Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 21-24 April 2008

The terms groupware and CSCW (Computer-Supported Cooperative Work) have received significant attention in computer science and related disciplines for quite some time now. This book has two main objectives: first, to outline the meaning of both terms, and second, to point out both the numerous opportunities for users of CSCW systems and the risks of applying them. The book introduces in detail an interdisciplinary application area of distributed systems, namely the computer support of individuals trying to solve a problem in cooperation with each other but not necessarily having identical work places or working times. CSCW can be viewed as a synergism between the areas of distributed systems and (multimedia) communications on the one hand and those of information science and socio-organizational theory on the other hand. Thus, the book is addressed to students of all these disciplines, as well as to users and developers of systems with group communication and cooperation as top priorities.

The Bubble and Beyond, describes how the fabulous expansive forces of industrial capitalism have been subverted by a predatory finance capitalism. What the FED hailed as The Great Moderation has left the middle class to take on a lifetime of bank debt to obtain access to housing, education to get a job, an auto to drive to it, and simply to maintain living standards that wages and salaries no longer support. What has derailed the economy is the take-over of academic economics and politics by the financial sector in order to censor criticism and misrepresent statistics so as to give the impression that the economy can borrow its way out of debt. The reality is that income used to pay down today s debt overhead is not available to be spent on goods and services. The result is debt deflation, followed by austerity and the the "fire sale" or decay of infrastructure at the national and local levels. The most controversial claim by Prof. Hudson is that Debts that can t be paid, won t be. The question he poses is whether their non-payment will lead to worldwide foreclosures including sell-offs of the public domain by debt-strapped local and national governments or whether they will be written down in line with the ability to pay. This is the economic issue that will dominate politics over the next generation. Illustrated with charts and exhibits that make it plain where money goes versus where it should go.

Knowledge about the outer heliosphere and the interstellar medium, which were long treated as two separate fields, has improved dramatically over the past 25 years as a consequence of recent developments: The discovery of interstellar pickup ions and neutral helium inside the heliosphere, the determination of the interstellar hydrogen distribution in the heliosphere obtained using backscattered solar Lyman-alpha radiation, the prediction and subsequent detection of the hydrogen wall just outside of the heliopause, the development of detailed global models for the interaction of solar wind plasma with the interstellar medium, and most recently, direct in-situ plasma and field measurements inside of the heliosheath. At the same time, our understanding of the nearby galactic environment, including the composition and dynamics of the warm gas clouds and hot gas in the local bubble, has benefited greatly from absorption-line spectroscopy using nearby stars as background sources and dynamic modeling. The present volume provides a synopsis of these developments organised into seven sections: Dominant physical processes in the termination shock and heliosheath, three-dimensional shape and structure of the dynamic heliosphere, relation of the plasmas and dust inside and outside of the heliosphere, origin and properties of the very local interstellar medium, energy and pressure equilibria in the local bubble, physical processes in the multiphase interstellar medium inside of the local bubble, and the roles that magnetic fields play in the outer heliosphere and the local bubble. The last theme is probably the most basic of all as magnetic fields play important roles in most of the phenomena discussed here. The volume concludes with four papers providing the "big picture" by looking at the time evolution of both the heliosphere and the local bubble, looking beyond the local bubble, and finally addressing the challenges in modeling the interface between the two media.

The Transactions XXVIIA Reports on Astronomy 2006-2009 provides a comprehensive and authoritative review of what has been achieved in astronomy during the years 2006 to 2009. These insightful and up-to-date reviews have been written by the presidents and chairpersons of the IAU scientific bodies: the Divisions, the Commissions, and the Working Groups. Topics covered in this wide-ranging volume include: fundamental astronomy; the Sun and heliosphere; planetary sciences; stars; variable stars; interstellar matter; the Galactic system; galaxies and the Universe; optical and infrared techniques; radio astronomy; space and high-energy astrophysics; and other IAU activities. The reviews have been written at a level suitable for colleagues in the same fields, but will also be useful for students and researchers wishing to gain an overview of astronomical fields beyond their own research area.

Modern x-ray data, available through online archives, are important for many astronomical topics. However, using these data requires specialized techniques and software. Written for graduate students, professional astronomers and researchers who want to start working in this field, this book is a practical guide to x-ray astronomy. The handbook begins with x-ray optics, basic detector physics and CCDs, before focussing on data analysis. It introduces the reduction and calibration of x-ray data, scientific analysis, archives, statistical issues and the particular problems of highly extended sources. The book describes the main hardware used in x-ray astronomy, emphasizing the implications for data analysis. The concepts behind common x-ray astronomy data analysis software are explained. The appendices present reference material often required during data analysis.

This book includes the proceedings of the Workshop held in Madrid, April 1999 to celebrate 2 years of successful operation of the first Spanish small scientific satellite in orbit. It contains discussions about the overall philosophy of small mission programs, the design of the satellite and its payload as well as the most relevant scientific outcome of the mission. Also included are additional contributions to the workshop, which are of importance to Minisat 01 in order to put its results within context. Finally, the future of small missions for space sciences is reviewed together with the main technological challenges for new studies. Out of the technological and scientific results of Minisat 01, the measurement of the EUV airglow spectrum and the flux of some stars in the same range can be highlighted together with the dismiss of the massive neutrino decay theory. The high-energy experiment analyzed the characterization of the radiation environment in LEO and the behaviour of different kind of detectors, as well as the use of coded masks for imaging and the measurement of some specific sources. The book's level is intended for specialists in EUV and Hard X-Ray astrophysicists as well as for engineers and technicians involved in space science experiments and missions.

The eleventh COSPAR colloquium The Outer Heliosphere: The Next Frontiers was held in Potsdam, Germany, from 24-28 July, 2000, and is the second dedicated to this subject after the first one held in Warsaw, Poland in 1989.Roughly a century has passed after the first ideas by Oliver Lodge, George Francis Fitzgerald and Kristan Birkeland about particle clouds emanating from the Sun and interacting with the Earth environment. Only a few decades after the formulation of the concepts of a continuous solar corpuscular radiation by Ludwig Bierman and a solar wind by Eugene Parker, heliospheric physics has evolved into an important branch of astrophysical research. Numerous spacecraft missions have increased the knowledge about the heliosphere tremendously. Now, at the beginning of a new millenium it seems possible, by newly developed propulasion technologies to send a spacecraft beyond the boundaries of the heliosphere. Such an Interstellar Proce will start the in-situ exploration of interstellar space and, thus, can be considered as the first true astrophysical spacecraft. The year 2000 appeared to be a highly welcome occassion to review the achievements since the last COSPAR Colloquia 11 years ago, to summarize the present developments and to give new impulse for future activities in heliospheric research.

This extensive thesis work covers several topics, including intensity and polarization, focusing on a new polarization bias reduction method. Vidal studied data from the WMAP satellite, which is low signal-to-noise and as such has to be corrected for polarization bias. He presents a new method for correcting the data, based on knowledge of the underlying angle of polarization. Using this novel method, he sets upper limits for the polarization fraction of regions known to emit significant amounts of spinning dust emissions. He also studies the large-scale loops and filaments that dominate the synchrotron sky. The dominant features are investigated, including identification of several new features. For the North Polar Spur, a model of an expanding shell in the vicinity of the Sun is tested, which appears to fit the data. Implications for CMB polarization surveys are also discussed. In addition, Vidal presents interferometric observations of the dark cloud LDN 1780 at 31 GHz and shows that the spinning dust hypothesis can explain the radio properties observed.