PDF CHM Books Catalogue

Pro Android

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 08:14:22 GMT

At a high level, this book is about writing mobile applications for devices that support the Android Platform. Specifically, the book teaches you how to write applications using the Android SDK.

Who This Book Is For

This book is for software developers interested in writing mobile applications with the Android SDK. Because Android is a fairly new technology, anyone interested in building mobile applications using the Java™ platform will also benefit from this book. In addition, software architects and business-development professionals can use this book to get an understanding of the Android Platform’s capabilities.

Pro Hadoop

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 08:13:02 GMT

You’ve heard the hype about Hadoop: it runs petabyte–scale data mining tasks insanely fast, it runs gigantic tasks on clouds for absurdly cheap, it’s been heavily committed to by tech giants like IBM, Yahoo!, and the Apache Project, and it’s completely open source (thus free). But what exactly is it, and more importantly, how do you even get a Hadoop cluster up and running?

From Apress, the name you’ve come to trust for hands–on technical knowledge, Pro Hadoop brings you up to speed on Hadoop. You learn the ins and outs of MapReduce; how to structure a cluster, design, and implement the Hadoop file system; and how to build your first cloud–computing tasks using Hadoop. Learn how to let Hadoop take care of distributing and parallelizing your software—you just focus on the code, Hadoop takes care of the rest.

Best of all, you’ll learn from a tech professional who’s been in the Hadoop scene since day one. Written from the perspective of a principal engineer with down–in–the–trenches knowledge of what to do wrong with Hadoop, you learn how to avoid the common, expensive first errors that everyone makes with creating their own Hadoop system or inheriting someone else’s.

Skip the novice stage and the expensive, hard–to–fix mistakes...go straight to seasoned pro on the hottest cloud–computing framework with Pro Hadoop. Your productivity will blow your managers away.

What you’ll learn

Set up a stand–alone Hadoop cluster the smart way, laid out simply and step by step so you can get up and running quickly to build your next data center, collaborative, data–intensive Internet services application, Software as a Service (SaaS), and more.
Optimize your Hadoop production tasks like an experienced pro.
Work with time–proven, bulletproof standard patterns that have been tested and debugged in high–volume production.
Understand just enough theoretical knowledge to know why something works in Hadoop, without getting bogged down in abstruse walls of theory.
Get detailed explanations of not only how to do something with Hadoop, but also why, from a front–line coder with years in the Hadoop game.
Turn someone else’s expensive cluster–wide “wrong” into an orderly, productive "right" with professional–level debugging and testing.

About the Author

Jason Venner has 20+ years of software engineering, managing, designing, and coding. He has been a VP, director, and consultant. Currently, his interests and expertise are in Java, Hadoop, cloud computing, and more. For more, visit www.prohadoopbook.com.

Nonviolence and Peace Psychology (Peace Psychology Book Series)

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 08:11:45 GMT

Recent trends and events worldwide have increased public interest in nonviolence, pacifism, and peace psychology as well as professional interest across the social sciences. "Nonviolence and Peace Psychology" assembles multiple perspectives to create a more comprehensive and nuanced understanding of the concepts and phenomena of nonviolence than is usually seen on the subject. Through this diverse literature - spanning psychology, political science, religious studies, anthropology, and sociology - peace psychologist Dan Mayton gives readers the opportunity to view nonviolence as a body of principles, a system of pragmatics, and a strategy for social change. This important volume draws critical distinctions between nonviolence, pacifism, and related concepts. It classifies nonviolence in terms of its scope (intrapersonal, interpersonal, societal, global) and pacifism according to political and situational dimensions. It applies standard psychological concepts such as beliefs, motives, dispositions, and values to define nonviolent actions and behaviors. It brings sociohistorical and cross-cultural context to peace psychology. It analyzes a century's worth of nonviolent social action, from the pathbreaking work of Gandhi and King to the Courage to Refuse movement within the Israeli armed forces. It reviews methodological and measurement issues in nonviolence research, and suggests areas for future study. Although more attention is traditionally devoted to violence and aggression within the social sciences, "Nonviolence and Peace Psychology" reveals a robust knowledge base and a framework for peacebuilding work, granting peace psychologists, activists, and mediators new possibilities for the transformative power of nonviolence.

An Introduction to Fronts in Random Media (Surveys and Tutorials in the Applied Mathematical Sciences)

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 08:11:35 GMT

The aim of this book is to give a user friendly tutorial of an interdisciplinary research topic (fronts in random media) to senior undergraduates and beginning graduate students with basic knowledge of partial differential equations (PDE) and probability. The approach taken is semi-formal, using elementary methods to introduce ideas and motivate results as much as possible, then outlining how to pursue rigorous theorems with details found in references of the bibliography. As the topic concerns both differential equations and probability, yet probability is traditionally a technical subject with heavy measure theoretical treatment, the book strives to develop a simplistic approach so students can grasp the essentials of fronts and random media and their applications in a self-contained tutorial. The scope of the book goes from wave properties of scalar deterministic PDEs (Burgers, Hamilton-Jacobi, reaction-diffusion etc.) to the asymptotic analysis of their stochastic versions.

Pro SQL Server 2008 Analytics: Delivering Sales and Marketing Dashboards

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 08:04:44 GMT

Pro SQL Server 2008 Analytics provides everything you need to know to develop sophisticated and visually appealing sales and marketing dashboards using SQL Server 2008 and to integrate those dashboards with SharePoint, PerformancePoint, and other key Microsoft technologies.

