Search results for ""scientific publishing""

The field of nanotubes and nanowires is evolving at a rapid pace, with many potential applications in electronics, optics, and sensors, to name a few. In this book, various prominent researchers summarize our current understanding of these new materials systems, as well as some of these potential applications. A snapshot of the state-of-the-art in the field of nanowires and nanotubes, the contributions give an instructive mix of experimental, theoretical, and visionary material to give the reader an indication of where the field is now, and where it is going.With several points of view represented, including academic theoreticians, academic experimental device engineers, and industry researchers from well-known semiconductor companies, Nanotubes and Nanowires is an essential source of reference for physicists, chemists, materials scientists, and graduate students interested in keeping abreast of the latest developments in nanotechnology.

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This book provides a fascinating account of the accumulated knowledge of the mechanisms by which plants regulate their patterning. This is an exciting subject based on a novel endeavor, not least due to the rapid progress made in recent years in the diverse fields of genetics, molecular biology, microscopy, inter- and intracellular signaling, as well as our intimate knowledge of model plants (such as Arabidopsis).This book is unique in that it provides, in one volume, comprehensive information on all the main organs of flowering plants. There is no other book similar to this, written by a single author, that has been published in the last 10 years.The book contains updated information on the differentiation of the plant organs with respect to structure and molecular genetics, and the methodologies employed to investigate plant patterning are described in detail. Extensively illustrated with numerous figures, many of which are in color, the book will appeal to three main groups of readers: novices interested in plant patterning; plant biologists requiring a comprehensive understanding of differentiation in flowering plants; and graduate students in advanced courses.

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Ambition, genius, thought, imagination, love, hate, greed and, above all, consciousness ourselves as alive and as part of our world — all this is somehow enabled by the brain. The brain is the person, and if it goes wrong, a person is ruined. This book is about part of what the brain does — a role of which many of us are hardly aware, but one that has ensured, the survival of mankind. Despite famine, drought, wars, cold, infections and hostile environments, we survive as a species — though not always as individuals. All this time, our brains have been coping with what fate throws at us — a process that some call adaptation. How does the brain do it? How does it know what's needed? How does it enable us to provide that need? How much do we depend on our own brains, or on those of others?This book is different from other books on the brain. It deals with the brain's role in survival, rather than “higher” cognitive functions (such as language or thought). It describes the special part of the brain that keeps you alive: that makes you feel hungry when you need energy, makes you feel thirsty when you need water, drives you to reproduce so that your species survives, makes you fearful of things or individuals that might harm you, and defends you against adversity.

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Laser Cleaning II is the second of a series of books reporting research on the use of lasers for cleaning material surfaces and related micro-scale and nano-scale laser processing. It follows Laser Cleaning, edited by Boris Luk'yanchuk, published in 2002. The primary focus is on contaminant particle removal, nano-scale sized particles in particular, which represents a major cleaning challenge in industrial contexts and poses a broad range of research questions. The contributions provide stimulating answers to these questions, spanning the essential areas: the fundamental theoretical and experimental physics of light/particle/interface interactions, invention and development of laser cleaning techniques and diagnostics, simulations for important material and process systems, and laser cleaning and processing applications. Laser cleaning for art and cultural heritage conservation is a related, mature field of research which is also treated.

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The rapid progress in genomics and related technologies has increased interest in genetically modified organisms (GMOs). This concise and highly readable book equips the reader with essential information about what genes are, how they work, and how they can be modified and used in biotechnology. The book starts with a summary of the beginnings of life, the structure and components of living organisms, and an outline of genetic engineering.The coverage of human genetics spans race, human evolution and migration, the sex chromosomes, gene therapy, and forensic science. A separate chapter is devoted to the genetics and evolution of some of the major disease-causing organisms. On environmental genetics, the book considers the risks of releasing agricultural GM plants, as well as bioremediation and metal extraction by GM plants. Applications of genetic modification in agriculture — pest-resistant plants, herbicide resistance, and improved foods — are presented as part of a discussion on sustainable agriculture to emphasize the role played by GM plants in relation to chemicals, analytic techniques, and organic farming.

