Book Description
Every form of behavior is shaped by trial and error. Such stepwise adaptation can occur through individual learning or through natural selection, the basis of evolution. Since the work of Maynard Smith and others, it has been realized how game theory can model this process. Evolutionary game theory replaces the static solutions of classical game theory by a dynamical approach centered not on the concept of rational players but on the population dynamics of behavioral programs. In this book the authors investigate the nonlinear dynamics of the self-regulation of social and economic behavior, and of the closely related interactions among species in ecological communities. Replicator equations describe how successful strategies spread and thereby create new conditions that can alter the basis of their success, i.e., to enable us to understand the strategic and genetic foundations of the endless chronicle of invasions and extinctions that punctuate evolution. In short, evolutionary game theory describes when to escalate a conflict, how to elicit cooperation, why to expect a balance of the sexes, and how to understand natural selection in mathematical terms.
Customer Reviews:
The Best There Is On Evolutionary Dynamics.......2000-07-14
When I was writing the chapter on evolutionary dynamics for my book Game Theory Evolving (Princeton, 2000), I looked at all the books available and found nothing. Then Hofbauer and Sigmund's new book (a totally revised version of their earlier Theory of Evolution and Dynamical Systems) came out, and I knew I had a masterpiece in hand.
The book does not assume the reader knows basic differential equation theory--it presents all the theory necessary. Indeed, it is a wonderful way to learn differential equation theory, since one immediately is faced with meaningful problems to solve. It does assume the reader is familiar with multivariate calculus. The book should be accessible to biologists and game theorists with a minimum understanding of each other's disciplines.
There are four parts. First, HS deal with Lotka-Volterra equations of the type prevalent in predator-prey models, which they extend to ecological models and several populations. Like the rest of the book, there are lots of problems and the presentation is elegant and succinct.
The second part deals with game theory dynamics and replicator equations, including sections on evolutionary games and asymmetric games. This too is extremely nicely presented, and the links to the Lotka-Volterra models are made clear.
Part three is on dynamical systems especially of relevance to biochemistry--catalytic hypercycles--as well as higher dimensional phase space dynamics of ecological models.
Part four deal with population genetic models using a differential equation approach. This section is also excellent, though for serious readers it should be complemented by Karlin and Taylor's Second Course in Stochastic Processes (which is much more mathematically demanding).
The physical production of the book is also first rate--a pleasure to read and use.
Average customer rating:
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advanced very high resolution radiometer AVHRR
Arthur P. Cracknell
Manufacturer: CRC
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Library Binding
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ASIN: 0748402098 |
Book Description
This guide to Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometers (AVHRRs) covers the satellite system, the instrument itself, the control of the spacecraft and the data-recovery arrangements.
Book Description
This digital document is a journal article from Remote Sensing of Environment, published by Elsevier in 2006. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Media Library immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Description:
We developed a new 6-year daily, daytime and nighttime, NOAA-14 AVHRR based land surface temperature (LST) dataset over continental Africa for the period 1995 through 2000. The processing chain was developed within the Global Inventory Modeling and Mapping System (GIMMS) at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. This paper describes the processing methodology used to convert the Global Area Coverage Level-1b data into LST and collateral data layers, such as sun and view geometries, cloud mask, local time of observation, and latitude and longitude. We used the Ulivieri et al. [Ulivieri, C., M.M. Castronuovo, R. Francioni, and A. Cardillo (1994), A split window algorithm for estimating land surface temperature from satellites, Adv. Space Research, 14(3):59-65.] split window algorithm to determine LST values. This algorithm requires as input values of surface emissivity in AVHRR channels 4 and 5. Thus, we developed continental maps of emissivity using an ensemble approach that combines laboratory emissivity spectra, MODIS-derived maps of herbaceous and woody fractional cover, and the UNESCO FAO soil map. A preliminary evaluation of the resulting LST product over a savanna woodland in South Africa showed a bias of
<0.3 K and an uncertainty of
<1.3 K for daytime retrievals (
<2.5 K for night). More extensive validation is required before statistically significant uncertainties can be determined. The LST production chain described here could be adapted for any wide field of view sensor (e.g., MODIS, VIIRS), and the LST product may be suitable for monitoring spatial and temporal temperature trends, or as input to many process models (e.g., hydrological, ecosystem).
