springer international publishing springer international publishing jul 2013 (57 Ergebnisse)

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Digital technology has become a defining characteristic of modern life. Almost everyone uses it, we all rely on it, and many of us own a multitude of devices. What is more, we all expect to be able to use these technologies 'straight out the box.' This lecture discusses how we are able to do this without apparent problems. We are able to use digital technology because we have learned to cope with it. 'To cope' is used in philosophy to mean 'absorbed engagement,' that is, we use our smart phones and tablet computers with little or no conscious effort. In human-computer interaction this kind of use is more often described as intuitive. While this, of course, is testament to improved design, our interest in this lecture is in the human side of these interactions. We cope with technology because we are familiar with it. We define familiarity as the readiness to engage with technology which arises from being repeatedly exposed to it¿often from birth. This exposure involves the frequent useof it and seeing people all around us using it every day. Digital technology has become as common a feature of our everyday lives as the motor car, TV, credit card, cutlery, or a dozen other things which we also use without conscious deliberation. We will argue that we cope with digital technology in the same way as we do these other technologies by means of this everyday familiarity. But this is only half of the story. We also regularly support or scaffold our use of technology. These scaffolding activities are described as 'epistemic actions' which we adopt to make it easier for us to accomplish our goals. With digital technology these epistemic actions include appropriating it to more closer meet our needs. In summary, coping is a situated, embodied, and distributed description of how we use digital technology. Table of Contents: Introduction / Familiarity / Coping / Epistemic Scaffolding / Coping in Context / Bibliography / Author BiographySpringer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 112 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -The aim of this book is to supply valid and reasonable parameters in order to guide the choice of the right model of industrial evaporative tower according to operating conditions which vary depending on the particular industrial context: power plants, chemical plants, food processing plants and other industrial facilities are characterized by specific assets and requirements that have to be satisfied. Evaporative cooling is increasingly employed each time a significant water flow at a temperature which does not greatly differ from ambient temperature is needed for removing a remarkable heat load; its aim is to refrigerate a water flow through the partial evaporation of the same.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 124 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 148 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Information Retrieval (IR) models are a core component of IR research and IR systems. The past decade brought a consolidation of the family of IR models, which by 2000 consisted of relatively isolated views on TF-IDF (Term-Frequency times Inverse-Document-Frequency) as the weighting scheme in the vector-space model (VSM), the probabilistic relevance framework (PRF), the binary independence retrieval (BIR) model, BM25 (Best-Match Version 25, the main instantiation of the PRF/BIR), and language modelling (LM). Also, the early 2000s saw the arrival of divergence from randomness (DFR). Regarding intuition and simplicity, though LM is clear from a probabilistic point of view, several people stated: 'It is easy to understand TF-IDF and BM25. For LM, however, we understand the math, but we do not fully understand why it works.' This book takes a horizontal approach gathering the foundations of TF-IDF, PRF, BIR, Poisson, BM25, LM, probabilistic inference networks (PIN's), and divergence-basedmodels. The aim is to create a consolidated and balanced view on the main models. A particular focus of this book is on the 'relationships between models.' This includes an overview over the main frameworks (PRF, logical IR, VSM, generalized VSM) and a pairing of TF-IDF with other models. It becomes evident that TF-IDF and LM measure the same, namely the dependence (overlap) between document and query. The Poisson probability helps to establish probabilistic, non-heuristic roots for TF-IDF, and the Poisson parameter, average term frequency, is a binding link between several retrieval models and model parameters. Table of Contents: List of Figures / Preface / Acknowledgments / Introduction / Foundations of IR Models / Relationships Between IR Models / Summary & Research Outlook / Bibliography / Author's Biography / IndexSpringer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 164 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Many of us have implemented oral communication instruction in our design courses, lab courses, and other courses where students give presentations. Others have students give presentations without instruction on how to become a better presenter. Many of us, then, could use a concise book that guides us on what instruction on oral communication should include, based on input from executives from different settings. This instruction will help our students get jobs and make them more likely to move up the career ladder, especially in these hard economic times. Oral Communication Excellence for Engineers and Scientists: Based on Executive Input is the tool we need. It is based on input from over 75 executives with engineering or science degrees, leading organizations that employ engineers and scientists. For the presentation chapter, the executives described what makes a ¿stellar presentation.