springer mär 2008 (147 Ergebnisse)

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Numbers have fascinated people for centuries. They are familiar to everyone, forming a central pillar of our understanding of the world, yet the number system was not presented to us ¿gift-wrapped¿ but, rather, was developed over millennia. Peter Higgins distills centuries of work into one delightful narrative that celebrates the mystery of numbers and explains how different kinds of numbers arose and why they are useful. Full of historical snippets and interesting examples, the book ranges from simple number puzzles and magic tricks, to showing how ideas about numbers relate to real-world problems, such as: How are our bank account details kept secure when shopping over the internet What are the chances of winning at Russian roulette; or of being dealt a flush in a poker hand As our understanding of numbers continues to evolve, this book invites us to rediscover the mystery and beauty of numbers and reminds us that the story of numbers is a tale with a long way to run.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 336 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Compression is an option naturally selected when faced with problems of high costs or restricted space. This book offers readers a succinct and reader-friendly foundation to the most important topics in the field of data compression.Divided into two parts, Part I presents the basic approaches to data compression and describes a few popular techniques and methods that are commonly used to compress data. The reader discovers essential concepts, such as variable-length and prefix codes, statistical distribution and run-length codes. Part II concentrates on advanced techniques, such as arithmetic coding, orthogonal transforms, subband transforms and Burrows-Wheeler transform.Complete and clear, this book will be the perfect reference for advanced undergraduates in computer science and requires a minimum of mathematics. An author-maintained website provides readers with errata and auxiliary material.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 328 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -For over fifty years satellites have circled the Earth and spacecraft have been used to explore our solar system. Every day ordinary people around the world use satellites for satellite television, GPS navigation, weather forecasts and other technologies. Many people are curious about how something gets into space - and stays there - and what the terms used in the media actually mean. Also, with the advent of space tourism, some people are starting to wonder if they too could go into space and what it would be like.Here, the author explains the basics of what is involved, from the initial idea to the completion of the mission.The beauty of this text, written by an engineer who is also an accomplished science writer, is that it covers the subject comprehensively, and yet is almost entirely descriptive and non-mathematical.It deals with all aspects of spaceflight, from how to leave the Earth (including the design of the rocket, mission planning, navigation and communication), to life in space and the effects of weightlessness.The book also includes sections describing how an amateur can track satellites and understand their trajectories, and on the future of spaceflight, touching on what is, and what is not, possible given present and expected future technologies.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 368 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -David Harland opens with a review of the robotic probes, namely the Rangers which returned television before crashing into the Moon, the Surveyors which 'soft landed' in order to investigate the nature of the surface, and the Lunar Orbiters which mapped prospective Apollo landing sites. He then outlines the historic landing by Apollo 11 in terms of what was discovered, and how over the next several missions the program was progressively geared up to enable the final three missions each to spend three days on comprehensive geological investigations. He concludes with a review of the robotic spacecraft that made remote-sensing observations of the Moon. Although aimed at the enthusiast, and can be read as an adventure in exploration, the book develops the scientific theme of lunar geology, and therefore will be of use as background reading for undergraduate students of planetary sciences. In addition, with the prospect of a resumption of human missions, it will help journalists understand what Apollo achieved after the 'flags and footprints' of the Apollo 11 landing in July 1969 and will commemorate the fortieth anniversary of that momentous event.