COTS-Based software systems ; 4th International Conference, ICCBSS 2005, Bilbao, Spain, February 7-11, 2005, Proceedings
The theme “Build and Conquer” : software development is an engineering discipline, and not an artistic expression. Once we are ready to “build” our software systems using pieces previously builtin (similar to any other technology manufacturer), we will be able to “conquer” the software engineering process. If we take a look at other engineering disciplines such as car manufacturing, house appliances or aeronautics, we see that the final products are built through the integration of multiprovider commercial components. These components are successfully integrated and constitute an important part of the final product. Most software-related organizations still build software from scratch, omitting thousands of ready-built commercially available software components that could be used very effectively during the development phase. This year ICCBSS moves to Europe for the first time since the first conference took place in Orlando, FL, USA in 2002. The conference scope has enlarged over the years to include the Open Source community and Web Services technologies. so many of the characteristics of COTS are also applied to Open Source and Web Services.
Costs of air pollution control : Analyses of emission control options for ozone abatement strategies
This work derives strategies for developing useful EU policies aimed at the control of air pollutants in Europe, especially ground-level ozone. The author starts with the air-pollution status quo in the late 1990s, placing further impacts of photooxidant concentrations into perspective. Emission sources are then analysed in detail, and a likely scenario for a business-as-usual development in emissions is proposed. From the cost-benefit perspective, it is shown that a holistic, integrated evaluation of all air pollutants and their effects results in a full accounting that reflects synergies and hidden benefits. The modelling scheme identifies emission targets needed to achieve compliance with EU thresholds, and calculations reveal the need to review established ozone thresholds and emission limits, even after discounting the positive effects of including central and eastern European nations.
Cost Accounting for Shared IT Infrastructures
Distributed client/server architectures are the technological backbone of today’s data centres. A usage-based allocation of infrastructure costs to business processes or users is often not possible as the necessary resource consumption measurements incur too much overhead. Reinhard Brandl proposes a method to derive estimates for the expected resource consumption of customer-oriented services during standard load tests. This facilitates the determination of usage-based cost allocation keys significantly. He implements the concept in a software tool kit and evaluates it successfully in a set of experiments with multi-tier database applications. In particular, he uses the determined consumption estimates as input parameters for Queuing Network Models which lead to highly accurate performance predictions. Finally, he analyzes how the method can be integrated into existing IT processes at the BMW Group.
Corporate Sustainability Management in the Energy Sector : An Empirical Contigency Approach
Corporate social responsibility, sustainability, and citizenship are terms that often evoke considerable scepticism and cynicism, particularly in civil society. Much needed sector-specific and comparative research, which could facilitate a more fact-oriented debate, is still missing from the literature. The present study aims to fill this gap by presenting data collected from two groups of managers, namely sustainability experts and non-sustainability experts, from two different industry sectors (integrated oil and gas vs. electric utilities) and several geographical regions. Oliver Salzmann provides a comprehensive view on corporate sustainability management in companies such as Shell and RWE and investigates the key social and environmental issues driving the energy sector. The author analyses the influence which stakeholder pressure exercises on energy companies and their efforts to become more responsive. Moreover, he develops a model for strategic, thus profit-oriented, corporate sustainability management.
Corporate Sustainability in Practice : A guide for Strategy Development and Implementation
Building better organisations, with a clear sense of purpose, is a common challenge faced by many entrepreneurs and executives in industry. A fully integrated corporate sustainability strategy can help organisations to better manage risks, to win business opportunities and to ultimately strengthen reputation. Building on the experience of renowned strategists, sustainability, finance and academic experts, this book offers practical tools and approaches that can be used to develop and implement fully integrated corporate sustainability strategies.
Coronal Mass Ejections
This volume offers a comprehensive and integrated overview of our present knowledge and understanding of Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) and their descendants, Interplanetary CMEs (ICMEs). It results from a series of workshops held between 2000 and 2004. An international team of about sixty experimenters involved e.g. in the SOHO, ULYSSES, VOYAGER, PIONEER, HELIOS, WIND, IMP, and ACE missions, ground observers, and theoreticians worked jointly on interpreting the observations and developing new models for CME initiations, development, and interplanetary propagation. The book provides researchers active in space physics with an overview of the current understanding of CMEs and ICMEs, and their effects in the heliosphere. It also provides the advanced graduate student with introductory material on this active field of research.
