springer international publishing springer international publishing okt 2014 (200 Ergebnisse)

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Contextual Design is a user-centered design process that uses in-depth field research to drive innovative design. Contextual Design was first invented in 1988 and has since been used in a wide variety of industries and taught in universities all over the world. It is a complete front-end design process rooted in Contextual Inquiry, the widespread, industry-standard field data gathering technique. Contextual Design adds techniques to analyze and present user data, drive ideation from data, design specific product solutions, and iterate those solutions with customers. In 2013, we overhauled the method to account for the way that technology has radically changed people¿s lives since the invention of the touchscreen phones and other always-on, always-connected, and always-carried devices. This book describes the new Contextual Design, evolved to help teams design for the way technology now fits into peoples¿ lives. We briefly describe the steps of the latest version of Contextual Design and show how they create a continual immersion in the world of the user for the purpose of innovative product design.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 92 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -As new discoveries complicate the scientific picture of the universe, the evolving theories about the nature of space and time and the origins and fate of the universe threaten to become overwhelming. Enter David Seargent. Continuing the author's series of books popularizing strange astronomy facts and knowledge, Weird Universe explains the bizarre, complicated terrain of modern cosmology for lay readers.From exploring some of the strange consequences of the theories of special and general relativity, to probing time dilation and the twin and mother-and-baby ¿paradoxes¿ and the theory that the universe can be mathematically considered as a hologram, all of the latest findings and conjectures are clearly described in non-technical language. The development of quantum physics and the more recent developments of string and M-theory are looked at, in addition to several hypotheses that have not won wide acceptance from the scientific community, such as modified gravity. Enter the wonderfully weird world of these theories and gain a new appreciation for the latest findings in cosmological research.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 288 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Spaces of Interaction, Places for Experience is a book about Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), interaction design (ID) and user experience (UX) in the age of ubiquitous computing. The book explores interaction and experience through the different spaces that contribute to interaction until it arrives at an understanding of the rich and complex places for experience that will be the focus of the next period for interaction design. The book begins by looking at the multilayered nature of interaction and UX¿not just with new technologies, but with technologies that are embedded in the world. People inhabit a medium, or rather many media, which allow them to extend themselves, physically, mentally, and emotionally in many directions. The medium that people inhabit includes physical and semiotic material that combine to create user experiences. People feel more or less present in these media and more or less engaged with the content of the media. From this understanding of people in media,the book explores some philosophical and practical issues about designing interactions. The book journeys through the design of physical space, digital space, information space, conceptual space and social space. It explores concepts of space and place, digital ecologies, information architecture, conceptual blending and technology spaces at work and in the home. It discusses navigation of spaces and how people explore and find their way through environments. Finally the book arrives at the concept of a blended space where the physical and digital are tightly interwoven and people experience the blended space as a whole. The design of blended spaces needs to be driven by an understanding of the correspondences between the physical and the digital, by an understanding of conceptual blending and by the desire to design at a human scale. There is no doubt that HCI and ID are changing. The design of ¿microinteractions¿ remains important, but there is a bigger picture to consider. UX is spread across devices, over time and across physical spaces. The commingling of the physical and the digital in blended spaces leads to new social spaces and new conceptual spaces. UX concerns the navigation of these spaces as much as it concerns the design of buttons and screens for apps. By taking a spatial perspective on interaction, the book provides new insights into the evolving nature of interaction design.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 132 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -The adiabatic quantum computation (AQC) is based on the adiabatic theorem to approximate solutions of the Schrödinger equation. The design of an AQC algorithm involves the construction of a Hamiltonian that describes the behavior of the quantum system. This Hamiltonian is expressed as a linear interpolation of an initial Hamiltonian whose ground state is easy to compute, and a final Hamiltonian whose ground state corresponds to the solution of a given combinatorial optimization problem. The adiabatic theorem asserts that if the time evolution of a quantum system described by a Hamiltonian is large enough, then the system remains close to its ground state. An AQC algorithm uses the adiabatic theorem to approximate the ground state of the final Hamiltonian that corresponds to the solution of the given optimization problem. In this book, we investigate the computational simulation of AQC algorithms applied to the MAX-SAT problem. A symbolic analysis of the AQC solution is given in order to understand the involved computational complexity of AQC algorithms. This approach can be extended to other combinatorial optimization problems and can be used for the classical simulation of an AQC algorithm where a Hamiltonian problem is constructed. This construction