¿ And for every other chapter, they gave input¿on, for example, how to effectively communicate in meetings and in teams, how to excel at phone communication, how to communicate electronically to supplement oral communication, and how to meet the challenges of oral communication. They also provided tips on cross-cultural communication, listening, choosing the appropriate medium for a communication, elevator pitches, and posters; and using oral communication to network on the job. Oral Communication Excellence for Engineers and Scientists includes exercises and activities for students and professionals, based on instruction that has improved Georgia Tech¿s students¿ presentation skills at a statistically significant level. Slides demonstrating best practices are included from Capstone Design students around the country. Table of Contents: Introduction / Background Preparation / Presentation: Customizing to your Audience / Presentation: Telling your Story / Presentation: Displaying Key Information / Delivering the Presentation / Other Oral Communication Skills / Advanced Oral Communication Skills / ReferencesSpringer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 136 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Planning is the model-based approach to autonomous behavior where the agent behavior is derived automatically from a model of the actions, sensors, and goals. The main challenges in planning are computational as all models, whether featuring uncertainty and feedback or not, are intractable in the worst case when represented in compact form. In this book, we look at a variety of models used in AI planning, and at the methods that have been developed for solving them. The goal is to provide a modern and coherent view of planning that is precise, concise, and mostly self-contained, without being shallow. For this, we make no attempt at covering the whole variety of planning approaches, ideas, and applications, and focus on the essentials. The target audience of the book are students and researchers interested in autonomous behavior and planning from an AI, engineering, or cognitive science perspective. Table of Contents: Preface / Planning and Autonomous Behavior / Classical Planning: Full Information and Deterministic Actions / Classical Planning: Variations and Extensions / Beyond Classical Planning: Transformations / Planning with Sensing: Logical Models / MDP Planning: Stochastic Actions and Full Feedback / POMDP Planning: Stochastic Actions and Partial Feedback / Discussion / Bibliography / Author's BiographySpringer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 144 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Today's wireless communications and networking practices are tightly coupled with economic considerations, to the extent that it is almost impossible to make a sound technology choice without understanding the corresponding economic implications. This book aims at providing a foundational introduction on how microeconomics, and pricing theory in particular, can help us to understand and build better wireless networks. The book can be used as lecture notes for a course in the field of network economics, or a reference book for wireless engineers and applied economists to understand how pricing mechanisms influence the fast growing modern wireless industry.This book first covers the basics of wireless communication technologies and microeconomics, before going in-depth about several pricing models and their wireless applications. The pricing models include social optimal pricing, monopoly pricing, price differentiation, oligopoly pricing, and network externalities, supported by introductory discussions of convex optimization and game theory. The wireless applications include wireless video streaming, service provider competitions, cellular usage-based pricing, network partial price differentiation, wireless spectrum leasing, distributed power control, and cellular technology upgrade. More information related to the book (including references, slides, and videos) can be found at ncel.ie.cuhk.edu.hk/content/wireless-network-pricing.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 180 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -In the last few years, a number of NLP researchers have developed and participated in the task of Recognizing Textual Entailment (RTE). This task encapsulates Natural Language Understanding capabilities within a very simple interface: recognizing when the meaning of a text snippet is contained in the meaning of a second piece of text. This simple abstraction of an exceedingly complex problem has broad appeal partly because it can be conceived also as a component in other NLP applications, from Machine Translation to Semantic Search to Information Extraction. It also avoids commitment to any specific meaning representation and reasoning framework, broadening its appeal within the research community. This level of abstraction also facilitates evaluation, a crucial component of any technological advancement program. This book explains the RTE task formulation adopted by the NLP research community, and gives a clear overview of research in this area. It draws out commonalities in this research, detailing the intuitions behind dominant approaches and their theoretical underpinnings. This book has been written with a wide audience in mind, but is intended to inform all readers about the state of the art in this fascinating field, to give a clear understanding of the principles underlying RTE research to date, and to highlight the short- and long-term research goals that will advance this technology.