A Natural History of Nettles

A Natural History of Nettles
Author: Dr. Keith G R Wheeler
Publisher: Trafford Publishing
Total Pages: 316
Release: 2007-01-16
Genre: Gardening
ISBN: 1466981024

The first book ever on the much maligned nettles of the world presents a story of these followers of mankind and his cattle throughout history. This study centres on the most abundant and sub-cosmopolitan common stinging nettle (Urtica dioica), but also deals with other nettles throughout the world. Tropical tormentors rich in species include the notorious nettle trees with their formidable stings which fascinated the Europeans after their discovery by botanists on the round-the-world trips of exploration in the 17-19th centuries. Many people on their travels will have met the nettle trees of the Indo-Malay region and other stinging nettles in North and South America, India, etc., which sting and have beautiful flowers but are called nettles; these are also dealt with. The first microscopists and their descriptions of the beautiful stinging hair; the uncovering of the mechanism of its action and the more recent elucidation of the toxins causing the characteristic symptoms is a fascinating one and takes up 3 chapters. The book includes the 100 major scientific works published on the common stinging nettle and never brought to the notice of the general public before. The author spent six years studying the ecology of the nettle patch, its invertebrate herbivores (mainly insects) and vertebrate herbivores (cattle, deer, etc.,) and their interactions with other plants: its secret life is recorded in line drawings and photographs (1000+ individual items). It was not possible to publish these in colour but they are in full colour on a CD-ROM (300 dpi) at the back of the book. Covered also are nettle folklore, fibre use in World War I & II, as a food, fodder, herbal medicine, growth as a competitor plant, habitats, sex (unique exploding stamens), breeding systems, variation, evolution etc.!! Some the world's most beautiful butterflies would not exist without nettles.

Software Visualization

Software Visualization
Author: Stephan Diehl
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 192
Release: 2007-05-01
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 3540465057

Here is an ideal textbook on software visualization, written especially for students and teachers in computer science. It provides a broad and systematic overview of the area including many pointers to tools available today. Topics covered include static program visualization, algorithm animation, visual debugging, as well as the visualization of the evolution of software. The author's presentation emphasizes common principles and provides different examples mostly taken from seminal work. In addition, each chapter is followed by a list of exercises including both pen-and-paper exercises as well as programming tasks.

Guide to Advanced Empirical Software Engineering

Guide to Advanced Empirical Software Engineering
Author: Forrest Shull
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 393
Release: 2007-11-21
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 1848000448

This book gathers chapters from some of the top international empirical software engineering researchers focusing on the practical knowledge necessary for conducting, reporting and using empirical methods in software engineering. Topics and features include guidance on how to design, conduct and report empirical studies. The volume also provides information across a range of techniques, methods and qualitative and quantitative issues to help build a toolkit applicable to the diverse software development contexts

Rethinking Productivity in Software Engineering

Rethinking Productivity in Software Engineering
Author: Caitlin Sadowski
Publisher: Apress
Total Pages: 275
Release: 2019-05-07
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 1484242211

Get the most out of this foundational reference and improve the productivity of your software teams. This open access book collects the wisdom of the 2017 "Dagstuhl" seminar on productivity in software engineering, a meeting of community leaders, who came together with the goal of rethinking traditional definitions and measures of productivity. The results of their work, Rethinking Productivity in Software Engineering, includes chapters covering definitions and core concepts related to productivity, guidelines for measuring productivity in specific contexts, best practices and pitfalls, and theories and open questions on productivity. You'll benefit from the many short chapters, each offering a focused discussion on one aspect of productivity in software engineering. Readers in many fields and industries will benefit from their collected work. Developers wanting to improve their personal productivity, will learn effective strategies for overcoming common issues that interfere with progress. Organizations thinking about building internal programs for measuring productivity of programmers and teams will learn best practices from industry and researchers in measuring productivity. And researchers can leverage the conceptual frameworks and rich body of literature in the book to effectively pursue new research directions. What You'll LearnReview the definitions and dimensions of software productivity See how time management is having the opposite of the intended effect Develop valuable dashboards Understand the impact of sensors on productivity Avoid software development waste Work with human-centered methods to measure productivity Look at the intersection of neuroscience and productivity Manage interruptions and context-switching Who Book Is For Industry developers and those responsible for seminar-style courses that include a segment on software developer productivity. Chapters are written for a generalist audience, without excessive use of technical terminology.

Contemporary Empirical Methods in Software Engineering

Contemporary Empirical Methods in Software Engineering
Author: Michael Felderer
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 520
Release: 2020-08-27
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 3030324893

This book presents contemporary empirical methods in software engineering related to the plurality of research methodologies, human factors, data collection and processing, aggregation and synthesis of evidence, and impact of software engineering research. The individual chapters discuss methods that impact the current evolution of empirical software engineering and form the backbone of future research. Following an introductory chapter that outlines the background of and developments in empirical software engineering over the last 50 years and provides an overview of the subsequent contributions, the remainder of the book is divided into four parts: Study Strategies (including e.g. guidelines for surveys or design science); Data Collection, Production, and Analysis (highlighting approaches from e.g. data science, biometric measurement, and simulation-based studies); Knowledge Acquisition and Aggregation (highlighting literature research, threats to validity, and evidence aggregation); and Knowledge Transfer (discussing open science and knowledge transfer with industry). Empirical methods like experimentation have become a powerful means of advancing the field of software engineering by providing scientific evidence on software development, operation, and maintenance, but also by supporting practitioners in their decision-making and learning processes. Thus the book is equally suitable for academics aiming to expand the field and for industrial researchers and practitioners looking for novel ways to check the validity of their assumptions and experiences. Chapter 17 is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

The Smart Internet

The Smart Internet
Author: Mark Chignell
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 326
Release: 2010-10-19
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 3642165982

I love the idea of a Smart Internet that lets users improve many parts of their lives, pulling together data and services from around the internet. This won’t happen with large unwieldy programming requirements. . . it will happen because we’re moving towards integrated, simple tasks that users can do on an every day basis. With services available on the cloud, with analytics available, with data that has meaning to the user and not just to some protocol parser - with all of these, users at all levels will be able to do a better job. The users may be small and large enterprises, local governments, individuals, etc. All of this means that as the world is becoming more intelligent, instrumented and more interconnected, we’ll be headed towards smarter health care, smarter cities, and smarter lives. ” — Gennaro A. Cuomo, IBM Software Group Vice President and IBM Fellow, WebSphere Chief Technology O?cer Congratulations to the team on the publication of this ?rst volume of the IBM CASResearchbookseries!Thisisasigni?cantmilestoneforIBMCASResearch. This series not only captures the innovations resulting from the collaboration acrossIBM technical leaders,IBM CAS faculty members, as well as our network of distinguished academic partners, it also lays the foundation for ongoing c- mercialization of future research initiatives.