Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 17, No. 284.
Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
Submit to: firstname.lastname@example.org
Date: Wed, 08 Oct 2003 06:59:32 +0100
From: Willard McCarty <email@example.com>
Subject: new books
Embedded System Design
University of Dortmund, Germany
Embedded systems can be defined as information processing systems embedded
into enclosing products such as cars, telecommunication or fabrication
equipment. Such systems come with a large number of common characteristics,
including real-time constraints, and dependability as well as efficiency
requirements. Following the success of information technology (IT) for
office and workflow applications, embedded systems are considered to be the
most important application area of IT during the coming years. This
importance of embedded systems is so far not well reflected in many of the
Embedded System Design is intended as an aid for changing this situation.
It provides the material for a first course on embedded systems, but can
also be used by PhD students and professors. A key goal of this book is to
provide an overview of embedded system design and to relate the most
important topics in embedded system design to each other. It should help to
motivate students as well as professors to put more emphasis on education
in embedded systems. In order to facilitate teaching from this book,
slides, exercises and other related material can be downloaded via the
author's web page.
Available at a reduced price for course adoption when ordering six copies
or more. Please contact Customer Services (firstname.lastname@example.org) for further
(Please refer to promotional code 738020 when ordering.)
Hardbound ISBN: 1-4020-7690-8 Date: November 2003 Pages: 258 pp.
EURO 104.00 / USD 115.00 / GBP 71.00
Connectionist Approaches in Economics and Management Sciences
CREREG CNRS, University of Rennes, France
SAMOS MATISSE CNRS, University of Paris 1, France
ADVANCES IN COMPUTATIONAL MANAGEMENT SCIENCE -- 6
Since the beginning of the 1980's, many new approaches of biomimetic
inspiration have been defined and developed for imitating the brain
behavior, for modeling non linear phenomenon, for providing new hardware
architectures, for solving hard problems. These approaches include: Neural
Networks, Multilayer Perceptrons, Genetic algorithms, Cellular Automates,
Self-Organizing maps, etc. They can be summarized by the word
Connectionism, and consist of an interdisciplinary domain between
neuroscience, cognitive science and engineering. First they were applied in
computer sciences, engineering, biological models, pattern recognition,
motor control, learning algorithms, etc. However, it rapidly appeared that
these methods could be of great interest in the fields of Economics and
Management Sciences. The main difficulty was the distance between
researchers, the difference in the vocabulary used and their basic
background. The main notions used by these news techniques were not
familiar to the Social and Human Sciences researchers.
The purpose of the book is to put these new techniques at the disposal of
researchers coming from different horizons, to assess the state of the art,
to identify the capability of these new algorithms, to evidence the
contribution of these methods to Economics and Management Sciences. It is a
privileged place to expose the know-how and to discuss new developments and
problems encountered in the researches.
The contributions in this book bring new confirmations of the interest of
connectionist approaches for researchers in Economics and Management
Sciences. The first part is dedicated to theoretical advances; the second
part presents a wide range of applications. All papers contain interesting
results on each subject, which would have been very difficult to show with
classical techniques but which has been proven by using these connectionist
non linear methods. They reflect the great diversity of connectionist
approaches of which we know the reader will benefit for his(her) own
research. If this study enlarges the range of analysis tools for
researchers in Economics and Management we will have reached our goal of
sharing our interest in these new and fascinating connectionist methods.
Hardbound ISBN: 1-4020-7535-9 Date: October 2003 Pages: 269 pp.
EURO 119.00 / USD 108.00 / GBP 75.00
Technological Aspects of Virtual Organizations
Enabling the Intelligent Enterprise
Alea M. Fairchild
Vesalius College/Vrije University Brussel, Belgium; Greiner International,
Virtual organizations are frequently discussed in management texts in the
context of e-business and remote working. Yet the technical infrastructure
that allows individuals, groups and corporations to have virtual
relationships is rarely discussed in management books, and if so, the
relationship between technology and the managerial issues is glossed over,
or not properly elaborated.
This textbook, designed for final year undergraduates and MBA students,
considers the theory and practice of virtual organizations at three levels:
the individual, the group, and the corporation. The justification for this
approach is that at each level one sees manifestations of different
problems that have to be considered in the design and implementation of
relevant tools. These problems center on how information is used or, more
precisely, how it is accessed, created, communicated, and reused once
again. The technology appropriate for individuals may be different from the
technology for groups or corporations. Ultimately, the reader should get a
better understanding of the relationship between people and technology.
