With this concise volume we hope to satisfy the needs of a large scientific community previously served mainly by huge encyclopedic references. Rather than aiming at a comprehensive coverage of our subject, we have concentrated on the most important topics, but explained those as deeply as space has allowed. The result is a compactwork...

A sacred space is any place recognized for its ability to direct the mind and body to holy matters. The basis for this power varies considerably. Sometimes spaces act like reliquaries—enclosures that mark the deposit of a saint’s remains, or the site of an unusual event such as a vision or manifestation of divine power, or the...

Accidents are the leading cause of...

Th e swift course of domestic and world events, part of a hastened process of change, requires an enormous increase of basic understanding by peoples of the multiple factors infl uencing the tempo and direction of national developments. Th e pattern of intercultural penetration and cross-fertilizing exchanges of scientifi c and technological...

Situated in northwestern Africa along the Mediterranean Sea, Algeria is the second-largest country on the continent. Comparatively, it is slightly less than 3.5 times the size of Texas, with a total area of 2,381,740 sq km (919,595 sq mi). Extending about 2,400 km (1,500 mi) e–w and 2,100 km (1,300 mi) n–s, Algeria is bounded on...

The telecommunications industry is changing rapidly in its quest to converge voice and data on high-performance multiservice networks that are designed to meet virtually any business and consumer need. These nextgeneration networks are being driven as much by the revenue-generating potential of new integrated applications as they are by the...

The knowledge, skill, and expertise of any true professional often can be gauged by the library of literature that he or she keeps and has read. In the often mysterious, secretive, and intriguing world of locks and locksmithing, no true professional, aficionado, or curiosity seeker would be without The Complete Book of Locks and Locksmithing,...

In the last few years, changes have had a profound influence on the problems addressed by compiler designers. First, the proliferation in machine architectures has necessitated the fine-tuning of compiler back ends to exploit features such as multiple memory banks, pipelines and clustered architectures. These features provide potential for...

Secret writing for the transmission of messages has been practiced for nearly 4,000 years. According to David Kahn, the great historian of cryptology, the first example of an intentionally altered message can be traced to a tomb in ancient Egypt dated about 1900 b.c. In the 40 centuries since that...

A number of forces are driving this explosion. The first is internationalization encompassing a dramatic growth in...

CSS3, the newest version of the style sheet language of the web, is less about creating new effects and more about accomplishing the beautiful web design effects you’re familiar with in fantastic new ways—ways that are more efficient and produce more usable and flexible results than the techniques we’ve been using...