Skip to main content
Elsevier

Elsevier Science

  • Information Flow and Knowledge Sharing

    • 1st Edition
    • Volume 2
    • Flavio Soares Correa da Silva + 1 more
    • Mary E. James
    • English
    Except from the ForewordThe stated aim of the book series "Capturing Intelligence" is to publish books on research from all disciplines dealing with and affecting the issue of understanding and reproducing intelligence artificial systems. Of course, much of the work done in the past decades in this area has been of a highly technical nature, varying from hardware design for robots, software design for intelligent agents, and formal logic for reasoning.It is therefore very refreshing to see Information Flow and Knowledge Sharing. This is a courageous book indeed. It is not afraid to tackle the Big Issues: notions such as information, knowledge, information system, information flow, collaborative problem solving, and ontological reasoning. All of these notions are crucial to our understanding of intelligence and our building of intelligent artificial systems, but all too often, these Big Issues are hidden behind the curtains while the technical topics take center stage. AI has a rich history of philosophical books that have chosen a non-standard structure and narrative. It is nice to see that the authors have succeeded into combining a non-standard approach to deep questions with a non-standard format, resulting in a highly interesting volume.Frank van Harmelen, Series EditorExcerpt from the IntroductionOur interest is to promote, through a better and deeper understanding of the notions of information and knowledge, a better and deeper critical understanding of information technology as situated in the full range of human activities, assuming as a principle that this range of activities cannot be properly appreciated when it is reduced to the simplified means-end schema proposed by Technology. We invite the reader to build his/her own points of view about these notions, considering our propositions as a starting point for a critical analysis and discussion of these points. With that, we believe we are contributing to a better understanding of the impact of technology – and particularly of Information Technology – in everyday life. Flavio Soares Correa da Silva, Jaume Agusti-Cullell

  • Realizability

    An Introduction to its Categorical Side
    • 1st Edition
    • Volume 152
    • Jaap van Oosten
    • English
    Aimed at starting researchers in the field, Realizability gives a rigorous, yet reasonable introduction to the basic concepts of a field which has passed several successive phases of abstraction. Material from previously unpublished sources such as Ph.D. theses, unpublished papers, etc. has been molded into one comprehensive presentation of the subject area.

  • Digestive Involvement in Systemic Autoimmune Diseases

    • 1st Edition
    • Volume 13
    • Manuel Ramos-Casals
    • English
    The Digestive System in Systemic Autoimmune Diseases represents the state-of-the-art in the field of digestive disorders in the most common systemic autoimmune diseases.The volume consists of an introductory chapter on imaging techniques in digestive diseases, followed by eight chapters on digestive manifestations in specific systemic autoimmune diseases. The final five chapters deal with digestive diseases with an autoimmune pathogenesis and systemic manifestations.Inter... in scope, the table of contents reads like a Who's who in clinical research on systemic autoimmune diseases. More than 20 contributors from the European Union, the United States, Mexico and South Africa share their knowledge in this detailed volume.

  • Urban Energy Transition

    From Fossil Fuels to Renewable Power
    • 1st Edition
    • Peter Droege
    • Peter Droege
    • English
    This compendium of 29 chapters from 18 countries contains both fundamental and advanced insight into the inevitable shift from cities dominated by the fossil-fuel systems of the industrial age to a renewable-energy based urban development framework. The cross-disciplinary handbook covers a range of diverse yet relevant topics, including: carbon emissions policy and practice; the role of embodied energy; urban thermal performance planning; building efficiency services; energy poverty alleviation efforts; renewable community support networks; aspects of household level bio-fuel markets; urban renewable energy legislation, programs and incentives; innovations in individual transport systems; global urban mobility trends; implications of intelligent energy networks and distributed energy supply and storage; and the case for new regional monetary systems and lifestyles. Presented are practical and principled aspects of technology, economics, design, culture and society, presenting perspectives that are both local and international in scope and relevance.

  • Comprehensive Heterocyclic Chemistry III

    A Review of the Literature 1995-2007 1- 15
    • 1st Edition
    • Alan R. Katritzky + 3 more
    • English
    Comprehensive Heterocyclic Chemistry III (CHEC-III) is a new 15-volume reference work which provides the first point of entry to the literature for all scientists interested in heterocyclic ring systems. Since publishing in 1984, Comprehensive Heterocyclic Chemistry (CHEC) has become the standard work on the subject, indispensable to all serious readers in the interdisciplinary areas where heterocycles are employed. CHEC-III builds on and complements the material in CHEC and CHEC-II and is designed to be used both alone and in conjunction with these two works. Written by leading scientists who have evaluated and summarized the most important data published over the last decade, Comprehensive Heterocyclic Chemistry III will be an invaluable addition to the reference library of those working with heterocyclic ring systems.

