springer jul 2005 (128 Ergebnisse)

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -This book contains scores of intriguing puzzles and paradoxes from Lewis Carroll, the author of Alice in Wonderland, whose interests ranged from inventing new games like Arithmetical Croquet to important problems in symbolic logic and propositional calculus. Written by Carroll expert and well-known mathematics author Martin Gardner, this tour through Carroll's inventions is both fun and informative.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 172 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - Thisiswherewetrytoconvinceyoutobuythisbook,tellyouwhatittriestodo, define a few terms and generally set the scene - all of which makes this more like an introduction than a first chapter, but no-one reads introductions so we called it a chapter. If you have already bought the book and know what it does, feel free to skip to Chapter 2 where the action starts. Whyshouldyoubuythisbook TherearemanyAccessbooksonthemarket,whyshouldIbuythisone Doesithavemore informationthananyotherbook Errr, no, it actually has less than the big reference books you'll also find on the shelf. So,isitverycheap Well, it isn't as expensive as some but, no, it isn't particularly cheap either. Tobebrutallyfrank,you'renotdoingagreatjobofsellingthistome. Right, time for the hard sell. Bill worked for Microsoft as the Development Manager for the first three versions of Access. I (Mark) work as a database consultant, teach database theory and practice at two Universities and have written the UK Personal ComputerWorld's database column for more than ten years. We met (at a database conference, not unreasonably, given our interests) in the summer before Access 1. 0 was launched and found that we shared similar views on how databases should be designed and built. Since then we have writtenabooktogetherabouttherelationalmodelthatunderliesAccessandall other relational database systems (see below for the inevitable plug). But why write a book about Access itself when there are already so many around 3 1 Introduction Well, since Bill was in charge of the product's development, it was fair to assume that we had the technical side reasonably well covered.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -As its name suggests, the EHCI-DSVIS conference has been a special event, merging two different, although overlapping, research communities: EHCI (Engineering for Human-Computer Interaction) is a conference organized by the IFIP 2.7/13.4 working group, started in 1974 and held every three years since 1989. The group¿s activity is the scientific investigation of the relationships among the human factors in computing and software engineering. DSVIS (Design, Specification and Verification of Interactive Systems) is an annual conference started in 1994, and dedicated to the use of formal methods for the design of interactive systems. Of course these two research domains have a lot in common, and are informed by each other¿s results. The year 2004 was a good opportunity to bring closer these two research communities for an event, the 11th edition of DSVIS and the 9th edition of EHCI. EHCI-DSVIS was set up as a working conference bringing together researchers and practitioners interested in strengthening the scientific foundations of user interface design, specification and verification, and in examining the relationships between software engineering and human-computer interaction. The call for papers attracted a lot of attention, and we received a record number of submissions: out of the 65 submissions, 23 full papers were accepted, which gives an acceptance rate of approximately 34%. Three short papers were also included. The contributions were categorized in 8 chapters: Chapter 1 (Usability and Software Architecture) contains three contributions which advance the state of the art in usability approaches for modern software engineering.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 416 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -This volume comprises the proceedings of the 4th Conference on Advanced - cryption Standard, ¿AES ¿ State of the Crypto Analysis,¿ which was held in Bonn, Germany, during 10¿12 May 2004. The conference followed a series of events organized by the US National - stitute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in order to hold an international competition to decide on an algorithm to serve as the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES). In 1998, at the rst AES conference (AES 1), 15 di erent al- rithmswerepresented,discussed,reviewedandveri ed.Asecondconferencewas organizedinApril1999,andbyAugust1999only vecandidateswerestillinthe running: MARS, RC6, Rijndael, Serpent and Two sh. After a further conference devoted to veri cation, testing and examination of the candidate algorithms in order to prove their performance and security, one winning algorithm remained. The encryption scheme Rijndael, designed by the Belgian cryptographers Joan Daemen and Vincent Rijmen, was selected in 2000 to become the successor to the famous DES (Data Encryption Standard) and it is now the Advanced - cryption Standard.