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North Holland

The Economics of Complex Spatial Systems
1st Edition
A. Reggiani + 1 more
English
This book argues that complexity theory offers new departures for (spatial-) economic modelling. It offers a broad overview of recent advances in non-linear dynamics (catastrophe theory, chaos theory, evolutionary theory and so forth) and illustrates the relevance of this new paradigm on the basis of several illustrations in the area of space-economy. The empirical limitations - inherent in the use of non-linear dynamic systems approaches - are also addressed. Next, the application potential of biocomputing (in particular, neural networks and evolutionary algorithms) is stressed, while various empirical model results are presented. The book concludes with an agenda for further research.
The Other Side of the Error Term
Aging and Development as Model Systems in Cognitive Neuroscience
1st Edition
Volume 125
N. Raz
English
It has been said more than once in psychology that one person's effect is another person's error term. By minimising and occasionally ignoring individual and group variability cognitive psychology has yieled many fine achievements. However, when investigators are working with special populations, the subjects, and the unique nature of the sample, come into focus and become the goal in itself. For developmental psychologists, gerontologists and psychopathologists, research progresses with an eye on their target populations of study. Yet every good study in any of these domains inevitably has another dimension. Whenever a study is designed to turn a spotlight on a special population, the light is also shed on the mainstream from which the target deviates.This book examines what we can learn about general and universal phenomena in cognition and its brain substrates from examining the odd, the rare, the transient, the exceptional and the abnormal.
System Theories and A Priori Aspects of Perception
1st Edition
Volume 126
J.S. Jordan
English
This book takes as a starting point, John Dewey's article, The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology, in which Dewey was calling for, in short, the utilisation of systems theories within psychology, theories of behaviour that capture its nature as a vastly-complex dynamic coordination of nested coordinations. This line of research was neglected as American psychology migrated towards behaviourism, where perception came to be thought of as being both a neural response to an external stimulus and a mediating neural stimulus leading to, or causing a muscular response. As such, perception becomes a question of how it is the perceiver creates neural representations of the physical world. Gestalt psychology, on the other hand, focused on perception itself, utilising the term Phenomenological Field; a term that elegantly nests perception and the organism within their respective, as well as relative, levels of organisation. With the development of servo-mechanisms during the second world war, systems theory began to take on momentum within psychology, and then in the 1970s William T Powers brought the notion of servo-control to perception in his book, Behavior: The Control of Perception. Since then, scientists have come to see nature not as linear chain of contingent cause-effect relationships, but rather, as a non linear, unpredictable nesting of self referential, emergent coordinations, best described as Chaos theory. The implications for perception are astounding, while maintaining the double-aspect nature of perception espoused by the Gestalt psychologists. In short, system theories model perception within the context of a functioning organism, so that objects of experience come to be seen as scale-dependent, psychophysically-neu... phenomenological transformations of energy structures, the dynamics of which are the result of evolution, and therefore, a priori to the individual case. This a priori, homological unity among brain perception and world is revealed through the use of systems theories and represents the thrust of this book. All the authors are applying some sort of systems theory to the psychology of perception. However, unlike Dewey we have close to a century of technology we can bring to bear upon the issue. This book should be seen as a collection of such efforts.
Stream Ciphers and Number Theory
1st Edition
Volume 55
T.W. Cusick + 2 more
English
This book is almost entirely concerned with stream ciphers, concentrating on a particular mathematical model for such ciphers which are called additive natural stream ciphers. These ciphers use a natural sequence generator to produce a periodic keystream. Full definitions of these concepts are given in Chapter 2.This book focuses on keystream sequences which can be analysed using number theory. It turns out that a great deal of information can be deducted about the cryptographic properties of many classes of sequences by applying the terminology and theorems of number theory. These connections can be explicitly made by describing three kinds of bridges between stream ciphering problems and number theory problems. A detailed summary of these ideas is given in the introductory Chapter 1.Many results in the book are new, and over seventy percent of these results described in this book are based on recent research results.
