Banks and fintech on platform economies : Contextual and conscious banking
In Banks and Fintech on Platform Economies: Contextual and Conscious Banking, accomplished fintech professional and author Paolo Sironi delivers an insightful examination of how platform theory, born outside of financial services, will make its way inside banking and financial markets to radically transform the way firms do business.
Bank Investing : A Practitioner's Field Guide
Bank Investing: A Practitioner's Field Guide offers you the essential toolkit to become a successful bank investor. It packages practical lessons, theoretical knowledge, and historical context, all into one compelling and hopefully entertaining book. The book includes conversations with investors and management teams.
Balanced Website Design : Optimising Aesthetics, Usability and Purpose
Balanced Website Design (BWD) is a new methodology that fuses the strengths of traditional structured, stepped, and iterative approaches with a sharp focus on defining and achieving the desired characteristics of purpose, usability and aesthetics – absolutely essential requirements for any website. The book includes discussions of new perspectives on usability and aesthetics in the special context of website design. BWD is suitable for all types of websites, for individual and/or team projects, and should prove to be of significant value for even the most experienced of website designers. BWD provides guidance, structure and detailed documentation/process support for the activity of designing and implementing your next website – helping you to maximise its effectiveness and relevance.
Average-Cost Control of Stochastic Manufacturing Systems
This book is concerned with hierarchical control of manufacturing systems under uncertainty. It focuses on system performance measured in long-run average cost criteria, exploring the relationship between control problems with a discounted cost and that with a long-run average cost in connection with hierarchical control. A new theory is articulated that shows that hierarchical decision making in the context of a goal-seeking manufacturing system can lead to a near optimization of its objective. The approach in the book considers manufacturing systems in which events occur at different time scales.
Autonomy and human rights in health care : An international perspective
Autonomy and Human Rights in Healthcare: An International Perspective is a group of essays published in memory of David Thomasma, one of the leading humanists in the field of bioethics during the twentieth century. A pioneer in the field of multidisciplinary research, having integrated major theological and philosophical traditions in the west with modern science, Thomasma was a role model to the authors who have devoted essays to his major avenues of inquiry. The authors represent many different countries and disciplines throughout the globe. The volume deals with the pressing issue of how to ground a universal bioethics in the context of the conflicted world of combative cultures and perspectives.
Autonomic networking ; 1st International IFIP TC6 Conference, AN 2006, Paris, France, September 27-29, 2006, Proceedings
The autonomic communication paradigm has been defined mainly through the Autonomic Communications Forum (ACF) and particularly as follows: Autonomic communication is centered on selfware – an innovative approach to perform known and emerging tasks of a network control plane, both end-to-end and middle box communication-based. Selfware assures the capacity to evolve; however, it requires generic network instrumentation. Selfware principles and technologies borrow largely from well-established research on distributed systems, fault tolerance among others, from emerging research on non-conventional networking (multihop ad hoc, sensor, peer-to-peer, group communication, etc.
Autonomic communication ; Vol. 3457 ; 1st International IFIP Workshop, WAC 2004, Berlin, Germany, October 18-19, 2004, Revised Selected Papers
The ?rst IFIP Workshop on Autonomic Communication (WAC 2004) was held 2004 in Berlin, Germany. The purpose of this workshop was to discuss Autonomic Communication—a new communication paradigm to assist the design of the next-generation n- works. WAC 2004 was explicitly focused on the principles that help to achieve purposeful behavior on top of self-organization (self-management, self-healing, self-awareness, etc. ). The workshop intended to derive these common principles from submissions that study network element’s autonomic behavior exposed by innovative (cross-layer optimized, context-aware, and securely programmable) protocol stack (or its middleware emulations) in its interaction with numerous, often dynamic network groups and communities. The goals were to understand how autonomic behaviors are learned, in?uenced or changed, and how, in turn, these a?ect other elements, groups and the network. Panel reports were compiled by panel moderators and conclude this volume.
