Educational technology in the broadest sense is knowledge and competence forimproving the educational process: for using hardware (equipment), software (methods), and "underware" (underlying organizational structures). This volume in the Special Programme on Advanced Educational Technology presents the results of a NATO Advanced Research Workshop on educational systems design as a new educational technology. The objective of the workshop was toadvance our knowledge about the comprehensive systems design approach for improving educational systems. The workshop was organized for the transdisciplinary interaction of three scientific groups representing design science, organizational/systems science, and educationaltechnology. Participants were selected based on their scholarship as members of one or more of these three groups. The book opens with theframing papers sent by the editors to participants prior to the workshop, then presents five sets of thematic contributions: the conceptual and empirical contexts of comprehensive systems design, the systems design focus, a systems view of designing educational systems, the educational context of systems design, and high technology focus in systems design.

This work fills an important gap in the literature by providing an important link between MAPLE and its successful use in solving problems in Operations Research (OR). The symbolic, numerical, and graphical aspects of MAPLE make this software package an ideal tool for treating certain OR problems and providing descriptive and optimization-based analyses of deterministic and stochastic models. Detailed is MAPLE's treatment of some of the mathematical techniques used in OR modeling: e.g., algebra and calculus, ordinary and partial differential equations, linear algebra, transform methods, and probability theory.

A number of examples of OR techniques and applications are presented, such as linear and nonlinear programming, dynamic programming, stochastic processes, inventory models, queueing systems, and simulation. Throughout the text MAPLE statements used in the solutions of problems are clearly explained. At the same time, technical background material is presented in a rigorous mathematical manner to reach the OR novice and professional. Numerous end-of- chapter exercises, a good bibliography and overall index at the end of the book are also included, as well as MAPLE worksheets that are easily downloadable from the author's website at www.business.mcmaster.ca/msis/profs/parlar, or from the Birkhauser website at www.birkhauser.com/cgi-win/ISBN/0-8176-4165-3.

The book is intended for advanced undergraduate and graduate students in operations research, management science departments of business schools, industrial and systems engineering, economics, and mathematics. As a self-study resource, the text can be used by researchers and practitioners who want a quick overview ofMAPLE's usefulness in solving realistic OR problems that would be difficult or impossible to solve with other software packages.

This book is for both specialist and generalist. For Information Technology (IT) and Educational Management (EM) researchers, it brings together the latest information and analysis of ITEM projects in eleven countries. But the issues raised by this collection of papers are so important for schools, school systems and the future of education that it is essential reading not only for researchers but also for teachers, administrators and all concerned with the planning and governance of our education systems. New technologies may improve our lives in two ways: by enabling us to do things better (accomplishing what we do already more efficiently) and by enabling us to do better things (accomplishing new things that we were not able to do before). Sometimes "doing things better" merges into "doing better things." Thus in the 19th century the coming of the railway enabled our forbears to accomplish their existing journies in less time and in greater comfort. But it also opened up the prospect of new journies to more distant places, and led ultimately to far-reaching changes in lifestyles in new, commuter settlements far from the old city centres. So it is in the present day with Information Technology in Educational Management. Some of the papers in this volume focus on specialist tasks, for example how to develop a computer-based decision-support system to help those drawing up school timetables. Others address situations in which the power of the technology offers us the potential to change radically what we do.

Statistical Modeling and Analysis for Complex Data Problems treats some of today's more complex problems and it reflects some of the important research directions in the field. Twenty-nine authors - largely from Montreal's GERAD Multi-University Research Center and who work in areas of theoretical statistics, applied statistics, probability theory, and stochastic processes - present survey chapters on various theoretical and applied problems of importance and interest to researchers and students across a number of academic domains.