Parallel Computational Fluid Dynamics '97
Recent Developments and Advances Using Parallel Computers
1st Edition
D. Emerson + 4 more
English
Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) is a discipline that has always been in the vanguard of the exploitation of emerging and developing technologies. Advances in both algorithms and computers have rapidly been absorbed by the CFD community in its quest for more accurate simulations and reductions in the time to solution. Within this context, parallel computing has played an increasingly important role. Moreover, the uptake of parallel computing has brought the CFD community into ever-closer contact with hardware vendors and computer scientists. The multidisciplinary subject of parallel CFD and its rapidly evolving nature, in terms of hardware and software, requires a regular international meeting of this nature to keep abreast of the most recent developments.Paralle... CFD '97 is part of an annual conference series dedicated to the discussion of recent developments and applications of parallel computing in the field of CFD and related disciplines. This was the 9th in the series, and since the inaugural conference in 1989, many new developments and technologies have emerged. The intervening years have also proved to be extremely volatile for many hardware vendors and a number of companies appeared and then disappeared. However, the belief that parallel computing is the only way forward has remained undiminished. Moreover, the increasing reliability and acceptance of parallel computers has seen many commercial companies now offering parallel versions of their codes, many developed within the EC funded EUROPORT activity, but generally for more modest numbers of processors. It is clear that industry has not moved to large scale parallel systems but it has shown a keen interest in more modest parallel systems recognising that parallel computing will play an important role in the future. This book forms the proceedings of the CFD '97 conference, which was organised by the the Computational Engineering Group at Daresbury Laboratory and held in Manchester, England, on May 19-21 1997. The sessions involved papers on many diverse subjects including turbulence, reactive flows, adaptive schemes, unsteady flows, unstructured mesh applications, industrial applications, developments in software tools and environments, climate modelling, parallel algorithms, evaluation of computer architectures and a special session devoted to parallel CFD at the AEREA research centres. This year's conference, like its predecessors, saw a continued improvement in both the quantity and quality of contributed papers.Since the conference series began many significant milestones have been acheived. For example in 1994, Massively Parallel Processing (MPP) became a reality with the advent of Cray T3D. This, of course, has brought with it the new challenge of scalability for both algorithms and architectures. In the 12 months since the 1996 conference, two more major milestones were achieved: microprocessors with a peak performance of a Gflop/s became available and the world's first Tflop/s calculation was performed. In the 1991 proceedings, the editors indicated that a Tflop/s computer was likely to be available in the latter half of this decade. On December 4th 1996, Intel achieved this breakthrough on the Linpack benchmark using 7,264 (200MHz) Pentium Pro microprocessors as part of the ASCI Red project. With the developments in MPP, the rapid rise of SMP architectures and advances in PC technology, the future for parallel CFD looks both promising and challenging.
Handbook on the Physics and Chemistry of Rare Earths
1st Edition
Volume 25
English
Twenty years on and 164 reviews later since the appearance of volume 1 of this prestigious series, the rare earths continue to perplex, if not mystify us. There is no doubt that in the next breakthrough to a higher level of human understanding of nature, the rare earth elements and their compounds will play an important part in its elaboration. The reviews contained in this 25th volume continue this quest.The first chapter reveals the effects of the addition of the rare earths on steel. These elements were introduced to the steel-making industry in the 1920's to affect deoxidization and desulfurization. Today it is possible to extend their usefulness to provide steels with desired characteristics. The description of why and how additions of the rare earths affect micro- and nano-structures in steels which provide these beneficial modifications is explored.Chapter two reviews ternary and higher-order nitride materials. The synthesis of ternary compounds is examined and the products are categorized by their composition and the nature of the chemical bonding they exhibit. The structures of the compounds are discussed where possible.The spectral intensities of f-f transitions in lanthanide compounds are discussed at length in the following chapter. The authors present an exhaustive consideration of the unique appearance of intraconfigurational electronic transitions in f-type materials, particularly the lanthanides.The final chapter reviews the prodigious literature on the organometallic &pgr; complexes of the f-elements. The authors consider the main classes of complexes of both the lanthanide and actinide organometallics, and synthesis and structure are dealt with in particular.
