Knowledge is a very seductive, but elusive concept. Following the wider debate about the emergence of the information age and the knowledge from different disciplinary and theoretical perspectives. Yet, theoretical development has not always been accompanied by sound empirical research. Methodologies for studying knowledge as an empirical...

Increasingly, parallel processing is being seen as the only cost-effective method for the fast solution of computationally large and data-intensive problems. The emergence of inexpensive parallel computers such as commodity desktop multiprocessors and clusters of workstations or PCs has made such parallel methods generally...

The next several years will see a massive emergence of hydrogen fuel cells as an alterative energy option in both transportation and domestic use. The long-range expectation is that hydrogen will be used as a fuel, produced either from renewable energy, fossil, or nuclear sources, offering an environmentally acceptable and efficient source of...

The emergence of key second-generation Web services standards has positioned service-oriented architecture (SOA) as the foremost platform for contemporary business automation solutions. The integration of SOA...

The IT community has always struggled with questions concerning the value of an organization’s investment in software and hardware. It is the goal of value-based software engineering (VBSE) to develop models and measures of value which are of use for managers, developers and users as they make tradeoff decisions between, for example,...

Both the editors of this book were exposed to human-in-the-loop simulations while pursuing their doctoral degrees in the Center for Human-Machine Systems at Georgia Tech. In fact, S. Narayanan served as Ling Rothrock’s teaching assistant for the simulation course taught by Prof. Christine Mitchell. It has been over 15 years...

This book is about how to model software systems and how to use those models. It is rooted in that emerging intellectual "ecosystem" comprising the various networks (the Internet, intranets, extranets, and so on), distributed objects, piecemeal development based on short development cycles, and something called...