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    • Comparisons of Prices and Real Products in Latin America

      • 1st Edition
      • Volume 194
      • June 28, 2014
      • J. Salazar-Carrillo + 1 more
      • English
      • Paperback
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      • eBook
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      Contained in this book are studies related to the computation of purchasing power parities for comparing real income and product among Latin American countries. The principal components of income and product comparisons are discussed: from designing and executing benchmark studies, to extrapolating results for non-benchmark years. Different comparative methods and measurement techniques, including index number formulations, are considered. Comparisons of Latin countries with other countries are also undertaken.This volume aims to illuminate the thorny theoretical and methodological issues involved in regional comparisons, and to facilitate the practical application of the comparative approach to the many sided policy problems generated by a rapidly integrating international economy.

    • Topoi

      • 2nd Edition
      • Volume 98
      • June 28, 2014
      • R. Goldblatt
      • English
      • Paperback
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      The first of its kind, this book presents a widely accessible exposition of topos theory, aimed at the philosopher-logician as well as the mathematician. It is suitable for individual study or use in class at the graduate level (it includes 500 exercises). It begins with a fully motivated introduction to category theory itself, moving always from the particular example to the abstract concept. It then introduces the notion of elementary topos, with a wide range of examples and goes on to develop its theory in depth, and to elicit in detail its relationship to Kripke's intuitionistic semantics, models of classical set theory and the conceptual framework of sheaf theory (``localization'' of truth). Of particular interest is a Dedekind-cuts style construction of number systems in topoi, leading to a model of the intuitionistic continuum in which a ``Dedekind-real'' becomes represented as a ``continuously-varia... classical real number''.The second edition contains a new chapter, entitled Logical Geometry, which introduces the reader to the theory of geometric morphisms of Grothendieck topoi, and its model-theoretic rendering by Makkai and Reyes. The aim of this chapter is to explain why Deligne's theorem about the existence of points of coherent topoi is equivalent to the classical Completeness theorem for ``geometric'' first-order formulae.

    • Regiomontanus: His Life and Work

      • 1st Edition
      • Volume 1
      • June 28, 2014
      • E. Zinner + 1 more
      • English
      • Paperback
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      • eBook
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      The 500th anniversary of Regiomontanus's birth has occasioned this depiction of his life and work. It is the first English translation of Ernst Zinner's monumental biography, plus a number of specially-written supplementary articles which help paint a more comprehensive picture of the current state of knowledge about Regiomontanus. The articles show the high regard in which the biography is still held by the community of scholars doing work on the mathematics of the Renaissance.Zinner's biography is a mine of information about early printing, astrolabes, tables of eclipses and the world of Henry of Langenstein, Johann of Gmunden, Georg Peuerbach, Cardinal Bessarion, Nicholas of Cusa and the extraordinary itinerant scholar, Johannes Müller of Königsberg — Regiomontanus. His contributions to mathematics are discussed (for example, he may have discovered the fifth and sixth perfect numbers) as well as the mysteries surrounding his life and death.

    • Progress in Pattern Recognition 1

      • 1st Edition
      • June 28, 2014
      • L.N. Kanal + 1 more
      • English
      • Paperback
        9 7 8 1 4 9 3 3 0 5 4 8 3
      • eBook
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      Progress in Pattern Recognition, Volume 1 focuses on the processes, techniques, and approaches involved in pattern recognition, including conceptual clustering, cross-correlation, syntax, software, data structures, and distance transforms. The selection first tackles progress in syntactic pattern recognition and clustering objects into classes characterized by conjunctive concepts. Discussions focus on an overview of clustering problems, conjunctive conceptual clustering, primitive selection and pattern grammars, high dimensional grammars for pattern description, syntactic pattern recognition using stochastic languages, and syntactic approach to shape and texture analysis. The text then elaborates on database representations in hierarchical scene analysis and medium level vision. The book examines image processing software and analysis and synthesis of image patterns by spatial interaction models. Topics include synopsis of discrete spatial interaction models, nonrecursive models over infinite lattices, finite lattice models, and the MSFC image processing package. The text also reviews the mathematical aspects of image reconstruction from projection and recognition of stereo-image cross-correlation errors. The selection is a highly recommended source of data for researchers interested in the process of pattern recognition.

