"Iris Biometrics: From Segmentation to Template Security" provides critical analysis, challenges and solutions on recent iris biometric research topics, including image segmentation, image compression, watermarking, advanced comparators, template protection and more. Open source software is also provided on a dedicated website which includes feature extraction, segmentation and matching schemes applied in this book to foster scientific exchange. Current state-of-the-art approaches accompanied by comprehensive experimental evaluations are presented as well. This book has been designed as a secondary text book or reference for researchers and advanced-level students in computer science and electrical engineering. Professionals working in this related field will also find this book useful as a reference.

For manufacturers of complex engineering equipment, the focus on service and achieving outcomes for customers is the key to growth. Yet, the capability to provide service for complex engineered products is less understood. Taking a trans-disciplinary approach, Complex Engineering Service Systems covers various aspects of service in complex engineering systems, with perspectives from engineering, management, design, operations research, strategy, marketing and operations management that are relevant to different disciplines, organisation functions, and geographic locations. The focus is on the many facets of complex engineering service systems around a core integrative framework of three value transformations - that of material/equipment, information and people. Complex Engineering Service Systems is the outcome of the EPSRC/BAE Systems S4T (Service Support Solutions: Strategy and Transition) research programme of 10 universities and 27 researchers, which examined how high-value manufacturers of complex engineering products adapt to a multi-partnered environment to design and deliver value in a service system. Complex Engineering Service Systems aims to be the main source of knowledge for academics and professionals in the research and practice of contracting, managing, designing, leading, and delivering complex engineering service systems. The book takes a value-based approach to integrating equipment and human factors into a total service provision. In doing so, it aims to advance the field of service systems and engineering.

th TAMODIA 2009 was the 8 International Workshop in the series looking at TAskMOdelsandDIAgramsforUserInterfaceDevelopment. Overtheyearsthe submissionshavelookedatavarietyofperspectivesformodeling andannotating the user interface development process. The eighth workshop continued that approachandwascombinedwiththeIFIPWorkingConferenceonHumanError, Safety and Systems Development, HESSD 2009. There is an obvious synergy betweenthetwo workshops, asa rigorous, engineeringapproachto userinterface development can help in the prevention of human error and the maintenance of safety in critical interactive systems. The 12 papers presented here take a variety of approaches and cover d- ferent domains of the application of task modeling. We begin with higher-level perspectives on business processes that enable us to drive user interface dev- opment. Aspects of the general design process are also considered and applied to service-oriented and augmented reality interaction. Formal methods are also investigated for more rigorous development. Model-driven development is also recognized for its contribution to high-level interface design, and continuing the software engineering theme, approaches based on UML are presented. Sousa et al. propose a model-driven approach to linking business processes with user interface models. Their approach is demonstrated in the context of a large ?nancial institution and they show how the alignment between UI models and business can be managed, taking advantage of the traceability provided by model-driven design. Neubauer et al. also consider a ?ow-oriented modeling of business processes as a more open approach to capturing the dynamics of process modeling and understandin

A critical analysis of research papers by the author on the interfacial mechanisms controlling the stability of protein stabilised foams and emulsions. Proteins can stabilise foams and emulsions, by forming a visco-elastic adsorbed layer on the surface of the bubbles and droplets. The influence of protein molecular structure and the competitive adsorption of surfactants on the interfacial properties and the subsequent effects on foam and emulsion stability are presented. Approaches to increase the resistance to competitive adsorption through using hydrophobic proteins and highly elastic interfaces are described. The displacement of proteins from interfaces by surfactants was found to be a physical displacement process which heavily depended on the visco-elasticity of the protein adsorbed layer. Finally, approaches to protect foams against competitive destabilisation using lipid binding proteins, and non-covalent crosslinking proteins at the interface are shown. This caused in increase in surface elasticity, and hence improved foam stability.

The music of the Smiths and their iconic frontman Morrissey is beautiful, witty, melancholic--music that makes outsiders feel as though they are part of something. Now an eclectic collection of acclaimed, up-and-coming writers lets their love of the band, its words and music, manifest itself in literary form with smart, emotion-filled, Smiths-inspired short fiction.

In "Please," edited by Peter Wild, love blooms by the cemetery gates and the death of a Miami disco dancer inspires a new TV show. Shoplifters of the world unite to tug a reluctant aardvark from a hole, while a naked birthday rendition of "Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now" is beamed across the globe. Here is fiction that melds the worlds of music and literature while celebrating the unique artistic contributions of one of the most beloved bands of the past two and a half decades.

For more than twenty-five years, the antimelodic "noise" of Sonic Youth has assaulted us, exhilarated us, inspired us. Why?

Katherine Dunn says it's because they operate in the foggy world between the real and the surreal. Mary Gaitskill says that Sonic Youth caught her, years ago, when she was falling. J. Robert Lennon says it's because Sonic Youth rip it apart. Emily Maguire was hooked because once she was in love with chaos.

Their sound is caustic, elemental, nihilistic--and quite unlike any other cult band ever to achieve rock godhood. In "Noise," twenty-one great literary voices offer short fiction based on or inspired by songs from Sonic Youth--a raucous coupling of music and literature featuring marrow-colored goo, severed hands and abandoned babies, Patty Hearst watching the apocalypse on TV, and other unruly images of the Zeitgeist.

