This book provides an insightful overview of the current state of earth building. The author approaches the subject from the perspective of the building material's life cycle, featuring in-depth explanations of the cycle's individual steps: extraction and classification of construction soil; production of earth building materials and earthen structures; planning, construction and renovation of earth buildings; and demolition and recycling of earthen structures. This unique resource provides examples of sophisticated earth building projects and illustrates the diverse applications of earth as a building material. Compared to conventional mineral building materials, earth possesses particularly positive ecological qualities such as its energy balance and recyclability. Architects, engineers, students, manufacturers and distributors of building materials, building contractors, building biologists, public authorities and preservationists will benefit from this book's ample coverage of restoring, optimizing and building with this material of the past, present and future.

The present volume contains papers presented on the occasion of the Ichthyological Symposium on Genetics and Mutagenesis held on October 13 through 15, 1972 at the Biology Institute of the Association for Radia- tion and Environmental Research in Neuherberg near Munich, Germany. These symposia have been held annually since 1955 by former students of Prof. C. Kosswig and Prof. F. Anders in Hamburg or Giessen. In the last two years attendance has increased beyond the national German basis, but the Neuherberg meeting of fish geneticists was the first that could be called "international", the participants coming from twelve different countries. The organization of this meeting was made possible by the support of the Association for Radiation and Environmental Research, which provided the financial backing; special thanks are due to Min.- Rat. H. Costa and Dr. R. Wittenzellner. The scientific advice and encouragement of the Director of the Biology Institute, Prof. O. Hug, was also much appreciated, as was the helpful assistance of Dr. B. Betz and Dr. K. Gottel. In addition, I have to thank my colleagues and co- workers Mdmes. E. Neubner, I.S. Otten, and K. Peters, Messrs. M. Murr and M. Wiestner, and Dr. S. Holzberg for their help in organizing the meeting. Apart from the papers presented at the above symposium, we have in- cluded some papers by colleagues who were unable to attend the meeting.

The ability to manage knowledge is relevant for millions of small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) that operate in high-tech environments. They strongly depend on external knowledge about customers, technologies, and competitors because, as opposed to large companies, they have limited internal knowledge resources and little power to control their business environments. Present KM literature, however, mainly focuses on large companies and therefore does not explain, how SMEs, for example, can successfully apply groupware, data mining, semantic networks, and knowledge maps. This book addresses this problem by introducing the concept of knowledge integration (KI) that places emphasis on the identification, acquisition and use of external knowledge. Drawing from this theoretical basis, the book presents concepts and instruments specifically designed for SMEs, as well as examples of their implementation and use in practice.

The ability to manage knowledge is relevant for millions of small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) that operate in high-tech environments. They strongly depend on external knowledge about customers, technologies, and competitors because, as opposed to large companies, they have limited internal knowledge resources and little power to control their business environments. Present KM literature, however, mainly focuses on large companies and therefore does not explain, how SMEs, for example, can successfully apply groupware, data mining, semantic networks, and knowledge maps. This book addresses this problem by introducing the concept of knowledge integration (KI) that places emphasis on the identification, acquisition and use of external knowledge. Drawing from this theoretical basis, the book presents concepts and instruments specifically designed for SMEs, as well as examples of their implementation and use in practice.

Matthias Christian Freund untersucht bestehende wirtschaftsgeographische, volks- und betriebswirtschaftliche Erklarungs- und Gestaltungsansatze und entwickelt daraus ein mehrstufiges produktionstheoretisches Modell zur Erklarung der subnationalen Differenzierung betrieblicher Innovationsaktivitaten, welches unter Anwendung raumokonometrischer Verfahren empirisch uberpruft wird."

Antonie Jetter prasentiert ein neuartiges Handlungsunterstutzungssystem (HAUS) fur die fruhen Phasen der Produkentwicklung / fur das Fuzzy Front End, mit dem das System "Entwicklungsprojekt" modelliert und seine Dynamik durch Simulation erfasst wird. Die theoretische Basis fur das HAUS liefern Forschungsarbeiten der Handlungspsychologie. Methodisch stutzt sich das System auf verknupfte Teilmodelle der Entwicklungssituation, die durch das qualitative Modellierungsverfahren der Fuzzy Cognitive Maps (FCMs) erstellt werden. Aufbau und Nutzung des HAUS werden am Beispiel eines realen Entwicklungsprojektes konkretisiert und auf ihre Machbarkeit hin gepruft.

Mit seinem "International House of Knowledge Management" prasentiert Michael Gehle ein leistungsfahiges Konzept fur das Wissensmanagement in wissensintensiven internationalen Unternehmen. Es ruht auf den Saulen Mensch & Kultur, Organisation & Prozess sowie Informations- & Kommunikationsmanagement."