Automotive production systems and standardisation : From Ford to the case of Mercedes-Benz
The introduction of the Mercedes-Benz Production System (MPS) is exemplary of a trend within the automotive industry: the creation and introduction of company-specific standardised production systems. This book contributes to the debate about production systems by examining the social and economic implications of the role of standardisation in production systems. In this context it addresses three core issues: First, the driving forces behind the changing forms and functions of standardisation and the role of institutions therein. Second, the impact of standardisation on the evolution of automotive production systems. Third, based on the author's own empirical research conducted over a three year period at the Mercedes-Benz plant Stuttgart-Untertürkheim/Germany, the book examines the influence of standardisation on the work of actors on the shop floor in terms of organisational learning processes and the regulation of work.
Aurora : Observing and Recording Nature's Spectacular Light Show
The uniquely beautiful light display of an aurora is the result of charged particles colliding with tenuous atmospheric oxygen and nitrogen, more than 60 miles above the Earth, when the magnetosphere is disturbed by changes in the solar wind. Often - and incorrectly - regarded as being confined to high northern and southern latitudes, major auroral displays are visible from even the southern USA and the south of England, and occur perhaps twenty times in each eleven-year sunspot cycle. This book describes the aurora from the amateur observational viewpoint, discusses professional studies of auroral and geomagnetic phenomena to put amateur work in context, and explains how practical observers can go about observing and recording auroral displays.
Attitudes and changing contexts
In this book, the author defends a unified externalists account of propositional attitudes and reference, and formalizes this view within possible world semantics.
Attention in Cognitive Systems : Theories and Systems from an Interdisciplinary Viewpoint ; 4th International Workshop on Attention in Cognitive Systems, WAPCV 2007 Hyderabad, India, January 8, 2007 Revised Selected Papers
The embodied nature of sensory-motor intelligence requires a continuous and focused interplay between the control of motor activities and the interpretation of feedback from perceptual modalities. Decision making about the selection of information from the incoming sensory stream – in tune with contextual processing on a current task and an agent’s global objectives – becomes a further challenging issue in attentional control. Attention must operate at interfaces between bottom-up driven world int- pretation and top-down driven information selection, thus acting at the core of arti?cial cognitive systems. These insights have already induced changes in AI-related disciplines, such as the design of behavior-based robot control and the computational modeling of animats. Today, the development of enabling technologiessuch as autonomous robotic systems,miniaturizedmobile–evenwearable–sensors,andambientintelligence systems involves the real-time analysis of enormous quantities of data. These data have to be processed in an intelligent way to provide “on time delivery” of the required relevant information. Knowledge has to be applied about what needs to be attended to, and when, and what to do in a meaningful sequence, in correspondence with visual feedback.
Atmospheric Aerosol Properties : Formation, Processes and Impacts
An increasing interest in studies of atmospheric aerosols in the context of their impact on the formation of climate, heterogeneous chemical reactions in the atmosphere affecting in particular the environmental quality, problems of visibility and human health is the cause of unusual scales of developments connected with studies of atmospheric aerosols. The necessity has arisen to analyze the latest results concerning, first of all, three aspects of the problems considered: 1. aerosol properties from data of complex field observational experiment; 2. processes of aerosol formation and interaction of aerosol with clouds, 3. aerosol as a climate-forming atmospheric component (including the problem of long-range transport). The monograph in hand is dedicated mainly to the problems of the impact of aerosol on climate processes in the atmosphere, from microphysical processes of formation and evolution of aerosol properties to the formation of macro-scale cloud sytems on aerosol particles.
Asylum Determination in Europe : Ethnographic Perspectives
The book includes a legal overview of European asylum determination procedures, followed by sections on the diverse actors involved, the means by which they communicate, and the ways in which they make life and death decisions on a daily basis. It offers a contextually rich account that moves beyond doctrinal law to uncover the gaps and variances between formal policy and legislation, and law as actually practiced.
Asian Digital Libraries. Looking Back 10 Years and Forging New Frontiers ; 10th International Conference on Asian Digital Libraries, ICADL 2007, Hanoi, Vietnam, December 10-13, 2007. Proceedings
The theme reflects upon the growth of the digital libraries community and explores new areas that the community could delve into in the coming years.