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The breadth, scope and volume of research in atomic, molecular and optical (AMO) physics have increased enormously in the last few years. Following the widespread use of pulsed lasers, certain newly emerging areas as well as selected mature subfields are ushering in a second renaissance.This volume focuses on current research in these crucial areas: cold atoms and Bose-Einstein condensates, quantum information and quantum computation, and new techniques for investigating collisions and structure. The topics covered include: the multireference coupled cluster method in quantum chemistry and the role of electronic correlation in nanosystems; laser cooling of atoms and theories of the Bose-Einstein condensate; and quantum computing and quantum information transfer using cold atoms and shaped ultrafast pulses. Other articles deal with recent findings in heavy ion collisions with clusters, time-of-flight spectroscopy techniques, and a specific example of a chaotic quantum system.The contributions will greatly assist in the sharing of specialized knowledge among experts and will also be useful for postgraduate students striving to obtain an overall picture of the current research status in the areas covered.

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Our Place in the Universe tells the story of our world, formation of the first galaxies and stars formed from great clouds containing the primordial elements made in the first few minutes; birth of stars, their lives and deaths in fiery supernova explosions; formation of the solar system, its planets and many moons; life on Earth, its needs and vicissitudes on land and in the seas; finally exoplanets, planets that surround distant stars. Interspersed in the text are short pieces on some of those who revealed these wonders to us.It is written in a very authoritative and readable form and contains more than 100 color prints of the marvelous galaxies, and nebula that have been taken from space-based and land-based telescopes carried by NASA missions, the European Space Agency, the European Southern Laboratory in Chile and many other sources.

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This book provides valuable insight and critical appraisal of key areas of intelligent transport systems (ITS) for land transport in Europe. ITS is becoming increasingly important as the means to improving the efficiency, safety and comfort of the transport of people and goods while at the same time helping to minimize environmental damage and the contribution of transport to global warming.The material draws on over four years of study by the ROSETTA project — part of the European Commission 5th Framework Program. For each of the 12 areas addressed, the book provides a vision for their application, identifies key issues yet to be addressed and the future opportunities that the timely application and advancement of ITS can bring.

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This is the third and fully updated edition of the classic textbook on physics at the subatomic level. An up-to-date and lucid introduction to both particle and nuclear physics, the book is suitable for both experimental and theoretical physics students at the senior undergraduate and beginning graduate levels.Topics are introduced with key experiments and their background, encouraging students to think and empowering them with the capability of doing back-of-the-envelope calculations in a diversity of situations. Earlier important experiments and concepts as well as topics of current interest are covered, with extensive use of photographs and figures to convey principal concepts and show experimental data.The coverage includes new material on:Detectors and acceleratorsNucleon elastic form factor dataNeutrinos, their masses and oscillationsChiral theories and effective field theories, and lattice QCDRelativistic heavy ions (RHIC)Nuclear structure far from the region of stabilityParticle astrophysics and cosmology

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This is a brief introduction to some geometrical topics including topological spaces, the metric tensor, Euclidean space, manifolds, tensors, r-forms, the orientation of a manifold and the Hodge star operator. It provides the reader who is approaching the subject for the first time with a deeper understanding of the geometrical properties of vectors and covectors. The material prepares the reader for discussions on basic concepts such as the differential of a function as a covector, metric dual, inner product, wedge product and cross product.J M Domingos received his D Phil from the University of Oxford and has now retired from the post of Professor of Physics at the University of Coimbra, Portugal.

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This volume describes the elaborate surveillance systems and various DNA repair mechanisms that ensure accurate passage of genetic information onto daughter cells. In particular, it narrates how the cell cycle checkpoint and DNA repair machineries detect and restore DNA damages that are embedded in millions to billions of normal base pairs. The scope of the book ranges from biochemical analyses and structural details of DNA repair proteins, to integrative genomics and population-based studies. It provides a snapshot of current understanding about some of the major DNA repair pathways, including base-excision repair, nucleotide excision repair, mismatch repair, homologous recombination, and non-homologous end-joining as well as cell cycle checkpoints and translesion DNA synthesis. One of the particular emphases of the book is the link between inherited DNA repair deficiencies and susceptibility to cancer in the general population. For the first time, the book brings together a collection of review articles written by a group of active and laboratory-based investigators who have a clear understanding of the recent advances in the fields of DNA damage repair and genomic stability and their implications in carcinogenesis, new approaches in cancer therapy, and cancer prevention.

