Book Description

At last, here’s an approachable introduction to the widely used Portable Document Format. PDFs are everywhere, both online and in printed form, but few people take advantage of the useful features or grasp the nuances of this format. This concise book provides a hands-on tour of the world’s leading page-description language for programmers, power users, and professionals in the search, electronic publishing, and printing industries. Illustrated with lots of examples, this book is the documentation you need to fully understand PDF.

• Build a simple PDF file from scratch in a text editor
• Learn the layout and content of a PDF file, as well as the syntax of its objects
• Examine the logical structure of PDF objects, and learn how pages and their resources are arranged into a document
• Create vector graphics and raster images in PDF, and deal with transparency, color spaces, and patterns
• Explore PDF operators for building and showing text strings
• Get up to speed on bookmarks, metadata, hyperlinks, annotations, and file attachments
• Learn how encryption and document permissions work in PDF
• Use the pdftk program to process PDF files from the command line

Table of Contents
Chapter 1. Introduction
Chapter 2. Building a Simple PDF
Chapter 3. File Structure
Chapter 4. Document Structure
Chapter 5. Graphics
Chapter 6. Text and Fonts
Chapter 7. Document Metadata and Navigation
Chapter 8. Encrypted Documents
Chapter 9. Working with Pdftk
Chapter 10. PDF Software and Documentation

Book Details

• Paperback: 138 pages
• Publisher: O’Reilly Media (December 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1449310028
• ISBN-13: 978-1449310028

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Book Description

Based on more than forty interviews with Jobs conducted over two years—as well as interviews with more than a hundred family members, friends, adversaries, competitors, and colleagues—Walter Isaacson has written a riveting story of the roller-coaster life and searingly intense personality of a creative entrepreneur whose passion for perfection and ferocious drive revolutionized six industries: personal computers, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing, and digital publishing.

At a time when America is seeking ways to sustain its innovative edge, and when societies around the world are trying to build digital-age economies, Jobs stands as the ultimate icon of inventiveness and applied imagination. He knew that the best way to create value in the twenty-first century was to connect creativity with technology. He built a company where leaps of the imagination were combined with remarkable feats of engineering.

Although Jobs cooperated with this book, he asked for no control over what was written nor even the right to read it before it was published. He put nothing off-limits. He encouraged the people he knew to speak honestly. And Jobs speaks candidly, sometimes brutally so, about the people he worked with and competed against. His friends, foes, and colleagues provide an unvarnished view of the passions, perfectionism, obsessions, artistry, devilry, and compulsion for control that shaped his approach to business and the innovative products that resulted.

Driven by demons, Jobs could drive those around him to fury and despair. But his personality and products were interrelated, just as Apple’s hardware and software tended to be, as if part of an integrated system. His tale is instructive and cautionary, filled with lessons about innovation, character, leadership, and values.

About the Author
Walter Isaacson, the CEO of the Aspen Institute, has been chairman of CNN and the managing editor of Time magazine. He is the author of Benjamin Franklin: An American Life and of Kissinger: A Biography, and the coauthor of The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made. He lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife and daughter.

Book Details

• Hardcover: 656 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster (October 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1451648537
• ISBN-13: 978-1451648539

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Book Description

Renowned neuroscientist Dr. Masao Ito advances a sophisticated new view of the cerebellum’s roles in brain function, explaining how its multiple neuronal machine modules enable humans to unconsciously master motor skills through practice, and suggesting how it may serve implicit thought and cognitive processes that manipulate knowledge—playing a surprising role in intuition, imagination, and hallucination.

From the Back Cover
A New Assessment of the Cerebellum’s Role in Brain Function by One of the Field’s Most Respected Researchers

In The Cerebellum, leading neuroscientist Masao Ito draws on current research to advance a detailed new view of the cerebellum’s multiple roles in brain function.

The cerebellum’s role in coordinating body movement control and facilitating motor skills learning has long been recognized. Ito presents new insights into how it accomplishes these tasks. He explains how the cerebellum assembles numerous neuronal machine modules, each providing implicit learning capabilities—and how these modules enable humans to unconsciously learn motor skills through practice by forming internal models that simulate the control system properties of body parts.

Ito shows how the cerebellum also serves higher brain functions, including implicit components of thought and cognitive processes that manipulate knowledge. In particular, he discusses evidence of the cerebellum’s role in complex mental actions—such as intuition, imagination, hallucination, and delusion—and in supporting the implicit self.

Ito’s insights will be valuable to a wide audience of neuroscientific investigators and might also be applicable in artificial intelligence, control engineering, robotics, and related fields.

Book Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: FT Press (August 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0137050682
• ISBN-13: 978-0137050680

Book Description

Bookbinding may well be a dying art in this digital age, but you can still learn how to do it yourself with this easy-to-follow ebook. In fact, you can reverse the course of evolution and convert this particular digital specimen into a durable, hand-stitched book that will last for generations. When you’re finished, this ebook will truly be “hands-on.”

O’Reilly Senior Editor Brian Sawyer takes you through the process with step-by-step instructions and scores of instructive photographs. All you need to bring to the table are a few simple materials—including magazines you’d like to preserve. Discover how simple, unmessy, fun, and satisfying binding books by hand can be.

