springer nov 2003 (204 Ergebnisse)

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -This monograph develops the Gröbner basis methods needed to perform efficient state-of- the-art calculations in the cohomology of finite groups. Results obtained include the first counterexample to the conjecture that the ideal of essential classes squares to zero. The context is J.F. Carlson's minimal resolutions approach to cohomology computations. 156 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -This monograph is the first devoted to optimal syntheses in control theory and focuses on minimum time on 2-D manifolds. The first chapter outlines book results and examples of applicability. Then a quick introduction to geometric methods in control theory is provided. The following chapters contain a deep analysis of single input systems on 2-D manifolds including classifications of optimal syntheses and feedbacks, their singularities, extremals projection and minimum time singularities. Various extensions and applications are also illustrated. The volume is suitable for a graduate level one-semester course on optimal syntheses theory for mathematicians or engineers with a solid mathematical background.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 280 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -This book grew out of the teaching and lecture notes for a course in 'Dynamic Economics' given at Copenhagen University where it has been part of a combined study program in economics and mathematics since 1986. The subjects in the course have varied over time but a common theme has been the study of economies over time and under uncertainty in the form of incomplete markets and the overlapping generations model. When I took up a position at Lund University in 1996 Mich Tvede took over responsibility for the course and together we developed a large part of the material, which formed the basis for the present book. He has generously allowed me to use all of our common material. There is a considerable overlap between general equilibrium theory with incomplete markets (GEI), finance and macroeconomic theory, which sterns from the considerations of time and uncertainty, as can be seen from the splendid textbooks by LeRoy and Werner [2001], Pliska [1997] and the seminal work on GEI by Magill and Quinzee [1996], in partic ular its 'Historical Remarks' which off er a brilliant history of modern economic theory. The exposition here airns at making some of the results of GEI and on overlapping generations (OG) economies readily available to areader acquainted with economic theory at an upper undergraduate level.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 420 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -KfW has been assigned responsibility by the German government and several other donors for projects designed to reconstruct the financial landscapes of Southeast Europe. These activities are recognized as quite successful in building sustainable financial institutions that serve the small end of the market, with special emphasis on microenterprise and small business. The KfW-managed projects have contributed to the overall stability of financial sectors and to economic recovery and growth through employment creation and investment. This book reviews experience gained and analyses the reasons for the successes achieved, options for further improvement, and scope for replicability in other transition and developing economies. A particularly interesting feature is that relatively small amounts of public funds can catalyse financial markets in volatile environments.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 268 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -The International Conference on Asian Digital Libraries (ICADL) is an annual international forum that provides opportunities for researchers and experts to meet and exchange research results, innovative ideas and state-of-the-art de- lopments in the digital libraries of their respective countries. Building on the success of the rst ve ICADL conferences, the 6th ICADL conference in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia aimed to further strengthen the collaboration and strategic alliance between the di erent researchers and experts from the Asia-Paci c - gion in the eld of digital libraries. Thethemeoftheconference,¿DigitalLibraries:TechnologyandManagement of Indigenous Knowledge for Global Access,¿ re ects the shared belief of the - ganizers that success in the development and implementation of digital libraries in the k-economy is based on four key areas: the technologies that are employed to create a user-friendly environment, organization, interaction, navigation, and access to content; a knowledge management approach that ensures all types of knowledge (explicit, tacit and implicit) are included; indigenous content, which implies the creation of suitable and speci c content to meet the needs of the indigenous community; and global access, which implies that content should be made available across time and space, and also implies that the content should be exible enough to meet global needs. The ICADL 2003 began with an opening ceremony and a keynote address. 728 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -In this book the authors study the differential geometry of varieties with degenerate Gauss maps. They use the main methods of differential geometry, namely, the methods of moving frames and exterior differential forms as well as tensor methods. By means of these methods, the authors discover the structure of varieties with degenerate Gauss maps, determine the singular points and singular varieties, find focal images and construct a classification of the varieties with degenerate Gauss maps.The authors introduce the above mentioned methods and apply them to a series of concrete problems arising in the theory of varieties with degenerate Gauss maps. What makes this book unique is the authors¿ use of a systematic application of methods of projective differential geometry along with methods of the classical algebraic geometry for studying varieties with degenerate Gauss maps.This book is intended for researchers and graduate students interested in projective differential geometry and algebraic geometry and their applications. It can be used as a text for advanced undergraduate and graduate students.Each author has published over 100 papers and they have each written a number of books, including Conformal Differential Geometry and Its Generalizations (Wiley 1996), Projective Differential Geometry of Submanifolds (North-Holland 1993), and Introductory Linear Algebra (Prentice-Hall 1972), which were written by them jointly.