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This easy-to-read book presents an elementary yet comprehensive introduction to modern energy economics. Mathematical content is kept to a minimum, and advanced numerical concepts are placed in appendices. The two survey chapters are suitable for readers with little or no formal training in economics. Differing greatly from other energy textbooks, the book aims to provide the reader with an informed advantage. Principally intended as a textbook for undergraduate economics students, it can also be used for self-study or as a reference material.

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Given the rapid emergence of regional economic arrangements in Asia, especially in Southeast Asia, it is useful to understand clearly what regionalism implies for the region, as well as to take stock as to the far-reaching and complicated effects of formal economic cooperation and integration. This book allows the reader to better understand the relevant international policies of the Southeast Asian economies, and to appreciate the potential lessons for other developing regions. It also focuses on the regionalism trend with an explicit application to ASEAN, as well as the implications of regionalism in the developed countries.The goal of this book is to survey the economics and political economy of regionalism in the ASEAN context from a variety of perspectives and using various techniques, from standard economic analysis of preferential trading arrangements to the political economy analysis of institutions. Its approach is comprehensive in that it includes ASEAN economic integration in the areas of trade, foreign direct investment, and finance. Presentation of the material is designed to be accessible to non-technical audiences without sacrificing the rigor expected by economists and other experts.

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Ever since 1911, the Solvay Conferences have shaped modern physics. The 23rd edition, chaired by 2004 Nobel Laureate David Gross, did not break with that tradition. It gathered most of the leading figures working on the central problem of reconciling Einstein's theory of gravity with quantum mechanics.These proceedings give a broad overview with unique insight into the most fundamental issues raised by this challenge for 21st century physics, by distinguished renowned scientists. The contributions cover: the status of quantum mechanics, spacetime singularities and breakdown of classical space and time, mathematical structures underlying the most promising attempts under current development, spacetime as an emergent concept, as well as cosmology and the cosmological constant puzzle. A historical overview of the Solvay conferences by historian of sciences Peter Galison opens the volume.In the Solvay tradition, the volume also includes the discussions among the participants — many of which were quite lively and illustrate dramatically divergent points of view — carefully edited and reproduced in full.

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This book is written for managers in organizations that practice western style of management. The central theme of the book is the importance of generating core values, vision and mission within an organization, extending core values of work into practical and concrete ways of infusing them into day-to-day activities at work.Many of the central ideas and theories of western style of management are questioned, and readers are introduced to theories of contemporary writers in the field.Based on a critical interpretation of theory, this practical book is distilled from the authors' experience in developing core values within a variety of organizations over the last decade.

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"Bridges over Water" places the study of transboundary water conflicts, negotiation, and cooperation in the context of various disciplines (such as international relations, international law, international negotiations, and economics), analyzing them using various quantitative approaches, such as river basin modeling and game theory. Case studies of particular transboundary river basins, lakes and aquifers are also considered. This is the first textbook for a relatively recent yet rapidly expanding field of study.

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Does the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) exploit student athletes? Should athletes be paid? Does Title IX unfairly discriminate against men's sports? Are the salaries of head coaches excessive? Why is there so much cheating in college sports? Should the sports department be subsidized by the university? Why do universities place so much emphasis on athletics?The above are just some of the questions raised in this sports economics textbook specially designed to teach undergraduate students about the college sports industry. The book focuses on the unique cartel structure of the NCAA and its member institutions to shed light on the labor market for college athletes and coaches; the tension between athletics and academics; the finance of athletic departments; the role of the media and commercialization of college sports; race, gender, and legal issues; and the desirability and plausibility of reform.The book reinforces the economic analysis with a variety of examples of recent events and can be used as either a primary or secondary text.

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This book begins by introducing the effective field approach, the simplest approach to phase transitions. It provides an intuitive approximation to the physics of such diverse phenomena as liquid-vapor transitions, ferromagnetism, superconductivity, order-disorder in alloys, ferroelectricity, superfluidity and ferroelasticity. The connection between the effective field approach and Landau's theory is stressed.The main coverage is devoted to specific applications of the effective field concept to ferroelectric systems, both hydrogen bonded ferroelectrics, like those in the TGS family, and oxide ferroelectrics, like pure and mixed perovskites.

