springer london springer london feb 2013 (38 Ergebnisse)

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Risk has been described in the past by a simple measure, such as the variance, and risk attitude is often considered simply a degree of risk aversion. However, this viewpoint is usually not sufficient.Risk Measures and Attitudescollects contributions whichillustrate how modern approaches to both risk measures and risk attitudes are inevitably intertwined. The settings under which this is discussed includeportfolio choice, mitigating credit risk and comparing risky alternatives.This book will be a useful study aid for students and researchers of actuarial science or risk management as well as practitioners.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 104 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Images contain information about the spatial properties of the scene they depict. When coupled with suitable assumptions, images can be used to infer thr- dimensional information. For instance, if the scene contains objects made with homogeneous material, such as marble, variations in image intensity can be - sociated with variations in shape, and hence the ¿shading¿ in the image can be exploited to infer the ¿shape¿ of the scene (shape from shading). Similarly, if the scene contains (statistically) regular structures, variations in image intensity can be used to infer shape (shape from textures). Shading, texture, cast shadows, - cluding boundaries are all ¿cues¿ that can be exploited to infer spatial properties of the scene from a single image, when the underlying assumptions are sat- ed. In addition, one can obtain spatial cues from multiple images of the same scene taken with changing conditions. For instance, changes in the image due to a moving light source are used in ¿photometric stereo,¿ changes in the image due to changes in the position of the cameras are used in ¿stereo,¿ ¿structure from motion,¿ and ¿motion blur. ¿ Finally, changes in the image due to changes in the geometry of the camera are used in ¿shape from defocus. ¿ In this book, we will concentrate on the latter two approaches, motion blur and defocus, which are referred to collectively as ¿accommodation cues.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 264 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -This book introduces the statistical software R to the image processing community in an intuitive and practical manner. R brings interesting statistical and graphical tools which are important and necessary for image processing techniques. Furthermore, it has been proved in the literature that R is among the most reliable, accurate and portable statistical software available. Both the theory and practice of R code concepts and techniques are presented and explained, and the reader is encouraged to try their own implementation to develop faster, optimized programs. Those who are new to the field of image processing and to R software will find this work a useful introduction. By reading the book alongside an active R session, the reader will experience an exciting journey of learning and programming.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 104 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Functional analysis owes much of its early impetus to problems that arise in the calculus of variations. In turn, the methods developed there have been applied to optimal control, an area that also requires new tools, such as nonsmooth analysis. This self-contained textbook gives a complete course on all these topics. It is written by a leading specialist who is also a noted expositor.This book provides a thorough introduction to functional analysis and includes many novel elements as well as the standard topics. A short course on nonsmooth analysis and geometry completes the first half of the book whilst the second half concerns the calculus of variations and optimal control. The author provides a comprehensive course on these subjects, from their inception through to the present. A notable feature is the inclusion of recent, unifying developments on regularity, multiplier rules, and the Pontryagin maximum principle, which appear here for the first time in a textbook. Othermajor themes include existence and Hamilton-Jacobi methods.The many substantial examples, and the more than three hundred exercises, treat such topics as viscosity solutions, nonsmooth Lagrangians, the logarithmic Sobolev inequality, periodic trajectories, and systems theory. They also touch lightly upon several fields of application: mechanics, economics, resources, finance, control engineering.Functional Analysis, Calculus of Variations and Optimal Control is intended to support several different courses at the first-year or second-year graduate level, on functional analysis, on the calculus of variations and optimal control, or on some combination. For this reason, it has been organized with customization in mind. The text also has considerable value as a reference. Besides its advanced results in the calculus of variations and optimal control, its polished presentation of certain other topics (for example convex analysis, measurable selections, metric regularity, and nonsmooth analysis) will be appreciated by researchers in these and related fields.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 608 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Diamond has a unique combination of properties, such as the highest hardness and thermal conductivity among any known material, high electrical resistivity, a large optical band gap and a high transmission, good resistance to chemical erosion, low adhesion and friction, and extremely low thermal expansion coefficient. As such, diamond has been a desirable material in a wide range of applications in mechanical, chemical, optical, thermal and electrical engineering. In many of the cases, the surface of a diamond component or element must have a superior finish, often down to a surface roughness of nanometers. Nevertheless, due to its extreme hardness and chemical inertness, the polishing of diamond and its composites has been a sophisticated process.Polishing of Diamond Materials will provide a state-of-the-art analysis, both theoretically and experimentally, of the most commonly used polishing techniques for mono/poly-crystalline diamond and chemical vapour deposition (CVD) diamond films, including mechanical, chemo-mechanical, thermo-chemical, high energy beam, dynamic friction and other polishing techniques. The in-depth discussions will be on the polishing mechanisms, possible modelling, material removal rate and the quality control of these techniques. A comparison of their advantages and drawbacks will be carried out to provide the reader with a useful guideline for the selection and implementation of these polishing techniques.Polishing of Diamond Materials will be of interest to researchers and engineers in hard materials and precision manufacturing, industry diamond suppliers, diamond jewellery suppliers and postgraduate students in the area of precision manufacturing.