springer springer jan 2001 (343 Ergebnisse)

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - Strategy and Management of Industrial Brands is the first book devoted to business-to-business products and services.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - Lo, soul! seest thou not God's purpose from the first The earth to be spann'd, connected by net-work From Passage to India! Walt Whitman, 'Leaves of Grass', 1900. The Internet is growing at a tremendous rate today. New services, such as telephony and multimedia, are being added to the pure data-delivery framework of yesterday. Such high demands on capacity could lead to a 'bandwidth-crunch' at the core wide-area network resulting in degra dation of service quality. Fortunately, technological innovations have emerged which can provide relief to the end-user to overcome the In ternet's well-known delay and bandwidth limitations. At the physical layer, a major overhaul of existing networks has been envisaged from electronic media (such as twisted-pair and cable) to optical fibers - in the wide area, in the metropolitan area, and even in the local area set tings. In order to exploit the immense bandwidth potential of the optical fiber, interesting multiplexing techniques have been developed over the years. Wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) is such a promising tech nique in which multiple channels are operated along a single fiber si multaneously, each on a different wavelength. These channels can be independently modulated to accommodate dissimilar bit rates and data formats, if so desired. Thus, WDM carves up the huge bandwidth of an optical fiber into channels whose bandwidths (1-10 Gbps) are compati ble with peak electronic processing speed.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - I Global Overview and Policies.- Global Prospects on Deforestation and Forest Transition.- II Forest Transition.- South-North Challenges in Global Forestry.- Deforestation and Forest Transition:Theory and Evidence in China.- From Deforestation to Reforestation in New England, United States.- Forest Plantations in the South: Environmental-Economic Evaluation.- III Underlying Causes of Deforestation.- Modeling Causes of Deforestation with 477 Subnational Units.- Demographic and Ecological Factors in FAO Tropical Deforestation Modelling.- Causes of Brazilian Amazon Deforestation.- Deforestation and Forest Policies in Indonesia.- Deforestation and Agricultural Expansion in Mhonda area, Tanzania.- Socio-Cultural History of Deforestation in Africa.- Contributors.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - This book should be of interest to scholars, researchers, students, and practitioners alike. Scholars, researchers, and students of personal relationship development will recognize in this book the first serious attempt in over 40 years to do a large-scale, longitudinal study of premarital factors that predict premarital breakup and marital quality; they should also appreciate our attempt to develop a theoretical rationale for predicted paths and to test those paths with the best available statistical tools. Practitioners-while generally not as interested in the intricacies of the statistical results-will find much that is useful to them as they help individuals and couples make decisions about their intimate relationships, their readiness for marriage, and how to increase the probability for marital success. Teachers, family life educators, premarital counselors, and clergy will find helpful our 'principles for practice,' particularly as described in Chapter 9, as they teach and counsel couples in any premarital situation. My interest in the development of relationships from premarital to marital probably began when I got married in 1972 and started to notice all of the characteristics my wife and I brought from our respective families and how our 'new beginning' as a married couple was in many ways the continuation of our premarital relationship, only more refined and more intense. My professional interest began when I did my doctoral dissertation in 198 1 on premarital predictors of early marital satisfaction (the results of that study are reported in Chapter 8).

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - The major strength of this book is its use of concrete examples that show how process redesign and the integration of enabling technologies have led to performance improvement and cost reduction in the largest healthcare system in the world and how these approaches transfer effectively to the private healthcare sector.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - This book reports one part of the findings tive, due to vested national and internation of the research project The Forests in the al interests. South and North - Transition from Defor This book presents a set of new research estation to Sustainable Forest Policies in findings emerging from our comprehensive Redressing Global Warming. The project research project. The book can be regard was coordinated and partly funded by the ed as a follow-up to and elaboration of our World Institute for Development Econom previous research published in 1996 by Kluwer Academic Publishers, Sustainable ics Research of the United Nations University (UNUIWIDER). The Finnish Forestry ChallengesforDeveloping Coun Forest Research Institute (METLA) and the tries, edited by Matti Palo and Gerardo Institute for Applied Economic Research Mery. (IPEAIDIPES) in Brazil were among the To facilitate coordination, interaction eleven implementing institutesthat contrib and exchange of information the project uted financially to the research. Director organized three workshops between 1994 Eustaquio J. Reis from IPEA served as the and 1996.The first and last workshops were External Project Coordinator in Rio de Ja held in Finland and the second one in In neiro while I acted as the External Project donesia, in cooperation with the Center for Director in Helsinki. International Forest Research (CIFOR).

