Our energy system faces a fundamental transformation and renewable energies will play a dominant role in the future energy supply. One of the promising solutions is the use of solar thermal energy in buildings, for cooling, heating and domestic hot water preparation. Solar thermal systems for providing heat and cold to industrial processes show a high potential, too. In the last decade, the application of solar driven cooling systems achieved a significant progress. Steps forward have been taken in the design of system concepts to specific needs and in more reliable and efficient operation of the installed plants. New systems are available on the market and cover a broad range of cooling capacities and driving temperatures. This handbook provides an overview on the various solutions to convert solar heat into useful cooling, reports about experiences made with realized installations and gives support in the design process. Its use will strongly contribute to achieve high quality solar cooling systems which provide significant energy savings and fulfil the user’s requirements in a safe and reliable way.

Concurrent constraint programming (ccp) is a recent development in programming language design. Its central contribution is the notion of partial information provided by a shared constraint store. This constraint store serves as a communication medium between concurrent threads of control and as a vehicle for their synchronization. Objects for Concurrent Constraint Programming analyzes the possibility of supporting object-oriented programming in ccp. Starting from established approaches, the book covers various object models and discusses their properties. Small Oz, a sublanguage of the ccp language Oz, is used as a model language for this analysis. This book presents a general-purpose object system for Small Oz and describes its implementation and expressivity for concurrent computation. Objects for Concurrent Constraint Programming is written for programming language researchers with an interest in programming language aspects of concurrency, object-oriented programming, or constraint programming. Programming language implementors will benefit from the rigorous treatment of the efficient implementation of Small Oz. Oz programmers will get a first-hand view of the design decisions that lie behind the Oz object system.

Concurrent constraint programming (ccp) is a recent development in programming language design. Its central contribution is the notion of partial information provided by a shared constraint store. This constraint store serves as a communication medium between concurrent threads of control and as a vehicle for their synchronization. Objects for Concurrent Constraint Programming analyzes the possibility of supporting object-oriented programming in ccp. Starting from established approaches, the book covers various object models and discusses their properties. Small Oz, a sublanguage of the ccp language Oz, is used as a model language for this analysis. This book presents a general-purpose object system for Small Oz and describes its implementation and expressivity for concurrent computation. Objects for Concurrent Constraint Programming is written for programming language researchers with an interest in programming language aspects of concurrency, object-oriented programming, or constraint programming. Programming language implementors will benefit from the rigorous treatment of the efficient implementation of Small Oz. Oz programmers will get a first-hand view of the design decisions that lie behind the Oz object system.

Regional issues are increasingly debated across the social sciences. In an age of globalization, the region has come to matter perhaps more than before. In business, companies orient themselves to engage in regional environments to build capabilities and create critical mass in their vicinity. In the world of policy, almost one-third of the EU budget is spent on regional policy. Yet in spite of this the differences between regions that do well and those that do not are increasing in both Europe and the United States. In recent years, evolutionary economic geography has done much to create a framework to inform regional policy and academic work. Using its insights, Martin Henning explores why economic growth and transformation is an essentially regionally based and spatially dependent process. The book offers an accessible introduction to the core ideas involved in understanding the dynamics of regional economies and draws on case studies to illuminate these ideas in practice.

Regional issues are increasingly debated across the social sciences. In an age of globalization, the region has come to matter perhaps more than before. In business, companies orient themselves to engage in regional environments to build capabilities and create critical mass in their vicinity. In the world of policy, almost one-third of the EU budget is spent on regional policy. Yet in spite of this the differences between regions that do well and those that do not are increasing in both Europe and the United States. In recent years, evolutionary economic geography has done much to create a framework to inform regional policy and academic work. Using its insights, Martin Henning explores why economic growth and transformation is an essentially regionally based and spatially dependent process. The book offers an accessible introduction to the core ideas involved in understanding the dynamics of regional economies and draws on case studies to illuminate these ideas in practice.