Bücher veröffentlicht von Springer US

Educational institutions in which administrators, managers and teachers will be working in the late 1990's will be far different from those oftoday. Schools, which until recently were lagging behind in the implementation of information technology (IT) in their administration and management, are now attempting to close the gap. A massive and rapid computerization process in schools, school districts and throughout the other Ievels of the educational system, including universities, has made computers an integral part of the educational management scene. A computer on the desk of every educational management statT might become a reality in the near future. The term "e;IT"e; includes three main components: hardware, software - mainly management information systems (MIS)/decision support systems (DSS) and human factors. Presently, successful implementation depends on adequate software and on human factors. MIS/DSSs are being implemented with the aim of providing meaningful support for school employees in their daily activities, and to improve their performance, etfectiveness and efficiency. Much like at universities, usable and accessible school databases are being established, encompassing data on students, teachers, employees, classrooms, grade Ievels, courses, student achievements and behavior, school space, curriculum, finance, inventory, transportation, etc.

Designing is one of the most significant of human acts. Surprisingly, given that designing has been occurring for many millenia, our understanding of the processes of designing is remarkably limited. Recently, design methods have been formalised not as humano-centred processes but as processes capable of computer implementation with the goal of augmenting human designers. This volume contains contributions which cover design methods based on evolutionary systems, generative processes, evaluation methods and analysis methods. It presents the state of the art in formal design methods for computer aided design.

This book contains the papers presented at the International Workshop on Visual Fonn, held in Capri (Italy) on May 27-30, 1991. The workshop, sponsored by the International Association for Pattern Recognition (!APR), has been jointly organized by the Dipartimento di Infonnatica e Sisternistica of the University of Naples and the Istituto di Cibemetica of the National Research Council of Italy, and has focussed on Shape. Shape is a distinctive feature of most patterns, so that recognition can often be attained through shape discrimination. The organizers of the workshop shared the general feeling manifested by researchers, that it was time for holding a meeting exclusively devoted to a feature so crucial for both human and machine perception. During this meeting, problems and prospects in the field of 2D and 3D shape analysis could be discussed extensively, so as to provide an effective, updated picture of the current research activity in which shape plays a central role. Indeed, many highly qualified researchers in the field positively reacted to the Call for Papers.

Architectures for Enterprise Integration describes the latest methods to guide enterprises and consultants, managers and technical personnel through a complete life-cycle of enterprise development. This book is based on the findings of the IFIP/IFAC Task Force and presents the state-of-the-art in enterprise architecture. This book is essential reading for all practising engineers and researchers in manufacturing and engineering management with special interest for those involved in CIM and Enterprise Modelling and Integration.

This book constitutes the Proceedings of the IFIP Working Conference PRO- COMET'98, held 8-12 June 1998 at Shelter Island, N.Y. The conference is organized by the t'wo IFIP TC 2 Working Groups 2.2 Formal Description of Programming Concepts and 2.3 Programming Methodology. WG2.2 and WG2.3 have been organizing these conferences every four years for over twenty years. The aim of such Working Conferences organized by IFIP Working Groups is to bring together leading scientists in a given area of computer science. Participation is by invitation only. As a result, these conferences distinguish themselves from other meetings by extensive and competent technical discus- sions. PROCOMET stands for Programming Concepts and Methods, indicating that the area of discussion for the conference is the formal description of pro- gramming concepts and methods, their tool support, and their applications. At PROCOMET working conferences, papers are presented from this whole area, reflecting the interest of the individuals in WG2.2 and WG2.3.

It is, indeed, widely acceptable today that nowhere is it more important to focus on the improvement of software quality than in the case of systems with requirements in the areas of safety and reliability - especially for distributed, real-time and embedded systems. Thus, much research work is under progress in these fields, since software process improvement impinges directly on achieved levels of quality, and many application experiments aim to show quantitative results demonstrating the efficacy of particular approaches. Requirements for safety and reliability - like other so-called non-functional requirements for computer-based systems - are often stated in imprecise and ambiguous terms, or not at all. Specifications focus on functional and technical aspects, with issues like safety covered only implicitly, or not addressed directly because they are felt to be obvious; unfortunately what is obvious to an end user or system user is progressively less so to others, to the extend that a software developer may not even be aware that safety is an issue. Therefore, there is a growing evidence for encouraging greater understanding of safety and reliability requirements issues, right across the spectrum from end user to software developer; not just in traditional safety-critical areas (e.g. nuclear, aerospace) but also acknowledging the need for such things as heart pacemakers and other medical and robotic systems to be highly dependable.