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 188 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -During the 21st century business environments have become more complex and dynamic than ever before. Companies operate in a world of change influenced by globalisation, volatile markets, legal changes and technical progress. As a result, they have to handle growing volumes of data and therefore require fast storage, reliable data access, intelligent retrieval of information and automated decision-making mechanisms, all provided at the highest level of service quality. Successful enterprises are aware of these challenges and efficiently respond to the dynamic environment in which their business operates.Business Intelligence (BI) and Performance Management (PM) offer solutions to these challenges and provide techniques to enable effective business change. The important aspects of both topics are discussed within this state-of-the-art volume. It covers the strategic support, business applications, methodologies and technologies from the field, and explores the benefits, issues and challenges of each. Issues are analysed from many different perspectives, ranging from strategic management to data technologies, and the different subjects are complimented and illustrated by numerous examples of industrial applications. Contributions are authored by leading academics and practitioners representing various universities, research centres and companies worldwide. Their experience covers multiple disciplines and industries, including finance, construction, logistics, and public services, amongst others.Business Intelligence and Performance Management is a valuable source of reference for graduates approaching MSc or PhD programs and for professionals in industry researching in the fields of BI and PM for industrial application.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 284 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -User Modeling and Adaptation for Daily Routines is motivated by the need to bring attention to how people with special needs can benefit from adaptive methods and techniques in their everyday lives. Assistive technologies, adaptive systems and context-aware applications are three well-established research fields. There is, in fact, a vast amount of literature that covers HCI-related issues in each area separately. However, the contributions in the intersection of these areas have been less visible, despite the fact that such synergies may have a great impact on improving daily living.Presenting a comprehensive review of state-of-the-art practices on user modeling and adaptation for people with special needs, as well as some reflections on the challenges that need to be addressed in this direction, topics covered within this volume include the analysis, design, implementation and evaluation of adaptive systems to assist users with special needs to take decisions and fulfil daily routine activities. Particular emphasis is paid to major trends in user modeling, ubiquitous adaptive support, diagnostic and accessibility, recommender systems, social interaction, designing and building adaptive assistants for daily routines, field studies and automated evaluation.Nine leading contributors write on key current research in the domain of adaptive applications for people with special needs, integrating and summarizing findings from the best known international research groups in these areas. User Modeling and Adaptation for Daily Routines highlights how adaptation technologies can ease daily living for all, and support sustainable high-quality healthcare, demographic ageing and social/economic inclusion. highlights how adaptation technologies can ease daily living for all, and support sustainable high-quality healthcare, demographic ageing and social/economic inclusion.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 264 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -In recent years, rapid changes and improvements have been witnessed in the field of transformer condition monitoring and assessment, especially with the advances in computational intelligence techniques. Condition Monitoring and Assessment of Power Transformers Using Computational Intelligence applies a broad range of computational intelligence techniques to deal with practical transformer operation problems. The approaches introduced are presented in a concise and flowing manner, tackling complex transformer modelling problems and uncertainties occurring in transformer fault diagnosis.Condition Monitoring and Assessment of Power Transformers Using Computational Intelligence covers both the fundamental theories and the most up-to-date research in this rapidly changing field. Many examples have been included that use real-world measurements and realistic operating scenarios of power transformers to fully illustrate the use of computational intelligence techniques for a variety of transformer modelling and fault diagnosis problems.Condition Monitoring and Assessment of Power Transformers Using Computational Intelligence is a useful book for professional engineers and postgraduate students. It also provides a firm foundation for advanced undergraduate students in power engineering.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 220 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Hydrogen Fuel Cells for Road Vehicles addresses the main issues related to the application of hydrogen fuel cell technology in the road transportation sector. A preliminary treatment is given on fuel resources and atmospheric pollution concerns which are closely related to the current technology (internal combustion engine) used for moving people and goods.The authors deal, in particular, with the problems that can hinder a widespread hydrogen market (production, storage and distribution), as well as giving an analysis of fuel cell technologies available for utilization of this energy carrier in the automotive field. Hydrogen Fuel Cells for Road Vehicles also examines the concerns faced during the design and realization of a PEM fuel cell system with optimal size and efficiency, evidencing the impact of the individual auxiliary components on energy losses and dynamic stack performance. The book ends with the analysis of two practical case studies on fuel cell propulsion systems.Hydrogen Fuel Cells for Road Vehicles is a useful text for researchers, professionals and advanced students in the fields of automotive and environmental engineering.