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This book is meant for postgraduate modules that cover lifetime data in reliability and survival analysis as taught in statistics, engineering statistics and medical statistics courses. It is helpful for researchers who wish to choose appropriate models and methods for analyzing lifetime data. There is an extensive discussion on the concept and role of ageing in choosing appropriate models for lifetime data, with a special emphasis on tests of exponentiality. There are interesting contributions related to the topics of ageing, tests for exponentiality, competing risks and repairable systems. A special feature of this book is that it introduces the public domain R-software and explains how it can be used in computations of methods discussed in the book.

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This important book reviews applications of optimization and optimal control theory to modern problems in physics, nano-science and finance. The theory presented here can be efficiently applied to various problems, such as the determination of the optimal shape of a laser pulse to induce certain excitations in quantum systems, the optimal design of nanostructured materials and devices, or the control of chaotic systems and minimization of the forecast error for a given forecasting model (for example, artificial neural networks). Starting from a brief review of the history of variational calculus, the book discusses optimal control theory and global optimization using modern numerical techniques. Key elements of chaos theory and basics of fractional derivatives, which are useful in control and forecast of complex dynamical systems, are presented. The coverage includes several interdisciplinary problems to demonstrate the efficiency of the presented algorithms, and different methods of forecasting complex dynamics are discussed.

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This book explores the unique advantages and large inherent transmission capacity of optical fiber communication systems. The long-term and high-risk research challenges of optical transceivers are analyzed with a view to sustaining the seemingly insatiable demand for bandwidth. A broad coverage of topics relating to the design of high-speed optical devices and integrated circuits, oriented to low power, low cost, and small area, is discussed.Written by specialists with many years of research and engineering experience in the field of optical fiber communication, this book is essential for an audience dedicated to the development of integrated electronic systems for optical communication applications. It can also be used as a supplementary text for graduate courses on optical transceiver IC design.

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This is the first book that takes a detailed look at the importance of phase in the design of speech processing systems. Phase, in comparison with amplitude, is often ignored for speech recognition applications. Thus, this book highlights some of the important ways in which the phase of speech signals can be utilized for sound localization, enhancement, and recognition.This book also discusses the state-of-the-art research in phase-based speech processing, starting from the basics of signal processing and recording, to single microphone speech recognition, the recognition of speech and the processing of speech by humans, as well as the importance of phase in human speech recognition and multi-microphone phase-based speech processing.

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This book offers a refreshing view of leadership as a psycho-social phenomenon. Attention is drawn to the conceptual muddle which underlies much of managerial practices, particularly in the selection and development of future leaders. Also demonstrated is the conceptual muddle through semantic analysis of the vocabulary used in defining leadership in different languages. The concept of leadership from four different perspectives is examined in detail: leadership as a universal and natural phenomenon; membership and social roles; leadership as a collective process; conceptual models.In addition to the theoretical models, the author discusses patterns of influence and use and abuse of power. Consistent with his emphasis on the reciprocal nature of leadership, he complements his analysis of leading behavior by insightful analysis of the phenomenon of obedience: the psychological and cultural foundations of obedience; patterns of obedience; the collusion of leaders and followers in the abuse of power.The author's conceptualization of leadership challenges much of our conventional wisdom and traditional notions. He questions, for example, the universality of intelligence, dominance, aggressiveness and extraversion as predictors of leadership potential. Instead of imposing an ideal model of leadership, he lays the philosophical foundations that allow institutions to make their own choice of the model (or models) best suited for their values and unique historical circumstances. As such, the book can best be described as an interdisciplinary and cross-cultural guide for policy makers, particularly those concerned with the selection and training of leaders.

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This review volume is devoted to a discussion of analogies and differences of complex production systems — natural, as in biological cells, or man-made, as in economic systems or industrial production. Taking this unified look at production is based on two observations: Cells and many biological networks are complex production units that have evolved to solve production problems in a reliable and optimal way in a highly stochastic environment. On the other hand, industrial production is becoming increasingly complex and often hard to predict. As a result, modeling and control of such production networks involve many different spatial and temporal scales and decision policies for many different structures. The common themes of industrial and biological production include evolution and optimization, synchronization and self-organization, robust operation despite high stochasticity, and hierarchical dynamics. The mathematical techniques used come from dynamical systems theory, transport equations, control theory, pattern formation, graph theory, discrete event simulations, stochastic processes, and others. The application areas range from semiconductor production to supply chains, protein networks, slime molds, social networks, and whole economies.

