Learning in cultural context : Family, peers, and school
What events take place at the intersection of cultural identity, education, and experience? How can they be measured, replicated? How can teachers use such personal phenomena to enhance student performance?
Learning Classifier Systems in Data Mining
Just over thirty years after Holland first presented the outline for Learning Classifier System paradigm, the ability of LCS to solve complex real-world problems is becoming clear. In particular, their capability for rule induction in data mining has sparked renewed interest in LCS. This book brings together work by a number of individuals who are demonstrating their good performance in a variety of domains.
Learning and Teaching for the Twenty-first Century : Festschrift for Professor Phillip Hughes
This book stresses learning and teaching, rather than teaching and learning. The contention of the contributors is that the focus in all educational endeavours should not be primarily on teachers and teaching, but on learners; how to best facilitate learning, in the most effective, enjoyable, relevant and cost-effective ways for learners, whether they be children, youth or adults. The focus is therefore on how learning can be enhanced, through effective teaching; and how individuals can be best prepared to be excellent teachers.
Lead-free Soldering
The push toward lead-free soldering in computers, cell phones and other electronic and electrical devices has taken on a greater urgency as laws have been passed or are pending in the United States, the European Union and Asia which ban lead-bearing solder. These new restrictions on hazardous substances are changing the way electronic devices are assembled, and specifically affect process engineering, manufacturing and quality assurance. Lead-Free Soldering offers in a single volume a broad collection of practical techniques for lead-free soldering design and manufacture, which up to now have been scattered in difficult-to-find scholarly sources. The book includes the latest information on proposed changes to lead-free standards, and up-to-date analysis of government and legislative activities and regulations in North America, Europe and Asia.
Le raisonnement bayésien : Modélisation et inférence = Bayesian reasoning : Modeling and inference
Describes in detail the practice of the Bayesian statistical approach using many examples chosen for their educational interest. The first part gives the general principles of statistical modeling making it possible to supervise but also to come to the aid of the imagination of the apprentice modeler. By examining examples of increasing difficulty, the reader forges the keys to building their own model. The second part presents the most useful calculation algorithms for estimating the unknowns of the model. Each inference method is presented and illustrated by numerous application cases.
Le choix bayésien: Principes et pratique
Covers the so-called Bayesian approach to statistical inference and in particular its decision-making aspects. The bases of this axiomatics (choice of the a priori, optimal decisions, tests and regions of confidence) are discussed in detail, as well as more recent openings of Bayesian analysis such as the choice of models, the use of numerical methods. Stochastic approximation (MCMC), the theory of noninformative laws (Berger-Bernardo axioms) and the relation to the classical theory of admissibility. Each chapter is completed by an extensive series of exercises of increasing difficulty and by bibliographical notes on the themes addressed. This book can be used in a Master's program in Applied Mathematics, Biometrics, Econometrics or any other program that uses quantitative information processing techniques. It only requires a basic course in probability theory and mathematical statistics as a preliminary.
Law as Symbolic Form : Ernst Cassirer and the Anthropocentric View of Law
In this book we describe the rule of law as the reign of persuasion rather than the reign of force, and democracy as the reign by persuasion rather than the reign by force.
Lattice Hadron Physics
This series of lectures draws upon the developments made in recent years in implementing chirality on the lattice via the overlap formalism. These developments exploit chiral effective field theory in order to extrapolate lattice results to physical quark masses, new forms of improving operators to remove lattice artefacts, analytical studies of finite volume effects in hadronic observables, and state-of-the-art lattice calculations of excited resonances. This volume is designed to assist those outside the field who want quickly to becoming literate in these topics. So it is intended for graduate students and experienced researchers in other areas of hadronic physics to provide the background through which they can appreciate, if not become active in, contemporary lattice gauge theory and its applications to hadronic phenomena.