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - Biophysical studies in the 1950ies and 1960ies led to the realization that the water permeability of certain biological membranes must be due to the presence of water transporting proteins. This hypothesis was confirmed in 1991 and 1992 with the pioneering discovery of the first molecular membrane water channel, CHIP28, by Agre and coworkers. This integral membrane protein, which is abundant in the erythrocyte membrane and in many epithelial cells, is now called aquaporin-1 or AQP1. Thus the terms water channel or aquaporin are synonymous. In July 2000 more than 200 researchers came together in Gothenburg, Sweden, for the `3rd International Conference on the Molecular Biology and Physiology of Water and Solute Transport' to discuss progress in this emerging research field. 58 different presentations from this conference are the basis for this book. Cumulatively, these 58 short chapters provide a balanced overview complementing numerous recent reviews in this field.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - Despite the fact that the human life of the past cannot be understood without taking into account its ecological relationships, environmental studies are often marginalised in archaeology. This is the first book that, by discussing the meaning and purpose we give to the expression `environmental archaeology', investigates the reasons for such a problem. This is achieved through the use of theoretical considerations and the aid of a number of case studies, which, by taking us from Anglo-Saxon England to pre-Columbian Venezuela, and from Classical Greece to late Antique Egypt, emphasise the potential of an integrated approach. The book is written by archaeologists with different backgrounds and is addressed to all researchers who care about the past relationship between people and the rest of Nature. Despite the complexity of some of the issues tackled, the book is written in an accessible manner and should be of interest to all students who want to understand the essence of archaeology beyond the boundary of the individual sub-disciplines.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - This volume contains a selection of 14 articles dealing with different aspects of biomonitoring and their relation to questions of global change. During the last 10 - 15 years, vegetation changes due to various causes have been more intensively studied in biological and environmental sciences. Especially aspects of global warming lead to a great variety of tasks for vegetation science (see e.g. the articles by Grabherr, Gottfried & Pauli; Carraro, Gianoni, Mossi, KlOtzli & Walther; Walther; Defila; Stampfli & Zeiter; Rothlisberger; Burga & Perret and Moller, WUthrich & Thannheiser). The different aspects of applied biomonitoring related to (possible) environmental changes concern various ecosystems, e.g. Central European beechwoods, Insubrian evergreen broad-leaved forests, thermophilous lowland deciduous forests, dry grasslands of the lower montane belt of the Ticino Alps, alpine mountain peaks of Switzerland and Austria, Swiss alpine timberline ecotones, and high arctic tundra vegetation. The volume is divided into three parts: A. General aspects of biomonitoring (contributions by KlOtzli; Wildi and Labasch & Otte) , B. Examples of applied biomonitoring in Germany and Switzerland (articles by Hakes; Herpin, Siewers, Kreimes & Markert; Defila; Stampfli & Zeiter; Rothlisberger and Ruoss, Burga & Eschmann), and C. Aspects of global change in the Alps and in the high arctic tundra (Grabherr, Gottfried & Pauli; Burga & Perret; Carraro, Gianoni, Mossi, KlOtzli & Walther; Walther and Moller, WUthrich & Thannheiser).