Book Description
This digital document is a journal article from International Journal of Applied Earth Observations and Geoinformation, published by Elsevier in 2007. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Media Library immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Description:
This study tested the degree to which single date, near-nadir AVHRR image could provide forest cover estimates comparable to the phase I estimates obtained from the traditional photo-based techniques of the Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) program. FIA program is part of the United States Department of Agriculture-Forest Service (USFS). A six-county region in east Texas was selected for this study. Manual identification of ground control points (GCPs) was necessary for geo-referencing this image with higher precision. Through digital image classification techniques forest classes were separated from other non-forest classes in the study area. Classified AVHRR imagery was compared to two verification datasets: photo-center points and the USFS FIA plots. The overall accuracy values obtained were 67 and 71%, respectively. Analyses of the error matrices indicated that the AVHRR image correctly classified more forested areas than non-forested areas; however, most of the errors could be attributed to certain land cover and land use classes. Several pastures with tree cover, which were field-identified as non-forest, were misclassified as forest in the AVHRR image using the image classification system developed in this study. Recently harvested and young pine forests were misclassified as non-forest in the imagery. County-level forest cover estimates obtained from the AVHRR imagery were within the 95% confidence interval of the corresponding estimates from traditional photo-based methods. These results indicate that AVHRR imagery could be used to estimate county-level forest cover; however, the precision associated with these estimates was lower than that obtained through traditional photo-based techniques.
Book Description
This book treats the experimental methods used to determine the physical properties of explosives and explosions - physical principles, operating procedures and evaluations of results. Aimed at practicing engineers as well as experimental physicists who investigate the effects of explosions, this book will be of interest to research laboratories, manufacturers of explosives, military training establishments, technical laboratories and so forth.
Customer Reviews:
Test Methods for Explosives.......2000-02-24
Excellent book. This may be one of the rare books on the market that covers physics of explosives, and the only one about test methods for explosives.I think that everyone who works with explosives must have this book. My conclusion is that this is very well writen book, wort every penny that I paid for it.
Book Description
We have all been lied to—a great and sinister conspiracy exists to keep us from uncovering the truth about our past. Have you ever wondered how Victorians like Jules Verne and H.G. Wells dreamed up all that fantastic futuristic fiction? Did it ever occur to you that it might have been based upon fact? That War of The Worlds was a true account of real events? That Captain Nemo’s Nautilus even now lies rusting at the bottom of the North Sea? And what about the other stuff? Did you know, for instance, that Jack the Ripper was a terminator robot sent from the future? In this book, learn how a cabal of Victorian Witches from the Chiswick Townswomen’s Guild, working with advanced Babbage super computers, rewrote 19th-century history, and how a 21st-century boy called Billy Starling uncovered the truth about everything.
Customer Reviews:
Periodically clever, consistently amusing- just don't expect it to make a lot of sense.......2007-10-06
At one point in The Witches of Chiswick our protagonist (one of numerous William Starlings in the novel) says "If this were a book or a movie, the critics would tear it to pieces, saying the hero was two dimensional and the entire sorry business unconvincing and totally plot-led."
The author makes a number of references like this (characters refer to things that `happened in earlier chapters' or point out continuity problems in the story). The author is essentially winking at the reader, as if to say "We both know this is all pretty silly."
The plot here is absurd, convoluted, and seems not to have been entirely thought out. The pleasure in the novel comes, not from a plot that really doesn't make much sense, but rather from the writing itself. Rankin has a writing style that demands to be read out loud (if not actually spoken, at least read out loud in one's own head.)
For example, can't help but hear someone (with a British accent of course) reading this line from the novel out loud: "Tim looked up at the big door that lay (or rather stood, or perhaps, more precisely hung) before them."
The entire novel has an amusing tone but I can't say that anyone ever caught me laughing out loud while I read it. It did have me smiling most of the way though. This is a novel that features a boy who was raised by snails (they call him Snail Boy of course), talking vegetables that you insert in your ear, and a cabal of pinch-faced witches who fancy quilting and world domination. The novel portrays John Merrick (the Elephant Man) as an oversexed alien human hybrid spy, Queen Victoria (God Bless Her) as a party girl who parades around in diaphanous outfits wearing nothing else but high heeled clogs, Oscar Wilde as a `ladies man', and HG Wells as an invisible (literally), obnoxious and frustrated scientist.
