Bücher veröffentlicht von Springer Berlin Heidelberg

Complex systems are ubiquitous, and practically all branches of science ranging from physics through chemistry and biology to economics and sociology have to deal with them. In this book we wish to present concepts and methods for dealing with complex systems from a unifying point of view. Therefore it may be of inter- est to graduate students, professors and research workers who are concerned with theoretical work in the above-mentioned fields. The basic idea for our unified ap- proach sterns from that of synergetics. In order to find unifying principles we shall focus our attention on those situations where a complex system changes its macroscopic behavior qualitatively, or in other words, where it changes its macroscopic spatial, temporal or functional structure. Until now, the theory of synergetics has usually begun with a microscopic or mesoscopic description of a complex system. In this book we present an approach which starts out from macroscopic data. In particular we shall treat systems that acquire their new structure without specific interference from the outside; i. e. systems which are self-organizing. The vehicle we shall use is information. Since this word has several quite different meanings, all of which are important for our purpose, we shall discuss its various aspects. These range from Shannon information, from which all semantics has been exorcised, to the effects of information on receivers and the self-creation of meaning.

"e;You will hold in your hands the proceedings of the last conference ever on integral-?eld spectroscopy."e; So the daring statement that we, organizers, made at the end of an extremely interesting and busy week of conference in October 2005. Indeed, the quality and diversity of the contributions in this book indicated that integral-?eld spectroscopy had evolved into a mature technique. Future books would not be dedicated to the technique as such but to the science achieved with '3D-spectroscopy,' that is a dedicated book after thisone,assemblingscienceresultsacrosssomany?elds,isunlikelytoappear again (or have you seen a proceeding dedicated to 'long-lit spectroscopy' recently?). In a sense this is very encouraging. The idea of this conference was an o?springoftheResearchandTrainingNetwork(RTN)'Euro3D'sponsoredby the European Commission. The goal of this network was to promote integr- ?eld spectroscopy from an technique for experts to a common user utility for astronomical research. When we ?rst talked about this conference the VLT, for example, was not yet equipped with any integral-?eld spectrograph. We were wondering whether anyone would actually attend the conference in 4 years' time and would have anything to report upon. We were rewarded for our optimism and very positively surprised about the progress made in the years after that. A progress, of course, driven by theadventofsomanyintegral-?eldspectrographsaroundtheworld,installed on 4m to 8-10m class telescopes. Many of these instruments are referred to in the present book. Yet, this is explicitly not a book dedicated to technical issues,butfocusingonthescience.Thus,thenameoftheconference,Science Perspectives for 3D Spectroscopy.

The Information Management Systems group at the University of Padua, led by Maristella Agosti, has been a major contributor to information retrieval and digital libraries for nearly twenty years.This group has produced some of Italy's best-known IR researchers, whose work spans a broad range of topics, as the papers in this book demonstrate. One of the goalsof the IR book series is to highlight the work of academic research centers in our ?eld, in order to balancetheperceptionthateveryoneinIRworksforasearchenginecompany. One of the best aspects of our ?eld is that, as academic researchers, we can work with new graduate students and collaborate with companies to ensure that our research has direct impact on systems that people use every day. The Padua group is typical in this respect, and has been involved in a series of collaborations and major European projects over the years. I hope this volume inspires graduate students to pursue research in IR, and I encourage other research groups to contribute their own collections of papers. Amherst, Massachusetts. July 2007. W. Bruce Croft Preface The Information Management Systems (IMS) Research Group was formed in the Department of Information Engineering (formerly Department of El- tronicsandComputer Science)ofthe UniversityofPadua,Italy,in1987when the department was established. The group activities are concerned with the design,modelingandimplementationofadvancedinformationretrievaltools- such as search engines - and digital library systems.

The Agulhas Current is one of the major currents of the world ocean. In the network of currents that connect the major ocean basins, it forms a key link. This linkage may be of critical importance in the way the ocean affects the earth's climate and climate change. Based on the research findings of 60 years, the author describes the origins of the Agulhas Current, its behaviour, its influence on the adjacent continental shelf, its effect on local weather as well as its role in linking the Indian and the Atlantic Ocean. The text is well-illustrated and includes small asides on the history of research on the Agulhas Current. An exhaustive bibliography gives easy access to present knowledge on this important current system.