The book begins by addressing the many misconceptions that surround the use of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and giving a brief overview of the business intelligence (BI) and reporting tools that can be combined on the Microsoft platform to help you generate the results that you need.

The focus of the book is to help you implement a successful business intelligence project of your own. The text discusses many of the required project planning components, provides overviews and examples associated with Microsoft’s BI tools, and gives detailed examples of successful dashboard implementations.

What you’ll learn

The key functional and technical components of a successful report/dashboard implementation
What Microsoft tools are provided both within and without SQL Server 2008 to help you achieve an integrated solution
How to determine whether your performance indicators are correct for your business and how to roll them out to your organization in an effective way

About the Author

Brian Paulen cofounded Madrona Solutions Group in July 2005. He has overall responsibility for the firm’s growing business and for managing client and partner relationships. Additionally, Brian works to ensure that Madrona can offer an exciting and challenging environment for its employees. He has extensive project and program management experience, and is an expert in delivering strategic sales and marketing solutions. Prior to founding Madrona Solutions, Brian was the director of the CRM practice at Two Degrees Consulting. There, he had overall responsibility for sales and client delivery of CRM solutions. Earlier, Brian was a member of the CRM team at Equarius (now Interlink Group), working primarily with clients in the Pacific Northwest. His career began at Accenture (formerly Andersen Consulting), working out of their New York office. Brian holds Bachelor of Arts degrees in political science and international business from Lehigh University.

Jeff Finken cofounded Madrona Solutions Group in July 2005 and brings years of experience to his role as director of Madrona’s BI practice. He particularly focuses on working with sales, marketing, and IT leaders to define KPIs that drive improved organizational performance. Prior to joining Madrona, Jeff led and delivered BI projects while at Deloitte Consulting and Onyx Software. Specific clients have included Microsoft, Paccar, Pemco, Expedia, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Beginning Android

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 08:02:51 GMT

Learn how to develop applications for Android mobile devices using simple examples, ready to run with your copy of the SDK. Author and Android columnist, writer, developer, and community advocate Mark L Murphy shows you what you need to know to get started on programming Android applications–everything from crafting GUIs to using GPS, accessing web services, and more!

The Android development platform, created by Google and the Open Handset Alliance, is a platform in its truest sense, encompassing hundreds of classes beyond the traditional Java classes and open source components that ship with the SDK. Some Android books race through the material, trying to cover as much ground as possible in as few pages as possible. Experienced writer and community advocate Mark Murphy shows you how to develop Android applications simply and with care.

The book includes dozens of sample projects, ready to run with your copy of the SDK–not just one huge project where you have difficulty finding the specific examples of the technique you are looking for. You can even get these sample programs online at Apress.com.

What you'll learn

Discover what Android is and how to use Android to build Java-based mobile applications for Google Phones G1 and more phones as they hit the market
Work with the new Android 1.x SDK
Create user interfaces using both the Android Widget framework and the built-in WebKit-powered web browser components
Use scripting with BeanShell
Work with menu inflation, fonts, SDK tools, rotation events, and more
Work with TabActivity, MyLocationOverlay, DDMS, and more
Utilize the distinctive capabilities of the Android engine including maps, Internet access, integrated search, media playback, and more
Use and create similar sample Android applications for services, content providers, mapping, and location-based services/events

About the Author

Mark Murphy is the founder of CommonsWare and the author of The Busy Coder's Guide to Android Development. A three-time entrepreneur, his experience ranges from consulting on open source and collaborative development for Fortune 500 companies to application development on just about anything smaller than a mainframe. He has been a software developer for over 25 years, working on platforms ranging from the TRS-80 to the latest crop of mobile devices. A polished speaker, Mark has delivered conference presentations and training sessions on a wide array of topics internationally.

Mark writes the "Building Droids" column for AndroidGuys and the "Android Angle" column for NetworkWorld.

Outside of CommonsWare, Mark has an avid interest in how the Internet will play a role in citizen involvement with politics and government. He is a contributor to the Rebooting America essay collection, and his personal blog features many posts discussing "cooperative democracy."

Pro IronPython

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 08:02:41 GMT

I come from a background of static typing and rigid languages: C, C++, C#. I’m seeing more than one trend at work here. For the longest time I felt something of a warm, fuzzy sensation when it came to my programming. The data type on the left matched the data type on the right. All was well. Then Python walked through the door.

Python’s not the only game in town to use dynamic typing (also known as duck typing, which you will learn about in due time), but it did catch my eye and challenged my perspective as a programmer. “What is this? How does one accurately program anything in this fashion? Five hundred lines of code and not one duck! Python’s a liar.” A little unsettling, you can imagine.

Practical Django Projects, Second Edition

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 08:01:35 GMT

Build a django content management system, blog, and social networking site with James Bennett as he introduces version 1.1 of the popular Django framework.

You’ll work through the development of each project, implementing and running the applications while learning new features along the way.

Web frameworks are playing a major role in the creation of today’s most compelling web applications, because they automate many of the tedious tasks, allowing developers to instead focus on providing users with creative and powerful features. Python developers have been particularly fortunate in this area, having been able to take advantage of Django, a very popular open source web framework whose stated goal is to "make it easier to build better web applications more quickly with less code".