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 256 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Electronic Value Exchange examines in detail the transformation of the VISA electronic payment system from a collection of non-integrated, localized, paper-based bank credit card programs into the cooperative, global, electronic value exchange network it is today. Topics and features: provides a history of the VISA system from the mid-1960s to the early 1980s; presents a historical narrative based on research gathered from personal documents and interviews with key actors; investigates, for the first time, both the technological and social infrastructures necessary for the VISA system to operate; supplies a detailed case study, highlighting the mutual shaping of technology and social relations, and the influence that earlier information processing practices have on the way firms adopt computers and telecommunications; examines how ¿gateways¿ in transactional networks can reinforce or undermine established social boundaries, and reviews the establishment of trust in new payment devices.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 268 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -This practical and easy-to-follow text explores the theoretical underpinnings of decision forests, organizing the vast existing literature on the field within a new, general-purpose forest model. Topics and features: with a foreword by Prof. Y. Amit and Prof. D. Geman, recounting their participation in the development of decision forests; introduces a flexible decision forest model, capable of addressing a large and diverse set of image and video analysis tasks; investigates both the theoretical foundations and the practical implementation of decision forests; discusses the use of decision forests for such tasks as classification, regression, density estimation, manifold learning, active learning and semi-supervised classification; includes exercises and experiments throughout the text, with solutions, slides, demo videos and other supplementary material provided at an associated website; provides a free, user-friendly software library, enabling the reader to experiment with forests ina hands-on manner.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 392 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Failure of components or systems must be prevented by both designers and operators of systems, but knowledge of the underlying mechanisms is often lacking. Since the relation between the expected usage of a system and its failure behavior is unknown, unexpected failures often occur, with possibly serious financial and safety consequences.Principles of Loads and Failure Mechanisms. Applications in Maintenance, Reliability and Design provides a complete overview of all relevant failure mechanisms, ranging from mechanical failures like fatigue and creep to corrosion and electric failures. Both qualitative and quantitative descriptions of the mechanisms and their governing loads enable a solid assessment of a system¿s reliability in a given or assumed operational context.Moreover, a unique range of applications of this knowledge in the fields of maintenance, reliability and design are presented. The benefits of understanding the physics of failure are demonstrated for subjects like condition monitoring, predictive maintenance, prognostics and health management, failure analysis and reliability engineering. Finally, the role of these mechanisms in design processes and design for maintenance are illustrated.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 316 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -Due to its inherent time-scale locality characteristics, the discrete wavelet transform (DWT) has received considerable attention in signal/image processing. Wavelet transforms have excellent energy compaction characteristics and can provide perfect reconstruction. The shifting (translation) and scaling (dilation) are unique to wavelets. Orthogonality of wavelets with respect to dilations leads to multigrid representation. As the computation of DWT involves filtering, an efficient filtering process is essential in DWT hardware implementation. In the multistage DWT, coefficients are calculated recursively, and in addition to the wavelet decomposition stage, extra space is required to store the intermediate coefficients. Hence, the overall performance depends significantly on the precision of the intermediate DWT coefficients. This work presents new implementation techniques of DWT, that are efficient in terms of computation, storage, and with better signal-to-noise ratio in the reconstructed signal. 104 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -This work focuses on central catadioptric systems, from the early step of calibration to high-level tasks such as 3D information retrieval. The book opens with a thorough introduction to the sphere camera model, along with an analysis of the relation between this model and actual central catadioptric systems. Then, a new approach to calibrate any single-viewpoint catadioptric camera is described. This is followed by an analysis of existing methods for calibrating central omnivision systems, and a detailed examination of hybrid two-view relations that combine images acquired with uncalibrated central catadioptric systems and conventional cameras. In the remaining chapters, the book discusses a new method to compute the scale space of any omnidirectional image acquired with a central catadioptric system, and a technique for computing the orientation of a hand-held omnidirectional catadioptric camera. 