Ambient intelligence : A novel paradigm
Ambient Intelligence (AmI) is an integrating technology for supporting a pervasive and transparent infrastructure for implementing smart environments. Such technology is used to enable environments for detecting events and behaviors of people and for responding in a contextually relevant fashion. AmI proposes a multi-disciplinary approach for enhancing human machine interaction. The authors start with a description of the iDorm as an example of a smart environment conforming to the AmI paradigm, and introduces computer vision as an important component of the system. Other computer vision examples describe visual monitoring for the elderly, classic and novel surveillance techniques using clusters of cameras installed in indoor and outdoor application domains, and the monitoring of public spaces. Face and speech recognition systems are also covered as well as enhanced LEGO blocks for novel educational purposes. The book closes with a provocative chapter on how a cybernetic system can be designed as the backbone of a human machine interaction.
Alternative Education : Global Perspectives Relevant to the Asia-Pacific Region
Alternative streams of education have been and remain an important but difficult theme for teachers, parents, policy-makers, and scholars. By focusing on case studies of six countries (Bolivia, Thailand, Australia, USA, The Netherlands, and Denmark), and by comprehensively analysing these by means of international comparative methodologies, the author approaches the nuts and bolts issues of alternative and mainstream education systems. The case studies include Charter Schools in the USA and Waldorf Schools in Australia. The study presents not only an insightful analysis of alternative forms of education with regard to actual issues in societies and also legal and administrative features of education. It provides insights into the kind of school development that could be appropriate in the 21st century and the types of educational communities we should seek to create in the age of globalisation.
AI and law : How automation is changing the law
Provides insights into how AI is changing legal practice, government processes, and individuals’ access to those processes, encouraging each of us to consider how technological advances are changing the legal system. Particularly, and distinct from current debates on how to regulate AI, this books focuses on how the progressive merger between computational methods and legal rules changes the very structure and application of the law itself.
Agrobacterium : From Biology to Biotechnology
Agrobacterium’ is a comprehensive book on Agrobacterium research, including its history, application, basic biology discoveries, and effects on human society. Although the book largely focuses on providing a detailed review of virtually all molecular events of the genetic transformation process, it also provides coverage of ethical and legal issues relevant to the use of Agrobacterium as a "genetic transformation machine". The result is an all-inclusive text which readers—including scientists and students involved in plant genetic engineering—will find useful as a reference source for all major aspects of the Agrobacterium-mediated genetic transformation of plant and non-plant organisms.
Ages, generations and the social contract : The demographic challenges facing the welfare state
Our societies are ageing. The Family is changing. Labour force behaviour is evolving. How is the organisation of family and collective solidarity adapting in this context of longer life spans, low fertility, and work that is simultaneously scarce and abundant? The welfare states are currently facing three main challenges: ensure satisfactory living conditions for the elderly without increasing the cost burden on the active population, reduce social inequality, and maintain equity between successive generations. In this book, researchers from different countries compare their experiences and offer contrasting views on the future of social protection. They consider the theoretical aspects of the intergenerational debate, relations between generations within the family, the living standards of elderly people, and the question of social time.
African Handbook of Climate Change Adaptation
discusses current thinking and presents the main issues and challenges associated with climate change in Africa. It introduces evidences from studies and projects which show how climate change adaptation is being - and may continue to be successfully implemented in African countries. Thanks to its scope and wide range of themes surrounding climate change, the ambition is that will be a lead publication on the topic, which may be regularly updated and hence capture further works.
African Cultural Astronomy : Current Archaeoastronomy and Ethnoastronomy research in Africa
Astronomy is the science of studying the sky using telescopes and light collectors such as photographic plates or CCD detectors. However, people have always studied the sky and continue to study the sky without the aid of instruments this is the realm of cultural astronomy. This is the first scholarly collection of articles focused on the cultural astronomy of Africans. It weaves together astronomy, anthropology, and Africa. The volume includes African myths and legends about the sky, alignments to celestial bodies found at archaeological sites and at places of worship, rock art with celestial imagery, and scientific thinking revealed in local astronomy traditions including ethnomathematics and the creation of calendars. Authors include astronomers Kim Malville, Johnson Urama, and Thebe Medupe; archaeologist Felix Chami, and geographer Michael Bonine, and many new authors.