A Selection of Papers from the EEC Conference on Social Experiments with Information Technology in Odense, Denmark, January 13-15, 1986

Object-based Distributed Computing is being established as the most pertinent basis for the support of large, heterogeneous computing and telecommunications systems. The advent of Open Object-based Distributed Systems (OODS) brings new challenges and opportunities for the use and development of formal methods. Formal Methods for Open Object-based Distributed Systems presents the latest research in several related fields, and the exchange of ideas and experiences in a number of topics including: formal models for object-based distributed computing; semantics of object-based distributed systems and programming languages; formal techniques in object-based and object oriented specification, analysis and design; refinement and transformation of specifications; multiple viewpoint modeling and consistency between different models; formal techniques in distributed systems verification and testing; types, service types and subtyping; specification, verification and testing of quality of service constraints and formal methods and the object life cycle. It contains the selected proceedings of the International Workshop on Formal Methods for Open Object-based Distributed Systems, sponsored by the International Federation for Information Processing, and based in Paris, France, in March 1996.

Building Scalable Network Services: Theory and Practice is on building scalable network services on the Internet or in a network service provider's network. The focus is on network services that are provided through the use of a set of servers. The authors present a tiered scalable network service model and evaluate various services within this architecture. The service model simplifies design tasks by implementing only the most basic functionalities at lower tiers where the need for scalability dominates functionality.
The book includes a number of theoretical results that are practical and applicable to real networks, such as building network-wide measurement, monitoring services, and strategies for building better P2P networks. Various issues in scalable system design and placement algorithms for service nodes are discussed. Using existing network services as well as potentially new but useful services as examples, the authors formalize the problem of placing service nodes and provide practical solutions for them.

This book presents an in-depth discussion of the semiconductor-laser gain medium. The optical and electronic properties of semiconductors, particularly semiconductor quantum-well systems, are analzyed in detail, covering a wide variety of near-infrared systems with or without strain, as well as wide-gap materials such as the group-III nitride compounds or the II-VI materials. The important bandstructure modifications and Coulomb interaction effects are discussed, including the solution of the longstanding semiconductor laser lineshape problem. Quantitative comparisons between measured and predicted gain/absorption and refractive index spectra for a wide variety of semiconductor-laser materials enable the theoretical results to be used directly in the engineering of advanced laser and amplifier structures. A wealth of examples for many different material combinations bestow the book with quantitative and predictive value for a wide variety of applications.

ELLENBALKA Simon Fraser University ebalka@Sfu. ca 1. INTRODUCTION In developing the call for papers for the 7th International Federation of Information Processors (IFIP) Women, Work and Computerization Conference, we sought to cast our net widely. We wanted to encourage presenters to think broadly about women, work and computerization. Towards this end, the programme committee developed a call for papers that, in its final form, requested paper submissions around four related themes. These are (1) Setting the Course: Taking Stock of Where We Are and Where We're Going; (2) Charting Undiscovered Terrain: Creating Models, Tools and Theories; (3) Navigating the Unknown: Sex, Time, Space and Place, and (4) Taking the Helm: Education and Pedagogy. Our overall conference theme, 'Charting a Course to the Future' was inspired in part by Vancouver's geography, which is both coastal and mountainous. As such, navigation plays an important part in the lives of many as we seek to enjoy our environs. In addition, as the first Women, Work and Computerization conference of the new millennium, we hoped to encourage the broad community of scholars that has made past Women, Work and Computerization conferences a success to actively engage in imagining--and working towards-- a better future for women in relation to computers. The contributions to this volume are both a reflection of the hard work undertaken by many to improve the situation of women in relation to computerization, and a testament to how much work is yet to be done.

In the context of the 18th IFIP World Computer Congress (WCC'04), and beside the traditional organization of conferences, workshops, tutorials and student forum, it was decided to identify a range of topics of dramatic interest for the building of the Information Society. This has been featured as the "Topical day/session" track of the WCC'04. Topical Sessions have been selected in order to present syntheses, latest developments and/or challenges in different business and technical areas.