In today's unsafe and increasingly wired world cryptology plays a vital role in protecting communication channels, databases, and software from unwanted intruders. This revised and extended third edition of the classic reference work on cryptology now contains many new technical and biographical details. The first part treats secret codes and their uses - cryptography. The second part deals with the process of covertly decrypting a secret code - cryptanalysis, where particular advice on assessing methods is given. The book presupposes only elementary mathematical knowledge. Spiced with a wealth of exciting, amusing, and sometimes personal stories from the history of cryptology, it will also interest general readers.

Rice (Oryza sativa) is one of the most important staple food crops in the world. Breeding efforts to improve the agronomical quality of rice have been conducted, and studies on rice from the viewpoint of basic biological interest have also been carried out. In 1991, a book entitled Rice (edited by Dr. Bajaj) was published as the 14th volume in the series Biotechnology in Agriculture and Forestry (BAF), detailing rice research activities at that time, and focusing mainly on cell and tissue culture and genetic variability. Studies on rice have fundamentally advanced since then, whose outcomes are mentioned below. This is a good reason to compile a new volume on rice. The situation regarding rice research has markedly changed in the last 16 years. First, the genomic sequences of rice were completely determined by the International Rice Genome Sequencing Project in 2004. Since the genome sequence of Arabidopsis thaliana had been determined in 2000, rice became the second species in the seed plants to have its genome well understood. Second, the technology to transform rice by the Agrobacterium-mediated method was developed and is now established. In classical phytopathology, Poaceae (including rice) has not been considered as a host for Agrobacterium. This transformation method is relatively easy and reproducible as compared to conventional transformation methods using protoplasts, and is now widely used in rice research.

Das Buch führt den Leser in einer didaktisch ausgefeilten Weise an die Modellierung und den rechnergestützten Entwurf digitaler Schaltungen mit der Hardware-Beschreibungssprache VHDL heran. Behandelt werden das logische und das Zeitverhalten, Laufzeittoleranz, Automaten- und andere Verhaltensmodelle für sequentielle Schaltungen, Synthese, Logikoptimierung und Rechenwerke. Es folgen eine detaillierte Einführung in VHDL und darauf aufsetzende Beschreibungs- und Vorgehenstechniken für die Modellentwicklung sowie ein Exkurs auf die Transistorebene. Zum Abschluss demonstrieren drei komplexe Beispielentwürfe die Anwendung des Erlernten. Begriffsdefinitionen, die Hervorhebung von Kernaussagen, zahlreiche Abbildungen, Übungsaufgaben mit Musterlösungen und buchbegleitende VHDL-Beispiele im Internet unterstützen den Lernprozess.

The scanning probe microscopy ?eld has been rapidly expanding. It is a demanding task to collect a timely overview of this ?eld with an emphasis on technical dev- opments and industrial applications. It became evident while editing Vols. I-IV that a large number of technical and applicational aspects are present and rapidly - veloping worldwide. Considering the success of Vols. I-IV and the fact that further colleagues from leading laboratories were ready to contribute their latest achie- ments, we decided to expand the series with articles touching ?elds not covered in the previous volumes. The response and support of our colleagues were excellent, making it possible to edit another three volumes of the series. In contrast to to- cal conference proceedings, the applied scanning probe methods intend to give an overview of recent developments as a compendium for both practical applications and recent basic research results, and novel technical developments with respect to instrumentation and probes. The present volumes cover three main areas: novel probes and techniques (Vol. V), charactarization (Vol. VI), and biomimetics and industrial applications (Vol. VII). Volume V includes an overview of probe and sensor technologies including integrated cantilever concepts, electrostatic microscanners, low-noise methods and improved dynamic force microscopy techniques, high-resonance dynamic force - croscopy and the torsional resonance method, modelling of tip cantilever systems, scanning probe methods, approaches for elasticity and adhesion measurements on the nanometer scale as well as optical applications of scanning probe techniques based on near?eld Raman spectroscopy and imaging.