136 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. This item is printed on demand - Print on Demand Titel. Neuware -There are plenty of challenging and interesting problems open for investigation in the field of switched systems. Stability issues help to generate many complex nonlinear dynamic behaviors within switched systems. The authors present a thorough investigation of stability effects on three broad classes of switching mechanism: arbitrary switching where stability represents robustness to unpredictable and undesirable perturbation, constrained switching, including random (within a known stochastic distribution), dwell-time (with a known minimum duration for each subsystem) and autonomously-generated (with a pre-assigned mechanism) switching; and designed switching in which a measurable and freely-assigned switching mechanism contributes to stability by acting as a control input.For each of these classes this book propounds: detailed stability analysis and/or design, related robustness and performance issues, connections to other control problems and many motivating and illustrative examples.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 276 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. This item is printed on demand - Print on Demand Titel. Neuware -This text reviews the issues involved in handling and processing digital documents. Examining the full range of a document¿s lifetime, the book covers acquisition, representation, security, pre-processing, layout analysis, understanding, analysis of single components, information extraction, filing, indexing and retrieval. Features: provides a list of acronyms and a glossary of technical terms; contains appendices covering key concepts in machine learning, and providing a case study on building an intelligent system for digital document and library management; discusses issues of security, and legal aspects of digital documents; examines core issues of document image analysis, and image processing techniques of particular relevance to digitized documents; reviews the resources available for natural language processing, in addition to techniques of linguistic analysis for content handling; investigates methods for extracting and retrieving data/information from a document.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 324 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. This item is printed on demand - Print on Demand Titel. Neuware -In response to the growing importance of power system security and reliability, Transmission Grid Security proposes a systematic and probabilistic approach for transmission grid security analysis. The analysis presented uses probabilistic safety assessment (PSA) and takes into account the power system dynamics after severe faults. In the method shown in this book the power system states (stable, not stable, system breakdown, etc.) are connected with the substation reliability model. In this way it is possible to:estimate the system-wide consequences of grid faults;identify a chain of events that might lead to blackout; andrank the importance of different substation components at the system level.Transmission Grid Security also presents the main features and basic mathematics of PSA. It provides the reader with up-to-date knowledge of the regulatory issues affecting the security of transmission grids in Europe.Transmission Grid Security gives a practical method for the security analysis of transmission grids, making it a valuable text for engineers and system operators, as well as postgraduate students. It includes basic information and detailed modules for creating a reliability model that takes into account all the basic operations and components needed after grid faults.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 180 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -Interaction with computers is becoming an increasingly ubiquitous and public affair. With more and more interactive digital systems being deployed in places such as museums, city streets and performance venues, understanding how to design for them is becoming ever more pertinent. Crafting interactions for these public settings raises a host of new challenges for human-computer interaction, widening the focus of design from concern about an individual's dialogue with an interface to also consider the ways in which interaction affects and is affected by spectators and bystanders. Designing Interfaces in Public Settings takes a performative perspective on interaction, exploring a series of empirical studies of technology at work in public performance environments. From interactive storytelling to mobile devices on city streets, from digital telemetry systems on fairground rides to augmented reality installation interactive, the book documents the design issues emerging from the changing role of technology as it pushes out into our everyday lives. Building a design framework from these studies and the growing body of literature examining public technologies, this book provides a new perspective for understanding human-computer interaction. Mapping out this new and challenging design space, Designing Interfaces in Public Settings offers both conceptual understandings and practical strategies for interaction design practitioners, artists working with technology, and computer scientists. 208 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -Fatigue and Fracture Reliability Engineering is an attempt to present an integrated and unified approach to reliability determination of fatigue and fracture behaviour, incorporating probability, statistics and other related areas.A series of original and practical approaches, are suggested in Fatigue and Fracture Reliability Engineering, including new techniques in determining fatigue and fracture performances. It also carries out an investigation into static and fatigue properties, and into the failure mechanisms of unnotched and notched CFR composite laminates with different lay-ups to optimize the stacking sequence effect. Further benefits include:a novel convergence-divergence counting procedure to extract all load cycles from a load history of divergence-convergence waves;practical scatter factor formulae to determine the safe fatigue crack initiation and propagation lives from the results of a single full-scale test of a complete structure; anda nonlinear differential kinetic model for describing the dynamical behaviour of an atom at a fatigue crack tip.Fatigue and Fracture Reliability Engineering is intended for practising engineers in marine, civil construction, aerospace, offshore, automotive and chemical industries. It is also useful reading for researchers on doctoral programmes, and is appropriate for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate programmes in any mechanically-oriented engineering discipline. 228 pp. Englisch.