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 460 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -OpenGL Graphics Through Applications is a practical introduction to Computer Graphics with an emphasis on understanding through practice. Throughout the book, theory is followed by implementation using C / C++ and complete programs are provided on the Springer website.A procedural approach has been taken to algorithmic development while taking an object oriented approach when building artefacts from simple objects. The book covers a range of topics including: (1) image processing, (2) artefact construction, (3) introductory animation, (4) texturing, (5) curves surfaces and patterns.Robert Whitrow has taught computing courses from first year undergraduate to postgraduate MSc at a range of different institutions.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 348 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -This volume contains the proceedings of the 9th International Symposium on Functional and Logic Programming (FLOPS 2008), held in Ise, Japan, April 14¿16, 2008 at the Ise City Plaza. FLOPS is a forum for research on all issues concerning functional progr- ming and logic programming. In particular it aims to stimulate the cro- fertilization as well as integration of the two paradigms. The previous FLOPS meetings took place in Fuji-Susono (1995), Shonan (1996), Kyoto (1998), Tsukuba(1999),Tokyo(2001),Aizu (2002),Nara(2004),and againFuji-Susono (2006). Since its 1999 edition, FLOPS proceedings have been published by Springer in itsLecture Notes in Computer Science series,as volumes 1722,2024, 2441, 2998 and 3945, respectively. In response to the call for papers, 59 papers were submitted. Each paper was reviewedbyatleastthreeProgramCommittee members,withthe helpofexpert external reviewers. The Program Committee meeting was conducted electro- cally, for a period of two weeks in December 2007. After careful and thorough discussion,the ProgramCommittee selected20 papers(33%)for presentationat theconference.Inadditiontothe20contributedpapers,thesymposiumincluded talks by three invited speakers: Peter Dybjer (Chalmers University of Techn- ogy), Naoki Kobayashi (Tohoku University) and Torsten Schaub (University of Potsdam). 352 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (Ajax) is a web technique used to transfer data between a browser and server asynchronously without posting the web page to the server. 'Asynchronously' implies that the processing of the web page continues while the Ajax request is sent to the server and a response is received from the server. The web page, or section(s) of the web page, is refreshed with the Ajax response without reposting the web page. Ajax has the following advantages over non-Ajax web applications. Reduced response time and reduced server load, as the complete web page is not reposted. Reduced bandwidth of web applications as only data is transferred and the HTML format is applied in the browser. Separation of data, format and style.The book covers web search and RSS Feed with Ajax as well as form validation with Ajax frameworks for Java, JSP, JSF, and PHP. It discusses using Ajax in Oracle JDeveloper and is IDE based. JDeveloper has the following advantages over Eclipse IDE. JDeveloper 11g provides an integrated JavaScript Editor for Ajax/Web development. It also provides a PHP extension. JDeveloper has a built-in support for JSF and for JDBC.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 240 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -As we enter the third decade of the World Wide Web (WWW), the textual revolution has seen a tremendous change in the availability of online information. Finding inf- mation for just about any need has never been more automatic¿just a keystroke or mouseclick away. While the digitalization and creation of textual materials continues at light speed, the ability to navigate, mine, or casually browse through documents too numerous to read (or print) lags far behind. What approaches to text mining are available to ef ciently organize, classify, label, and extract relevant information for today¿s information-centric users What algorithms and software should be used to detect emerging trends from both text streamsandarchives Thesearejustafewoftheimportantquestionsaddressedatthe Text Mining Workshop held on April 28, 2007, in Minneapolis, MN. This workshop, the fth in a series of annual workshops on text mining, was held on the nal day of the Seventh SIAM International Conference on Data Mining (April 26¿28, 2007). With close to 60 applied mathematicians and computer scientists representing universities, industrial corporations, and government laboratories, the workshop f- tured both invited and contributed talks on important topics such as the application of techniques of machine learning in conjunction with natural language processing, - formation extraction and algebraic/mathematical approaches to computational inf- mation retrieval. The workshop¿s program also included an Anomaly Detection/Text Mining competition. NASA Ames Research Center of Moffett Field, CA, and SAS Institute Inc. of Cary, NC, sponsored the workshop.