Hardbound ISBN: 1-4020-1732-4 Date: October 2003 Pages: 210 pp.
EURO 80.00 / USD 88.00 / GBP 55.00
Public and Situated Displays
Social and Interactional Aspects of Shared Display Technologies
The Appliance Studio, Bristol, UK
Brunel University, Uxbridge, UK
Fuji-Xerox Palo Alto Laboratory Inc., CA, USA
IBM Almaden Research Center, San Jose, CA, USA
THE KLUWER INTERNATIONAL SERIES ON COMPUTER SUPPORTED COOPERATIVE WORK -- 2
Public and situated display technologies can have an important impact on
individual and social behaviour and present us with particular interesting
new design considerations and challenges. While there is a growing body of
research exploring these design considerations and social impact this work
remains somewhat disparate, making it difficult to assimilate in a coherent
manner. This book brings together the perspectives of key researchers in
the area of public and situated display technology. The chapters detail
research representing the social, technical and interactional aspects of
public and situated display technologies. The underlying concern common to
these chapters is how these displays can be best designed for
collaboration, coordination, community building and mobility. Presenting
them together allows the reader to examine everyday display activities
within the context of emerging technological possibilities.
Audience: This book is intended as an important foundational text for
researchers and practitioners in the areas of CSCW, Ubiquitous Computing
and HCI as well as a useful reference for advanced undergraduate and
postgraduate students on HCI, psychology, information systems and computer
Hardbound ISBN: 1-4020-1677-8 Date: October 2003 Pages: 456 pp.
EURO 124.00 / USD 136.00 / GBP 86.00
Perspectives on Software Requirements
Julio Cesar Sampaio do Prado Leite
Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Jorge Horacio Doorn
Universidad Nacional del Centro de la Provincia de Buenos Aires, Argentina
THE KLUWER INTERNATIONAL SERIES IN ENGINEERING AND COMPUTER SCIENCE -- 753
Requirements engineering is a field of knowledge concerned with the
systematic process of eliciting, analyzing and modeling requirements.
Requirements engineering is usually understood in relation to software
system requirements, most of its principles and some of its techniques can
be adapted to other problems dealing with complex sets of requirements. The
engineering vision indicates that this should be a practical and
well-defined process where trade-offs have to be considered to obtain the
best results. Mature software development needs mature requirements
engineering. This was true ten years ago when requirements engineering
became an important component of the software development process. It
remains true today when the pressure to deliver code on time and on budget
is increasing, and the demand for higher quality software also increases.
Perspectives On Software Requirements presents perspectives on several
current approaches to software requirements. Each chapter addresses a
specific problem where the authors summarize their experiences and results
to produce well-fit and traceable requirements. Chapters highlight familiar
issues with recent results and experiences, which are accompanied by
chapters describing well-tuned new methods for specific domains.
Perspectives On Software Requirements is designed for a professional
audience, composed of researchers and practitioners in industry. This book
is also suitable as a secondary text for graduate-level students in
computer science and engineering.
Hardbound ISBN: 1-4020-7625-8 Date: October 2003 Pages: 296 pp.
EURO 122.00 / USD 135.00 / GBP 84.00
Realism in Action
Essays in the Philosophy of the Social Sciences
University of Tampere, Finland
University of Helsinki, Finland
University of Helsinki, Finland
SYNTHESE LIBRARY -- 321
Realism in Action is a selection of essays written by leading
representatives in the fields of action theory and philosophy of mind,
philosophy of the social sciences and especially the nature of social
action, and of epistemology and philosophy of science. Practical reason,
reasons and causes in action theory, intending and trying, and
folk-psychological explanation are some of the topics discussed by these
leading participants. A particular emphasis is laid on trust, commitments
and social institutions, on the possibility of grounding social notions in
individual social attitudes, on the nature of social groups, institutions
and collective intentionality, and on common belief and common knowledge.
Applications to the social sciences include, e.g., a look at the
Erklären-Verstehen controversy in economics, and at constructivist and
realist views on archeological reconstructions of the past.
CONTENTS AND CONTRIBUTORS
1: Realism, Truth, And Explanation. What Philosophers Should Know about
Truth and the Slingshot; F. Stoutland. From Erklären-Verstehen to
Prediction-Understanding: The Methodological Framework in Economics; W.J.
Gonzalez. The Archaeological Construction of the Past: Some Realist
Moderations; U.Mäki. The Backward Induction Paradox and Epistemic Logic;
2: Philosophy Of Mind And Action Theory. The Scope of Motivation and the
Basis of Practical Reason; R. Audi. Activity and Passivity; M. Brand.
