springer apr 2003 (414 Ergebnisse)

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - Grade inflation runs rampant at most colleges and universities, but faculty and administrators are seemingly unwilling to face the problem. This book explains why, exposing many of the misconceptions surrounding college grading. Based on historical research and the results of a yearlong, on-line course evaluation experiment conducted at Duke University during the 1998-1999 academic year, the effects of student grading on various educational processes, and their subsequent impact on student and faculty behavior, is examined. Principal conclusions of this investigation are that instructors' grading practices have a significant influence on end-of-course teaching evaluations, and that student expectations of grading practices play an important role in the courses that students decide to take. The latter effect has a serious impact on course enrollments in the natural sciences and mathematics, while the combination of both mean that faculty have an incentive to award high grades, and students have an incentive to choose courses with faculty who do. Grade inflation is the natural consequence of this incentive system. Material contained in this book is essential reading for anyone involved in efforts to reform our postsecondary educational system, or for those who simply wish to survive and prosper in it.Valen Johnson is a Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Michigan. Prior to accepting an appointment in Ann Arbor, he was a Professor of Statistics and Decision Sciences at Duke University, where data for this book was collected. He is a Fellow of the American Statistical Association.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -The characteristics of software systems are undergoing dramatic changes. We are moving rapidly into the age of ubiquitous information services. Persistent computing systems are being embedded in everyday objects. They interact in an autonomouswaywith eachother to provideus with increasinglycomplexservices and functionalities that we can access at any time from anywhere. As a con- quence, not only do the numbers of components of software systems increase; there is also a strong qualitative impact. Software systems are increasingly made up of autonomous, proactive, networked components. These interact with each other in patterns and via mechanisms that can hardly be modeled in terms of classical models of interaction or service-oriented coordination. To some extent, future software systems will exhibit characteristics making them more res- blant of natural systems and societies than of mechanical systems and software architectures. This situation poses exciting challenges to computer scientists and software engineers. Already, software agents and multi-agent systems are recognized as both useful abstractions and e ective technologies for the modeling and building of complex distributed applications. However, little is done with regard to e - tive and methodic development of complex software systems in terms of mul- agent societies. An urgent need exists for novel approaches to software modeling and software engineering that enable the successful deployment of software s- tems made up ofa massive number ofautonomous components, and that allowus to control and predict their behaviour. 300 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-proceedings of the 11th International Workshop on Theoretical Foundations of Computer Vision, held in Dagstuhl Castle, Germany in April 2002.The 27 revised full papers presented went through two rounds of reviewing and improvement and assess the state of the art in geometry, morphology, and computational imaging. The papers are organized in sections on geometry - models and algorithms; property measurement in the grid and on finite samples; features, shape, and morphology; and computer vision and scene analysis.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 456 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -In its formative years, from the 1970s through the 1990s, sabermetrics was p- marily an amateur undertaking. Publications were aimed at a relatively small audience of baseball fans. To be sure, this ever-growing group of aficionados brought a lot of sophistication to baseball analysis, and were constantly looking for statistical insights beyond the listings of the top ten batters found in popular newspapers and magazines. But their influence on the baseball profession was very limited. A few consultants like Craig Wright developed temporary relati- ships with various teams, but none were able to stay long enough to create a p- manent sabermetrician staff position. (See Rob Neyer¿s November 11, 2002, arti- 1 cle on ESPN. com. ) All of this changed, however, in 2002 with the hiring of Bill James by the Boston Red Sox. With that move, we have seen the admittance of the foremost proponent of sabermetrics into the top echelon of professional ba- ball management. The art and science of careful statistical analysis, it now seems, had made it into the big leagues. Since the publication of the first edition of Curve Ball in 2001, we have been overwhelmed by the positive responses from readers and critics. We¿re pleased with the reception, of course, but we don¿t want to rest on our laurels. Like a pitcher refining his repertoire, we¿ve revised, expanded, and updated the book for its publication in this paperback edition. Several readers and critics took us 1 espn. go. com/mlb/columns/neyer_rob/1456664.