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The idea of complexity states that most things tend to organize themselves into recurring patterns, even when these patterns are not immediately visible to an external observer. The general name for the scientific field concerned with the behaviour over time of a dynamic system is complexity theory. The dynamic systems - systems capable of changing over time - are the focus of this approach, and its concern is with the predictability of their behaviour. The systems of interest to the complexity theory, under certain conditions, perform in regular, predictable ways; under other conditions they exhibit behaviour in which regularity and predictability is lost. The concepts of stable and unstabl...
Some researcher has created the vision of the 'data utility' as a key enabler towards ubiquitous and pervasive computing. Decentralization and replication would be the approach to make it resistant against security attacks. This book presents an organic view on the research and technologies, which bring us towards the realization of the vision.
A trend in socio-cognitive research investigates into the mental capacities that allow humans to relate to each other and to engage in social interactions. This book offers a general overview of this area of research.
At the start of studies on health communication, scholars were primarily concerned with showing the ethical implications of a new approach to care and with collecting evidence to demonstrate its greater effectiveness as opposed to the paternalistic and mechanistic paradigms. Well into the second decade of the 21st century, different issues need to be addressed. Aging populations and the spread of chronic diseases are challenging the sustainability of health care systems worldwide; increased awareness of health issues among the population and greater citizen participation seem to threaten clinicians’ authority. In this new scenario, it is acknowledged that the quality of verbal communicatio...
This book deploys the concept of ‘audiovisual tourism promotion’ to account for the promotional functions performed by a vast array of diverse media texts including tourism films, feature films, digital videos conceived for online circulation, video games and TV commercials. From this point of view, this volume fills a major gap in the literature by providing the first comprehensive critical overview of audiovisual tourism promotion as a distinct media field. In this book, the study of audiovisual tourism promotion is characterised by an interdisciplinary approach which combines film studies, media studies, human geography, sociology, tourism studies, history, postcolonial and gender studies. This book will appeal to a wide range of students and scholars from different disciplines.
This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the IFIP-TC6 8th International Conference on Personal Wireless Communications, PWC 2003, held in Venice, Italy in September 2003. The 49 revised papers presented together with 6 special track papers, 1 invited paper, 11 project descriptions, 7 work in progress reports, and 8 novel ideas reports were carefully reviewed and selected from 115 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on mobile computing, wireless access, sensor networks, transport protocols, performance models, WCDMA, ad-hoc networks, wireless and mobile systems, cellular networks, IPv6, Bluetooth, and security and cooperations in ad-hoc networks.
The metaphor of Ambient Intelligence (AmI) tries to picture a vision of the future where all of us will be surrounded by 'intelligent' electronic environments, and this ambient has claims to being sensitive and responsive to our needs. Ambient Intelligence without invasion of privacy represents a long-term vision for the EU Information Society Technologies Research programme. A strong multi-disciplinary and collaborative approach is a key requirement for large-scale technology innovation and the development of effective applications. Up to now, most of the books and papers related to AmI focus their analysis on the technology potential only. An important feature of this volume is the link be...
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This volume presents current research and development in the fields of sensors and microsystems. Many aspects of disciplines related to sensors and microsystems are covered, ranging from materials science to complete applications and multifunctional systems. The variety of the topics and the quality of the papers offer readers an insight into the research status in Italy. The book contains selected contributions from 37 institutions in Italy — both academic institutions and public/private research institutions.