Artrite reumatoide e spondiloentesoartriti : Diagnostica per immagini e imaging follow-up = Rheumatoid Arthritis and Spondyloentesoarthritis : Follow-up imaging and imaging
Recent technological evolutions in diagnostic imaging have allowed him to grasp the anatomical and functional alterations that characterize the onset phase of degenerative and inflammatory arthropathies. In the context of the latter, in particular, imaging is not only fundamental in the diagnosis of the early stage of arthritis but also in defining their evolution and response to modern therapeutic treatment. The evaluation of a new imaging semeiology, which makes considerable use of the use of contrast medium in relation to both power Doppler and magnetic resonance imaging, has made it possible to narrow the gap between histology and imaging in rheumatological diagnostics.
Artistic cartography and design explorations towards the pluriverse
Explores the pluriverse of art and design through epistemological and methodological considerations. What kinds of sustainable ways are there for knowledge transfer, supporting plural agendas, finding novel ways for unsettling conversations, unlearning and learning and challenging power structures with marginalised groups and contexts through art and design? The main themes of the book are art and design methods, epistemologies and practices that provide critical, interdisciplinary, pluriversal and decolonial considerations. The book challenges the domination of the white logic of art and design and shifts away from the Anglo-European one-world system towards the pluriverse.
Artificial Mind System : Kernel Memory Approach
This book is written from an engineer's perspective of the mind. "Artificial Mind System" exposes the reader to a broad spectrum of interesting areas in general brain science and mind-oriented studies. In this research monograph a picture of the holistic model of an artificial mind system and its behaviour is drawn, as concretely as possible, within a unified context, which could eventually lead to practical realisation in terms of hardware or software. With a view that "the mind is a system always evolving", ideas inspired by many branches of studies related to brain science are integrated within the text, i.e. artificial intelligence, cognitive science / psychology, connectionism, consciousness studies, general neuroscience, linguistics, pattern recognition / data clustering, robotics, and signal processing.
Artificial intelligence techniques in hydrology and water resources management
The sustainable management of water cycles is crucial in the context of climate change and global warming. It involves managing global, regional, and local water cycles, as well as urban, agricultural, and industrial water cycles, to conserve water resources and their relationships with energy, food, microclimates, biodiversity, ecosystem functioning, and anthropogenic activities. Hydrological modeling is indispensable for achieving this goal, as it is essential for water resources management and the mitigation of natural disasters. In recent decades, the application of artificial intelligence (AI) techniques in hydrology and water resources management has led to notable advances. In the face of hydro-geo-meteorological uncertainty, AI approaches have proven to be powerful tools for accurately modeling complex, nonlinear hydrological processes and effectively utilizing various digital and imaging data sources, such as ground gauges, remote sensing tools, and in situ Internet of Things (IoT) devices.
Artifical intelligence for human computing ; ICMI 2006 and IJCAI 2007 International Workshops, Banff, Canada, November 3, 2006 Hyderabad, India, January 6, 2007 Revised Selceted Papers
This book contains the thoroughly refereed post-proceedings of two events discussing AI for Human Computing.It presented a vision of the future of computing technology in which AI, in particular machine learning and agent technology, plays an essential role.
Argumentation in Science Education : Perspectives from Classroom-Based Research
This book brings together the work of leading experts in argumentation in science education. It presents research combining theoretical and empirical perspectives relevant for secondary science classrooms. Since the 1990s, argumentation studies have increased at a rapid pace, from stray papers to a wealth of research exploring ever more sophisticated issues. This volume constitutes a unique collection and covers fundamental issues in argumentation such as cognitive, methodological and epistemological aspects; classroom-based research in teaching and learning of argumentation in science classrooms; and argumentation in context such as in socio-scientific and moral contexts. The book’s underlying premise is that argumentation is a significant aspect of scientific inquiry and plays an important role in teaching and learning of science.



