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 224 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -With the proliferation of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) offerings, it is becoming increasingly important for individual SaaS providers to operate their services at a low cost. This book investigates SaaS from the perspective of the provider and shows how operational costs can be reduced by using ¿multi tenancy,¿ a technique for consolidating a large number of customers onto a small number of servers.Specifically, the book addresses multi tenancy on the database level, focusing on in-memory column databases, which are the backbone of many important new enterprise applications. For efficiently implementing multi tenancy in a farm of databases, two fundamental challenges must be addressed, (i)workload modeling and (ii)data placement. The first involves estimating the (shared) resource consumption for multi tenancy on a single in-memory database server. The second consists in assigning tenants to servers in a way that minimizes the number of required servers (and thus costs) based on the assumed workload model. This step also entails replicating tenants for performance and high availability. This book presents novel solutions to both problems.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 144 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -This work presents the evolution of the traditional concept of 'national security' as military security to additionally embrace 'environmental security' and then necessarily also 'social (societal) security', thence to be termed 'comprehensive human security'. It accomplishes this primarily by presenting 11of the author's own benchmark papers published between 1983 and 2010 (additionally providing bibliographic citations to a further 36 of the author's related publications during that period). The work stresses the importance of transfrontier (regional) cooperation, and also recognizes global overpopulationas a key impediment to achieving comprehensive human security.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 172 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -This book describes the shortage of girls and women in present day China and focuses on two important features: the sex imbalance in childhood and youth, and the excess mortality of women at various stages of their life. The author analyzes the causes and the processes of a strong preference for sons, which generates discrimination toward females and results in a shortage of girls and women. Chinäs higher proportion of men than women is a population characteristic that is shared by very few countries in the world. This demographic masculinity is unprecedented in the documented history of human populations, both in scale and its lasting impact on the numbers and the structure of the population. Despite the economic boom of recent years, many families in China still consider girls to be less important than boys. Although Chinese women have become largely emancipated since the 1950s, they still do not have the same opportunities for social achievement as men, and Chinese society remains fundamentally rooted in highly gendered social and family roles. As a consequence, Chinese girl babies who have the misfortune to be born instead of a long-awaited son go by various names, such as Pandi (literally 'awaiting a son'), Laidi ('a son will follow'), or Yehao ('she'll do too'). The book provides a comprehensive review of the situation of women in Chinäs society and shows that discrimination against girls and women is part of a system of norms and values that traditionally favours males.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 216 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -¿The term sustainable development (SD) has now become a ubiquitous idea, philosophy, and guiding principle in our society. Governments, business, NGOs and individuals have embraced the mindset, andeven the education institutions talk about graduating young people with sustainability in their DNA. Despite its noble origin, however,sustainable development is a concept thatembodies compromise. This compromise hasled to a term that is devoid of scientific foundation and actionable guidelines.In this volume, Min Ding offers an alternative to SD, introducing a framework, which he calls the Bubble Theory, built on three layers: the symbiotic duo (subconscious desires at the self and species levels); enlightened needs (manifested desires of the self and species beyond basic survival and procreation), and human development principles (with fair development as the ideal principle for the present). These fundamental concepts of enlightened needs (EN) and fair development (FD) have profound implications for both the theory and application of new practices in business and policymaking.