Reasons and Causes: The Case of Collingwood; R.Martin. Intending and
Trying: Tuomela vs. Bratman at the Video Arcade; A. Mele. Spinoza on Causal
Explanation of Action; J. Pietarinen. On the Structuralist Constraints on
Explanatory Scheme of Folk Psychology; M. Kuokkanen.
3: Intentions, Trust And Social
Institutions. Commitments; K. Miller. The Components of Rational Trust; M.
Tuomela. Grounding We-intentions in Individual Social Attitudes; C.
Castelfranchi. Social Groups, Collective Intentionality, and Anti-Hegelian
Skepticism; F. Hindriks. Social Institutions; S.Miller. Common Belief and
Common Knowledge; G. Meggle. Others Will Do It: Social Reality by
Opportunists; P. Makela, P. Ylikoski. Science as Collective Knowledge; I.
Hardbound ISBN: 1-4020-1667-0 Date: November 2003 Pages: 286 pp.
EURO 125.00 / USD 138.00 / GBP 86.00
Wholes, Sums and Unities
University of Haifa, Israel
PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES SERIES -- 97
According to Ariel Meirav, the root of some of our most noteworthy
difficulties in the metaphysics of concrete entities has been the
traditional tendency to focus on the horizontal dimension of wholes (i.e.
relations between the parts of a whole), and to neglect the vertical
dimension (i.e. relations between the whole itself and its parts). In
Wholes, Sums and Unities, Meirav formulates a critique of widely accepted
mereological assumptions, presents a new conception of wholes as `Unities',
and demonstrates the advantages of this new conception in treating a
variety of metaphysical puzzles (such as that of Tibbles the cat). More
generally he suggests that conceiving wholes as Unities offers us a new way
of understanding the world in non-reductive terms.
1: Introduction. I. Plato's Challenge.
II. Two Approaches to Wholes and Parts.
III. Illustration of the Idea of a Three-Tiered Whole.
IV. The Theoretical Context.
V. Outline of the Argument.
2: Concrete Comprising Entities. I. Preliminaries.
II. Ways of Being One. Appendix: Plural Quantification.
3: Types of
Comprising Entities. I. Collective and Distributive Classes.
II. Distributive Classes and Concreteness.
4: Theory and
Pre-theory of Wholes. I. The Pre-theoretical Conception.
II. Preliminaries to a Theoretical Conception.
Part Two: Sums. 5:
Classical and Neoclassical Mereology. I. Principles of Classical and
II. Limitations of the Notion of a Classical Sum.
III. Flexibility of the Notion of a Neoclassical Sum.
Traditional Higher Wholes as Sums. I. Organic Wholes and Gestalts.
II. Features of Organic Wholes and Gestalts.
III. Organic Wholes and Gestalts as Sums.
7: Criticism of the Notion of a Neoclassical Sum. I. Conditioned Sums.
II. Non-unique Sums.
III. Mereologically Varying Sums.
8: Sums, Collections and All the Parts. I. Inherent Limitation in the
Notion of a Sum.
II. Classical Sums as Identical to their Parts.
Part Three: Unities. 9: A Theory of Unities. I. Introduction.
II. Unities and Collections.
III. Principles for a Theory of Unities. Appendix: Proofs of Theorems.
10: Further Elaborations and
Applications. I. Perspectives on the Theory of Unities.
II. Applying a Theory of Unities.
III. The Paradox of Tibbles. Bibliography. Index.
Hardbound ISBN: 1-4020-1660-3 Date: November 2003 Pages: 318 pp.
EURO 130.00 / USD 143.00 / GBP 90.00
Experts in Science and Society
Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, USA
Max Planck Institute for Human Behavior, Berlin, Germany
In today's complex world, we have come to rely increasingly on those who
have expertise in specific areas and can bring their knowledge to bear on
crucial social, political and scientific questions. Taking the viewpoint
that experts are consulted when there is something important at stake for
an individual, a group, or society at large, Experts in Science and Society
explores what personally traits contribute to the making of an expert and
how a society actually determines that a person has expertise. It covers a
wide range of areas in order to be inclusive as well as to demonstrate
similarities across areas. Likewise, in order to be culturally comparative,
this volume includes examples and discussions of experts in different
countries and even in different time periods. The topics include the roles
of political experts, scientific experts, medical experts, legal experts,
Hardbound ISBN: 0-306-47903-6 Date: December 2003 Pages: 320 pp.