    • Parallel Processing for Artificial Intelligence 1

      • 1st Edition
      • Volume 14
      • June 28, 2014
      • L.N. Kanal + 3 more
      • English
      • Paperback
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      • eBook
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      Parallel processing for AI problems is of great current interest because of its potential for alleviating the computational demands of AI procedures. The articles in this book consider parallel processing for problems in several areas of artificial intelligence: image processing, knowledge representation in semantic networks, production rules, mechanization of logic, constraint satisfaction, parsing of natural language, data filtering and data mining. The publication is divided into six sections. The first addresses parallel computing for processing and understanding images. The second discusses parallel processing for semantic networks, which are widely used means for representing knowledge - methods which enable efficient and flexible processing of semantic networks are expected to have high utility for building large-scale knowledge-based systems. The third section explores the automatic parallel execution of production systems, which are used extensively in building rule-based expert systems - systems containing large numbers of rules are slow to execute and can significantly benefit from automatic parallel execution. The exploitation of parallelism for the mechanization of logic is dealt with in the fourth section. While sequential control aspects pose problems for the parallelization of production systems, logic has a purely declarative interpretation which does not demand a particular evaluation strategy. In this area, therefore, very large search spaces provide significant potential for parallelism. In particular, this is true for automated theorem proving. The fifth section considers the problem of constraint satisfaction, which is a useful abstraction of a number of important problems in AI and other fields of computer science. It also discusses the technique of consistent labeling as a preprocessing step in the constraint satisfaction problem. Section VI consists of two articles, each on a different, important topic. The first discusses parallel formulation for the Tree Adjoining Grammar (TAG), which is a powerful formalism for describing natural languages. The second examines the suitability of a parallel programming paradigm called Linda, for solving problems in artificial intelligence.Each of the areas discussed in the book holds many open problems, but it is believed that parallel processing will form a key ingredient in achieving at least partial solutions. It is hoped that the contributions, sourced from experts around the world, will inspire readers to take on these challenging areas of inquiry.

    • Price Expectations in Rising Inflation

      • 1st Edition
      • Volume 152
      • June 28, 2014
      • I. Visco
      • English
      • Paperback
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      • eBook
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      It is claimed in this book that expectations should not necessarily be treated as unobservable variables and that there is much to be learned from survey data. A unique data set is examined, the output of surveys conducted twice a year since 1952, among informed Italian businessmen and economic experts. The predictive accuracy, rationality and determinants of inflation expectations are investigated, following an extensive analysis of measurement issues.The estimate of inflation expectations are evaluated for both wholesale and consumer price changes, comparing them with those held by respondents to other surveys for different countries and with the forecasts generated by alternative predictors of the inflation process. The expectations considered in the study are shown to be remarkably accurate, anticipating all major price changes, even if during the years of high and rising inflation which have followed the first oil crisis they appear to underestimate on a number of occasions the inflation rates actually experienced, as the alternative predictors also do.An accurate testing of the rational expectations hypothesis is conducted, rejecting it over the entire sample period but not for the period of mild, but variable inflation which preceded the first oil crises.It is shown that a mixed adaptive-regressive model, with both error-learning and return-to-normality components adapts very well to the data considered in this study and that inflation expectations are also influenced by an uncertainty component which affects the adaptive coefficient. Furthermore, regression towards normality is slowed down when industrial capacity is utilized above normal, and vice-versa. Many other issues such as the dispersion of individual answers, the problems of aggregation and measurement error are also considered and an extensive bibliography of other works where use is made of direct information on expectations, is included.

