Description: This book presents the first broad look at the rapidly emerging field of data-intensive science, with the goal of influencing the worldwide scientific and computing research communities and inspiring the next generation of scientists. Increasingly, scientific breakthroughs will be powered by advanced computing capabilities that help researchers manipulate and explore massive datasets. The speed at which any given scientific discipline advances will depend on how well its researchers collaborate with one another, and with technologists, in areas of eScience such as databases, workflow management, visualization, and cloud-computing technologies. This collection of essays expands on the vision of pioneering computer scientist Jim Gray for a new, fourth paradigm of discovery based on data-intensive science and offers insights into how it can be fully realized.

Description: Focuses on computer languages as tools for data management
Providing key information on how to work with research data, Introduction to Data Technologies presents ideas and techniques for performing critical, behind-the-scenes tasks that take up so much time and effort yet typically receive little attention in formal education. With a focus on computational tools, the book shows readers how to improve their awareness of what tasks can be achieved and describes the correct approach to perform these tasks.

Description: The main theme of the AMCTM 2008 conference, reinforced by the establishment of IMEKO TC21, was to provide a central opportunity for the metrology and testing community worldwide to engage with applied mathematicians, statisticians and software engineers working in the relevant fields.

Description: Technological advances are enabling scientists to collect vast amounts of data in fields such as medicine, remote sensing, astronomy, and high-energy physics. These data arise not only from experiments and observations, but also from computer simulations of complex phenomena. They are often complex, with both spatial and temporal components. As a result, it has become impractical to manually explore, analyze, and understand the data. Scientific Data Mining: A Practical Perspective describes how techniques from the multi-disciplinary field of data mining can be used to address the modern problem of data overload in science and engineering domains.

Description: A large number of scientists and engineers employ Monte Carlo simulation and related global optimization techniques (such as simulated annealing) as an essential tool in their work. For such scientists, there is a need to keep up to date with several recent advances in Monte Carlo methodologies such as cluster methods, data- augmentation, simulated tempering and other auxiliary variable methods. There is also a trend in moving towards a population-based approach. All these advances in one way or another were motivated by the need to sample from very complex distribution for which traditional methods would tend to be trapped in local energy minima. It is our aim to provide a self-contained and up to date treatment of the Monte Carlo method to this audience.

Description: Recent trends have shown increasing privatization of standardization activities under various corporations, trade associations, and consortia, raising significant public policy issues about how the public interest may be represented.

Standardization and Digital Enclosure: The Privatization of Standards, Knowledge, and Policy in the Age of Global Information Technology establishes a framework of analysis for public policy discussion and debate. Discussing topics such as social practices and political economic discourse, this book offers a truly interdisciplinary approach to standardization and privatization valuable to technical, economic, and political researchers and practitioners, as well as academicians involved in related fields.

Description: Master the essential skills for designing and conducting a successful research project

Essentials of Research Design and Methodology contains practical information on how to design and conduct scientific research in the behavioral and social sciences. This accessible guide covers basic to advanced concepts in a clear, concrete, and readable style.

Description: Qualitative research is designed to explore the human elements of a given topic, while specific qualitative methods examine how individuals see and experience the world. Qualitative approaches are typically used to explore new phenomena and to capture individuals’ thoughts, feelings, or interpretations of meaning and process. Such methods are central to research conducted in education, nursing, sociology, anthropology, information studies, and other disciplines in the humanities, social sciences, and health sciences. Qualitative research projects are informed by a wide range of methodologies and theoretical frameworks.

Description: Quasi-Monte Carlo methods have become an increasingly popular alternative to Monte Carlo methods over the last two decades. Their successful implementation on practical problems, especially in finance, has motivated the development of several new research areas within this field to which practitioners and researchers from various disciplines currently contribute.

Description: Recent developments in the technology of silicon nanocrystals and silicon nanostructures, where quantum-size effects are important, are systematically described including examples of device applications. Due to the strong quantum confinement effect, the material properties are freed from the usual indirect- or direct-bandgap regime, and the optical, electrical, thermal, and chemical properties of these nanocrystalline and nanostructured semiconductors are drastically changed from those of bulk silicon. In addition to efficient visible luminescence, various other useful material functions are induced in nanocrystalline silicon and periodic silicon nanostructures. Some novel devices and applications, in fields such as photonics (electroluminescence diode, microcavity, and waveguide), electronics (single-electron device, spin transistor, nonvolatile memory, and ballistic electron emitter), acoustics, and biology, have been developed by the use of these quantum-induced functions in ways different from the conventional scaling principle for ULSI.