requires the computation of a sparse matrix of dimension 2n × 2n, by means of tensor products, where n is the dimension of the quantum system. Also, a general scheme to design AQC algorithms is proposed, based on a natural correspondence between optimization Boolean variables and quantum bits. Combinatorial graph problems are in correspondence with pseudo-Boolean maps that are reduced in polynomial time to quadratic maps. Finally, the relation among NP-hard problems is investigated, as well as its logical representability, and is applied to the design of AQC algorithms. It is shown that every monadic second-order logic (MSOL) expression has associated pseudo-Boolean maps that can be obtained by expanding the given expression, and also can be reduced to quadratic forms.Table of Contents: Preface / Acknowledgments / Introduction / Approximability of NP-hard Problems / Adiabatic Quantum Computing / Efficient Hamiltonian Construction / AQC for Pseudo-Boolean Optimization / A General Strategy to Solve NP-Hard Problems / Conclusions / Bibliography / Authors' BiographiesSpringer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 116 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -This bookexplains why scientists believe that life may be more common in the Universe than previously considered possible.It presentsthe tools and strategies astronomers and astrobiologists are using in their formal search for habitable exoplanets as well as more advanced forms of life in other parts of our galaxy.The authorthen summarizes what is currently known about how and where organic molecules critical to our form of carbon-based life are manufactured.The core of the book explains (and presents educated guesses) how nervous systems evolved on Earth, how they work, and how they might work on other worlds. Combining his knowledge of neuroscience, computers, and astrobiology the author jumps into the discussion whether biological nervous systems are just the first step in the rise of intelligence in the Universe.The book ends with a description from both the psychologist¿s and the neuroscientist¿s viewpoints, exactly what it is about the fields of astrobiology and astronomy that ¿boggles the minds¿ of many amateur astronomers and interested non-scientists.This book stands out from other popular science books on astrobiology by making the point that ¿astro-neurobiologists¿ need to begin thinking about how alien nervous systems might work.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 216 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -The current drug development paradigm---sometimes expressed as, ``One disease, one target, one drug''---is under question, as relatively few drugs have reached the market in the last two decades. Meanwhile, the research focus of drug discovery is being placed on the study of drug action on biological systems as a whole, rather than on individual components of such systems. The vast amount of biological information about genes and proteins and their modulation by small molecules is pushing drug discovery to its next critical steps, involving the integration of chemical knowledge with these biological databases. Systematic integration of these heterogeneous datasets and the provision of algorithms to mine the integrated datasets would enable investigation of the complex mechanisms of drug action; however, traditional approaches face challenges in the representation and integration of multi-scale datasets, and in the discovery of underlying knowledge in the integrated datasets. The Semantic Web, envisioned to enable machines to understand and respond to complex human requests and to retrieve relevant, yet distributed, data, has the potential to trigger system-level chemical-biological innovations. Chem2Bio2RDF is presented as an example of utilizing Semantic Web technologies to enable intelligent analyses for drug discovery.Table of Contents: Introduction / Data Representation and Integration Using RDF / Data Representation and Integration Using OWL / Finding Complex Biological Relationships in PubMed Articles using Bio-LDA / Integrated Semantic Approach for Systems Chemical Biology Knowledge Discovery / Semantic Link Association Prediction / Conclusions / References / Authors' BiographiesSpringer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 144 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -This is the first volume in a series about creating and maintaining taxonomies and their practical applications, especially in search functions. In Book 1 (The Taxobook: History, Theories, and Concepts of Knowledge Organization), the author introduces the very foundations of classification, starting with the ancient Greek philosophers Plato and Aristotle, as well as Theophrastus and the Roman Pliny the Elder. They were first in a line of distinguished thinkers and philosophers to ponder the organization of the world around them and attempt to apply a structure or framework to that world. The author continues by discussing the works and theories of several other philosophers from Medieval and Renaissance times, including Saints Aquinas and Augustine, William of Occam, Andrea Cesalpino, Carl Linnaeus, and René Descartes. In the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, John Locke, Immanuel Kant, James Frederick Ferrier, Charles Ammi Cutter, and Melvil Dewey contributed greatly to the theories of classification systems and knowledge organization. Cutter and Dewey, especially, created systems that are still in use today. Chapter 8 covers the contributions of Shiyali Ramamrita Ranganathan, who is considered by many to be the ¿father of modern library science.