Contextual computing has been around for several years with a variety of names such as pervasive computation and omnipresent computing. Recently there has been a drive toward making personal digital assistants (PDAs) more aware of their environment. For example, a cell phone may sense that it is in a conference room and reason that it should...

Since the dawn of computing, the quest for a better understanding of Nature has been a driving force for technological development. Groundbreaking achievements by great scientists have paved the way from the abacus to the supercomputing power of today. When trying to replicate Nature in the computer’s silicon test tube, there is need...

This book provides a foundation in digital design for students in computer engineering, electrical engineering and computer science courses. It deals with digital design as an activity in a larger systems design context. Instead of focusing on gate-level design and aspects of digital design that have diminishing relevance in a real-world...

This book is for those of you who want to learn about electronics and computers but frankly are put off by all the gory details. If you have a short attention span, a nonexistent background in science, math, and technology, and are looking for near-instant gratification of electronics knowledge, this book is for you. Electronics is a complex...

Our world faces an unprecedented energy crisis. Fuel shortages, skyrocketing energy prices, climate change, nuclear contamination, catastrophic oil spills and energy wars define the global scenario. The nonrenewable energy path of oil, natural gas, coal and nuclear is headed for a dead-end at an accelerated speed. In our race for survival we...

C is a powerful procedural-based programming language developed in 1972 by Dennis Ritchie within the halls of Bell Telephone Laboratories. The C programming language was originally developed for use with the UNIX platform and has since spread to many other systems and applications. C has influenced a number of other programming languages,...

Welcome to the proceedings of the 17th Multimedia Modeling Conference (MMM 2011) held in Taipei, Taiwan, during January 5–7, 2011. Following the success of the 16 preceding conferences, the 17th MMM brought together researchers,developers, practitioners, and educators in the field of multimedia. Both practical systems and theories...

Why are scientists so excited about string theory? Because string theory is the most likely candidate for a successful theory of quantum gravity — a theory that scientists hope will unite two major physical laws of the universe into one. Right now, these laws (quantum physics and general relativity) describe two totally different types...

Delineating the tremendous growth in this area, the Handbook of Approximation Algorithms and Metaheuristics covers fundamental, theoretical topics as well as advanced, practical applications. It is the first book to comprehensively study both approximation algorithms and metaheuristics.

Starting with basic approaches, the...

In the past half-century we have gone from a world where computers were science fiction to a world where computers are everyday fact. Just thirty years ago the computer that flew with the first astronauts to the moon had less computing power than the computer on the average student’s desk today. Computers have grown in popularity,...

Both practical systems and...

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