Bücher veröffentlicht von Springer US

IT Governance is finally getting the Board's and top management's attention. The value that IT needs to return and the associated risks that need to be managed, have become so important in many industries that enterprise survival depends on it. Information integrity is a significant part of the IT Governance challenge. Among other things, this conference will explore how Information Integrity contributes to the overall control and governance frameworks that enterprises need to put in place for IT to deliver business value and for corporate officers to be comfortable about the IT risks the enterprise faces. The goals for this international working conference are to find answers to the following questions: * what precisely do business managers need in order to have confidence in the integrity of their information systems and their data; * what is the status quo of research and development in this area; * where are the gaps between business needs on the one hand and research I development on the other; what needs to be done to bridge these gaps. The contributions have been divided in the following sections: * Refereed papers. These are papers that have been selected through a blind refereeing process by an international programme committee. * Invited papers. Well known experts present practice and research papers upon invitation by the programme committee. * Tutorial. Two papers describe the background, status quo and future development of CobiT as well as a case of an implementation of Co biT.

Video segmentation is the most fundamental process for appropriate index- ing and retrieval of video intervals. In general, video streams are composed 1 of shots delimited by physical shot boundaries. Substantial work has been done on how to detect such shot boundaries automatically (Arman et aI. , 1993) (Zhang et aI. , 1993) (Zhang et aI. , 1995) (Kobla et aI. , 1997). Through the inte- gration of technologies such as image processing, speech/character recognition and natural language understanding, keywords can be extracted and associated with these shots for indexing (Wactlar et aI. , 1996). A single shot, however, rarely carries enough amount of information to be meaningful by itself. Usu- ally, it is a semantically meaningful interval that most users are interested in re- trieving. Generally, such meaningful intervals span several consecutive shots. There hardly exists any efficient and reliable technique, either automatic or manual, to identify all semantically meaningful intervals within a video stream. Works by (Smith and Davenport, 1992) (Oomoto and Tanaka, 1993) (Weiss et aI. , 1995) (Hjelsvold et aI. , 1996) suggest manually defining all such inter- vals in the database in advance. However, even an hour long video may have an indefinite number of meaningful intervals. Moreover, video data is multi- interpretative. Therefore, given a query, what is a meaningful interval to an annotator may not be meaningful to the user who issues the query. In practice, manual indexing of meaningful intervals is labour intensive and inadequate.

Reviews from the First Edition:"e;An excellent text The postulates of quantum mechanics and the mathematical underpinnings are discussed in a clear, succinct manner."e; (American Scientist)"e;No matter how gently one introduces students to the concept of Dirac's bras and kets, many are turned off. Shankar attacks the problem head-on in the first chapter, and in a very informal style suggests that there is nothing to be frightened of."e; (Physics Bulletin)Reviews of the Second Edition:"e;This massive text of 700 and odd pages has indeed an excellent get-up, is very verbal and expressive, and has extensively worked out calculational details---all just right for a first course. The style is conversational, more like a corridor talk or lecture notes, though arranged as a text. It would be particularly useful to beginning students and those in allied areas like quantum chemistry."e; (Mathematical Reviews) R. Shankar has introduced major additions and updated key presentations in this second edition of Principles of Quantum Mechanics. New features of this innovative text include an entirely rewritten mathematical introduction, a discussion of Time-reversal invariance, and extensive coverage of a variety of path integrals and their applications. Additional highlights include:- Clear, accessible treatment of underlying mathematics- A review of Newtonian, Lagrangian, and Hamiltonian mechanics- Student understanding of quantum theory is enhanced by separate treatment of mathematical theorems and physical postulates- Unsurpassed coverage of path integrals and their relevance in contemporary physicsThe requisite text for advanced undergraduate- and graduate-level students, Principles of Quantum Mechanics, Second Edition is fully referenced and is supported by many exercises and solutions. The book's self-contained chapters also make it suitable for independent study as well as for courses in applied disciplines.

Non-Invasive Imaging of Atherosclerosis is a primer, reference and review of some of the key features of current activities in the field of atherosclerosis. The Editors' goal is to provide material and stimulating ideas to basic scientists and clinical researchers in order to extend the application of vascular imaging and to further develop methods suitable for investigation of the arterial wall. The first section presents current knowledge about pathology, vascular mechanics and compensatory mechanisms active during atherogenesis. It explores the early lesion, complications of plaques and early detection of plaques. Section II reviews several key methodological issues of B-mode ultrasound imaging and some of the most current data. Quantitative B-mode ultrasound is an established non-invasive tool widely used in large epidemiologic studies and interventional clinical trials of atherosclerosis. The last section addresses the most promising areas of development in vascular imaging. This involves new techniques to evaluate the atherosclerotic bed, to follow atheroma progression/regression and to evaluate vascular mechanics in atherosclerotic arteries. The last chapter places the application of non-invasive imaging in perspective.