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 206 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Introduction The dramatic increase in available computer storage capacity over the last 10 years has led to the creation of very large databases of scienti c and commercial information. The need to analyze these masses of data has led to the evolution of the new eld knowledge discovery in databases (KDD) at the intersection of machine learning, statistics and database technology. Being interdisciplinary by nature, the eld o ers the opportunity to combine the expertise of di erent elds intoacommonobjective.Moreover,withineach elddiversemethodshave been developed and justi ed with respect to di erent quality criteria. We have toinvestigatehowthesemethods cancontributeto solvingthe problemofKDD. Traditionally, KDD was seeking to nd global models for the data that - plain most of the instances of the database and describe the general structure of the data. Examples are statistical time series models, cluster models, logic programs with high coverageor classi cation models like decision trees or linear decision functions. In practice, though, the use of these models often is very l- ited, because global models tend to nd only the obvious patterns in the data, 1 which domain experts already are aware of . What is really of interest to the users are the local patterns that deviate from the already-known background knowledge. David Hand, who organized a workshop in 2002, proposed the new eld of local patterns.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 248 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Data management systems play the most crucial role in building large application s- tems. Since modern applications are no longer single monolithic software blocks but highly flexible and configurable collections of cooperative services, the data mana- ment layer also has to adapt to these new requirements. Therefore, within recent years, data management systems have faced a tremendous shift from the central management of individual records in a transactional way to a platform for data integration, fede- tion, search services, and data analysis. This book addresses these new issues in the area of data management from multiple perspectives, in the form of individual contributions, and it outlines future challenges in the context of data management. These contributions are dedicated to Prof. em. Dr. Dr. -Ing. E. h. Hartmut Wedekind on the occasion of his 70th birthday, and were (co-)authored by some of his academic descendants. Prof. Wedekind is one of the most prominent figures of the database management community in Germany, and he enjoys an excellent international reputation as well. Over the last 35 years he greatly contributed to making relational database technology a success. As far back as the early 1970s, he covered¿as the first author in Germany¿ the state of the art concerning the relational model and related issues in two widely used textbooks ¿Datenbanksysteme I¿ and ¿Datenbanksysteme II¿. Without him, the idea of modeling complex-structured real-world scenarios in a relational way would be far less developed by now. Among Prof.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 396 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Brazilian Symposium on Bioinformatics, BSB 2005, held in Sao Leopoldo, Brazil in July 2005.The 15 revised full papers and 10 revised extended abstracts presented together with 3 invited papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 55 submissions. The papers address a broad range of current topics in computational biology and bioinformatics. 276 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -This book is a collection of papers presented at UCS 2004, held on November 8¿9 in Tokyo. UCS is a series of international symposia sponsored by the special interest group Ubiquitous Computing Systems of the Information Processing Society of Japan. The rst UCS was held on November 17, 2003 in Kyoto. It was held as an invitation-based symposium. UCS 2004 was the second of the series, and the rst submission-based conference. UCS focuses on the emerging researcharea of ubiquitous computing systems. This emergence is an outcome of the rapid evolution in smart appliances and devices, as well as tremendous advances in wireless networks and mobile c- puting.Inthelastfewyears,variousapplicationsofinformationtechnologyhave been changing our everyday life rapidly and to a large extent. The best ex- ple is the use of mobile phones. By getting new sensing devices, cameras, their application eld is no longer limited to communication but covers data c- munications including Internet access, and data and program up-/downloading, and so on. The symposium o ered the opportunity for in-depth exploration of the most recent research and development ndings in the eld of ubiquitous computing. The submitted papers presented at UCS 2004 suggest such a direction to future technologies, including mobile ad hoc networks, sensor networks and conte- aware technologies.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 296 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Group.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 360 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -The 19th Annual IFIP Working Group 11.3 Working Conference on Data and Applications Security was held August 7¿10, 2005 at the University of C- necticut in Storrs, Connecticut. The objectives of the working conference were to discuss in depth the current state of the researchand practice in data and - plicationsecurity,enableparticipantstobene tfrompersonalcontactwithother researchers and expand their knowledge, support the activities of the Working Group, and disseminate the research results. This volume contains the 24 papers that were presented at the working c- ference. These papers, which had been selected from 54 submissions, were rig- ously reviewed by the Working Group members. The volume is o ered both to document progressand to provideresearcherswith a broadperspective of recent developments in data and application security. A special note of thanks goes to the many volunteers whose e orts made the working conference a success. We wish to thank Divesh Srivastava for agreeing to deliver the invited talk, Carl Landwehr and David Spooner for organizing the panel, the authors for their worthy contributions, and the referees for their time and e ort in reviewing the papers. We are grateful to T. C. Ting for serving as the General Chair, Steven Demurjian and Charles E. Phillips, Jr. for their hard work as Local Arrangements Chairs, and Pierangela Samarati, Working Group Chair, for managing the IFIP approval process. We would also like to acknowledge Sabrina De Capitani di Vimercati for managing the conference¿s Web site.