Linux is hot! It's cost-effective, secure, and comes in a lot of varieties. And with this book to walk you through it, choosing and using a Linux distribution is...

Biometrics deals with recognition of individuals based on their physiological or behavioral characteristics. The human ear is a new feature in biometrics that has several merits over the more common face, fingerprint and iris biometrics. Unlike the fingerprint and iris, it can be easily captured from a distance without a fully cooperative...

The book introduces gas explosion technology (GET) and its applications in biomass refineries. In this book an overview of GET is provided, the mechanisms are thoroughly discussed. The chapters also cover the latest processes and equipments of GET, including equipment selection, parameter determination and engineering scaling-up. Last but not...

First, note that I have used Zen in the title of this book. I have been asked many times why I used such an esoteric term. After all, what is the meaning of Zen? To clarify the meaning of Zen, we must examine the philosophical environment that gave rise to Zen: Indian and Chinese philosophies. In India, Buddhism arose out of a Hindu...

In 2009, it is estimated that more than 1.5 billion people have access to the Internet, including 220 million in the U.S. alone. Throw in 338 million Chinese users, 55 million German users, 48 million British users, 38 million Russian users, and 67 million Brazilians, and you can see the meaning of the word “world” in the...

As future generation information technology (FGIT) becomes specialized and fragmented, it is easy to lose sight that many topics in FGIT have common threads and, because of this, advances in one discipline may be transmitted to others. Presentation of recent results obtained in different disciplines encourages this interchange for the...

This Festschrift volume, dedicated to He Jifeng on the occasion of his 70th birthday in September 2013, includes 24 refereed papers by leading researchers, current and former colleagues, who congratulated at a celebratory symposium held in Shanghai, China, in the course of the 10th International Colloquium on Theoretical Aspects of Computing,...