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Noncommutative differential geometry is a novel approach to geometry that is paving the way for exciting new directions in the development of mathematics and physics. The contributions in this volume are based on papers presented at a workshop dedicated to enhancing international cooperation between mathematicians and physicists in various aspects of frontier research on noncommutative differential geometry. The active contributors present both the latest results and comprehensive reviews of topics in the area. The book is accessible to researchers and graduate students interested in a variety of mathematical areas related to noncommutative geometry and its interface with modern theoretical physics.

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The contributors of this volume are working at the forefront of various realizations of quantum computers. They survey the recent developments in each realization, in the context of the DiVincenzo criteria, including nuclear magnetic resonance, Josephson junctions, quantum dots, and trapped ions. There are also some theoretical contributions which have relevance in the physical realizations of a quantum computer. This book fills the gap between elementary introductions to the subject and highly specialized research papers to allow beginning graduate students to understand the cutting-edge of research in the shortest possible time.

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This textbook describes the fundamental “physical” aspects of fluid flows for beginners of fluid mechanics in physics, mathematics and engineering, from the point of view of modern physics.It also emphasizes the dynamical aspects of fluid motions rather than the static aspects, illustrating vortex motions, waves, geophysical flows, chaos and turbulence. Beginning with the fundamental concepts of the nature of flows and the properties of fluids, the book presents fundamental conservation equations of mass, momentum and energy, and the equations of motion for both inviscid and viscous fluids.In addition to the fundamentals, this book also covers water waves and sound waves, vortex motions, geophysical flows, nonlinear instability, chaos, and turbulence. Furthermore, it includes the chapters on superfluids and the gauge theory of fluid flows.The material in the book emerged from the lecture notes for an intensive course on Elementary Fluid Mechanics for both undergraduate and postgraduate students of theoretical physics given in 2003 and 2004 at the Nankai Institute of Mathematics (Tianjin) in China. Hence, each chapter may be presented separately as a single lecture.

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With the poems written by winner of the Posner Poetry Award from the Council of Wisconsin Writers in 2005, this coffee-table book will delight and inform general readers curious about ideas of chaos, fractals, and nonlinear complex systems. Developed out of ten years of interdisciplinary seminars in chaos and complex systems at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, it features multiple ways of knowing: Robin Chapman's poems of everyday experience of change in a complex world, associated metaphorically with Julien Clinton Sprott's full-color computer art generated from billions of versions of only three simple equations for strange attractors, Julia sets, and iterated function systems; his definitions of 39 key terms; a mathematical appendix; and even a multiple-choice quiz to test understanding. Accompanied by a CD-ROM of the poet reading 13 poems and 1,000 images of chaos art from which slide shows can be generated and 100 high-resolution posters created, the book has a foreword by Cliff Pickover, author of A Passion for Mathematics.

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This book covers comprehensive bifurcation theory and its applications to dynamical systems and partial differential equations (PDEs) from science and engineering, including in particular PDEs from physics, chemistry, biology, and hydrodynamics.The book first introduces bifurcation theories recently developed by the authors, on steady state bifurcation for a class of nonlinear problems with even order nondegenerate nonlinearities, regardless of the multiplicity of the eigenvalues, and on attractor bifurcations for nonlinear evolution equations, a new notion of bifurcation.With this new notion of bifurcation, many longstanding bifurcation problems in science and engineering are becoming accessible, and are treated in the second part of the book. In particular, applications are covered for a variety of PDEs from science and engineering, including the Kuramoto-Sivashinsky equation, the Cahn-Hillard equation, the Ginzburg-Landau equation, reaction-diffusion equations in biology and chemistry, the Benard convection problem, and the Taylor problem. The applications provide, on the one hand, general recipes for other applications of the theory addressed in this book, and on the other, full classifications of the bifurcated attractor and the global attractor as the control parameters cross certain critical values, dictated usually by the eigenvalues of the linearized problems. It is expected that the book will greatly advance the study of nonlinear dynamics for many problems in science and engineering.

