Bücher von Michael Maher

After travelling in India for 5 months, Michael and Julie meet with a dramatic accident in the revered temple city of Trichy, Tamil Nadu. Their hotel is blacked out and dangerously engulfed by an electrical fire; the only escape, by rope, is through the third story window of their room. Julie plummets to the ground far below. Unconscious, she is hospitalised and found to have many broken bones and a brain trauma, amongst other problems that develop.Yet apart from many difficulties, both Michael and Julie are in wonder at the strangeness, the gifts of understanding, that this event unfolds: the people and medical systems encountered in both countries, the surprising turns of fate, and the mysterious working of the body and the brain itself.

Constraints have emerged as the basis of a representational and computational paradigm that draws from many disciplines and can be brought to bear on many problem domains. This volume contains papers dealing with all aspects of c- puting with constraints. In particular, there are several papers on applications of constraints, re?ecting the practical usefulness of constraint programming. The papers were presented at the 1998 International Conference on Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming (CP'98), held in Pisa, Italy, 26{30 - tober, 1998. It is the fourth in this series of conferences, following conferences in Cassis (France), Cambridge (USA), and Schloss Hagenberg (Austria). We received 115 high quality submissions. In addition, 7 abstracts submissions were not followed by a full paper, hence were not counted as submissions. The program committee selected 29 high quality papers after thorough refereeing by at least 3 experts and further discussion by committee members. We thank the referees and the program committee for the time and e ort spent in reviewing the papers. The program committee invited three speakers: { Joxan Ja ar { Peter Jeavons { Patrick Prosser Their papers are in this volume.

This volume presents a collection of refereed papers reflecting the state of the art in the area of over-constrained systems.Besides 11 revised full papers, selected from the 24 submissions to the OCS workshop held in conjunction with the First International Conference on Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming, CP '95, held in Marseilles in September 1995, the book includes three comprehensive background papers of central importance for the workshop papers and the whole field. Also included is an introduction by one of the volume editors together with a bibliography listing 243 entries. All in all this is a very useful reference book relevant for all researchers and practitioners interested in hierarchical, partial, and over-constrained systems.

This book examines the unique relationships between seven important leaders in history--from Henry VIII to Martin Luther King, Jr.--and their principal advisors. The book uncovers the complex systems each team creates and the way these systems evolve toward a point of impasse or gridlock that requires the emergence of a new political system.