springer international publishing jan 2011 (8 results)

Taschenbuch. Condition: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -The recent tragedy in the Gulf of Mexico and resultant ethical consequences for the engineering profession are introduced and discussed. The need for a new engineering ethic is identified and introduced based upon advancements in science, complex systems and eco-philosophy. Motivations for introducing a new ethic rather than modifying existing ethics are also discussed.Table of Contents: Tragedy in the Gulf / Tragedy Unfolding / Engineering Ethics / Complex Systems / Quantum Mechanics / Evolving Principles of the Universe / A New Engineering Ethic / Epilogue 96 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condition: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -This book treats all of the most commonly used theories of the integral. After motivating the idea of integral, we devote a full chapter to the Riemann integral and the next to the Lebesgue integral. Another chapter compares and contrasts the two theories. The concluding chapter offers brief introductions to the Henstock integral, the Daniell integral, the Stieltjes integral, and other commonly used integrals. The purpose of this book is to provide a quick but accurate (and detailed) introduction to all aspects of modern integration theory. It should be accessible to any student who has had calculus and some exposure to upper division mathematics. Table of Contents: Introduction / The Riemann Integral / The Lebesgue Integral / Comparison of the Riemann and Lebesgue Integrals / Other Theories of the Integral 108 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condition: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -In A Philosophy of Technology: From Technical Artefacts to Sociotechnical Systems, technology is analysed from a series of different perspectives. The analysis starts by focussing on the most tangible products of technology, called technical artefacts, and then builds step-wise towards considering those artefacts within their context of use, and ultimately as embedded in encompassing sociotechnical systems that also include humans as operators and social rules like legislation. Philosophical characterisations are given of technical artefacts, their context of use and of sociotechnical systems. Analyses are presented of how technical artefacts are designed in engineering and what types of technological knowledge is involved in engineering. And the issue is considered how engineers and others can or cannot influence the development of technology. These characterisations are complemented by ethical analyses of the moral status of technical artefacts and the possibilities and impossibilities for engineers to influence this status when designing artefacts and the sociotechnical systems in which artefacts are embedded. The running example in the book is aviation, where aeroplanes are examples of technical artefacts and the world aviation system is an example of a sociotechnical system. Issues related to the design of quiet aeroplane engines and the causes of aviation accidents are analysed for illustrating the moral status of designing, and the role of engineers therein. Table of Contents: Technical Artefacts / Technical Designing / Ethics and Designing / Technological Knowledge / Sociotechnical Systems / The Role of Social Factors in Technological Development / Ethics and Unintended Consequences of Technology 136 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condition: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -Knowledge Management (KM) is an effort to increase useful knowledge in the organization. It is a natural outgrowth of late twentieth century movements to make organizational management and operations more effective, of higher quality, and more responsive to constituents in a rapidly changing global environment. This document traces the evolution of KM in organizations, summarizing the most influential research and literature in the field. It also presents an overview of selected common and current practices in knowledge management, including the relationship between knowledge management and decision making, with the intention of making a case for KM as a series of processes and not necessarily a manipulation of things. The final section highlights the use of social networking and commonly adopted Web applications to increase the value of social capital and to connect practitioners with clients and colleagues. Table of Contents: Introduction / Background Bibliographic Analysis / Theorizing Knowledge in Organizations / Conceptualizing Knowledge Emergence / Knowledge 'Acts' / Knowledge Management in Practice / Knowledge Management Issues / Knowledge Management and Decision Making / Social Network Analysis and KM / Implications for the Future / Conclusion 100 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condition: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -This book is devoted to the study of the problem of speech enhancement whose objective is the recovery of a signal of interest (i.e., speech) from noisy observations. Typically, the recovery process is accomplished by passing the noisy observations through a linear filter (or a linear transformation). Since both the desired speech and undesired noise are filtered at the same time, the most critical issue of speech enhancement resides in how to design a proper optimal filter that can fully take advantage of the difference between the speech and noise statistics to mitigate the noise effect as much as possible while maintaining the speech perception identical to its original form. The optimal filters can be designed either in the time domain or in a transform space. As the title indicates, this book will focus on developing and analyzing optimal filters in the Karhunen-Loève expansion (KLE) domain. We begin by describing the basic problem of speech enhancement and the fundamental principles to solve it in the time domain. We then explain how the problem can be equivalently formulated in the KLE domain. Next, we divide the general problem in the KLE domain into four groups, depending on whether interframe and interband information is accounted for, leading to four linear models for speech enhancement in the KLE domain. For each model, we introduce signal processing measures to quantify the performance of speech enhancement, discuss the formation of different cost functions, and address the optimization of these cost functions for the derivation of different optimal filters. Both theoretical analysis and experiments will be provided to study the performance of these filters and the links between the KLE-domain and time-domain optimal filters will be examined. Table of Contents: Introduction / Problem Formulation / Optimal Filters in the Time