Over the last few decades, energy minimization methods have become an established paradigm to resolve a variety of challenges in the fields of computer vision and pattern recognition. While traditional approaches to computer vision were often based on a heuristic sequence of processing steps and merely allowed a very limited...

Brimming with beautiful pictures, this successful book guides you through a project-based, progressive curriculum so that you can build all the essential skills to enhance photographs creatively and professionally with Photoshop CS3. If you are an aspiring professional, enthusiastic amateur photographer, or a student learning photography,...

Martin Rutte, Chair of the Board, The Centre for Spirituality and the Workplace, Saint Mary’s University, co-author of New York Times business...

"With a strong interdisciplinary approach to a subject that does not lend itself easily to the reference format, this work may not seem to support directly academic programs beyond general research, but it is a more thorough and up-to-date treatment than Taylor and Francis’s 1994 Encyclopedia of...

Actor Training expands on Alison Hodge’s highly-acclaimed and best-selling Twentieth Century Actor Training. This exciting second edition radically updates the original book making it even more valuable for any student of the history and practice of actor training. The bibliography is brought right up to date and many...

This practical book provides everything you need to know about the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP). This open technology for real-time communication is used in many diverse applications such as instant messaging, Voice over IP, real-time collaboration, social networking, microblogging, lightweight middleware, cloud...

As the twenty-first century begins, the United States has emerged as not only the most powerful nation on earth, but also by far the most religiously diverse nation ever. Several thousand distinct religious communities live side-by-side in relative harmony, and in any urban area it is not unusual to see a Catholic church...