In a bold attempt to redirect the ways theories of communication are conceived and research on communication processes are conducted, this volume questions prevailing communication scholarship that emphasizes the cultural, psychological, and sociological variables that impact on, and/or are impacted by, communication. Instead of focusing on the "consequences" of communication, this books urges readers to examine the "consequentiality" of communication -- what it is about the communication process that enables it to play a defining role in our lives. Communication is not a neutral conveyor of meanings derived from culture, cognition, or social structure, and is not explained by correlations with external variables. Meaning emerges from the communication process itself; it is dependent upon what transpires during the real-time moments of communicators behaving with each other. To properly study this new paradigm, a new vocabulary for thinking about the consequentiality of communication is needed and proposed.
Four theoretical orientations are used to stake out this new territory: coordinated management of meaning, neo-rhetorical theory, conversation analysis, and social communication theory. While there are points of agreement and overlap on the need to study communication as inherently consequential, there are also differences across the four theories -- in the value of "rules" as an explanatory concept, on the relationship between structure and process, and on the very constitution of a "theory." Thus, this book has the benefit of articulating a new paradigm for communication scholarship without losing sight of the discipline's rich diversity.

In a bold attempt to redirect the ways theories of communication are conceived and research on communication processes are conducted, this volume questions prevailing communication scholarship that emphasizes the cultural, psychological, and sociological variables that impact on, and/or are impacted by, communication. Instead of focusing on the "consequences" of communication, this books urges readers to examine the "consequentiality" of communication -- what it is about the communication process that enables it to play a defining role in our lives. Communication is not a neutral conveyor of meanings derived from culture, cognition, or social structure, and is not explained by correlations with external variables. Meaning emerges from the communication process itself; it is dependent upon what transpires during the real-time moments of communicators behaving with each other. To properly study this new paradigm, a new vocabulary for thinking about the consequentiality of communication is needed and proposed.
Four theoretical orientations are used to stake out this new territory: coordinated management of meaning, neo-rhetorical theory, conversation analysis, and social communication theory. While there are points of agreement and overlap on the need to study communication as inherently consequential, there are also differences across the four theories -- in the value of "rules" as an explanatory concept, on the relationship between structure and process, and on the very constitution of a "theory." Thus, this book has the benefit of articulating a new paradigm for communication scholarship without losing sight of the discipline's rich diversity.

With the advent of the National Curriculum, computer based modelling (CBM) is now a compulsory part of the school curriculum. Teachers are increasingly being encouraged to seek out opportunities for CBM in their own subject and across the curriculum. The new demands on the curriculum have left eachers and teacher trainers concerned as to their lack of experience in the area. This book sets out to provide a comprehensive guide to the area through an examination of a number of funded projects on CBM and their application to the school curriculum, setting them in the context of wider theoretical and practical concerns. It is acknowledged that computers bring about change in the classroom, both in teachers' professional development and innovative practices in teaching and learning. In highlighting how CBM can aid in the effective delivery of the curriculum, this book should be essential reading for teachers and researchers in the field.

Neural Network Modeling offers a cohesive approach to the statistical mechanics and principles of cybernetics as a basis for neural network modeling. It brings together neurobiologists and the engineers who design intelligent automata to understand the physics of collective behavior pertinent to neural elements and the self-control aspects of neurocybernetics. The theoretical perspectives and explanatory projections portray the most current information in the field, some of which counters certain conventional concepts in the visualization of neuronal interactions.

Whereas many organizational communication texts address internal communication processes, few consider the efforts that companies expend to communicate with external stakeholders. Likewise, many texts that concentrate on public relations or advertising consider external communication, but fail to give attention to internal communication. Combining both points of view, this text explains how an entire organization operates through enactments of personnel and external stakeholders.
Central to this book is a concern for meaning and its influence on the performance of jobs in response to expectations of co-workers and external publics. The concept of narrative is used to explain how individual and organization performance is the expression of personae that are best when enacted jointly -- in varying degrees of coordination -- to satisfy mutual performance expectations. Narrative explains the power of organizational meaning, interpersonal contacts, group performance, stakeholder negotiation, and internal and external organizational zones of meaning -- assumptions that are shared by people who enact an organization through coordinated efforts.

This book gives an in-depth introduction to the areas of modeling, identification, simulation, and optimization. These scientific topics play an increasingly dominant part in many engineering areas such as electrotechnology, mechanical engineering, aerospace, and physics. This book represents a unique and concise treatment of the mutual interactions among these topics.
Techniques for solving general nonlinear optimization problems as they arise in identification and many synthesis and design methods are detailed. The main points in deriving mathematical models via prior knowledge concerning the physics describing a system are emphasized. Several chapters discuss the identification of black-box models. Simulation is introduced as a numerical tool for calculating time responses of almost any mathematical model. The last chapter covers optimization, a generally applicable tool for formulating and solving many engineering problems.

