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Fundamentals of Structural Mechanics
With the advent of the finite element method, our ability to compute has surpassed our ability to formulate theory. As a result, continuum mechanics is no longer the province of the specialist. What an engineer needs to know about mechanics has been forever changed by our capacity to compute. This book attempts to capitalize on the pedagogi cal opportunities implicit in this shift of perspective. It now seems more ap propriate to focus on fundamental principles and formulations than on classical solution techniques.
Formal Methods for Computational Systems Biology ; 8th International School on Formal Methods for the Design of Computer, Communication, and Software Systems, SFM 2008 Bertinoro, Italy, June 2-7, 2008 Advanced Lectures
This volume presents the set of papers accompanying the lectures of the eighth International School on Formal Methods for the Design of Computer, Com- nication, and Software Systems (SFM). This series of schools addresses the use of formal methods in computer science asaprominent approach to theri gorousdesign of computer, communication, and software systems. The main aim of the SFM series is to ofer a good spectrum of current research in foundations as well as applications of formal methods, which can be of help for graduate students and young researchers who intend to approach the feld.
FastSLAM : A Scalable Method for the Simultaneous Localization and Mapping Problem in Robotics
This monograph describes a new family of algorithms for the simultaneous localization and mapping problem in robotics (SLAM). SLAM addresses the problem of acquiring an environment map with a roving robot, while simultaneously localizing the robot relative to this map. This problem has received enormous attention in the robotics community in the past few years, reaching a peak of popularity on the occasion of the DARPA Grand Challenge in October 2005, which was won by the team headed by the authors. The FastSLAM family of algorithms applies particle filters to the SLAM Problem, which provides new insights into the data association problem that is paramount in SLAM. The FastSLAM-type algorithms have enabled robots to acquire maps of unprecedented size and accuracy, in a number of robot application domains and have been successfully applied in different dynamic environments, including the solution to the problem of people tracking.
Ethics and Civil Drones : European Policies and Proposals for the Industry
Disseminates some of the results of the European H2020 AiRT Project (Technology transfer of RPAs for the creative industry).
Equilibrium Between Phases of Matter : Phenomenology and Thermodynamics
The phase behaviour of materials and their thermodynamic properties are a central subject in all fields of materials research. The first Volume of the work, meant for graduate students in chemistry, geology, physics, and metallurgy, and their engineering counterparts, is split up in three levels, such that from level to level the portion and importance of thermodynamics and mathematics are increased. In the ground level it is shown that the basic principles of phase equilibria can be understood without the use of thermodynamics – be it that the concept of chemical potential is introduced right from the beginning. The intermediate level is an introduction to thermodynamics; culminating in the Gibbs energy as the arbiter for equilibrium – demonstrated for systems where the phases in equilibrium are pure substances. In the third level the accent is on binary systems, where one or more phases are solutions of the components.
Entrepreneurship in Emerging Domestic Markets : Barriers and Innovation
As one examines worldwide economic growth over the past decade, it is clear that the U.S. economy has surpassed most of the industrialized world, both in its rate of growth and its ability to create wealth. Entrepreneurship is critical to this growth—entrepreneurs recognize the potential of new ideas, design applications, develop new products, and successfully bring products to market. They build companies and create jobs, generating new opportunities for wealth creation.
Early Cancer of the Gastrointestinal Tract : Endoscopy, Pathology, and Treatment
Differences in the diagnostic criteria for early cancer of the gastrointestinal tract between Japan and Western countries have been an interesting issue for some time, physicians in Japan being much more inclined to give a diagnosis of cancer than their European and North American counterparts. This book addresses those differences by contrasting the views of Eastern and Western endoscopists and pathologists on 24 cases presented in Part I.
Distributed systems : Concurrency and consistency
Explores the gray area of distributed systems and draws a map of weak consistency criteria, identifying several families and demonstrating how these may be implemented into a programming language. Unlike their sequential counterparts, distributed systems are much more difficult to design, and are therefore prone to problems. On a large scale, usability reminiscent of sequential consistency, which would provide the same global view to all users, is very expensive or impossible to achieve.
Digital Towns : Accelerating and Measuring the Digital Transformation of Rural Societies and Economies
This book explores the digital transformation of small and rural towns, in particular, how to measure the evolution and development of digital towns. In addition to access to resources, competition from urban and global markets, and population trends, rural communities present lesser access and use of digital technologies and have lower digital competencies and skills than their urban counterparts. Consequently, they experience less beneficial outcomes from increased digitalisation than urban areas. This book defines what a digital town is and explores digitalisation from the perspective of the four basic economic sectors in towns - individuals and households, businesses, the public sector, and civil society - and three types of enabling infrastructure - digital connectivity, education, and governance.
Development in Turbulent Times: The Many Faces of Inequality Within Europe
This open access book explores the most recent trends in the EU in terms of development, progress, and performance.This book reflect upon the developmental challenges of the moment, such as sustainable development, reducing inequality, ensuring social cohesion, and driving the digital revolution. They particularly focus on the relation between the less-developed Eastern part of the EU and its more developed Western counterpart, and discuss the consequences of this development gap in detail. Lastly, the book presents a range of case studies from different areas of governance, such as economy and commerce, health services, education, migration and public opinion in order to investigate the trends most likely to impact the European Union's medium and long-term development.