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 280 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -This book is about three seemingly independent areas of mathematics: combinatorial group theory, the theory of Lie algebras and affine algebraic geometry. Indeed, for many years these areas were being developed fairly independently. Combinatorial group theory, the oldest of the three, was born in the beginning of the 20th century as a branch of low-dimensional topology. Very soon, it became an important area of mathematics with its own powerful techniques. In the 1950s, combinatorial group theory started to influence, rather substantially, the theory of Lie algebrasj thus combinatorial theory of Lie algebras was shaped, although the origins of the theory can be traced back to the 1930s. In the 1960s, B. Buchberger introduced what is now known as Gröbner bases. This marked the beginning of a new, 'combinatorial', era in commu tative algebra. It is not very likely that Buchberger was directly influenced by ideas from combinatorial group theory, but his famous algorithm bears resemblance to Nielsen's method, although in a more sophisticated form.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 332 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -What is the first thing that ordinary people, for whom journalists are the proxy, ask when they meet a seismologist It is certainly nothing technical like 'What was the stress drop of the last earthquake in the Imperial Valley ' It is a sim ple question, which nevertheless summarizes the real demands that society has for seismology. This question is 'Can you predict earthquakes ' Regrettably, notwithstanding the feeling of omnipotence induced by modem technology, the answer at present is the very opposite of 'Yes, of course'. The primary motivation for the question 'Can you predict earthquakes ' is practical. No other natural phenomenon has the tremendous destructive power of a large earthquake, a power which is rivaled only by a large scale war. An earth quake in a highly industrialized region is capable of adversely affecting the econ omy of the whole world for several years. But another motivation is cognitive. The aim of science is 'understanding' nature, and one of the best ways to show that we understand a phenomenon is the ability to make accurate predictions.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 364 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -The Computers and Games (CG) series began in 1998 with the objective of showcasing new developments in arti cial intelligence (AI) research that used games as the experimental test-bed. The rst two CG conferences were held at Hamamatsu,Japan(1998,2000).ComputersandGames2002(CG2002)wasthe third event in this biennial series. The conference was held at the University of Alberta(Edmonton,Alberta,Canada),July25¿27,2002.Theprogramconsisted of the main conference featuring refereed papers and keynote speakers, as well as several side events including the Games Informatics Workshop, the Agents in Computer Games Workshop, the Trading Agents Competition, and the North American Computer Go Championship. CG 2002 attracted 110 participants from over a dozen countries. Part of the successoftheconferencewasthatitwasco-locatedwiththeNationalConference of the American Association for Arti cial Intelligence (AAAI), which began in Edmonton just as CG 2002 ended. The CG 2002 program had 27 refereed paper presentations. The papers ranged over a wide variety of AI-related topics including search, knowledge, learning, planning, and combinatorial game theory. Research test-beds included one-player games (blackjack, sliding-tile puzzles, Sokoban), two-player games (Amazons, awari, chess, Chinese chess, clobber, Go, Hex, Lines of Action, O- ello, shogi), multi-player games (Chinese checkers, cribbage, Diplomacy, hearts, spades), commercial games (role-playing games, real-time strategy games), and novel applications (Post¿s Correspondence Problem). 448 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Practically every radiologist would benefit from an all-encompassing guide to malpractice issues in radiology. Dr. Ronald Eisenberg, a highly respected author in the field, has put together a comprehensive reference to provide radiologists with an introduction to malpractice issues and a basic understanding of their relationships with government regulatory agencies and HMOs. This softcover book will detail the mechanics of a lawsuit, how radiologists can become the object of a malpractice action, and what they can do to minimize potential exposure.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 284 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Production from tropical agricultural systems will need to increase to satisfy the rising food demand of an increasing population coupled with changes in consumption patterns. At the same time, the agricultural sector is a significant source of greenhouse gases (GHG) in many developing countries, which can be attributed mainly to land-use change and methane emissions from rice and livestock. But how can we reconcile less GHG emissions from tropical agricultural systems while increasing productivity Due to the interactive nature of these issues, this book is compiled of articles on natural resource management, as well as the socio-economic aspects of GHG mitigation. The scope of mitigation options in tropical agriculture is discussed for three different activities: (a) agroforestry; (b) rice-based production systems; (c) pasture/animal husbandry.Agronomic solutions alone will not be sufficient, as the institutional and economic frameworks within which farmers operate dictate whether a recommended agronomic management practice is acceptable. The prevention of deforestation, and the re-forestation of degraded land, could become key elements to national climate protection programs of some developing countries. Alternative management practices in rice-based and pasture systems may offer win-win options to reduce emissions and improve resource-use efficiencies.