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - Future Directions in Postal Reform brings together leading practitioners, world-wide postal administrations, and the courier industry, as well as a number of regulators, academic economists, mailers, and lawyers, to examine some of the major policy and regulatory issues facing the postal and delivery industry. Issues addressed include international postal policy; the universal service obligation; regulation; competition, entry, and the role of scale and scope economies; the nature and role of cost analysis in postal service; productivity; interaction of law and economics; and future technologies and service standards.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - The design of computer systems to be embedded in critical real-time applications is a complex task. Such systems must not only guarantee to meet hard real-time deadlines imposed by their physical environment, they must guarantee to do so dependably, despite both physical faults (in hardware) and design faults (in hardware or software). A fault-tolerance approach is mandatory for these guarantees to be commensurate with the safety and reliability requirements of many life- and mission-critical applications. This book explains the motivations and the results of a collaborative project', whose objective was to significantly decrease the lifecycle costs of such fault tolerant systems. The end-user companies participating in this project already deploy fault-tolerant systems in critical railway, space and nuclear-propulsion applications. However, these are proprietary systems whose architectures have been tailored to meet domain-specific requirements. This has led to very costly, inflexible, and often hardware-intensive solutions that, by the time they are developed, validated and certified for use in the field, can already be out-of-date in terms of their underlying hardware and software technology.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - Computer models offer a means of interpreting and analyzing the dynamics of real-world systems ranging from population growth to ozone depletion and a new section on modeling in genetics. Dynamic Modeling introduces an approach to modeling that makes it a more practical, intuitive endeavor. The book enables readers to convert their understanding of a phenomenon to a computer model, and then to run the model and let it yield the inevitable dynamic consequences built into the structure of the model. Dynamic Modeling uses STELLA software to develop simulation models. Part I provides an introduction to modeling dynamic systems. Part II offers general methods for modeling. Parts III through VIII apply these methods to model real-world phenomena from chemistry, genetics, ecology, economics, and engineering. Dynamic Modeling offers a clear, approachable introduction to the modeling process, and will be of interest in any field where real problems can be illuminated by computer simulation.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - The triennial International Alloy Conferences (lACs) aim at the identification and promotion of the common elements developed in the study, either experimental, phenomenological, or theoretical and computational, of materials properties across materials types, from metals to minerals. To accomplish this goal, the lACs bring together scientists from a wide spectrum of materials science including experiment, theory, modeling, and computation, incorporating a broad range of materials properties. The first lAC, lAC-I, took place in Athens, Greece, June 16-21, 1996. The present volume of proceedings contains the papers presented at IAC-2, that took place in Davos, Switzerland, August 8-13, 1999. The topics in this book fall into several themes, which suggest a number of different classification schemes. We have chosen a scheme that classifies the papers in the volume into the categories Microstructural Properties; Ordering, Kinetics and Diffusion; Magnetic Properties and Elastic Properties. We have juxtaposed apparently disparate of revealing the dynamic character approaches to similar physical processes, in the hope of the processes under consideration. We hope this will invigorate new kinds of discussion and reveal challenges and new avenues to the description and prediction of properties of materials in the solid state and the conditions that produce them.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - It is an authentic privilege to have the opportunity to assemble and edit a new volume on 'Prolactin,' the first in several decades to be devoted to this fascinating hormone in all its aspects. The obvious clinical rationale for understanding prolactin (PRL) is the frequent occurrence of prolactinomas, the most common type of pituitary tumor. Fortunately, medical management of prolactinomas can be based on our under standing of the physiology of hypothalamic control of the lactotroph. Armed with this knowledge, therapies for proiactinomas are highly successful and well tolerated. Be cause of the historical and practical importance of knowledge regarding the hypothala mus-Iactotroph axis, the first chapters of this volume are dedicated to reviewing the physiology, development, and cell biology of lactotroph regulation. Chapters focusing on prolactinomas and related clinical issues follow these. PRL is the primary hormone that is responsible for 'parental care' in many verte brate species. This reproductive strategy is not unique to mammals, but it has devel oped through evolution to be the central distinguishing feature of the mammalian life cycle. Among the mammals, mice have become the most effective research species in recent years. This can be traced to the development of a wide range of methods for manipulating mouse genetics, and thereby influencing development, physiology and behavior. Mice also provide a profound illustration of the physiological challenges faced in maternity. Female mice undergo a post-partum estrous, and often are both pregnant and lactating simultaneously.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - Mitochondria from mammalian tissues possess an elaborate system for 2+ 2+ transporting Ca across their inner membrane which consists of Ca import, 2+ via the Ca uniporter, in response to the mitochondrial membrane 2+ + potential and of Ca release by an antiport system in exchange for H + 9,23 or Na (see Fig. l) . Because the uniporter is dependent upon the external 2+ 2+ 2+ 2+ Ca concentration ([Ca ]), mitochondria accumulate Ca until the [Ca ] o o 2+ decreases to the level at which the uniporter activity balances the Ca efflux. 2+ The [Ca ] at which the uniporter and efflux activities are equal is defined o the 'setpoint' andcorresponds to values between 0.3-3µM. 2+ Figure 1. The Ca transport system of the inner membrane of mammalian mitochondria. U, + 2+ + + uniporter. I, Na -independent efflux mechanism or Ca /2H exchanger. D, Na -dependent 2+ + efflux mechanism or Ca /2Na exchanger. PTP, permeability transition pore. FP, 11 flavoprotein. membrane potential. pH gradient. Adapted from .