Design and analysis of randomized algorithms : Introduction to design paradigms
Randomness is a powerful phenomenon that can be harnessed to solve various problems in all areas of computer science. Randomized algorithms are often more efficient, simpler and, surprisingly, also more reliable than their deterministic counterparts. Computing tasks exist that require billions of years of computer work when solved using the fastest known deterministic algorithms, but they can be solved using randomized algorithms in a few minutes with negligible error probabilities. Introducing the fascinating world of randomness, this book systematically teaches the main algorithm design paradigms – foiling an adversary, abundance of witnesses, fingerprinting, amplification, and random sampling, etc. – while also providing a deep insight into the nature of success in randomization. Taking sufficient time to present motivations and to develop the reader's intuition, while being rigorous throughout, this text is a very effective and efficient introduction to this exciting field.
DARPA Grand Challenge : The Great Robot Race
The goal of the new series of Springer Tracts in Advanced Robotics (STAR) is to bring, in a timely fashion, the latest advances and developments in robotics on the basis of their significance and quality. It is our hope that the wider dissemination of research developments will stimulate more exchanges and collaborations among the research community and contribute to further advancement of this rapidly growing field. The volume edited by Martin Buehler, Karl Iagnemma and Sanjiv Singh presents a unique and extensive collection of the scientific results by the teams which took part into the DARPA Grand Challenge in October 2005 in the Nevada desert. This event reached an incredible peak of popularity in the media, the race of the century like someone called it! The Grand Challenge demonstrated the fast growing progress - ward the development of robotics technology, as it showed the feasibility of using mobile robots operating autonomously in real world scenarios.
CyberParks – The Interface Between People, Places and Technology: New Approaches and Perspectives
This book is about public open spaces, about people, and about the relationship between them and the role of technology in this relationship. It is about different approaches, methods, empirical studies, and concerns about a phenomenon that is increasingly being in the centre of sciences and strategies – the penetration of digital technologies in the urban space. As the main outcome of the CyberParks Project, this book aims at fostering the understanding about the current and future interactions of the nexus people, public spaces and technology. It addresses a wide range of challenges and multidisciplinary perspectives on emerging phenomena related to the penetration of technology in people’s lifestyles - affecting therefore the whole society, and with this, the production and use of public spaces. Cyberparks coined the term cyberpark to describe the mediated public space, that emerging type of urban spaces where nature and cybertechnologies blend together to generate hybrid experiences and enhance quality of life.
Criminalising Harmful Conduct : The Harm Principle, its Limits and Continental Counterparts
This book explores the issue of legitimate criminalization in a modern, liberal society. Coverage provides a comparative study between two major criminal legal systems and its theories: the Anglo-American, on one side, and the Continental criminal legal system of Germanic legal circle, on the other.
Concurrency, Graphs and Models : Essays Dedicated to Ugo Montanari on the Occasion of His 65th Birthday
The volume consists of seven sections, six of which are dedicated to the main research areas to which Ugo Montanari has contributed: Graph Transformation; Constraint and Logic Programming; Software Engineering; Concurrency; Models of Computation; and Software Verification.
Computational Intelligence in Medical Informatics
This book deals with the application of computational intelligence in medical informatics. Addressing the various issues of medical informatics using different computational intelligence approaches is the novelty of this edited volume.
Computational intelligence in bioinformatics
This book deals with the application of computational intelligence in bioinformatics. Addressing the various issues of bioinformatics using different computational intelligence approaches is the novelty of this edited volume.
Magnetoreception and Magnetosomes in Bacteria
Recent developments in the research on magnetotactic bacteria are presented in this volume. Included are reviews on the formation and organization of magnetosomes, the genes controlling magnetosome biomineralization, and new cryogenic techniques to visualize novel cytoskeleton structures. Described here are potential nanobiotechnological applications of the magnetosome crystals, which have magnetic and crystalline characteristics unmatched by their inorganic counterparts.
Low-Cost Approaches to Promote Physical and Mental Health : Theory, Research, and Practice
Most physical and mental health professionals will agree that their time, space, and funds are generally in short supply, even under optimal conditions. Their participants (clients or patients), too, will admit to similar deficits of time and patience, even with optimal motivation. Overburdened mental health facilities are trying to cope with limited budgets and overworked and underpaid personnel. Low-Cost Approaches to Promote Physical and Mental Health addresses both sides of this shortfall by offering either self-administered or easily administered verbal and non-verbal interventions designed to promote positive health behaviors while requiring little or no outside funding.
Leibnizs Metaphysics of Time and Space
Leibniz’s metaphysics of space and time stands at the centre of his philosophy and is one of the high-water marks in the history of the philosophy of science. In this work, Futch provides the first systematic and comprehensive examination of Leibniz’s thought on this subject. In addition to elucidating the nature of Leibniz’s relationalism, the book fills a lacuna in existing scholarship by examining his views on the topological structure of space and time, including the unity and unboundedness of space and time. It is shown that, like many of his more recent counterparts, Leibniz adopts a causal theory of time where temporal facts are grounded on causal facts, and that his approach to time represents a precursor to non-tensed theories of time.