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 436 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Although the computing demands of real-time signal processing and control applications are increasing rapidly, parallel processors permit several instructions to be dealt with simultaneously so that the 'real-time' needed is manageable. This book introduces the advantages of this strategy and details how to use parallel processing to deal with common signal processing and control algorithms. It emphasises the relationship between the computing requirements of algorithms and the appropriate choice of architectures, while demonstrating how to identify processor capabilities and how to exploit them to the fullest. The text includes examples and end-of-chapter exercises to facilitate self- and group study and case studies to put theoretical concepts into a practical context. For advanced students in parallel computing, control and signal processing disciplines, it is an invaluable tool in learning to get the most from their computer systems.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 268 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - Prions are an entirely new class of pathogens, and scientists are just beginning to understand them. This book tells the strange story of their discovery, and the medical controversies that swirl around them.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -As the complexity of financial markets keeps growing, so does the need to understand the decision-making and the coordination of the exsuing actions in the marketplace. In particular, the disclosure of information to market participants and its impact on the market outcome mertis attention. This study analyses the role of private and public information in currency crises. Calls for increased dissemination of economic and policy-related information by central banks notwithstanding, the study shows that transparency is not generally conductive to preventing speculative attacks in fixed exchange-rate regimes. Rather, the role of private and public information in the market-place depencs critically on the prevailing market sentiment. The study also highlights the import of market transparency design in an environment that allows for herding and market leadership of individual speculators.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 252 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -To put the ARTS & ECONOMICS next to each other, as in the title to this book, may be shocking to some readers. Must not creative art be free of economic constraints, must it not lead a life of its own And is economics not the realm of mean commercial dealings This book argues that it is not so: the ARTS & ECONOMICS go well together, indeed need each other. Without a sound economic base, art cannot exist, and without creativity the economy cannot flourish. There is a second way in which the Arts and Economics go together, namely in the sense of applying economic thinking to the arts. Over the last decades, this scholarly endeavor has been established under the name of 'The Economics of Art' or 'Cultural Economics'. But this may also sound revolting to some readers as it suggests an imperialistic extension of a lowly benefit-cost calculus to the world of art. This fear is unwarranted. On the contrary, cultural economists stress the social value of art and defend it against a crude business view of art. Rather than dismissing art without direct commercial profit, art economists seek ways and means of supporting it. This book is not a textbook summarizing the achievements attained by the economics of art. Such books already exist, among them the author's own, Muses and Markets, Explorations in the Economics of Art, written jointly with Werner Pommerehne. VI Preface ARTS & ECONOMICS charters little known territories.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 260 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Award-winning monograph of the Ferran Sunyer i Balaguer Prize 2001.Subgroup growth studies the distribution of subgroups of finite index in a group as a function of the index. In the last two decades this topic has developed into one of the most active areas of research in infinite group theory; this book is a systematic and comprehensive account of the substantial theory which has emerged.As well as determining the range of possible 'growth types', for finitely generated groups in general and for groups in particular classes such as linear groups, a main focus of the book is on the tight connection between the subgroup growth of a group and its algebraic structure.A wide range of mathematical disciplines play a significant role in this work: as well as various aspects of infinite group theory, these include finite simple groups and permutation groups, profinite groups, arithmetic groups and Strong Approximation, algebraic and analytic number theory, probability, and p-adic model theory. Relevant aspects of such topics are explained in self-contained 'windows'. 480 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -The success of the first edition of this broad appeal book prompted the prepa ration of an updated and expanded second edition. The field of surface anal ysis is constantly changing as it answers the need to provide more specific and more detailed information about surface composition and structure in advanced materials science applications. The content of the second edition meets that need by including new techniques and expanded applications. Newcastle John O'Connor Clayton Brett Sexton Adelaide Roger Smart January 2003 Preface to the First Edition The idea for this book stemmed from a remark by Philip Jennings of Mur doch University in a discussion session following a regular meeting of the Australian Surface Science group. He observed that a text on surface anal ysis and applications to materials suitable for final year undergraduate and postgraduate science students was not currently available. Furthermore, the members of the Australian Surface Science group had the research experi ence and range of coverage of surface analytical techniques and applications to provide a text for this purpose. A list of techniques and applications to be included was agreed at that meeting. The intended readership of the book has been broadened since the early discussions, particularly to encompass industrial users, but there has been no significant alteration in content.