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 260 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -The World Wide Web has become part of our everyday life and information retrieval and data mining on the Web are now of enormous practical interest. The algorithms supporting these activities combine the view of the Web as a text repository and as a graph, induced in various ways by links among pages, links among hosts, or other similar networks. The aim of the 4th Workshop on Algorithms and Models for the Web-Graph (WAW 2006)wasto further the understanding of these Web-induced graphsand stimulate the developmentofhigh-performancealgorithmsandapplicationsthat use the graph structure of the Web. The workshop was meant both to foster an exchange of ideas among the diverse set of researchers already involved in this topic and to act as an introduction for the larger community to the state of the art in this area. The workshop program included invited keynote talks by Fan Chung-Graham (UCSD), Soumen Chakrabarti (IITB), Walter Willinger (ATT Research) and Filippo Menczer (Indiana). WAW 2006tookplaceonNovember30 andDecember 1 at the Ban Inter- tionalResearchInstitute(BIRS),inBan ,Alberta(Canada).Itwasthefourthin a seriesof verysuccessful workshopson the Web graph.WAW 2002 (Vancouver) and 2004 (Rome) were held in conjunction with the Annual IEEE Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science (FOCS). WAW 2003 (Budapest) was held in conjunction with the 12th International World Wide Web Conference.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 184 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -ETAPS2008wasthe11thinstanceoftheEuropeanJointConferencesonTheory and Practice of Software. ETAPS is an annual federated conference that was established in 1998 by combining a number of existing and new conferences. This yearit comprised ve conferences (CC, ESOP,FASE, FOSSACS, TACAS), 22satelliteworkshops(ACCAT,AVIS,Bytecode,CMCS,COCV,DCC,FESCA, FIT, FORMED, GaLoP, GT-VMT, LDTA, MBT, MOMPES, PDMC, QAPL, RV,SafeCert,SC,SLA++P,WGT,andWRLA),ninetutorials,andseveninvited lectures (excluding those that were speci c to the satellite events). The ve main conferences received 571 submissions, 147 of which were accepted, giving an overall acceptance rate of less than 26%, with each conference below 27%. Congratulationsthereforetoallthe authorswhomadeittothe nalprogramme! I hope that most of the other authors will still have found a way of participating in this exciting event, and that you will all continue submitting to ETAPS and contributing to make of it the best conference in the area. The events that comprise ETAPS address various aspects of the system - velopment process, including speci cation, design, implementation, analysis and improvement. The languages, methodologies and tools which support these - tivities are all well within its scope. Di erent blends of theory and practice are represented, with an inclination towards theory with a practical motivation on the one hand and soundly based practice on the other. Many of the issues involved in software design apply to systems in general, including hardware s- tems, and the emphasis on software is not intended to be exclusive.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 540 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -This volume contains the papers presented at the 12th Annual International ConferenceonREsearchin COmputationalMolecularBiology(RECOMB2008) held in Singapore, March 30-April 2, 2008. The RECOMB conference series was founded in 1997 by Sorin Istrail, Pavel Pevzner and Michael Waterman. Its history is summarized in the table herein. The general development of the RECOMB conference series is guided by a Steering Committee. RECOMB 2008 was hosted by the National University of Singapore and held at the University Cultural Centre. The Conference Chair was Limsoon Wong, who was supported by a 16-member-strong Organizing Committee. Out of 193 papers submitted to RECOMB 2008, the Program Committee (PC) selected 34 papers for presentation at the conference. The PC consisted of 46 members, who could further draw on the help of subreviewers. Three PC members with possible help of the external reviewers rst reviewed each paper, subsequently a Web-based discussion led to the nal selection of papers. This year, RECOMB and the journal Genome Research teamed up to - fer authors Genome Research as an alternative forum for publication. Appro- mately 55 of the RECOMB submissions, selected by a subset of the PC headed by Sera m Batzoglou, were forwarded to Genome Research for consideration.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 504 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -At the intersection of disruptive and accelerated change in the environment with globalization, business leaders around the world are trying to embrace change and incorporate innovative business models in the basics of their businesses. While innovation in their products and services remains a priority, it is the focus on rethinking how customer value is developed and delivered, and rethinking the profit formula and the financial model, and finally making corresponding changes to the core resources that are coming under increasing emphasis. This book presents new and innovative ideas and approaches that are increasingly becoming a key to business success in a rapidly changing world.