI Workshop on Ambient Intelligence for Scientific Discovery, this state-of-the-art survey is organized in three parts: new paradigms in scientific discovery, ambient cognition, and ambient intelligence systems. Many chapters share common features such as interaction, vision, language, and biomedicine.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 328 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -This volume contains the nal proceedings for the 2004Computer Music Mod- ing and Retrieval Symposium (CMMR 2004). This event was held during 26¿29 May 2004 in Esbjerg, Denmark on the joint campus area of Aalborg University Esbjerg and the University of Southern Denmark, Esbjerg. CMMR is an annual event focusing on important aspects of computer music. CMMR 2004 is the s- ond event in this series. CMMR 2003, which was held in Montpellier, France in May 2003, was a great success and attracted high-quality papers and prominent researchers from the eld of computer music. The CMMR 2003 postsymposium proceedingswaspublishedbySpringerintheLectureNotesinComputerScience series (LNCS 2771). CMMR 2004 was jointly organized by Aalborg University Esbjerg in Denmark and LMA, CNRS, Marseille in France (in cooperation with ACM SIGWEB). The use of computers in music is well established. CMMR 2004 provided a unique opportunity to meet and interact with peers concerned with the cro- in uence of the technological and creative in computer music. The eld of c- putermusicisinterdisciplinarybynatureandcloselyrelatedtoanumberofc- puter science and engineering areas such as information retrieval, programming, human computer interaction,digital libraries,hypermedia, arti cialintelligence, acoustics, signal processing, etc. The event gathered many interesting people (researchers, educators, composers, performers, and others). There were many high-qualitykeynoteandpaperpresentations,thatfosteredinspiringdiscussions. I hope that you nd the work presented in these proceedings as interesting and exciting as I have.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 388 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -This successor edition picks up the story where the first edition left off in 1997, and runs through to Mir¿s de-orbiting in March 2001, providing the definitive account of the Mir Space Station. The book reviews the origins of the Soviet space station programme, in particular the highly successful Salyuts 6 and 7, describes Mir¿s structure, environment, power supply and maneuvering systems, and provides a comprehensive account of how it was assembled and how it operated in orbit.Tells how the Soviet Union's experience with a succession of Salyut space stations led to the development of Mir, which was assembled in space, piece by piece, between 1982 and 1996 and became an international research laboratory whose technology went on to form the 'core modules' of the International Space Station.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 452 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -This book contains the Proceedings of the 5th Workshop on OpenMP Appli- tionsandTools(WOMPAT2004),whichtookplaceattheUniversityofHouston, Houston, Texas on May 17 and 18, 2004. Previous workshops in this series took place in Toronto, Canada, Fairbanks, Alaska, Purdue, Indiana, and San Diego, California.Thepurposeoftheworkshopwastobringtogetherusersanddevel- ers of the OpenMP API for shared memory parallel programming to disseminate their ideas and experiences and discuss the latest developments in OpenMP and its application. To support this aim, the program comprised a mixture of invited talks from research and industry, experience reports, and submitted papers, the last of which are presented in this volume. A tutorial introduction to OpenMP was held at the same location on May 18 by Ruud van der Pas from Sun Microsystems. Further, a two-day lab session called OMPlab was held immediately following the workshop and the tutorial on May 19 and 20, and was attended by both novice and advanced users. Many of the hardware vendors and several researchers gave in-depth tutorials on their softwareandmadetheirsystemsavailabletobothnoviceandadvancedattendees during OMPlab. Contributors to the WOMPAT 2004 OMPlab included IBM, Intel, Sun, the University of Tennessee, NASA, the University of Greenwich, Cornell University, the University of Oregon and the University of Houston. TheOpenMPAPIisawidelyacceptedstandardforhigh-levelsharedmemory parallel programming that was put forth by a consortium of vendors in 1997.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 160 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -message sequence charts annotated with security properties.