    • Applications of Fuzzy Set Theory in Human Factors

      • 1st Edition
      • Volume 6
      • June 28, 2014
      • W. Karwowski + 1 more
      • English
      • Paperback
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      • eBook
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      The development of the theory of fuzzy sets was motivated largely by the need for a computational framework for dealing with systems in which human judgement, behavior and emotions play a dominant role. Although there are very few papers on fuzzy sets in the literature of psychology and cognitive science, the theory of fuzzy sets provides a much better model for human cognition than traditional approaches.By focusing on the application of fuzzy sets in human factors, this book provides a valuable, authoritative overview of what the theory is about and how it can be applied. An impressive feature is the broad spectrum of applications, ranging from the use of fuzzy methods in the ergonomic diagnostics of industrial production systems to approximate reasoning in risk analysis and the modeling of human-computer interactions in information retrieval tasks. Equally impressive is the very wide variety of disciplines and countries represented by the contributors.

    • The Econometric Analysis of Non-Uniqueness in Rational Expectations Models

      • 1st Edition
      • Volume 201
      • June 28, 2014
      • L. Broze + 1 more
      • English
      • Paperback
        9 7 8 1 4 9 3 3 0 4 7 2 1
      • eBook
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      This book is devoted to the econometric analysis of linear multivariate rational expectation models. It shows that the interpretation of multiplicity in terms of "new degrees of freedom" is consistent with a rigorous econometric reasoning. Non-uniqueness is the central theme of this book. Each chapter is concerned with a specific econometric aspect of rational expectations equilibria. The most constructive result lies in the possibility of an empirical determination of the equilibrium followed by the economy.

    • Plans and Disequilibria in Centrally Planned Economies

      • 1st Edition
      • Volume 159
      • June 28, 2014
      • W. Charemza + 1 more
      • English
      • Paperback
        9 7 8 1 4 9 3 3 0 8 1 0 1
      • eBook
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      The purpose of this study is to investigate interrelations between planning mechanisms and disequilibria in a case where the planning decisions are centralized and are exogenously given to enterprises. The first introductory chapter is intended to provide an understanding of Poland's economic situation during the period under research. In the next five chapters the basic model, describing the households-planners relations in terms of consumption, labour, money and plans are derived, estimated, used for calculation of excess demands, for simulation of some monetary policies, and, finally, for providing optimal control experiments in which consumption excess demand is minimized on a reasonable level of the consumption volume. In the next two chapters the basic model is gradually extended, and the last chapter summarizes the results by formulating a more effective macroeconomic policy.

    • Occupational Safety and Accident Prevention

      • 1st Edition
      • Volume 11
      • June 28, 2014
      • C.G. Hoyos + 1 more
      • English
      • Paperback
        9 7 8 1 4 9 3 3 0 5 3 1 5
      • eBook
        9 7 8 1 4 8 3 2 9 7 3 0 9
      Since the early 1970s there has been a considerable growth in the literature published on the topic of human reliability. However, the main emphasis has been on technical aspects of human reliability, rather than on an integrated safety approach combining safety engineering, organization and human factors. Up till now, information on the subject of occupational safety which covers human reliability as one aspect has been widely scattered in technical reviews or briefly mentioned in textbooks.This book provides a comprehensive overview on occupational safety with special emphasis on the human element. Examples of empirical studies as well as suggestions for practical measures are included to help in the understanding and application of the contents of the text. Although the prime objective of the book is to cover occupational safety from a human factors point of view, nevertheless some of the related areas are also discussed. Among others, they include problem solving in complex systems, judgmental and heuristic biases in decision making as well as characteristics of decision support systems in high risk industry. The inclusion of these topics clearly indicates the shift in attention of occupational safety from work activities on the shop floor to tasks of operators and supervisors in automated and semi-automated systems.The text will prove useful to students of psychology and human factors engineering. Additionally, it holds great utility for persons with an engineering background, such as industrial engineers, quality control engineers, system and design engineers and safety practitioners.

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