Large Coulomb Systems: Lecture Notes on Mathematical Aspects of QED
A mathematically consistent formulation of relativistic quantum electrodynamics (QED) has still to be found. Nevertheless, there are several simplified effective models that successfully describe many body quantum systems and the interaction of radiation with matter. Large Coulomb Systems explores a selection of mathematical topics inspired by QED. It comprises selected, expanded and edited lectures given by international experts at a topical summer school and is intended as a high-level introduction for graduate students, postdocs and nonspecialists from related fields.
Language Policy and Modernity in Southeast Asia : Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand
This volume considers the ways in which modernity challenges and informs the language policies of various Southeast Asians nations. Using case studies from Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand, the authors examine language policies that are explicitly articulated either in the form of State constitutions or in the public proclamations of political leaders. Particular attention is paid to the ways in which English, often seen as the language of globalization, impacts the status of indigenous Southeast Asian language.
Language in our brain : The origins of a uniquely human capacity
Friederici describes the basic language functions and their brain basis; the language networks connecting different language-related brain regions; the brain basis of language acquisition during early childhood and when learning a second language, proposing a neurocognitive model of the ontogeny of language; and the evolution of language and underlying neural constraints. She finds that it is the information exchange between the relevant brain regions, supported by the white matter tract, that is the crucial factor in both language development and evolution.
Language Choice in a Nation Under Transition : English Language Spread in Cambodia
This book examines language choice in contemporary Cambodia, and uses the case study to explore and evaluate competing explanations for the spread of English globally. the multiple contexts in which Cambodians make individual and institutional language policy choices are considered. Chapters 2 and 3 examine the economic and political contexts for language choice, as Cambodia has transitioned from a planned economy and communism to a market economy and democracy. Chapters 4, 5, and 6 examine the assistance context for language choice; the bilateral, multilateral, and nongovernmental development agencies that have recently begun to work in Cambodia demand certain language skills of Cambodian employees and government counterparts, and support the learning of these languages in both nonformal and formal education.
Landslides from Massive Rock Slope Failure
Amongst the thematic topics discussed are global frequency, impacts on society, analysis of initial rock slope failure, monitoring of rock slope movement, analysis and modeling of post-failure behaviour, volcanic landslides, and influences of massive rock slope failure on the geomorphological evolution of mountain regions. Regional contributions include reports on rockslides and rock avalanches in Norway, western Canada, the Andes of Argentina, the Karakoram Himalaya, the European Alps, the Appennines, and the mountains of Central Asia.
Landscape Analysis and Visualisation : Spatial Models for Natural Resource Management and Planning
This book presents a collection and synthesis of many of these perspectives — perhaps it could only be produced in a land urb- ised in the tiniest of pockets, and yet so daunting with respect to the way non-populated landscapes dwarf its cities. Many travel to Australia to its cities and never see the landscapes — but it is these that give the country its power and imagery. It is the landscapes that so impress on us the need to consider how our intervention, through activities ranging from resource exploitation and settled agriculture to climate change, poses one of the greatest crises facing the modern world. In this sense, Australia and its landscape provide a mirror through which we can glimpse the extent to which our intervention in the world threatens its very existence.
Land-Change Science in the Tropics : Changing Agricultural Landscapes
Land use and land-cover change research over the past decade has focused mainly on contemporary primary land-cover conversions in the tropics and sub-tropics, with considerable resources dedicated to the explanation and prediction of tropical deforestation and often ignoring the dynamism in the world’s agro-pastoral landscapes. This collection integrates cutting-edge research in the social, biogeophysical, and geographical information sciences to understand the human and environmental dynamics that change the type, magnitude and location of land uses and land covers in the changing countryside.This book describes the monitoring of land-cover changes, explains the processes through which land is altered, and describes the development of spatially-explicit models to predict land change. This book illustrates how practitioners have integrated knowledge from the three scientific realms - social, biophysical, and GIScience - that underpin land-change science.