Plastic Limit Analysis of Plates, Shells and Disks
2nd Edition
Volume 43
M.A. Save + 2 more
English
This revised and updated edition of a book first published in 1972 has kept the general features of the first edition but as could be expected after two decades there are also substantial differences. For instance optimal design has been completely deleted as the developments in this field have been so great that it warrants a book in itself. The fundamental concepts based on Drucker's postulate rather than those of Prager's assumptions function have been introduced. Problems of cyclic loading have been given some more extensive treatment, both in the general theory and in applications. General indications and references have been added for reinforced concrete plates and shells. A general presentation of the yield condition for both plates and shells has been included and the section on the influence of axial force in plates has been almost re-written. Finally, a chapter has been added exclusively devoted to the numerical approach to limit load and shake-down load evaluation. Like the previous edition the book is directed towards engineering applications. The theory is rigorously developed and is therefore of great use to engineering students in plastic limit analysis. Furthermore, applications to metal and reinforced concrete plates and shells and to metal disks are treated by both analytical and numerical approaches.
Color for Science, Art and Technology
1st Edition
Volume 1
Kurt Nassau
English
The aim of this book is to assemble a series of chapters, written by experts in their fields, covering the basics of color - and then some more. In this way, readers are supplied with almost anything they want to know about color outside their own area of expertise. Thus, the color measurement expert, as well as the general reader, can find here information on the perception, causes, and uses of color. For the artist there are details on the causes, measurement, perception, and reproduction of color. Within each chapter, authors were requested to indicate directions of future efforts, where applicable. One might reasonably expect that all would have been learned about color in the more than three hundred years since Newton established the fundamentals of color science. This is not true because:• the measurement of color still has unresolved complexities (Chapter 2)• many of the fine details of color vision remain unknown (Chapter 3)• every few decades a new movement in art discovers original ways to use new pigments, and dyes continue to be discovered (Chapter 5)• the philosophical approach to color has not yet crystallized (Chapter 7)• new pigments and dyes continue to be discovered (Chapters 10 and 11)• the study of the biological and therapeutic effects of color is still in its infancy (Chapter 2).Color continues to develop towards maturity and the editor believes that there is much common ground between the sciences and the arts and that color is a major connecting bridge.
Cerebral Asymmetries in Sensory and Perceptual Processing
1st Edition
Volume 123
S. Christman
English
The purpose of the book is to provide a comprehensive overview of hemispheric differences in sensory and perceptual processing. The first section of the book deals directly with the intra- and inter-hemispheric processing of spatial and temporal frequencies in the visual modality. The second section addresses the initial interaction between sensory and cognitive mechanisms, dealing with how the left and right cerebral hemispheres differ in their computation and representation of sensory information. The third section covers how attentional mechanisms modulate the nature of perceptual processing in the cerebral hemispheres. Section four consists of a single chapter which reviews evidence suggesting a functional linkage between upper and right visual field processing, on the one hand, and lower and left visual field processing on the other.
Cognitive Science Perspectives on Personality and Emotion
1st Edition
Volume 124
G. Matthews
English
This book aims to highlight the vigour, diversity and insight of the various cognitive science perspectives on personality and emotion. It aims also to emphasise the rigorous scientific basis for research to be found in the integration of experimental psychology with neuroscience, connectionism and the new evolutionary psychology. The contributors to this book provide a wide-ranging survey of leading-edge research topics. It is divided into three parts, on general frameworks for cognitive science, on perspectives from emotion research, and on perspectives from studies of personality traits.

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