Building the Information Society provides a deep perspective on domains including: the semantic integration of heterogeneous data, virtual realities and new entertainment, fault tolerance for trustworthy and dependable information infrastructures, abstract interpretation (and its use for verification of program properties), multimodal interaction, computer aided inventing, emerging tools and techniques for avionics certification, bio-, nano-, and information technologies, E-learning, perspectives on ambient intelligence, the grand challenge of building a theory of the Railway domain, open source software in dependable systems, interdependencies of critical infrastructure, social robots, as a challenge for machine intelligence.

Building the Information Society comprises the articles produced in support of the Topical Sessions during the IFIP 18th World Computer Congress, which was held in August 2004 in Toulouse, France, and sponsored by the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP).

One of the major concerns of theoretical computer science is the classifi cation of problems in terms of how hard they are. The natural measure of difficulty of a function is the amount of time needed to compute it (as a function of the length of the input). Other resources, such as space, have also been considered. In recursion theory, by contrast, a function is considered to be easy to compute if there exists some algorithm that computes it. We wish to classify functions that are hard, i.e., not computable, in a quantitative way. We cannot use time or space, since the functions are not even computable. We cannot use Turing degree, since this notion is not quantitative. Hence we need a new notion of complexity-much like time or spac that is quantitative and yet in some way captures the level of difficulty (such as the Turing degree) of a function."

Engineering the Knowledge Society (EKS) - Event of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) This book is the result of a joint event of the World Federation of Engineering Organisations (WFEO) and the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) held during the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in Geneva, Switzerland, December 11 - 12, 2003. The organisation was in the hands of Mr. Raymond Morel of the Swiss Academy of Engineering Sciences (SATW). Information Technology (or Information and Communication Technology) cannot be seen as a separate entity. Its application should support human development and this application has to be engineered. Education plays a central role in the engineering of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) for human support. The conference addressed the following aspects: Lifelong Learning and education, - inclusion, ethics and social impact, engineering profession, developing- society, economy and e-Society. The contributions in this World Summit event reflected an active stance towards human development supported by ICT. A Round Table session provided concrete proposals for action

The genus of definitions for the theoretical sciences is (the province of) the habitus of the intellective intention, for the practical sciences, however, that of the effective intention; the objects and ends constitute the specific differ ence There is nothing in the intellect that has not already been in the senses, that is, in the sensory organs, that has not already been in sensible things from which are distinguished things not perceptible to the senses. Nothing can be of the mind, sensation and the thing inferred therefrom except the operation itself. Real learning is cognition of things in themselves. It thus has the basis of its certainty in the known thing. This is established in two ways: by demon stration in the case of contemplative things, and by induction in the case of things perceptible to the senses. In contrast with real learning there is pos sible, probable and fictive learning. Antonius Gvilielmus Amo Afer (1827) This research has been long in the making. Its conception began in my last years in the doctoral program at Temple University, Philadelphia, Pa. It was simultaneously conceived with my two books on the Neo Keynesian Theory of Optimal aggregate investment and output dynamics [201] [202] as well as reflections on the methodology of decision-choice rationality and development economics [440] [441]. Economic theories and social policies were viewed to have, among other things, one impor tant thing in common in that they relate to decision making under different.

OmeGA: A Competent Genetic Algorithm for Solving Permutation and Scheduling Problems addresses two increasingly important areas in GA implementation and practice. OmeGA, or the ordering messy genetic algorithm, combines some of the latest in competent GA technology to solve scheduling and other permutation problems. Competent GAs are those designed for principled solutions of hard problems, quickly, reliably, and accurately. Permutation and scheduling problems are difficult combinatorial optimization problems with commercial import across a variety of industries.

This book approaches both subjects systematically and clearly. The first part of the book presents the clearest description of messy GAs written to date along with an innovative adaptation of the method to ordering problems. The second part of the book investigates the algorithm on boundedly difficult test functions, showing principled scale up as problems become harder and longer. Finally, the book applies the algorithm to a test function drawn from the literature of scheduling.

