Not until 1997 did a female become chief executive officer of a Fortune 500 corporation (Jill Barad, at Mattel Toy Co. Women’s progress since that time has been in fits and starts, exceedingly slow. The number of women CEOs reached 4 in 1999 only to slide back to 2 in 2001. Meanwhile, while not reaching anything approaching parity,...

The design and the verification of modern software applications requires the analysis of several different aspects, such as software correctness, quality of service, and security, and of the possible inter-relations among them. Process algebraic architectural languages and the related analysis techniques provide a formal paradigm that allows...

A large number of physical phenomena are modeled by nonlinear partial differential equations, subject to appropriate initial/ boundary conditions; these equations, in general, do not admit exact solution. The present monograph gives constructive mathematical techniques which bring out large time behavior of solutions of these model equations....

Employee participation encompasses the range of mechanisms used to involve the workforce in decisions at all levels of the organization - whether direct or indirect - conducted with employees or through their representatives. In its various guises, the topic of employee participation has been a recurring theme in industrial relations and...

C# has matured over the past decade: It’s now a rich language with generics, functional programming concepts, and support for both static and dynamic typing. This palette of techniques provides great tools for many different idioms, but there are also many ways to make mistakes. In Effective C#, Second...

An organisation’s competitive advantage lies in the knowledge of its employees and the organisation’s ability to harness that knowledge to meet business objectives. Knowledge management is recognised in the construction industry as a potential tool for providing organisational benefits, but for a number of reasons –...

OSSs are the large servers that host the OSS applications that manage telecommunications services. Developing solutions to manage telecommunications...

The aim of this book is to serve pedagogic goals as a complement of the book Pattern Recognition, 4th Edition, by S. Theodoridis and K. Koutroumbas (Academic Press, 2009). It is the offspring of our experience in teaching pattern recognition for a number of years to different audiences such as students with good enough mathematical...

An ontology is a set of vocabulary terms with explicitly stated meanings and relations with other terms. Presently, a growing number of ontologies are being built and used for annotating data in biomedical research. Thanks to the tremendous amount of data being generated, ontologies are now being used in numerous ways, including connecting...

One of the most striking features of mathematics is the fact that we are much more certain about the mathematical knowledge we have than about what mathematical knowledge is knowledge of. Are numbers, sets, functions and groups physical entities of some kind? Are they objectively existing objects in some non-physical, mathematical realm? Are...

Diabetes is a disease with a fascinating history and one that has been growing dramatically with urbanization. According to the World Health Authority, it now affects 4.6% of adults over 20, reaching 30% in the over 35s in some populations. It is one of the most serious and widespread diseases today. But the general perception of diabetes is...

From Windows Solitaire to Bejeweled to Wii Tennis, casual games have radically changed the landscape of games. By simplifying gameplay and providing quick but intense blasts of engaging play, casual games have drawn in huge new audiences of players. To entertain and engage the casual player, game designers must learn to...