Bücher veröffentlicht von Springer New York

Graphs on Surfaces: Dualities, Polynomials, and Knots offers an accessible and comprehensive treatment of recent developments on generalized duals of graphs on surfaces, and their applications. The authors illustrate the interdependency between duality, medial graphs and knots; how this interdependency is reflected in algebraic invariants of graphs and knots; and how it can be exploited to solve problems in graph and knot theory. Taking a constructive approach, the authors emphasize how generalized duals and related ideas arise by localizing classical constructions, such as geometric duals and Tait graphs, and then removing artificial restrictions in these constructions to obtain full extensions of them to embedded graphs. The authors demonstrate the benefits of these generalizations to embedded graphs in chapters describing their applications to graph polynomials and knots. Graphs on Surfaces: Dualities, Polynomials, and Knots also provides a self-contained introduction to graphs on surfaces, generalized duals, topological graph polynomials, and knot polynomials that is accessible both to graph theorists and to knot theorists. Directed at those with some familiarity with basic graph theory and knot theory, this book is appropriate for graduate students and researchers in either area. Because the area is advancing so rapidly, the authors give a comprehensive overview of the topic and include a robust bibliography, aiming to provide the reader with the necessary foundations to stay abreast of the field. The reader will come away from the text convinced of advantages of considering these higher genus analogues of constructions of plane and abstract graphs, and with a good understanding of how they arise.

This book was written to provide resource materials for teachers to use in their introductory or intermediate statistics class. The  chapter content is ordered along the lines of many popular statistics books so it should be easy to supplement the content and exercises with class lecture materials. The book contains R script programs to demonstrate important topics and concepts covered in a statistics course, including probability, random sampling, population distribution types, role of the Central Limit Theorem, creation of sampling distributions for statistics, and more. The chapters contain T/F quizzes to test basic knowledge of the topics covered. In addition, the book chapters contain numerous exercises with answers or solutions to the exercises provided.  The chapter exercises reinforce an understanding of the statistical concepts presented in the chapters. An instructor can select any of the supplemental materials to enhance lectures and/or provide additional coverage of concepts and topics in their statistics book.

Predictive microbiology is a recent area within food microbiology, which studies the responses of microorganisms in foods to environmental factors (e.g., temperature, pH) through mathematical functions. These functions enable scientists to predict the behavior of pathogens and spoilage microorganisms under different combinations of factors. The main goal of predictive models in food science is to assure both food safety and food quality. Predictive models in foods have developed significantly in the last 20 years due to the emergence of powerful computational resources and sophisticated statistical packages. This book presents the concepts, models, most significant advances, and future trends in predictive microbiology. It will discuss the history and basic concepts of predictive microbiology. The most frequently used models will be explained, and the most significant software and databases (e.g., Combase, Sym'Previus) will be reviewed. Quantitative Risk Assessment, which uses predictive modeling to account for the transmission of foodborne pathogens across the food chain, will also be covered.

Many statistical innovations are linked to applications in food science. For example, the student t-test (a statistical method) was developed to monitor the quality of stout at the Guinness Brewery and multivariate statistical methods are applied widely in the spectroscopic analysis of foods. Nevertheless, statistical methods are most often associated with engineering, mathematics, and the medical sciences, and are rarely thought to be driven by food science. Consequently, there is a dearth of statistical methods aimed specifically at food science, forcing researchers to utilize methods intended for other disciplines. The objective of this Brief will be to highlight the most needed and relevant statistical methods in food science and thus eliminate the need to learn about these methods from other fields. All methods and their applications will be illustrated with examples from research literature.

In statistics, the Kalman filter is a mathematical method whose purpose is to use a series of measurements observed over time, containing random variations and other inaccuracies, and produce estimates that tend to be closer to the true unknown values than those that would be based on a single measurement alone. This Brief offers developments on Kalman filtering subject to general linear constraints. There are essentially three types of contributions: new proofs for results already established; new results within the subject; and applications in investment analysis and macroeconomics, where the proposed methods are illustrated and evaluated. The Brief has a short chapter on linear state space models and the Kalman filter, aiming to make the book self-contained and to give a quick reference to the reader (notation and terminology). The prerequisites would be a contact with time series analysis in the level of Hamilton (1994) or Brockwell & Davis (2002) and also with linear state models and the Kalman filter - each of these books has a chapter entirely dedicated to the subject. The book is intended for graduate students, researchers and practitioners in statistics (specifically: time series analysis and econometrics).

Automated Configuration has long been the subject of intensive research, especially in Artificial Intelligence. It is a pervasive problem to be solved, and it is a good test of various knowledge representation and reasoning techniques. The problem shows up in applications such as various electrical circuit design, utility computing and even concurrent engineering. Automated Configuration Problem Solving defines the ubiquitous problem, illustrates the various solution techniques, and includes a survey using these techniques from the mid-70's until the mid-90's. During this time, various general approaches were developed, and then become more specialized. This book covers the development of the general problem solving techniques for automated configuration, which are based on both published academic work and patents.