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 616 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -The authors, leading representatives of Russian space research and industry, show the results and future prospects of astronautics at the start of the third millennium. The focus is on the development of astronautics in Russia in the new historical and economic conditions. The text spotlights the basic trends in space related issues before moving on to describe the possibilities of the wide use of space technologies and its numerous applications such as navigation and communication, space manufacturing, and space biotechnology. The book contains a large amount of facts described in a way understandable without specialist knowledge. The text is accompanied by many photographs, charts and diagrams, mostly in color.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 612 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Every year we witness acceleration in the availability, deployment, and use of distributed applications. However building increasingly sophisticated applications for extant and emerging networked systems continues to be challenging for several reasons: ¿ Abstract models of computation used in distributed systems research often do not fully capture the limitations and the unpredictable nature of realistic distributed computing platforms; ¿ Fault-tolerance and ef ciency of computation are dif cult to combine when the c- puting medium is subject to changes, asynchrony, and failures; ¿ Middleware used for constructing distributed software does not provide services most suitable for sophisticated distributed applications; ¿ Middleware services are speci ed informally and without precise guarantees of e- ciency, fault-tolerance, scalability, and compositionality; ¿ Speci cation of distributed deployment of software systems is often left out of the development process; ¿ Finally, there persists an organizational and cultural gap between engineering groups developing systems in a commercial enterprise, and research groups advancing the scienti c state-of-the-art in academic and industrial settings. The objectives of this book are: (1) to serve as a motivation for de ning future research programs in distributed computing, (2) to help identify areas where practitioners and engineers on the one hand and scientists and researchers on the other can improve the state of distributed computing through synergistic efforts, and (3) to motivate graduate students interested in entering the exciting research eld of distributed computing.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 236 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -This book grew out of our lectures given in the Oberseminar on 'Cod ing Theory and Number Theory' at the Mathematics Institute of the Wiirzburg University in the Summer Semester, 2001. The coding the ory combines mathematical elegance and some engineering problems to an unusual degree. The major advantage of studying coding theory is the beauty of this particular combination of mathematics and engineering. In this book we wish to introduce some practical problems to the math ematician and to address these as an essential part of the development of modern number theory. The book consists of five chapters and an appendix. Chapter 1 may mostly be dropped from an introductory course of linear codes. In Chap ter 2 we discuss some relations between the number of solutions of a diagonal equation over finite fields and the weight distribution of cyclic codes. Chapter 3 begins by reviewing some basic facts from elliptic curves over finite fields and modular forms, and shows that the weight distribution of the Melas codes is represented by means of the trace of the Hecke operators acting on the space of cusp forms. Chapter 4 is a systematic study of the algebraic-geometric codes. For a long time, the study of algebraic curves over finite fields was the province of pure mathematicians. In the period 1977 - 1982, V. D. Goppa discovered an amazing connection between the theory of algebraic curves over fi nite fields and the theory of q-ary codes.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 160 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Error-correcting codes have been incorporated in numerous working communication and memory systems. This book covers the mathematical aspects of the theory of block error-correcting codes together, in mutual reinforcement, with computational discussions, implementations and examples of all relevant concepts, functions and algorithms. This combined approach facilitates the reading and understanding of the subject.The digital companion of the book is a non-printable .pdf document with hyperlinks. The examples included in the book can be run with just a mouse click and modified and savedby users for their own purpose.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 280 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 344 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -We are pleased to present the proceedings of the 2003 Atlantic Web Intelligence C- ference, AWIC 2003. The conference was located in Madrid, Spain during May 5¿6, 2003, organized locally by the Technical University of Madrid. AWIC 2003 aimed to be the rst of a series of conferences on Web Intelligence, to be celebrated annually, alternatively in Europe and America, starting in Madrid. It was born as an activity of the recently created WIC-Poland Research Centre and the WIC-Spain Research Centre, bothbelongingtotheWebIntelligenceConsortium(WIC) (wi-consortium.org).AWIC 2003 was supported with grants from the S- nish Ministry for Science and Technology and the European Network of Excellence in Knowledge Discovery, KDNet. AWIC 2003 brought together scientists, engineers, computer users, and students to exchange and share their experiences, new ideas, and research results about all aspects (theory,applications,andtools)ofarti cialintelligencetechniquesappliedtoWeb-based systems, and to discuss the practical challenges encountered and the solutions adopted. Almost 70 contributions were submitted. After a preliminary evaluation, 60 of these papers were accepted to the conference and were assigned at least two reviewers from the international program committee. Out of this 60, 33 were conditionally accepted, and 32 of them were nally accepted after the conditions set by the reviewers had been met, which resulted in an acceptance ratio of 45%. 