¿ He created the concept of faceted vocabularies, which are widely used¿even if they are not well understood¿on many e-commerce websites. Following the discussions and historical review, the author has included a glossary that covers all three books of this series so that it can be referenced as you work your way through the second and third volumes. The author believes that it is important to understand the history of knowledge organization and the differing viewpoints of various philosophers¿even if that understanding is only that the differing viewpoints simply exist. Knowing the differing viewpoints will help answer the fundamental questions: Why do we want to build taxonomies How do we build them to serve multiple pointsof view Table of Contents: List of Figures / Preface / Acknowledgments / Origins of Knowledge Organization Theory: Early Philosophy of Knowledge / Saints and Traits: Realism and Nominalism / Arranging the glowers¿ and the Birds, and the Insects, and Everything Else: Early Naturalists and Taxonomies / The Age of Enlightenment Impacts Knowledge Theory / 18th-Century Developments: Knowledge Theory Coming to the Foreground / High Resolution: Classification Sharpens in the 19th and 20th Centuries / Outlining the World and Its Parts / Facets: An Indian Mathematician and Children¿s Toys at Selfridge¿s / Points of Knowledge / Glossary / End Notes / Author BiographySpringer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 84 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Gathering and updating results scattered in journal articles over thirty years, this self-contained monograph gives a comprehensive introduction to the subject. Its goal is to: - motivate and explain the method for general Lie groups, reducing the proof of deep results in invariant analysis to the verification of two formal Lie bracket identities related to the Campbell-Hausdorff formula (the 'Kashiwara-Vergne conjecture'); - give a detailed proof of the conjecture for quadratic and solvable Lie algebras, which is relatively elementary; - extend the method to symmetric spaces; here an obstruction appears, embodied in a single remarkable object called an 'e-function'; - explain the role of this function in invariant analysis on symmetric spaces, its relation to invariant differential operators, mean value operators and spherical functions; - give an explicit e-function for rank one spaces (the hyperbolic spaces); - construct an e-function for general symmetric spaces, in the spirit of Kashiwara and Vergne's original work for Lie groups. The book includes a complete rewriting of several articles by the author, updated and improved following Alekseev, Meinrenken and Torossian's recent proofs of the conjecture. The chapters are largely independent of each other. Some open problems are suggested to encourage future research. It is aimed at graduate students and researchers with a basic knowledge of Lie theory.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 220 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Guide to Targeted Therapies: EGFR Mutations in NSCLC is a speedy and up-to-date review, which discusses EGFR mutations, testing methods and technology, current and emerging therapies, and resources that clinicians can provide to their patients. Busy healthcare professionals who want a quick review of EGFR gene mutations as well as a summary of current therapies will benefit from this succinct guide.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 80 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -This book constitutes revised post-proceedings of the 4th International Symposium on Pervasive Computing Paradigms for Mental Health, MindCare 2014, held in Tokyo, Japan, in May 2014.The 11 full and 5 short papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 26 submissions for inclusion in the proceedings. The papers are organized in topical sections on recognition and assessment, mental health management, improving communication, depression, and self-applied treatments.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 176 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -This book constitutes the proceedings of the 7th International Information Retrieval Facility Conference, IRFC 2014, held in Copenhagen, Denmark, November 2014.The 10 papers presented together with one industry paper were carefully reviewed and selected from 13 submissions. The conference aims at bringing young researchers into contact with the industry at an early stage, emphasizing the applicability of IR solutions to real industry cases and the respective challenges.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 148 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 9th Brazilian Symposium on Bioinformatics, BSB 2014, held in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, in October 2014. The 18revised fullpapers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 32 submissions. The papers cover all aspects of bioinformatics and computational biology.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 168 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the First International Workshop on Bayesian and grAphical Models for Biomedical Imaging, BAMBI 2014, held in Cambridge, MA, USA, in September 2014 as a satellite event of the 17th International Conference on Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention, MICCAI 2014.The 11 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous submissions with a key aspect on probabilistic modeling applied to medical image analysis. The objectives of this workshop compared to other workshops, e.g. machine learning in medical imaging, have a stronger mathematical focus on the foundations of probabilistic modeling and inference. The papers highlight the potential of using Bayesian or random field graphical models for advancing scientific research in biomedical image analysis or for the advancement of modeling and analysis of medical imaging data.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 144 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -There are five different types of eye movements: saccades, smooth pursuit, vestibular ocular eye movements, optokinetic eye movements, and vergence eye movements. The purpose of this book series is focused primarily on mathematical models of the horizontal saccadic eye movement system and the smooth pursuit system, rather than on how visual information is processed. A saccade is a fast eye movement used to acquire a target by placing the image of the target on the fovea. Smooth pursuit is a slow eye movement used to track a target as it moves by keeping the target on the fovea. The vestibular ocular movement is used to keep the eyes on a target during brief head movements. The optokinetic eye movement is a combination of saccadic and slow eye movements that keeps a full-field image stable on the retina during sustained head rotation. Each of these movements is a conjugate eye movement, that is, movements of both eyes together driven by a common neural source. A vergence movement is a non-conjugate