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 72 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Although the development of remote sensing techniques focuses greatly on construction of new sensors with higher spatial and spectral resolution, it is advisable to also use data of older sensors (especially, the LANDSAT-mission) when the historical mapping of land use/land cover and monitoring of their dynamics are needed. Using data from LANDSAT missions as well as from Terra (ASTER) Sensors, the authors shows in his book maps of historical land cover changes with a focus on agricultural irrigation projects.The kernel of this study was whether, how and to what extent applying the various remotely sensed data that were used here, would be an effective approach to classify the historical and current land use/land cover, to monitor the dynamics of land use/land cover during the last four decades, to map the development of the irrigation areas, and to classify the major strategic winter- and summer-irrigated agricultural crops in the study area of the Euphrates River Basin.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 224 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Discrete Fracture Network Modeling of Hydraulic Stimulation describes the development and testing of a model that couples fluid-flow, deformation, friction weakening, and permeability evolution in large, complex two-dimensional discrete fracture networks. The model can be used to explore the behavior of hydraulic stimulation in settings where matrix permeability is low and preexisting fractures play an important role, such as Enhanced Geothermal Systems and gas shale. Used alsoto describe pure shear stimulation, mixed-mechanism stimulation, or pure opening-mode stimulation. A variety of novel techniques to ensure efficiency and realistic model behaviorare implemented, and tested. The simulation methodology can also be used as an efficient method for directly solving quasistatic fracture contact problems. Results show how stresses induced by fracture deformation during stimulation directly impact the mechanism of propagation and the resulting fracture network.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 100 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -The current volume presents four chapters touching on some of the most important and modern areas of research in Mathematical Finance: asset price bubbles (by Philip Protter); energy markets (by Fred Espen Benth); investment under transaction costs (by Paolo Guasoni and Johannes Muhle-Karbe); and numerical methods for solving stochastic equations (by Dan Crisan, K. Manolarakis and C. Nee).The Paris-Princeton Lecture Notes on Mathematical Finance, of which this is the fifth volume, publish cutting-edge research in self-contained, expository articles from renowned specialists. The aim is to produce a series of articles that can serve as an introductory reference source for research in the field.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 328 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Inhaltsangabe1. Background 1.1 Pollution problems of pulp and paper industry 2. Pulp and Paper making process 2.1 Pulp making Process 2.2 Stock preparation and paper making process 3. Pulp Bleaching and Bleaching effluents 3.1 Pulp Bleaching 3.2 Bleaching effluents 4. Environmental effects of bleach plant effluents 4.1 Environmental Fate and effects 4.2 Environmental issues 4.3 Environmental regulations 5. Stratgies used for reducing the generation of pollutants 5.1 Pollution reduction through Process modification 5.1.1 Nonconventional Pulping Technologies Organosolvent Pulping Organic acid Pulping Biopulping 5.1.2 Internal Process Modifications Extended delignification and Oxygen delignification Improved pulp washing Oxidative alkali extraction stage Substitution of elemental chlorine with chlorine dioxide Ozone ECF, Totally Chlorine-free Bleaching and Chloride Removal Processes Bleach filtrate recovery Enzyme pretreatment Fungal pretreatment 5.2 External treatment 5.2.1 Physico-chemical processes 5.2.2 Electro-chemical processes 5.2.3 Advanced oxidation technologies 5.2.4 Treatment with Enzymes 5.2.5 Treatment with Bacteria Aerobic treatment Anaerobic treatment Sequential aerobic/anaerobic treatment 5.2.6 Treatment with Fungi 6. Conclusions and future perspectives 7. ReferencesSpringer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 96 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -The book describes a development concept called abulecentrism. The Yoruba word abule (pronounced: a-boo-lay) literarily means ¿the village¿. abulecentrism seeks to achieve rapid and sustainable development of a given society by the strategic execution of projects and the provision of critical services at the local community level. The village has always been the traditional unit of communal living in many societies around the world. The typical village is small, comprising close-knit social groups and individuals that number in the tens, or at most, low hundreds. In a village, people live close to one another, and derive strength in their communal methods of living, working and protecting their society. Furthermore, the management and governance of the community is simpler than in urban areas because the village requires smaller administrative systems. abulecentrism is built on the philosophy of using small, modular systems, such as a village, as building blocks for developing the greater society. The ultimate goal of abulecentrism is for the larger society to be significantly impacted by the dividends of the aggregated development attained within the different communities. Development projects will typically be executed by starting with a few local communities and progressing organically until all the communities that make up the larger society have been impacted.