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 288 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -On several occasions I and colleagues have found ourselves teaching a o- semester course for students at the second year of graduate study in ma- ematics who want to gain a general perspective on Jordan algebras, their structure, and their role in mathematics, or want to gain direct experience with nonassociative algebra. These students typically have a solid grounding in rst¿year graduate algebra and the Artin¿Wedderburn theory of assoc- tive algebras, and a few have been introduced to Lie algebras (perhaps even Cayley algebras, in an o hand way), but otherwise they have not seen any nonassociative algebras. Most of them will not go on to do research in non- sociative algebra, so the course is not primarily meant to be a training or breeding ground for research, though the instructor often hopes that one or two will be motivated to pursue the subject further. This text is meant to serve as an accompaniment to such a course. It is designed rst and foremost to be read by students on their own without assistance by a teacher. It is a direct mathematical conversation between the author and a reader whose mind (as far as nonassociative algebra goes) is a tabula rasa. In keeping with the tone of a private conversation, I give more heuristicandexplanatorycommentthanisusualingraduatetextsatthislev el (pep talks, philosophical pronouncements on the proper way to think about certain concepts, historical anecdotes, mention of some mathematicians who have contributed to our understanding of Jordan algebras, etc.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 592 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -The aim of contextual logic is to provide a formal theory of elementary logic, which is based on the doctrines of concepts, judgements, and conclusions. Concepts are mathematized using Formal Concept Analysis (FCA), while an approach to the formalization of judgements and conclusions is conceptual graphs, based on Peirce's existential graphs. Combining FCA and a mathematization of conceptual graphs yields so-called concept graphs, which offer a formal and diagrammatic theory of elementary logic.Expressing negation in contextual logic is a difficult task. Based on the author's dissertation, this book shows how negation on the level of judgements can be implemented. To do so, cuts (syntactical devices used to express negation) are added to concept graphs. As we can express relations between objects, conjunction and negation in judgements, and existential quantification, the author demonstrates that concept graphs with cuts have the expressive power of first-order predicate logic. While doing so, the author distinguishes between syntax and semantics, and provides a sound and complete calculus for concept graphs with cuts. The author's treatment is mathematically thorough and consistent, and the book gives the necessary background on existential and conceptual graphs.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 232 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -This volume, ¿Petri Net Technology for Communication-Based Systems,¿ is a state-of-the-artreportin the seriesAdvances in Petri Nets. It showshowvarious well-established and new Petri net notions and techniques can be used for m- elingcommunication-basedsystems,withspecialfocusonwork owmanagement and business processes. In the last 6 years this topic has been studied by the DFG Forschergruppe Petri Net Technology in Berlin in close cooperation with the international c- munity. The main results of this cooperation were presented at the 1st and 2nd InternationalColloquiaonPetriNetTechnologiesforModelingCommunication- Based Systems, held in Berlin in 1999 and 2001,respectively. A careful selection of contributions by members of the DFG Forschergruppe and by international experts in this eld are presented in this volume. Taking into account the fru- ful discussions during the two colloquia and the cross-refereeing process for the accepted papers, a high degree of common understanding was achieved, leading to a highly comprehensive presentation in this volume. The topics of the papers in this volume can be roughly classi ed into the following two areas: ¿ Petri net technology and ¿ application to communication-based systems. Since most papers comprise aspects of both areas, we chose an alphabetic order. However, in the following we give a rough overview of the contributions in both areas according to the main focus of the corresponding papers.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 476 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -For many years, intensive care has focused on avoiding immediate death from acute, life-threatening conditions. However, there are increasing reports of a number of lingering consequences for those who do indeed survive intensive care. Examples include on-going high risk of death, neurocognitive defects, significant caregiver burden, and continued high healthcare costs.Surviving Intensive Care, written by the world's experts in this area, is dedicated to better understanding the consequences of surviving intensive care and is intended to provide a synopsis of the current knowledge and a stimulus for future research and improved care of the critically ill.