CMOS Current Amplifiers presents design strategies for high performance current amplifiers based on CMOS technology. After an introduction to various architectures of operational amplifiers, the operating principles of the current amplifier are outlined. This book provides the reader with simple and compact design equations for use in a pencil and paper design and the following simulation step. Chapter 1 introduces the general aspects of current amplifiers. After a preliminary classification of operational amplifiers, ideal blocks and models are discussed for different architectures and a first high-level comparison is made between traditional amplifiers and current amplifiers. Analysis and examples of basic circuits, as well as signal processing applications involving current amplifiers, are also given. Non-idealities and second- order effects causing limitations in performance are then discussed and evaluated. Chapter 2 focuses on low-drive current amplifiers. Several design examples for current conveyors and class A current amplifiers are discussed in detail and design equations are presented for the main performance parameters, which allows a good trade-off between requirements. High-performance solutions for high bandwidth and low voltage capability are also considered, and, finally, current comparators with progressively enhanced performance are reported and analyzed critically. Chapter 3 deals with current amplifiers for off-chip loads. Several class AB current-mode output stages are discussed and design strategies which improve performance are presented. A detailed analysis of non-ideal effect is carried out with particular emphasis on linearity. Design examples are given and circuit arrangements for further developments are included. CMOS Current Amplifiers serves as an excellent reference for researchers and professionals of analog IC design, and may also be used as an advanced text on current amplifiers.

Fuzzy theory is an interesting name for a method that has been highly effective in a wide variety of significant, real-world applications. A few examples make this readily apparent. As the result of a faulty design the method of computer-programmed trading, the biggest stock market crash in history was triggered by a small fraction of a percent change in the interest rate in a Western European country. A fuzzy theory ap- proach would have weighed a number of relevant variables and the ranges of values for each of these variables. Another example, which is rather simple but pervasive, is that of an electronic thermostat that turns on heat or air conditioning at a specific temperature setting. In fact, actual comfort level involves other variables such as humidity and the location of the sun with respect to windows in a home, among others. Because of its great applied significance, fuzzy theory has generated widespread activity internationally. In fact, institutions devoted to research in this area have come into being. As the above examples suggest, Fuzzy Systems Theory is of fundamen- tal importance for the analysis and design of a wide variety of dynamic systems. This clearly manifests the fundamental importance of time con- siderations in the Fuzzy Systems design approach in dynamic systems. This textbook by Prof. Dr. Jernej Virant provides what is evidently a uniquely significant and comprehensive treatment of this subject on the international scene.

N etwork-based computing domain unifies all best research efforts presented from single computer systems to networked systems to render overwhelming computational power for several modern day applications. Although this power is expected to grow with respect to time due to tech- nological advancements, application requirements impose a continuous thrust on network utilization and on the resources to deliver supreme quality of service. Strictly speaking, network-based computing dornain has no confined scope and each element offers considerable challenges. Any modern day networked application strongly thrives on efficient data storage and management system, which is essentially a Database System. There have been nurnber of books-to-date in this domain that discuss fundamental principles of designing a database systern. Research in this dornain is now far matured and rnany researchers are venturing in this dornain continuously due to a wide variety of challenges posed. In this book, our dornain of interest is in exposing the underlying key challenges in designing algorithms to handle unpredictable requests that arrive at a Distributed Database System(DDBS) and evaluating their performance. These requests are otherwise called as on-line requests arriving at a system to process. Transactions in an on-line Banking service, Airline Reservation systern, Video-on-Demand systern, etc, are few examples of on-line requests.

The problem of fault diagnosis and reconfigurable control is a new and actually developing field of science and engineering. The subject becomes more interesting since there is an increasing demand for the navigation and control systems of aerospace vehicles, automated actuators etc. to be more safe and reliable. Nowadays, the problems of fault detection and isolation and reconfigurable control attract the attention the scientists in the world. The subject is emphasized in the recent international congresses such as IF AC World Congresses (San Francisco-1996, Beijing-1999, and Barcelona-2002) and lMEKO World Congresses (Tampere-1997, Osaka-1999, Vienna-2000), and also in the international conferences on fault diagnosis such as SAFEPROCESS Conferences (Hull-1997, Budapest-2000). The presented methods in the book are based on linear and nonlinear dynamic mathematical models of the systems. Technical objects and systems stated by these models are very large, and include various control systems, actuators, sensors, computer systems, communication systems, and mechanical, hydraulic, pneumatic, electrical and electronic devices. The analytical fault diagnosis techniques of these objects have been developed for several decades. Many of those techniques are based on the use of the results of modem control theory. This is natural, because it is known that fault diagnosis process in control systems is considered as a part of general control process. xxii In organization of fault diagnosis of control systems, the use of the concepts and methods of modem control theory including concepts of state space, modeling, controllability, observability, estimation, identification, and filtering is very efficient.

