This is the first knowledge book in the Resources for the Knowledge-Based Economy Readers' series to link the two hot topics of knowledge and strategy. The book centers around the concept of treating organizational knowledge as a valuable strategy asset. Knowledge strategy is a natural extension of the historical development of business strategy in general. The book includes seminal articles on the subject as well as an introduction written by Michael Zack.

Links together knowledge and strategy
Seminal articles

This book presents selected fault diagnosis and fault-tolerant control strategies for non-linear systems in a unified framework. In particular, starting from advanced state estimation strategies up to modern soft computing, the discrete-time description of the system is employed Part I of the book presents original research results regarding state estimation and neural networks for robust fault diagnosis. Part II is devoted to the presentation of integrated fault diagnosis and fault-tolerant systems. It starts with a general fault-tolerant control framework, which is then extended by introducing robustness with respect to various uncertainties. Finally, it is shown how to implement the proposed framework for fuzzy systems described by the well-known Takagi-Sugeno models.

This research monograph is intended for researchers, engineers, and advanced postgraduate students in control and electrical engineering, computer science, as well as mechanical and chemical engineering.

This book introduces a new branch of evaluation theory, where evaluation and score calculation is embedded into general measure theory, as is typical in geometry, probability theory and reliability theory. The author describes the theoretical background of new evaluation model for complex processes, where interests of involved groups are considered as multi-players of evaluation process. Readers will learn how the logical structure of a process/system can be included into an evaluation. The author applies these techniques not only to the visualization of evaluation goals, but also the designed logical structure becomes the basis for calculation of evaluation scores. Various examples are provides to demonstrate the implementation of the methods.

Modern Statistical, Systems, and GPSS Simulation, Second Edition introduces the theory and implementation of discrete-event simulation. This text:
o establishes a theoretical basis for simulation methodology
o provides details of an important simulation language (GPSS - General Purpose Simulation System)
o integrates these two elements in a systems simulation case study
Valuable additions to the second edition include coverage of random number generators with astronomic period, new entropy-based tests of uniformity, gamma variate generation, results on the GLD, and variance reduction techniques.
GPSS/PC is an interactive implementation of GPSS for the IBM-PC compatible family of microcomputers. The disk accompanying Modern Statistical, Systems, and GPSS Simulation contains the limited educational version of GPSS/PC with many illustrative examples discussed in the text.

This book addresses many of the issues facing new and seasoned communication and media administrators. Though there are business-oriented management and leadership books, there is no handbook--to the editor's knowledge--that emphasizes academic administration. This book fills an important gap in the literature by providing--in one place--interesting, important, and useful information that will help administrators by anticipating problems and suggesting strategies for the variety of challenges they face.
This scholarly, anecdotal, useful, and very readable volume is conceived as an action handbook that contains philosophical, theoretical, and practical information. It is divided into three sections: "background" material, "programmatic" challenges facing administrators, and "specific" challenges facing administrators. It contains information that both the seasoned administrator and those faculty who are thinking about moving into administration will find useful. Although aimed at the communication and media disciplines, administrators in other fields will also find it valuable. In addition, deans and vice presidents outside the discipline who are responsible for communication and media programs will view the book a "must" read.

This book addresses many of the issues facing new and seasoned communication and media administrators. Though there are business-oriented management and leadership books, there is no handbook--to the editor's knowledge--that emphasizes academic administration. This book fills an important gap in the literature by providing--in one place--interesting, important, and useful information that will help administrators by anticipating problems and suggesting strategies for the variety of challenges they face.
This scholarly, anecdotal, useful, and very readable volume is conceived as an action handbook that contains philosophical, theoretical, and practical information. It is divided into three sections: "background" material, "programmatic" challenges facing administrators, and "specific" challenges facing administrators. It contains information that both the seasoned administrator and those faculty who are thinking about moving into administration will find useful. Although aimed at the communication and media disciplines, administrators in other fields will also find it valuable. In addition, deans and vice presidents outside the discipline who are responsible for communication and media programs will view the book a "must" read.