eye movement allowing the eyes to track targets as they come closer or farther away. In Part 1, early models of saccades and smooth pursuit are presented. A number of oculomotor plant models are described therein beginning with the Westheimer model published in 1954, and up through our 1995 model involving a 4th-order oculomotor plant model. In Part 2, a 2009 version of a state-of-the-art model is presented for horizontal saccades that is 3rd-order and linear, and controlled by a physiologically based time-optimal neural network. In this book, a multiscale model of the saccade system is presented, focusing on the neural network. Chapter 1 summarizes a whole muscle model of the oculomotor plant based on the 2009 3rd-order and linear, and controlled by a physiologically based time-optimal neural network. Chapter 2 presents a neural network model of biophysical neurons in the midbrain for controlling oculomotor muscles during horizontal human saccades. To investigate horizontal saccade dynamics, a neural circuitry, including omnipause neuron, premotor excitatory and inhibitory burst neurons, long lead burst neuron, tonic neuron, interneuron, abducens nucleus, and oculomotor nucleus, is developed. A generic neuron model serves as the basis to match the characteristics of each type of neuron in the neural network. We wish to express our thanks to William Pruehsner for drawing many of the illustrations in this book. Table of Contents: Acknowledgments / 2009 Linear Homeomorphic Saccadic Eye Movement Model / A Neuron-Based Time-Optimal Controller of Horizontal Saccadic Eye Movements and Glissades / References / Authors' BiographiesSpringer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 160 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -This volume constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-conference proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Verified Software: Theories, Tools and Experiments, VSTTE 2014, held in July 2014 at the Vienna Summer of Logic in Vienna, Austria, as an associated event of CAV 2014, the International Conference on Computer-Aided Verification. The 17 revised full papers presented were carefully revised and selected from 34 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections such as analysis: understanding and explanation; verification frameworks and applications; hypervisors and dynamic data structures; certification; real time and security.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 300 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -This book constitutes the proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Computational Methods in Systems Biology, CMSB 2014, held in Manchester, UK, in November 2014.The 16 regular papers presented together with 6 poster papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 31 regular and 18 poster submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on formalisms for modeling biological processes, model inference from experimental data, frameworks for model verification, validation, and analysis of biological systems, models and their biological applications, computational approaches for synthetic biology, and flash posters.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 284 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed conference proceedings of the International Workshop on Brain-inspired Computing, BrainComp 2013, held in Cetraro, Italy, in July 2013. The 16 revised full papers were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous submissions and cover topics such as brain structure and function as a neuroscience perspective, computational models and brain-inspired computing, HPC and visualization for human brain simulations.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 224 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 4th International Symposium on Model-Based Safety and Assessment, IMBSA 2014, held in Munich, Germany, in October 2014.The 15 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on modeling paradigms, validation and testing, fault detection and handling, safety assessment in the automotive domain, and case studies.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 220 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed joint proceedings of the Third and Fourth Workshop on Big Data Benchmarking. The third WBDB was held in Xi'an, China, in July 2013 and the Fourth WBDB was held in San José, CA, USA, in October, 2013. The 15 papers presented in this book were carefully reviewed and selected from 33 presentations. They focus on big data benchmarks; applications and scenarios; tools, systems and surveys.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 216 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -This book traces the history of the baby-boomers, beginning with an explanation of the cause of the post-war baby boom and ending with the contemporary concerns of ageing boomers. It shows how the baby-boomers challenged traditional family attitudes and adopted new lifestyles in the 1960s and 1970s. Drawing on 90 interviews conducted with baby boomers living in London and Paris, the book demonstrates how their aspirations for leisure and consumption converged with family responsibilities and obligations. It shows how the baby boomers emerged from an authoritative upbringing to challenge some of the traditional assumptions of the family, such as marriage and cohabitation. The rise of feminism led by the baby-boomers is examined, together with its impact on family forms and structures. The book shows how women¿s trajectories veered between the two extremes of family and employment, swerving between the models of stay-at-home mother and working woman. It demonstrates how new family configurations such as solo parenting, and recomposed families were adopted by the baby boomers. Today, as they enter into retirement, the baby-boomers remain closely involved in the lives of their children and parents, although relationships with elderly parents are maintained primarily through a sense of duty and obligation. The book concludes that the baby boomers have both been influenced by and actors to the changes and transformations that have occurred to family life. They reconciled and continue to reconcile, individualism with family obligations. As grandparents often with an ageing parent still alive, the baby boomers wish to keep the independence that has been the hallmark of their generation whilst not abandoning family life.