• Print the pages of this ebook or remove the existing cover from a magazine
• Create signatures and prepare them for stitching
• Glue the spine
• Build and attach the cover boards
• Cover the exterior and interior of the cover boards

About the Author
Brian Sawyer is a Senior Editor for O’Reilly Media, where he manages the Missing Manuals division. He has also served as lead editor for the company’s popular Hacks series, editor for Head First and Make: Books titles, and contributing editor to Craft magazine. When not writing or editing about technology, he uses it to help train for marathons (see Chapter 4 of Best Android Apps).

Book Details

• Paperback: 32 pages
• Publisher: O’Reilly Media / Make (July 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1449307698
• ISBN-13: 978-1449307691

Book Description

Leading neuroscientist Samuel Barondes shares scientific frameworks and tools for improving your intuitions about people, and sizing them up more consciously, systematically, and successfully. He shows how to use the latest research about personality and character to get along better, choose great friends, decide whom to trust, and avoid narcissists and sociopaths.

From the Back Cover
“This pioneering book does for our mental life what the periodic table did for chemistry; it breaks the mind down into elementary constituents and their interactions–thereby transforming personality research into science. In addition to being a rich treasure-trove of insights into human nature, it can potentially enrich your relationships with people. Barondes has written a masterpiece.”
–V.S. Ramachandran, author of Phantoms in the Brain and The Tell-Tale Mind

“We’re a fantastically social species, constantly taking the measure of everyone’s personality. In this wise, enjoyable book, the esteemed biological psychiatrist Sam Barondes considers ways to build up this vital skill. The book is clear, entertaining, and educational, and will not only make you a more adept social primate, but a more self-reflective one as well.”
–Robert Sapolsky, Professor of Biology, Stanford University; author of A Primate’s Memoir and Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers

“Making Sense of People is a marvelous guided tour through the infinitely variable landscape of personality. Barondes truly illuminates how genes and environment shape human behavior, and he tells the story with an engaging armchair style that makes the book hard to put down!”
–John Oldham, President, American Psychiatric Association; author of The New Personality Self-Portrait

“Human beings judge personalities every day, but often in an unconscious muddle. Sam Barondes has taken a daunting research literature on personality and has made it remarkably accessible as well as useful. I suspect that many psychiatrists will find this book as valuable as lay readers will.”
–Steven E. Hyman, Professor of Neurobiology and Provost, Harvard University; former Director, National Institute of Mental Health

“In Making Sense of People, Sam Barondes, a superb teacher and writer, creates his own schema to help us better understand each other and make the right decisions about who to share our lives with. A highly readable and enjoyable introduction to the psychology of everyday life.”
–Eric Kandel, University Professor, Columbia University; Nobel Laureate; author of In Search of Memory

What really bothers you about your boss–or your daughter’s boyfriend? Could the person you’re dating really become your life partner? Can you really rely on your intuition about people? This book will help you find out.

Drawing on extensive research, renowned psychiatrist and neuroscientist Samuel Barondes gives you powerful, easy-to-use tools for understanding what people are really like and how they got to be the way they are. These tools will provide you with a system for assessing the person’s traits, character, and sense of identity, and then putting these elements together into a unified picture. Learning to think of people in this way will help you choose more satisfying relationships, recognize telltale signs of dysfunction and danger, and savor the complexity and uniqueness of everyone you meet.

Supplement your intuition!

• Learn a system for understanding anyone
• Identify character strengths and weaknesses
• Make better decisions about whom to seek out and whom to avoid
• Find out how all personalities are shaped by two great chance events:  the set of genes we happen to be born with, and the particular world we happen to grow up in

Book Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: FT Press (June 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0132172607
• ISBN-13: 978-0132172608

Book Description

The Logic of Chance offers a reappraisal and a new synthesis of theories, concepts, and hypotheses on the key aspects of the evolution of life on earth in light of comparative genomics and systems biology. The author presents many specific examples from systems and comparative genomic analysis to begin to build a new, much more detailed, complex, and realistic picture of evolution. The book examines a broad range of topics in evolutionary biology including  the inadequacy of natural selection and adaptation as the only or even the main mode of evolution; the key role of horizontal gene transfer in evolution and the consequent overhaul of the Tree of Life concept;  the central, underappreciated evolutionary importance of viruses; the origin of eukaryotes as a result of endosymbiosis; the concomitant origin of cells and viruses on the primordial earth; universal dependences between genomic and molecular-phenomic variables; and the evolving landscape of constraints that shape the evolution of genomes and molecular phenomes.

From the Back Cover
An Outline of a Fundamentally New Evolutionary Synthesis Reflecting Key Advances in Genomics, Systems Biology, and Biological PhysicsIn this ambitious book, Eugene V. Koonin illuminates the gamut of randomness and regularity that is at the heart of life.

Pointing the way beyond Modern Synthesis, Koonin brings together new data and concepts in an attempt to achieve a far deeper understanding of the interplay between chance and necessity that drives biological evolution. He explains evolution as a stochastic process based on historical contingency, constrained by requirements for maintaining cell organization and modulated by adaptation.

To support his argument, he weaves together multiple conceptual threads: genomic comparisons that illuminate ancestral forms; new insights into pattern, process, and contingency in evolution; advances in the study of gene expression, protein abundance, and other phenotypic molecular characteristics; application of statistical physics to the study of the evolution of genes and genomes; and new perspectives on probability now emerging from modern cosmology.

