Wood as an engineering material can be technically defined as a hygroscopic, orthotropic, biological, and permeable material having extreme chemical diversity and physical complexity with structures, that vary extensively in their shape, size, properties and function. Therefore, using wood to its best advantage and most efficiency in engineering applications, specific characteristics or chemical, physical and mechanical properties must be considered.
The developed world, increasingly aware of inconvenient truths about global warming and sustainability, is turning its attention to possible remedieseco-efficiency, sustainable development, and corporate social responsibility, among others. But such measures are mere Band-Aids, and they may actually do more harm than good, says John Ehrenfeld, a pioneer in the field of industrial ecology. In this deeply considered book, Ehrenfeld challenges conventional understandings of solving environmental problems and offers a radically new set of strategies to attain sustainability.
Markov networks and other probabilistic graphical modes have recently received an upsurge in attention from Evolutionary computation community, particularly in the area of Estimation of distribution algorithms (EDAs). EDAs have arisen as one of the most successful experiences in the application of machine learning methods in optimization, mainly due to their efficiency to solve complex real-world optimization problems and their suitability for theoretical analysis.This book focuses on the different steps involved in the conception, implementation and application of EDAs that use Markov networks, and undirected models in general. It can serve as a general introduction to EDAs but covers also an important current void in the study of these algorithms by explaining the specificities and benefits of modeling optimization problems by means of undirected probabilistic models. All major developments to date in the progressive introduction of Markov networks based EDAs are reviewed in the book. Hot current research trends and future perspectives in the enhancement and applicability of EDAs are also covered. The contributions included in the book address topics as relevant as the application of probabilistic-based fitness models, the use of belief propagation algorithms in EDAs and the application of Markov network based EDAs to real-world optimization problems. The book should be of interest to researchers and practitioners from areas such as optimization, evolutionary computation, and machine learning.
It has been ten years since its first edition, making the Handbook of Brewing, Second Edition the must have resource on the science and technology of beer production. It recounts how during this time, the industry has transformed both commercially and technically and how many companies have been subsumed into large multinationals while at the other extreme, microbreweries have flourished in many parts of the world. It also explains how massive improvements in computer power and automation have modernized the brewhouse while developments in biotechnology have steadily improved brewing efficiency, beer quality, and shelf life.
The authors of this book challenge mainstream thinking about the nature of globalization. While not hostile to markets per se, they believe that capitalist market processes, left to operate freely, tend to generate injustice, insecurity, instability, and inefficiency. Taking account of the new realities of globalization, this volume explores an unusually wide range of subjects, including trade integration, multinational corporations, labor markets and migration, international capital flows, macroeconomic and environmental policy, and the central roles of the IMF and World Bank. It proposes alternatives to neo-liberal orthodoxy, developing policy measures that counter the destructive features of markets and promote equality as well as efficiency. The approach in this volume is particularly illuminating for understanding the Asian financial collapse of 199798 and similar recent crises. The volume also includes comments on each chapter by a wide range of distinguished economists, producing a lively and often controversial set of interchanges.
The implications of capital mobility for growth and stability are some of the most contentious and least understood contemporary issues in economics. In this book, Barry Eichengreen discusses historical, theoretical, empirical, and policy aspects of the effects, both positive and negative, of capital flows. He focuses on the connections between capital flows and crises as well as on those between capital flows and growth.Eichengreen argues that international financial liberalization, like other forms of economic liberalization, can positively affect the efficiency of resource allocation and the rate of economic growth. But analyses of both recent and historical experience also show an undeniable association between capital mobility and crises, especially when domestic institutions are weak and the harmonization of capital account liberalization and other policy reforms is inadequate. In his conclusion, Eichengreen makes suggestions for policy design to maximize the benefits of international financial liberalization while minimizing the risks of financial instability.
Strengthen your understanding of data structures and their algorithms for the foundation you need to successfully design, implement and maintain virtually any software system. Theoretical, yet practical, DATA STRUCUTRES AND ALGORITHMS IN C++, 4E by experienced author Adam Drosdek highlights the fundamental connection between data structures and their algorithms, giving equal weight to the practical implementation of data structures and the theoretical analysis of algorithms and their efficiency. This edition provides critical new coverage of treaps, k-d trees and k-d B-trees, generational garbage collection, and other advanced topics such as sorting methods and a new hashing technique. Abundant C++ code examples and a variety of case studies provide valuable insights into data structures implementation. DATA STRUCTURES AND ALGORITHMS IN C++ provides the balance of theory and practice to prepare readers for a variety of applications in a modern, object-oriented paradigm.