Coping with Water Deficiency : From Research to Policymaking
In line with the Water Framework Directive, this book stresses the need for an Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) approach to balance the competing demands on water-domestic, agricultural, industrial, tourism and environmental/ecological- and promote economically efficient, socially equitable and environmentally sustainable water use in selected regions from Southern Europe, the Mediterranean and the developing world. Results from the research projects covered by this book, demonstrate that effective water management tools and decisions-making practices, are needed in order to complement integrated interventions for increasing the availability of supply and/or managing the growing demand for scarce water supplies. Further, the book attempts to bridge the gap between ideas and actions endorsed at the research-oriented environmental debate, and their translation into policy making structures and programs in developed and developing countries.
Coping With Institutional Order Flow
Handling the large orders of institutional participants presents some of the most complex problems for system design. How well are our current systems operating, and how effective are new facilities on the scene? To what extent is market quality impaired for all participants when institutional trading costs are not properly contained? Can institutional order flow be efficiently integrated with the orders of retail customers, or are separate facilities needed? What are the impediments to market structure change, and how might they best be overcome?
Coordinated Multiuser Communications
Many communications systems, such as cellular mobile radio and wireless local area networks, are subject to multiple-access interference, caused by a multitude of users sharing a common transmission medium. The performance of receiver systems in such cases can be greatly improved by the application of joint detection and decoding methods. Multiuser detection and decoding not only improve system reliability and capacity, they also simplify the problem of resource allocation. Emphasis is placed on practical implementation aspects and modern iterative processing techniques for systems both with, and without integrated error control coding.
Continuous-Time Sigma-Delta A/D Conversion : Fundamentals, Performance Limits and Robust Implementations
This comprehensive book deals with all relevant aspects arising during the analysis, design and simulation of the now widespread continuous-time implementations of sigma-delta modulators. The results of several years of research by the authors in the field of CT sigma-delta modulators are covered, including the analysis and modeling of different CT modulator architectures, CT/DT loop filter synthesis, a detailed error analysis of all components, and possible compensation/correction schemes for the non-ideal behavior in CT sigma-delta modulators. Guidance for obtaining low-power consumption and several practical implementations are also presented. It is shown that all the proposed new theories, architectures and possible correction techniques have been confirmed by measurements on discrete or integrated circuits. Quantitative results are also provided, thus enabling prediction of the resulting accuracy.
Contemporary Sociological Theory : An Integrated Multi-Level Approach
This book covers the major theoretical orientations that have been influential in American sociology since the mid-twentieth century. These include symbolic interaction, phenomenological sociology and ethnomethodology, social exchange and rational choice theories, sociology of emotions, functionalism and neofunctionalism, conflict and critical theory, selected feminist theories, structuration theory, systems theory, sociobiology, selected sociology of culture perspectives, and major themes from postmodern orientations.
Contaminated rivers : A geomorphological-geochemical approach to site assessment and remediation
The geomorphological, surficial and geochemical processes and conditions of rivers require a tailored set of strategies and programs to successfully clean up contaminated river reaches. The primary purpose of this book is not only to provide students and professionals with an introductory understanding of fluvial geomorphic principles but also to explain using a process oriented approach how these geomorphic principles can be integrated with geochemical data to cost-effectively characterize, assess and remediate contaminated river systems. Numerous case studies from North America and many other parts of the world are included.
Consumer psychology : A life span developmental approach
Approaches consumer psychology from a unique perspective - it covers the entire lifespan, from birth to old age. Childhood and youth are not discussed as areas special, different and remote from the rest of consumer research but are integrated into our development as humans. Consumption is viewed as a process by groups and individuals with the cycle continuing through to disposal or ownership and possession. The author discusses how people’s natural lifespan influences their relationship to the things they own, how preferences are developed from childhood and how motivations for purchases change throughout their lives from childhood to old age. This book brings together the most recent findings and theories on child and youth consumption, including children’s understanding of advertising and marketing, teen and youth identities and their consumption tastes.