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 344 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Information systems for manufacturing often follow a three-layer architecture based on an enterprise resource planning (ERP) layer (for order planning), a manufacturing execution system (MES) layer (for factory control), and a shop floor layer (for machine control). Future requirements on flexibility and adaptability require a much closer integration of ERP systems with the manufacturing floor. To achieve this integration, an MES often pushes customer orders to the manufacturing floor in a flexible manner. Moreover, a large amount of shop floor data needs to be filtered and fed into business planning applications such as production planning or supply chain management. Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) chips can play an important role in the collection and management of such data.Günther, Kletti, and Kubach explain the potential advantages of using RFID technology in a modern manufacturing and supply chain context. Areas of emphasis include integration of RFID data into legacy IT architectures, RFID-MES-ERP integration, and cost-benefit considerations. Their presentation is not restricted to intra-company production planning, but also emphasizes the benefits of inter-company collaboration. Six case studies based on SAP¿s ERP systems and MPDV¿s MES solution show how to successfully implement cross-company supply chain integration using RFID technology.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 180 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Intergenerational justice has been achieved if the opportunities of the members of the next generation to fulfill their needs are better than those of the members of the preceding generation. For this, each generation ought to leave for the next generation an amount of resources is at least equal to its own amount.The book deals with the complex relationship between intergenerational justice and demographic change and is characterized by its interdisciplinary approach. The authors come from a multitude of professional backgrounds and from several countries. This illustrates the implications of the demographic shift from many different perspectives. The book deals not only with the aspects of economic policy but also with environmental, societal and philosophical issues. The comprehensive volume is composed of five sections that pinpoint demographic trends, examine the impact of demographic changes on key indicators, investigate the relationship between key indicators and intergenerational justice, scrutinize population policies, and finally propose ways to implement long-term thinking on these issues.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 248 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -ETAPS2008wasthe11thinstanceoftheEuropeanJointConferencesonTheory and Practice of Software. ETAPS is an annual federated conference that was established in 1998 by combining a number of existing and new conferences. This yearit comprised ve conferences (CC, ESOP,FASE, FOSSACS, TACAS), 22satelliteworkshops(ACCAT,AVIS,Bytecode,CMCS,COCV,DCC,FESCA, FIT, FORMED, GaLoP, GT-VMT, LDTA, MBT, MOMPES, PDMC, QAPL, RV,SafeCert,SC,SLA++P,WGT,andWRLA),ninetutorials,andseveninvited lectures (excluding those that were speci c to the satellite events). The ve main conferences received 571 submissions, 147 of which were accepted, giving an overall acceptance rate of less than 26%, with each conference below 27%. Congratulationsthereforetoallthe authorswhomadeittothe nalprogramme! I hope that most of the other authors will still have found a way of participating in this exciting event, and that you will all continue submitting to ETAPS and contributing to make of it the best conference in the area. The events that comprise ETAPS address various aspects of the system - velopment process, including speci cation, design, implementation, analysis and improvement. The languages, methodologies and tools which support these - tivities are all well within its scope. Di erent blends of theory and practice are represented, with an inclination towards theory with a practical motivation on the one hand and soundly based practice on the other. Many of the issues involved in software design apply to systems in general, including hardware s- tems, and the emphasis on software is not intended to be exclusive.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 324 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -The 11th European Conference on Genetic Programming, EuroGP 2008, took place in Naples, Italy from 26 to 28 March in the University of Naples Congress Centre with spectacular views over the Gulf of Naples. This volume contains the papers for the 21 oral presentations and 10 posters that were presented during this time. A diverse array of topics were covered re ecting the current state of research in the eld of Genetic Programming, including the latest work on representations, theory, operators and analysis, evolvable hardware, agents and numerous applications. A rigorous, double-blind peer review process was employed, with each s- mission reviewed by at least three members of the international Program C- mittee. In total 61 papers were submitted this year, making an acceptance rate of 34% for full papers, and an overall acceptance rate of 51% including posters. S- mission of papers and the reviewing process were greatly assisted by the use of the MyReview management software originally developed by Philippe Rigaux, Bertrand Chardon and other colleagues from the Universit¿e Paris-Sud Orsay, France. We are especially grateful to Marc Schoenauer from INRIA, France for managing this system. Reviewers were asked to nominate keywords specifying their area of expertise, and these keywords were matched to those selected by the authors of the submitted papers with the assistance of the optimal assignment feature of the conference management software.