Library and information sciences : Trends and research
Introduces the opportunities and challenges faced by the library and information literacy profession and discusses the key role of librarians in the future of information literacy education. Next, it covers trends in LIS education by examining the vision of the iSchool movement and detailing its practice in Syracuse University. The book then covers issues in information seeking and retrieval by showing how visual data mining technology can be used to detect the relationship and pattern between terms on the Q&A of a social media site. It also includes a case study regarding tracing information seeking behavior and usage on a multimedia website.
Complexity hints for economic policy
This volume extends the complexity approach to economics. It provides some alternative pattern generators, which can supplement existing approaches by providing an alternative way of finding patterns than be obtained by the traditional scientific approach.
Complex systems approach to economic dynamics
This monograph introduces new concepts of unstable periodic orbits and chaotic saddles which are unstable structures embedded in a chaotic attractor, responsible for economic intermittency.
Agent-based computational modelling : Applications in demography, social, economic and environmental sciences
The present book describes the methodology to set up agent-based models and to study emerging patterns in complex adaptive systems resulting from multi-agent interaction. It offers the application of agent-based models in demography, social and economic sciences and environmental sciences. It presents and combines different approaches how to implement agent-based computational models and tools in an integrative manner that can be extended to other cases.
Calm : Interiors to nurture, relax and restore
Home should be a place to retreat from the everyday. Creating a home that instills a sense of calm will cocoon and protect us from the outside world, create a sense of wellbeing and make us feel truly nurtured. Calm will help you create a restful, restorative interior that draws you in and makes your shoulders drop the moment you walk through the door. Sally Denning first explores the essential foundations of a tranquil, comforting home: calming and harmonious colors, textiles, patterns, lighting, and decorative elements.
Architecture of normal : the colonization of the American landscape
Charts the patterns created by reigning modes of transportation and examines how people came to accept the bland, branded boxes lining America's streets and freeways as architecture. Beginning with a portrait of ambulatory Native American societies and the introduction of horses by the Spaniards, Kaven discusses the built environment shaped by trains, cars, planes and rockets, and looks toward a future architecture defined by autonomous cars and air taxis
A Pattern Language : Towns, Buildings, Construction
In this volume, 253 archetypal patterns consisting of problem statements, discussions, illustrations, and solutions provide lay persons with a framework for engaging in architectural design.
Mathematical Modelling of Biosystems
This volume is an interdisciplinary book, which introduces, in a very readable way, state of the art research in the fundamental topics of mathematical modelling of Biosystems. These topics include: the study of Biological Growth and its mechanisms, the coupling of pattern to form via theorems of Differential Geometry, the human immunodeficiency virus dynamics, the inverse folding problem and the possibility of analysing true protein backbone flexibility, the Biclustering techniques for the organization of microarray data, the analytical approach to the modelling of biomolecular structure via Steiner trees, the action of biocides on resistance mechanisms of mutated and phenotypic bacteria strains, a description of the fundamental processes for the distribution and abundances of species towards a unified theory of Ecology, and a special introduction to Protein Physics aiming to explain the all-or-none first order phase transitions from native to denatured states.
Mathematical Masterpieces : Further Chronicles by the Explorers
Experience the discovery of mathematics by reading the original work of some of the greatest minds throughout history. Here are the stories of four mathematical adventures, including the Bernoulli numbers as the passage between discrete and continuous phenomena, the search for numerical solutions to equations throughout time, the discovery of curvature and geometric space, and the quest for patterns in prime numbers. Each story is told through the words of the pioneers of mathematical thought. Particular advantages of the historical approach include providing context to mathematical inquiry, perspective to proposed conceptual solutions, and a glimpse into the direction research has taken.
Longer Life and Healthy Aging
Focuses on theoretical issues and empirical findings related to trends and determinants of healthy aging, including factors related to "healthy longevity" of the oldest-old, aged 80 and over. The group is the most rapidly increasing elderly sub-population and is most likely to need assistance in daily living in all countries. Chapters include both longitudinal and cross-sectional data from North America, Europe, and Asia in country-specific studies and cross-national comparisons. Part I focuses on the definition, components, concepts, measurements, and determinants of healthy aging, and discusses the trends and patterns of disability and healthy life expectancy at the macro level. Part II addresses individual healthy aging, including its biological and socio-demographic aspects. Part III focuses on issues concerning the family and healthy aging, and Part IV explores formal and informal care for healthy aging through governmental policy interventions and community service programs.
Latinas/os in the United States : Changing the Face of América
This book also addresses important theoretical and methodological issues related to the study of Latinas/os and presents in-depth analyses (both quantitative and qualitative) of substantive issues relevant to this population, including migration, demographic patterns and processes, education, health, citizenship, political participation, religion, gender and sex roles, literary and cultural production, and the media. The authors seek to educate and increase awareness of the diversity that exists among the Latina/o population, and to carefully examine the social, economic, demographic, cultural, and political impacts and contributions that this growing population has had in the United States. The edited volume presents a holistic and multidisciplinary perspective of this group, and it critically documents how Latinas and Latinos have changed and will continue to change the face of América.