Contributors
Hiag Akmakjian - Christopher Coake - Katherine Dunn - Mary Gaitskill - Rebecca Godfrey - Laird Hunt - Shelley Jackson - J. Robert Lennon - Samuel Ligon - Emily Maguire - Tom McCarthy - Scott Mebus - Eileen Myles - Catherine O'Flynn - Emily Carter Roiphe - Kevin Sampsell - Steven Sherrill - Matt Thorne - Rachel Trezise - Jess Walter - Peter Wild

The early American West has been depicted in art as a land of harsh struggles, a place of heavenly miracles, and everything in between. Different Travellers, Different Eyes records impressions of life on the nineteenth-and early twentieth-century American frontier by twenty-one artists better known for their paintings, sculptures, and photographs. Most but not all the selections come from journals or diaries kept during trips to the West.

Thomas Moran, for instance, notes what others must have felt, that "the impression then made upon me by the stupendous and remarkable manifestations of nature's forces will remain with me as long as memory lasts". That impression of grandeur echoes the vast and dramatic canvasses Moran created on his trips west.

Different Travellers, Different Eyes is not an art history book. The narrators are not art historians. Their works adorn the walls of museums, fill the pages of art books, fetch large sums at auction, and (as reproductions) illustrate histories of the early American West. Chances are slim, however, that the casual reader has read a word these artists wrote. This gathering brings the best of this literary art out of the shadows.

The opalescent deserts of the American Southwest have become romantic icons in the public imagination through the words of writers, the images of artists and photographers, and the visual storytelling of filmmakers. In this spirited, personal, beautifully written book, Peter Wild explores the lives and works of sixteen writers whose words have shaped our visions of the opal desert.

Wild begins with Cabeza de Vaca, whose Relacion of his desert wanderings sent treasure-hungry Spaniards searching for cities of gold. He goes on to discuss the works of both widely read and lesser-known nineteenth- and twentieth-century authors, including such luminaries as Mary Austin, Joseph Wood Krutch, Edward Abbey, Ann Zwinger, and Charles Bowden. He links all the writers as explorers of one kind or another, searching for tangible or intangible treasures, some finding and some losing their dreams in the opal desert.

Burnished copper mesas, pricked cacti, and hunched Joshua trees in the Mojave Desert stand as timeless witnesses to the evolution of the Western landscape, once the territory of ancient native tribes and now a high speed transportation corridor linking the sleek metropolises of Los Angeles and Las Vegas. Rising from the Mojave sands along with those more familiar physical elements are fifty-five narratives gathered here by Peter Wild that chronicle the evolving character and landscape of a legendary region of the American West.
"True Tales of the Mojave" is the first literary anthology to explore the place of the Mojave Desert, both past and present, in the American imagination. Wild provides engaging readings--ranging chronologically from prehistoric origin myths of native people to contemporary literature--that will delight readers drawn to the rich lore of the Mojave. The volume also captures the alien yet arresting beauty of the desert with a thirty-two-page galley of black-and-white illustrations and photographs featuring the people and places of the Mojave. "True Tales of the Mojave" unearths evocative writings that plumb the depths of this mythic desert of the American West.

Since its first appearance in 1901, John C. Van Dyke's "The Desert" has been considered one of the classics of American nature writing. Before its publication, Americans thought of deserts as scorpion-infested wastelands--with names like Devil's Domain and the Lands That God Forgot. All this changed as "The Desert" drew attention to the extraordinary beauty that existed in the American West: rolling sand dunes, golden vistas, vibrant sunsets, and remarkable plant and animal life. Van Dyke's book captured the nation's imagination at a time when attitudes about the land were changing. It provided a vocabulary that continues to be used as appreciation of deserts increases and ever greater pressures lead to new calls to protect these fragile environments.

With a critical introduction by Peter Wild, this edition offers new insights--and reveals some surprising truths--about this legendary author and his best known work. Van Dyke was not, it seems, the "plaster saint of the desert." He was not entirely honest with his readers about the journeys that inspired the book, and his natural history includes serious errors. But in this more informed reading, Wild notes, Van Dyke "emerges as all the more fascinating a writer and his famous book becomes far more intriguing than most readers have imagined through the decades." As the centennial of its publication approaches and the complex story behind its long success is finally told, this new edition of "The Desert" reveals an equally complex and dramatic narrative: our changing relationship with the American landscape.

"Van Dyke came at just the right time... No sooner had Americans conquered the wilderness, cut down the forests, and slaughtered the buffalo than the romantic nation began sentimentalizing the past, longing for what it had just destroyed."--from the Introduction

An ardent early suffragette, Edna Brush Perkins set out in 1920 with her friend, Charlotte Hannahs Jordan, to journey into the Mojave, both women seeking to escape civilization and their struggle to secure voting rights for women. The Mojave at that time was considered to be a desolate, inaccessible region--part of the fading American frontier. Originally published in 1922, The White Heart of Mojave is Perkins' account of this journey.

Perkins' evocative writing describes the landscape and the people she encounters. As editor Peter Wild writes, this is ultimately the story of two wealthy women who enter Death Valley "as a sort of middle-aged lark" and "emerge from the trip profoundly changed."