Practical Django Projects introduces this popular framework by way of a series of real–world projects. Readers follow along with the development of each project, implementing and running each application while learning new features along the way. This edition is updated for Django 1.1 and includes an all-new chapter covering practical development tools and techniques you'll be able to apply to your own development workflow.

About the Author

James Bennett is a web developer for the World Company of Lawrence, Kansas, and is a major contributor to the Django project. His current role within the Django community is as the software project’s release manager.

Intermediate Statistics For Dummies (Math & Science)

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 06:27:45 GMT

"style, language, layout,common sense, Minitab output, dire warnings,practicalities,examples,punchy headings and warmth of humour..." (MSOR Connections, Vol 8 No 1)

Need to know how to build and test models based on data? Intermediate Statistics For Dummies gives you the knowledge to estimate, investigate, correlate, and congregate certain variables based on the information at hand. The techniques you’ll learn in this book are the same techniques used by professionals in medical and scientific fields.

Picking up right where Statistics For Dummies left off, this straightforward, easy-to-follow book guides you beyond Central Limit Theorem and hypothesis tests and immerses you in flavors of regression, ANOVA, and nonparametric procedures. Unlike regular statistics books, this guide provides full explanations of intermediate statistical ideas; computer input dissection; an extensive number of examples, tips, strategies, and warnings; and clear, concise step-by-step procedures—all in a language you can understand. You’ll soon discover how to:

Analyze data and base models off of your data
Make predictions using regression
Compare many means with ANOVA
Test models using Chi-square
Dealing with abnormal data

In addition, this book includes a list of wrong statistical conclusions and common questions that professors ask using computer output. This book also adopts a nonlinear approach, making it possible to skip to the information you need without having to read previous chapters. With Intermediate Statistics For Dummies, you’ll have all the tools you need to make important decisions in all types of professional areas—from biology and engineering to business and politics!

About the Author

Deborah Rumsey has a PhD in Statistics from The Ohio State University (1993). She is a Statistics Education Specialist/Auxiliary Faculty Member for the Department of Statistics. Dr. Rumsey has been given the distinction of being named a Fellow of the American Statistical Association. She has also won the Presidential Teaching Award from Kansas State University. She is the author of Statistics For Dummies, Statistics Workbook For Dummies, and Probability For Dummies. She has published numerous papers and given many professional presentations on the subject of statistics education. Her passions include being with her family, bird watching, solving Sudoku puzzles, getting more seat time on her Kubota tractor, and cheering the Ohio State Buckeyes on to another National Championship.

Problems in Real Analysis: Advanced Calculus on the Real Axis

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 06:19:47 GMT

"Problems in Real Analysis: Advanced Calculus on the Real Axis" features a comprehensive collection of challenging problems in mathematical analysis that aim to promote creative, non-standard techniques for solving problems. This self-contained text offers a host of new mathematical tools and strategies which develop a connection between analysis and other mathematical disciplines, such as physics and engineering. A broad view of mathematics is presented throughout; the text is excellent for the classroom or self-study. It is intended for undergraduate and graduate students in mathematics, as well as for researchers engaged in the interplay between applied analysis, mathematical physics, and numerical analysis. Key features of this title are as mentioned below. It uses competition-inspired problems as a platform for training typical inventive skills. It develops basic valuable techniques for solving problems in mathematical analysis on the real axis and provides solid preparation for deeper study of real analysis. It includes numerous examples and interesting, valuable historical accounts of ideas and methods in analysis. It offers a systematic path to organizing a natural transition that bridges elementary problem-solving activity to independent exploration of new results and properties.

About the Author

Teodora-Liliana Radulescu received her PhD in 2005 from Babes-Bolyai University of Cluj-Napoca, Romania, with a thesis on nonlinear analysis, and she is currently a professor of mathematics at the "Fratii Buzesti" National College in Craiova, Romania. She is a member of the American Mathematical Society and the Romanian Mathematical Society. She is also a reviewer for Mathematical Reviews and Zentralblatt fur Mathematik. Vicentiu Radulescu received both his PhD and the Habilitation at the Universite Pierre et Marie Curie (Paris 6), and he is currently a professor of mathematics at the University of Craiova, Romania and a senior researcher at the Institute of Mathematics "Simion Stoilow" of the Romanian Academy in Bucharest, Romania. He has authored 9 books and over 100 articles. Titu Andreescu is an associate professor of mathematics at the University of Texas at Dallas. He is also firmly involved in mathematics contests and Olympiads, being the Director of AMC (as appointed by the Mathematical Association of America), Director of MOP, Head Coach of the USA IMO Team and Chairman of the USAMO. He has also authored a large number of books on the topic of problem solving and Olympiad-style mathematics.

Risk Analysis of Complex and Uncertain Systems (International Series in Operations Research & Management Science)

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 06:19:38 GMT

This book is motivated by the following convictions:

1) Quantitative risk assessment (QRA) can be a powerful discipline for improving risk management decisions and policies.
2) Poorly conducted QRAs can produce results and recommendations that are worse than useless.
3) Sound risk assessment methods provide the benefits of QRA modeling – being able to predict and compare the probable consequences of alternative actions, interventions, or policies and being able to identify those that make preferred consequences more probable – while avoiding the pitfalls.