  • The Triazine Herbicides

    • 1st Edition
    • Janis Mc Farland Ph.D. + 2 more
    • English
    Over the past 50 years, triazines have made a great impact on agriculture and world hunger by assisting in the development of new farming methods, providing greater farming and land use capabilities, and increasing crop yields. Triazines are registered in over 80 countries and save billions of dollars a year. The Triazine Herbicides is the one book that presents a comprehensive view of the total science and agriculture of these chemicals. With emphasis on how the chemicals are studied and developed, reviewed, and used at the agricultural level this book provides valuable insight into the benefits of triazine herbicides for sustainable agriculture.

  • Models of Brain and Mind

    Physical, Computational and Psychological Approaches
    • 1st Edition
    • Volume 168
    • Rahul Banerjee + 1 more
    • English
    The phenomenon of consciousness has always been a central question for philosophers and scientists. Emerging in the past decade are new approaches to the understanding of consciousness in a scientific light. This book presents a series of essays by leading thinkers giving an account of the current ideas prevalent in the scientific study of consciousness. The value of the book lies in the discussion of this interesting though complex subject from different points of view ranging from physics and computer science to the cognitive sciences. Reviews of controversial ideas related to the philosophy of mind from western and eastern sources including classical Indian first person methodologies provide a breadth of coverage that has seldom been attempted in a book before. Additionally, chapters relating to the new approaches in computational modeling of higher order cognitive function and consciousness are included. The book is of great value for established as well as young researchers from a wide cross-section of interdisciplinary scientific backgrounds, aiming to pursue research in this field, as well as an informed public.

  • The Concise Encyclopedia of the Properties of Materials Surfaces and Interfaces

    • 1st Edition
    • J. W. Martin
    • English
    The structure and thermodynamics of solid surfaces are considered in this single volume, The Concise Encyclopedia of the Properties of Materials Surfaces and Interfaces. This includes their reactivity and catalytic role, as well as their tribological features such as friction, lubrication, adhesion and wear. The importance of surface coatings and surface films upon material properties is also reviewed, and a range of articles on the production and characterisation of thin films is included. Approximately one hundred articles have been selected which discuss the above features in a range of material families, e.g.. metallic, ceramic and polymeric. Reviews of the surface properties of wood and paper are also included.

  • The Synchronized Dynamics of Complex Systems

    • 1st Edition
    • Volume 6
    • Stefano Boccaletti
    • English
    The origin of the word synchronization is a greek root, meaning "to share the common time". The original meaning of synchronization has been maintained up to now in the colloquial use of this word, as agreement or correlation in time of different processes. Historically, the analysis of synchronization phenomena in the evolution of dynamical systems has been a subject of active investigation since the earlier days of physics. Recently, the search for synchronization has moved to chaotic systems. In this latter framework, the appearance of collective (synchronized) dynamics is, in general, not trivial. Indeed, a dynamical system is called chaotic whenever its evolution sensitively depends on the initial conditions. The above said implies that two trajectories emerging from two different closeby initial conditions separate exponentially in the course of the time. As a result, chaotic systems intrinsically defy synchronization, because even two identical systems starting from slightly different initial conditions would evolve in time in a unsynchronized manner (the differences in the systems' states would grow exponentially). This is a relevant practical problem, insofar as experimental initial conditions are never known perfectly. The setting of some collective (synchronized) behavior in coupled chaotic systems has therefore a great importance and interest.The subject of the present book is to summarize the recent discoveries involving the study of synchronization in coupled chaotic systems.Not always the word synchronization is taken as having the same colloquial meaning, and one needs to specify what synchrony means in all particular contexts in which we will describe its emergence.The book describes the complete synchronization phenomenon, both for low and for high dimensional situations, and illustrates possible applications in the field of communicating with chaos.Furthermore, the book summarizes the concepts of phase synchronization, lag synchronization, imperfect phase synchronization, and generalized synchronization, describing a general transition scenario between a hierarchy of different types of synchronization for chaotic oscillators.These concepts are extended to the case of structurally different systems, of uncoupled systems subjected to a common external source, of space extended nonlinearly evolving fields, and of dynamical units networking via a complex wiring of connections, giving thus a summary of all possible situations that are encountered in real life and in technology.

  • Competitive Electricity Markets

    Design, Implementation, Performance
    • 1st Edition
    • Fereidoon Sioshansi
    • English
    After 2 decades, policymakers and regulators agree that electricity market reform, liberalization and privatization remains partly art. Moreover, the international experience suggests that in nearly all cases, initial market reform leads to unintended consequences or introduces new risks, which must be addressed in subsequent “reform of the reforms.” Competitive Electricity Markets describes the evolution of the market reform process including a number of challenging issues such as infrastructure investment, resource adequacy, capacity and demand participation, market power, distributed generation, renewable energy and global climate change.

Browse by Publisher