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 316 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -What is computer graphics and what are the conceptual tasks of research in this area To the average person the term still conveys more or less the design of - gos and the manipulation of pictures with the help of image-editing programs. However, during the past four decades, computer graphics has evolved into an innovative multifaceted eld of research and computing that affects many other sciences. In many areas and for many problems we can best convey an und- standing through images that trigger our sense with the highest capability: our eye. And, what is more, aside from algorithms, formulas, and tables, the c- puter graphics scientist often is able to create beauty. Though it is a beauty of its own, it often fascinates the viewer, especially when complex aesthetic images emerge from simple mathematical concepts. Also, there are only a few other areas that advance as dynamically as inf- matics and especially computer graphics. While CPU capacity still increases and is almost doubled every 18 months, the rendering speed and ef ciency of graphics boards has increased even more during recent years. Today, images can be rendered in real time that some years ago still required several hours of computing. Parallel to the rapid improvement of computer hardware, many newalgorithms weredevelopedthattoday form the basis for some fundamental changes and achievements in graphics.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 308 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -The 4th International Conference on Security in Communication Networks 2004 (SCN2004)washeldatthe¿DioceseHall¿oftheArchdioceseofAmal -Cavade¿ Tirreni and the ¿Armorial Bearings Hall¿ of the Archbishop Palace in Amal , Italy, on September 8¿10, 2004. Previous conferences also took place in Amal in 1996, 1999 and 2002. The conference aimed at bringing together researchers in the elds of cr- tography and security in communication networks to foster cooperation and the exchange of ideas. The main topics included all technical aspects of data security, including: anonymity,authentication,blockciphers,complexity-basedcryptography,cry- analysis, digital signatures, distributed cryptography, hash functions, identi - tion,implementations,keydistribution,privacy,publickeyencryption,threshold cryptography, and zero knowledge. The Program Committee, consisting of 21 members, considered 79 papers and selected 26 for presentation; one of them was withdrawn by the authors. These papers were selected on the basis of originality, quality and relevance to cryptography and security in communication networks. Due to the high number of submissions, paper selection was a di cult and challenging task, and many good submissions had to be rejected. Each subm- sion was refereed by at least three reviewers and some had four reports or more. We are very grateful to all the program committee members, who devoted much e ort and valuable time to read and select the papers. In addition, we gratefully acknowledge the help of colleagues who reviewed submissions in their areas of expertise. They are all listed on page VII and we apologize for any inadvertent omissions. These proceedings include the revised versions of the 26 accepted papersandtheabstractoftheinvitedtalkbyBartPreneel(ECRYPT:theCr yptographic Research Challenges for the Next Decade). 396 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -A man may imagine he understands something, but still not understand anything in the way that he ought to. (Paul of Tarsus, 1 Corinthians 8:2) Calling this a ¿practical theory¿ may require some explanation. Theory and practice are often thought of as two di erent worlds, governed bydi erentideals,principles, andlaws.DavidLorgeParnas, forinstance,who hascontributedmuchtoourtheoreticalunderstandingofsoftwareengineering and also to sound use of theory in the practice of it, likes to point out that ¿theoretically¿ is synonymous to ¿not really¿. In applied mathematics the goal is to discover useful connections between these two worlds. My thesis is that in software engineering this two-world view is inadequate, and a more intimate interplay is required between theory and practice. That is, both theoretical and practical components should be integrated into a practical theory. It should beclearfrom theabovethattheintended readership of this book is not theoreticians. They would probably have di culties in appreciating a book on theory where the presentation does not proceed in a logical sequence from basic de nitions to theorems and mathematical proofs, followed by - plication examples. In fact, all this would not constitute what I understand by a practical theory in this context.