Financial Privacy : An International Comparison of Credit Reporting Systems
This book provides the first in-depth analysis of the economics and regulation of financial privacy. It is an international comparison of credit reporting systems in the United States and in European countries. On the theoretical level the book explains competition in information markets, especially in markets for goods made of highly personal and sensitive information. It reviews the microeconomics of information and privacy and discusses the economic incentives to disclose or to conceal information. The book also focuses on the institutions of credit reporting, the history of credit reporting agencies and the regulation of privacy and credit reporting on both sides of the Atlantic as well as internationally. Finally, on the empirical level, it reviews the microeconomic and potential macroeconomic effects of credit reporting in the credit markets of countries around the world.
Financial accounting for decision makers ; 10th ed.
Financial Accounting for Decision Makers, 10th edition is an accessible introduction to the subject, focusing on the ways in which financial statements and information improve the quality of decision-making.
Field Guide to Meteors and Meteorites
Imagine the unique experience of being the very first person to hold a newly-found meteorite in your hand – a rock from space, older than Earth! "Weekend meteorite hunting" with magnets and metal detectors is becoming ever more popular as a pastime, but of course you can’t just walk around and pick up meteorites in the same way that you can pick up seashells on the beach. Those fragments that survived the intense heat of re-entry tend to disguise themselves as natural rocks over time, and it takes a trained eye – along with the information in this book – to recognize them.
Field and Service Robotics ; Vol. 25 : Results of the 5th International Conference
Field robots are robots which operate in outdoor, complex, and dynamic environments. Service robots are those that work closely with humans, with particular applications involving indoor and structured environments. There are a wide range of topics presented in this issue on field and service robots including: Agricultural and Forestry Robotics, Mining and Exploration Robots, Robots for Construction, Security & Defence Robots, Cleaning Robots, Autonomous Underwater Vehicles and Autonomous Flying Robots.
Ferro- and Antiferroelectricity : Order/Disorder versus Displacive
Solid-state systems are frequently classi?ed according to their physical, str- tural or chemical properties. Such schemes are extremely helpful since pr- erties related to any such classi?cation are typically known and facilitate id- tifying solids with special material classes. The best-known examples of these schemes are conductivity or resistivity measurements by means of which m- als are easily distinguishable from insulators. However, frequently clear-cut decisions between material classes are not possible, since anisotropy, chemical composition, binding forces and local effects wash out distinct properties and lead to competition or coexistence. Such unresolved situations are especially typical for transition metal oxides that exhibit a variety of ground-state properties in a fascinating way.
Femtosecond laser spectroscopy
As concepts and methodologies have evolved over the past two decades, the realm of ultrafast science has become vast and exciting and has impacted many areas of chemistry, biology and physics, and other fields such as materials science, electrical engineering, and optical communication. The field has recently exploded with the announcement of a series of remarkable new developments and advances. This volume surveys this recent growth in eleven chapters written by leading international researchers in the field. It includes sections on femtosecond optical frequency combs, soft x-ray femtosecond laser sources, and attosecond laser sources. In addition, the contributors address real-time spectroscopy of molecular vibrations with sub-5-fs pulses and multidimensional femtosecond coherent spectroscopies for studying molecular and electron dynamics. Novel methods for measuring and characterizing ultrashort laser pulses and ultrashort pulses of light are also described. The topics covered are revolutionizing the fields of biomedical imaging, electron dynamics, ultrahigh precision spectroscopy, and optical frequency metrology. Surveying the latest advances in ultrafast lasers, Femtosecond Laser Spectroscopy will be of interest to both researchers and graduate students.
Feature Extraction : Foundations and Applications
This book is both a reference for engineers and scientists and a teaching resource, featuring tutorial chapters and research papers on feature extraction. "This book compiles some very promising techniques, coming from an extremely smart collection of researchers, delivering their best ideas in a competitive environment."
Feasibility studies : An architect's guide
Details the benefits of a feasibility study. Once you’ve secured the commission, how do you ensure you’re following current best practice? Aimed at architects, it identifies the pitfalls involved in undertaking a feasibility study and explains how to set boundaries, organise the process and manage clients’ aspirations. By featuring recent live projects, alongside advice from successful architectural practices, it illustrates how a feasibility study can help achieve positive outcomes and avoid the dangers of a poorly defined brief and service proposal. Presenting the client’s, as well as the architect’s, perspective, this publication highlights why a feasibility study is a sensible way of establishing viability prior to committing to a full-service commission. It underlines the significance of ‘adding value’ as an architect.
Fast, Efficient and Predictable Memory Accesses : Optimization Algorithms for Memory Architecture Aware Compilation
Fast, Efficient and Predictable Memory Accesses presents techniques for designing fast, energy-efficient and timing predictable memory systems. By using a careful combination of compiler optimizations and architectural improvements, we can achieve more than what would be feasible at one of the levels in isolation. The described optimization algorithms achieve the goals of high performance and low energy consumption. In addition to these benefits, the use of scratchpad memories significantly improves the timing predictability of the entire system, leading to tighter worst case execution time bounds (WCET). The WCET is a relevant design parameter for all timing critical systems. In addition, the book covers algorithms to exploit the power down modes of main memories in SDRAM technology, as well as the execute-in-place feature of Flash memories. The final chapter considers the impact of the register file, which is also part of the memory hierarchy.
Fashion Figures : How Missy the Mathlete Made the Cut
Gain an inside perspective on what it’s like when you love math and science and happen to be a girl. Fashion Figures highlights the societal and internal pressures preteen and early-teen girls often face when they excel in these subjects, and it shows strategies for overcoming barriers to being themselves and doing what they love while still fitting in socially.