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 392 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Metaheuristics have been shown to be e ective for di cult combinatorial - timization problems appearing in various industrial, economical, and scienti c domains. Prominent examples of metaheuristics are evolutionary algorithms, tabu search, simulated annealing, scatter search, memetic algorithms, variable neighborhood search, iterated local search, greedy randomized adaptive search procedures, ant colony optimization and estimation of distribution algorithms. Problems solved successfully include scheduling, timetabling, network design, transportation and distribution, vehicle routing, the travelling salesman pr- lem, packing and cutting, satis ability and general mixed integer programming. EvoCOPbeganin2001andhasbeenheldannuallysincethen.Itwasthe rst event speci cally dedicated to the application of evolutionary computation and related methods to combinatorial optimization problems. Originally held as a workshop,EvoCOPbecameaconferencein2004.Theeventsgaveresearchersan excellent opportunity to present their latest research and to discuss current - velopments and applications. Following the general trend of hybrid metaheur- tics and diminishing boundaries between the di erent classes of metaheuristics, EvoCOP has broadened its scope over the last years and invited submissions on any kind of metaheuristic for combinatorial optimization. 304 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -ThisvolumecontainstheproceedingsoftheInternetofThings(IOT)Conference 2008, the rst international conference of its kind. The conference took place in Zurich,Switzerland, March26¿28,2008. The term ¿Internet of Things¿ hascome to describe a number of technologies and researchdisciplines that enable the - ternet to reach out into the real world of physical objects. Technologies such as RFID, short-range wireless communications, real-time localization, and sensor networks are becoming increasingly common, bringing the ¿Internet of Things¿ into industrial, commercial, and domestic use. IOT 2008 brought together le- ing researchersand practitioners, from both academia and industry, to facilitate the sharing of ideas, applications, and research results. IOT 2008 attracted 92 high-quality submissions, from which the technical program committee accepted 23 papers, resulting in a competitive 25% acc- tance rate. In total, there were over 250 individual authors from 23 countries, representing both academic and industrial organizations. Papers were selected solely on the quality of their blind peer reviews. We were fortunate to draw on the combined experience of our 59 program committee members, coming from the most prestigious universities and research labs in Europe, North America, Asia, and Australia. Program committee members were aided by no less than 63 external reviewers in this rigorous process, in which each committee member wrote about 6 reviews. The total of 336 entered reviews resulted in an average of 3. 7 reviews per paper, or slightly more than 1000 words of feedback for each paper submitted. 400 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -A few years ago, in the Wren Library of Trinity College, Cambridge, I came across a remarkable but then little-known album of pencil and watercolour portraits. The artist of most (perhaps all) was Thomas Charles Wageman. Created during 1829¿1852, these portraits are of pupils of the famous mat- matical tutor William Hopkins. Though I knew much about several of the subjects, the names of others were then unknown to me. I was prompted to discover more about them all, and gradually this interest evolved into the present book. The project has expanded naturally to describe the Cambridge educational milieu of the time, the work of William Hopkins, and the later achievements of his pupils and their contemporaries. As I have taught applied mathematics in a British university for forty years, during a time of rapid change, the struggles to implement and to resist reform in mid-nineteenth-century Cambridge struck a chord of recognition. So, too, did debates about academic standards of honours degrees. And my own experiences, as a graduate of a Scottish university who proceeded to C- bridge for postgraduate work, gave me a particular interest in those Scots and Irish students who did much the same more than a hundred years earlier. As a mathematician, I sometimes felt frustrated at having to suppress virtually all of the ne mathematics associated with this period: but to have included such technical material would have made this a very different book.