This book develops and illustrates QRA methods for complex and uncertain biological, engineering, and social systems. These systems have behaviors that are too complex or uncertain to be modeled accurately in detail with high confidence. Practical applications include assessing and managing risks from chemical carcinogens, antibiotic resistance, mad cow disease, terrorist attacks, and accidental or deliberate failures in telecommunications network infrastructure.

Toward the Elimination of Cancer Disparities: Medical and Health Perspectives

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 06:19:29 GMT

The societal burden of cancer is one of the major public health challenges of our time, yet that burden is not equally shared by all. Troubling disparities have been documented not only by racial/ethnic group but also by social class, insurance status, geography, and a host of other factors. Furthermore, such disparities represent the end result of a constellation of forces stemming from both within the health care system and outside of it. Many currently existing cancer disparities are preventable. To date, few publications capture the breadth and depth of the dimensions of cancer disparities from both the clinical and public health perspective.In this volume, we will broaden concepts of disparities beyond traditional race/ethnicity discussions to explore a more systematic analysis of how, where, and why disparities occur across the cancer continuum. We will also analyze the issue of social disparities with respect to certain major cancers, with emphasis on the particular role of socioeconomic position. This volume reflects the work of a number of experts in cancer disparities, led by members of the Executive Committee of the Program-in-Development for the Dana Farber/Harvard Cancer Center. In particular, this volume updates and expands an earlier 2005 monograph on the topic published in the journal "Cancer Causes and Control" (Nancy Krieger PhD, Editor).

Classical Fourier Analysis (Graduate Texts in Mathematics)

Sun, 05 Jul 2009 15:06:13 GMT

The primary goal of this text is to present the theoretical foundation of the field of Fourier analysis. This book is mainly addressed to graduate students in mathematics and is designed to serve for a three-course sequence on the subject. The only prerequisite for understanding the text is satisfactory completion of a course in measure theory, Lebesgue integration, and complex variables. This book is intended to present the selected topics in some depth and stimulate further study. Although the emphasis falls on real variable methods in Euclidean spaces, a chapter is devoted to the fundamentals of analysis on the torus. This material is included for historical reasons, as the genesis of Fourier analysis can be found in trigonometric expansions of periodic functions in several variables.

While the 1st edition was published as a single volume, the new edition will contain 120 pp of new material, with an additional chapter on time-frequency analysis and other modern topics. As a result, the book is now being published in 2 separate volumes, the first volume containing the classical topics (Lp Spaces, Littlewood-Paley Theory, Smoothness, etc...), the second volume containing the modern topics (weighted inequalities, wavelets, atomic decomposition, etc...).

From a review of the first edition:

“Grafakos’s book is very user-friendly with numerous examples illustrating the definitions and ideas. It is more suitable for readers who want to get a feel for current research. The treatment is thoroughly modern with free use of operators and functional analysis. Morever, unlike many authors, Grafakos has clearly spent a great deal of time preparing the exercises.” - Ken Ross, MAA Online

Quantum Mechanics

Sun, 05 Jul 2009 15:03:36 GMT

Why yet another book on quantum mechanics? Quantum mechanics was born in the first quarter of the twentieth century and has received an enormous number of theoretical and experimental confirmations over the years. It is considered to be the fundamental physical paradigm, and has a wide range of applications, from cosmology to chemistry, and from biology to information sciences. It is one of the greatest intellectual achievements of the past century. As an effect of its invention, the very concept of physical reality was changed, and “observation,” “measurement,” “prediction,” and “state of the system” acquired a new and deeper meaning.

Probability was not unknown in physics: it was introduced by Boltzmann in order to control the behavior of a system with a very large number of particles. It was the missing concept in order to understand the thermodynamics of macroscopic bodies, but the structure of the physical laws remained still deterministic. The introduction of probability was needed as a consequence of our lack of knowledge of the initial conditions of the system and of our inability to solve an enormous number of coupled non-linear differential equations.

Quantum Statistical Mechanics

Sun, 05 Jul 2009 15:03:24 GMT

The book provides a contemporary understanding of irreversibility, particularly in quantum systems. It explains entropy production in quantum kinetic theory and in the master equation formulation of non-equilibrium statistical mechanics. The first half of the book focuses on the foundations of non-equilibrium statistical mechanics with emphasis on quantum mechanics. The second half of the book contains alternative views of quantum statistical mechanics, and topics of current interest for advanced graduate level study and research. Unique to textbooks on this subject, this book contains a discussion of the fundamental Gleason theorem. Quantum entanglements are treated in application to quantum computation and the difficulties arising from decoherence. The relativistic generalization of the Boltzmann equation is derived, and modern transport applications to reservoir ballistic transport are developed.

Many-body theory stands at the foundation of modern quantum statistical mechanics and it is introduced here to graduates in physics, chemistry, engineering and biology. The book focuses on the foundations of non-equilibrium statistical mechanics, and provides alternative views of quantum statistical mechanics.

About the Author

W. C. Schieve is Professor Emeritus in the Physics Department and Center for Complex Quantum Systems at the University of Texas, Austin. His research interests lie in non-equilibrium statistical mechanics and its applications to areas such as quantum optics, relativistic statistical mechanics, dynamical models in biophysics, and chaos theory.

L. P. Horwitz is Professor of Physics Emeritus in the School of Physics at Tel Aviv University. He is also Professor of Physics at Bar Ilan University, and Research Director in Theoretical Physics at Ariel University.