Social scientists often dismiss the media as untrustworthy and irresponsible and the media frequently regard social scientists as incapable of giving a straight answer. The contributors to this volume complain of having been misrepresented, misquoted and edited out of all recognition. That this clash of cultures should occur is not surprising given the different priorities and perspectives of the social sciences and the media. This work examines these issues from the viewpoint of the media and social scientists who have had extensive media contact. The academics contributing to this book have conducted research on a diverse range of topics including: education, stress, football hooliganism, intelligence, risk factors for illness, drug use, performance appraisal in universities, politics, sex, religion, pornography, female sexuality, terrorism, youth culture and media studies. There are also chapters from well-known media practitioners, from radio, the television and newspapers. Based on the contributions, the editors offer practical suggestions for social scientists to help them work more effectively with the media and thereby reach a wider audience.

This book provides a much needed short, reliable and stimulating guide to the mass media in present day society. Incisive, surprising and stimulating it will become an essential text in thinking and writing about the mass media.

This book presents a new approach for the analysis of chaotic behavior in non-linear dynamical systems, in which output can be represented in quaternion parametrization. It offers a new family of methods for the analysis of chaos in the quaternion domain along with extensive numerical experiments performed on human motion data and artificial data. All methods and algorithms are designed to allow detection of deterministic chaos behavior in quaternion data representing the rotation of a body in 3D space. This book is an excellent reference for engineers, researchers, and postgraduate students conducting research on human gait analysis, healthcare informatics, dynamical systems with deterministic chaos or time series analysis.

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.

"Information Theory and Statistical Learning" presents theoretical and practical results about information theoretic methods used in the context of statistical learning.

The book will present a comprehensive overview of the large range of different methods that have been developed in a multitude of contexts. Each chapter is written by an expert in the field. The book is intended for an interdisciplinary readership working in machine learning, applied statistics, artificial intelligence, biostatistics, computational biology, bioinformatics, web mining or related disciplines.

Advance Praise for "Information Theory and Statistical Learning"

"A new epoch has arrived for information sciences to integrate various disciplines such as information theory, machine learning, statistical inference, data mining, model selection etc. I am enthusiastic about recommending the present book to researchers and students, because it summarizes most of these new emerging subjects and methods, which are otherwise scattered in many places." Shun-ichi Amari, RIKEN Brain Science Institute, Professor-Emeritus at the University of Tokyo

Written in the 1980s by one of the fathers of chaos theory, Otto E. Roessler, the manuscript presented in this volume eventually never got published. Almost 40 years later, it remains astonishingly at the forefront of knowledge about chaos theory and many of the examples discussed have never been published elsewhere. The manuscript has now been edited by Christophe Letellier - involved in chaos theory for almost three decades himself, as well as being active in the history of sciences - with a minimum of changes to the original text. Finally released for the benefit of specialists and non-specialists alike, this book is equally interesting from the historical and the scientific points of view: an unconventionally modern approach to chaos theory, it can be read as a classic introduction and short monograph as well as a collection of original insights into advanced topics from this field.

Containing 71 articles, "Supplementary Volume 2," provides an up-to-date review of recent developments in the field of systems and control. New developments covered include: 'fuzzy logic control', 'neural nets in control systems' and 'robust stability and robust stable control'. "Supplementary Volume 2" also provides coverage of the theory and application of systems in specific areas: modelling and simulation, traffic control and biological systems and measurement and software engineering. This update will continue to provide the practising scientist and engineer with an invaluable reference source on topics in the field of systems and control.

Named a best book of the year by Bloomberg and Nature. 'Soni and Goodman have done their research...A Mind at Play reveals the remarkable human behind some of the most important theoretical and practical contributions to the information age.' (Nature) 'A charming account of one of the twentieth century's most distinguished scientists...Readers will enjoy this portrait of a modern-day Da Vinci.' (Fortune) This is the extraordinary story of the little-known man who influenced every computer built, email sent, video streamed, and webpage loaded. He wrote the seminal text of the digital revolution, which has been called 'the Magna Carta of the Information Age.' His discoveries would lead contemporaries to compare him to Albert Einstein and Isaac Newton. His work anticipated by decades the world we live in today and gave mathematicians and engineers the tools to create the digital technology we rely on. His career stretched from the era of room-sized computers powered by gears and string to the age of Apple. His life shows us the beginnings of modern technology: in the 'idea factory' of Bell Labs, in the 'scientists' war' with Nazi Germany, and in the work of Shannon's collaborators and rivals, including Alan Turing. With access to Shannon's family and friends, A Mind at Playbrings this singular innovator and creative genius to life.