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 368 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -It is our great pleasure to introduce the papers of the proceedings of the 9th - ternational Symposium on Spatial and Temporal Databases ¿ SSTD 2005. This year¿s symposium continues the tradition of being the premier forum for the presentation of research results and experience reports on leading edge issues of spatialandtemporaldatabasesystems, including data models,systems,appli- tions and theory. The mission of the symposium is to share innovative solutions that ful ll the needs of novel applications and heterogeneous environments and identify new directions for future research and development. SSTD 2005 gives researchers and practitioners a unique opportunity to share their perspectives with others interested in the various aspects of database systems for managing spatial and temporal data and for supporting their applications. A total of 77 papers were submitted this year from several countries. After a thorough review process, the program committee accepted 24 papers covering a variety of topics, including indexing techniques and query processing, mobile environments and moving objects, and spatial and temporal data streams. We are very pleased with the variety of the symposium¿s topics, and we are proud of the resulting strong program. 452 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -This book presents research performed as part of the EU project on biomimetic multimodal learning in a mirror neuron-based robot (MirrorBot) and contri- tions presented at the International AI-Workshop on NeuroBotics. The ov- all aim of the book is to present a broad spectrum of current research into biomimetic neural learning for intelligent autonomous robots. There is a need for a new type of robot which is inspired by nature and so performs in a more exible learned manner than current robots. This new type of robot is driven by recent new theories and experiments in neuroscience indicating that a biological and neuroscience-oriented approach could lead to new life-like robotic systems. The book focuses on some of the research progress made in the MirrorBot project which uses concepts from mirror neurons as a basis for the integration of vision, language and action. In this book we show the development of new techniques using cell assemblies, associative neural networks, and Hebbian-type learning in order to associate vision, language and motor concepts. We have developed biomimetic multimodal learning and language instruction in a robot to investigate the task ofsearching for objects. As well as the researchperformed in this area for the MirrorBot project, the second part of this book incorporates signi cant contributions from other research in the eld of biomimetic robotics. This second part of the book concentrates on the progress made in neuroscience inspired robotic learning approaches (in short: NeuroBotics).Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 400 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -With the rapid development of Web-based learning, a new set of learning - vironments including virtual classrooms, virtual laboratories and virtual u- versities are being developed. These new learning environments, however, also introduce new problems that need to be addressed. On the technical side, there is a need for the deployment of e ective technologies on Web-based education. On the learning side, the cyber mode of learning is very di erent from tra- tional classroom-based learning. On the management side, the establishment of a cyber university imposes very di erent requirements for the set up. ICWL 2005, the 4th International Conference on Web-Based Learning, was held in Hong Kong, China from July 31 to August 3, 2005, as a continued - tempttoaddressmanyoftheabove-mentionedissues.Followingthegreatsuccess of ICWL 2002 (Hong Kong, China), ICWL 2003 (Australia), and ICWL 2004 (China), ICWL 2005 aimed at presenting progresson the technical, pedagogical, as well as management issues of Web-based learning. The conference featured a comprehensive program, including a number of tutorials, two keynote talks, a main track containing regular as well as short paper presentations, and an application track. We received a total of 99 submissions from all over the world. The Program Committee selected 33 papers as regular papers for presentation in the main track, an acceptance rate of about 33%. Due to the high-quality submissions, the Committee decided to further accept 9 papers as short papers for presentation.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 440 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -This volume contains invited and contributed papers presented at the 9th International Summer School ¿Neural Nets E.R. Caianiellö on Nonlinear Speech Processing: Al- rithms and Analysis, held in Vietri sul Mare, Salerno, Italy, during September 13¿18, 2004. The aim of this book is to provide primarily high-level tutorial coverage of the elds related to nonlinear methods for speech processing and analysis, including new approaches aimed at improving speech applications. Fourteen surveys are offered by specialists in the eld. Consequently, the volume may be used as a reference book on nonlinear methods for speech processing and an- ysis. Also included are fteen papers that present original contributions in the eld and complete the tutorials. The volume is divided into ve sections: Dealing with Nonlinearities in Speech S- nal, Acoustic-to-Articulatory Modeling of Speech Phenomena, Data Driven and Speech Processing Algorithms, Algorithms and Models Based on Speech Perception Mec- nisms, and Task-Oriented Speech Applications. Dealing with Nonlinearities in Speech Signals is an introductory section where n- linear aspects of the speech signal are introduced from three different points of view. The section includes three papers. The rst paper, authored by Anna Esposito and Maria Marinaro, is an attempt to introduce the concept of nonlinearity revising several nonl- ear phenomena observed in the acoustics, the production and the perception of speech. Also discussed is the engineering endeavor to model these phenomena.