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 284 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -This book is designed to help practitioners and academics to assess the added value of HR practices. It provides hands-on recommendations for choosing effective means to manage HR and specific suggestions aimed at facilitating the measurement of HR practices¿ impact on value creation. Evidence-based recommendations are made by drawing on thorough empirical research from various research traditions and academic disciplines. It covers a wide variety of tasks faced by the HR function and specifically addresses new challenges such as assessing the added value of work-life balance practices.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 244 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -The European economy is still in recession, even though there are some weak indications of stabilization. This book examines important aspects of the crisis in selected countries of Southern Europe, the Balkans and Eastern Europe. The intensity of the crisis and its economic and social repercussions have varied from country to country, generally impacting the core countries less than those on the periphery. The countries in the latter group currently face significant structural challenges with regard to improving productivity and competitiveness, including the areas of investment, climate, the labour market, and the public sector. The book not only illustrates the scope of the problem, but also informs readers on the policies implemented to address it, and discusses the progress some of the economies have already made. Special topics include the convergence hypothesis, agriculture and growth,Public-Private Partnership in Infrastructure (PPPI), and the labour market.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 228 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Customervaluemanagement is a managerial approach in which customers are perceived as the company¿s asset, the value of which may be measured and increased through the organization of processes around customer relationships. This book deals with the topic of managing customer lifetime value on the internet, and more specifically on including the role of the internet in customer value propositionto enhance stakeholder and shareholder value.This book also discusses the possibilities of internet-based customer value management and presents a model describing the process leading to it. Its uniqueness lies in presenting a managerial approach to customer relationships rather than offering just another tool of e-marketing. The author¿s approach is not limited by branches or sectors ¿ differences in customer value management approaches are perceived through a prism of relationships between the company and its customers.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 164 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -The book is a benefit for graduate and postgraduate students in the areas of operations research, decision theory, optimization theory, linear algebra, interval analysis and fuzzy sets. The book will also be useful for the researchers in the respective areas. The first part of the book deals with decision making problems and procedures that have been established to combine opinions about alternatives related to different points of view. Procedures based on pairwise comparisons are thoroughly investigated. In the second part we investigate optimization problems where objective functions and constraints are characterized by extremal operators such as maximum, minimum or various triangular norms (t-norms). Matrices in max-min algebra are useful in applications such as automata theory, design of switching circuits, logic of binary relations, medical diagnosis, Markov chains, social choice, models of organizations, information systems, political systemsand clustering. The input data in real problems are usually not exact and can be characterized by interval values.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 240 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -This Brief identifies and contrasts the groups of National Basketball Association (NBA) expansion franchises and of any teams that relocated from one metropolitan area or city to another from 1950 to 2013. It discusses historical differences and similarities in the teams¿ markets and performances and then as members of divisions and conferences. It measures and compares the emergence, development, and success of the teams by analyzing demographic, economic and sport-specific data. It also discusses the respective mergers of the Basketball Association of America and National Basketball League in 1949, and the American Basketball Association and National Basketball Association in 1976. National Basketball Association Strategies makes an important, relevant, and useful contribution to the literature regarding professional sports operations and to the NBA¿s short and long run business strategies in American culture. Besides numerous sports fans within metropolitan areas and extended markets of these NBA teams, the book¿s audiences are sports historians and researchers, college and public libraries, and current and potential NBA franchise owners and team executives. This Brief may also be used as a reference or supplemental text for college and university students enrolled in such applied undergraduate and graduate courses and seminars as sports administration, sports business, and sports management.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 140 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the five workshops that were organized in conjunction with the International Conference on Business Information Systems, BIS 2014, which took place in Larnaca, Cyprus, in May 2014. The 27 papers in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 53 submissions and were revised and extended after the event. The workshop topics covered applications and economics of knowledge-based technologies (AKTB), business and IT alignment (BITA), digital currencies (DC), modern applications of business information systems (MODAPP), and tools for setting up and running a business in cloud computing (TSRB). In addition a keynote paper is included in this book.