We live in a fast-paced world. Looking over the last decade, the world has changed so radically - politically, economically and culturally - that it’s difficult to believe only 10 years have passed. Technology is certainly no exception. It’s easy to overlook the huge changes in the way technology is used in our daily lives - because...

This is a full and authoritative account of the history of private banking, beginning with its development in conjunction with the world markets served by and centred on a few European cities, notably Amsterdam and London. These banks were usually partnerships, a form of organization which persisted as the role of private banking changed in...

Ruby has built an enormous following of developers attracted by its intuitiveness, flexibility, and simplicity. Meanwhile, Microsoft’s .NET has grown and matured into a platform of unparalleled power. IronRuby brings them together, enabling developers to write elegant, efficient Ruby code that seamlessly...

During its brief existence Wikipedia has proved astonishingly successful. Its 2.8 million articles (in English alone) are available freely to all with access to the internet. The on-line encyclopaedia can be seen as the 21st century's version of earlier historical attempts to gather the world's knowledge into one place. This unique book first...

There is often more than meets the eye where politics, religion and money are concerned. This is certainly the case with the Faith-Based Initiative. Section 104, a small provision of the 1996 Welfare Reform bill called "Charitable Choice," was the beginning of what we now know as the Faith-Based Initiative. In its original form, the...

With the technological advancement of mobile devices, social networking, and electronic services, Web technologies continues to play an ever-growing part of the global way of life, incorporated into cultural, economical, and organizational levels. Web Technologies: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications provides a comprehensive...

Early applications of chemical and physical analytical methods in studies on art materials and archaeological objects demonstrated that scientific investigation is an essential tool for acquiring information on the materials that make up an artwork and for assessing their decay, in order to plan restoration approaches. Chemical diagnosis,...

A continually evolving discipline, Human Reliability Assessment (HRA) has elements of controversy from the definition of terms to the application of appropriate methods for the representation of human failure probability. The idea that human error is a random event is falling out of favor and the concept that humans can be set up to fail or...

"Critical Social Theory and the End of Work" examines the development and sociological significance of the idea that work is being eliminated through the use of advanced production technology. Granter's engagement with the work of key American and European figures such as Marx, Marcuse, Gorz, Habermas and Negri, focuses his arguments...

This unique text/reference describes the state of the art in computational gene finding, with a particular focus on comparative approaches. Providing both an overview of the various methods that are applied in the field, and a concise guide on how computational gene finders are built, the book covers a broad range of topics from probability...

There is perhaps no more compelling discipline in the behavioral and brain sciences today than cognitive neuroscience. This book provides a systematic examination of the cognitive neuroscience of attention, taking as its thesis that attention is not a unitary function of the brain. To fully understand attention, therefore, requires examination...