Lake Victoria : Ecology, Resources, Environment
Recently, there has been, and continues to be, a tremendous interest on Lake Victoria and its environs, both locally and internationally. A casual browsing on the Internet indicates that the entries on the Lake have been rising phenomenally. At the same time, the issues discussed are as diverse as they are varied in their treatment of the subject, both in terms of depth and comprehensiveness. The information on Lake Victoria and its environ is scattered, isolated, and sometimes confusing even though documentation on the subject are available. Despite this situation, the fact remains that various people (e. g. , secondary and universitystudents,researchers,practitioners,etc. ,)wouldliketoaccess and know more about the Lake and its environs. Aware of the existing information gap about this world’s second largest fresh water Lake, this book is intended to provide readers with up-to-date information pertaining the Lake. The book gives an in-depth coverage of environmental issues, - source endowment, poverty amidst plenty, development opportunities, challenges and other related issues facing the Lake and its environs. It aims at providing information on the above variables, which hopefully will address the needs of various users.
Lagrangian Probability Distributions
Lagrangian expansions can be used to obtain numerous useful probability models, which have been applied to real life situations including, but not limited to: branching processes, queuing processes, stochastic processes, environmental toxicology, diffusion of information, ecology, strikes in industries, sales of new products, and production targets for optimum profits. This book presents a comprehensive, systematic treatment of the class of Lagrangian probability distributions, along with some of its families, their properties, and important applications.
LabVIEW based Advanced Instrumentation Systems
Information is a valuable resource to an organization. User-friendly, computer-controlled instrumentation and data analysis techniques are revolutionizing the way measurements are being made, allowing nearly instantaneous comparison between theoretical predictions, simulations, and actual experimental results. This book provides comprehensive coverage of fundamentals of advanced instrumentation systems based on LabVIEW concepts. This book is for those who wish a better understanding of virtual instrumentation concepts, its purpose, its nature, and the applications developed using the National Instrument’s LabVIEW software.
La musica del Big Bang : Come la radiazione cosmica di fondo ci ha svelato i segreti dell’Universo = The music of the Big Bang : How the cosmic background radiation revealed the secrets of the Universe to us
Cosmic microwave background radiation is the residue of the great heat following the Big Bang. A tenuous sign, over 13 billion years old, in which the answers to many of the questions about the nature of our Universe are hidden. Discovered by chance in 1964, in the last forty years this fossil trace of the origins of the Cosmos has been explored with every available means. Two Nobel Prizes in physics have already been awarded for research involving it, the last in 2006 for the results of the COBE satellite. Much of the information encoded in the cosmic background radiation was impressed by the superimposition of acoustic waves present in the early Universe: a "music" of the Big Bang, which cosmologists have tried for years to reconstruct, using techniques similar to those that allow to distinguish the sound of different musical instruments. Only recently have the first notes of this extraordinary cosmic symphony finally been revealed, but the investigation is not over yet. This book illustrates, with a language suitable even for non-specialists, the theories, observations and discoveries that have brought cosmology into a new era.
La correspondance entre Henri Poincaré et les physiciens, chimistes et ingénieurs = The correspondence between Henri Poincaré and physicists, chemists and engineers
Cosmic microwave background radiation is the residue of the great heat following the Big Bang. A tenuous sign, over 13 billion years old, in which the answers to many of the questions about the nature of our Universe are hidden. Discovered by chance in 1964, in the last forty years this fossil trace of the origins of the Cosmos has been explored with every available means. Two Nobel Prizes in physics have already been awarded for research involving it, the last in 2006 for the results of the COBE satellite. Much of the information encoded in the cosmic background radiation was impressed by the superimposition of acoustic waves present in the early Universe: a "music" of the Big Bang, which cosmologists have tried for years to reconstruct, using techniques similar to those that allow to distinguish the sound of different musical instruments. Only recently have the first notes of this extraordinary cosmic symphony finally been revealed, but the investigation is not over yet. This book illustrates, with a language suitable even for non-specialists, the theories, observations and discoveries that have brought cosmology into a new era.



