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 352 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -This Brief explores school funding reform in the states of Kentucky and Tennessee. In 1990, Kentucky passed the Kentucky Education Reform Act designed to overhaul that state¿s education system. Two years later, Tennessee passed the Education Improvement Act which included the Basic Education Plan, designed to foster equity in funding among the state¿s schools. Initiated as a result of lawsuits against the states¿ educational systems, both programs dealt with school funding, specifically funding equalization among districts. This Brief examines the environments that precipitated funding reform in each state as well as the outcomes of the reforms on student achievement. The similarities and differences between the approaches in each state are analyzed and compared to related reform programs in other states. An in-depth study of regional educational reform in the United States, this Brief is of use to public policy scholars as well as education policy consultants and other school system or state education leaders.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 88 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -¿Concepts and Trends in Healthcare Information Systems covers the latest research topics in the field from leading researchers and practitioners. This book offers theory-driven research that explores the role of Information Systems in the delivery of healthcare in its diverse organizational and regulatory settings. In addition to the embedded role of Information Technology (IT) in clinical and diagnostics equipment, Information Systems are uniquely positioned to capture, store, process, and communicate timely information to decision makers for better coordination of healthcare at both the individual and population levels. For example, data mining and decision support capabilities can identify potential adverse events for an individual patient while also contributing to the population¿s health by providing insights into the causes of disease complications.Information systems have great potential to reduce healthcare costs and improve outcomes. The healthcare delivery systems share similar characteristics with most service and productive organizations, but also exhibit specific characteristics, which are related to the complexity and diversity of healthcare production, including the dissimilar ways healthcare professionals discharge their clinical tasks. New requirements and technological advances occurring in healthcare, information systems, and information technology have influenced the evolving role of healthcare information systems and related technology, and this book will help bring the field up to date.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 248 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -This book makes a case for rights and responsibilities to be expressed through a cosmopolitan praxis based on developing strong cosmopolitan approaches. This developed approach respects a form of cultural or national identity that is not at the expense of others, the environment or future generations. This new stoicism is based on a sense of responsibility for others. The book also explores systemic ethical praxis in response to the vexed challenge of how to bridge the false dualism of pitting the environment versus profit.Systemic Ethics and Non-Anthropocentric Stewardship: Implications for Transdisciplinarity and Cosmopolitan Politics isorganized into seven chapters. The book begins by providing readers with an understanding of the way in which cosmopolitanism (like all social concepts) is shaped by diverse definitions and applied differently by theorists and those that engage in transformative praxis. It also develops an argument based on considering the empirical consequences of social, economic and environmental decisions on the quality of life of current and future generations. The next chapter critiques anthropocentricism and explores how policy makers develop agreements on what constitutes and supports the wellbeing of the planet rather than the GDP. The book then explores the options for social democracy and ways to enhance an ethical approach to post national governance and argues for participatory democracy and governance to respond to diversity within and across national boundaries. The following chapters reflect upon the author¿s own participatory action research process and examines the transformations that can arise through critical systemic thinking and practice. Next the book makes the case for systemic ethical governance that is able to manage consumption, before concluding with a final look at the book¿s approach, based on critical heuristics.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 204 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Now that supply chain operations are facing new challenges due to the necessity of reducing costs and CO2 emissions, companies are increasingly leveraging cooperation from companies from other supply chains as a source of competitive advantage. Horizontal Collaboration has been proved an efficient tool for cutting logistic costs up to 49%.Zaragoza Logistics Center, member of the MIT-Scale Network, is publishing this book with the aim of building upon a framework of inter-organizational learning for horizontal collaboration on logistic operations. The outcome of this study is designed to help understand the relationship dynamics and managerial insights of horizontal collaboration for sustainable and profitable cooperation in freight distribution.The proposed collaborative practices are based on senior manager experiences from different industries: home appliances, automotive, retail, and food and beverage. Additionally, collaborative evidence from various successful pilot cases relevant to the distribution operations of the four industries are described, in order to illustrate the framework presented. This book fills a gap in the literature market and its insights encouragesthe readers to reflect on their own operational circumstances and challenges. Additionally, the book can be used as supplementary reading for master degree courses on supply chain collaboration, as well as courses in executive management.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 76 pp. Englisch.