Inverse limits with set-valued functions are quickly becoming a popular topic of research due to their potential applications in dynamical systems and economics. This brief provides a concise introduction dedicated specifically to such inverse limits. The theory is presented along with detailed examples which form the distinguishing feature of this work. The major differences between the theory of inverse limits with mappings and the theory with set-valued functions are featured prominently in this book in a positive light.   The reader is assumed to have taken a senior level course in analysis and a basic course in topology. Advanced undergraduate and graduate students, and researchers working in this area will find this brief useful.  ¿

Kronecker products are used to define the underlying Markov chain (MC) in various modeling formalisms, including compositional Markovian models, hierarchical Markovian models, and stochastic process algebras. The motivation behind using a Kronecker structured representation rather than a flat one is to alleviate the storage requirements associated with the MC. With this approach, systems that are an order of magnitude larger can be analyzed on the same platform. The developments in the solution of such MCs are reviewed from an algebraic point of view and possible areas for further research are indicated with an emphasis on preprocessing using reordering, grouping, and lumping and numerical analysis using block iterative, preconditioned projection, multilevel, decompositional, and matrix analytic methods. Case studies from closed queueing networks and stochastic chemical kinetics are provided to motivate decompositional and matrix analytic methods, respectively.

"e;Functional food or medicinal food is any fresh or processed food claimed to have a health-promoting and/or disease-preventing property beyond the basic nutritional function of supplying nutrients, although there is no consensus on an exact definition of the term.This is an emerging field in food science, in which such foods are usually accompanied by health claims for marketing purposes, such as a company's 'cereal is a significant source of fiber. Studies have shown that an increased amount of fiber in one's diet can decrease the risk of certain types of cancer in individuals.'Functional foods are sometimes called nutraceuticals, a portmanteau of nutrition and pharmaceutical, and can include food that has been genetically modified. The general category includes processed food made from functional food ingredients, or fortified with health-promoting additives, like "e;vitamin-enriched"e; products, and also fresh foods (e.g., vegetables) that have specific claims attached. Fermented foods with live cultures are often also considered to be functional foods with probiotic benefits."e;

This book was written as a first treatment of statistical com­ munication theory and communication systems at a senior­ graduate level. The only formal prerequisite is a knowledge of ele­ mentary calculus; however, some familiarity with linear systems and transform theory will be helpful. Chapter 1 is introductory and contains no substantial techni­ cal material. Chapter 2 is an elementary introduction to probability theory at a nonrigorous and non abstract level. It is essential to the remainder of the book but may be skipped (or reviewed has­ tily) by any student who has taken a one-semester undergraduate course in probability. Chapter 3 is a brief treatment of random processes and spec­ tral analysis. It includes an introduction to shot noise (Sections 3.14-3.17) which is not subsequently used explicitly. Chapter 4 considers linear systems with random inputs. It includes a considerable amount of material on narrow-band sys­ tems and on the representation of random processes. Chapter5 treats the matched filter and the linear least mean-squared-error filter at an elementary level but in some detail. Numerous examples are provided throughout the book. Many of these are of an elementary nature and are intended merely to illustrate textual material. A reasonable number of problems of varying difficulty are provided. Instructors who adopt the text for classroom use may obtain a Solutions Manual for most of the problems by writing to the author.

This new SpringerBrief in Physiology explores the newest research findings on how exercise influences the fetus in utero and beyond. Physiology of Prenatal Exercise and Fetal Development reviews the current findings of how maternal exercise throughout gestation influences fetal development of key organ systems, and also encompasses the relationship between maternal activity level and fetal, birth, and neonatal effects. This information will help researchers and scientists better understand the physiological effects of exercise during pregnancy on offspring development.

Induced Pluripotent Stem (iPS) cells are mature cells that have been genetically reprogrammed so that they return to their embryonic state. It is not yet known if iPS stem cells and embryonic stem cells differ significantly. Today many fundamental belief systems in biology are shifting towards accepting that mature body cells can be reverted to an embryonic state without the help of eggs or embryos. With their changed identities, iPS cells are then ready to serve as new tools for research in the fields of disease pathogenesis, drug discovery, oncology, and cell transplantation. One example of this would be using iPS from a patient's mature cells to repair damaged tissue; it is thought that there would be very low incidence of rejection of the 'new' tissue in these cases. For the last four years, this therapeutic promise has been studied by hundreds of researchers worldwide in an effort to understand the ability of these cells to reverse their biological clocks.

These days, construction companies are beginning to be concerned about a potential labor shortage by demographic changes and an aging construction work force. Also, an improvement in construction safety could not only reduce accidents but also decrease the cost of the construction, and is therefore one of the imperative goals of the construction industry. These challenges correspond to the potential for Automation and Robotics in Construction as one of solutions. Almost half of construction work is said to be material handling and materials used for construction are heavy and bulky for humans. To date, various types of robots have been developed for glazed panel construction. Through the case studies on construction, to which the robots were applied, however, we identified difficulties to be overcome. In this study, a human-robot cooperative system is deduced as one approach to surmount these difficulties; then, considerations on interactions among the operator, robot and environment are applied to design of the system controller. The human-robot cooperative system can cope with various and construction environments through real-time interaction with a human, robot and construction environment simultaneously. The physical power of a robot system helps a human to handle heavy construction materials with a relatively scaled-down load. Also, a human can feel and respond to the force reflected from robot end effecter acting with working environment. Through the experiments and mock-up tests with a prototype robot, we observe the characteristics of the power assist and the force reflection, the merits of the human-robot cooperation system. To apply human-robot cooperative system at real construction sites, Glazed Ceiling Panel Construction Robot is developed for the first time. This robot is distinguished from other glazed panel construction robots because of the methods of lifting the panel to high installation positions and installing the fragile and bulk panel with robot force control. After applying to real construction sites, evaluation on the productivity of the developed robot was done by comparing and analyzing with the existing installation methods.