368 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -At present environmental chemistry is becoming an increasingly popular subject in both under graduate and graduated education in the whole World and especially in all Asian countries. Different courses in ecology, chemistry, environmental science, public health, geography, biology, and environmental engineering all include this subject in their curriculum. Many textbooks have appeared in recent years aiming to fulfill these requirements; however, most of these books operate mainly with examples from developed countries of Europe, USA and Canada. Taking into account the geographic boundaries of environmental pollution that is especially pronounced in Asia and the specific peculiarities of pollution in developing countries, this textbook is supposed to close the gap by providing regionally oriented knowledge in basic and applied environmental chemistry.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 488 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -This book, in some sense, began to be written by the first author in 1983, when optional lectures on Abelian groups were held at the Fac ulty of Mathematics and Computer Science,'Babes-Bolyai' University in Cluj-Napoca, Romania. From 1992,these lectures were extended to a twosemester electivecourse on abelian groups for undergraduate stu dents, followed by a twosemester course on the same topic for graduate students in Algebra. All the other authors attended these two years of lectures and are now Assistants to the Chair of Algebra of this Fac ulty. The first draft of this collection, including only exercises solved by students as home works, the last ten years, had 160pages. We felt that there is a need for a book such as this one, because it would provide a nice bridge between introductory Abelian Group Theory and more advanced research problems. The book InfiniteAbelianGroups, published by LaszloFuchsin two volumes 1970 and 1973 willwithout doubt last as the most important guide for abelian group theorists. Many exercises are selected from this source but there are plenty of other bibliographical items (see the Bibliography) which were used in order to make up this collection. For some of the problems stated, recent developments are also given. Nevertheless, there are plenty of elementary results (the so called 'folklore') in Abelian Group Theory whichdo not appear in any written material. It is also one purpose of this book to complete this gap.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 366 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -TheAAECCsymposiumwasstartedinJune1983byAlainPoli(Toulouse),who, together with Roger Desq, Daniel Lazard, and Paul Camion, organized the rst conference. The meaning of the acronym AAECC changed from ¿Applied - gebra and Error Correcting Codes¿ to ¿Applied Algebra, Algebraic Algorithms, and Error Correcting Codes.¿ One reason for this was the increasing importance of complexity, particularly for decoding algorithms. During the AAECC-12 s- posium the conference committee decided to enforce the theory and practice of the coding side as well as the cryptographic aspects. Algebra was conserved, as in the past, but was slightly more oriented to algebraic geometry codes, nite elds, complexity, polynomials, and graphs. For AAECC-15 the main subjects covered were: ¿ Block codes. ¿ Algebra and codes: rings, elds, AG codes. ¿ Cryptography. ¿ Sequences. ¿ Algorithms, decoding algorithms. ¿ Algebra: constructions in algebra, Galois groups, di erential algebra, po- nomials. The talks of the six invited speakers characterized the aims of AAECC-15: ¿ P. Sole (¿Public Key Cryptosystems Based on Rings¿). ¿ S. Lin (¿Combinatorics Low Density Parity Check Codes¿). ¿ J. Stern (¿Cryptography and the Methodology of Provable Security¿). ¿ D. Costello (¿Graph-Based Convolutional LDPC Codes¿). ¿ I. Shparlinsky (¿Dynamical Systems Generated by Rational Functions¿). ¿ A. Lauder (¿Algorithms for Multivariate Polynomials over Finite Fields¿). 280 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -The objective of program analysis is to automatically determine the p- perties of a program. Tools of software development, such as compilers, p- formance estimators, debuggers, reverse-engineering tools, program veri - tion/testing/proving systems, program comprehension systems, and program specializationtoolsarelargelydependentonprogramanalysis. Advancedp- gram analysis can: help to nd program errors; detect and tune performan- critical code regions; ensure assumed constraints on data are not violated; tailor a generic program to suit a speci c application; reverse-engineer so- ware modules, etc. A prominent program analysis technique is symbolic a- lysis, which has attracted substantial attention for many years as it is not dependent on executing a program to examine the semantics of a program, and it can yield very elegant formulations of many analyses. Moreover, the complexity of symbolic analysis can be largely independent of the input data size of a program and of the size of the machine on which the program is being executed. In this book we present novel symbolic control and data ow repres- tation techniques as well as symbolic techniques and algorithms to analyze and optimize programs. Program contexts which de ne a new symbolic - scription of program semantics for control and data ow analysis are at the center of our approach. We have solved a number of problems encountered in program analysis by using program contexts. Our solution methods are e cient, versatile, uni ed, and more general (they cope with regular and irregular codes) than most existing methods.