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.
Fallibility at Work : Rethinking Excellence and Error in Organizations
This book addresses how organizations can deal with human fallibility in order to create space for excellence at work. Some mistakes in work settings put lives at risk, while others create openings for innovative breakthroughs. In order to deal constructively with fallibility, an organization needs a communication climate where it is normal to voice opinions, admit mistakes, and ask for help in critical situations. The book builds on interviews with practitioners in healthcare, aviation, IT, public governance, and industry. It connects narratives from these fields with theories from organizational psychology and philosophy, as well as from positive organizational scholarship. In the final chapter, an overall ethics of fallibility at work is outlined. Fallibility at Work contributes to research in multiple academic disciplines, but also reaches out to practitioners who are interested in the connections between error and excellence in organizations.
Factors Influencing Mammalian Kidney Development : Implications for Health in Adult Life
In this monograph the authors have emphasized a number of important concepts in mammalian kidney development. Emphasis has been put on methodology so that the reader can understand how certain results or conclusions were reached and what the optimal methods for reliable results to be obtained are.
Exploring the Vertebrate Central Cholinergic Nervous System
The volume’s eleven chapters cover a wide variety of topics including the complexity of synthesis of acetylcholine, cholinesterases, cholinergic teratology, anticholinesterase agents, clinical use of cholinergic drugs, central cholinergic pathways and behaviors with cholinergic correlates. The figures and diagrams help illustrate various subjects and its photographs of "cholinergikes" of the past and present bring a personal note to the book. The book illustrates the peaks that have been reached in the course of the history of cholinergic research and challenges the perennial frontier of human science: the understanding of ourselves.
Examining Innovation Management from a Fair Process Perspective
Companies nowadays still differ considerably in that they interact with employees. This interaction depends on different organisational cultures, leadership styles, and the ways in which information and communication take place. A recent trend, even in economic theory, is that interactions are valued in themselves and not solely to achieve rational economic maximisation. People care about outcomes, but they also care about the interactional processes that produce those outcomes. Thomas Limberg investigates a new approach to the management of human relationships in a knowledge-based work environment and analyses the relationship between fair process and innovation performance. Key findings are that social interactions have a significant influence on execution performance in organisations, and fairness can have positive effects on innovative behaviour and therefore on innovation performance. In the transition from a production-based to a knowledge-based economy, fair process is becoming a powerful tool for managing human interactions and for influencing attitudes and behaviours that are so critical in reaching high innovation performance.
E-Training Practices for Professional Organizations
E-Training Practices for Professional Organizations is an essential reference for anyone interested in the integration of e-business, e-work and e-learning processes. The book collects, for the first time, the proceedings from the 2003 IFIP eTrain Conference held in Pori, Finland. The text serves as a multi-disciplinary resource for information on the research, development and applications of all topics related to e-Learning. The first half of the book discusses theories, paradigms and their applications in academia and industry. The last half of the book examines learning environments, design issues and collaboration among the corporate, governmental and academic sectors. With academic and professional contributors, E-Training Practices for Professional Organizations reflects the multi-faceted and exciting nature of e-training studies. This volume presents the balanced view of past developments and current research necessary to truly reach the potential of this burgeoning field.
Essentials of Sports Nutrition and Supplements
Millions of consumers want to lose body fat, gain muscle mass, and/or improve exercise performance. In addition to an exercise program, they often look to sports supplements as ‘tools’ to help them reach their goals. This book, the culmination of years of work by the thought leaders in the sports nutrition field will help the consumer, student, scientist, and sports nutrition professional sift through the huge volume of information and come up with reasonable and scientifically-based ideas and conclusions about sports nutrition.
Essential Topology
Taking a direct route, Essential Topology brings the most important aspects of modern topology within reach of a second-year undergraduate student. Based on courses given at the University of Wales Swansea, it begins with a discussion of continuity and, by way of many examples, leads to the celebrated ""Hairy Ball theorem"" and on to homotopy and homology: the cornerstones of contemporary algebraic topology. While containing all the key results of basic topology, Essential Topology never allows itself to get mired in details. Instead, the focus throughout is on providing interesting examples that clarify the ideas and motivate the student, reflecting the fact that these are often the key examples behind current research.
Entrepreneurship, the new economy and public policy : Schumpeterian perspectives
Silicon Valley is the most salient example of high-tech industrial clusters. Public policy makers throughout the world would like to learn the secrets of Silicon Valley in order to build their own high-tech economies. The existing literature on ind- trial clusters, which traces back to Marshall (1920), focuses on the way in which ?rms bene?t from locating in a cluster; it suggests that once a cluster comes into existence However, a more important question is how to reach this critical mass in the ?rst place. In contrast to the literature, evidence suggests that entrepreneurs rarely move when they est- lish high-tech start-ups. This contradicts the notion that location choice analyses lead entrepreneurs to a high-tech cluster. A high-tech industrial cluster such as Silicon Valley is characterized by c- centrated entrepreneurship.
Emerging and Young Adulthood : Multiple Perspectives, Diverse Narratives
The delayed onset of maturity from adolescence to adulthood is gaining the considerable attention of scholars, not to mention that of the parents and the young adults themselves. The chapters in this volume examine the experiences of numerous individuals in their 20s and early 30s – as well as parents and employers – the end result of which is a finely nuanced, research-based portrait of today’s aging adolescents and the increasingly high hurdles they must jump to reach full-fledged adulthood.