The Witches of Chiswick is amusing enough* but lacks the big laughs needed to inspire a `four star' rating. Its incoherent plot falls apart near the end, leaving loose ends dangling everywhere. Very little of what happens makes any sense. The Witches of Chiswick may not be as funny or as inspired as Adam's The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, but if you like your science fiction mixed with humour (1 part clever, 3 parts silly) the Witches of Chiswick is an oddly entertaining (although not entirely satisfying) novel.
* The asterisks at the bottom of the page provide some of the funniest bits in the novel.
A mostly Wonderful Book .......2007-01-13
Mr. Rankin has created a wonderful world here hats off to him. Sometimes the jokes are subtle and other times they are incredibly funny quite frankly words can't do justice to how funny parts of this book are.
You will love all the characters Will, other Will and Barry the time traveling sprout. There are also characters that are more familiar to us H.G Wells, Jack the Ripper and Queen Victoria just to name a few.
Great book, great story but the last 10 pages totally destroy whatever the author had been working towards. This is not enough to destroy a wonderful book but the ending is indeed a letdown. Either Rankin is setting things up for a sequel or he is just guilty of sloppy plot resolution. That is why it gets a fourth star and not the whole 5.
passing it on.......2006-10-21
In our 37 years of acquaintance, my brother has never recommended a book to me to read. The other day he called me from the cab of the truck he drives at work. He had to tell me about the book he was listening to on CD as he drove. That book was (of course) Robert Rankins Witches of Chiswick. On that recommendation, I went out the next day, purchased the book, interrupted the book I was reading at the time and began to read. Aside from periods of work (necessary to get money to buy books) and eating (necessary to keep energy up to read books) and sleeping (necessary... ahh who am I kidding? I didn't sleep) I read and finished the book. When it was done I was sorry there wasn't more. Funny, irreverent, at times irrelevent, and all together a rollicking, ride through the future, the past (more than one of each) and who knows where, this book is a must buy/borrow/steal/read. Oh, and there is more... Knees Up Mother Earth is the second book in the series. I'm passing on my brother's recommendation to you, the lusty reader of this review (if you're not so lusty, that's o.k. I'll recommend it to you too. However, if you can... get lusty, it'll help in the future. I'm not sure what it'll help with, just take my word for it, lusty is helpful).
In regards to the distressing plot point near the beginning... I was able to get past it and I wasn't disappointed. I have been known, in the past, to quit reading a book due to such things but, this book was all too compelling to give up on. Perhaps it was the continued references to a certain Governators movies, perhaps not (probably not but, it's as good a reason as any) but, I had to continue, you will too. If not, do it anyway.
Compelling? Ahh, why not? Compelling it shall stay.
thoroughly entertaining comic fantasy.......2006-02-18
Highly recommended for its comic riffs, manic flights of fantasy and wildly speculative science fiction - that is, its imagination. When so many books serve up all-too-predictable plot lines and dialogue, it's refreshing to find fiction that treats the reader to a smorgasboard of Imagination.
Clever writer, lots of in-jokes, fun to read.......2005-07-31
I found the characters and plot incidental to the humour, and I enjoyed the victorian steam punk environment and the book's premise. WOC borrows snippets from many popular films and songs, mercilessly sending them up, and for that it scores highly.
The Barry character was nothing but a pain in the ear - he served only to move things along at the right time, throwing in the odd 'told you so' when things went wrong. I noticed a few gaping plot holes, but this kind of fiction isn't supposed to be discussed at length in dreary university tutes - it's just for fun.
Average customer rating:
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Witches of Chiswick
Robert Rankin
Manufacturer: GOLLANCZ (ORIO)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
Science Fiction & Fantasy
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ASIN: 0575075694 |
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- From Clocks to Chaos
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![Development of a daily long term record of NOAA-14 AVHRR land surface [An article from: Remote Sensing of Environment]](http://ec1.images-amazon.com/images/I/114GFTZ11AL.jpg)
![Estimating regional forest cover in East Texas using Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) data [An article from: International Journal of Applied Earth Observations and Geoinformation]](http://ec1.images-amazon.com/images/I/21C4JW5H2AL.jpg)
