Books published by IOS Press

Although we can recognize further progress in educating health and a considerable number of educational programs for health informatics / medical informatics specialists have been set up, there is still a need to enhance these educational activities world wide, considering global developments as well as new curricular concepts.

A survey of work on passage times in stable Markov chains with a discrete state space and a continuous time. A unifying framework is provided by probabilistic potential theory and the results presented in the text are interpreted from this point of view.

In the research project presented in this book, an innovative type of fibre concrete is developed, which improved both the tensile strength and the ductility: the Hybrid-Fibre Concrete (HFC). The expression 'hybrid' refers to the 'hybridisation' of fibres: short and long steel fibres were combined together in one concrete mixture. This is the contrary of conventional steel fibre concretes, which contain only one type of fibre. The basic goal of combining short and long fibres is to improve the tensile strength by the action of short fibres on the one hand and on the other hand to improve the ductility by the action of long fibres. In this research project all important aspects needed for the development and application of HFC have been considered. A total of fifteen mixtures, with different types and amounts of steel fibres were developed and tested in the fresh state (workability) as well as in the hardened state (uniaxial tensile tests, flexural tests, pullout tests of single fibres and compressive tests). A new analytical model for the bridging of cracks by fibres was developed and successfully implemented for tensile softening response of HFC. Finally, the utilisation of HFC in the engineering practice was discussed, including a case-study on light prestressed long-span beams made of HFC.

Ethics and accountability have become important themes for modern government, as in most of the countries there is a severe crisis of legitimacy. Increasingly, there is a feeling that performance management alone will not solve this crisis. This book deals with ethics and accountability in a context of governance and new public management.

Provides insight into those elements of acoustics and aeronautics that are connected directly with the problem of aviation noise. This book, intended as a textbook for a university course on aviation acoustics at an undergraduate level, is suitable for use as an instrument of self-study for the practicing engineer.

This book is intended to provide a treatment of the theory and applications of Stochastic Neural Networks, that is networks able to learn random processes from experience, on the basis of recent developments on this subject.

Current approaches to the development of legal knowledge-based systems (LKBS), such as the use of rule-based systems, case-based systems or logics, have obtained limited theoretical and practical results. This overview of the field describes present approaches and analyzes their problems.