Schmidt and Bannon (1992) introduced the concept of common information space by contrasting it with technical conceptions of shared information: Cooperative work is not facilitated simply by the provisioning of a shared database, but rather requires the active construction by the participants of a common information space where the meanings of the shared objects are debated and resolved, at least locally and temporarily. (Schmidt and Bannon, p. 22) A CIS, then, encompasses not only the information but also the practices by which actors establish its meaning for their collective work. These negotiated understandings of the information are as important as the availability of the information itself: The actors must attempt to jointly construct a common information space which goes beyond their individual personal information spaces. . . . The common information space is negotiated and established by the actors involved. (Schmidt and Bannon, p. 28) This is not to suggest that actors' understandings of the information are identical; they are simply "common" enough to coordinate the work. People understand how the information is relevant for their own work. Therefore, individuals engaged in different activities will have different perspectives on the same information. The work of maintaining the common information space is the work that it takes to balance and accommodate these different perspectives. A "bug" report in software development is a simple example. Software developers and quality assurance personnel have access to the same bug report information. However, access to information is not sufficient to coordinate their work.

Relatively new research ?elds such as ambient intelligence, intelligent envir- ments, ubiquitous computing, and wearable devices have emerged in recent years. These ?elds are related by a common theme: making use of novel technologies to enhance user experience by providing user-centric intelligent environments, - moving computers from the desktop and making computing available anywhere and anytime. It must be said that the concept of intelligent environments is not new and beganwithhomeautomation. Thechoiceofnameforthe?eldvariessomewhatfrom continent to continent in the English-speaking world. In general intelligent space is synonymous to intelligent environments or smart spaces of which smart homes is a sub?eld. In this collection, the terms intelligent environments and ambient int- ligence are used interchangeably throughout. Such environments are made possible by permeating living spaces with intelligent technology that enhances quality of life. In particular, advances in technologies such as miniaturized sensors, advances in communication and networking technology including high-bandwidth wireless devices and the reduction in power consumption have made possible the concept of intelligent environments. Environments such as a home, an of?ce, a shopping mall, and a travel port utilize data provided by users to adapt the environment to meet the user's needs and improve human-machine interactions. The user information is gathered either via wearable devices or by pervasive sensors or a combination of both. Intelligent environments brings together a number of research ?elds from computer science, such as arti?cial intelligence, computer vision, machine learning, and robotics as well as engineering and architecture.

The systems movement is made up of many systems societies as well as of disciplinary researchers and researches, explicitly or implicitly focusing on the subject of systemics, officially introduced in the scientific community fifty years ago. Many researches in different fields have been and continue to be sources of new ideas and challenges for the systems community. To this regard, a very important topic is the one of EMERGENCE. Between the goals for the actual and future systems scientists there is certainly the definition of a general theory of emergence and the building of a general model of it. The Italian Systems Society, Associazione Italiana per la Ricerca sui Sistemi (AIRS), decided to devote its Second National Conference to this subject. Because AIRS is organized under the form of a network of researchers, institutions, scholars, professionals, and teachers, its research activity has an impact at different levels and in different ways. Thus the topic of emergence was not only the focus of this conference but it is actually the main subject of many AIRS activities.

Self-organizing maps (SOM) have proven to be of significant economic value in the areas of finance, economic and marketing applications. As a result, this area is rapidly becoming a non-academic technology. This book looks at near state-of-the-art SOM applications in the above areas, and is a multi-authored volume, edited by Guido Deboeck, a leading exponent in the use of computational methods in financial and economic forecasting, and by the originator of SOM, Teuvo Kohonen. The book contains chapters on applications of unsupervised neural networks using Kohonen's self-organizing map approach.