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 364 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -This volume records the 10th Anniversary Colloquium of UNU/IIST, the Int- nationalInstituteforSoftwareTechnologyoftheUnitedNationsUniversity,held in Lisbon, Portugal, March 18¿21, 2002. Armando Haeberer, then Chairman of the board of UNU/IIST, conceived the idea of an international meeting in ce- brationoftheinstitute¿s10thanniversary. HewasworkinginLisbonatthistime andheproposedtoholdthemeetingthere,notleastbecausethePortugueseg- ernment had been one of the major sponsors of the institute, right from the very beginning. The aim of the meeting, organized by the Board of UNU/IIST, was twofold. First, the institute¿s research work should be re-assessed and diss- inated. Second, the future role of UNU/IIST¿s research area, formal methods, should be discussed. Role of Formal Methods. Over at least three decades of development, the c- ception of what role formal methods should play in software engineering seems to have changed dramatically, in uenced by both advocates and detractors. - ginning with a fundamentalist view that contested the genuineness of any ¿n- formal¿ practice, dismissing it as an inappropriate contribution to the as yet ill-de ned corpus of so-called software engineering, the conception of what this role should be has apparently evolved to a less naive engineering viewpoint. - day, as these theoretical methods acquire a new maturity and breadth of use, many of their advocates appear to be questioning their direct application by software practitioners, often considering it to be nonmandatory, and sometimes even nonadvisable. It appears that, together with the said maturation of the theoretical results and constructions, the perspective of their role within a far more complex picture of the software development activity has also matured. 476 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -For about half a century the general theory of relativity attracted little attention from physicists. However, the discovery of compact objects such as quasars and pulsars, as well as candidates for black holes on the one hand, and the microwave background radiation on the other hand completely changed the picture. In addition, developments in elementary particle physics, such as predictions of the behavior of matter at the ultrahigh energies that might have prevailed in the early stages of the big bang, have greatly en hanced the interest in general relativity. These developments created a large body of readers interested in general relativity, and its applications in astrophysics and cosmology. Having neither the time nor the inclination to delve deeply into the technical literature, such readers need a general introduction to the subject before exploring applica tions. It is for these readers that the present volume is intended. Keeping in mind the broad range of interests and wanting to avoid mathematical compli cations as much as possible, we have ventured to combine all three topics relativity, astrophysics, and cosmology-in a single volume. Naturally, we had to make a careful selection of topics to be discussed in order to keep the book to a manageable length.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 312 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -M. LUCERTINI, A. MILLAN GASCA, AND F. NICOLO 1 Technology as Knowledge: The Case of Modern Engineering Systems In recent years scholars coming from the fields of history and philosophy of sci ence and technology have devoted much attention to the problem of 'technology as knowledge' and to the emergence of an autonomous engineering science in the Industrial Agel. This interest echoes a growing awareness among engineers of the independence of their conceptual approach with respect to other forms of knowl edge, linked to the consolidation of autonomous academic engineering research in th the 20 century. A careful examination of the nature of technological knowledge appears particularly valuable in view of the pervasive presence of technology in contemporary life and culture, not only as a result of its impressive achievements, but through the less obvious influence of its concepts and viewpoints as well. The activity of engineers and technicians has been traditionally based on the practical ability to cope with specific situations and to attain the corresponding specific goal by means of the design and realization of an artifact or structure, on the basis of past experience handed down by tradition and applied by means of trial-and-error and rule-of-thumb procedures. But the existence of a theoreti cal background and of principles underpinning this activity can be traced back to classical antiquity.Springer Basel AG in Springer Science + Business Media, Heidelberger Platz 3, 14197 Berlin 268 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Opening new directions in research in both discrete event dynamic systems as well as in stochastic control, this volume focuses on a wide class of control and of optimization problems over sequences of integer numbers. This is a counterpart of convex optimization in the setting of discrete optimization. The theory developed is applied to the control of stochastic discrete-event dynamic systems. Some applications are admission, routing, service allocation and vacation control in queuing networks. Pure and applied mathematicians will enjoy reading the book since it brings together many disciplines in mathematics: combinatorics, stochastic processes, stochastic control and optimization, discrete event dynamic systems, algebra.