The Logic of Chance shows why these insights make the twentieth-century scientific consensus about evolution appear outdated and incomplete and outlines a fundamentally new approach: one that is challenging, sometimes controversial, and always firmly rooted in hard science. Coverage includes

• Understanding the forces and patterns of evolution
• Surprising evolutionary “reconstructions” arising from the comparison of complete genomes
• Is there a “tree” of life–or a “forest”?
• How complex eukaryotes arose: tantalizing hints about one of evolutionary biology’s key enigmas
• Biological complexity and entropy: evolutionary lessons from Kolmogorov, Shannon, and Boltzmann
• Robustness, evolvability, and the creative role of noise in evolution
• The Last Universal Common Ancestor, cell origins, and the primordial gene pool
• The key role of viruses and the virus-cell arms race in evolution
• Life’s origin: estimating the probability of “unique events” in the context of modern cosmology

Book Details

• Hardcover: 528 pages
• Publisher: FT Press (June 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0132542498
• ISBN-13: 978-0132542494

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Book Description

James A. Shapiro’s Evolution: A View from the 21st Century proposes an important new paradigm for understanding biological evolution. Shapiro demonstrates why traditional views of evolution are inadequate to explain the latest evidence, and presents a compelling alternative. His information- and systems-based approach integrates advances in symbiogenesis, epigenetics, and mobile genetic elements, and points toward an emerging synthesis of physical, information, and biological sciences.

From the Back Cover
“Shapiro has written a stimulating, innovative manuscript that surely Darwin would have liked.”
—Sidney Altman, Yale University; Nobel Laureate in Chemistry, 1989

“Based on a long and highly competent personal experience in science and his novel insights into biological functions, the author has reached views of biological evolution that can reveal to a wide, interested readership how the living world co-evolves with the environment through its intrinsic powers.”
—Werner Arber, Professor Emeritus, University of Basel, Switzerland; Nobel Laureate in Physiology/Medicine, 1978

“Professor Shapiro’s offering is the best book on basic modern biology I have ever seen. As far as I can tell, the book is a game changer.”
—Carl Woese, University of Illinois; discoverer of Archaea, the third realm of life; National Medal of Science 2000

“‘[N]atural genetic engineering’ explains evolutionary processes that preceded people by at least 3,000 million years. Shapiro’s detailed account of ubiquitous genetic dynamism, DNA machination, repair, and recombination in real life, bacterial to mammalian, destroys myths…. Shapiro’s careful, authoritative narrative is entirely scientific and should interest all of us who care about the evolution of genetic systems.”
—Lynn Margulis, University of Massachusetts, Amherst; National Academy of Sciences, National Medal of Science 1999

“[T]his book is a magnificent analysis of the key questions of the origin of variation…. Jim Shapiro has new insights on all the central issues of evolutionary theory. The genome becomes a read-write storage system rather than the sole determinant of heredity. After reading this book, you will find it imperative to see biology as the 21st century is coming to see it.”
—Denis Noble, CBE FRS, Balliol College, Oxford; author of The Music of Life

“This book highlights…dynamic systems biology and engineering between the evolving genome, cell, and environmental stresses…affecting the…read-write memory system underlying life’s evolution.”
—Eviatar Nevo, University of Haifa, U.S. National Academy of Sciences; explorer of Evolution Canyon

James Shapiro’s Evolution: A View from the 21st Century proposes an important new science-based paradigm for understanding biological evolution. Shapiro explains how conventional evolutionary theory (as elaborated from the neo-Darwinian synthesis) has become outdated, and he marshals new molecular genetics and DNA sequence evidence to reinterpret fundamental evolutionary processes.

Shapiro’s new information- and systems-based paradigm integrates important phenomena such as symbiogenesis, epigenetics, and natural genetic engineering. He demonstrates how active cell processes can drive the rapid, large evolutionary changes seen in the DNA that cannot be adequately explained by earlier theories.

Evolution: A View from the 21st Century is likely to generate extensive discussion throughout the biological community and might change your own thinking about how life has evolved. Shapiro’s vision also has major implications for evolutionary computation, information science, and the growing synthesis of physical and biological sciences.

Living cells: evolution’s not-so-blind watchmakers
How cells acquire and use external information–and what that means for evolution

Cellular read-write mechanisms and informatics-based approaches
Cell-mediated genome inscriptions at time scales ranging from days to epochs

Nature’s leaps: beyond Linnaeus and Darwin
The growing molecular evidence for rapid, large-scale, evolutionary change

A new conceptual basis for 21st century evolutionary research
Discovering how evolutionary innovation is generated, dispersed, and diversified

Book Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: FT Press (June 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0132780933
• ISBN-13: 978-0132780933

Book Description

Leading medical genetics scholar Moyra Smith reviews current prospects and progress in medical genetics and genomics, arising from the growth of gene mapping and Human Genome sequencing. She addresses recent investigations into human origins, migrations, and diversity; psychiatric diseases; Alzheimer’s, Parkinsonism, and ALS; protein misfolding; gene-environment interactions; mRNA; epigenetics, and much more

From the Back Cover
An Up-to-Date Assessment of Recent Advances in Human Genetics, Human Variation,and Gene-Related Disease

In Investigating the Human Genome, leading medical genetics scholar Moyra Smith reviews current and recent work in genetics and genomics to assess progress in understanding human variation and the pathogenesis of common and rare diseases in which genetics plays a role.