Adobe Photoshop for VFX Artists

Sun, 05 Jul 2009 15:03:06 GMT

Adobe Photoshop for VFX Artists is an in-depth guide to creating visual effects art using Photoshop. Taking a straightforward, visual approach to Adobe's best-selling software, this book provides you with everything you need to use Photoshop to meet specific goals for art creation. Develop the skills you need to master professional matte painting and 2D and 3D texturing techniques and secrets. This unique guide is one of the only books available targeted specifically to the VFX artist. Written by a professional Texture Artist at a major Hollywood visual effects studio, you’ll learn insider tips and tricks that are hard to come by. Adobe Photoshop for VFX Artists adheres to the high standards of the professional VFX world, while still offering an abundance of information for the VFX hobbyist.

About the Author

Lopsie Schwartz has worked in the VFX industry as a freelancer and has worked on high-profile movies such as Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, and Hollow Man. She is currently working at Rhythm and Hues Studios as the Departmental Texture Lead.

Advanced Photoshop Elements 7 for Digital Photographers

Sun, 05 Jul 2009 15:02:58 GMT

Invaluable Intermediate/Advanced guide to Photoshop Elements 7 for all photographers, writen by Elements guru and bestselling author Philip Andrews.

This essential guide for intermediate/advanced photographers has now been fully updated for Elements 7.

Bestselling author and Elements guru Philip Andrews turns his expansive knowledge to this powerful application, delivering, once again, a practical approach in a crystal-clear writing style.

For the advanced Elements user, this book offers a standalone guide to advancing knowledge of the software. For those with a little less experience, it works seamlessly in conjunction with Philip's other Elements guide: "Adobe Photoshop Elements 7: A visual introduction to digital photography". Philip expands on the solid foundation delivered by that title to deliver a master-guide that shows you just how powerful this deceptively simple software package can be.

Throughout the book, Philip takes a pro's approach, emphasising a streamlined, non-destructive workflow. Diverse chapters cover the entire spectrum of photographic potential offered by the software, including key areas such as: darkroom techniques, advanced selection techniques, professional retouching, photo restoration, panoramas, collages, RAW processing and printing. Additionally, the content is supplemented by extra great learning tools available on the website: WWW.XXXXXX.com. These include: downloadable resources, and Elements vodcasts.

Essential reading for all photographers using Elements 7.

* Advanced guide to Elements, the natural sequel to the bestselling 'Adobe Photoshop Elements 6'
* Written by Philip Andrews, world-renowned Photoshop elements expert
* Takes a professional approach to this industry-standard software, with a core focus on nondestructive editing throughout

About the Author

Philip Andrews is Adobe Australia's official Photoshop and Elements Ambassador. He is an experienced photographer, author, magazine editor and online course creator. He was previously a lecturer at the Queensland School of Printing and Graphic Arts, Australia and Nescot, England. He is a beta tester for Photoshop, an alpha tester for Photoshop Elements and a Photoshop specialist demonstrator for Adobe Australia. Philip is also co-founder of photo-college.com an online photography training college. He's a regular contributor to several magazines including Shutterbug, Amateur Photographer, Australian Photography and Better Photography, he is senior contributing editor for Better Digital, columnist for What Digital Camera and Co-editor and publisher of Better Photoshop Techniques magazine.

The Visual Effects Arsenal: Vfx Solutions for the Independent Filmmaker

Sun, 05 Jul 2009 15:02:46 GMT

Build your VFX arsenal with quick-access, step-by-step instruction on how to create today's hottest digital VFX shots. This essential toolkit provides techniques for creating effects seen in movies such as "300", "Spiderman 3", "Predator" and others, with lessons on how-to: splatter blood or digitally lop someone's arm off; create a scene with actors running from an explosion; create the 'twin effect' (same actor, same location, 2 performances); and, produce space-ship dog fights. Organized in a 'cookbook' style, this title allows you to reference a certain effect in the index and immediately access concise instructions to create that effect. In this title, techniques are demonstrated in each of the most popular software tools. After Effects, Final Cut Studio, Shake, Photoshop, and Combustion are all covered. Brilliant, 4-color presentation provides inspiration and stimulating visual guidance to the lessons presented, while the companion DVD contains project media files enabling you to put concepts learned into immediate practice. This title provides 4-color, step-by-step instruction for producing today's hottest digital VFX shots. VFX techniques are presented in each of the most popular software tools. Companion DVD features project media files allowing you to immediately implement techniques learned.

About the Author

Bill Byrne is a multimedia digital artist whose work has been exhibited internationally. His visual and sound art focuses on building surrealistic, organic worlds. He makes digital-photomontage-based prints, animated installations and conceptual sound art podcasts. He performs experimental electronic music with a laptop, Game boy and circuit bent toys with his wife Suzanne as The Painful Leg Injuries. They have recently performed at Make magazine's Maker Faire in Austin. On November 14th 2007 he was the invited speaker at Bloomfield College in New Jersey discussing his career as a fine artist and professional designer. Prints of his digital photomontage were chosen to be in Arts and Science Collaborators Digital exhibitions in 2001, 2002, and 2004.

