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Most of modern enterprises, institutions, and organizations rely on knowledge-based management systems. In these systems, knowledge is gained from data analysis. Nowadays, knowledge-based management systems include data warehouses as their core components. The purpose of building a data warehouse is twofold. Firstly, to integrate multiple heterogeneous, autonomous, and distributed data sources within an enterprise. Secondly, to provide a platform for advanced, complex, and efficient data analysis. Data integrated in a data warehouse are analyzed by the so-called On-Line Analytical Processing (OLAP) applications designed among others for discovering trends, patterns of behavior, and anomalies as well as for finding dependencies between data. Massive amounts of integrated data and the complexity of integrated data that more and more often come from WEB-based, XML-based, spatio-temporal, object, and multimedia systems, make data integration and processing challenging.

The objective of NEW TRENDS IN DATA WAREHOUSING AND DATA ANALYSIS is fourfold: First, to bring together the most recent research and practical achievements in the DW and OLAP technologies. Second, to open and discuss new, just emerging areas of further development. Third, to provide the up-to-date bibliography of published works and the resource of research achievements for anyone interested in up-to-date data warehouse issues. And, finally, to assist in the dissemination of knowledge in the field of advanced DW and OLAP.

Stanislaw Kozielski works as a professor at the Silesian University of Technology, Poland.  In 1977 he earned his Ph.D. in computer science (model building for information systems). In 1988 he received the D.Sc. in computer science (database design), and in 1997 he received the professor title in computer science. Between 1971-1991 and 2002-2007 he took part in several research, academic and industrial projects on softwaretools design, databases, information systems design, and information technologies. Between 1991-1996 he was the vice-dean and in 1996-2002 he was the dean of the Faculty of Automatic Control, Electronics and Computer Science of the Silesian University of Technology. His main research areas encompass databases (design, query languages), data warehouse technologies (efficiency, multidimensional modeling), and distributed processing (database query).

Dr. hab. Robert Wrembel is an Assistant Professor in the Institute of Computing Science at Poznan University of Technology, Poland. In 2008 he received the post-doctoral degree in computer science, specializing in database systems and data warehouses. He was elected a deputy dean of the Faculty of Computing Science and Management for the period Sept. 2008 - Aug. 2011. Since 1996 he has been actively involved in five research projects on databases and four industrial projects in the field of information technologies. He has paid a number of visits to research and education centers, including INRIA Paris-Rocquencourt (France), the Paris Dauphine University (France), Klagenfurt University (Austria), and Loyola University (USA). His main research interests encompass data warehouse technologies (temporal, multiversion, object-relational) and object-oriented systems (views, data access optimization, methods and views materialization).

This book is based on a series of lectures for a course on ionic channels held in Santiago, Chile, on November 17-20, 1984. It is intended as a tutorial guide on the properties, function, modulation, and reconstitution of ionic channels, and it should be accessible to graduate students taking their first steps in this field. In the presentation there has been a deliberate emphasis on the spe­ cific methodologies used toward the understanding of the workings and function of channels. Thus, in the first section, we learn to "read" single­ channel records: how to interpret them in the theoretical frame of kinetic models, which information can be extracted from gating currents in re­ lation to the closing and opening processes, and how ion transport through an open channel can be explained in terms of fluctuating energy barriers. The importance of assessing unequivocally the origin and purity of mem­ brane preparations and the use of membrane vesicles and optical tech­ niques in the stUGY of ionic channels are also discussed in this section. The patch-clamp technique has made it possible to study ion channels in a variety of different cells and tissues not amenable to more conven­ tional electrophysiological methods. The second section, therefore, deals with the use of this technique in the characterization of ionic channels in different types of cells, ranging from plant protoplasts to photoreceptors.

