Field and service robotics : Results of the 6th international conference
This book presents the results of the sixth edition of Field and Service Robotics, FSR07, held in Chamonix, France, on 9th - 12th July 2007. The conference provided a forum for researchers, professionals and robot manufacturers to exchange up-to-date technical knowledge and experience. This book offers a collection of a broad range of topics including: Underwater Robots and Systems, Autonomous Navigation for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, Simultaneous Localization and Mapping, Climbing Robotics, Sensor Fusion.
Fiber-Optic Communication Systems
Contains substantial additions covering the topics of coherence detection, space division multiplexing, and more advanced subjects. You'll learn about topics like fiber’s losses, dispersion, and nonlinearities, as well as coherent lightwave systems. The latter subject has undergone major changes due to the extensive development of digital coherent systems over the last decade. Space-division multiplexing is covered as well, including multimode and multicore fibers developed in just the last ten years.
Fiber-based Dispersion Compensation
Dispersion management is a critical design criterion that characterizes the performance of an optical network, and has impacted almost every aspect of the physical layer of an optical transmission line. The past 10 years have seen an explosion in the variety of device effects exploited to obtain optimal performance from dispersion compensators, and this is the first book that deals exclusively with this technology.
Femtosecond optical frequency comb : Principle, operation and applications
This book provides an introductory description of mode-locked lasers, the connection between time and frequency descriptions of their output and the physical origins of the electric field dynamics, together with an overview of applications of femtosecond comb technology. Individual chapters go into more detail on mode-locked laser development, spectral broadening in microstructure fiber, optical parametric amplification, optical frequency metrology, optical atomic clocks, ultrasensitive sensors, carrier-envelope phase dynamics, high field ionization of atoms and generation of attosecond high-harmonic radiation. To provide readers with the most recent, direct, and comprehensive information, the chapters are written by the international researchers who have led the development of this field. This book provides an introduction to those new to the field and is at the same time a resource for experts.
Female Urology : A Practical Clinical Guide
A Practical Clinical Guide offers a hands-on reference for the management of challenging disorders of the female lower urinary tract. This volume features scenario presentations in which a patient presentation is described and followed by two experts in the field reviewing work-up and management of the problem. The volume is divided into three, easy-to-follow sections. The first section, Evaluation, details the anatomy of pelvic support, the lower urinary tract, incontinency, and overactive bladders. The second section, Treatment, outlines treatments for stress urinary incontinence, overactive bladder, prolapse, and reconstruction. The third section includes case studies from various locales around the country, illustrating the proper techniques for the evaluation and treatment of problems relating to female urology.
Feedforward Amplifiers for Wideband Communication Systems
Feedforward Amplifiers for Wideband Communication Systems has been possible thanks to the research carried out throughout several years in the field of the linearization techniques applied to digital communication systems, particularly to those with high spectral efficient modulation techniques. This challenge is enshrined in one of the present wideband communication systems, but all the recommended design guidelines are perfectly reusable in the future wideband applications.
Fecal Incontinence : Diagnosis and Treatment
Fecal incontinence is a frequent, distressing condition that has a devastating impact on patients’ lives. However, patients are typically embarrassed and reluctant to acknowledge this disability, so they relinquish the possibility of being cured and remain socially isolated. Since fecal incontinence may result from various pathophysiological situations, an accurate diagnostic work-up of each patient is fundamental. Today, a wide range of therapeutic options is available, but making the correct choice is pivotal to the successful management of this condition. This book is aimed at all physicians involved in the assessment and treatment of fecal incontinence. Its main purpose is to review the latest advances in the epidemiologic, socio-economic, psychologic, diagnostic, and therapeutic aspects of fecal incontinence, in order to establish guidelines for effective treatment.
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.
Feasibility and Infeasibility in Optimization : Algorithms and Computational Methods
Feasibility and Infeasibility in Optimization is a timely expository book that summarizes the state of the art in both classical and recent algorithms related to feasibility and infeasibility in optimization, with a focus on practical methods. All model forms are covered, including linear, nonlinear, and mixed-integer programs. Connections to related work in constraint programming are shown. Part I of the book addresses algorithms for seeking feasibility quickly, including new methods for the difficult cases of nonlinear and mixed-integer programs. Part II provides algorithms for analyzing infeasibility by isolating minimal infeasible (or maximum feasible) subsets of constraints, or by finding the best repair for the infeasibility. Infeasibility analysis algorithms have arisen primarily over the last two decades, and the book covers these in depth and detail. Part III describes applications in numerous areas outside of direct infeasibility analysis such as finding decision trees for data classification, analyzing protein folding, radiation treatment planning, automated test assembly, etc.
Fashion recommender systems
The impact of social networks and the influence that fashion influencers have on the choices people make for shopping is undeniable. For instance, many people use Instagram to learn about fashion trends from top influencers, which helps them to buy similar or even exact outfits from the tagged brands in the post. When traced, customers’ social behavior can be a very useful guide for online shopping websites, providing insights on the styles the customers are really interested in, and hence aiding the online shops in offering better recommendations and facilitating customers quest for outfits.