Contemporary Iran: Economy, Society, Politics

Sun, 05 Jul 2009 15:01:21 GMT

In recent decades Iran has experienced a wide range of changes. These include shifts in the relationship between urban and rural economies, the nationwide growth of the middle class and ensuing social mobility, a higher literacy rate along with the expansion of educational institutions, and new complexities and expectations in gender relations—all within the context of the country’s evolving domestic and international politics. This volume examines the extent and the degree of such vicissitudes in contemporary Iran through the prism of different disciplines. Each chapter provides a thorough analysis of its specifi c and substantive topic, though not in isolation, without neglecting the overarching and interdisciplinary goal of the book to probe the many-sided factors that connect all these radical upheavals and departures together in the still volatile society of contemporary Iran.

Paranoia: The 21st Century Fear

Sun, 05 Jul 2009 15:01:07 GMT

"An absorbing, entertaining, and illuminating examination of one of the defining topics of our time."--Professor Aaron T. Beck, University of Philadelphia and President of the Beck Institute for Cognitive Therapy, USA

Terrorists, child abductors, muggers, delinquent teenagers, malicious colleagues . . . Who wouldnt be worried? The world can be a dangerous place, for sure. But have we lost the knack of judging risk? Are we letting paranoia get the better of us? In this entertaining and thought-provoking book, based on the most up-to-date scientific research, Daniel and Jason Freeman highlight just how prominent paranoia is today. One in four of us have regular paranoid thoughts. The authors analyse the causes of paranoia, identifying the social and cultural factors that seem to be skewing the way we think and feel about the world around us. And they explain why paranoia may be on the rise and, crucially, what we can do to tackle it. Witty, clear, and compelling, Paranoia takes us beyond the tabloid headlines to pinpoint the real menace at the heart of twenty-first century culture.

About the Author

Dr, Daniel Freeman is a Wellcome Trust Fellow at the Institute of Psychiatry, Kings College London, and a consultant clinical psychologist in the South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust. He is one of the worlds leading researchers on paranoia, publishing in the major psychiatry and psychology journals. Jason Freeman is a writer and editor. Together with Daniel Freeman and Philippa Garety, he is co-author of Overcoming Paranoid and Suspicious Thoughts, the first self-help book for people affected by suspicious thoughts.

The Accidental Guerrilla: Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One

Sun, 05 Jul 2009 15:00:25 GMT

David Kilcullen is one of the world's most influential experts on counterinsurgency and modern warfare. A Senior Counterinsurgency Advisor to General David Petraeus in Iraq, his vision of war dramatically influenced America's decision to rethink its military strategy in Iraq and implement "the surge."

Now, in The Accidental Guerrilla, Kilcullen provides a remarkably fresh perspective on the War on Terror. Kilcullen takes us "on the ground" to uncover the face of modern warfare, illuminating both the big global war (the "War on Terrorism") and its relation to the associated "small wars" across the globe: Iraq, Afghanistan, the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, Chechnya, Pakistan and North Africa. Kilcullen sees today's conflicts as a complex pairing of contrasting trends: local social networks and worldwide movements; traditional and postmodern culture; local insurgencies seeking autonomy and a broader pan-Islamic campaign. He warns that America's actions in the war on terrorism have tended to conflate these trends, blurring the distinction between local and global struggles and thus enormously complicating our challenges. Indeed, the US had done a poor job of applying different tactics to these very different situations, continually misidentifying insurgents with limited aims and legitimate grievances (whom he calls "accidental guerrillas") as part of a coordinated worldwide terror network. We must learn how to disentangle these strands, develop strategies that deal with global threats, avoid local conflicts where possible, and win them where necessary.

Colored with gripping battlefield experiences that range from the jungles and highlands of Southeast Asia to the mountains of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border to the dusty towns of the Middle East, The Accidental Guerrilla will, quite simply, change the way we think about war. This much anticipated book will be a must read for everyone concerned about the war on terror.

About the Author

David Kilcullen is at once part of General David Petraeus' brain trust in Baghdad, an Australian anthropologist, a Pentagon-based counterinsurgency theorist, and an on-the-ground officer/military advisor who has worked in hotspots ranging from East Africa to the Javanese highlands to the jungles of the Philippines. The "go-to guy" for journalists when it comes to counterinsurgency, he was interviewed for a full-hour on Charlie Rose , was the subject of a full-length profile in the New Yorker written by George Packer, and he's quoted frequently in The New York Times. David Kilcullen is a senior fellow at the EastWest Institute.

Relationscapes: Movement, Art, Philosophy (Technologies of Lived Abstraction)

Sun, 05 Jul 2009 15:00:05 GMT

With Relationscapes, Erin Manning offers a new philosophy of movement challenging the idea that movement is simple displacement in space, knowable only in terms of the actual. Exploring the relation between sensation and thought through the prisms of dance, cinema, art, and new media, Manning argues for the intensity of movement. From this idea of intensity—the incipiency at the heart of movement—Manning develops the concept of preacceleration, which makes palpable how movement creates relational intervals out of which displacements take form.

Discussing her theory of incipient movement in terms of dance and relational movement, Manning describes choreographic practices that work to develop with a body in movement rather than simply stabilizing that body into patterns of displacement. She examines the movement-images of Leni Riefenstahl, Étienne-Jules Marey, and Norman McLaren (drawing on Bergson's idea of duration), and explores the dot-paintings of contemporary Australian Aboriginal artists. Turning to language, Manning proposes a theory of prearticulation claiming that language's affective force depends on a concept of thought in motion.