This book is formulated from the papers presented at the International Symposium on "Membrane Biochemistry and Bioenergetics," held at the Rensselaerville Institute, Rensselaerville, New York, August 1986, in honor of Tsoo E. King on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of reconstitution of arespiratory chain system by Professor David Keilin and Tsoo E. King. Professor Tsoo E. King, to whom this volume is dedicated, has made enormous contributions to the field of isolation and reconstitution of membrane proteins and has continued to explore the frontiers of bioener­ getics. In particular, his persistent proposals on the existence of ubiquinone binding proteins from conceptualization to experimentation eventually convinced many scientists to study these proteins further . Professor King's preparation of reconstitutively active succinate dehydrogenase opened a new avenue in the fie1d of membrane bioenergetics, and his work has been greatly appreciated. The purpose of the symposium was to bring together scientists from diverse disciplines related to membrane bioenergetics to discuss the recent developments in the field. This symposium, initiated by the Capital District Bioenergetics Group, was attended by 100 scientists, 80 of whom presented their recent discoveries. The symposium was arranged in a sequence of platform lectures, poster presentations and discussion sessions so that all the participants had opportunities to discuss the subjects presented. Most of the participants contributed a chapter to this volume. We would like to express our regret to many other scientists including Professor King's friends, colleagues and students who could not attend due to various reasons.

Critical Issues in Mathematics Education presents the significant contributions of Professor Alan Bishop within the mathematics education research community. Six critical issues, each of which have had paramount importance in the development of mathematics education research, are reviewed and include a discussion of current developments in each area.

Teacher decision making, spatial/visualizing geometry, teachers and research, cultural/social aspects of mathematics education, socio political issues, and values serve as the basic issues discussed in this examination of mathematics education over the last fifty years during which Professor Bishop has been active in the field.

A comprehensive discussion of each of these topics is realized by offering the reader a classic research contribution of Professor Bishop's together with commentary and invited chapters from leading experts in the field of mathematics education.

Critical Issues in Mathematics Education will make an invaluable contribution to the ongoing reflection of mathematic education researchers worldwide, but also to policy makers and teacher educators who wish to understand some of the key issues with which mathematics education has been and still is concerned, and the context within which Professor Bishop's key contributions to these research issues were made.

From the reviews:

Machine Conversationsis a collection of some of the best research available in the practical arts of machine conversation. The book describes various attempts to create practical and flexible machine conversation - ways of talking to computers in an unrestricted version of English or some other language. While this book employs and advances the theory of dialogue and its linguistic underpinnings, the emphasis is on practice, both in university research laboratories and in company research and development. Since the focus is on the task and on the performance, this book provides some of the first-rate work taking place in industry, quite apart from the academic tradition. It also reveals striking and relevant facts about the tone of machine conversations and closely evaluates what users require. Machine Conversations is an excellent reference for researchers interested in computational linguistics, cognitive science, natural language processing, artificial intelligence, human computer interfaces and machine learning.

Uncertainty has been of concern to engineers, managers and . scientists for many centuries. In management sciences there have existed definitions of uncertainty in a rather narrow sense since the beginning of this century. In engineering and uncertainty has for a long time been considered as in sciences, however, synonymous with random, stochastic, statistic, or probabilistic. Only since the early sixties views on uncertainty have ~ecome more heterogeneous and more tools to model uncertainty than statistics have been proposed by several scientists. The problem of modeling uncertainty adequately has become more important the more complex systems have become, the faster the scientific and engineering world develops, and the more important, but also more difficult, forecasting of future states of systems have become. The first question one should probably ask is whether uncertainty is a phenomenon, a feature of real world systems, a state of mind or a label for a situation in which a human being wants to make statements about phenomena, i. e. , reality, models, and theories, respectively. One cart also ask whether uncertainty is an objective fact or just a subjective impression which is closely related to individual persons. Whether uncertainty is an objective feature of physical real systems seems to be a philosophical question. This shall not be answered in this volume.

Over the past decade, techniques have been developed and implemented to observe metabolism noninvasively in localized regions of intact, living experimental animals and humans through the use of magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS). At the same time, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) techniques developed in the 1970s and refined in this decade have been increasingly applied as a powerful clinical tool to probe human anatomy. Because of the unusual metabolic and physiologic characteristics of malignant tissues, oncology has been one of the primary focuses of the application of both MRS and MRI. Although considerable progress has been made in oncologic applications of magnetic resonance (MR), further research is needed to realize the full potential of MR in this area. Consequently, the 21st Annual Detroit Cancer Symposium entitled "Magnetic Resonance in Experimental and Clin­ ical Oncology" was organized to provide a forum for researchers in the field to report the state of the art of MRS and MRI in oncol­ ogy, to discuss future goals for MRS and MRI in oncology, and to define the research needed to meet those goals. The major emphasis of the symposium was on MRS due to both the recent widespread availability of clinical MRS instrumentation and the extensive amount of animal MRS research performed over the past half decade.