Famine Early Warning Systems and Remote Sensing Data
This book describes the interdisciplinary work of USAID’s Famine Early Warning System Network (FEWS NET) and its in uence on how food security crises are identi ed, documented and the kind of responses that result. The book describes FEWS NET’s systems and methods for using satellite remote sensing to identify and describe how biophysical hazards impact the lives and livelihoods of the po- lation where they occur. It presents several illustrative case studies that will dem- strate the integration of both physical and social science disciplines in its work. FEWS NET’s operational needs have driven science in biophysical remote sensing applications through its collaboration with the US Geological Survey, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, and US Department of Agriculture, as well as methodologies in the social science domain through its support of the US Agency for International - velopment, UN World Food Program and numerous international non-governmental organizations such as Save the Children, Oxfam and others. Because FEWS NET is an organization that must provide a global picture of food insecurity to decision makers, the information it relies on are by necessity - servable and able to be documented.
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.
Faith, finance, and economy : Beliefs and economic well-being
This book seeks to foster a multidisciplinary understanding of the ties between faith, financial intermediation, and economic progress by drawing on research across economics, finance, history, philosophy, ethics, theology, public policy, law, and other disciplines.
Failure rate modelling for reliability and risk
Failure Rate Modelling for Reliability and Risk focuses on reliability theory and, specifically, on the failure rate (the hazard rate, the force of mortality) modelling and its generalizations, on systems operating in a random environment and on repairable systems. The failure rate is one of the crucial probabilistic characteristics for a number of disciplines; including reliability, survival analysis, risk analysis and demography.
Factorization of Matrix and Operator Functions : The State Space Method
The present book deals with factorization problems for matrix and operator functions. The problems originate from, or are motivated by, the theory of non-selfadjoint operators, the theory of matrix polynomials, mathematical systems and control theory, the theory of Riccati equations, inversion of convolution operators, theory of job scheduling in operations research. The book systematically employs a geometric principle of factorization which has its origins in the state space theory of linear input-output systems and in the theory of characteristic operator functions. This principle allows one to deal with different factorizations from one point of view. Covered are canonical factorization, minimal and non-minimal factorizations, pseudo-canonical factorization, and various types of degree one factorization.
Fabbriche, sistemi, organizzazioni : Storia dell'ingegneria industriale = Factories, systems, organizations : A history of industrial engineering
This book examines the origin of the technological and organizational challenges of industry in Europe and the United States and the stages of its theoretical formulation; the creation of the figure of the industrial engineer between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; and the elaboration of the technological disciplines and of the language and of the fundamental concepts (system, automation, control, optimization, network) of modern industrial engineering. Divided into three chronologically organized parts, each chapter is accompanied by readings, bibliographic information for in-depth study and illustrative sheets of historical, biographical aspects (relating to some great engineers, scientists and philosophers), terminological and mathematical-technical aspects.
Extremes in Nature : An Approach Using Copulas
The study of the statistics of extreme events is an essential first step in the mitigation of natural catastrophies, that often cause severe economic losses worldwide. This book is about the theoretical and practical aspects of the statistics of Extreme Events in Nature. Most importantly, this is the first text in which Copulas are introduced and used in Geophysics. Several topics are fully original, and show how standard models and calculations can be improved by exploiting the opportunities offered by Copulas. In addition, new quantities useful for design and risk assessment are introduced. Practicioners in all research areas of Geosciences and extreme events (including Finance and Insurance, closely related to natural disasters) will definitely benefit from the new Copula-approach outlined in the book.
Extreme Ocean Waves
The book details the vast progress that has been achieved in the understanding of the physical mechanisms of rogue wave phenomenon in recent years. The selected articles address such issues as the formation of freak waves due to modulation instability of nonlinear wave field, physical and statistical properties of rogue wave generation in deep water and in shallow water, various models of nonlinear water waves, special analysis of nonlinear resonances between water waves and the relation between observations and freak wave theories.
Extreme Nonlinear Optics : An Introduction
Following the birth of the laser in 1960, the field of "nonlinear optics" rapidly emerged. Today, laser intensities and pulse durations are readily available, for which the concepts and approximations of traditional nonlinear optics no longer apply. In this regime of "extreme nonlinear optics," a large variety of novel and unusual effects arise, for example frequency doubling in inversion symmetric materials or high-harmonic generation in gases, which can lead to attosecond electromagnetic pulses or pulse trains. Other examples of "extreme nonlinear optics" cover diverse areas such as solid-state physics, atomic physics, relativistic free electrons in a vacuum and even the vacuum itself. This book starts with an introduction to the field based primarily on extensions of two famous textbook examples, namely the Lorentz oscillator model and the Drude model. Here the level of sophistication should be accessible to any undergraduate physics student. Many graphical illustrations and examples are given. The following chapters gradually guide the student towards the current "state of the art" and provide a comprehensive overview of the field. Every chapter is accompanied by exercises to deepen the reader's understanding of important topics, with detailed solutions at the end of the book.



