The book presents nonlinear, chaotic and fractional dynamics, complex systems and networks, together with cutting-edge research on related topics. The fifteen chapters - written by leading scientists working in the areas of nonlinear, chaotic, and fractional dynamics, as well as complex systems and networks - offer an extensive overview of cutting-edge research on a range of topics, including fundamental and applied research. These include but are not limited to, aspects of synchronization in complex dynamical systems, universality features in systems with specific fractional dynamics, and chaotic scattering. As such, the book provides an excellent and timely snapshot of the current state of research, blending the insights and experiences of many prominent researchers.

The Soft Edge is a one-of-a-kind history of the information revolution. In his lucid and direct style, Paul Levinson, historian and philosopher of media and communications, gives us more than just a history of information technologies. The Soft Edge is a book about theories on the evolution of technology, the effects that human choice has on this (r)evolution, and what's in store for us in the future.
Boldly extending and deepening the pathways blazed by McLuhan, Paul Levinson has provided us with a brilliant and exciting study of life with our old media, our new media, and the media still to come.

Going Digital: Strategies for Access, Preservation, and Conversion of Collections to a Digital Format offers you succinct and analytic views of the problems and benefits of digital resources in the traditional academic library. Library administrators, collection managers, and librarians will learn the advantages and disadvantages of traditional and digital collections and the costs of providing local access or implementing remote access to digital collections. Originally presented at a series of five symposiums sponsored by the Research Libraries Group, the articles inGoing Digital will help you decide upon a cost-effective collection method that will meet the needs of your library, your patrons, and your budget.The chapters in this text are written by the nation 's leading librarians who pose and answer questions about hardware and software needed for digital libraries, the costs involved, establishing and maintaining access to digital collections, copyright concerns, and long-term preservation problems. Going Digital gives you insight into factors that will help you decide what will best meet the goals of your library, such as: the advantages and disadvantages of preserving microfilm and digital conversion choosing the correct hardware and software for your digital preservation program the changes required from librarians when shifting from collection development to digital resources examining the selection process for collections from perspectives of access, public service, technological requirements, and preservation ways to improve access to traditional collections cost comparisons between digital and hard copy resources devising a technical plan for successful digital conversion of projects involving the user 's wants when selecting collections for digital conversion and recognizing the central parts patrons play in the selection processIn light of the changing ways we receive and keep our information, Going Digital discusses new collection preservation criteria and suggests that access and informational values, not just deterioration, should be equal factors in selecting materials to be converted to digital form. Proving that digital collections are changing every facet of library operations, Going Digital shows you the most cost-effective way to begin a digital collection and how to choose what materials to digitize in order to provide your patrons with the information they want and need.

This volume features recent development and techniques in evolution equations by renown experts in the field. Each contribution emphasizes the relevance and depth of this important area of mathematics and its expanding reach into the physical, biological, social, and computational sciences as well as into engineering and technology. The reader will find an accessible summary of a wide range of active research topics, along with exciting new results. Topics include: Impulsive implicit Caputo fractional q-difference equations in finite and infinite dimensional Banach spaces; optimal control of averaged state of a population dynamic model; structural stability of nonlinear elliptic p(u)-Laplacian problem with Robin-type boundary condition; exponential dichotomy and partial neutral functional differential equations, stable and center-stable manifolds of admissible class; global attractor in Alpha-norm for some partial functional differential equations of neutral and retarded type; and more. Researchers in mathematical sciences, biosciences, computational sciences and related fields, will benefit from the rich and useful resources provided. Upper undergraduate and graduate students may be inspired to contribute to this active and stimulating field.

The future obviously matters to us. It is, after all, where we'll be spending the rest of our lives. We need some degree of foresight if we are to make effective plans for managing our affairs. Much that we would like to know in advance cannot be predicted. But a vast amount of successful prediction is nonetheless possible, especially in the context of applied sciences such as medicine, meteorology, and engineering. This book examines our prospects for finding out about the future in advance. It addresses questions such as why prediction is possible in some areas and not others; what sorts of methods and resources make successful prediction possible; and what obstacles limit the predictive venture.