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 148 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-proceedings of the 8th Panhellenic Conference on Informatics, PCI 2001, held in Nicosia, Cyprus in November 2001.The 31 revised full papers presented were carefully selected and improved during two months of reviewing from 104 conference papers. The papers cover the areas of databases, data mining and intelligent systems, e-learning, human computer interaction, image processing, networks and systems, software and languages, and theoretical computer science. 516 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -These proceedings contain a refereed selection of papers presented at the Second Annual Workshop of the Types Working Group (Computer-Assisted Reasoning based on Type Theory, EUIST project 29001), which was held April 24¿28, 2002 in Hotel Erica, Berg en Dal (close to Nijmegen), The Netherlands. The workshop was attended by about 90 researchers. On April 27, there was a special afternoon celebrating the 60th birthday of Per Martin-L¿of, one of the founding fathers of the Types community. The afternoon consisted of the following three invited talks: ¿Constructive Validity Revisited¿ by Dana Scott, ¿From the Rules of Logic to the Logic of Rules¿ by Jean-Yves Girard, and ¿The Varieties of Type Theories¿ by Peter Aczel. The contents of these contributions were not laid down in these proceedings, but the videos of the talks and the slides used by the speakers are available at cs. kun. nl/fnds/MartinLoefDay/LoefTalks. htm The previous workshop of the Types Working Group under EUIST project 29001 was held in 2000 in Durham, UK. The workshops Types 2000 and Types 2002 followed a series of meetings organized in the period 1993 ¿ 1999 whithin previous Types projects (ESPRIT BRA 6435 and ESPRIT Working Group 21900). The proceedings of these earlier Types workshops were also published in the LNCS series, as volumes 806, 996, 1158, 1512, 1657, 1956 and 2277. ESPRIT BRA 6453 was a continuation of ESPRIT Action 3245, Logical Frameworks: - sign, Implementation and Experiments.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 344 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Semantics in Databases, held in Dagstuhl Castle, Germany, in January 2001. The 10 revised full papers presented together with an introduction by the volume editors were carefully selected during two rounds of reviewing. Among the aspects of database semantics discussed are semantic constraints, paraconsistency, logic foundations of databases, ER modeling, type hierarchies, null values, consistency enforcement, logic-based pattern languages, and semantic classification of queries. Among the classes of databases dealt with are deductive databases, relational databases, distributed information systems, and tree-structured data.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 244 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -This is a softcover reprint of the English translation of 1990 of the revised and expanded version of Bourbaki's, Algèbre, Chapters 4 to 7 (1981).This completes Algebra, 1 to 3, by establishing the theories of commutative fields and modules over a principal ideal domain. Chapter 4 deals with polynomials, rational fractions and power series. A section on symmetric tensors and polynomial mappings between modules, and a final one on symmetric functions, have been added. Chapter 5 was entirely rewritten. After the basic theory of extensions (prime fields, algebraic, algebraically closed, radical extension), separable algebraic extensions are investigated, giving way to a section on Galois theory. Galois theory is in turn applied to finite fields and abelian extensions. The chapter then proceeds to the study of general non-algebraic extensions which cannot usually be found in textbooks: p-bases, transcendental extensions, separability criterions, regularextensions. Chapter 6 treats ordered groups and fields and based on it is Chapter 7: modules over a p.i.d. studies of torsion modules, free modules, finite type modules, with applications to abelian groups and endomorphisms of vector spaces. Sections on semi-simple endomorphisms and Jordan decomposition have been added.Chapter IV: Polynomials and Rational FractionsChapter V: Commutative FieldsChapter VI: Ordered Groups and FieldsChapter VII: Modules Over Principal Ideal DomainsSpringer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 464 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -A number of important results in combinatorics, discrete geometry, and theoretical computer science have been proved using algebraic topology. While the results are quite famous, their proofs are not so widely understood. They are scattered in research papers or outlined in surveys, and they often use topological notions not commonly known among combinatorialists or computer scientists.This book is the first textbook treatment of a significant part of such results. It focuses on so-called equivariant methods, based on the Borsuk-Ulam theorem and its generalizations. The topological tools are intentionally kept on a very elementary level (for example, homology theory and homotopy groups are completely avoided). No prior knowledge of algebraic topology is assumed, only a background in undergraduate mathematics, and the required topological notions and results are gradually explained.At the same time, many substantial combinatorial results are covered, sometimes with some of the most important results, such as Kneser's conjecture, showing them from various points of view.The history of the presented material, references, related results, and more advanced methods are surveyed in separate subsections. The text is accompanied by numerous