Farmacognosia applicata : Controllo di qualità delle droghe vegetali
Il processo di identificazione è per una droga vegetale di enorme importanza ai fini dell'efficacia e sicurezza della stessa. Infatti la risposta terapeutica e gli effetti indesiderati sono fortemente condizionati dall'identificazione della droga e dalla presenza di contaminanti botanici. Il testo si compone di due parti; la prima sintetizza gli aspetti diagnostici che indirizzano verso il riconoscimento della droga vegetale, mentre la seconda descrive gli aspetti macro- e microscopici della droga ed i saggi chimici e farmacologici che consentono con certezza l’identificazione della stessa. Infine, l’ultima parte riporta alcuni esempi di cromatogrammi e di tracciati di organi isolati.
Fallsammlung zum Strafprozessrecht = Case collection on criminal procedure law
The collection of term papers and exams essentially covers the spectrum of questions of criminal procedure law. On the one hand, it enables an exemplary repetition and deepening of the basic knowledge of criminal procedure law, on the other hand, it clearly conveys the formal and content-related requirements to be placed on above-average term papers and exams. The case collection is intended as a supplement to the reading of a textbook aimed at acquiring the knowledge of criminal procedural law necessary for the examination and training in the criminal law trainee station.
Extragalactic Astronomy and Cosmology : An Introduction
This textbook introduces the astronomy of galaxies, their structure, their active galactic nuclei, their evolution and their large scale distribution. Starting with a detailed description of our Milky Way, the book examines the formation of structures and astronomical objects in the early universe.
Extracting Accountability : Engineers and Corporate Social Responsibility
The growing movement toward corporate social responsibility (CSR) urges corporations to promote the well-being of people and the planet rather than the sole pursuit of profit. In Extracting Accountability, Jessica Smith investigates how the public accountability of corporations emerges from the everyday practices of the engineers who work for them. Focusing on engineers who view social responsibility as central to their profession, she finds the corporate context of their work prompts them to attempt to reconcile competing domains of accountability—to formal guidelines, standards, and policies; to professional ideals; to the public; and to themselves.
Expert Network Time Protocol : An Experience in Time with NTP
Have you ever tried to figure out why your computer clock is off, or why your emails somehow have the wrong timestamp? Most likely, it's due to an incorrect network time synchronization, which can be reset using the Network Time Protocol. Until now, most network administrators have been too paranoid to work with this, afraid that they would make the problem even worse. However, Expert Network Time Protocol: An Experience in Time with NTP takes the mystery out of time, and shows the network administrator how to regain the upper hand. This book is a fascinating look into NTP, and the stories behind the science. Written by Peter Rybaczyk, one of the foremost experts on NTP, this book will show the network administrator how to become more comfortable working with time.
Experience-Based Communication
Experience-based Communication is a powerful tool. Companies can use it to bring their values to life and to make their messages accessible and credible. By communicating in a way that can be both sensed and felt, companies can increase their influence on internal and external stakeholders - and existing and potential customers. This book teaches you how to architect the way your company is experienced at every real-life touchpoint. How to use physical meetings and locations to create an affinity with a given market segment. And how to engage your audience mentally, physically and socially in order to transform them into loyal customers and willing ambassadors.
Examples in Structural Analysis
This code-independent and comprehensive collection of fully worked and graded examples shows undergraduates how to analyse different types of structure, with the main analysis techniques, with some detailed mathematics. Now with pin-jointed frames and arches and cables, with more on the direct stiffness method and influence lines for beams.
Evolutionary Synthesis of Pattern Recognition Systems
Evolutionary Synthesis of Pattern Recognition Systems presents novel effective approaches based on evolutionary computational techniques, such as genetic programming (GP), linear genetic programming (LGP), coevolutionary genetic programming (CGP) and genetic algorithms (GA) to automate the synthesis and analysis of object detection and recognition systems. The book’s concepts, principles, and methodologies will enable readers to automatically build robust and flexible systems—in a systematic manner—that can provide human-competitive performance and reduce the cost of designing and maintaining these systems. Its content covers all key aspects of object recognition: object detection, feature selection, feature discovery, object recognition, domain knowledge. Basic knowledge of programming and data structures, and some calculus, is presupposed.ing the book’s novel ideas
Evolutionary Scheduling
Evolutionary scheduling is a vital research domain at the interface of two important sciences - artificial intelligence and operational research. Scheduling problems are generally complex, large scale, constrained, and multi-objective in nature, and classical operational research techniques are often inadequate at solving them effectively. With the advent of computation intelligence, there is renewed interest in solving scheduling problems using evolutionary computational techniques. These techniques, which include genetic algorithms, genetic programming, evolutionary strategies, memetic algorithms, particle swarm optimization, ant colony systems, etc, are derived from biologically inspired concepts and are well-suited to solve scheduling problems since they are highly scalable and flexible in terms of handling constraints and multiple objectives. This edited book gives an overview of many of the current developments in the large and growing field of evolutionary scheduling, and demonstrates the applicability of evolutionary computational techniques to solve scheduling problems, not only to small-scale test problems, but also fully-fledged real-world problems.
Evidence-based positron emission tomography : Summary of recent meta-analyses on PET
This book summarizes the findings of recent evidence-based articles (meta-analyses) on the use of positron emission tomography (PET) for various clinical indications. It is divided into five main sections, starting with an introduction to PET and meta-analysis.



