Active networking is an exciting new paradigm in digital networking that has the potential to revolutionize the manner in which communication takes place. It is an emerging technology, one in which new ideas are constantly being formulated and new topics of research are springing up even as this book is being written. This technology is very likely to appeal to a broad spectrum of users from academia and industry. Therefore, this book was written in a way that enables all these groups to understand the impact of active networking in their sphere of interest. Information services managers, network administrators, and e-commerce developers would like to know the potential benefits of the new technology to their businesses, networks, and applications. The book introduces the basic active networking paradigm and its potential impacts on the future of information handling in general and on communications in particular. This is useful for forward-looking businesses that wish to actively participate in the development of active networks and ensure a head start in the integration of the technology in their future products, be they applications or networks. Areas in which active networking is likely to make significant impact are identified, and the reader is pointed to any related ongoing research efforts in the area. The book also provides a deeper insight into the active networking model for students and researchers, who seek challenging topics that define or extend frontiers of the technology. It describes basic components of the model, explains some of the terms used by the active networking community, and provides the reader with taxonomy of the research being conducted at the time this book was written. Current efforts are classified based on typical research areas such as mobility, security, and management. The intent is to introduce the serious reader to the background regarding some of the models adopted by the community, to outline outstanding issues concerning active networking, and to provide a snapshot of the fast-changing landscape in active networking research. Management is a very important issue in active networks because of its open nature. The latter half of the book explains the architectural concepts of a model for managing active networks and the motivation for a reference model that addresses limitations of the current network management framework by leveraging the powerful features of active networking to develop an integrated framework. It also describes a novel application enabled by active network technology called the Active Virtual Network Management Prediction (AVNMP) algorithm. AVNMP is a pro-active management system; in other words, it provides the ability to solve a potential problem before it impacts the system by modeling network devices within the network itself and running that model ahead of real time.

This unique volume explores cutting-edge management approaches to developing complex software that is efficient, scalable, sustainable, and suitable for distributed environments. Practical insights are offered by an international selection of pre-eminent authorities, including case studies, best practices, and balanced corporate analyses. Emphasis is placed on the use of the latest software technologies and frameworks for life-cycle methods, including the design, implementation and testing stages of software development. Topics and features: * Reviews approaches for reusability, cost and time estimation, and for functional size measurement of distributed software applications * Discusses the core characteristics of a large-scale defense system, and the design of software project management (SPM) as a service * Introduces the 3PR framework, research on crowdsourcing software development, and an innovative approach to modeling large-scale multi-agent software systems * Examines a system architecture for ambient assisted living, and an approach to cloud migration and management assessment * Describes a software error proneness mechanism, a novel Scrum process for use in the defense domain, and an ontology annotation for SPM in distributed environments* Investigates the benefits of agile project management for higher education institutions, and SPM that combines software and data engineering This important text/reference is essential reading for project managers and software engineers involved in developing software for distributed computing environments. Students and researchers interested in SPM technologies and frameworks will also find the work to be an invaluable resource. Prof. Zaigham Mahmood is a Senior Technology Consultant at Debesis Education UK and an Associate Lecturer (Research) at the University of Derby, UK. He also holds positions as Foreign Professor at NUST and IIU in Islamabad, Pakistan, and Professor Extraordinaire at the North West University Potchefstroom, South Africa.

The aim of this book is to present readers with state-of-the-art options which allow pupils as well as teachers to cope with the social impacts and implications of information technology and the rapid technological developments of the past 25 years. The book explores the following key areas: the adaption of curricula to the social needs of society; the influences of multimedia on social interaction; morals, values and ethics in the information technology curriculum; social and pedagogical variables which promote information technology use; and social implications of distance learning through the medium of information technology. This volume contains the selected proceedings of the TC3/TC9 International Working Conference of the Impact of Information technology, sponsored by the International Federation for Information Processing and held in Israel, March, 1996.

