Bücher veröffentlicht von Springer Netherlands

Today, in a world with abundant food, more than 700 million people are chro- cally undernourished. Over the next 20 years, the world's population will probably double. The global food supply would need to double or to triple for the larger population to be fed adequately. Agriculture is closely linked to environmental quality in a variety of ways, and the challenge of our generation is how to feed a growing planet while maintaining the integrity of our ecological life-support system. The responsibility of governments for ensuring food security will grow proportionately with the growth of populations, and governments bear a special responsibility for promoting agricultural inputs. Agriculture in the 21st century, will certainly focus increasingly on adapting modern technologies to local farming systems, needs and environments. Worldwide climatic changes have been raising concerns about potential changes to crop yields and production systems. Such concerns include the ability to acc- modate these uncertain effects in order to ensure an adequate food supply for an increasing population. What can be done concretely to use agriculture to address some of the fundamental issues of today's world? We must recognize that agric- ture is part of the solution and not just a problem. Agricultural development is a key to social stability and equity in many parts of the world. It can help to al- viate the subtle and unspoken fears of modernization and the space of change if innovation is handled transparently.

Public and situated display technologies can have an important impact on individual and social behaviour and present us with particular interesting new design considerations and challenges. While there is a growing body of research exploring these design considerations and social impact this work remains somewhat disparate, making it difficult to assimilate in a coherent manner. This book brings together the perspectives of key researchers in the area of public and situated display technology. The chapters detail research representing the social, technical and interactional aspects of public and situated display technologies. The underlying concern common to these chapters is how these displays can be best designed for collaboration, coordination, community building and mobility. Presenting them together allows the reader to examine everyday display activities within the context of emerging technological possibilities.

Preface to Second Edition From the time that the original edition was published in 1985, multidimensional systems theory has matured into a discipline of research and teaching with an expanding array of applications. The international journal on Multidimensional Systems and Signal Processing, founded in 1990, is now in its fourteenth year. A biannual international workshop on n-D systems was launched in 1998 and the impressive number of special sessions, mini-symposia, monographs and special issues that have emerged bear testimony to the growing popularity and importance of the subject -matter among scientists in various disciplines including engineering, computer science, geophysics and mathematics. This second edition builds on the fundamentals expounded in the original book with the addition of important developments in theory as well as practice since 1985. Particular attention has been given to the consolidation of basic results, uni­ fication of theory and the diversification of applications. Chapters that remain have been reordered and updated in content and references. Some chapters, considered to be somewhat outdated, have been replaced with newer proven as well as poten­ tially significant results, inspired by some groundbreaking research and directions which are likely to stimulate further research. In addition to the description of some challenging open problems, posed in 1985, which have since been solved, new problems yet to be tackled are also included.

A decade has passed since Problems of Nonlinear Deformation, the first book by E.I. Grigoliuk: and V.I. Shalashilin was published. That work gave a systematic account of the parametric continuation method. Ever since, the understanding of this method has sufficiently broadened. Previously this method was considered as a way to construct solution sets of nonlinear problems with a parameter. Now it is c1ear that one parametric continuation algorithm can efficiently work for building up any parametric set. This fact significantly widens its potential applications. A curve is the simplest example of such a set, and it can be used for solving various problems, inc1uding the Cauchy problem for ordinary differential equations (ODE), interpolation and approximation of curves, etc. Research in this area has led to exciting results. The most interesting of such is the understanding and proof of the fact that the length of the arc calculated along this solution curve is the optimal continuation parameter for this solution. We will refer to the continuation solution with the optimal parameter as the best parametrization and in this book we have applied this method to variable c1asses of problems: in chapter 1 to non-linear problems with a parameter, in chapters 2 and 3 to initial value problems for ODE, in particular to stiff problems, in chapters 4 and 5 to differential-algebraic and functional differential equations.

From 12 to 14 September 2002, the Academy of Humanities and Economics (AHE) hosted the workshop "e;Optimization and Inverse Problems in Electromagnetism"e;. After this bi-annual event, a large number of papers were assembled and combined in this book. During the workshop recent developments and applications in optimization and inverse methodologies for electromagnetic fields were discussed. The contributions selected for the present volume cover a wide spectrum of inverse and optimal electromagnetic methodologies, ranging from theoretical to practical applications. A number of new optimal and inverse methodologies were proposed. There are contributions related to dedicated software.Optimization and Inverse Problems in Electromagnetism consists of three thematic chapters, covering: -General papers (survey of specific aspects of optimization and inverse problems in electromagnetism), -Methodologies, -Industrial Applications. The book can be useful to students of electrical and electronics engineering, computer science, applied mathematics (PhD level) and to researchers interested in the topic.