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 444 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -This volume contains the research papers, invited papers, and abstracts of - torials presented at the Second International Conference on Tests and Proofs (TAP 2008) held April 9¿11, 2008 in Prato, Italy. TAP was the second conference devoted to the convergence of proofs and tests. It combines ideas from both areasfor the advancement of softwarequality. To provethe correctnessof a programis to demonstrate, through impeccable mathematical techniques, that it has no bugs; to test a programis to run it with the expectation of discovering bugs. On the surface, the two techniques seem contradictory: if you have proved your program, it is fruitless to comb it for bugs; and if you are testing it, that is surely a sign that you have given up on anyhope of proving its correctness.Accordingly,proofs and tests have,since the onset of software engineering research, been pursued by distinct communities using rather di erent techniques and tools. And yet the development of both approaches leads to the discovery of c- mon issues and to the realization that each may need the other. The emergence of model checking has been one of the rst signs that contradiction may yield to complementarity, but in the past few years an increasing number of research e orts have encountered the need for combining proofs and tests, dropping e- lier dogmatic views of their incompatibility and taking instead the best of what each of these software engineering domains has to o er.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 208 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Inductive LogicProgramming¿byDeRaedtandKersting.Inasecondpart,itprovidesa detailedoverviewofthemostimportantprobabilisticlogiclearningformalisms and systems. We are very pleased and proud that the scientists behind the key probabilistic inductive logic programming systems (also those developed outside the APRIL project) have kindly contributed a chapter providing an overviewoftheircontributions.Thisincludes:relationalsequencelearningte- niques (Kersting et al.), using kernels with logical representations (Frasconi andPasserini),MarkovLogic(Domingosetal.), the PRISMsystem (Satoand Kameya),CLP(BN)(SantosCostaetal.),BayesianLogicPrograms(Kersting andDeRaedt),andtheIndependentChoiceLogic(Poole).Thethirdpartthen provides a detailed account of some show-caseapplications of probabilistic - ductive logic programming, more speci cally: in protein fold discovery (Chen et al.), haplotyping (Landwehr and Mielik¿ ainen) and systems biology (Fages andSoliman). The nal parttouchesupon sometheoreticalinvestigationsand VI Preface includes chaptersonbehavioralcomparisonof probabilisticlogicprogramming representations(MuggletonandChen)andamodel-theoreticexpressivityan- ysis(Jaeger).Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 356 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -ETAPS2008wasthe11thinstanceoftheEuropeanJointConferencesonTheory and Practice of Software. ETAPS is an annual federated conference that was established in 1998 by combining a number of existing and new conferences. This yearit comprised ve conferences (CC, ESOP,FASE, FOSSACS, TACAS), 22satelliteworkshops(ACCAT,AVIS,Bytecode,CMCS,COCV,DCC,FESCA, FIT, FORMED, GaLoP, GT-VMT, LDTA, MBT, MOMPES, PDMC, QAPL, RV,SafeCert,SC,SLA++P,WGT,andWRLA),ninetutorials,andseveninvited lectures (excluding those that were speci c to the satellite events). The ve main conferences received 571 submissions, 147 of which were accepted, giving an overall acceptance rate of less than 26%, with each conference below 27%. Congratulationsthereforetoallthe authorswhomadeittothe nalprogramme! I hope that most of the other authors will still have found a way of participating in this exciting event, and that you will all continue submitting to ETAPS and contributing to make of it the best conference in the area. The events that comprise ETAPS address various aspects of the system - velopment process, including speci cation, design, implementation, analysis and improvement. The languages, methodologies and tools which support these - tivities are all well within its scope. Di erent blends of theory and practice are represented, with an inclination towards theory with a practical motivation on the one hand and soundly based practice on the other. Many of the issues involved in software design apply to systems in general, including hardware s- tems, and the emphasis on software is not intended to be exclusive. 416 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -selectedpapershavebeenpublished asa SpringerLNCS(LectureNotes in C- puter Science) volume. 