Smith provides an exceptional overview of the most important biomedical progress arising from the greatly increased genetic information base generated by gene mapping and the sequencing of the complete Human Genome. She addresses diverse topics associated with human genetics and genomics, ranging from psychiatric and late-onset illness to early human history.

Coverage includes

• Genetic research on human origins, migrations, and population diversity
• Genome architecture and sequence variation in health and disease
• Genes, transcripts, and regulation at multiple levels
• Modifications via epigenetics and epigenomics
• Phenotypes, phenocopies, pathways, and interactions
• Key issues of protein misfolding
• Gene-environment interactions in DNA damage, instability, and repair
• Synaptic activity and plasticity, and relevance to cognitive impairment and behavioral abnormalities
• Micro RNAs and mRNA translation
• Late-onset neurodegenerative diseases: Alzheimer’s, ALS, and Parkinson’s
• Genes, cancer, signaling pathways, and targeted therapies
• Functional genomics and personalized medicine

Book Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: FT Press (June 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0132168146
• ISBN-13: 978-0132168144

Book Description

You’ll learn how to handle each aspect of the flexible Scrivener manuscript-generation process:
Set up: Add reference materials to your project for easy access – videos, audio files, PDFs, Web resources, and more. And, if you’ve already written bits of text, you can import those items too, including OPML outline files (such as from OmniOutliner Pro). Beyond importing from the Finder, you can use Mac OS X Services or Scrivener’s handy Scratch Pad panel. Or, you can use the Import and Split feature to import a long document into multiple chapters or segments in Scrivener.

Organize: Use the Outliner, Corkboard, Collections, and Binder to mix and match your content into the perfect final arrangement. For example, you can:

• Ignore the concept of a traditional file and break your manuscript into sections based on character, theme, topic, scene, or whatever you like.
• Organize your manuscript linearly in the Outliner.
• Use search Collections to search for a character, location, or phrase and see just those texts.
• Organize ideas by dragging and pinning index cards on the Corkboard.

Write: Use Full Screen mode to hide distractions so you can wordsmith in peace; set up Typewriter Scrolling to keep your writing focus at the center of the screen, not the bottom; and view more than one part of your project at once, so you can write in one section while referring to another. Also, use Scrivenings view to write one thread of a story all at once in a single view, even if it is broken up in multiple scenes or chapters in the final manuscript.

Format: Optimize the formatting you see when you work in Scrivener for your eyes and your screen, and understand how this can differ from the formatting in a “compiled” version of your manuscript.

Revise: Use revision marking and the useful Snapshot capability to experiment with and compare the effect of different revision strategies, while still being able to roll back to a previous version.

Be Mobile: Work on your project using more than one Mac, or on an iPad.

Compile: Don’t worry if the term “compile” is unfamiliar; it enables you to assemble your manuscript into linear order, in a form that can be printed or converted to common file formats. Scrivener supports RTF, Microsoft Word, Final Draft, PDF, and EPUB.

Specific questions answered in the ebook include:

• What’s the difference between a Scrivener folder and a file?
• How do I change which columns appear in the Outliner?
• How do I open the Inspector and control what appears in it?
• What is the relationship between Corkboard index cards and Finder items?
• How do I monitor character, word, or page count?
• How do text format presets work?
• How do I track changes when I revise a draft?
• How do I change the color of a revision level?
• What is the difference between an annotation, a comment, and a footnote?
• How do I export in an ebook format from Scrivener?

Book Details

• Paperback: 105 pages
• Publisher: TidBITS Publishing, Inc. (May 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1615421343
• ISBN-13: 978-1615421343

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Book Description

TIBCO’s product suite comprises a diverse range of components. Each component is specialized for a particular functionality, ranging from basic messaging through services, service orchestration, the management of complex business processes, managing master data across multiple systems, and the interpretation ofmassive streams of events (complex event processing).

The architecture series from TIBCO® Press comprises a coordinated set of books for software architects and developers, showing how to combine TIBCO components to design and build real-world solutions.

TIBCO® Architecture Fundamentals is the core book for understanding and using the TIBCO product suite. It focuses on the TIBCO ActiveMatrix® product suite and a handful of the other most commonly used components, including the TIBCO Enterprise Message Service^TM and TIBCO BusinessEvents^TM. The book provides a sound basis for applying TIBCO products to solve the most common integration and SOA challenges faced by architects and developers. In addition, it lays the foundation for the more advanced books to be added to the architecture series.

Designed to make the material as accessible as possible, the book starts with concrete problems architects and developers face every day, showing how to solve these problems with combinations of TIBCO (and selected third-party) products. In the context of specific design scenarios, it also discusses key concepts and decision trade-offs. To accomplish its practical aims, the book

• Provides useful techniques for discussing and documenting architectures
• Presents reference architectures (design patterns) for solving common SOA and system integration problems
• Describes each problem and solution from both business process and technical perspectives
• Supplies an overview of the typical solution roles played by different TIBCO products

The book largely avoids the code-level detail already available in the product manuals, concentrating instead on blueprints for solving whole classes of problems.