The technique of randomization has been employed to solve numerous prob lems of computing both sequentially and in parallel. Examples of randomized algorithms that are asymptotically better than their deterministic counterparts in solving various fundamental problems abound. Randomized algorithms have the advantages of simplicity and better performance both in theory and often is a collection of articles written by renowned experts in practice. This book in the area of randomized parallel computing. A brief introduction to randomized algorithms In the analysis of algorithms, at least three different measures of performance can be used: the best case, the worst case, and the average case. Often, the average case run time of an algorithm is much smaller than the worst case. 2 For instance, the worst case run time of Hoare's quicksort is O(n ), whereas its average case run time is only O(nlogn). The average case analysis is conducted with an assumption on the input space. The assumption made to arrive at the O(n logn) average run time for quicksort is that each input permutation is equally likely. Clearly, any average case analysis is only as good as how valid the assumption made on the input space is. Randomized algorithms achieve superior performances without making any assumptions on the inputs by making coin flips within the algorithm. Any analysis done of randomized algorithms will be valid for all possible inputs.

Circuit simulation has been a topic of great interest to the integrated circuit design community for many years. It is a difficult, and interesting, problem be cause circuit simulators are very heavily used, consuming thousands of computer hours every year, and therefore the algorithms must be very efficient. In addi tion, circuit simulators are heavily relied upon, with millions of dollars being gambled on their accuracy, and therefore the algorithms must be very robust. At the University of California, Berkeley, a great deal of research has been devoted to the study of both the numerical properties and the efficient imple mentation of circuit simulation algorithms. Research efforts have led to several programs, starting with CANCER in the 1960's and the enormously successful SPICE program in the early 1970's, to MOTIS-C, SPLICE, and RELAX in the late 1970's, and finally to SPLICE2 and RELAX2 in the 1980's. Our primary goal in writing this book was to present some of the results of our current research on the application of relaxation algorithms to circuit simu lation. As we began, we realized that a large body of mathematical and exper imental results had been amassed over the past twenty years by graduate students, professors, and industry researchers working on circuit simulation. It became a secondary goal to try to find an organization of this mass of material that was mathematically rigorous, had practical relevance, and still retained the natural intuitive simplicity of the circuit simulation subject."

viii The experimental research presented at the conference and reported here deals mainly with the visible wavelength region and slight extensions to either side (roughly from 150 nrn to 1000 nrn, 8. 3 eV to 1. 2 eV). A single exception was that dealing with a description of spin-resolved photoelectron spectroscopy at energies up to 40 eV (31 nm). This work was done using circularly polarized radiation emitted above and below the plane of the circulating electrons in a synchrotron ring. The device at BESSY (West Germany) in which the experiments were carried out seems to be the only one presently capable of providing circularly polarized radiation in the X--ray through vacuum ultraviolet energy range. A much more intense source is needed in this range. A possible solution was proposed which could provide not only circularly polarized photons over a wide energy range, but could in principle modulate the polarization of the beam between two orthogonal polarization states. Realization of this device, or an equivalent one, would be a vital step towards the goal of determining all components of the Mueller matrix for each spectroscopic experiment. A variety of theoretical treatments are presented describing the different phenomena emerging from the interaction of matter and polarized radiation in a wide range of energies. From this work we expect to learn what are the most useful wavelength regions and what types of samples are the most suitable for study.

One criterion for classifying books is whether they are written for a single pur pose or for multiple purposes. This book belongs to the category of multipurpose books, but one of its roles is predominant-it is primarily a textbook. As such, it can be used for a variety ofcourses at the first-year graduate or upper-division undergraduate level. A common characteristic of these courses is that they cover fundamental systems concepts, major categories of systems problems, and some selected methods for dealing with these problems at a rather general level. A unique feature of the book is that the concepts, problems, and methods are introduced in the context of an architectural formulation of an expert system referred to as the general systems problem solver or aSPS-whose aim is to provide users ofall kinds with computer-based systems knowledge and methodo logy. Theasps architecture, which is developed throughout the book, facilitates a framework that is conducive to acoherent, comprehensive, and pragmaticcoverage ofsystems fundamentals-concepts, problems, and methods. A course that covers systems fundamentals is now offered not only in sys tems science, information science, or systems engineering programs, but in many programs in other disciplines as well. Although the level ofcoverage for systems science or engineering students is surely different from that used for students in other disciplines, this book is designed to serve both of these needs."