springer netherlands springer netherlands jul 2009 (12 Ergebnisse)

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -This book explores new forms and modalities of relations between people and space that increasingly affect the life of the city. The investigation takes as its starting point the idea that in contemporary societies the loss of our relationship with place is a symptom of a breakdown in the relationship between ethics and aesthetics. This in turn has caused a crisis not only in taste, but also in our sense of beauty, our aesthetic instinct, and our moral values. It has also led to the loss of our engagement with the landscape, which is essential for cities to function.The authors argue that new, fertile forms of interaction between people and space are now happening in what they call the ¿intermediate space¿, at the border of ¿urban normality¿ and those parts of a city where citizens experiment with unconventional social practices. This new interaction engenders a collective conscience, giving a new and productive vigor to the actions of individuals and also their relations with their environment.These new relations emerge only after we abandon what is called the ¿therapeutic illusion of space¿, which still exists today, and which binds in a deterministic manner the quality of civitas, the associative life of people in the city, to the quality of urban space. Projects for the city should, instead, have as their keystone the notion of social action as a return to a critical perspective, to a courageous acceptance of social responsibility, at the same time as seeking the generative structures of urban life in which civitas and urbs again acknowledge each other.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 256 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -This book has been developed as a forest inventory textbook for students and could also serve as a handbook for practical foresters. We have set out to keep the mathematics in the book at a fairly non-technical level, and therefore, although we deal with many issues that include highly sophisticated methodology, we try to present first and foremost the ideas behind them. For foresters who need more details, references are given to more advanced scientific papers and books in the fields of statistics and biometrics. Forest inventory books deal mostly with sampling and measurement issues, as found here in section I, but since forest inventories in many countries involve much more than this, we have also included material on forestry applications. Most applications nowadays involve remote sensing technology of some sort, so that section II deals mostly with the use of remote sensing material for this purpose. Section III deals with national inventories carried out in different parts of world, and section IV is an attempt to outline some future possibilities of forest inventory methodologies. The editors, Annika Kangas Professor of Forest Mensuration and Management, Department of Forest Resource Management, University of Helsinki. Matti Maltamo Professor of Forest Mensuration, Faculty of Forestry, University of Joensuu. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTSSpringer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 384 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -There is suf cient need to document all the available data on biological control of rice diseases in a small volume. Part of this need rests on the global importance of rice to human life. In the rst chapter, I have tried to show that rice is indeed life for most people in Asia and shortages in production and availability can lead to a food crisis. While rice is cultivated in most continents, biological disease management attains special relevance to rice farmers of Africa, Asia, and also perhaps, Latin America. These farmers are resource-poor and might not be able to afford the cost of expensive chemical treatments to control devastating rice pathogens such as Magnaporthe oryzae (blast), Xanthomonas oryzae pv. oryzae (bacterial leaf blight), Rhizoctonia solani (sheath blight) and the virus, rice tungro disease. In an earlier volume that I developed under the title, Biological Control of Crop Diseases (Dekker/CRC Publishers, 2002), I included transgenic crops generated for the management of plant pathogens as biological control under the umbrella of a broad de nition. Dr Jim Cook who wrote the Foreword for the volume lauded the inclusion of transgenic crops and induced systemic resistance (ISR) as a positive trend toward acceptance of host plant resistance as part of biocontrol. I continue to subscribe to this view.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 124 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Nuclear quadrupole resonance (NQR) a highly promising new technique for bulk explosives detection: relatively inexpensive, more compact than NMR, but with considerable selectivity. Since the NQR frequency is insensitive to long-range variations in composition, mixing explosives with other materials, such as the plasticizers in plastic explosives, makes no difference. The NQR signal strength varies linearly with the amount of explosive, and is independent of its distribution within the volume monitored. NQR spots explosive types in configurations missed by the X-ray imaging method.But if NQR is so good, why it is not used everywhere Its main limitation is the low signal-to-noise ratio, particularly with the radio-frequency interference that exists in a field environment, NQR polarization being much weaker than that from an external magnetic field. The distinctive signatures are there, but are difficult to extract from the noise. In addition, the high selectivity is partly a disadvantage, as it is hard to build a multichannel system necessary to cover a wide range of target substances. Moreover, substances fully screened by metallic enclosures, etc. are difficult to detect. A workshop was held at St Petersburg in July 2008 in an attempt to solve these problems and make NQR the universal technique for the detection of bombs regardless of type. This book presents the essentials of the papers given there.