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The theory of adaptive control is concerned with construction of strategies so that the controlled system behaves in a desirable way, without assuming the complete knowledge of the system. The models considered in this comprehensive book are of Markovian type. Both partial observation and partial information cases are analyzed. While the book focuses on discrete time models, continuous time ones are considered in the final chapter. The book provides a novel perspective by summarizing results on adaptive control obtained in the Soviet Union, which are not well known in the West. Comments on the interplay between the Russian and Western methods are also included.

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Quantum mechanics is a difficult subject for students to learn after years of rigorous training in classical physics. In quantum mechanics they have to abandon what they have laboriously learned and adopt a new system of thinking.In the previous edition of this book, the author reformulated classical mechanics as a classical theory with an undetermined constant. As the constant approaches zero the theory reduces to Newton's exactly, but when set equal to the Planck constant the theory reduces to the Schrödinger representation of quantum mechanics. Thus the new theory, at least in its mathematical form, can be learned without ramifications and complexity. Over the years, the book has shepherded the growth of a generation of physicists.In this expanded edition, a similar trick is applied to introduce matrix mechanics. The matrix formulation presented allows quantum theory to be generalized to new physical systems such as electron spin, which cannot be done by the Schrödinger approach.The result is a textbook which promises to provide a future generation of students a clear, usable and authoritative resource to study the fundamentals of quantum mechanics. Twenty new problems are added to existing chapters.

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The fourth generation of leaders of the People's Republic of China, while benefiting from the prestige of China's entry into the World Trade Organization and the honor of hosting the 2008 Olympic Games, also needs to contemplate the sobering side-effects of a rapid and internationally-interdependent economy and a troubled and only partly reformed political system.This important book approaches the study of the PRC under Hu Jintao in a two-fold manner: by examining the new political parameters within which the party-state functions and by analyzing the prominent issues — at home and abroad — that are commanding the attention of China's new leaders. The book tackles a comprehensive range of topics, including elites, institutions and state-society relations, politics and the political implications of economic change, domestic politics and foreign relations.

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This authoritative book brings together in a single volume international experts renowned in their specializations to discuss issues and current trends relating to maritime security.It looks at the issue of maritime security in the Asia-Pacific through a three step approach. Firstly, it surveys both the global maritime outlook and the outlook in each of the regions of Northeast Asia, Southeast Asia, and South Asia. From these regional perspectives, trends in commercial shipping and force modernization, and issues like the weapons proliferation and maritime terrorism are discussed.After looking at the maritime environment, the specific challenges that the maritime community faces are examined. These challenges include maritime boundary and territorial disputes in the South China Sea, the force modernization of three Northeast Asian navies, and the spectre of maritime terrorism. The volume concludes by looking at some new initiatives for maritime cooperation, a survey of maritime “regime” building, and the legal and political implications of the proliferation security initiative.

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The physical properties of knotted and linked configurations in space have long been of interest to mathematicians. More recently, these properties have become significant to biologists, physicists, and engineers among others. Their depth of importance and breadth of application are now widely appreciated and valuable progress continues to be made each year.This volume presents several contributions from researchers using computers to study problems that would otherwise be intractable. While computations have long been used to analyze problems, formulate conjectures, and search for special structures in knot theory, increased computational power has made them a staple in many facets of the field. The volume also includes contributions concentrating on models researchers use to understand knotting, linking, and entanglement in physical and biological systems. Topics include properties of knot invariants, knot tabulation, studies of hyperbolic structures, knot energies, the exploration of spaces of knots, knotted umbilical cords, studies of knots in DNA and proteins, and the structure of tight knots. Together, the chapters explore four major themes: physical knot theory, knot theory in the life sciences, computational knot theory, and geometric knot theory.

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This book provides an accessible approach to the study of Windows[registered] programming with Visual C++[registered]. It is intended to be an introduction to Visual C++[registered] for technical people including practicing engineers, engineering students, and others who would like to understand Windows[registered] programming and use its inherent graphic capabilities. While the book is aimed at a technical audience, the mathematical content is modest and it should be readable by most people interested in C++ programming. Readers of this book will be introduced to Windows[registered] programming in perhaps the most natural way, by using the Visual C++[registered] object-oriented environment and the tools of the Microsoft[registered] Foundation Classes (MFC).

