Meaning and Use
The second Jerusalem Philosophical Encounter was held in Jerusalem on April 25-28, 1976, The topic of the symposiumwas Meaning and Use. For Bar-Hillel, the question 'meaning or use?' was of great importance, one which he took as a question of priorities. Which approach to natural language is prior: the formal, semantical approach, which accords a central position to the truth functional concept of meaning and to the theory of reference, or rather the alternative approach which accords the central position to linguistic commu nication and prefers dealing with speech acts to dealing with Statements? Bar Hillel's answer to this question, in his later years, can be summed up by our title, meaning and use: neither approach deserves priority, each is equally necessary, and they both complement each other.
Islamic FinTech : Insights and Solutions
Addresses the effects and implications of rapid technological changes within the financial services industry on Islamic finance and Islamic banks. Exploring current challenges, opportunities and threats, the authors provide an overview of how FinTech can operate within an Islamic context, under the Shari’ah principles or the Halal framework, for example. Examining the potential opportunities of Islamic FinTech from a socio-economic perspective, this edited collection will be of use to anyone researching FinTech or Islamic Finance as well as practitioners and policy-makers involved in banking and financial services.
Irritable Bowel syndrome I.B.S
Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) is a chronic gastrointestinal disorder with a range of symptoms that significantly affect quality of life for patients. Is currently one of the most common disorders of the digestive system in the Western society? Almost 2 out of 10 people suffer from IBS, and it is associated with abdominal pain, bloating and altered stool consistency and imposes a heavy burden for the affected patients. The difficulty of differential diagnosis and its treatment may significantly delay initiation of optimal therapy. Hence, persons with IBS often self-treat symptoms with non-prescribed pharmacological regimens and/or complementary and alternative medicines (CAM) and by modifying diet and daily activities.
Irreversible Decisions under Uncertainty : Optimal Stopping Made Easy
In real life, as well as in economic models, individuals often make decisions in an uncertain environment. In many cases, a problem which an optimizing agent faces can be formulated or reformulated as a problem of optimal timing of a certain irreversible or partially reversible action or optimal stopping problem. In this book, the authors present an alternative approach to optimal stopping problems. The basic ideas and techniques of the approach can be explained much simpler than the standard methods in the literature on optimal stopping problems. The monograph will teach the reader to apply the technique to many problems in economics and finance, including new ones. From the technical point of view, the method can be characterized as option pricing via the Wiener-Hopf factorization.
Investing in Private Equity Partnerships : The Role of Monitoring and Reporting
Private equity has become an important asset class for institutional investors. As the asset class grows and investors get more experienced, the debate concerning transparency and governance of private equity funds has intensified. Fund investors demand more disclosure from private equity fund managers. Are these calls justified? What information do fund investors need? How can private equity fund investors manage their exposure to the asset class effectively? Kay Müller presents an in-depth analysis into the monitoring activities of institutional investors and explores their information requirements by interviewing leading European private equity fund investors. He contrasts these results with the actual reporting by fund managers and reveals essential information gaps based on a disclosure study of private equity fund reports. Since effective and open communication supports long-lasting and trusted partnerships, these findings provide important guidance on how to improve the relationships between investors and fund managers in the private equity industry.
Introduction to Variance Estimation
The book provides instruction on the methods that are vital to data-driven decision making in business, government, and academe. It will appeal to survey statisticians and other scientists engaged in the planning and conduct of survey research, and to those analyzing survey data and charged with extracting compelling information from such data. It will appeal to graduate students and university faculty who are focused on the development of new theory and methods and on the evaluation of alternative methods. Software developers concerned with creating the computer tools necessary to enable sound decision-making will find it essential.
Introduction to software design with Java
Provides an in-depth introduction to software design, with a focus on object-oriented design, and using the Java programming language. Its goal is to help readers learn software design by discovering the experience of the design process. To this end, the text follows a continuous narrative that introduces each element of design know-how in context, and explores alternative solutions in that context. This narrative is complemented by hundreds of code fragments and design diagrams.
Introduction to Bayesian Statistics
This is the second and translated edition of the German book “Einf ̈uhrung in die Bayes-Statistik, Springer-Verlag, Berlin Heidelberg New York, 2000”. It has been completely revised and numerous new developments are pointed out together with the relevant literature. The Chapter 5.2.4 is extended by the stochastic trace estimation for variance components. The new Chapter 5.2.6 presents the estimation of the regularization parameter of type Tykhonov regularization for inverse problems as the ratio of two variance components.The reconstruction and the smoothing of digital three-dimensional images is demonstrated in the new Chapter 5.3. The Chapter 6.2.1 on importance sampling for the Monte Carlo integration is rewritten to solve a more general integral. This chapter contains also the derivation of the SIR (sampling-importance-resampling) algorithm as an alternative to the rejection method for generating random samples. Markov Chain Monte Carlo methods are now frequently applied in Bayesian statistics.
Internal Research & Development Markets
In times of global markets, increasing competition and short product life cycles the effective and efficient management of industrial research and development (R&D) activities is of central importance for companies as well as for the whole economy. Traditionally the resources for R&D projects are allocated via planning- and budgeting procedures, evaluation methods and hierarchical decision-committees. This book presents resource allocation via internal markets as an alternative to such hierarchical decision procedures.