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 188 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Starting with novel algorithms for optimally updating bounding volume hierarchies of objects undergoing arbitrary deformations, the author presents a new data structure that allows, for the first time, the computation of the penetration volume. The penetration volume is related to the water displacement of the overlapping region, and thus corresponds to a physically motivated and continuous force. The practicability of the approaches used is shown by realizing new applications in the field of robotics and haptics, including a user study that evaluates the influence of the degrees of freedom in complex haptic interactions. New Geometric Data Structures for Collision Detection and Haptics closes by proposing an open source benchmarking suite that evaluates both the performance and the quality of the collision response in order to guarantee a fair comparison of different collision detection algorithms.Required in the fields of computer graphics, physically-based simulations, computer animations, robotics and haptics, collision detection is a fundamental problem that arises every time we interact with virtual objects. Some of the open challenges associated with collision detection include the handling of deformable objects, the stable computation of physically-plausible contact information, and the extremely high frequencies that are required for haptic rendering. New Geometric Data Structures for Collision Detection and Haptics presents new solutions to all of these challenges, and will prove to be a valuable resource for researchers and practitioners of collision detection in the haptics, robotics and computer graphics and animation domains.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 256 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -This book describes and analyzes the phenomenon of spontaneous transformation in self-built houses in the context of developing countries. After describing briefly the history of self-built houses and the phenomenon of transformation around the world, it focuses on its context, the city of Dhaka. Firstly it describes the physical patterns of spontaneous transformation. Then it explains the explicit reasons behind those transformations. Finally, it carefully unveils the implicit values that are hidden behind those explicit reasons. The entire book is an ethnographic journey, which not only expresses unique stories of living with transformation, but also captivates the reader throughout with its compelling way of qualitative judgment.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 108 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -InhaltsangabeSpecial Course: I. Nourdin: Lectures on Gaussian approximations with Malliavin calculus.- Other Contributions: V. Prokaj: Some sufficient conditions for the ergodicity of the Lévy-transformation.- S. Laurent: Vershik's intermediate level standardness criterion and the scale of an automorphism.- C. Dellacherie and M.Émery: Filtrations indexed by ordinals; application to a conjecture of S. Laurent.- M. Émery: A planar Borel set which divides every Borel product.- J. Brossard et C. Leuridan: Characterising Ocone local martingales with reflections.- H. Hashimoto: Approximation and stability of solutions of SDEs driven by a symmetric a stable process with non-Lipschitz coefficients.- C. Cuchiero and Josef Teichman: Path properties and regularity of affine processes on general state spaces.- E. Jacob: Langevin process reflected on a partially elastic boundary II.- R. Doney and S. Vakeroudis: Windings of planar stable processes.- A. Sokol: Elementary proof that the first hitting time of an open set by a jump process is a stopping time.- L. Döring and M. Roberts: Catalytic branching processes via spine techniques and renewal theory.- S. Bourguin and C. Tudor: Malliavin calculus and self normalized sums.- P. Catuogno, D. Ledesma and P. Ruffino: A note on stochastic calculus in vector bundles.- G. Pagès: Functional co-monotony of processes with an application to peacocks.- S. Noreddine: Fluctuations of the traces of complex-valued iid random matrices.- J. Ortmann: Functionals of the Free Brownian motion.- L. Miclo and P. Monmarche : Étude de processus moins indécis que les autres.- F. Barthe and C. Bordenave: Combinatorial optimization over two random point sets.- I. Kortchemski: A simple proof of Duquesne's theorem on contour processes of conditioned Galton-Watson trees.