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 308 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -From 1965¿1968, I held an Agricultural Research Council Research Fellowship at Christ¿s College, Cambridge. Later in 1981, when I was a Visiting Fellow in the Department of Biochemistry, University of Cambridge and renewed my contacts with Christ¿s College, my friend and colleague David Coombe, a Fellow of Christ¿s College, informed me that a collection of letters of Charles Darwin had just been - covered in the Library storeroom, underneath the College. I had always maintained an interest in Charles Darwin, from the early age of thirteen, when I had rst read his books, with I might say some dif culty! This collection was the 155 letters of Charles Darwin to his second cousin William Darwin Fox, which had been given in trust to the College, in 1909, by members of the Fox family at the time of the Darwin Centenary celebrations. I was allowed access to these 155 letters and at that time made my own tr- scriptions. It seemed to me that this was a magni cent account of the lives of two naturalists of the nineteenth century, starting at the time that they were at Christ¿s together, in 1828, and going to 1880 when W D Fox died ¿ just two years short of the death of Charles Darwin in 1882. Of course this valuable resource had not gone unnoticed before. Darwin¿s son, Francis Darwin had been given the letters in the 1880s, when he was preparing his Life and Letters of Charles Darwin in 3 volumes.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 624 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -habitats and the overlapping of these biotopes by humans and animals contributed to the spread of mycobacteria and perhaps to their convergence to pathogenicity. It was not our intention to present a compendium covering all published results, but rather to issue a ¿readable¿ book, which is illustrative and thus focused on the principle facts. The increase in the number of Editors has allowed the sharing of original experiences regarding the ecology of mycobacteria, published here for the rst time in some cases. The supplemented edition should serve as a guide to these discoveries and also contribute to an understanding of clinically signi cant species in human and animal medicine. Borstel, Germany, January 2009 Jindrich Kazda Editors¿Comments The editors responsible for the chapters are listed under the title of each chapter. Authors are listed under the titles of subchapters. The references are listed as they appear in the databases Reference Manager (Thomson Reuters, Philadelphia) as imported from Web of Science (Thomson Reuters, Philadelphia) or PubMed (Medline, NLM Bethesda). A few citations, not indexed, were cited according to the reprints or books available. This principle resulted in minor differences in the titles (not all reference titles are in English, some references have capitalized title words, not all species names are according to the contemporary nomenclature and in italics). Some journals are cited with abbreviated titles, some in full, as available in the source databases. These differences were left in the format of the database.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 540 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Armen Takhtajan is among the greatest authorities in the world on the evolution of plants. This book culminates almost sixty years of the scientist's research of the origin and classification of the flowering plants. It presents a continuation of Dr. Takhtajan¿s earlier publications including ¿Systema Magnoliophytorum¿ (1987), (in Russian), and ¿Diversity and Classification of Flowering Plants¿ (1997), (in English). In his latest book, the author presents a concise and significantly revised system of plant classification (¿Takhtajan system¿) based on the most recent studies in plant morphology, embryology, phytochemistry, cytology, molecular biology and palynology. Flowering plants are divided into two classes: class Magnoliopsida (or Dicotyledons) includes 8 subclasses, 126 orders, c. 440 families, almost 10,500 genera, and no less than 195,000 species; and class Liliopsida (or Monocotyledons) includes 4 subclasses, 31 orders, 120 families, more than 3,000 genera, and about 65,000 species.This book contains a detailed description of plant orders, and descriptive keys to plant families providing characteristic features of the families and their differences.