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 444 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Research in the eld of gene regulation is evolving rapidly in an ever-changing s- enti c environment. Microarray techniques and comparative genomics have enabled more comprehensive studies of regulatory genomics and are proving to be powerful tools of discovery. The application of chromatin immunoprecipitation and microarrays (chIP-on-chip) to directly study the genomic binding locations of transcription factors has enabled more comprehensive modeling of regulatory networks. In addition, c- plete genome sequences and the comparison of numerous related species has dem- strated that conservation in non-coding DNA sequences often provides evidence for cis-regulatory binding sites. That said, much is still to be learned about the regulatory networks of these sequenced genomes. Systematic methods to decipher the regulatory mechanism are also crucial for c- roboratingthese regulatorynetworks.Thecoreof thesemethodsarethe motifdiscovery algorithms that can help predict cis-regulatory elements. These DNA-motif discovery programsarebecomingmoresophisticatedandare beginningto leverageevidencefrom comparative genomics (phylogenetic footprinting) and chIP-on-chip studies. How to use these new sources of evidence is an active area of research.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 126 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -In this book, we present a collection of papers around the topic of agent com- nication. The communication between agents has been one of the major topics of research in multiagent systems. The current work can therefore build on a number of previous Workshops of which the proceedings have been published in earlier volumes in this series. The basis of this collection is formed by the accepted submissions of the Workshop on Agent Communication held in c- junction with the AAMAS Conference in July 2004 in New York. The workshop received 26 submissions of which 14 were selected for publication in this v- ume. Besides the high-quality workshop papers we noticed that many papers on agent communication found their way to the main conference. We decided therefore to invite a number of authors to revise and extend their papers from this conference and to combine them with the workshop papers. We believe that the current collection comprises a very good and quite complete overview of the state of the art in this area of research and gives a good indication of the topics that are of major interest at the moment. The papers can roughly be divided over the following ve themes: ¿ social commitments ¿ multiparty communication ¿ content languages ¿ dialogues and conversations ¿ speech acts Although these themes are of course not mutually exclusive they indicate some main directions of research. We therefore have arranged the papers in the book according to the topics indicated above.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 280 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -The theory of argumentation is a rich, interdisciplinary area of research lying across philosophy, communication studies, linguistics, and psychology (at least). Its techniques and results have found a wide range of applications in both t- oretical and practical branches of arti cial intelligence and computer science. Several theories of argumentation with various semantics have been proposed in the literature. Multi-agent systems theory has picked up argument-inspired approaches and speci cally argumentation-theoretic results from many di erent areas. The community of researchers in argumentation and multi-agent systems is currently presented with a unique opportunity to integrate the various und- standings of argument into a coherent and core part of the functioning of - tonomouscomputationalsystems.Thebene tsrangefromextendedsemanticsof arguments construed as relationships between epistemic atoms, through conv- sation protocols for argumentation with serendipitous information exchange, to models of dialectical practical reasoning, both intra- and inter-agent (and a m- ture of the two). In all these cases argumentation is used to structure knowledge representation, reasoning and agent interaction, and o ers a potential means of better integrating these disparate problems.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 280 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -These are the proceedings of the 2nd International Workshop on Programming Multi-agentSystems(ProMAS2004),heldinJuly2004inNewYork(USA)asan associated event of AAMAS 2004, the main international conference dedicated to autonomous agents and multi-agent systems. The idea of organizing such an event was discussed during the Dagstuhl s- inarProgramming Multi-agent Systems Based on Logic (see [2]), where the focus was on logic-based approaches. It was felt that the scope should be broadened beyond logic-based approaches, and thus ProMAS came into being (see [1] for the proceedings of the rst event, ProMAS 2003). Meanwhile, a Steering Committee (Rafael Bordini, Mehdi Dastani, Jurgen ¿ Dix, Amal El Fallah Seghrouchni) as well as an AgentLink III Technical Forum GrouponProgrammingMulti-agentSystems wereestablished(thelatteronewas founded on 30 June/1 July 2004 in Rome, Italy (see cs.uu.nl/ mehdi/al3tf8.html). Moreover, a Kluwer book on the same topic is underway (to appear early in 2005) and the third workshop ProMAS 2005 will be organized within AAMAS 2005 (see cs.uu.nl/ProMAS/ for up-to-date information about ProMAS). 268 pp. Englisch.