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 568 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -The dimension theory of dynamical systems has progressively developed, especially over the last two decades, into an independent and extremely active field of research. Its main aim is to study the complexity of sets and measures that are invariant under the dynamics. In particular, it is essential to characterizing chaotic strange attractors. To date, some parts of the theory have either only been outlined, because they can be reduced to the case of maps, or are too technical for a wider audience. In this respect, the present monograph is intended to provide a comprehensive guide. Moreover, the text is self-contained and with the exception of some basic results in Chapters 3 and 4, all the results in the book include detailed proofs.The book is intended for researchers and graduate students specializing in dynamical systems who wish to have a sufficiently comprehensive view of the theory together with a working knowledge of its main techniques. The discussion of some open problems is also included in the hope that it may lead to further developments. Ideally, readers should have some familiarity with the basic notions and results of ergodic theory and hyperbolic dynamics at the level of an introductory course in the area, though the initial chapters also review all the necessary material.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 168 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Deals with the historical perspectives and the current status of doubled haploid production along with its practical implications in basic and applied research. It highlights various haploid production methods with a comprehensive discussion on their pros and cons, bottlenecks, and embryogenic pathways. The review also describes in detail the results of molecular and genomic studies conducted to investigate the underlying principles of this spectacular technique that has changed the status of many species from recalcitrant to responsive over the last ninety years.¿Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 88 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -This study discusses issues of optimal water management in a complex distribution system. The main elements of the water-management system under consideration are retention reservoirs, among which water transfers are possible, and a network of connections between these reservoirs and water treatment plants (WTPs). System operation optimisation involves determining the proper water transport routes and their flow volumes from theretention reservoirs to the WTPs, and the volumes of possible transfers among the reservoirs, taking into account transport-related delays for inflows, outflows and water transfers in the system. Total system operation costs defined by an assumed quality coefficient should be minimal. An analytical solution of the optimisation task soformulated has been obtained as a result of using Pontryagin¿s maximum principle with reference to the quality coefficient assumed. Stable start and end conditions in reservoir state trajectories have been assumed. The researchers have taken into account cases of steady and transient optimisation duration. The solutions obtainedhave enabled the creation of computer models simulating system operation. In future, an analysis of the results obtained may affect decisions supporting the control of currently existing water-management systems.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 92 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -The book describes the valorization of biomass-derived compounds over gold catalysts.Since biomass is a rich renewable feedstock for diverse platform molecules, including those currently derived from petroleum, the interest in various transformation routes has become intense. Catalytic conversion of biomass is one of the main approaches to improving the economic viability of biorefineries.In addition, Gold catalysts were found to have outstanding activity and selectivity in many key reactions.This book collects information about transformations of the most promising and important compounds derived from cellulose, hemicelluloses, and woody biomass extractives. Since gold catalysts possess high stability under oxidative conditions, selective oxidation reactions were discussed more thoroughly than other critical reactions such as partial hydrogenation, acetalization, and isomerization.The influence of reaction conditions, the role of the catalyst, and the advantages and disadvantages of using gold are presented for all of the reactions mentioned above.This book provides an overview of the recent research results focusing on application of gold catalysts for synthesis of valuable chemicals using renewable feedstocks.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 64 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -InhaltsangabeCharacteristics of Low-Power Links.- External Radio Interference.- Overview of Link Quality Estimation.- Performance evaluation of link quality estimators.- On the use of link quality estimation for improving higher layer protocols and mechanisms.- Conclusions.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 164 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -There is a diversity of ¿ethical practices¿ within medicine as an institutionalised profession as well asa need for ethical specialists both in practice as well as in institutionalised roles. ThisBrief offers a social perspective on medical ethics education.It discusses a range of concepts relevant to educational theory and thus provides a basic illumination of the subject. Recent research in the sociology of medical education and the social theory of PierreBourdieu are covered. In the end, the themes of Bourdieuan Social Theory, socio-cultural apprenticeships and the ¿characterological turn¿ in medical educationare draw togetherthe context of medical ethics education.