Relationscapes is a radically empirical book, working directly out of examples and delving into the complexity of relations these examples suggest. It takes a "Whiteheadian perspective," recognizing Whitehead's importance and his influence on process philosophers of the late twentieth century—Deleuze and Guattari in particular. Relationscapes is truly a transdisciplinary book, not aiming to cover the ground of a particular discipline but making clear how the specificity of a particular inquiry can alter key questions that emerge in the interstices between disciplines. It will be of special interest to scholars in new media, philosophy, dance studies, film theory, and art history.

Technologies of Lived Abstraction series

About the Author

Erin Manning holds a University Research Chair in the Faculty of Fine Arts at Concordia University in Montreal. She is director of the Sense Lab and the author of Politics of Touch: Sense, Movement, Sovereignty and Ephemeral Territories: Representing Nation, Home, and Identity in Canada.

Grails in Action

Sun, 05 Jul 2009 14:59:04 GMT

Grails in Action is a book for practitioners from practitioners. Glen’s “20-hour challenge,” in which he implemented the www.groovyblogs.org service in Grails, has become legendary. That site is still my one-and-only resource for staying up to date with Groovy and Grails. Not only has he been one of the frontrunners of Grails, he made his achievements publicly available, both by sharing his code and by sharing his insights through blogging and public speaking. I have long wished that he would capture his wisdom in a book, and I can hardly believe that I can now hold it in my hands.

Glen’s “from the trenches” experience is ideally complemented by Peter’s insider knowledge, which he has shown thousands of times when answering questions on the Grails user mailing list. If anybody on this planet knows what people ask about Grails, he does.

Writing a good book on Grails is a challenge. As an author, you are tempted to present the full cornucopia of features, but you would like to also get across the simplicity that Grails brings to Java web application development.

Glen and Peter have found an excellent balance between providing a low-barrier entry into the Grails world and covering the issues that you are likely to encounter when using Grails in more demanding scenarios.

Grails in Action takes a practical stance. It leads you through the process of creating a Grails application and explains the sights along the way. This applies to the various pieces of technology: models, tests, views, controllers, services, and the like, but also—and maybe even more importantly—to the sequence of when and how you go from one to the next.

Focus: Music of Northeast Brazil (Focus on World Music)

Sun, 05 Jul 2009 14:58:50 GMT

"Anyone with more than a casual interest in Brazilian music history simply must look at this top ethnomusicological study." --Midwest Book Review

"Focus: Music of Northeast Brazil" examines the historical and contemporary manifestations of the music of Brazil, a country with a musical landscape that is layered with complexity and diversity. Based on the author's field research during the past twenty years, the book describes and analyzes the social/historical contexts and contemporary musical practices of Afro-Brazilian religion, selected Carnival traditions, Bahia's black cultural renaissance, the traditions of rural migrants, and currents in new popular music. Part One, Understanding Music in Brazil, presents important issues and topics that encompass all of Brazil, and provides a general survey of Brazil's diverse musical landscape. Part Two, Creating Music in Brazil, presents historical trajectories and contemporary examples of Afro-Brazilian traditions, Carnival music, and northeastern popular music. Part Three, Focusing In, presents two case studies that explore the ground-level activities of contemporary musicians in Northeast Brazil and the ways in which they move between local, national, and international realms. The accompanying CD offers vivid musical examples that are discussed in the text.

About the Author

University of Florida, USA

Leveraging Drupal: Getting Your Site Done Right (Wrox Programmer to Programmer)

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 05:14:05 GMT

As an open source, community-based content management system and web site application development framework, Drupal allows you to create interactive, media-based, database-driven web sites that become a part of everyday activities and communications. This unique book is the first of its kind to tackle the challenging task of leveraging Drupal to get a site done right and make that site work for you, based on industry-wide software development best practices.

Within these pages, you will gain insight into how to work with any release of Drupal, approach your project, establish a development environment, plan for deployment, and avoid pitfalls along the way. A real-world example of a web site application based on Drupal—an online Literary Workshop—is used throughout the book, and it walks you through the entire development lifecycle. You'll learn how to bring your web site into the exciting Drupal mainstream, customize Drupal for your specific needs, and even make "non-Drupal" looking sites. With this hands-on guide, you'll discover how to use Drupal to efficiently publish, manage, and organize a wide variety of content on your web site.

What you will learn from this book

Best practices to optimize the way you approach development projects
Methods for setting up a development environment using version control and issue tracking tools
How the Drupal theming system works and how it separates content from presentation and style
Techniques for upgrading and deploying the online Literary Workshop
The future of Drupal and how it might be developed and used

This book is for Drupal users of all levels of expertise who are looking to put together a sophisticated web application.

Wrox guides are crafted to make learning programming languages and technologies easier than you think. Written by programmers for programmers, they provide a structured, tutorial format that will guide you through all the techniques involved.

Strategic Innovation: New Game Strategies for Competitive Advantage

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 05:12:44 GMT

The first question that potential readers might be tempted to ask is, why another book on strategy? Strategic Innovation: New Game Strategies for Competitive Advantage has many of the same features that existing textbooks have. It draws on the latest research in strategic management and innovation, it is peppered with the latest examples from key business cases, it is easy to read, and so on. However, it has six distinctive features that give it a unique position vis-à-vis existing strategy and innovation books.