exercises, of varying difficulty. Many of the exercises actually outline additional results that did not fit in the main text. The book is richly illustrated, and it has a detailed index and an extensive bibliography.This text started with a one-semester graduate course the author taught in fall 1993 in Prague. The transcripts of the lectures by the participants served as a basis of the first version. Some years later, a course partially based on that text was taught by Günter M. Ziegler in Berlin. The book is based on a thoroughly rewritten version prepared during a pre-doctoral course the author taught at the ETH Zurich in fall 2001.Most of the material was covered in the course:Chapter 1 was assigned as an introductory reading text, and the other chapters were presented in approximately 30 hours of teaching (by 45 minutes), with some omissions throughout and with only a sketchy presentation of the last chapter.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 228 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - This book is intended as a course in numerical analysis and approximation theory for advanced undergraduate students or graduate students, and as a reference work for those who lecture or research in this area. Its title pays homage to Interpolation and Approximation by Philip J. Davis, published in 1963 by Blaisdell and reprinted by Dover in 1976. My book is less g- eral than Philip Davis's much respected classic, as the quali cation 'by polynomials' in its title suggests, and it is pitched at a less advanced level. I believe that no one book can fully cover all the material that could appearinabookentitledInterpolation and Approximation by Polynomials. Nevertheless, I have tried to cover most of the main topics. I hope that my readers will share my enthusiasm for this exciting and fascinating area of mathematics, and that, by working through this book, some will be encouraged to read more widely and pursue research in the subject. Since my book is concerned with polynomials, it is written in the language of classical analysis and the only prerequisites are introductory courses in analysis and linear algebra.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - Much theoretical and historical work engaged with the question of the 'postcolonial' is built upon an imagined, unified premodern 'Middle Ages' in Europe. One of the results of this has been that in recent years scholars in medieval and early modern studies have been critically assessing the uses of postcolonial and subaltern theoretical perspectives in their fields, and considering what their periods have to say to postcolonial theorists. This book offers a series of original essays that explore with specificity the methodological, textual, cultural, and historiographic moves required for postcolonial engagements with premodern times.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -At the beginning of the 21st century, new features have emerged within the field of comparative education. Some of these features result from new technologies, while others reflect political transitions and the forces of globalisation. The field embraces new insights on cultures, and scholars are exploring diverse units of analysis.This book presents perspectives on these changes while noting various continuing traditions. Its contributors come from a wide range of countries and contexts, and present their work within a framework set by the 11th congress of the World Council of Comparative Education Societies (WCCES). The book makes a valuable methodological as well as a conceptual contribution to the field.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 272 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -A comprehensive study of the international coordination of economic policy in a monetary union. It carefully discusses the process of policy competition and the structure of policy cooperation. As to policy competition, the focus is on competition between the union central bank, the German government, and the French government. Similarly, as to policy cooperation, the focus is on cooperation between the union central bank, the German government, and the French government. The key questions are: Does the process of policy competition lead to full employment and price stability Can these targets be achieved through policy cooperation And is policy cooperation superior to policy competition Another important issue is monetary competition / monetary cooperation between Europe and America.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 292 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Since the dawn of mankind, observers of the sky have wondered at the sudden appearance of new stars on the seemingly unchanging heavens and, for at least 2000 years, have recorded these phenomena in their annals and archives. Even in more modern times, since the discovery of SN1885A in S Andromeda which gured in the important ¿island universe¿ discussions of the 1920¿s, the puzzle of supernovae (SNe) has played an important role in astrophysics. Only with the seminal work of Fritz Zwicky and Walter Baade in the 1930¿s did we begin to understand the di erences between novae and SNe and the importance of SNe as the fonts of energy for the interstellar medium and as drivers of chemical evolution in galaxies. As recently as the 1940¿s and 1950¿s the early days of radio astronomy were heavily in uenced by the familiar names of Cassiopeia A and Taurus A, two young supernova remnants, and two Nobel prizes have been awarded for discovery and study of a related phenomenon, pulsars. In spite of the great age of the study of SNe, since at least the Chinese records of SN185and probably earlier, the eld is, in fact, very young having only attracted a large devoted following since the spectacular Type II SN1987A in the Large Magellanic Cloud, the rst naked-eye SN in more than 400 years.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 488 pp. Englisch.