Chicago–the reigning #1 city in homicides–has no shortage of deadly gangs. And all those gangs know well that the Cross crew occupies a cinderblock bunker called Red 71 . . . the last place you want to go, unless you’re willing to risk it being the last place you go. The crew is notorious for its deadly efficiency and its disinterest in anything but money. So why has it turned from seller to buyer, grabbing up houses on a decaying block where only a few holdouts remain? Both the cops and the underworld are watching closely . . . but are they the only ones?
Energy Efficient Thermal Management of Data Centers examines energy flow in today’s data centers. Particular focus is given to the state-of-the-art thermal management and thermal design approaches now being implemented across the multiple length scales involved. The impact of future trends in information technology hardware, and emerging software paradigms such as cloud computing and virtualization, on thermal management are also addressed. The book explores computational and experimental characterization approaches for determining temperature and air flow patterns within data centers. Thermodynamic analyses using the second law to improve energy efficiency are introduced and used in proposing improvements in cooling methodologies. Reduced-order modeling and robust multi-objective design of next generation data centers are discussed. This book also:
Energy technology, Management, Efficiency, Energy consumption, Energy conservation, Management techniques, Planning, Conformity, Quality assurance, Quality management, Quality auditing, Environmental management, Documents, Measurement, Performance, Environment, Quality and Management
Around the world concerns about cost, efficiency, and safety – employee, product, process and consumer — have led to changes in the way food plants are planned, constructed and evaluated. From initiation of major capital requests to legal design requirements to project management and plant operations, food engineers and scientists must understand the myriad of requirements and responsibilities of successful food facilities. J. Peter Clark provides that guidance in this complete volume.
The book provides a well-balanced mixture of theoretical discussion and real-world examples. It explains the concepts and approaches, and describes methodology and notation. It demonstrates these concepts on real-world examples and provides a step-by-step example tutorial that guides readers from business process modeling in BPMN through transformation into BPEL to execution on the SOA process server. It also discusses some key concepts using practical examples and business scenarios around Business Rules Management and Business Activity Monitoring with BPM and SOA. This book is for CIOs, executives, SOA project managers, business process analysts, BPM and SOA architects, who are responsible for improving the efficiency of business processes through IT, or for designing SOA. It provides a high-level coverage of business process modeling, but it also gives practical development examples on how to move from model to execution. We expect the readers to be familiar with the basics of SOA.
Protecting Oracle Database 12c helps you solve the problem of maximizing the safety, resilience, and , of an , , whilst preserving performance, availability, and integration despite ongoing and new security issues in the software. The book demonstrates, through coded examples, how you can enable the consolidation features of Oracle Database 12c without increasing risk of either internal corruption or external vulnerability. In addition, new protections not publicly available are included, so that you can see how demonstrable risk improvements can be achieved, measured, and reported through Enterprise Manager 12c. Most importantly, the challenge of privileged access control within a consolidation environment will be addressed, thus enabling a safe move to greater efficiency.
This comprehensive guide teaches you the skills needed to successfully administer , , 2012. You’ll learn how to handle the most difficult admin issues including change management, security, , tuning, monitoring, and backups. And you’ll also discover how to master the latest features of the 2012 release, including client connectivity enhancements, cloud computing, data replication, and business intelligence. This detailed instruction by leading experts will help you improve the efficiency, scalability, and performance of your SQL Server environment so you can do more in much less time.
Computer Vision Metrics provides an extensive survey and analysis of over 100 current and historical feature description and machine vision methods, with a detailed taxonomy for local, regional and global features. This book provides necessary background to develop intuition about why interest point detectors and feature descriptors actually work, how they are designed, with observations about , the methods for achieving robustness and invariance targets for specific applications. The survey is broader than it is deep, with over 540 references provided to dig deeper. The taxonomy includes search methods, spectra components, descriptor representation, shape, distance functions, accuracy, efficiency, robustness and invariance attributes, and more. Rather than providing how-to’ source code examples and shortcuts, this book provides a counterpoint discussion to the many fine opencv community source code resources available for hands-on practitioners.
This book provides a comprehensive guide to the , of sustainable and green computing systems (GSC). Coverage includes important breakthroughs in various aspects of GSC, including multi-core architectures, interconnection technology, data centers, high-performance computing (HPC), and sensor networks. The authors address the challenges of power efficiency and sustainability in various contexts, including system design, computer architecture, , languages, compilers and networking.
If your team is investigating ways to , applications for the cloud, this concise book introduces 11 architecture , that can help you take advantage of cloud-platform services. You’ll learn how each of these platform-agnostic patterns work, when they might be useful in the cloud, and what impact they’ll have on your application architecture. You’ll also see an example of each pattern applied to an application built with , Azure.,
The patterns are organized into four major topics, such as scalability and handling failure, and primer chapters provide background on each topic. With the information in this book, you’ll be able to make informed decisions for designing effective cloud-native applications that maximize the value of cloud services, while also paying attention to user experience and operational efficiency.