First, Strategic Innovation: New Game Strategies for Competitive Advantage is about change. While existing textbooks acknowledge the importance of change, especially in an ever-changing world, they devote very little or no attention to the subject of change. All the chapters in New Game Strategies are about change and strategic management—about how to create and appropriate value in the face of new games. Second, existing strategic management texts tend to have very few or no numerical examples. This lack of numerical examples does little to reinforce the growing consensus that strategy is about winning but rather, it might be promoting the “anything goes in strategy” attitude that is not uncommon to students who are new to the field of strategic management. Nine of the thirteen chapters in the book have numerical examples that link elements of the balance sheet to components of the income statement. Of course, the book is also full of case examples. Third, while other texts are more descriptive than analytical, this book is more analytical than descriptive. It is largely about the why and how of things, and less about the what of things. Fourth, the book includes a detailed framework for assessing the profitability potential of a strategy, resource, business unit, brand, product, etc. Called the AVAC (activities, value, appropriability, and change), the framework is distinctive in that it includes not only both firm-specific and industry-specific factors that impact firm profitability, but also a change component. Fifth, the book’s emphasis is on those activities that can be linked to the determinants of profitability; that is, the book focuses on those aspects of strategy that can be logically linked to elements of the balance sheet and income statement. Sixth, the book summarizes the major strategic management frameworks that are otherwise scattered in other texts. This is a useful one-stop reference for many students.

How Mathematicians Think: Using Ambiguity, Contradiction, and Paradox to Create Mathematics

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 05:11:39 GMT

To many outsiders, mathematicians appear to think like computers, grimly grinding away with a strict formal logic and moving methodically--even algorithmically--from one black-and-white deduction to another. Yet mathematicians often describe their most important breakthroughs as creative, intuitive responses to ambiguity, contradiction, and paradox. A unique examination of this less-familiar aspect of mathematics, How Mathematicians Think reveals that mathematics is a profoundly creative activity and not just a body of formalized rules and results.

Nonlogical qualities, William Byers shows, play an essential role in mathematics. Ambiguities, contradictions, and paradoxes can arise when ideas developed in different contexts come into contact. Uncertainties and conflicts do not impede but rather spur the development of mathematics. Creativity often means bringing apparently incompatible perspectives together as complementary aspects of a new, more subtle theory. The secret of mathematics is not to be found only in its logical structure.

The creative dimensions of mathematical work have great implications for our notions of mathematical and scientific truth, and How Mathematicians Think provides a novel approach to many fundamental questions. Is mathematics objectively true? Is it discovered or invented? And is there such a thing as a "final" scientific theory?

Ultimately, How Mathematicians Think shows that the nature of mathematical thinking can teach us a great deal about the human condition itself

About the Author

William Byers is Professor of Mathematics at Concordia University in Montreal. He has published widely in mathematics journals.

One-Dimentional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society (Routledge Classics)

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 05:10:06 GMT

One of the most important texts of modern times, Herbert Marcuse's analysis and image of a one-dimensional man in a one-dimensional society has shaped many young radical's way of seeing and experiencing life.

Herbert Marcuse's One-Dimensional Man was one of the most important books of the 1960s. 1 First published in 1964, it was immediately recognized as a significant critical diagnosis of the present age and was soon taken up by the emergent New Left as a damning indictment of contemporary Western societies, capitalist and communist. Conceived and written in the 1950s and early 1960s, the book reflects the stifling conformity of the era and provides a powerful critique of new modes of domination and social control. Yet it also expresses the hopes of a radical philosopher that human freedom and happiness could be greatly expanded beyond the one-dimensional thought and behavior prevalent in the established society.

About the Author

Marcuse is a Beacon Press author.

Set Theory (Studies in Logic and the Foundations of Mathematics)

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 05:09:17 GMT
...provides a good introduction to relative consistence proofs in axiomatic set theory. It can be recommended as a graduate text on the subject. -- Zentralblatt für Mathematik

Paperback. Many branches of abstract mathematics have been affected by the modern independence proofs in set theory. This book provides an introduction to relative consistency proofs in axiomatic set theory, and is intended to be used as a text in beginning graduate courses in that subject. It is hoped that this treatment will make the subject accessible to those mathematicians whose research is sensitive to axiomatics. The readers should have had the equivalent of an undergraduate course on cardinals and ordinals, but no specific training in logic is necessary.
The volume includes a discussion of modern techniques in forcing, as well as coverage of infinitary combinatorics and its relevance to independence proofs. The work also features a lucid treatment of basic facts about constructibility.

The Physical Tourist: A Science Guide for the Traveler

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 05:08:34 GMT
Typical travel guides have sections on architecture, art, literature, music and cinema. Rarely are any science-related sites identified. For example, a current travel guide for Germany contains one tidbit on science: Einstein is identified as the most famous citizen of Ulm. By contrast, this travel guide walks a tourist through Berlin and identifies where Max Planck started the quantum revolution, where Einstein lived and gave his early talks on general relativity, and where, across the street, Einstein’s books were burned by the Nazis. Or, if you are walking in Paris, this guide tells you where radioactivity was discovered and where radium was discovered. Scientific discoveries of the past, like art of the past, have shaped life in the 21^st century. From this travel guide, a tourist will learn what other guides leave out.