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - The use of mathematical modeling te chniques in biomedical research is playing an increasingly important role aso ne seeks tounderstand the physiopathology of disease processes. This includes not only understand ing mechanisms ofphysiological processes, but diagnosis and treatment. In addition, its introduction in the study of genomics andproteomics is key in understanding the functional ch aracteristics of gene expression and protein assembly and secretion. Finally, with the increasing com plexity and associated cost of drug development, modeling techniques are being used to streamline the process. We have workedin c lose collaboration with colleagues in biomedical and pharmaceutical research for a number of years applying and refining mathematical modeling techniques to avariety o f problems. In addition, we haveworked incollaboration with colleagues in applied m athematics and statistics to develop new algorithms to solve new setsof problems as theyemerge ino ur research efforts. Finally, we have worked with colleagues in computer sciencet o develop new software tools that bring the power of mathematical modeling to a broad research community. This books brings together mucho f what we have learned over the years, and presents the material in a format that should be accessible both to the novice reader and those desiring more detailed information about specific techniques.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -This volume provides detailed information on the key applications of spiral CT for each anatomical zone of the chest. Special emphasis is placed on those areas where spiral CT has documented advantages over conventional CT, and on its newer applications in CT angiography and three-dimensional CT imaging. Necessary background information on principles and technical considerations is also supplied. The expertise of the authors, the scope of the text, and the numerous high-quality illustrations combine to ensure that the volume will fully acquaint the reader with the current state of the art in the use of spiral CT in the evaluation of thoracic pathology.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Die moderne Werkstofftechnologie ist dadurch gekennzeichnet, daß sie in weit größerem Maße, als es früher möglich schien, metastabile Zustände für die Herstellung von Legierungen und eine damit verbundene Gefüge-Optimierung einsetzen kann. Beispiele sind das mechanische Legieren oder etwa die Erstarrung aus tief unterkühlten Schmelzen. Die Verwendung ungewöhnlicher Tie gelmaterialen (z. B. der Aerogele), behälterfreie Verfahren oder das Erschmelzen unter Schwere losigkeit gestatten neue Einblicke, neue Anwendungsmöglichkeiten und weiteres Entwicklungs potential auf sehr breiter Front, auch in Richtung praktischer Fragestellungen. Weiterhin ist an zumerken, daß die moderne rechnerische Simulation von Gieß- und Erstarrungsvorgängen insbe sondere in der erstarrungstechnologischen Industrie einen Entwicklungsschub hervorruft, der auf einer gesunden theoretischen Basis aufbaut. Diese Entwicklung führt zu innovativen Werkstoffen und neuartigen Bauteilen, welche beide unter Nutzung ebenfalls entsprechend modifizierter Pro zeßtechniken entstehen. Die dafür erforderliche theoretische Grundlage profitiert insbesondere von einem Zusammenwirken mehrerer wissenschaftlicher Disziplinen. Die organisatorische und finanzielle Grundlage für eine solche interdisziplinäre Zusammen arbeit wurde 1993 durch die Einrichtung des Graduiertenkollegs 'Schmelze, Erstarrung, Grenz flächen' geschaffen. Das Kolleg wurde begleitet von einer Vorlesungsreihe, die die Fachgebiete der beteiligten Institute, ihrer Stipendiaten und Kollegiaten widerspiegelt. Von der Thermodyna mik der Schmelze, der Fluiddynamik und Transportphänomenen über die Kinetik der Erstarrung, mit eingeschlossen auch Seigerungsvorgänge sowie die damit verbundenen Wachstumsfrontmor phologien, bis hin zu Vorgängen im Festkörper, insbesondere ausgelöst durch Grenzflächen (Ost waldreifung, Korngrenzendynamik), wurde vieles verknüpft, was nicht oft in einem Atemzug ge nannt wird. Auch technologische Fragestellungen wurden nicht ausgelassen, wie beispielsweise die Prozesse in der Gießereitechnik. 420 pp. Deutsch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -In this book the author considers data from both early and later schools of Buddhism in an attempt to provide an overall characterization of the structure of Buddhist ethics. The importance of ethics in the Buddha's teachings is widely acknowledged, but the pursuit of ethical ideals has up to now been widely held to be secondary to the attainment of knowledge. Drawing on the Aristotelian tradition of ethics the author argues against this intellectualization of Buddhism and in favour of a new understanding of the tradition in terms of which ethics plays an absolutely central role. In the course of this reassessment many basic concepts such as karma, nirvana, and the Eightfold Path, are reviewed and presented in a fresh light. The book will be of interest to readers with a background in either Buddhist studies or comparative religious ethics. 