“TIBCO® Architecture Fundamentals is a must-read for anybody involved with the architecture and design of distributed systems, system integration issues, or service-based application design.”
—Bert Hooyman, Chief Architect, Europe, for MphasiS (an HP Company)

“I would like all the folks on my team to read this, to ensure we are all on the same page with the deliverables that are expected from architecture teams involved in global projects and the role that the TIBCO tools play in implementing these solutions.”
—Joseph G. Meyer, Director of Architecture Services and R&D, Citi

Book Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional (May 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 032177261X
• ISBN-13: 978-0321772619

Book Description

Step-by-Step, Full-Color Graphics!

Take advantage of your computer’s features and tools right away–the QuickSteps way. Color photos and screenshots with clear instructions make it easy to accomplish everything you want to do. Follow along and quickly learn how to navigate the Windows operating system; get online; use core programs such as Word, Excel, and Quicken; and secure your computer. Fun activities, such as genealogy, photo editing and management, social networking, and online dating are covered, plus you’ll get tips for enjoying music, ebooks, and videos. Written by seniors for seniors, this practical, fast-paced guide helps you get the most out of your computer.

Use these handy guideposts:

• Shortcuts for accomplishing common tasks
• Personal insights from other seniors
• Need-to-know facts in concise narrative
• Helpful reminders or alternative ways of doing things
• Bonus information related to the topic being covered
• Errors and pitfalls to avoid

Book Details

• Paperback: 306 pages
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill Osborne Media (April 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 007174035X
• ISBN-13: 978-0071740357

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Book Description

Discover BIM: A better way to build better buildings

Building Information Modeling (BIM) offers a novel approach to design, construction, and facility management in which a digital representation of the building process is used to facilitate the exchange and interoperability of information in digital format. BIM is beginning to change the way buildings look, the way they function, and the ways in which they are designed and built.

The BIM Handbook, Second Edition provides an in-depth understanding of BIM technologies, the business and organizational issues associated with its implementation, and the profound advantages that effective use of BIM can provide to all members of a project team. Updates to this edition include:

• Completely updated material covering the current practice and technology in this fast-moving field
• Expanded coverage of lean construction and its use of BIM, with special focus on Integrated Project Delivery throughout the book
• New insight on the ways BIM facilitates sustainable building
• New information on interoperability schemas and collaboration tools
• Six new case studies

Painting a colorful and thorough picture of the state of the art in building information modeling, the BIM Handbook, Second Edition guides readers to successful implementations, helping them to avoid needless frustration and costs and take full advantage of this paradigm-shifting approach to construct better buildings that consume fewer materials and require less time, labor, and capital resources.

“The BIM Handbook is an extensively researched and meticulously written book, showing evidence of years of work rather than something that has been quickly put together in the course of a few months. It brings together most of the current information about BIM, its history, as well as its potential future in one convenient place, and can serve as a handy reference book on BIM for anyone who is involved in the design, construction, and operation of buildings and needs to know about the technologies that support it. The need for such a book is indisputable, and it is terrific that Chuck Eastman and his team were able to step up to the plate and make it happen. Thanks to their efforts, anyone in the AEC industry looking for a deeper understanding of BIM now knows exactly where to look for it.”
—AECbytes book review, August 28, 2008 (www.aecbytes.com/review/2008/BIMHandbook.html)

Book Details

• Hardcover: 648 pages
• Publisher: Wiley; 2nd Edition (April 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0470541377
• ISBN-13: 978-0470541371

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Book Description

Why do enterprise systems have complicated search pages, when Google has a single search box that works better? Why struggle with an expense reimbursement system that is not as easy as home accounting software? Although this seems like comparing apples to oranges, as information and communication technologies increasingly reach into every industry the demand for easy-to-use work tools continues to grow. An exploration of cutting-edge approaches for evaluating the usability of complex user interaction, Usability of Complex Information Systems: Evaluation of User Interaction focuses on improving design and communicating content to the end user.

The book continues the conversation about the evolution of usability, asking how we can design and evaluate these complex systems and the complex work they support. It describes and analyzes approaches to teaching, testing, analyzing, or managing usability studies—approaches that involve technical communicators making novel contributions to how we think about and evaluate increasingly complex systems. The book contains case studies on different types of complexity, including:

• A complex work environment, requiring collaboration among different people or a goal sustained over time, and often in the face of distractions, interruptions, and planned pauses
• A complex information context, one with no single answer, where the data changes dynamically or where the best answer may rely on other aspects of a fluid environment
• A complex technology, in which people use many different applications in their work and collaboration
• A complex topic, requiring advanced technical or domain knowledge

Even systems that seem simple are, in fact, complex. The shopping interface for an e-commerce system may not be complex, but the databases, business processes, and logistics behind it certainly are. The examination of different aspects of designing and examining complexity presented in this book brings you a step further in developing a deeper understanding of what it takes to make complex systems work.