360 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -It is indeed a great pleasure to welcome you to the proceedings of the 12th International Workshop on Combinatorial Image Analysis (IWCIA 2008) held in Bu alo, NY, April 7¿9, 2008. Image analysis is a scienti c discipline providing theoretical foundations and methods for solving problems that appear in various areas of human practice, as diverseas medicine,robotics,defense,andsecurity.As a rule,the processeddata are discrete; thus, the ¿discrete,¿ or ¿combinatorial¿approachto image analysis appears to be a natural one and therefore its importance is increasing. In fact, combinatorial image analysis often provides various advantages (in terms of - ciency and accuracy) over the more traditional approaches based on continuous models requiring numeric computation. The IWCIA workshop series provides a forum for researchers throughout the world to present cutting-edge results in combinatorial image analysis, to discuss recent advances in this research eld, and to promote interaction with researchersfromothercountries.Infact,IWCIA2008retainedandevenenriched the international spirit of these workshops, that had successful prior meetings in Paris (France) 1991, Ube (Japan) 1992, Washington DC (USA) 1994, Lyon (France) 1995, Hiroshima (Japan) 1997, Madras (India) 1999, Caen (France) 2000, Philadelphia (USA) 2001, Palermo (Italy) 2003, Auckland (New Zealand) 2004, and Berlin (Germany) 2006. The IWCIA 2008 Program Committee was highly international as its members are renowned experts coming from 23 di - entcountries,andsubmissionscamefrom24countriesfromAfrica,Asia,Europe, North and South America. 464 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -The 13th International Conference on Virtual Systems and Multimedia was held in Brisbane, Australia in September 2007. This was the first time that VSMM was sited in Australia. The Australian conference theme reflected the country¿s cultural heritage, both recent and past ¿ Exchange and Experience in Space and Place. Of the many papers submitted under this theme we were able to identify three core sub-themes: Virtual Heritage, Applied Technologies and Virtual Environments. With a truly international flavor, these sub-themes covered the diverse areas of heritage site and artifact reconstruction and analysis, Australian Aboriginal cultural heritage, training, notions of spirituality, human ¿ computer interaction in virtual environments, 3D modelling, remote collaboration and virtual agents. This made for rich, varied and lively conference session debates. Ninety-seven papers were submitted. Of these, 56 were accepted for inclusion in the general conference proceedings. Of these, 18 were further reviewed and selected for this Springer publication. The authors of these papers were invited to revise their papers following feedback from the conference before inclusion in this volume. Many people contributed to the conference. We first wish to thank the Virtual Systems and Multimedia Society, who provided strong support to the whole process of the preparation of the conference. In particular, we would like to express our thanks to Takeo Ojika, Mario Santana Quintero and Hal Thwaites for their generous support and guidance.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 232 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Terrestrial fluids, earthquakes and volcanoes: The Hiroshi Wakita Volume II is a special publication to honor Professor Hiroshi Wakita for his scientific contribution to science and commemorate his 10th anniversary as Emeritus Professor at The University of Tokyo. This second special issue of Pure and Applied Geophysics consists of 10 original contributions written by researchers from Japan, Germany, Italy, Costa Rica, Sweden, El Salvador, Turkey, USA, Greece, and Spain. The discussed subjects include research on earthquake-related hydrologic and geochemical observed temporal changes, diffuse degassing in active tectonic and volcanic settings, the observed changes on gas emission and temperature prior volcanic eruptions, magma degassing signature in the groundwater system of active volcanic, and the development of recent technology for continous monitoring of volcanic gases. The Hiroshi Wakita volume II will be useful to students and professional researchers who are interested in the role of terrestrial fluids in earthquakes and volcanic activity.Springer Basel AG in Springer Science + Business Media, Heidelberger Platz 3, 14197 Berlin 208 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -This volume presents the latest developmentsinthegrowingareaofresearch at the interface of argumentation theory and multiagent systems. This area has grown tremendously with many papers appearing in the recent special issue of the Arti cial Intelligence Journal on ¿Argumentation¿ and the special issue of IEEE Intelligent Systems on ¿Argumentation Technologies. ¿ Over the last few years, argumentation has been gaining increasing imp- tance in multiagent systems, mainly as a vehicle for facilitating rational int- action (i. e. , interaction which involves the giving and receiving of reasons). This is because argumentation provides tools for designing, implementing, and a- lyzing sophisticated forms of interaction among rational