Constraint Theory : Multidimensional Mathematical Model Management
The enormous potential of digital computation to manage new complex systems is impeded by exponential increases in complexity. As the model's dimensionality increases from hundreds to thousands of variables, and as submodels constructed by diverse technical teams are integrated into the total model, the model is likely to become inconsistent and even more likely, the computational requests on the model become unallowable. This text analyzes the way constraint theory employs bipartite graphs and constraint matrices to detect and correct these well-posed problems. It also presents the process of locating the "kernel of constraint", literally trillions of times faster than a random search, determining consistency and compatibility within seconds.
Computer Vision Systems ; 2nd International Workshop, ICVS 2001 Vancouver, Canada, July 7-8, 2001 Proceedings
Computer Vision has reached a level of maturity that allows us not only to p- form research on individual methods and system components but also to build fully integrated computer vision systems of signi cant complexity. This opens a number of new problems related to system architecture, methods for system synthesis and veri cation, active vision systems, control of perception and - tion, knowledge and system representation, context modeling, cue integration, etc. By focusing on methods and concepts for the construction of fully integrated vision systems, ICVS aims to bring together researchers interested in computer vision systems. Similar to the previous event in Las Palmas, ICVS 2001 was organized as a single-track workshop consisting of high-quality.
Computer graphics with OpenGL
Assuming no background in computer graphics, this junior- to graduate-level textbook presents basic principles for the design, use, and understanding of computer graphics systems and applications. The authors, authorities in their field, offer an integrated approach to two-dimensional and three-dimensional graphics topics. A comprehensive explanation of the popular OpenGL programming package, along with C++ programming examples illustrates applications of the various functions in the OpenGL basic library and the related GLU and GLUT packages.
Computational Thinking Education
This book is under a CC BY 4.0 license. This book offers a comprehensive guide, covering every important aspect of computational thinking education. It provides an in-depth discussion of computational thinking, including the notion of perceiving computational thinking practices as ways of mapping models from the abstraction of data and process structures to natural phenomena. Further, it explores how computational thinking education is implemented in different regions, and how computational thinking is being integrated into subject learning in K-12 education. In closing, it discusses computational thinking from the perspective of STEM education, the use of video games to teach computational thinking, and how computational thinking is helping to transform the quality of the workforce in the textile and apparel industry.
Computational Techniques for Voltage Stability Assessment and Control
The key concepts of both saddle node and Hopf bifurcation are covered. These are illustrated with the differential-algebraic equation (DAE) model of the system. The model is complex enough to include Load Tap-Changing transformers as well as HVDC models. The dynamic model of the generating unit includes the exciter since it plays a crucial role in voltage stability. A promising decoupled dynamic simulation technique is introduced for time domain analysis. Computational Techniques for Voltage Stability Assessment and Control provides the computational tools and algorithms needed for development of on-line voltage security assessment
Computational studies of RNA and DNA
Computational Studies of RNA and DNA includes, in an integrated way, modern computational studies of nucleic acids, ranging from advanced electronic structure quantum chemical calculations through explicit solvent molecular dynamics (MD) simulations up to mesoscopic modelling, with the main focus given to the MD field. It gives an equal emphasis to the leading methods and applications while successes as well as pitfalls of the computational techniques are discussed.The systems and problems studied include: Accurate calculations of base pairing energies / Electronic properties of nucleic acids and electron transfer, through various types of nucleic acid / Calculating DNA elasticity
Computational linguistics and intelligent text processing ; Vol. 3406 ; 6th International Conference, CICLing 2005, Mexico City, Mexico, February 13-19, 2005, Proceedings
This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Computational Linguistics and Intelligent Text Processing, CICLing 2005, held in Mexico City, Mexico in February 2005. An approach that involves natural language analysis techniques for the treatment of software system functional requirements is described in this book. This approach is used as the basis for a process developed to generate sequence diagrams automatically from the textual specification of use cases. This facility has been integrated in the Requirements Engineering Phase of OO-Method, an automatic production environment of software. For this purpose, a translator that is based on natural language parser is used. The translator provides grammatical information to each use case sentence and it identifies the corresponding interaction. The automatic transformation is conceived and specified following an orientation that is based on models and patterns. The results of the validation of the transformation patterns are presented.



