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 452 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 484 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -This book is the third in a series of lectures of the S¿ eminaire Poincar¿ e,whichis directed towards a large audience of physicists and of mathematicians. The goal of this seminar is to provide up to date information about general topics of great interest in physics. Both the theoretical and experimental aspects are covered, with some historical background. Inspired by the Bourbaki seminar in mathematics in its organization, hence nicknamed ¿Bourbaphi¿, this Poincar¿ e Seminar is held twice a year at the Institut Henri Poincar¿ ein Paris,with contri- tions prepared in advance. A particular care is devoted to the pedagogical nature of the presentation so as to ful ll the goal of being readable by a large audience of scientists. ThisvolumecontainsthesixthsuchSeminar,heldin2004.Itisdevotedtothe Quantum Hall E ect. After a historical and general presentation by Nobel prize Klaus von Klitzing, discoverer of this e ect, the volume proceeds with reviews on the mathematics and physics of both the integer and fractional case, and includes up to date presentations of the tunneling and metrology experiments related to the Quantum Hall E ect. We hopethat the publicationof this serieswill servethe community of phy- cists and mathematicians at professional or graduate student level. ¿ We thank the Commissariat `al¿Energie Atomique (Division des Sciences de laMati` ere),theCentreNationaldelaRechercheScienti que(SciencesPhysiqueet Math¿ ematiques), and the Daniel Iagolnitzer Foundation for sponsoring the Se- nar. Special thanks are due to Chantal Delongeas for the preparation of the m- uscript.Springer Basel AG in Springer Science + Business Media, Heidelberger Platz 3, 14197 Berlin 208 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Theacceptanceratiowaslessthan30%. Besides the technical contributed papers, the program included two exciting invited talks: Prof. David Lee (Ohio State University, USA) and Dr.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 480 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Statistical Seismology aims to bridge the gap between physics-based and statistics-based models. This volume provides a combination of reviews, methodological studies, and applications, which point to promising efforts in this field. The volume will be useful to students and professional researchers alike, who are interested in using stochastic modeling for probing the nature of earthquake phenomena, as well as an essential ingredient for earthquake forecasting.Springer Basel AG in Springer Science + Business Media, Heidelberger Platz 3, 14197 Berlin 384 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -authors. The merits of the submissions were d- cussed by the programcommittee for ten days through the Internet by means of the EasyChair system. Finally, the program committee selected for publication 25 regular research papers and 5 system descriptions.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 480 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -The notion of agency has recently increased its in uence in the research and - velopment of computational logic based systems, while at the same time sign- cantly gaining from decades of research in computational logic. Computational logic provides a well-de ned, general, and rigorous framework for studying s- tax, semantics and procedures, for implementations, environments, tools, and standards, facilitating the ever important link between speci cation and ver- cation of computational systems. The purpose of the Computational Logic in Multi-agent Systems (CLIMA) international workshop series is to discuss techniques, based on computational logic, for representing, programming, and reasoning about multi-agent systems in a formal way. Former CLIMA editions were conducted in conjunction with other major computational logic and AI events such as CL in July 2000, ICLP in December 2001, FLoC in August 2002, and LPNMR and AI-Math in January 2004. The fth edition of CLIMA was held Lisbon, Portugal, in September 29¿30, 2004.We,asorganizers,andinagreementwiththeCLIMASteeringCommittee, opted for co-location with the 9th European Conference on Logics in Arti cial Intelligence (JELIA 2004), wishing to promote the CLIMA research topics in the broader community of logics in AI, a community whose growing interest in multi-agent issues has been demonstrated by the large number of agent-related papers submitted to recent editions of JELIA. The workshop received 35 submissions ¿ a sensible increase from the previous edition.Thesubmittedpapersshowedthatthelogicalfoundationsofmulti-agent systems are felt by a large community to be a very important research topic, upon which classical AI and agent-related issues are to be addressed.