This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Applications of Natural Language to Information Systems, NLDB 2015, held in Passau, Germany, in June 2015. The 18 full papers, 15 short papers, 14 poster and demonstration papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 100 submissions. The papers cover the following topics: information extraction…
Susanne Michalik analyzes why authoritarian regimes allow for multiparty elections and how they affect political outcomes. Even though their introduction rarely leads to a change in power, such elections should not be regarded as mere window-dressing. She argues that competitive elections are installed to deal with a split among the incumbent elite and to facilitate the formation of a new rulin…
This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 4th CCF Conference, NLPCC 2015, held in Nanchang, China, in October 2015.The 35 revised full papers presented together with 22 short papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 238 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on fundamentals on language computing; applications on language computing; NLP for search technolog…
The Encyclopedia of Earthquake Engineering is designed to be the authoritative and comprehensive reference covering all major aspects of the science of earthquake engineering, specifically focusing on the interaction between earthquakes and infrastructure. The encyclopedia comprises approximately 265 contributions. Since earthquake engineering deals with the interaction between earthquake distu…
This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-workshop proceedings of the Third IAPR TC3 Workshop on Pattern Recognition of Social Signals in Human-Computer-Interaction, MPRSS 2014, held in Stockholm, Sweden, in August 2014, as a satellite event of the International Conference on Pattern Recognition, ICPR 2014. The 14 revised papers presented focus on pattern recognition, machine learning …
This book brings together in a unique perspective aspects of natural history dioramas, their history, construction and rationale, interpretation and educational importance, from a number of different countries, from the west coast of the USA, across Europe to China. It describes the journey of dioramas from their inception through development to visions of their future. A complementary journey …
This encyclopedia provides a comprehensive reference to topics in biometrics including concepts, modalities, algorithms, devices, systems, security, performance testing, applications and standardization. With an A–Z format and over 1400 entries, it provides easy access to relevant information on all aspects of biometrics for those seeking entry into this broad field. Entries are written by…
The interdisciplinary field of Astrobiology constitutes a joint arena where provocative discoveries are coalescing concerning, e.g. the prevalence of exoplanets, the diversity and hardiness of life, and its increasingly likely chances for its emergence. Biologists, astrophysicists, biochemists, geoscientists and space scientists share this exciting mission of revealing the origin and commonalit…
This book discusses the historic range of variation (HRV) in the types, frequencies, severities and scales of natural disturbances, and explores how they create heterogeneous structure within upland hardwood forests of the Central Hardwood Region (CHR). The book was written in response to a 2012 forest planning rule which requires that national forests to be managed to sustain ‘ecological int…
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by…