agents. Argumentation hasmadesolidcontributionstothe practiceofmultiagentdialogues. Application domains include: legal disputes, business negotiation, labor disputes, team f- mation, scienti c inquiry, deliberative democracy, ontology reconciliation, risk analysis, scheduling, and logistics. A single agent may also use argumentation techniquestoperformitsindividualreasoningbecauseitneedstomak edecisions under complex preferences policies, in a highly dynamic environment. Most papers in this volume appeared in the proceedings of the 4th Int- national Workshop on Argumentation in Multiagent Systems (ArgMAS 2007), which took place in Honolulu, USA, in conjunction with the International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS). This continues the success of the ArgMAS workshop series, which took place in t- dem with AAMAS in New York in 2004,Utrecht in 2005,and Hakodatein 2006.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 252 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - Computational geometry emerged from the eld of algorithms design and analysis in the late 1970s. It has grown into a recognized discipline with its own journals, conferences, and a large community of active researchers. The success of the eld as a research discipline can on the one hand be explained from the beauty of the problems studied and the solutions obtained, and, on the other hand, by the many application domains-computer graphics, geographic information systems (GIS), robotics, and others-in which geometric algorithms play a fundamental role. For many geometric problems the early algorithmic solutions were either slow or dif cult to understand and implement. In recent years a number of new algorithmic techniques have been developed that improved and simpli ed many of the previous approaches. In this textbook we have tried to make these modern algorithmic solutions accessible to a large audience. The book has been written as a textbook for a course in computational geometry,but it can also be used for self-study.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Ernest Rutherford (New Zealand¿British physicist, 1871¿1937), the 1908 Nobel Laureate who discovered the existence of atomic nuclei, is famously quoted as having said: ¿Physics is the only real science. All the rest is butter y collecting.¿ Or something to that e ect. I like to include this quote in my introductory remarks at the rst class meetings of the physics courses I teach. I have seen that there are those whointerpret this as a put-down of amateurs (butter y collectors) in science. However, my own interp- tation of Rutherford¿s statement is that he is claiming that, except for physics, all of the rest of science is involved merely in collecting facts and classifying them (butter y collecting). It is physics, uniqueamong the sciences, that is attempting to nd explanations for the classi ed data. The periodic table of the chemical elements, originally proposed by DmitriIvanovichMendeleev(Russianchemist,1834¿1907), presentsan example of this. Chemists toiled to discover the chemical elements and their properties and then classi ed the elements in the scheme that is expressed by the periodic table. Here was the chemists¿ butter y collecting. It took physicists to explaintheperiodictablebymeansof quantum theory.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 320 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Mathematical Control Theory is a branch of Mathematics having as one of its main aims the establishment of a sound mathematical foundation for the c- trol techniques employed in several di erent elds of applications, including engineering,economy,biologyandsoforth. Thesystemsarisingfromthese- plied Sciences are modeled using di erent types of mathematical formalism, primarily involving Ordinary Di erential Equations, or Partial Di erential Equations or Functional Di erential Equations. These equations depend on oneormoreparameters thatcanbevaried,andthusconstitute thecontrol - pect of the problem. The parameters are to be chosen soas to obtain a desired behavior for the system. From the many di erent problems arising in Control Theory, the C. I. M. E. school focused on some aspects of the control and op- mization ofnonlinear, notnecessarilysmooth, dynamical systems. Two points of view were presented: Geometric Control Theory and Nonlinear Control Theory. The C. I. M. E. session was arranged in ve six-hours courses delivered by Professors A. A. Agrachev (SISSA-ISAS, Trieste and Steklov Mathematical Institute, Moscow), A. S. Morse (Yale University, USA), E. D. Sontag (Rutgers University, NJ, USA), H. J. Sussmann (Rutgers University, NJ, USA) and V. I. Utkin (Ohio State University Columbus, OH, USA). We now brie y describe the presentations. Agrachev¿s contribution began with the investigation of second order - formation in smooth optimal control problems as a means of explaining the variational and dynamical nature of powerful concepts and results such as Jacobi elds, Morse¿s index formula, Levi-Civita connection, Riemannian c- vature.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 376 pp. Englisch.