Proofs play a central role in advanced mathematics and theoretical computer science, yet many students struggle the first time they take a course in which proofs play a significant role. This bestselling text's third edition helps students transition from solving problems to proving theorems by teaching them the techniques needed to read and write proofs. Featuring over 150 new exercises and a new chapter on number theory, this new edition introduces students to the world of advanced mathematics through the mastery of proofs. The book begins with the basic concepts of logic and set theory to familiarize students with the language of mathematics and how it is interpreted. These concepts are used as the basis for an analysis of techniques that can be used to build up complex proofs step by step, using detailed 'scratch work' sections to expose the machinery of proofs about numbers, sets, relations, and functions. Assuming no background beyond standard high school mathematics, this book will be useful to anyone interested in logic and proofs: computer scientists, philosophers, linguists, and, of course, mathematicians.

This monograph introduces methods for handling filtering and control problems in nonlinear stochastic systems arising from network-induced phenomena consequent on limited communication capacity. Such phenomena include communication delay, packet dropout, signal quantization or saturation, randomly occurring nonlinearities and randomly occurring uncertainties. The text is self-contained, beginning with an introduction to nonlinear stochastic systems, network-induced phenomena and filtering and control, moving through a collection of the latest research results which focuses on the three aspects of: * the state-of-the-art of nonlinear filtering and control; * recent advances in recursive filtering and sliding mode control; and * their potential for application in networked control systems, and concluding with some ideas for future research work. New concepts such as the randomly occurring uncertainty and the probability-constrained performance index are proposed to make the network models as realistic as possible. The power of combinations of such recent tools as the completing-the-square and sums-of-squares techniques, Hamilton-Jacobi-Isaacs matrix inequalities, difference linear matrix inequalities and parameter-dependent matrix inequalities is exploited in treating the mathematical and computational challenges arising from nonlinearity and stochasticity. Nonlinear Stochastic Systems with Network-Induced Phenomena establishes a unified framework of control and filtering which will be of value to academic researchers in bringing structure to problems associated with an important class of networked system and offering new means of solving them. The significance of the new concepts, models and methods presented for practical control engineering and signal processing will also make it a valuable reference for engineers dealing with nonlinear control and filtering problems.

This book covers the two broad areas of the electronics and electrical aspects of control applications, highlighting the many different types of control systems of relevance to real-life control system design. The control techniques presented are state-of-the-art. In the electronics section, readers will find essential information on microprocessor, microcontroller, mechatronics and electronics control. The low-level assembly programming language performs basic input/output control techniques as well as controlling the stepper motor and PWM dc motor. In the electrical section, the book addresses the complete elevator PLC system design, neural network plant control, load flow analysis, and process control, as well as machine vision topics. Illustrative diagrams, circuits and programming examples and algorithms help to explain the details of the system function design. Readers will find a wealth of computer control and industrial automation practices and applications for modern industries, as well as the educational sector.

The geometry of curves has fascinated mathematicians for 2500 years, and the theory has become highly abstract. Recently links have been made with the subject of error correction, leading to the creation of geometric Goppa codes, a new and important area of coding theory. This book is an updated and extended version of the last part of the successful book Error-Correcting Codes and Finite Fields. It provides an elementary introduction to Goppa codes, and includes many examples, calculations, and applications. The book is in two parts with an emphasis on motivation, and applications of the theory take precedence over proofs of theorems. The formal theory is, however, provided in the second part of the book, and several of the concepts and proofs have been simplified without sacrificing rigour.

This book presents new systems and circuits for implantable biomedical applications, using a non-conventional way to transmit energy and data via ultrasound. The authors discuses the main constrains (e.g. implant size, battery recharge time, data rate, accuracy of the acoustic models) from the definition of the ultrasound system specification to the in-vitro validation.The system described meets the safety requirements for ultrasound exposure limits in diagnostic ultrasound applications, according to FDA regulations. Readers will see how the novel design of power management architecture will meet the constraints set by FDA regulations for maximum energy exposure in the human body. Coverage also includes the choice of the acoustic transducer, driven by optimum positioning and size of the implanted medical device. Throughout the book, links between physics, electronics and medical aspects are covered to give a complete view of the ultrasound system described. Provides a complete, system-level perspective on the use of ultrasound as energy source for medical implants; Discusses system design concerns regarding wireless power transmission and wireless data communication, particularly for a system in which both are performed on the same channel/frequency; Describes an experimental study on implantable battery powered biomedical systems; Presents a fully-integrated, implantable system and hermetically sealed packaging.