E-health records
Each patient can view his health history electronically, decision makers can view the history of any patient and the treatment methods he underwent during his life and take the necessary measures to reach the patient to optimal health, and the Ministry of Health can obtain medical reports that enable it to take the necessary decisions.
Education Outreach and Public Engagement
The programs, tools, and resources featured in this monograph will assist scientists and scientists-in-training in enhancing public awareness and understanding of science and considering its applications and implications. In addition, this monograph addresses the notion that public engagement goes beyond enhancing the layperson’s comprehension of science to engaging the public in real and meaningful dialogue about science.
Ecophysiology of High Salinity Tolerant Plants
Halophytes get increasing attention today because of the steady increase of the salinity in irrigation systems in the arid and semi-arid regions where the increasing population reaches the limits of freshwater availability.
E-Content: Technologies and Perspectives for the European Market
Technologies develop rapidly and reach hurricane levels of velocity but quality E-Content and innovative applications lag behind. This book addresses the question how content industries change within a digital environment and what role information and communication technologies play in transforming the competitive landscape. The authors argue that post-industrial societies tend to pay substantial amounts for equipment and gadgets but invest far too little in the quality of the content. As a result, much effort is and has to be spent on the enhancement of E-Content.
Economic evaluations in exploration
This textbook, now in its second English edition, is originally a translation of the G- man textbook “Rechnen für Lagerstättenkundler und Rohstoffwirtschaftler, Teil 1”, also translated into the Chinese and Russian languages. Compared to the previous English and German editions the chapters have been updated with new examples and in many cases amended. The textbook is intended for the economic geologist who deals with the evaluation of deposits at an early stage of development. Once an exploration project has reached the feasibility stage, the exact calculations that are necessary for a comprehensive te- nical and economic assessment will be performed by a team of geologists, mining engineers, metallurgists, and economists. In the early stages of exploration, however, any evaluator of deposits must be able to cover the whole spectrum himself. Since only order of magnitude parameters are available at this early stage, the c- culations can only yield order of magnitude results.
Ecological Responses to the 1980 Eruption of Mount St. Helens
The eruption of Mount St. Helens on May 18, 1980, had a momentous impact on the fungal, plant, animal, and human life from the mountain to the far reaches of the explosion's ash cloud and mudflows. Although this intense natural event caused loss of substantial life and property, it also created a unique opportunity to examine a huge disturbance of natural systems and their subsequent responses. Based on one of the most studied areas of volcanic activity, this book synthesizes the ecological research that has been conducted for twenty-five years since the eruption.
East Asian Economic Regionalism: Feasibilities and Challenges
Economic regionalism has become a worldwide phenomenon. Since the Asian financial crisis, East Asian countries are accelerating the ongoing market-driven economic integration as well as institutional economic integration. The question is whether East Asia can reach an East Asian FTA (EAFTA), which is the first step towards institutional economic integration. East Asian Economic Regionalism attempts to analyze the feasibilities of economic integration in East Asia and to discuss emerging economic integration efforts in East Asia with special reference to an East Asian FTA. Although economic integration is desirable economically, positions and approaches of each regional economy toward East Asian economic integration may differ depending on the circumstances of the countries concerned. East Asian Economic Regionalism provides diverse positions on East Asian economic integration by ASEAN countries, as well as the Northeastern countries of China, Japan and Korea. The volume also provides economic assessment of EAFTA and evaluates East Asian economic integration.
Drug Absorption Studies : In Situ, In Vitro and In Silico Models
In the last 15 years, a great number of cell- or tissue-based in vitro models have been introduced into the biopharmaceutics arena. These models mimic the different biological barriers that a drug has to overcome to finally reach its target organ/cell/receptor. These in vitro models have been found very useful in not only characterising the permeability behaviour of drugs molecules in epithelial and endothelial tissues, but also studying drug delivery systems for improved delivery and enhanced absorption. Compared to the complex in vivo situation, in vitro models offer a fast, convenient approach with cost advantages most of times. Most importantly, they can be standardised and automatised to be applicable to the high-throughput screening. Starting at the molecular level of studies, continuing with cell monolayer models (both primary and cell lines) and in situ techniques as a final testing format, the book provides a practical approach to contemporary in vitro techniques for drug absorption studies. In addition, chapters on high-throughput assays, in vitro-in vivo correlation, bioinformatics and regulatory issues are covered, giving a comprehensive overview of available models and techniques. Moreover, an appendix comprised with a number of practical protocols is available online, updated as needed, should prove very helpful to apply the techniques directly to the benchside.
Dirac Operators in Representation Theory
This monograph presents a comprehensive treatment of important new ideas on Dirac operators and Dirac cohomology. Dirac operators are widely used in physics, differential geometry, and group-theoretic settings (particularly, the geometric construction of discrete series representations). The related concept of Dirac cohomology, which is defined using Dirac operators, is a far-reaching generalization that connects index theory in differential geometry to representation theory. Using Dirac operators as a unifying theme, the authors demonstrate how some of the most important results in representation theory fit together when viewed from this perspective.
Digital Marketing Outreach : The Future of Marketing Practices
Looks at diverse areas of business and non-business activities involving the use of digital platforms to augment marketing initiatives and improve reach, sales, and social media engagement. The volume analyses various themes including viral marketing, influencer marketing, webrooming behaviour, online impulse buying, telemedicine, social media advertising, and app-based cab services. It examines the role of digital marketing in creating a positive and favourable brand image for organizations by advertising their social responsiveness on social media and studies the influence of political brand value on social media activities.



