Advances in XML information retrieval and Evaluation ; 4th International workshop of the initiative for the evaluation of XML retrieval, INEX 2005, Dagstuhl Castle, Germany, November 28-30, 2005. Revised and Selected Papers
Content-oriented XML retrieval has been receiving increasing interest due to the widespread use of eXtensible Markup Language (XML), which is becoming a standard document format on the Web, in digital libraries,and publishing. By exploiting the enriched source of syntactic and semantic information that XML markup provides, XML information retrieval (IR) systems aim to implement a more focused retrieval strategy and return document components, so-called XML elements – instead of complete documents – in response to a user query. This focused retrieval approach is of particular bene?t for collections containing long documents or documents covering a wide variety of topics (e.g., books, user manuals, legal documents, etc.), where users’ e?ort to locate relevant content can be reduced by directing them to the most relevant parts of the documents.
Advances in Urban Ecology : Integrating Humans and Ecological Processes in Urban Ecosystems
The future of Earth’s ecosystems is increasingly influenced by the pace and patterns of urbanization. One of the greatest challenges for natural and social scientists is to understand how urbanizing regions evolve through the complex interactions between humans and ecological processes. Questions and methods of inquiry specific to our traditional disciplinary domains yield partial views that reflect different epistemologies and understandings of the world. In order to achieve the level of synthesis required to see the urban ecosystem as a whole we must change the way we pose questions and search for answers. Cities are the result of human and ecological processes occurring simultaneously in time and in space and the legacy of the simultaneous processes of the past. Urban ecology is the study of the co-evolution of human-ecological systems. Scholars of both urban systems and ecology must challenge the assumptions and world views within their disciplines and work towards a hybrid theory that builds on multiple world views.
Advances in information retrieval ; Vol. 3936 : 28th European Conference on IR Research, ECIR 2006, London, UK, April 10-12, 2006, Proceedings
The These proceedings contain the refereed papers and posters presented at the 28 Annual European Conference on Information Retrieval (ECIR 2006), which was held at Imperial College London in South Kensington between April 10 and 12, 2006. ECIR is the annual conference of the British Computer Society’s Inf- mation Retrieval Specialist Group. The event started its life as a colloquium in 1978 and was held in the UK each year until 1998, when the event took place in Grenoble, France. Since then the venue has alternated between the UK and Continental Europe.
Advances in Geoinformatics : VIII Brazilian Symposium on Geoinformatics, GEOINFO 2006, Campos do Jordão (SP), Brazil, November 19-22, 2006
The GeoInfo series of scientific conferences is an annual forum for exploring research, development and innovative applications in geographic information science and related areas. This book provides a privileged view of what is currently happening in the field of geoinformatics, and a preview of what could be the hotter developments and research topics a few years from now. Additionally, it includes recent research results on spatial databases, spatial ontologies, computational geometry and visualization for geographic information systems, geostatistics and spatial statistics, spatial analysis, interoperability, and innovative applications of geotechnologies.
Advances in Digital Forensics IV
Advances in Digital Forensics IV describes original research results and innovative applications in the emerging discipline of digital forensics. In addition, it highlights some of the major technical and legal issues related to digital evidence and electronic crime investigations.
Advances in Digital Forensics III ; IFIP International Conference on Digital Forensics, National Center for Forensic Science, Orlando Florida, January 28-January 31, 2007
Digital forensics deals with the acquisition, preservation, examination, analysis and presentation of electronic evidence. Networked computing, wireless communications and portable electronic devices have expanded the role of digital forensics beyond traditional computer crime investigations. Practically every crime now involves some aspect of digital evidence; digital forensics provides the techniques and tools to articulate this evidence. Digital forensics also has myriad intelligence applications. Furthermore, it has a vital role in information assurance -- investigations of security breaches yield valuable information that can be used to design more secure systems.it describes original research results and innovative applications in the emerging discipline of digital forensics. In addition, it highlights some of the major technical and legal issues related to digital evidence and electronic crime investigations.