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 332 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -This volume contains selected papers from WADT 2002, the 16th International Workshop on Algebraic Development Techniques. Like its predecessors, WADT 2002 focussed on the algebraic approach to the speci cation and development of systems, an area that was born around the algebraic speci cation of abstract data types and encompasses today the formal design of software systems, new speci cation frameworks and a wide range of application areas. WADT 2002 took place at the convent of Frauenchiemsee, Germany, on September 24¿27, 2002, and was organized by Rolf Hennicker, Dirk Pattinson and Martin Wirsing. The workshop also included a special track on Formalism, Logic, Institution ¿ Relating, Translating and Structuring (FLIRTS), and three satelliteevents:ameetingoftheIFIP WorkingGroup1.3onFoundationsofS- tem Speci cation, a Workshop on Global Computing organized by the AGILE project, and a Workshop on Multimedia Instruction in Safe and Secure Systems (MMISS). The program consisted of invited talks by Egidio Astesiano (Genoa, Italy), Andrew Gordon (Cambridge, UK), and Jan Rutten (Amsterdam, The Neth- lands), and 44 presentations describing ongoing research on main topics of the workshop: formal methods for system development, speci cation languages and methods, systems and techniques for reasoning about speci cations, speci - tion development systems, methods and techniques for concurrent, distributed and mobile systems, and algebraic and co-algebraic foundations. 472 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Recent advances in techniques and understanding in the fields of genetics, embryology and reproductive biology have opened up new ways to treat a wide range of medical problems. They range from new options for infertility treatment and pre-implantation genetic diagnosis to stem-cell-based therapies for debilitating diseases. Since all these approaches involve the manipulation of human gametes, embryos or embryonic cells, and could also permit more contentious uses, they have stimulated a controversial debate as to what aims are desirable and to what extent experiments on human embryos are morally permissible, if permissible at all. The situation is further complicated by the fact that scientific projects are increasingly realized through international co-operation and that patients are increasingly ready to seek morally contentious medical treatment wherever it is available and thus to bypass national legislation. In view of this situation the Europäische Akademie assembled a temporary interdisciplinary project group in which scientists from universities and non-university research organizations in Europe working on the relevant subjects were brought together and charged with establishing a knowledge base and providing suggestions for long-term solutions that would be acceptable for society. Presented here are the results of this project, ranging from a discussion of the theoretical and practical possibilities in human-embryo experimentation and its alternatives in research on adult stem cells, a comparison of the situations and prospects of regulation of embryo research in Europe, a survey of European public attitudes, and a philosophical analysis of the arguments and argumentative strategies used in the debate.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 448 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Since 1972 and the appearance of the famous Black & Scholes option pric ing formula, derivatives have become an integrated part of everyday life in the financial industry. Options and derivatives are tools to control risk ex posure, and used in the strategies of investors speculating in markets like fixed-income, stocks, currencies, commodities and energy. A combination of mathematical and economical reasoning is used to find the price of a derivatives contract. This book gives an introduction to the theory of mathematical finance, which is the modern approach to analyse options and derivatives. Roughly speaking, we can divide mathematical fi nance into three main directions. In stochastic finance the purpose is to use economic theory with stochastic analysis to derive fair prices for options and derivatives. The results are based on stochastic modelling of financial as sets, which is the field of empirical finance. Numerical approaches for finding prices of options are studied in computational finance. All three directions are presented in this book. Algorithms and code for Visual Basic functions are included in the numerical chapter to inspire the reader to test out the theory in practice. The objective of the book is not to give a complete account of option theory, but rather relax the mathematical rigour to focus on the ideas and techniques.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 180 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - 'Once upon a time there was no Universe,' began the Storyteller.'First Snow White encounters one of the Little People, then one of the Even Smaller People, and finally one of the Truly Infinitesimal People. And no matter how diligently she searches, the only dwarves she can find are collapsed stars! Clearly, she's not at home in her well-known Brothers Grimm fairy tale, but instead in a strange new landscape that features quantum behavior, the wavelike properties of particles, and the Uncertainty Principle. She (and we) must have entered, in short, one of the worlds created by Robert Gilmore, the physicist and fabulist who brought us the classic 'Alice in Quantumland.'Whether he's recasting such classic tales as 'Jack and the Quarkstalk,' 'Waking Beauty,' or 'Cinderenda and the Death of Stars,' Gilmore shows us that there's more than one way to shed light on the strange profundities of modern physics and cosmology, and what they have to tell us about the nature of time and space and motion. Black holes, dying stars, traveling backward through time to the Big Bang - they're all here in accessible, instructive, and charmingly illustrated retellings.Robert Gilmore has published three previous books with Copernicus, 'Alice in Quantumland,' 'Scrooge's Cryptic Carol,' and 'The Wizard of Quarks.' He is a Visiting Research Fellow, with a special focus on the public understanding of science, at Bristol University in England. He has also worked in particle physics at Brookhaven, Stanford, and CERN in Geneva.