Book Details

• Hardcover: 399 pages
• Publisher: CRC Press (October, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 9781439828946
• ISBN-13: 978-1439828946

Book Description

Updated and expanded, Bayesian Artificial Intelligence, Second Edition provides a practical and accessible introduction to the main concepts, foundation, and applications of Bayesian networks. It focuses on both the causal discovery of networks and Bayesian inference procedures. Adopting a causal interpretation of Bayesian networks, the authors discuss the use of Bayesian networks for causal modeling. They also draw on their own applied research to illustrate various applications of the technology.

New to the Second Edition

• New chapter on Bayesian network classifiers
• New section on object-oriented Bayesian networks
• New section that addresses foundational problems with causal discovery and Markov blanket discovery
• New section that covers methods of evaluating causal discovery programs
• Discussions of many common modeling errors
• New applications and case studies
• More coverage on the uses of causal interventions to understand and reason with causal Bayesian networks

Illustrated with real case studies, the second edition of this bestseller continues to cover the groundwork of Bayesian networks. It presents the elements of Bayesian network technology, automated causal discovery, and learning probabilities from data and shows how to employ these technologies to develop probabilistic expert systems.

Web Resource
The book’s website at www.csse.monash.edu.au/bai/book/book.html offers a variety of supplemental materials, including example Bayesian networks and data sets. Instructors can email the authors for sample solutions to many of the problems in the text.

Book Details

• Hardcover: 491 pages
• Publisher: CRC Press; 2nd Edition (December, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 9781439815915
• ISBN-13: 978-1439815915

Book Description

Open Text ProVision® (formerly known as Metastorm ProVision®) is an Enterprise Architecture (EA) solution allowing for effective planning and decision making throughout the enterprise. It enables an organization to have a central repository of information about the business, reducing organizational risks and better optimizing business resources.

Implemented well, it enables better and more actionable decisions exactly when you need them.

This book combines theory and practice to provide a step- by- step guide to building a successful customer- centric model of your business. The approach is simple and down to earth, and along the way, with various real-world examples, you will learn how to make a business case, use a framework, and adopt a methodology with Open Text ProVision®.

This book draws on the experience of ProVision® experts around the world. By combining theory with practice from the field you can avoid common mistakes and develop a successful customer centric strategy for implementing ProVision®. Each chapter builds on the previous one to give you the confidence to implement a central repository, dealing with both the technical and human issues that you might face.

Learn from real world business cases to think beyond the technical aspects of strategy implementation and enable better business decisions with Open Text ProVision®.

What you will learn from this book :

• Quickly get up and running with the key features of the Open Text ProVision® toolset
• Fully understand and communicate the key benefits of Open Text ProVision®
• Discover how to manage the repository with effective governance
• Master the essential foundation of your first five projects with ProVision®
• Take full advantage of a framework to organize information and review a methodology for building models
• Learn about the Enterprise Designer approach
• Obtain support and buy-in for modeling
• Grasp Metastorm best practices from real-world users of the tool
• Learn to deal with both the technical and human aspects of implementation
• Understand why a customer-centric approach is the most successful
• Effectively deploy a ProVision® strategy

Approach
This is both a practical and theoretical guide detailing how to deploy a successful ProVision® strategy, using a number of real business cases along the way. Unlike other architecture books, the approach is holistic – it looks at the whole lifecycle of building a business case, through to using the product. It combines a detailed understanding of the ProVision® toolset with a practical grasp of the business issues that affect the implementation of a successful strategy.

Who this book is written for
If you are a business architect or CIO in a large organization who wants to implement a successful strategy using Open Text ProVision®, then this book is for you. It will also be of interest if you are an enterprise designer or architect. It might be that you already have working knowledge of ProVision®, but do not yet have the skill to implement it in the right context; this book will help you get there.

Book Details

• Paperback: 260 pages
• Publisher: Packt Publishing (March, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1849682526
• ISBN-13: 978-1849682527

Book Description

It’s all in the name: Learn You a Haskell for Great Good! is a hilarious, illustrated guide to this complex functional language. Packed with the author’s original artwork, pop culture references, and most importantly, useful example code, this book teaches functional fundamentals in a way you never thought possible.

You’ll start with the kid stuff: basic syntax, recursion, types and type classes. Then once you’ve got the basics down, the real black belt master-class begins: you’ll learn to use applicative functors, monads, zippers, and all the other mythical Haskell constructs you’ve only read about in storybooks.

As you work your way through the author’s imaginative (and occasionally insane) examples, you’ll learn to:

• Laugh in the face of side effects as you wield purely functional programming techniques
• Use the magic of Haskell’s “laziness” to play with infinite sets of data
• Organize your programs by creating your own types, type classes, and modules
• Use Haskell’s elegant input/output system to share the genius of your programs with the outside world

Short of eating the author’s brain, you will not find a better way to learn this powerful language than reading Learn You a Haskell for Great Good!

About the Author
Miran Lipovaca is a computer science student in Ljubljana, Slovenia. His online tutorial, “Learn You a Haskell for Great Good!,” is widely regarded as the best way to learn Haskell.

Book Details

• Paperback: 400 pages
• Publisher: No Starch Press (March, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1593272839
• ISBN-13: 978-1593272838

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Book Description

IBM FileNet P8 Content Manager, built on top of the mature FileNet platform, is a complete, world class Enterprise Content Management platform. With its rock solid document management features, tight integration with BPM systems and other components, and rich API set, it is a highly scalable and secure solution to common and uncommon Enterprise Content Management requirements.Written by a FileNet insider, who is an Enterprise Content Management architect and engineer, this book is a straightforward guide to effectively installing, managing, and administering FileNet P8 Content Manager. It emphasizes practical, specific, and hands-on information about features for building Enterprise Content Management solutions. At every step, real-world tips and important information are called out to save you time and trouble when building customized solutions.

