these. In this book, we appropriate their conception of research-technology, and ex tend it to many other phenomena which are less stable and less localized in time and space than the Zeeman/Cotton situation. In the following pages, we use the concept for instances where research activities are orientated primarily toward technologies which facilitate both the production of scientific knowledge and the production of other goods. In particular, we use the tenn for instances where instruments and meth ods· traverse numerous geographic and institutional boundaries; that is, fields dis tinctly different and distant from the instruments' and methods' initial focus. We suggest that instruments such as the ultra-centrifuge, and the trajectories of the men who devise such artefacts, diverge in an interesting way from other fonns of artefacts and careers in science, metrology and engineering with which students of science and technology are more familiar. The instrument systems developed by re search-technologists strike us as especially general, open-ended, and flexible. When tailored effectively, research-technology instruments potentially fit into many niches and serve a host of unrelated applications. Their multi-functional character distin guishes them from many other devices which are designed to address specific, nar rowly defined problems in a circumscribed arena in and outside of science. Research technology activities link universities, industry, public and private research or me trology establishments, instrument-making finns, consulting companies, the military, and metrological agencies. Research-technology practitioners do not follow the career path of the traditional academic or engineering professional.

Exponential Fitting is a procedure for an efficient numerical approach of functions consisting of weighted sums of exponential, trigonometric or hyperbolic functions with slowly varying weight functions. This book is the first one devoted to this subject. Operations on the functions described above like numerical differentiation, quadrature, interpolation or solving ordinary differential equations whose solution is of this type, are of real interest nowadays in many phenomena as oscillations, vibrations, rotations, or wave propagation. The authors studied the field for many years and contributed to it. Since the total number of papers accumulated so far in this field exceeds 200 and the fact that these papers are spread over journals with various profiles (such as applied mathematics, computer science, computational physics and chemistry) it was time to compact and to systematically present this vast material. In this book, a series of aspects is covered, ranging from the theory of the procedure up to direct applications and sometimes including ready to use programs. The book can also be used as a textbook for graduate students.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Soft Computing, ICAISC 2006, held in Zakopane, Poland, in June 2006. The 128 revised contributed papers presented are organized in topical sections on neural networks and their applications, fuzzy systems and their applications, evolutionary algorithms and their applications, rough sets, classification and clustering, image analysis and robotics, bioinformatics and medical applications, various problems of artificial intelligence.

This book focuses on the class of large-scale stochastic systems, which has dominated the attention of many academic and research groups. It discusses distributed-sensor networks, decentralized detection theory, and econometric models with integrated and decentralized policymakers.

The Politics of Biafra is a reflection on the importance of history in addressing present realities and the future co-existence of Nigeria's multi ethnic society. It analyzes the ideological struggles and conflict in Biafra during the war with Nigeria from 1967-1970, the impact of the war and the relevance of those struggles to the current agitations for a new state of Biafra. In this historical and analytical work, the author observes that nearly fifty years after the end of the Nigeria-Biafra war in 1970, Nigeria remains confronted with the Biafra dilemma. No matter its pretensions, Nigeria will at some point have to reform its present pseudo federal arrangement to create a more inclusive, equitable and proper federal structure. If not, the country will continue to face epileptic developmental thrusts, militancy in the Niger Delta and a ruinous intensifying clamor for self-determination by disadvantaged ethnic groups, especially the Igbo. Appendix - Three part essay by Professor Chukwuma Soludo.