Higher Education is in a state of ferment. People are seriously discussing whether the medieval ideal of the university as being excellent in all areas makes sense today, given the number of universities that we have in the world. Student fees are changing the orientation of students to the system. The high rate of non repayment of fees in the UK is provoking difficult questions about whether the current system of funding makes sense. There are disputes about the ratio of research to teaching, and further discussions about the international delivery of courses.

The trusted landmark cardiology resource thoroughly updated to reflect the latest clinical perspectives Includes DVD with image bank Through thirteen editions Hursts the Heart has always represented the cornerstone of current scholarship in the discipline. Cardiologists, cardiology fellows and internists from across the globe have relied on its unmatched authority breadth of coverage and clinical relevance to help optimize patient outcomes. The thirteenth edition of Hursts the Heart continues this standard-setting tradition with 19 new chapters and 59 new authors, each of whom are internationally recognized as experts in their respective content areas. Featuring an enhanced reader-friendly design the new edition covers need-to-know clinical advances as well as issues that are becoming increasingly vital to cardiologists worldwide. As in previous editions you will find the most complete overview of cardiology topics available plus a timely new focus on evidence-based medicine health outcomes and health quality. New Features: 1548 full-color illustrations and 578 tables. Companion DVD with image bank includes key figures and tables from the text.

This two volume set LNCS 7238 and LNCS 7239 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Database Systems for Advanced Applications, DASFAA 2012, held in Busan, South Korea, in April 2012. The 44 revised full papers and 8 short papers presented together with 2 invited keynote papers, 8 industrial papers, 8 demo presentations, 4 tutorials and 1 panel paper were carefully reviewed and selected from a total of 159 submissions. The topics covered are query processing and optimization, data semantics, XML and semi-structured data, data mining and knowledge discovery, privacy and anonymity, data management in the Web, graphs and data mining applications, temporal and spatial data, top-k and skyline query processing, information retrieval and recommendation, indexing and search systems, cloud computing and scalability, memory-based query processing, semantic and decision support systems, social data, data mining.

Database Semantics: Semantic Issues in Multimedia Systems reflects the state of the art of emerging research on the meaning of multimedia information, as presented during IFIP's Eighth Data Semantics Working Conference (DS-8), organized by its Working Group 2.6 on Databases, and held at Rotorua, New Zealand, in January 1999. DS-8 was planned as an active forum for researchers and practitioners focusing on those issues that involve the semantics of the information represented, stored, and manipulated by multimedia systems. Depending on the topic and state of research, issues may be covered either deeply theoretically or quite practically, or even both. These proceedings contain twenty-one papers carefully selected by an International Programme Committee and organized in six thematic areas: Video Data Modelling and Use; Image Databases; Applications of Multimedia Systems; Multimedia Modeling in General; Multimedia Information Retrieval; Semantics and Metadata. For almost every area, important topics and issues include: data modeling and query languages for media such as audio, video, and images; methodological aspects of multimedia database design; intelligent multimedia information retrieval; knowledge discovery and data mining in multimedia information; multimedia user interfaces. Three visionary keynote addresses, by famous experts Ramesh Jain, Hermann Maurer and Masao Sakauchi, set the stage for discussion and future directions for the field. The collection of papers that resulted now offers a glimpse of the excitement and enthusiasm from DS-8. Database Semantics: Semantic Issues in Multimedia Systems is suitable as a secondary text for a graduate-level course on database systems, multimedia systems, or information retrieval systems and as a reference for practitioners and researchers in industry.

Introductory textbooks on American government tell us that the Supreme Court is independent from the elected branches and that independent courts better protect rights than their more deferential counterparts. But are these facts or myths? In this groundbreaking new work, Anna Harvey reports evidence showing that the Supreme Court is in fact extraordinarily deferential to congressional preferences in its constitutional rulings. Analyzing cross-national evidence, Harvey also finds that the rights protections we enjoy in the United States appear to be largely due to the fact that we do not have an independent Supreme Court. In fact, we would likely have even greater protections for political and economic rights were we to prohibit our federal courts from exercising judicial review altogether. Harvey’s findings suggest that constitutional designers would be wise to heed Thomas Jefferson’s advice to “let mercy be the character of the law-giver, but let the judge be a mere machine.&rdquo

Database Management Systems: Understanding and Applying Database Technology focuses on the processes, methodologies, techniques, and approaches involved in database management systems (DBMSs). The book first takes a look at ANSI database standards and DBMS applications and components. Discussion focus on application components and DBMS components, implementing the dynamic relationship application, problems and benefits of dynamic relationship DBMSs, nature of a dynamic relationship application, ANSI/NDL, and DBMS standards. The manuscript then ponders on logical database, interrogation, and physical database. Topics include choosing the right interrogation language, procedure-oriented language, system control capabilities, DBMSs and language orientation, logical database components, and data definition language. The publication examines system control, including system control components, audit trails, reorganization, concurrent operations, multiple database processing, security and privacy, system control static and dynamic differences, and installation and maintenance. The text is a valuable source of information for computer engineers and researchers interested in exploring the applications of database technology.

This volume contains the proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Database Systems for Advanced Applications (DASFAA '97). DASFAA '97 focused on advanced database technologies and their applications. The 55 papers in this volume cover a wide range of areas in the field of database systems and applications ? including the rapidly emerging areas of the Internet, multimedia, and document database systems ? and should be of great interest to all database system researchers and developers, and practitioners.