Digital cities constitutes a multidisciplinary field of research and development, where researchers, designers and developers of communityware interact and collaborate with social scientists studying the use and effects of these kinds of infrastructures and systems in their local application context. The field is rather young. After the diffusion of ICT in the world of organizations and companies, ICT entered everyday life. And this also influenced ICT research and development. The 1998 Workshop on Communityware and Social Interaction in Kyoto was an early meeting in which this emerging field was discussed. After that, two subsequent Digital Cities workshops were organized in Kyoto, and a third one in Amsterdam. This book is the result of the 3rd Workshop on Digital Cities, which took place September 18 19, 2003 in Amsterdam, in conjunction with the 1st Communities and Technologies Conference. Most of the papers were presented at this workshop, and were revised thoroughly afterwards. Also the case studies of digital cities in Asia, the US, and Europe, included in Part I, were direct offsprings of the Digital Cities Workshops. Together the papers in this volume give an interesting state-of-the-art overview of the field. In total 54 authors from the Americas, from Asia, and from Europe were contributed to this volume. The authors come from Brazil (two), the USA (eleven), China (three), Japan (fourteen), Finland (two), Germany (two), Italy (three), Portugal (two), the Netherlands (eight), and the UK (seven), indicating the international nature of the research field."

Power Electronics Device Applications of Diamond Semiconductors presents state-of-the-art research on diamond growth, doping, device processing, theoretical modeling and device performance. The book begins with a comprehensive and close examination of diamond crystal growth from the vapor phase for epitaxial diamond and wafer preparation. It looks at single crystal vapor deposition (CVD) growth sectors and defect control, ultra high purity SC-CVD, SC diamond wafer CVD, heteroepitaxy on Ir/MqO and needle-induced large area growth, also discussing the latest doping and semiconductor characterization methods, fundamental material properties and device physics. The book concludes with a discussion of circuits and applications, featuring the switching behavior of diamond devices and applications, high frequency and high temperature operation, and potential applications of diamond semiconductors for high voltage devices.