Formal Methods for Open Object-Based Distributed Systems presents the leading edge in several related fields, specifically object-orientated programming, open distributed systems and formal methods for object-oriented systems. With increased support within industry regarding these areas, this book captures the most up-to-date information on the subject. Many topics are discussed, including the following important areas: object-oriented design and programming; formal specification of distributed systems; open distributed platforms; types, interfaces and behaviour; formalisation of object-oriented methods. This volume comprises the proceedings of the International Workshop on Formal Methods for Open Object-based Distributed Systems (FMOODS), sponsored by the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) which was held in Florence, Italy, in February 1999. Formal Methods for Open Object-Based Distributed Systems is suitable as a secondary text for graduate-level courses in computer science and telecommunications, and as a reference for researchers and practitioners in industry, commerce and government.

Developments in electronic hardware, particularly microprocessors and solid-state cameras, have resulted in a vast explosion in the range and variety of applications to which intelligent processing may be applied to yield cost-effective automation. Typical examples include automated visual inspection and repetitive assembly. The technology required is recent and specialized, and is thus not widely known. VISION AND INFORMATION PROCESSING FOR AUTOMATION has arisen from a short course given by the authors to introduce potential users to the technology. Its content is a development and extension of material presented in the course. The objective of the book is to introduce readers to modern concepts and techniques basic to intelligent automation, and explain how these are applied to prac- tical problems. Its emphasis is on machine vision. Intelligent instrumentation is concerned with processing infor- mation, and an appreciation of the nature of information is essential in configuring instrumentation to handle it effiCiently. An understand- ing of the fundamental principles of efficient computation and of the way in which machines make decisions is vital for the same reasons. Selection of appropriate sensing (e.g., camera type and configuration), of illumination, of hardware for processing (microchip or parallel processor?) to give most effective information flow, and of the most appropriate processing algorithms is critical in obtaining an optimal solution. Analysis of performance, to demonstrate that requirements have been met, and to identify the causes if they have not, is also important. All of these topics are covered in this volume.

Recently, IT has entered all important areas of society. Enterprises, individuals and civilisations all depend on functioning, safe and secure IT. Focus on IT security has previously been fractionalised, detailed and often linked to non-business applicaitons. The aim of this book is to address the current and future prospects of modern IT security, functionality in business, trade, industry, health care and government. The main topic areas covered include existing IT security tools and methodology for modern IT environments, laws, regulations and ethics in IT security environments, current and future prospects in technology, infrastructures, technique and methodology and IT security in retrospective.

When we were first approached by Dr. Lucky to write this book we were very enthusiastic about the prospect, since we had contemplated a similar project for quite some time. The difficulty lay in how best to digest the vast amount of data on optical propagation, reduce it to a book of manageable size, and simultaneously form the transition from the physics of propagation to the engineering of optical channels. This is the intent of Optical Channels. In accomplishing our goal it was necessary to condense the material on optical propagation and, in so doing, we have left a large amount to be handled via references. We have tried to make these decisions in a consistent manner so that the book will be uniform in its treatment of this topic. We identify four channels for consideration: the free-space channel, which: is characteristic of a tranquil atmosphere or a space-to-space link; the turbulent channel, which is characteristic of the atmospheric channel; the scatter channel in two forms, clouds and water; and the fiber optic channel. For each of these channels we have tried to reduce the applicable propagation theory to a level that can be used for engineering design. This has been done by example, but here again decisions had to be made on which examples to present. We have not tried to present any material on optical components and consequently other references on engineering would be necessary to supplement this book.

Neural Network Parallel Computing is the first book available to the professional market on neural network computing for optimization problems. This introductory book is not only for the novice reader, but for experts in a variety of areas including parallel computing, neural network computing, computer science, communications, graph theory, computer aided design for VLSI circuits, molecular biology, management science, and operations research. The goal of the book is to facilitate an understanding as to the uses of neural network models in real-world applications. Neural Network Parallel Computing presents a major breakthrough in science and a variety of engineering fields. The computational power of neural network computing is demonstrated by solving numerous problems such as N-queen, crossbar switch scheduling, four-coloring and k-colorability, graph planarization and channel routing, RNA secondary structure prediction, knight's tour, spare allocation, sorting and searching, and tiling. Neural Network Parallel Computing is an excellent reference for researchers in all areas covered by the book. Furthermore, the text may be used in a senior or graduate level course on the topic.