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 920 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Access, distribution and processing of Geographic Information (GI) are basic preconditions to support strategic environmental decision-making. The heterogeneity of information on the environment today available is driving a wide number of initiatives, on both sides of the Atlantic, all advocating both the strategic role of proper management and processing of environme- related data as well as the importance of harmonized IT infrastructures designed to better monitor and manage the environment. The extremely wide range of often multidimensional environmental information made available at the global scale poses a great challenge to technologists and scientists to find extremely sophisticated yet effective ways to provide access to relevant data patterns within such a vast and highly dynamic information flow. In the past years the domain of 3D scientific visualization has developed several solutions designed for operators requiring to access results of a simulation through the use of 3D visualization that could support the understanding of an evolving phenomenon. However 3D data visualization alone does not provide model and hypothesis-making neither it provide tools to validate results. In order overcome this shortcoming, in recent years scientists have developed a discipline that combines the benefits of data mining and information visualization, which is often referred to as Visual Analytics (VA).Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 520 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -As concerns with the efficient use of energy resources, and the minimization of environmental damage have come to the fore, there has been a renewed interest in the role that thermoelectric devices could play in generating electricity from waste heat, enabling cooling via refrigerators with no moving parts, and many other more specialized applications. The main problem in realizing this ambition is the rather low efficiency of such devices for general applications. This book deals with the proceedings of a workshop addressed that problems by reviewing the latest experimental and theoretical work on suitable materials for device applications and by exploring various strategies that might increase their efficiency.The proceedings cover a broad range of approaches, from the experimental work of fabricating new compounds through to theoretical work in characterizing and understanding their properties. The effects of strong electron correlation, disorder, the proximity to metal-insulator transitions, the properties of layered composite materials, and the introduction of voids or cages into the structure to reduce the lattice thermal conductivity are all explored as ways of enhancing the efficiency of their use in thermoelectric devices.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 360 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Structures that are essential for economy and security such as energy production, transportation and supply, water supply, buildings, are susceptible to failure, because of defects already present in the material, or created at fabrication, or appearing during service. Methods of assesment of the nocivity of these defects are needed, to predict the remaining service life and the eventual emergency of stopping service and repairing, if possible. To reach this objectives, this book presents the last methods derived from the classical linear, non-linear fracture mechanics concepts, including fatigue and notch fracture mechanics. Several examples of structures rehabilitations and repairing are given.This book gathers the presentation made during the Advanced Research Workshop held in Portoroz (Slovenia) in October 2008, under the auspices of NATO Science for Peace and Security Programme. It is edited by Professor Guy Pluvinage from the University Paul Verlaine ¿ Metz (France) and Professor Aleksandar Sedmak from the University of Belgrade, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering. Both have a long and rich experience in analysis of theoretical and practical cases in safety and reliability of structures. Other contributors are all known as experts in the areas of fatigue, facture and reliability of structures.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 428 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -The 11th International Conference on X-Ray Lasers had contributions in the following topical areas: Transient Collisional X-Ray Lasers, Table-Top High Repetition Rate X-Ray Lasers, Optical-Field Ionised (OFI) X-Ray Lasers, Theory and Simulation of X-Ray Lasers, High Order Harmonic Generation, XUV Optics and X-Ray Laser Applications, Capillary Discharge X-Ray Lasers, Alternative Sources of coherent XUV Radiation.The proceedings of this conference constitute a comprehensive source of reference for scientists involved in researching the development and application of coherent X-Ray sources.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 580 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Photosynthesis in silico: Understanding Complexity from Molecules to Ecosystems is a unique book that aims to show an integrated approach to the understanding of photosynthesis processes. In this volume - using mathematical modeling - processes are described from the biophysics of the interaction of light with pigment systems to the mutual interaction of individual plants and other organisms in canopies and large ecosystems, up to the global ecosystem issues. Chapters are written by 44 international authorities from 15 countries. Mathematics is a powerful tool for quantitative analysis. Properly programmed, contemporary computers are able to mimic complicated processes in living cells, leaves, canopies and ecosystems. These simulations - mathematical models - help us predict the photosynthetic responses of modeled systems under various combinations of environmental conditions, potentially occurring in nature, e.g., the responses of plant canopies to globally increasing temperature and atmospheric CO2 concentration. Tremendous analytical power is needed to understand nature's infinite complexity at every level.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 536 pp. Englisch.