This volume represents the proceedings of a NATO Advanced Study Institute held at Noto, Sicily June 8-19, 1987. The director was Giovanni Gallavotti, Roma, with co-directors Marcello Anile, Catania and P. F. Zweifel, Virginia Tech. Other members of the scientific organizing committee included Mitchell Feigenbaum, Rockefeller University and David Ruelle, IHES. The attendance at the school consisted of 23 invited speakers and approximately 80 "students", the term student being in quotation marks because many of them were of post-doctoral or even professorial status, although there were also a goodly number of actual graduate students in attendance also. Because of the disparate background of these "students", it was felt advisable to include at the conference special tutorials each afternoon, in which the contents of the morning's lectures were reviewed and clarified as necessary. These tutorials, organized by Gallavotti, involved various of the speakers, organizers, and other senior members of the school, and contributed in no little way to the overall success of the school. The organizers of the school would like to take this opportunity to thank all of those who assisted in these sessions, and to assure them that the results were definitely worth the effort. Also contributing to the success of the school were a number of contributed papers, presented during the course of the afternoon tutorials. Three of those papers are included in these proceedings; they are the papers of DiFrancesco; Gallimbeni, Miari and Sertorio (presented by Sertorio); and Vittot.

Many are addicted. Few are treated. Yet many who are not treated recover. Promoting Self-Change from Addictive Behaviors examines natural recovery as a clinical phenomenon, a field of inquiry, and a vital component of therapy. It also brings clinicians and counselors to a new understanding of addiction and recovery.

One of the few books on the topic, this volume offers alternatives to disease models of addiction by exploring personal pathways to recovery. Focusing on alcohol and drug problems, it provides a literature review of 40 years of studies on self-change with particular emphasis on the current decade and methodological issues (starting with how much or how little treatment constitutes "treatment"). The 24 experts keep the coverage consistently readable, and dozens of brief narratives from individuals who have successfully recovered from an addictive behavior without formal help lend valuable personal perspectives.

More of the book's key features:

• Core factors in self-change, from cognitive processes to social issues
• Case examples of natural recovery from smoking, binge eating, problem gambling, and criminal behavior
• Redefining the role of treatment in changing addictive behaviors
• Cross-cultural, community, and prevention perspectives on promoting self-change
• "Self-change toolbox" chapter offering assessment tools, recovery strategies, web links, and other online resources

With Promoting Self-Change from Addictive Behaviors, health care professionals and researchers (from psychologists and social workers to nurses, sociologists, and physicians) can find more effective methods to fit client needs, and develop new insights into the recovery process. Public health workers and policymakers will also find informative strategies for tapping this richtherapeutic resource.

From the reviews:

"This discussion of how individuals recover from additive behaviors using self-change strategies delves into what actually constitutes 'treatment,' and how addicted people have recovered on their own without a formal program. ? It is intended for use as a reference by researchers, healthcare practitioners, public health specialists, and alcohol and drug policy makers." (Gary B. Kaniuk, Doody's Review Service, February, 2008)

"... a landmark in the field of addiction research. ... Appeal[s] to researchers and practitioners alike, stimulating thoughts about processes of change that can be examined in research and utilized in practice. ... This book is destined to become a classic...." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2008 APA, July 23, 2008, Vol. 53, Release 30)

Over the last fifty years, increasingly sophisticated risk measurement and management techniques have revolutionized the field of finance. More recently, the globalization of financial markets and policy changes in the regulation of financial institutions have impacted upon how commercial banks manage risk. The widespread implications of these fundamental changes prompted an international conference held in May, 1997, devoted to the topic of risk management and regulation in banking. This book contains the formal papers and the panel discussions that comprise the conference proceedings, and thus collects some of the latest research on managing financial market risk by top scholars, policymakers, and high-ranking banking officials from around the world.