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Written by the founders of the new and expanding field of numerical algebraic geometry, this is the first book that uses an algebraic-geometric approach to the numerical solution of polynomial systems and also the first one to treat numerical methods for finding positive dimensional solution sets. The text covers the full theory from methods developed for isolated solutions in the 1980's to the most recent research on positive dimensional sets.

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Few books cover experimental and theoretical methods to characterize decomposition, combustion and detonation of energetic materials. This volume, by internationally known and major contributors to the field, is unique because it summarizes the most important recent work, what we know with confidence, and what main areas remain to be investigated. Most chapters comprise summaries of work spanning decades and contain expert commentary available nowhere else. Although energetic materials are its focus, this book provides a guide to modern methods for investigations of condensed and gas-phase reactions. Although these energetic reactions are complex and difficult to study, the work discussed here provides readers with a substantial understanding of the behavior of materials now in use, and a predictive capability for the development of new materials based on target properties.

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This book furthers new and exciting developments in experimental designs, multivariate analysis, biostatistics, model selection and related subjects. It features articles contributed by many prominent and active figures in their fields. These articles cover a wide array of important issues in modern statistical theory, methods and their applications. Distinctive features of the collections of articles are their coherence and advance in knowledge discoveries.

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The study of presolar meteoritic grains is a new inter-disciplinary field that brings together topics from nuclear physics to astronomy and chemistry. Traditionally, most of the information about the cosmos has been gathered by observing light through telescopes. However, with the recent discovery that some dust grains extracted from primitive meteorites were produced in stellar environments, we now have the opportunity to gather information about stars and our Galaxy from the laboratory analysis of tiny pieces of stardust. Stellar grains represent a unique and fascinating subject of study. Their analysis is a breakthrough in research on stellar nucleosynthesis and the origin of the elements.While a number of specialized reviews exist on the topic, this book is the first work that brings together in a unified and accessible manner the background knowledge necessary for the study of presolar grains together with up-to-date discoveries in the field.The book includes exercise questions and answers, an extensive glossary for easy reference, and more than 40 figures and tables — from schematic diagrams to electron microscope images and graphs of results from stellar grain measurements and theoretical stellar models.

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The first edition of this book covered in depth the mathematical theory of nonblocking multistage interconnecting networks, which is applicable to both communication and computer networks. This comprehensively updated version puts more emphasis to the multicast and multirate networks which are under fast development recently due to their wide applications. This comprehensively updated new edition not only introduces the classical theory of the fundamental point-to-point network but also has a renewed emphasis on the latest multicast and multirate networks. The book can serve as either a one- or two-semester textbook for graduate students of information science, (electronic) communications, and applied mathematics. In addition, as all the relevant literature is organized and evaluated under one structured framework, the volume is an essential reference for researchers in those areas.

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This book begins with a historical essay entitled “Will the Sun Rise Again?” and ends with a general address entitled “Mathematics and Applications”. The articles cover an interesting range of topics: combinatoric probabilities, classical limit theorems, Markov chains and processes, potential theory, Brownian motion, Schrödinger-Feynman problems, etc. They include many addresses presented at international conferences and special seminars, as well as memorials to and reminiscences of prominent contemporary mathematicians and reviews of their works. Rare old photos of many of them enliven the book.

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In the first half of 2003, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) struck China (including Hong Kong), causing panic and claiming many lives. The unknown nature of SARS at that time also jolted the economic growth of China and Hong Kong, disrupted the social life of their citizens and created much stress and strain for their political systems and governance. Like other major crises, the management of the SARS crisis provides a good opportunity to examine the strengths and weaknesses of the political systems in China and Hong Kong. From the outset, scholars at the East Asian Institute (EAI) followed closely the unfolding of the disease in China, particularly how each of the two societies coped with this random external shock. SARS may or may not recur in the near future, but the episode has offered a glimpse into the extent of resilience of the two societies, the quality of their political leadership, the effectiveness of their political and institutional mobilization, the crisis-management capability of their respective bureaucracies, and the viability of their governance systems. This volume is the result of an EAI workshop on “SARS in China: Crises and Responses”.This book has been selected for coverage in:• Index to Scientific & Technical Proceedings® (ISTP® / ISI Proceedings)• Index to Scientific & Technical Proceedings (ISTP CDROM version / ISI Proceedings)• Index to Social Sciences & Humanities Proceedings® (ISSHP® / ISI Proceedings)• Index to Social Sciences & Humanities Proceedings (ISSHP CDROM version / ISI Proceedings)• CC Proceedings — Biomedical, Biological & Agricultural Sciences