269 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -It is now no longer necessary to argue the importance of agent technology. Be- des numerous conferences and workshops on speci c aspects of agent technology there are also many companies that are exploring its exploitation possibilities. In the light of these developments and in order to foster the transfer of agent technology from research labs to business, the EU has funded a network of exc- lence' devoted to agent technology. This network of excellence, called AgentLink , aims at bringing together research groups from d- ferent countries and industrial developers. The ultimate goal is to create synergy among the di erent projects and groups to improve the competence of European industry and the excellence of academia. In order to achieve this goal, Agent- Link organises educational activities (summer schools), builds agent-related - terature repositories, and facilitates collaboration between member nodes. One of the main activities related to the last point are the regular meetings of S- cial Interest Groups' (SIGs). At this moment six SIGs are functioning, focusing on topics ranging from agent based social simulation to intelligent agents for telecommunications applications and telematics. The current book combines two results from the activities of the SIG on Agent Mediated Electronic Commerce'. This SIG gathers the main research groups and industrial partners interested in the use of agent technology in el- tronic commerce. First and foremost the book contains a roadmap of research and current technological developments in the area of agent-mediated electronic commerce. 252 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware 980 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -Self-adaptive software evaluates its own behavior and changes its behavior when the evaluation indicates that the software does not accomplish what it is intended to do or when better functionality or better performance is possible. The self-adaptive approach in software engineering builds on well-known features like the use of errors and the handling of exceptions in languages like Lisp or Java and aims at improving the robustness of software systems by gradually adding new features of self-adaption and autonomity.This book originates from the First International Workshop on Self-Adaptive Software, IWSAS 2000, held in Oxford, UK in April 2000. The revised full papers presented in the volume together with an introductory survey by the volume editors assess the state of the art in this emerging new field and set the scene for future research and development work. 264 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -This year's meeting marked the Eighth International Symposium on Graph D- wing. The organizing and program committees worked hard to make this year's symposium possible, and we were delighted that so many people came to - lonial Williamsburg, Virginia, for three days of the latest results in the eld of graph drawing. As in previous years, the review process was quite competitive. We accepted 30 out of 53 regular-length submissions, and 5 out of 15 short submissions, for a total acceptance ratio of 35 out of 68, or 51%. This year's program featured several new developments in the eld. Four di erent approaches for handling very large graphs were presented in a session on force-directed layout. Two sessions were devoted to the latest advances in orthogonal graph drawing. And alongside the usual mix of theory and practice papers we had several contributions based on empirical studies of users and of systems. Our invited talks were given by two speakers who were new to most members of the GD community, but who work in areas that are closely related to graph drawing. Professor Colin Ware of the University of New Hampshire told us how knowledge of human visual perception is useful for the design of e ective data visualizations. And Professor David Jensen of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst talked about the process of knowledge discovery from graphs, a process that involves more than just graph drawing and visualization. 436 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -Ranging from the early modern period to the present day, this edited collection uses biography as a window into the history of the Arab-Islamic Middle East. The contributors reinterpret the lives of the famous such as George Antonius and Doria Shafiq and rediscover the lives of individuals previously consigned to the margins of history, including the notorious individuals of 17th-century Syria and the 20th-century Palestinian activist Kulthum Auda. The book also draws on the biographical tradition of Arab historical writing, including biographical dictionaries, for an understanding of the region s social and cultural history. Interdisciplinary in scope and theoretically informed, this volume brings to light individual lives which are essential to an understanding of Middle Eastern history. 