Nicholas Rescher develops a general theory of prediction that encompasses its fundamental principles, methodology, and practice and gives an overview of its promises and problems. Predicting the future considers the anthropological and historical background of the predictive enterprise. It also examines the conceptual, epistemic, and ontological principles that set the stage for predictive efforts. In short, Rescher explores the basic features of the predictive situation and considers their broader implications in science, in philosophy, and in the management of our daily affairs.

This second edition comprehensively presents important tools of linear systems theory, including differential and difference equations, Laplace and Z transforms, and more.
Linear Systems Theory discusses:
Nonlinear and linear systems in the state space form and through the transfer function method
Stability, including marginal stability, asymptotical stability, global asymptotical stability, uniform stability, uniform exponential stability, and BIBO stability
Controllability
Observability
Canonical forms
System realizations and minimal realizations, including state space approach and transfer function realizations
System design
Kalman filters
Nonnegative systems
Adaptive control
Neural networks
The book focuses mainly on applications in electrical engineering, but it provides examples for most branches of engineering, economics, and social sciences.
What's New in the Second Edition?
Case studies drawn mainly from electrical and mechanical engineering applications, replacing many of the longer case studies
Expanded explanations of both linear and nonlinear systems as well as new problem sets at the end of each chapter
Illustrative examples in all the chapters
An introduction and analysis of new stability concepts
An expanded chapter on neural networks, analyzing advances that have occurred in that field since the first edition
Although more mainstream than its predecessor, this revision maintains the rigorous mathematical approach of the first edition, providing fast, efficient development of the material.
Linear Systems Theory enables its reader to develop his or her capabilities for modeling dynamic phenomena, examining their properties, and applying them to real-life situations.

This book presents a new methodology with reduced time impact to address the problem of analog integrated circuit (IC) yield estimation by means of Monte Carlo (MC) analysis, inside an optimization loop of a population-based algorithm. The low time impact on the overall optimization processes enables IC designers to perform yield optimization with the most accurate yield estimation method, MC simulations using foundry statistical device models considering local and global variations. The methodology described by the authors delivers on average a reduction of 89% in the total number of MC simulations, when compared to the exhaustive MC analysis over the full population. In addition to describing a newly developed yield estimation technique, the authors also provide detailed background on automatic analog IC sizing and optimization.

This book presents a systematic study of an emerging field in the development of multi-agent systems. In a wide spectrum of applications, it is now common to see that multiple agents work cooperatively to accomplish a complex task. The book assists the implementation of such applications by promoting the ability of multi-agent systems to track - using local communication only - the mean value of signals of interest, even when these change rapidly with time and when no individual agent has direct access to the average signal across the whole team; for example, when a better estimation/control performance of multi-robot systems has to be guaranteed, it is desirable for each robot to compute or track the averaged changing measurements of all the robots at any time by communicating with only local neighboring robots. The book covers three factors in successful distributed average tracking: algorithm design via nonsmooth and extended PI control; distributed average tracking for double-integrator, general-linear, Euler-Lagrange, and input-saturated dynamics; and applications in dynamic region-following formation control and distributed convex optimization. The book presents both the theory and applications in a general but self-contained manner, making it easy to follow for newcomers to the topic. The content presented fosters research advances in distributed average tracking and inspires future research directions in the field in academia and industry.

The last two decades have seen the development of a number of models that have proven particularly important in advancing understanding of message-production processes. Now it appears that a "second generation" of theories is emerging, one that reflects considerable conceptual advances over earlier models. "Message Production: Advances in Communication Theory" focuses on these new developments in theoretical approaches to verbal and nonverbal message production. The chapters reflect a number of characteristics and trends resident in these theories including:
* the nature and source of interaction goals;
* the impact of physiological factors on message behavior;
* the prominence accorded conceptions of goals and planning;
* attempts to apply models of intra-individual processes in illuminating inter-individual phenomena;
* treatments which involve hybrid intentional/design-stance approaches; and
* efforts to incorporate physiological constructs and to meld them with psychological and social terms.
The processes underlying the production of verbal and nonverbal behaviors are exceedingly complex, so much so that they resist the development of unified explanatory schemes. The alternative is the mosaic of emerging theories such as are represented in this book -- each approach according prominence to certain message-production phenomena while obscuring others, and providing a window on some portion of the processes that give rise to those phenomena while remaining mute about other processes. The amalgam of these disparate treatments, then, becomes the most intellectually compelling characterization of message-production processes.