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 300 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - If mathematics is a language, then taking a topology course at the undergraduate level is cramming vocabulary and memorizing irregular verbs: a necessary, but not always exciting exercise one has to go through before one can read great works of literature in the original language.The present book grew out of notes for an introductory topology course at the University of Alberta. It provides a concise introduction to set theoretic topology (and to a tiny little bit of algebraic topology). It is accessible to undergraduates from the second year on, but even beginning graduate students can benefit from some parts.Great care has been devoted to the selection of examples that are not self-serving, but already accessible for students who have a background in calculus and elementary algebra, but not necessarily in real or complex analysis.In some points, the book treats its material differently than other texts on the subject: Baire's theorem is derived from Bourbaki's Mittag-Leffler theorem; nets are used extensively, in particular for an intuitive proof of Tychonoff's theorem; a short and elegant, but little known proof for the Stone-Weierstrass theorem is given.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - Modern cryptology increasingly employs mathematically rigorous concepts and methods from complexity theory. Conversely, current research topics in complexity theory are often motivated by questions and problems from cryptology. This book takes account of this situation, and therefore its subject is what may be dubbed 'cryptocomplexity'', a kind of symbiosis of these two areas.This book is written for undergraduate and graduate students of computer science, mathematics, and engineering, and can be used for courses on complexity theory and cryptology, preferably by stressing their interrelation. Moreover, it may serve as a valuable source for researchers, teachers, and practitioners working in these fields. Starting from scratch, it works its way to the frontiers of current research in these fields and provides a detailed overview of their history and their current research topics and challenges.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - We all know the hard fact: neither wealth nor income is ever uniform for us all. Justified or not, they are unevenly distributed; few are rich and many are poor! Investigations for more than hundred years and the recent availability of the income distribution data in the internet (made available by the finance ministries of various countries; from the tax return data of the income tax departments) have revealed some remarkable features. Irrespective of many differences in culture, history, language and, to some extent, the economic policies followed in different countries, the income distribution is seen to fol low a particular universal pattern. So does the wealth distribution. Barring an initial rise in population with income (or wealth; for the destitutes), the population decreases either exponentially or in a log-normal way for the ma jority of 'middle income' group, and it eventually decreases following a power law (Pareto law, following Vilfredo Pareto's observation in 1896) for the rich est 5-10 % of the population! This seems to be an universal feature - valid for most of the countries and civilizations; may be in ancient Egypt as well! Econophysicists tried to view this as a natural law for a statistical ma- body-dynamical market system, analogous to gases, liquids or solids: classical or quantum.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - Contemporary epistemological and cognitive studies, as well as recent trends in computer science and game theory have revealed an increasingly important and intimate relationship between Information, Interaction, and Agency.Agents perform actions based on the available information and in the presence of other interacting agents. From this perspective Information, Interaction, and Agency neatly ties together classical themes like rationality, decision-making and belief revision with games, strategies and learning in a multi-agent setting.Unified by the central notions Information, Interaction, and Agency, the essays in this volume provide refreshing methodological perspectives on belief revision, dynamic epistemic logic, von Neumann games, and evolutionary game theory; all of which in turn are central approaches to understanding our own rationality and that of other agents.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Formal concept analysis has been developed as a field of applied mathematics based on the mathematization of concept and concept hierarchy. It thereby allows us to mathematically represent, analyze, and construct conceptual structures. The formal concept analysis approach has been proven successful in a wide range of application fields.This book constitutes a comprehensive and systematic presentation of the state of the art of formal concept analysis and its applications. The first part of the book is devoted to foundational and methodological topics. The contributions in the second part demonstrate how formal concept analysis is successfully used outside of mathematics, in linguistics, text retrieval, association rule mining, data analysis, and economics. The third part presents applications in software engineering.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 364 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - It is often said that mathematics and music go together, and that people with a special aptitude for mathematics often have similar gifts in music. Some music is very profound, and listeners find that there is far more in it than they appreciated at a first hearing. A similar point can be made about an understanding of mathematics.This book introduces the reader to various topics in mathematics and is intended for precocious high school students andcollege students justbeginning their study of mathematics. The topics discussed in this book include a variety of results in number theory involving squares, and also complex numbers, early algebraic ideas such as the Euclidean algorithm, geometricalconstructions created by the Greeks, and more recenttopics such as group theory.