Intelligent interactive multimedia systems for e-Healthcare applications
includes high-quality research on various aspects of intelligent interactive multimedia technologies in healthcare services. The topics covered in the book focus on state-of-the-art approaches, methodologies, and systems in the design, development, deployment, and innovative use of multimedia systems, tools, and technologies in healthcare. The volume provides insights into smart healthcare service demands. It presents all information about multimedia uses in e-healthcare applications. The book also includes case studies and self-assessment problems for readers and future researchers. This book proves to be a valuable resource to know how AI can be an alternative tool for automated and intelligent analytics for e-healthcare applications.
Integrative Pain Medicine : The Science and Practice of Complementary and Alternative Medicine in Pain Management
This important book fills a need in the developing area of Pain Medicine, providing physicians with an up-to-date resource that would detail the current understanding about the basic science underlying the mechanism of action of the various CAM therapies used for pain, summarizing the clinical evidence both for efficacy and safety, and then end with practical guidelines about how such treatments could be successfully and safely integrated into a Pain practice.
Integrative Oncology : Incorporating Complementary Medicine into Conventional Cancer Care
Integrative Oncology: Incorporating Complementary Medicine into Conventional Cancer Care is a platform from which accomplished professionals describe the various aspects of their programs and present their insights to those seeking to start or improve an integrative oncology program.
Insurance distribution directive : A legal analysis
This book of the AIDA Europe Research Series on Insurance Law and Regulation offers the first comprehensive legal and regulatory analysis of the Insurance Distribution Directive (IDD).
Insulating Modernism : Isolated and Non-Isolated Thermodynamics in Architecture
What is the best way to achieve sustainable energy savings in buildings? This book describes the history, theory and facts of the mainstream insulation technology and the emerging alternative design approaches.
Innovations in impact and blast protections : Foam-filled energy absorbers and steel-concrete-steel sandwich structures
Develops several novel foam-filled structures and steel-concrete-steel (SCS) sandwich structures, which provides more alternatives for ensuring the safety of buildings and infrastructures under extreme loading, like impact and blast.
Innovation Capacity and the City : The Enabling Role of Design
This book represents one of the key milestones of DESIGNSCAPES: value creation through design-enabled innovation”. The book demonstrates that adopting design allows us to embed innovation within the city so as to arrive at feasible answers to complex global challenges. In this way, innovation can become disruptive, while also sparking a dynamic of gradual change in the “urbanscape” it acts within. To explore this potential, the book puts forward the concept of “design enabled innovation in urban environments” and examines the part that the city can play in promoting and facilitating the adoption of design among public and private sector innovators. This leads to a potential evaluation framework in which a given urbanscape is assessed both in terms of its capacity for generating innovation, and of the nature (more or less design-dependent or design-prone) of the innovative initiatives it hosts. This thread of reasoning holds many promising implications, including a possible “third way” between those who dream of an alternative economic model where revenues and growth are sacrificed on the altar of social and environmental respect, and the supporters of the traditional market-based view, who feel it is enough to add a touch of responsibility and concern to a system that should continue rewarding the profitability of innovations.
Inevitable Aging? : Contributions to Evolutionary-Demographic Theory
Aging is inevitable: this is gerontological dogma. And humans do inevitably grow old, which is probably why it seems so unlikely to us that other forms of life could escape aging. Escaping aging is not escaping death. Death is an inherent part of life, and it can strike any time. But the question is whether death necessarily becomes more likely as life proceeds. And it does not. The theoretical results in this monograph indicate that life provides alternative strategies. While some organisms will deteriorate over adult ages, for others mortality appears to fall or remain constant, at least over an extended period of life after reproductive maturity. This is empirically observed especially for species that keep on growing during adult ages. Perhaps the diversity of aging matches the diversity of life. My thesis, the central insight of this monograph, is: to deeply understand why some species age it is necessary to understand why other species do not.
Indian Medicinal Plants : An Illustrated Dictionary
This volume lists the taxonomy and medicinal usage of Indian plants. Also given are both traditional Indian and international synonyms along with details of the habitats of the plants. Indian Medicinal Plants. An Illustrated Dictionary is aimed at bringing out an updated Acute Study Dictionary of plant sources of Indian medicine. The text is based on authentic treatises which are the outcome of scientific screening and critical evaluation by eminent scholars.
Imaging Beyond the Pinhole Camera
The world's first photograph was taken in 1826 using a pinhole camera called camera obscura. Cameras used since then are basically following the pinhole camera principle. This book looks at the development as well as the applications of alternative camera architectures.
Image and video retrieval ; Vol. 3568 ; 4th International conference, CIVR 2005, Singapore, July 20-22, 2005, Proceedings
It was our great pleasure to host the 4th International Conference on Image and Video Retrieval (CIVR) at the National University of Singapore on 20–22 July 2005. CIVR aims to provide an international forum for the discussion of research challenges and exchange of ideas among researchers and practitioners in image/video retrieval technologies. It addresses innovative research in the broad ?eld of image and video retrieval. A unique feature of this conference is the high level of participation by researchers from both academia and industry. Another unique feature of CIVR this year was in its format – it o?ered both the traditional oral presentation sessions, as well as the short presentation cum poster sessions. The latter provided an informal alternative forum for animated discussions and exchanges of ideas among the participants.After a rigorous review process, 20 papers were accepted for oral presentations, and 42 papers were accepted for poster presentations. In addition to the accepted submitted papers, the program also included 4 invited papers, 1 keynote industrial paper, and 4 invited industrial papers. Altogether, we o?ered a diverse and interesting program, addressing the current interests and future trends in this area.



