The last two decades have seen the development of a number of models that have proven particularly important in advancing understanding of message-production processes. Now it appears that a "second generation" of theories is emerging, one that reflects considerable conceptual advances over earlier models. "Message Production: Advances in Communication Theory" focuses on these new developments in theoretical approaches to verbal and nonverbal message production. The chapters reflect a number of characteristics and trends resident in these theories including:
* the nature and source of interaction goals;
* the impact of physiological factors on message behavior;
* the prominence accorded conceptions of goals and planning;
* attempts to apply models of intra-individual processes in illuminating inter-individual phenomena;
* treatments which involve hybrid intentional/design-stance approaches; and
* efforts to incorporate physiological constructs and to meld them with psychological and social terms.
The processes underlying the production of verbal and nonverbal behaviors are exceedingly complex, so much so that they resist the development of unified explanatory schemes. The alternative is the mosaic of emerging theories such as are represented in this book -- each approach according prominence to certain message-production phenomena while obscuring others, and providing a window on some portion of the processes that give rise to those phenomena while remaining mute about other processes. The amalgam of these disparate treatments, then, becomes the most intellectually compelling characterization of message-production processes.

The true pioneers in electronic publishing put their bibliographic databases on tape and online in the 1960s. Nearly all of them had long experience with compiling information for distribution in printed form and a strong market connection. As a result of Soviet advances in science and space technology, American government support for information science and academic libraries flowed freely for a little over a decade, making possible tremendous advances in technology, in retrieval techniques and in sophisticated coverage. Advances in information technology and market conditions have encouraged many more participants to underwrite the development of databases that now extend into the arts, social sciences, business, and popular interests. These essays show how production statistics accompanied by statements of editorial coverage provide a fairly accurate reflection of output of many of the major disciplinary bibliographic databases. The urgent priority of information resources in the 1960s has encouraged comprehensive servicing of the formal research literature as published in journals and monographs. Authors have counted subject words, languages, origins, types of publication, and so on over several decades. This volume also includes articles on some databases that are not strictly bibliographic, such as the CMG database of college courses, which illuminates some of the changes in college textbook publishing. Information seekers will find the many tables of practical use, as guidance to what and how much may be found within each database. Analysts of publishing, of science policy, and of higher education will find information relevant to expenditures, human resources, and other indicators of education, research, and technology activity.

In an earlier era, the communication field was dominated by the study of mediated and unmediated message effects during which considerable research focused on the attitudinal and action consequences of exposure to messages. A more catholic purview of the communication process exists today. This more encompassing perspective does not deny the importance of studying message effects, but raises the additional question of how individuals generate messages in the first place. While the earlier era of communication research was dominated by studies that focused on attitude and behavior change as primary dependent variables, such variables as message comprehension have begun to emerge in this new era. The focus on communication and cognition has led, paradoxically, to a more intense focus on social interaction processes.
The theory and research presented in this volume seeks to strike a balance between the internal workings of the individual cognitive system on the one hand and the outer world of social interaction on the other. Whether or not the theory and research stands the test of time, it is clear that complete cognitive accounts of social interaction cannot confine themselves to mere descriptions of the cognitive structures and processes that are responsible for message production and comprehension. Explicit links must be made between these cognitive structures and processes and the workings of social interaction. This work takes a modest step in that direction.

This volume includes edited and revised versions of the papers delivered and discussed at the recent Advertising and Consumer Psychology Conference. Following the theme of the conference -- "Measuring Advertising Effectiveness" -- the book blends academic psychology, marketing theory, survey methodology, and practical experience, while simultaneously addressing the problems and limitations of advertising.
Acknowledging that advertisements are subtle, diverse, complex phenomena that require detailed investigation, this compilation explores the multidimensional nature of advertising's diverse effects from both academic and applied perspectives. Updates on theories and methods -- along with expert commentaries -- help to make this a valuable collection that will be of interest to advertising and marketing specialists and communications experts alike.