Advances in digital forensics ; IFIP International Conference on digital forensics, National Center for Forensic Science, Orlando, Florida, February 13-16, 2005
Digital forensics deals with the acquisition, preservation, examination, analysis and presentation of electronic evidence. Networked computing, wireless communications and portable electronic devices have expanded the role of digital forensics beyond traditional computer crime investigations. Practically every crime now involves some aspect of digital evidence; digital forensics provides the techniques and tools to articulate this evidence. Digital forensics also has myriad intelligence applications. Furthermore, it has a vital role in information assurance – investigations of security breaches yield valuable information that can be used to design more secure systems. Advances in Digital Forensics describes original research results and innovative applications in the emerging discipline of digital forensics. In addition, it highlights some of the major technical and legal issues related to digital evidence and electronic crime investigations.
Advances in cryptology - EUROCRYPT 2006 ; 25th Annual international conference on the theory and applications of cryptographic techniques, St. Petersburg, Russia, May 28 - June 1, 2006, Proceedings
The 2006 edition of the Eurocrypt conference was held in St. Petersburg,Russia from May 28 to June 1, 2006. It was the 25th Eurocrypt conference. Eurocrypt is sponsored by the International Association for Cryptologic Research (IACR). Eurocrypt 2006 was chaired by Anatoly Lebedev, and I had the privilege to chair the Program Committee. Eurocrypt collected 198 submissions on November 21, 2005. The Program Committee carried out a thorough review process. In total, 863 review reports were written by renowned experts, Program Committee members as well as external referees. Online discussions led to 1,114 additional discussion messages and about 1,000 emails. The review process was run using e-mail and the iChair software by Thomas Baign` eres and Matthieu Finiasz. Every submitted paper received at least three review reports. The Program Committee had a meeting in Lausanne on February 4, 2006.
Advanced Techniques in Biophysics
Technical advancements are basic elements in our life. In biophysical studies, new applications and improvements in well-established techniques are being implemented every day. This book deals with advancements produced not only from a technical point of view, but also from new approaches that are being taken in the study of biophysical samples, such as nanotechniques or single-cell measurements. This book constitutes a privileged observatory for reviewing novel applications of biophysical techniques that can help the reader enter an area where the technology is progressing quickly and where a comprehensive explanation is not always to be found.
Advanced Stress and Stability Analysis : Worked Examples
This book is a collection of problems for advanced students in the area of Strength of Materials. It draws the reader´s attention also to problems that are often overlooked and answers questions that are far beyond a training course and require more fundamental understanding. All problems are provided with detailed solutions to enable the reader to either learn about the problem-solving process or just to check his/her own way of solution. The research and educational Work of V.I. Feodosiev was carried out in the Bauman Moscow State technical University where he held the course on Strength of Materials for 50 years. Deep insight into engineering problems, clearness of concepts and elegance of solutions accompanied by pedagogical talent are the main features of his style.
Advanced NXT : The Da Vinci Inventions Book
About building some of Leonardo da Vinci's most famous inventions with LEGO's breathtaking robot technology, the LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT. In this book, you will revive such fascinating devices as the flying machine, the aerial screw, the revolving bridge, the double leaf spring catapult, and the armored car—five centuries after their creation by the great Renaissance engineer.
Advanced Experimental Methods For Noise Research in Nanoscale Electronic Devices
The approach described is to create methods for experimental observations of noise sources, their localization and their frequency spectrum, voltage-current and thermal dependences. Our current knowledge of measurement methods for mesoscopic devices is summarized to identify directions for future research, related to downscaling effects. The directions for future research into fluctuation phenomena in quantum dot and quantum wire devices are specified. Nanoscale electronic devices will be the basic components for electronics of the 21st century. From this point of view the signal-to-noise ratio is a very important parameter for the device application. Since the noise is also a quality and reliability indicator, experimental methods will have a wide application in the future.
Administrative law
Each book in this popular series offers a winning combination of text, examples, and explanations as it guides students to a more thorough understanding of the subject at hand for paralegal programs.



