The essence of this book can be found in a line written by the ancient Roman Stoic Philosopher Lucius Annaeus Seneca: "Fortune is of sluggish growth, but ruin is rapid". This sentence summarizes the features of the phenomenon that we call "collapse," which is typically sudden and often unexpected, like the proverbial "house of cards." But why are such collapses so common, and what generates them? Several books have been published on the subject, including the well known "Collapse" by Jared Diamond (2005), "The collapse of complex societies" by Joseph Tainter (1998) and "The Tipping Point," by Malcom Gladwell (2000). Why The Seneca Effect? This book is an ambitious attempt to pull these various strands together by describing collapse from a multi-disciplinary viewpoint. The reader will discover how collapse is a collective phenomenon that occurs in what we call today "complex systems," with a special emphasis on system dynamics and the concept of "feedback." From this foundation, Bardi applies the theory to real-world systems, from the mechanics of fracture and the collapse of large structures to financial collapses, famines and population collapses, the fall of entire civilzations, and the most dreadful collapse we can imagine: that of the planetary ecosystem generated by overexploitation and climate change. The final objective of the book is to describe a conclusion that the ancient stoic philosophers had already discovered long ago, but that modern system science has rediscovered today. If you want to avoid collapse you need to embrace change, not fight it. Neither a book about doom and gloom nor a cornucopianist's dream, The Seneca Effect goes to the heart of the challenges that we are facing today, helping us to manage our future rather than be managed by it.

This book provides a much needed short, reliable and stimulating guide to the mass media in present day society. Incisive, surprising and stimulating it will become an essential text in thinking and writing about the mass media.

This monograph details basic concepts and tools fundamental for the analysis and synthesis of linear systems subject to actuator saturation and developments in recent research. The authors use a state-space approach and focus on stability analysis and the synthesis of stabilizing control laws in both local and global contexts. Different methods of modeling the saturation and behavior of the nonlinear closed-loop system are given special attention. Various kinds of Lyapunov functions are considered to present different stability conditions. Results arising from uncertain systems and treating performance in the presence of saturation are given. The text proposes methods and algorithms, based on the use of linear programming and linear matrix inequalities, for computing estimates of the basin of attraction and for designing control systems accounting for the control bounds and the possibility of saturation. They can be easily implemented with mathematical software packages.

This book introduces an interesting and alternative way to design absorbing boundary conditions (ABCs) for quantum wave equations, basically the nonlinear Schroedinger equation. The focus of this book is the application of the phase space filter approach to derive accurate radiation conditions for Schroedinger equations. Researchers who are interested in partial differential equations and mathematical physics might find this book appealing.

This monograph introduces a newly developed robust-control design technique for a wide class of continuous-time dynamical systems called the "attractive ellipsoid method." Along with a coherent introduction to the proposed control design and related topics, the monograph studies nonlinear affine control systems in the presence of uncertainty and presents a constructive and easily implementable control strategy that guarantees certain stability properties. The authors discuss linear-style feedback control synthesis in the context of the above-mentioned systems. The development and physical implementation of high-performance robust-feedback controllers that work in the absence of complete information is addressed, with numerous examples to illustrate how to apply the attractive ellipsoid method to mechanical and electromechanical systems. While theorems are proved systematically, the emphasis is on understanding and applying the theory to real-world situations. Attractive Ellipsoids in Robust Control will appeal to undergraduate and graduate students with a background in modern systems theory as well as researchers in the fields of control engineering and applied mathematics.

This book deals with the simulation of the mechanical behavior of engineering structures, mechanisms and components. It presents a set of strategies and tools for formulating the mathematical equations and the methods of solving them using MATLAB. For the same mechanical systems, it also shows how to obtain solutions using a different approaches. It then compares the results obtained with the two methods. By combining fundamentals of kinematics and dynamics of mechanisms with applications and different solutions in MATLAB of problems related to gears, cams, and multilink mechanisms, and by presenting the concepts in an accessible manner, this book is intended to assist advanced undergraduate and mechanical engineering graduate students in solving various kinds of dynamical problems by using methods in MATLAB. It also offers a comprehensive, practice-oriented guide to mechanical engineers dealing with kinematics and dynamics of several mechanical systems.