"Group Communication examines the most effective ways of communicating and interacting within social and work groups, and offers a clear understanding of group communication."
"Group Communication" delves into groundbreaking research in group interaction and analyzes its implications for everyday situations, including discussion of how groups can change over time, the impact of conformity pressures, leadership and team roles, and problem solving. Readers are led to explore how these concepts can be applied to their personal group situations, and guided through a critical investigation of previous group communication research. This book is vital for students of Communication Studies or social science, as well as anyone involved in the study or application of group management.

Group Communication introduces applications of small group dynamics. Hartley shows how an understanding of how groups work and interact can improve the chances of successful team communication and cooperation.
Group Communication includes:
* critical reviews of group research
* explanation of the difficulties and practicalities of observing groups
* analysis of major group processes, including conformity and decision-making
* analysis and case studies of the management team, student seminar/project groups and self-help groups
* practical recommendation for group communication
* references and suggestions for further reading and research.

"Coalescent Argumentation" is based on the concept that arguments can function from agreement, rather than disagreement. To prove this idea, Gilbert first discusses how several components--emotional, visceral (physical) and kisceral (intuitive) are utilized in an argumentative setting by people everyday. These components, also characterized as "modes," are vital to argumentative communication because they affect both the argument and the resulting outcome.
In addition to the components/modes, this book also stresses the goals in argumentation as a means for understanding one's own and one's opposer's positions. Gilbert argues that by viewing positions as complex human events involving a variety of communicative modes, we are better able to find commonalities across positions, and, therefore, move from conflict to resolution. By focusing on agreement and shared goals in all modes, arguers can coalesce diverse positions and more easily distinguish between minor or unrelated differences and core disagreements. This permits much greater latitude for locating shared beliefs, values, and attitudes that will lead to conflict resolution.

Ithiel de Sola Pool was a pioneering social scientist, a distinguished scholar of the political process, and one of the most original thinkers in the development of the social sciences. Passionately engaged in politics, he continued his role of leadership throughout his life, building the MIT Political Science Department into an outstanding group. He organized international teams of social scientists and collaborated widely to develop the understanding of social change. He was a frequent adviser to governments as consultant and in-house critic, and a successful advocate of limits on government regulation. "Politics in Wired Nations" presents his writings on the social and political impact of different communication systems and new telecommunications technology. Included in this volume is the first study of trends in a global information society, and the first study of social networks and the "small world" phenomenon that creates new relationships and routes of informal influence and political power, both domestic and international. Pool's essays on the politics of foreign trade, the influence of American businessmen on Congress, and changeable "unnatural" institutions of the modern world (e.g., bureaucracies, mega-cities, and nation-states) are herein contained. Pool describes a nonviolent revolution in freedom and political control that is possible as the world changes from the era of one-way mass communications--targeted to national audiences--to a new era of abundant, high-capacity, low-cost, interactive, and user-controlled communications on a global scale. He discusses policy choices for freedom, the battlegrounds ahead, and the risks of government involvement in the regulation of new telecommunication technologies.

"The Communication Theory Reader" provides a clear introduction to communication studies, presenting the most important work which has shaped the field of communication studies and sampling a range of theories from the disciplines of linguistics, semiotics, philosophy, literary theory, film theory and psychoanalysis. The articles are grouped in subject sections, with an editor's introduction, and indications of further reading together with a glossary and a comprehensive bibliography. Contributors: Ien Ang, J.L. Austin, Roland Barthes, Emile Benveniste, Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen, Nick Browne, Steven Cohan, Jacques Derrida, Umberto Eco, Stanley Fish, M.A.K. Halliday, Stephen Heath, Wolfgang Iser, Roman Jakobson, Gunther Kress, Jacques Lacan, Alan Luke, Theo van Leeuwen, Jerry Palmer, Charles Sanders Peirce, Janice A. Radway, Ferdinand de Saussure, John Searle, Linda M. Shires, Brian Torode, V.N. Volosinov, Judith Williamson