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - The creation of intelligent robots is surely one of the most exciting and ch- lenginggoals of Arti cial Intelligence. A robot is, rst of all, nothing but an inanimate machine with motors and sensors. In order to bring life to it, the machine needs to be programmed so as to make active use of its hardware c- ponents. This turns a machine into an autonomous robot. Since about the mid nineties of the past century, robot programming has made impressive progress. State-of-the-art robots are able to orient themselves and move around freely in indoor environments or negotiate di cult outdoor terrains, they can use stereo vision to recognize objects, and they are capable of simple object manipulation with the help of arti cial extremities. At a time where robots perform these tasks more and more reliably,weare ready to pursue the next big step, which is to turn autonomous machines into reasoning robots.Areasoning robot exhibits higher cognitive capabilities like following complex and long-term strategies, making rational decisions on a high level, drawing logical conclusions from sensor information acquired over time, devising suitable plans, and reacting sensibly in unexpected situations. All of these capabilities are characteristics of human-like intelligence and ultimately distinguish truly intelligent robots from mere autonomous machines.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - School science is dominated by textbook-oriented approaches to teaching and learning. Some surveys reveal that students have to read, depending on academic level, between ten and thirty-six pages per week from their textbook. One therefore has to ask, To what degree do textbooks introduce students to the literary practices of their domain Few studies have addressed the quality of science curriculum materials, particularly textbooks, from a critical perspective. In this light, we are concerned in this book with better understanding the reading and interpretation practices related to visual materials - here referred to as inscriptions - that accompany texts. Our overarching questions included: 'What practices are required for reading inscriptions ' and 'Do textbooks allow students to develop levels of graphicacy required to critically read scientific texts ' Some of the more specific questions included: 'What are the practices of relating inscriptions, captions, and main text ,' and 'What practices are required to read inscriptions in school textbooks ' That is, we are interested not only in understanding what it takes to interpret, read, and understand visual materials (i.e., inscriptions), but also in understanding what it takes to engage inscriptions in a critical way. It is only when citizens can critically engage with language (texts, speech) and inscriptions that they become knowledgeable users of television, newspapers, and magazines, who can choose or leave aside particular expressions as part of the particular politics that they participate in.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -New Tools of Economic Dynamics gives an introduction and overview of recently developed methods and tools, most of them developed outside economics, to deal with the qualitative analysis of economic dynamics. It reports the results of a three-year research project by a European and Latin American network on the intersection of economics with mathematical, statistical, and computational methods and techniques. Focusing upon the evolution and manifold structure of complex dynamic phenomena, the book reviews and shows applications of a variety of tools, such as symbolic and coded dynamics, interacting agents models, microsimulation in econometrics, large-scale system analysis, and dynamical systems theory. It shows the potential of a comprehensive analysis of growth, fluctuations, and structural change along the lines indicated by pioneers like Harrod, Haavelmo, Hicks, Goodwin, Morishima, and it highlights the explanatory power of the qualitative approach they initiated.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 420 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -uring the spring of 1960, an uncle showed me a ¿petrifying spring¿ near Plaxtol in Kent Dwhere twigs had been encased in a calcareous jacket. A twig was collected and having - cently been given I. Evan¿s Observer¿s Book of Geology by my parents, I found a photograph of another petrifying spring and an explanation of its origin. In those days, Derbyshire was too far for a holiday destination, and I took little further interest until a research studentship with Professor G. E. Fogg became available in 1971. Tony Fogg had recently moved to the University College of North Wales, Bangor and the research was to be into cyanobacterium mats, with fieldwork along the Red Sea coast. The fieldwork never materialised but my interest in algal mats had been aroused. A chance stroll along the Bangor shore revealed beautifully calcified cya- bacterium mats, and Tony generously allowed me to investigate these instead. The old Plaxtol collection was retrieved and yielded abundant cyanobacteria. It became apparent that here was a wealth of information about a rock whose formation was so rapid, that the process could be studied in days rather than years ¿ an exceptional state of affairs. A search of the literature also revealed that the rock, a form of travertine, had other unusual features.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 460 pp. Englisch.