Land Use and Soil Resources
Land-use change is one of the main drivers of many environmental change processes. It influences the basic resources of land use, including the soil. Its impact on soil often occurs so creepingly that land managers hardly contemplate initiating ameliorative or counterbalance measures. Poor land management has degraded vast amounts of land, reduced our ability to produce enough food, and is a major threat to rural livelihoods in many developing countries. To date, there has been no single unifying volume that addresses the multifaceted impacts of land use on soils. This book has responded to this challenge by bringing together renowned academics and policy experts to analyze the patterns, driving factors and proximate causes, and the socioeconomic impacts of soil degradation. Policy measures to prevent irreversible degradation and rehabilitate degraded soils are also identified.
Kinship and Demographic Behavior in the Past
This book examines the role of kinship and the family’s influence on the health outcomes of their children, their children’s selection of marriage partners, couples having higher order births or reduced fertility, individual migration and origins of populations. Mortality patterns are examined to determine the influence of fertility patterns on parents’ mortality, the contribution of parents’ longevity to their children’s lifespan, and the whether a family history of disease affects the risk of dying from that same disease.This volume emphasizes the importance of studies that include and compare other factors related to social organization with information on multi-generational families. The authors elucidate previous explanations and provide provocative new results. Such intergenerational research is crucial in understanding long term demographic trends and processes.
Complex Artificial Environments : Simulation, Cognition and VR in the Study and Planning of Cities
This book explores the possibilities of applying the theories of complexity and self-organization developed to account for various phenomena in the natural science to artifacts traditionally the realm of humanities and social sciences. The emphasis of this volume is on the development of cities and the impact of these methods on urban simulation methods.
Childlessness in Europe : Contexts, Causes, and Consequences
This open access book provides an overview of childlessness throughout Europe. It offers a collection of papers written by leading demographers and sociologists that examine contexts, causes, and consequences of childlessness in countries throughout the region.The book features data from all over Europe. It specifically highlights patterns of childlessness in Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Finland, Sweden, Austria and Switzerland. An additional chapter on childlessness in the United States puts the European experience in perspective.
Challenges for Computational Intelligence
Computational Intelligence (CI) is used as a name to cover many existing branches of science, with artificial neural networks, fuzzy systems and evolutionary computation forming its core. In recent years CI has been extended by adding many other subdisciplines and it became quite obvious that this new field also requires a series of challenging problems that will give it a sense of direction. Without setting up clear goals and yardsticks to measure progress on the way many research efforts are wasted.The book written by top experts in CI provides such clear directions and the much-needed focus on the most important and challenging research issues, showing a roadmap how to achieve ambitious goals.
Cellular Automaton Modeling of Biological Pattern Formation: Characterization, Applications, and Analysis
This book focuses on a challenging application field of cellular automata: pattern formation in biological systems, such as the growth of microorganisms, dynamics of cellular tissue and tumors, and formation of pigment cell patterns. These phenomena, resulting from complex cellular interactions, cannot be deduced solely from experimental analysis, but can be more easily examined using mathematical models, in particular, cellular automaton models.
Catalytic Carbonylation Reactions
Carbonylation reactions are of major importance in both organic and industrial chemistry. Due to the availability, price and reactivity pattern, carbon monoxide is becoming a more and more important building block for fine and bulk chemicals. The major reaction types of carbon monoxide are comprehensively discussed by leading experts from academia and industry. The authors highlight important carbonylation reactions such as hydroformylation, alkoxy-carbonylations, co/olefin-copolymerization, Pauson-Khand reactions and others. They illustrate applications in organic synthesis and give industrial examples.
Browning Agents and Active Particles : Collective Dynamics in the Natural and Social Sciences
Lays out a vision for a coherent framework for understanding complex systems'' (from the foreword by J. Doyne Farmer). By developing the genuine idea of Brownian agents, the author combines concepts from informatics, such as multiagent systems, with approaches of statistical many-particle physics. This way, an efficient method for computer simulations of complex systems is developed which is also accessible to analytical investigations and quantitative predictions. The book demonstrates that Brownian agent models can be successfully applied in many different contexts, ranging from physicochemical pattern formation, to active motion and swarming in biological systems, to self-assembling of networks, evolutionary optimization, urban growth, economic agglomeration and even social systems.
Brain Dynamics : Synchronization and Activity Patterns in Pulse-Coupled Neural Nets with Delays and Noise
This book addresses a large variety of models in mathematical and computational neuroscience.He devotes the main part to the synchronization problem. He presents neural net models more realistic than the conventional ones by taking into account the detailed dynamics of axons, synapses and dendrites, allowing rather arbitrary couplings between neurons. He gives a complete stabile analysis that goes significantly beyond what has been known so far. He also derives pulse-averaged equations including those of the Wilson--Cowan and the Jirsa-Haken-Nunez types and discusses the formation of spatio-temporal neuronal activity pattems. An analysis of phase locking via sinusoidal couplings leading to various kinds of movement coordination is included.



