Beginning with an overview of Enterprise Content Management, the book moves quickly to the matter of getting a real Content Manager system up and running. You learn key Content Manager applications that are demonstrated to show you the major concepts that matter you as a developer, administrator, or as an end user. There are separate chapters that describe major platform features, security-related features, and integrations with other commonly used software components. A realistic sample application, designed right in front of you unfolds the genius in IBM Filenet P8 Content Manager. Finally, you take an in-depth look at troubleshooting, support sites, and online resources to help meet your security needs.

Master the ins and outs of the FileNet P8 platform, easily.

What you will learn from this book

• Install IBM FileNet P8 Content Manager along with its supporting components and pre-requisites
• Configure the Content Manager components to make them work in unison
• Learn the building-block features and uses of Content Manager and related components
• Master FileNet Enterprise Manager (FEM), the administrator’s tool, to learn the Content Manager features
• Perform various tasks in Workplace XT, one of the stand-alone, end-user applications provided with Content Manager
• Explore authentication, authorization, and other security mechanisms to meet your security needs
• Plan and deploy the components of an Enterprise Content Management platform to a real-world environment
• See how a custom application is designed and created using Content Manager APIs

Approach
The book is written in a straightforward style and avoids sales and marketing hype. William J. Carpenter is an Enterprise Content Management architect at IBM who spends every day doing product development and helping others make the best use of the Content Manager product. The numerous tips and notes arise from his years of practical experience with FileNet products.

Most of the book consists of specific recipes for installing and using Content Manager, and it also provides you with clear and precise explanations of the most important features and components. It is written in a conversational style without being “dumbed down”, and the book can be read straight through, from cover to cover. It emphasizes the things you need to know, presented in a logical progression.

Who this book is written for
If you are a CIO, an IT manager, an IT staff engineer, or perhaps a business leader, business analyst, or even an end user who wants to better understand the role that Content Manager plays in your enterprise, irrespective of any previous knowledge of IBM FileNet P8 Content Manager or Enterprise Content Management in general, then this book is a must have for you.

And if you are someone who is just starting to work with Content Manager or who is facing a decision about whether to use Content Manager or another solution, be assured you will not find a better guide. Even if you have years of experience, you can still enrich your knowledge with the clear, practical explanations of basic and advanced features. Although it is not a developer’s guide, per se, the API and sample application will help you as an enterprise developer or architect to get your bearings in Content Manager technologies.

Book Details

• Paperback: 452 pages
• Publisher: Packt Publishing (February, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1849680701
• ISBN-13: 978-1849680707

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Book Description

Good backup and recovery strategies are key to the health of any organization. Medium- to very-large-scale systems administrators have to protect large amounts of critical data as well as design backup solutions that are scalable and optimized to meet changing conditions. Pro Data Backup and Recovery will cover some of the more common backup applications, such as Symantec NetBackup/BackupExec, EMC NetWorker, and CommVault, but the main discussion will focus on the implementation of 21st century architectures that allow the backup software to be a “commodity” item. The underlying architecture provides the framework for meeting the requirements of data protection for the organization.

This book covers new developments in data protection as well as the impact of single-instance storage upon backup infrastructures. It discusses the impact of backup and data replication, the often misapplied B2D and D2D strategies, and “tapeless” backup environments. Continuous data protection and remote replication strategies are also addressed as they are integrated within backup strategies—a very important topic today.

Learn backup solution design regardless of specific backup software
Design realistic recovery solutions
Take into account new data protection standards and the impact of data replication

Whether you are using NetBackup, CommVault, or some other backup software, Pro Data Backup and Recovery will give you the information you need to keep your data safe and available.

What you’ll learn

• Elements of a backup environment and applications of those elements
• New technologies within the backup technology area and their impact on design
• Configurations using both Symantec NetBackup and CommVault Simpana, with combinations of backup serves, media servers, and clients, and the impacts of each combination
• Combinations of both hardware and software configurations that are scalable from small to large environments
• Designs that address perennial problem areas such as remote offices, very short (less-than-15-minute) recovery point objectives (RPOs), and tape management
• Reporting requirements that will assist in maintaining and growing an implementation once executed

Who this book is for
The general audience for this book includes systems engineers, systems administrators, and specialist backup administrators

Table of Contents
Ch. 1 – Introduction to Backup and Recovery
Ch. 2 – Backup Software (CommVault Simpana and Symantec NetBackup)
Ch. 3 – Physical Backup Media
Ch. 4 – Virtual Backup Media
Ch. 5 – New Media Technologies
Ch. 6 – Software Architectures: CommVault
Ch. 7 – Software Architectures: NetBackup
Ch. 8 – Application Backup Strategies
Ch. 9 – Putting It All Together: Sample Backup Environments
Ch. 10 – Monitoring and Reporting
Ch. 11 – Summary

Book Details

• Paperback: 296 pages
• Publisher: Apress (February, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1430226625
• ISBN-13: 978-1430226628

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Book Description

The Third Edition of CMOS Circuit Design, Layout, and Simulation continues to cover the practical design of both analog and digital integrated circuits, offering a vital, contemporary view of a wide range of analog/digital circuit blocks including: phase-locked-loops, delta-sigma sensing circuits, voltage/current references, op-amps, the design of data converters, and much more. Regardless of one’s integrated circuit (IC) design skill level, this book allows readers to experience both the theory behind, and the hands-on implementation of, complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) IC design via detailed derivations, discussions, and hundreds of design, layout, and simulation examples.