In the spectrum of mathematics, graph theory which studies a mathe- matical structure on a set of elements with a binary relation, as a recognized discipline, is a relative newcomer. In recent three decades the exciting and rapidly growing area of the subject abounds with new mathematical devel- opments and significant applications to real-world problems. More and more colleges and universities have made it a required course for the senior or the beginning postgraduate students who are majoring in mathematics, computer science, electronics, scientific management and others. This book provides an introduction to graph theory for these students. The richness of theory and the wideness of applications make it impossi- ble to include all topics in graph theory in a textbook for one semester. All materials presented in this book, however, I believe, are the most classical, fundamental, interesting and important. The method we deal with the mate- rials is to particularly lay stress on digraphs, regarding undirected graphs as their special cases. My own experience from teaching out of the subject more than ten years at University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) shows that this treatment makes hardly the course di:fficult, but much more accords with the essence and the development trend of the subject.

Recently, there has been interest by regulators, the public and the manufacturers of wireless devices in the issues relating to the safety of radio frequency (RF) energy. These issues require an understanding of the scientific underpinnings of both physics of RF energy and cellular biology. This book is designed to provide precisely such cross-functional expertise. The editors of this book intend to provide a reliable source for a sound scientific understanding of the issues and to stimulate future scientific advances in this area. Therefore, the audience for this book includes such diverse groups as scientists, governmental policy-makers and regulatory bodies, representatives of industry and the public at large.

A number of food engineering operations, in which heat is not used as a preserving factor, have been employed and are applied for preparation (cleaning, sorting, etc.), conversion (milling, agglomeration, etc.) or preservation (irradiation, high pressure processing, pulsed electric fields, etc.) purposes in the food industry. This book presents a comprehensive treatise of all normally used food engineering operations that are carried out at room (or ambient) conditions, whether they are aimed at producing microbiologically safe foods with minimum alteration to sensory and nutritive properties, or they constitute routine preparative or transformation operations. The book is written for both undergraduate and graduate students, as well as for educators and practicing food process engineers. It reviews theoretical concepts, analyzes their use in operating variables of equipment, and discusses in detail different applications in diverse food processes.

SystemVerilog for Verification teaches the reader how to use the power of the new SystemVerilog testbench constructs plus methodology without requiring in-depth knowledge of Object Oriented Programming or Constrained Random Testing. The book covers the SystemVerilog verification constructs such as classes, program blocks, C interface, randomization, and functional coverage. SystemVerilog for Verification also reviews some design topics such as interfaces and array types. There are extensive code examples and detailed explanations. The book will be based on Synopsys courses, seminars, and tutorials that the author developed for SystemVerilog, Vera, RVM, and OOP. Concepts will be built up chapter-by-chapter, and detailed testbench using these topics will be presented in the final chapter. SystemVerilog for Verification concentrates on the best practices for verifying your design using the power of the language.  

Physics of Nanostructured Solid State Devices introduces readers to theories and concepts such as semi-classical and quantum mechanical descriptions of electron transport, methods for calculations of band structures in solids with applications in calculation of optical constants, and other advanced concepts. The information presented here will equip readers with the necessary tools to carry out cutting edge research in modern solid state nanodevices.

Cardiac therapy has become ever more complex during the past quarter century. For example, 25 years ago, the therapy of cardiac failure was largely limited to digitalis, a very few diuretics, salt restriction, and general supportive measures. Antiarrhythmic therapy involved - in the main - quinidine, procainamide, and digitalis, and questions such as which arrhythmia to treat and how to measure drug efficacy had been addressed in elementary fashion only. Cardiac surgery was limited largely to congenital and valvular heart disease; the areas of cardiac pacemaker therapy, defibrillation and other forms of electrical diagnosis and therapy were rudimentary. The expansion of support of cardiovascular research by the National Institutes of Health as well as by institutional sources following World War II has led to major successes in clinical health care delivery and improved technology made available to clinical investigators. In reviewing progress over the past 25 years, we have been particularly impressed by one observation: this is the important interaction that has developed between studies of pathophysiology and the delivery of appropriate cardiac therapy.