General Theory.- Linear and Nonlinear Response Theory with Applications.- Conductivity via Nonequilibrium Statistical Physics.- Aspects of Linear and Nonlinear Electronic Conduction in Dissipative Media.- On the Electronic Transport in Polar Solids.- Theory and Application of Inverse Transport Coefficients.- Metals and Semiconductors.- Interacting Electron Gas in Metals.- Effects of Correlations on the Conductivity of Electron-Hole Plasmas.- Aspects of Transport in Liquid Metals.- Structural Effects on Superconductivity.- Classical Transport in Small-Gap Semiconductors.- Amorphous Semiconductors.- Solved and Unsolved Problems for Non-Crystalline Materials.- Theory of Hopping Conductivity in Disordered Semiconductors.- Hopping Transport in High Electric Fields.- The Formation and Motion of Small Polarons.- Electronic Properties of Amorphous Semiconductors.- Seminars.- Functional Integrals.- Some Recent Findings in Noise Theory and their Implications for Transport Processes.- Low Frequency Fluctuations in Electronic Transport Phenomena.- Electron-Hole Liquid Condensation in Semiconductors.- Thermodynamic and Transport Properties in the Hubbard Model.- Optical Determination of Hot Carrier Distribution Functions.- Special Seminar.- Softons, Softarons and Bisoftarons in Amorphous Solids.

As part of its EU strategy, the Swiss government commissioned several research projects covering the most important aspects of economic integration. Given the interesting results and the wealth of methods used in these studies we decided to organize a conference on the topic of 'The Economic Impact of EU Membership on Entrants: New Methods and Issues". The idea was to use the work on Switzerland as a case study for discussing modern approaches on how to assess the economic effects of joining an integration zone. This seemed to us to be a topic of considerable interest for the rising number of prospective EU-member countries. The response was very favourable with many eminent scholars agreeing to contribute. The conference took place in Lausanne, Switzerland in October 1999 and the papers submitted together with the discussions are published in this volume. We would like to acknowledge the financial support of the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs and to thank the University of Lausanne for providing the venue facilities for the conference. Many persons helped in the preparation of the conference and this volume but we would like to especially mention Marc Surchat who provided substantial input for the conference and Walter Brodmann who very efficiently reviewed and finalized the manuscript. The Editors RICHARD E. BALDWIN AND A YMO BRUNETTI THE ECONOMIC IMPACT OF EU MEMBERSHIP ON ENTRANTS: NEW METHODS AND ISSUES INTRODUCTION What a transformation Europe has witnessed in the past 15 years.

Intelligent Image Databases: Towards Advanced Image Retrieval addresses the image feature selection issue in developing content-based image retrieval systems. The book first discusses the four important issues in developing a complete content-based image retrieval system, and then demonstrates that image feature selection has significant impact on the remaining issues of system design. Next, it presents an in-depth literature survey on typical image features explored by contemporary content-based image retrieval systems for image matching and retrieval purposes. The goal of the survey is to determine the characteristics and the effectiveness of individual features, so as to establish guidelines for future development of content-based image retrieval systems. Intelligent Image Databases: Towards Advanced Image Retrieval describes the Advanced Region-Based Image Retrieval System (ARBIRS) developed by the authors for color images of real-world scenes. They have selected image regions for building ARBIRS as the literature survey suggests that prominent image regions, along with their associated features, provide a higher probability for achieving a higher level content-based image retrieval system. A major challenge in building a region-based image retrieval system is that prominent regions are rather difficult to capture in an accurate and error-free condition, particularly those in images of real-world scenes. To meet this challenge, the book proposes an integrated approach to tackle the problem via feature capturing, feature indexing, and database query. Through comprehensive system evaluation, it is demonstrated how these systematically integrated efforts work effectively to accomplish advanced image retrieval. Intelligent Image Databases: Towards Advanced Image Retrieval serves as an excellent reference and may be used as a text for advanced courses on the topic.

Productivity, Technology and Economic Growth presents a selection of recent research advances on long term economic growth. While the contributions stem from both economic history, macro- and microeconomics and the economics of innovation, all papers depart from a common viewpoint: the key factor behind long term growth is productivity, and the latter is primarily driven by technological change. Most contributions show implicitly or explicitly that technological change is at least partly dependent on growth itself. Furthermore, technology appears to interact strongly with investment in physical and human capital as well as with changes in historical, political and institutional settings. Together these papers are an up-to-date account of the remarkable convergence in theoretical and empirical work on productivity and growth over the past decades. The first part deals with the characteristics of growth regimes over longer periods, ranging from 20 years to two centuries. The next four chapters study the determinants of productivity growth and, in some cases, productivity slowdown during the last quarter of the twentieth century. The final five chapters focus on the role of technology and innovation as the key determinants of growth. Productivity, Technology and Economic Growth is, therefore, a welcome collection for academic scholars and graduate students in economics, history and related social sciences as well as for policy makers.