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The central theme of this volume is the contemporary mathematics of geometry and physics, but the work also discusses the problem of the secondary structure of proteins, and an overview of arc complexes with proposed applications to macromolecular folding is given.”Woods Hole has played such a vital role in both my mathematical and personal life that it is a great pleasure to see the mathematical tradition of the 1964 meeting resurrected forty years later and, as this volume shows, resurrected with new vigor and hopefully on a regular basis. I therefore consider it a signal honor to have been asked to introduce this volume with a few reminiscences of that meeting forty years ago.” Introduction by R Bott (Wolf Prize Winner, 2000).

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Understanding the spontaneous formation and dynamics of spatiotemporal patterns in dissipative nonequilibrium systems is one of the major challenges in nonlinear science. This collection of expository papers and advanced research articles, written by leading experts, provides an overview of the state of the art. The topics include new approaches to the mathematical characterization of spatiotemporal complexity, with special emphasis on the role of symmetry, as well as analysis and experiments of patterns in a remarkable variety of applied fields such as magnetoconvection, liquid crystals, granular media, Faraday waves, multiscale biological patterns, visual hallucinations, and biological pacemakers. The unitary presentations, guiding the reader from basic fundamental concepts to the most recent research results on each of the themes, make the book suitable for a wide audience.

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In recent years, the support vector machine (SVM), a new data processing method, has been applied to many fields of chemistry and chemical technology. Compared with some other data processing methods, SVM is especially suitable for solving problems of small sample size, with superior prediction performance. SVM is fast becoming a powerful tool of chemometrics. This book provides a systematic approach to the principles and algorithms of SVM, and demonstrates the application examples of SVM in QSAR/QSPR work, materials and experimental design, phase diagram prediction, modeling for the optimal control of chemical industry, and other branches in chemistry and chemical technology.

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This book presents a socio-technical view of strategic information systems issues such as enterprise systems implementation and management, knowledge management, customer relationship management, and e-government initiatives. It contains eight case studies documenting experiences of utilizing enterprise systems and e-government initiatives in organizations and government agencies from Asia-Pacific countries such as Australia, India, Singapore, and South Korea.The book provides regional (Asia-Pacific) coverage highlighting empirical case studies — involving both private and public organizations — of strategic information systems practices covering both the developed and developing economies. These in-depth, well-written case materials will be helpful to organizations and government agencies planning to implement enterprise systems and e-government initiatives. These cases can also be beneficial to classroom teaching and discussions.

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Quantum computation and information is a new, rapidly developing interdisciplinary field. Therefore, it is not easy to understand its fundamental concepts and central results without facing numerous technical details. This book provides the reader a useful and not-too-heavy guide. It offers a simple and self-contained introduction; no previous knowledge of quantum mechanics or classical computation is required.Volume I may be used as a textbook for a one-semester introductory course in quantum information and computation, both for upper-level undergraduate students and for graduate students. It contains a large number of solved exercises, which are an essential complement to the text, as they will help the student to become familiar with the subject. The book may also be useful as general education for readers who want to know the fundamental principles of quantum information and computation and who have the basic background acquired from their undergraduate course in physics, mathematics, or computer science.

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What actually is creativity? And what contributes to its conceptualization and development? For decades, these and other questions have fascinated researchers, educators, parents and laypeople alike, and equally so in the East and West. This interesting collection of articles is an attempt at exploring and answering the above questions from both the Eastern and Western perspectives. Readers may find some answers stimulating, and others bewildering. This is in fact the reality and fascination of creativity research and education. It is hoped that readers will share the joy of reading such a road map.

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