EURO 67.50 / USD 75.00 / GBP 46.50
Rediscovering the History of Psychology
Essays Inspired by the Work of Kurt Danziger
University College Dublin, Ireland
University of Cape Town, South Africa
Willem van Hoorn
University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands
HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF PSYCHOLOGY SERIES --
For the last 25 years, Kurt Danziger's work has been at the center of
developments in history and theory of psychology. This volume makes
Danziger's work the focal point of a variety of contributions representing
several active areas of research. The authors are among the leading figures
in history and theory of psychology from North America, Europe and South
Africa, including Danziger himself. This work will serve as a point of
departure for those who wish to acquaint themselves with some of the most
important issues in this field.
Hardbound ISBN: 0-306-47906-0 Date: December 2003 Pages: 246 pp.
EURO 81.00 / USD 90.00 / GBP 56.00
Advances in the Discursive Therapies
University of Calgary, AB, Canada
University of Ottawa, ON, Canada
This significant volume brings together noted clinicians to offer practical
ways of using narrative techniques in therapy. The ideas presented build
upon the "first wave" of narrative thinking that has influenced the field
for the past decade. A range of timely topics are covered including
sections of "dialogue" with the authors to demonstrate how these therapies
are carried out. Both clinicians and graduate students alike will find this
book of great value.
Hardbound ISBN: 0-306-47907-9 Date: December 2003 Pages: 292 pp.
EURO 63.00 / USD 69.95 / GBP 43.50
Algorithms in Ambient Intelligence
Philips Research Laboratories, Eindhoven, The Netherlands
Philips Research Laboratories, Eindhoven, The Netherlands
Philips Research Laboratories, Eindhoven, The Netherlands
PHILIPS RESEARCH BOOK SERIES -- 2
The advent of the digital era, the Internet, and the development of fast
computing devices that can access mass storage servers at high
communication bandwidths, have brought within our reach the world of
ambient intelligent systems. To provide users with information,
communication, and entertainment at any desired place and time in an
intuitive, efficient, and effective way requires quite some system
intelligence that is generated by smart algorithms. The need for such
algorithms, which run on digital platforms that are integrated into
consumer electronics devices, has strengthened the interest in
This book is the outcome of a series of discussions at the Philips
Symposium on Intelligent Algorithms, which was held in Eindhoven on
December 2002. It contains many exciting and practical examples from this
newly developing research field, which can be positioned at the
intersection of computer science, discrete mathematics, and artificial
intelligence. The examples include machine learning, content management,
vision, speech, content augmentation, profiling, music retrieval, feature
extraction, audio and video fingerprinting, resource management, multimedia
servers, network scheduling, and IC design.
Hardbound ISBN: 1-4020-1757-X Date: December 2003 Pages: 354 pp.
EURO 125.00 / USD 138.00 / GBP 80.00
Authoring Tools for Advanced Technology Learning Environments
Toward Cost-Effective Adaptive, Interactive and Intelligent Educational
Hampshire College, Amherst, MA, USA
Carnegie Learning Inc., Pittsburgh, PA, USA
University of Nottingham, UK
This edited book gives a comprehensive picture of the state of the art in
authoring systems and authoring tools for advanced technology instructional
systems. Issues of authoring, cost-effectiveness, interoperability and
re-usability have been at the forefront in recent years in educational
software in general and in the field of advanced, adaptive and intelligent
educational software more specifically. This book includes descriptions of
fifteen systems and research projects from almost every significant effort
in the field of advanced technology authoring systems. Included, is a
chapter comprising of an extensive overview of the field, summarizing the
work of dozens of systems and projects and providing an analytical
framework for comparing them.
The book will appeal to researchers, teachers and advanced students working
in the following areas: education (all levels), instructional technology
and computer-based education, psychology, cognitive science and computer
We imagine two types of readers. First are academic or industry personnel
in the field of instructional software research or development. They might
ask the question "what methods and designs have been used and how
successful have they been?", in their efforts to build the next generation
of systems. The second type of reader is the user, developer or purchaser
of instructional software (advanced intelligent or otherwise) who might ask
the question: "what is really available, or soon to be available, to make
advanced educational software authoring cost effective?"
Hardbound ISBN: 1-4020-1772-3 Date: December 2003 Pages: 571 pp.
EURO 185.00 / USD 204.00 / GBP 128.00
Dr Willard McCarty | Senior Lecturer | Centre for Computing in the
Humanities | King's College London | Strand | London WC2R 2LS || +44 (0)20
7848-2784 fax: -2980 || email@example.com
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