From the Back Cover
Now updated—the classic guide to CMOS circuits, from design to implementationThe Third Edition of CMOS Circuit Design, Layout, and Simulation continues to cover the practical design of both analog and digital integrated circuits, offering a vital, contemporary view of a wide range of analog/digital circuit blocks including: phase-locked-loops, delta-sigma sensing circuits, voltage/current references, op-amps, the design of data converters, and much more. Regardless of one’s integrated circuit (IC) design skill level, this book allows readers to experience both the theory behind, and the hands-on implementation of, complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) IC design via detailed derivations, discussions, and hundreds of design, layout, and simulation examples.

Inside, readers will continue to find the relevant and practical material that made the first two editions bestsellers. The Third Edition has been updated and includes new chapters covering the implementation of data converters and the analysis/design of feedback amplifiers The additional material makes the book even more useful as an academic text and companion for the working design engineer. Featured in this Third Edition:

• In-depth coverage of both analog and digital transistor-level design techniques
• Integration of the book’s material with online resources found at CMOSedu.com
• Detailed discussions on the design of phase- and delay-locked loops, mixed-signal circuits, data converters, and circuit noise
• Real-world process parameters, design rules, and layout examples
• Hundreds of practical design examples, discussions, and end-of-chapter problems
• Theory and discussions detailing the trade-offs and considerations when designing at the transistor level

The book’s accompanying Web site, CMOSedu.com, offers numerous examples for many computer-aided design (CAD) tools including Cadence, Electric, HSPICE, LASI, LTspice, Spectre, and WinSpice. Readers can recreate, modify, or simulate the design examples presented in the book. In addition, the solutions to the book’s end-of-chapter problems, the book’s figures, and additional homework problems without solutions are found at CMOSedu.com.

This Third Edition of CMOS Circuit Design, Layout, and Simulation is the ideal companion for undergraduate and graduate students in electrical and computer engineering as well as both novice and senior engineers working on transistor-level integrated circuit design.

Book Details

• Hardcover: 1208 pages
• Publisher: Wiley-IEEE Press; 3 edition (September, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0470881321
• ISBN-13: 978-0470881323

Book Description

The Most Complete, Modern, and Useful Collection of DSP Recipes: More Than 50 Practical Solutions and More than 30 Summaries of Pertinent Mathematical Concepts for Working Engineers

Notes on Digital Signal Processing is a comprehensive, easy-to-use collection of step-by-step procedures for designing and implementing modern DSP solutions. Leading DSP expert and IEEE Signal Processing Magazine associate editor C. Britton Rorabaugh goes far beyond the basic procedures found in other books while providing the supporting explanations and mathematical materials needed for a deeper understanding.

Rorabaugh covers the full spectrum of challenges working engineers are likely to encounter and delves into crucial DSP nuances discussed nowhere else. Readers will find valuable, tested recipes for working with multiple sampling techniques; Fourier analysis and fast Fourier transforms; window functions; classical spectrum analysis; FIR and IIR filter design; analog prototype filters; z-transform analysis; multirate and statistical signal processing; bandpass and quadrature techniques; and much more.

Notes on Digital Signal Processing begins with mapping diagrams that illuminate the relationships between all topics covered in the book. Many recipes include examples demonstrating actual applications, and most sections rely on widely used MATLAB tools.

• DSP fundamentals: ideal, natural, and instantaneous sampling; delta functions; physical signal reconstruction; and more
• Fourier Analysis: Fourier series and transforms; discrete-time and discrete Fourier transforms; signal truncation; DFT leakage and resolution
• Fast Fourier transforms: decimation in time and frequency; prime factor algorithms; and fast convolution
• Window techniques: sinusoidal analysis; window characteristics and choices; Kaiser windows; and more
• Classical spectrum analysis: unmodified and modified periodograms; Bartlett’s and Welch’s periodograms; and periodogram performance
• FIR filters: design options; linear-phase FIR filters; periodicities; basic and Kaiser window methods; and the Parks-McClellan algorithm
• Analog prototype filters: Laplace transforms; characterization; and Butterworth, Chebyshev, elliptic, and Bessel filters
• z-Transform analysis: computation and transforms using partial fraction expansion
• IIR filters: design options; impulse invariance methods; and bilinear transformation
• Multirate signal processing: decimation and interpolation fundamentals; multistage and polyphase decimators and interpolation
• Bandpass and quadrature techniques: bandpass sampling; wedge diagrams; complex and analytic signals; and advanced signal generation techniques
• Statistical signal processing: parametric modeling of discrete-time signals; autoregressive signal models; fitting AR and All-Pole models; and more

Book Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Prentice Hall (November, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0131583344
• ISBN-13: 978-0131583344