What has happened in Latin America's energy sector since the early 1990s is a revolution. Roles of state energy companies, private investment, and foreign capital are rapidly changing. This comprehensive study from the East-West Center presents an in-depth analysis and realistic forecast of Latin America's energy growth and consumption of primary energy and petroleum products. It also explores relationships between Latin American producers and U.S. and international energy markets. Here is invaluable information for energy economists, policy makers, government regulatory officials, oil company executives, and those interested in gaining an insight into the Latin American energy sector and its future.

Multimedia data comprising of images, audio and video is becoming increasingly common. The decreasing costs of consumer electronic devices such as digital cameras and digital camcorders, along with the ease of transportation facilitated by the Internet, has lead to a phenomenal rise in the amount of multimedia data generated and distributed. Given that this trend of increased use of multimedia data is likely to accelerate, there is an urgent need for providing a clear means of capturing, storing, indexing, retrieving, analyzing and summarizing such data. Content-based access to multimedia data is of primary importance since it is the natural way by which human beings interact with such information. To facilitate the content-based access of multimedia information, the first step is to derive feature measures from these data so that a feature space representation of the data content can be formed. This can subsequently allow for mapping the feature space to the symbol space (semantics) either automatically or through human intervention. Thus, signal to symbol mapping, useful for any practical system, can be successfully achieved. Perspectives on Content-Based Multimedia Systems provides a comprehensive set of techniques to tackle these important issues. This book offers detailed solutions to a wide range of practical problems in building real systems by providing specifics of three systems built by the authors. While providing a systems focus, it also equips the reader with a keen understanding of the fundamental issues, including a formalism for content-based multimedia database systems, multimedia feature extraction, object-based techniques, signature-based techniques and fuzzy retrieval techniques. The performance evaluation issues of practical systems is also explained. This book brings together essential elements of building a content-based multimedia database system in a way that makes them accessible to practitioners in computer science and electrical engineering. It can also serve as a textbook for graduate-level courses.

The key subjects of the book are policy imperatives, market dynamics and regional developments concerning oil and gas, as well as energy as a whole in China. In addition to national policies and issues, the objective of this book is to study China's regional oil and gas demand, supply and trade, energy balances, and economic development, with projections up till 2030. Particular emphasis will be given to challenges facing the Chinese government in ensuring future oil supplies, pipeline and liquefied natural gas (LNG) imports, energy security, downstream oil refining sector developments, the use of natural gas for power generation, and oil and gas related environmental issues. The impact of China's oil and gas sector developments, market dynamics, rising imports, and overseas investment on the Asia-Pacific region and the world at large are examined.Energy Economy in China also reviews current and future oil refining projects, gas pipelines, LNG import terminals, and emerging new markets in China over the next fifteen years.

Multimedia data comprising of images, audio and video is becoming increasingly common. The decreasing costs of consumer electronic devices such as digital cameras and digital camcorders, along with the ease of transportation facilitated by the Internet, has lead to a phenomenal rise in the amount of multimedia data generated and distributed. Given that this trend of increased use of multimedia data is likely to accelerate, there is an urgent need for providing a clear means of capturing, storing, indexing, retrieving, analyzing and summarizing such data. Content-based access to multimedia data is of primary importance since it is the natural way by which human beings interact with such information. To facilitate the content-based access of multimedia information, the first step is to derive feature measures from these data so that a feature space representation of the data content can be formed. This can subsequently allow for mapping the feature space to the symbol space (semantics) either automatically or through human intervention. Thus, signal to symbol mapping, useful for any practical system, can be successfully achieved. Perspectives on Content-Based Multimedia Systems provides a comprehensive set of techniques to tackle these important issues. This book offers detailed solutions to a wide range of practical problems in building real systems by providing specifics of three systems built by the authors. While providing a systems focus, it also equips the reader with a keen understanding of the fundamental issues, including a formalism for content-based multimedia database systems, multimedia feature extraction, object-based techniques, signature-based techniques and fuzzy retrieval techniques. The performance evaluation issues of practical systems is also explained. This book brings together essential elements of building a content-based multimedia database system in a way that makes them accessible to practitioners in computer science and electrical engineering. It can also serve as a textbook for graduate-level courses.