Domain / Linear Models for Signal Enhancement in the KLE Domain / Optimal Filters in the KLE Domain with Model 1 / Optimal Filters in the KLE Domain with Model 2 / Optimal Filters in the KLE Domain with Model 3 / Optimal Filters in the KLE Domain with Model 4 / Experimental Study 116 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condition: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -Malignant tumors due to breast cancer and masses due to benign disease appear in mammograms with different shape characteristics: the former usually have rough, spiculated, or microlobulated contours, whereas the latter commonly have smooth, round, oval, or macrolobulated contours. Features that characterize shape roughness and complexity can assist in distinguishing between malignant tumors and benign masses. In spite of the established importance of shape factors in the analysis of breast tumors and masses, difficulties exist in obtaining accurate and artifact-free boundaries of the related regions from mammograms. Whereas manually drawn contours could contain artifacts related to hand tremor and are subject to intra-observer and inter-observer variations, automatically detected contours could contain noise and inaccuracies due to limitations or errors in the procedures for the detection and segmentation of the related regions. Modeling procedures are desired to eliminate the artifacts in a given contour, while preserving the important and significant details present in the contour. This book presents polygonal modeling methods that reduce the influence of noise and artifacts while preserving the diagnostically relevant features, in particular the spicules and lobulations in the given contours. In order to facilitate the derivation of features that capture the characteristics of shape roughness of contours of breast masses, methods to derive a signature based on the turning angle function obtained from the polygonal model are described. Methods are also described to derive an index of spiculation, an index characterizing the presence of convex regions, an index characterizing the presence of concave regions, an index of convexity, and a measure of fractal dimension from the turning angle function. Results of testing the methods with a set of 111 contours of 65 benign masses and 46 malignant tumors are presented and discussed. It is shown that shape modeling and analysis can lead to classification accuracy in discriminating between benign masses and malignant tumors, in terms of the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve, of up to 0.94. The methods have applications in modeling and analysis of the shape of various types of regions or objects in images, computer vision, computer graphics, and analysis of biomedical images, with particular significance in computer-aided diagnosis of breast cancer. Table of Contents: Analysis of Shape / Polygonal Modeling of Contours / Shape Factors for Pattern Classification / Classification of Breast Masses 96 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condition: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -Tissue engineering research for bone and joint applications entails multidisciplinary teams bringing together the needed expertise in anatomy, biology, biochemistry, pathophysiology, materials science, biomechanics, fluidics, and clinical and veterinary orthopedics. It is the goal of this volume to provide students and investigators who are entering this exciting area with an understanding of the biologic foundations necessary to appreciate the problems in bone and cartilage that may benefit from innovative tissue engineering approaches. This volume includes state-of-the-art information about bone and cartilage physiology at the levels of cell and molecular biology, tissue structure, developmental processes, their metabolic and structural functions, responses to injury, mechanisms of post-natal healing and graft incorporation, the many congenital and acquired disorders, effects of aging, and current clinical standards of care. It reviews the strengths and limitations of various experimental animal models, sources of cells, composition and design of scaffolds, activities of growth factors and genes to enhance histogenesis, and the need for new materials in the context of cell-based and cell-free tissue engineering. These building blocks constitute the dynamic environments in which innovative approaches are needed for addressing debilitating disorders of the skeleton. It is likely that a single tactic will not be sufficient for different applications because of variations in the systemic and local environments. The realizations that tissue regeneration is complex and dynamic underscore the continuing need for innovative multidisciplinary investigations, with an eye to simple and safe therapies for disabled patients.Table of Contents: Introduction / Structure and Function of Bone and Cartilage Tissue / Development / Responses to Injury and Grafting / Clinical Applications for Skeletal Tissue Engineering / Animal Models / Tissue Engineering Principles for Bone and Cartilage / Perspectives 224 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condition: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -Introduction to the Finite-Difference Time-Domain (FDTD) Method for Electromagnetics provides a comprehensive tutorial of the most widely used method for solving Maxwell's equations -- the Finite Difference Time-Domain Method. This book is an essential guide for students, researchers, and professional engineers who want to gain a fundamental knowledge of the FDTD method. It can accompany an undergraduate or entry-level graduate course or be used for self-study. The book provides all the background required to either research or apply the FDTD method for the solution of Maxwell's equations to practical problems in engineering and science. Introduction to the Finite-Difference Time-Domain (FDTD) Method for Electromagnetics guides the reader through the foundational theory of the FDTD method starting with the one-dimensional transmission-line problem and then progressing to the solution of Maxwell's equations in three dimensions. It also provides step by step guides to modeling physical sources, lumped-circuit components, absorbing boundary conditions, perfectly matched layer absorbers, and sub-cell structures. Post processing methods such as network parameter extraction and far-field transformations are also detailed. Efficient implementations of the FDTD method in a high level language are also provided. Table of Contents: Introduction / 1D FDTD Modeling of the Transmission Line Equations / Yee Algorithm for Maxwell's Equations / Source Excitations / Absorbing Boundary Conditions / The Perfectly Matched Layer (PML) Absorbing Medium / Subcell Modeling / Post Processing 252 pp. Englisch.