¿Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 132 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Explores the practical applicability ofthe philosophy of science to scientific research, but also considers its relevance to practice within the realms of technology, design, crafts, and even within the world of arts and the humanities. The attempt to engage working scientists with the issues raised by the philosophy of science may profitably be extended to examine its applicability to any other fields of knowledge that encompass a problem-solving dimension. Drawing on his experience as a research and development scientist in the biomedical device industry, the author shows how the principles of the philosophy of science illuminate the research process. The book is structured on the concept of the inspirational text; it consists of short chapters, each of which provides an accessible discussion of an aspect of the philosophy of science. Each chapter concludes with a list of practical pointers towards the development of attitudes and skills which will benefit the student researcher. ¿Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 112 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -¿¿¿This book integratesthe current state of knowledge on the association of neurochemical and psychological factors underlying the concept of depression or on the process and nature of the drug-induced changes that lead to recovery.Highlighting the results of two major multisite collaborative studies of the psychobiology of depression, the author demonstrates how more refined clinical methods uncover the initial behavioral actions of the drugs and chart the time course of their actions. The results disconfirmearlier textbook reported findings that these actions are delayed for several weeks beyond the almost immediate neurochemical effects.The ¿multivantaged¿ method makes possible distinguishing the clinical actions of different classes of antidepressant drugs.¿¿Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 112 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -This book offers the only synthesis of early-period Marianas archaeology, marking the first human settlement of Remote Oceania about 1500 B.C. In these remote islands of the northwest Pacific Ocean, archaeological discoveries now can define the oldest site contexts, dating, and artifacts of a Neolithic (late stone-age) people. This ancient settlement was accomplished by the world¿s longest open-ocean voyage in human history at its time, more than 2000 km from any contemporary populated area. This work brings the isolated Mariana Islands into the forefront of scientific research of how people first settled Remote Oceania, further important for understanding long-distance human migration in general. Given this significance, the early Marianas sites deserve close attention that has been awkwardly missing until now. The author draws on his years of intensive field research to define the earliest Marianas sites in scientific detail but accessible for broad readership. It covers three major topics: 1) situating the ancient sites in their original environmental contexts; 2) inventory of the early-period sites and their dating; and 3) the full range of pottery, stone tools, shell ornaments, and other artifacts. The work concludes with discussing the impacts of the findings on Asia-Pacific archaeology and on human global migration studies.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 164 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -This book focuses on yogäs transcultural dissemination in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In the course of this process, the term ¿yogä has been associated with various distinctive blends of mental and physical exercises performed in order to achieve some sort of improvement, whether understood in terms of esotericism, fitness, self-actualization, body aesthetics, or health care. The essays in this volume explore some of the turning points in yogäs historico-spatial evolution and their relevance to its current appeal. The authors focus on central motivations, sites, and agents in the spread of posture-based yoga as well as on its successive (re-)interpretation and diversification, addressing questions such as: Why has yoga taken its various forms How do time and place influence its meanings, social roles, and associated experiences How does the transfer into new settings affect the ways in which yogic practice has been conceptualized as a system, and on what basis is it still identified as (Indian) yoga The initial section of the volume concentrates on the re-evaluation of yoga in Indian and Western settings in the first half of the twentieth century. The following chapters link global discourses to particular local settings and explore meaning production at the micro-social level, taking Germany as the focal site. The final part of the book focuses on yoga advertising and consumption across national, social, and discursive boundaries, taking a closer look at transnational and deterritorialized yoga markets, as well as at various classes of mobile yoga practitioners.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 260 pp. Englisch.