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Nanoelectronics provides an accessible introduction for prospective and practicing electronic engineers, computer scientists and physicists. The overview covers all aspects from underlying technologies to circuits and systems. The challenge of nanoelectronics is not only to manufacture minute structures but also to develop innovative systems for effective integration of the billions of devices. On the system level, various architectures are presented and important features of systems, such as design strategies, processing power, and reliability are discussed. Many specific technologies are presented, including molecular devices, quantum electronic devices, resonant tunnelling devices, single electron devices, superconducting devices, and even devices for DNA and quantum computing. The book also compares these devices with current silicon technologies and discusses limits of electronics and the future of nanosystems.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 300 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Functions in R and C, including the theory of Fourier series, Fourier integrals and part of that of holomorphic functions, form the focal topic of these two volumes. Based on a course given by the author to large audiences at Paris VII University for many years, the exposition proceeds somewhat nonlinearly, blending rigorous mathematics skilfully with didactical and historical considerations. It sets out to illustrate the variety of possible approaches to the main results, in order to initiate the reader to methods, the underlying reasoning, and fundamental ideas. It is suitable for both teaching and self-study. In his familiar, personal style, the author emphasizes ideas over calculations and, avoiding the condensed style frequently found in textbooks, explains these ideas without parsimony of words. The French edition in four volumes, published from 1998, has met with resounding success: the first two volumes are now available in English.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 460 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - Of interest to psychotherapists and counsellors of all kinds, this text describes key issues and controversies in human sexuality as they present in therapy practice. The author uses the biopsychosocial approach to human behaviour to analyze sexual behaviour, object choice, transgendered experience, sexual problems, transgressive sex and sex therapy. Issues of sexuality in the consulting room, including transference and countertransference, are discussed and, throughout, therapeutic approaches to sexual problems are presented. The human capacity for inventive imagining is presented as an important force for beneficial change and, in relation to sexuality, discussed in terms of the 'erotic imagination'.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -This undergraduate textbook introduces students of science and engineering to the fascinating field of optimization. It is a unique book that brings together the subfields of mathematical programming, variational calculus, and optimal control, thus giving students an overall view of all aspects of optimization in a single reference. As a primer on optimization, its main goal is to provide a succinct and accessible introduction to linear programming, nonlinear programming, numerical optimization algorithms, variational problems, dynamic programming, and optimal control. Prerequisites have been kept to a minimum, although a basic knowledge of calculus, linear algebra, and differential equations is assumed.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 260 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Multivariable Control Systems focuses on control design with continual references to the practical aspects of implementation. While the concepts of multivariable control are justified, the book emphasises the need to maintain student interest and motivation over exhaustive mathematical proof. Tools of analysis and representation are always developed as methods for achieving a final control system design and evaluation.Features:¿ design implementation laid out using extensive reference to MATLAB®;¿ combined consideration of systems (plant) and signals (mainly disturbances);¿ step-by-step approach from the objectives of multivariable control to the solution of complete design problems.Multivariable Control Systems is an ideal text for graduate students or for final-year undergraduates looking for more depth than provided by introductory textbooks. It will also interest the control engineer practising in industry and seeking to implement robust or multivariable control solutions to plant problems.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 360 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - Colletta uses psychoanalytic theories of joke-work and gallows humour to argue that dark humour is an important, defining characteristic of Modernism. She brings together the usual suspects alongside more often overlooked writers from the period, and asks probing questions about the relationship between a dark humour that 'revels in the non-rational, the unstable, and the fragmented, and resists easy definition and political usefulness' and the historical and social circumstances of the period. Colletta makes a compelling argument that probing deeply into the nature of humour or satire that define these 'social comedies' brings to light a more complex, and more accurate, understanding of the social changes and historical circumstances that define the modern era.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - The Contingent Valuation Method in Health Care is offered as a contribution to improving instruments of political decision making in health care. At a fundamental level, it is about methodological aspects of the contingent valuation method. It gives a holistic view of applying the contingent valuation method for use in policy. It shows all stages of a contingent valuation study beginning with the design, the choice of elicitation techniques and estimation methods for willingness-to-pay, the use of the results in a cost-benefit analysis, and finally, the policy implications resulting from our findings. The intended audience of The Contingent Valuation Method in Health Care are health economists interested in methodological problems of contingent valuation studies, people involved in health care decision making, planning, and priority setting as well as people interested in Alzheimer's Disease.