245 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -The Coming of Globalization provides the basic context for understanding what globalization means for human society in the contemporary world. It first describes the underlying processes which have led to economic, political and cultural globalization and then sets out the present stage in the evolution of these processes in three vital areas: global capitalism and global markets; the changing relationship between national governments and their peoples; and the conduct of global international relationships. The author concludes by discussing some likely outcomes, both good and bad. 155 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -This book explores the diversity of social care provision for older people in six contrasting European countries. Using a common descriptive and analytical framework, the book examines how the organisation and delivery of care are shaped by the wider welfare regime. This is discussed at the level of both practice and policy, including detailed case studies illustrating key features of social care in each country. The authors conclude by showing how the concept of social exclusion can inform service development. 226 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech. So the LORD scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to built the city. (Genesis 11.7-8) 1.1 Static Focal Points 1.1.1 Coordination In real life, people quite often face situations in which they prefer to act in the same way, but they are not particular about the concrete way of acting. Some examples are given below: Credit cards: Buyers want to possess the credit cards potential sellers do accept. Also, sellers wish to have contracted the credit card company the credit cards of which potential customers usually carry along. For both, basically, it is all the same which credit card this is. What matters is that both choices coincide. Communication, information transmission: The transmission of in formation requires that the signals used have the same meaning to both the sender and the receiver. But it is inessential which signal has a certain mean ing. In verbal communication, this basically means that the people involved use the same (natural) language, though even then some ambiguities remain. Things are a bit more difficult for non-verbal communication, for example data transmission between computers-both sides have to use the same or compatible protocols. Again, what matters is the protocols to be the same for both sides. 152 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -New technologies and the growing flow of information create new conditions for individuals who use these technologies in the work place. The existence and application of modern IT systems can result in new forms of work, tasks that have actually emerged as a result of modern computer and other systems. This third Work Life 2000 Yearbook is pan-European in nature, and provides the researcher with valuable source material relating to the EU's response to the changing working environment. 252 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -New object-oriented technologies have been conceived and implemented over the past decade in order to manage complexity inherent in information systems development. Research has spanned from information systems modelling languages (UML and OML) to databases (ODMG), from programming languages (Java) to middleware technology (CORBA). A more widespread use of the Internet has led to the emergence and integration of various other technologies, such as XML and database connectivity tools, allowing businesses to access and exchange information over the Internet. The main theme of OOIS 2000 was 'Object-Technology and New Business Opportunities' and focused on research conducted in the area of effective information systems development for the promotion of e-commerce. Papers were invited from academics and practitioners. The thirty-nine papers accepted for oms 2000 are included in these proceedings. It is nice to see this year that the shift from centralised to distributed systems and the widespread access and use of the Internet has allowed the advent of new opportunities for businesses to exploit, in the form of e-commerce. 480 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -This volume is based on papers accepted for the Second International Workshop on Multi-agent-based Simulation (MABS-2000)federated with the Fourth Int- national Conference on Multi Agent Systems (ICMAS-2000)held in Boston in July 2000. The purpose of MABS-2000 was to investigate and develop the synergy - tween software engineering for multi-agent systems and agent-based social s- ulation. The papers included in the MABS-2000 workshop were selected either because they explore how agent interaction can be used to build multi-agent s- tems or they o er examples of problem-oriented (rather than technique-oriented) systems. No paper was selected if it speci ed a model or an issue to make it t a previously chosen technique. All of the papers in the volume have been reviewed and in many cases revised since the workshop. Two papers (by Edmonds and by Hales)as well as the editorial introduction have been added to those accepted for the workshop. As editors and workshop organisers, we are very grateful to the participants who engaged enthusiastically in the discussions about both individual papers and the issues facing the MABS community. Issues raised and positions taken in those discussions are reported in the editorial introduction. We are also grateful to the authors for their punctuality and the grace with which they received and responded to editorial comments and requests. Klaus Fischer, the ICMAS-2000 workshops chair, was exceptionally patient and diplomatic in reconciling our demands with the resources available. 280 pp. Englisch.