Critical coding techniques have developed over the past few decades for data storage, retrieval and transmission systems, yet they are rarely covered in the graduate curricula. This book provides new researchers in academia and industry with informal introductions to the basic ideas of these topics, including pointers to further reading.

This book was written from the material I prepared for my teaching of a course Coding Theory at the Mathematics Department, Mahidol University, Thailand, in the second term from end 2005 until early 2006 when I used to be a lecturer there.

Landmark Essays in Rhetoric of Science: Issues and Methods compiles the essential readings of the vibrant field of rhetoric of science, tracing the growth and core concerns of the field since its development in the 1970s. A companion to Randy Allen Harris’s foundational Landmark Essays in Rhetoric of Science: Case Studies, this volume includes essays by such luminaries as Carolyn R. Miller, Jeanne Fahnestock, and Alan G. Gross, along with an early prophetic article by Charles Sanders Pierce. Harris’s detailed introduction puts the field into its social and intellectual context, and frames the important contributions of each essay, which range from reimagining classical concepts like rhetorical figures and topical invention to Modal Materialism and the Neomodern hybridization of Actor Network Theory with Genre Studies. Race, revolution, and Daoism come up along the way, and the empirical recalcitrance of the moon. This collection serves as a textbook for graduate and advanced undergraduate courses in science studies, and is an invaluable resource for researchers concerned with science not as a special, autonomous, sacrosanct enterprise, but as a set of value-saturated, profoundly influential rhetorical practices.

Using a simple yet rigorous approach, Algebraic and Stochastic Coding Theory makes the subject of coding theory easy to understand for readers with a thorough knowledge of digital arithmetic, Boolean and modern algebra, and probability theory. It explains the underlying principles of coding theory and offers a clear, detailed description of each code. More advanced readers will appreciate its coverage of recent developments in coding theory and stochastic processes. After a brief review of coding history and Boolean algebra, the book introduces linear codes, including Hamming and Golay codes. It then examines codes based on the Galois field theory as well as their application in BCH and especially the Reed–Solomon codes that have been used for error correction of data transmissions in space missions. The major outlook in coding theory seems to be geared toward stochastic processes, and this book takes a bold step in this direction. As research focuses on error correction and recovery of erasures, the book discusses belief propagation and distributions. It examines the low-density parity-check and erasure codes that have opened up new approaches to improve wide-area network data transmission. It also describes modern codes, such as the Luby transform and Raptor codes, that are enabling new directions in high-speed transmission of very large data to multiple users. This robust, self-contained text fully explains coding problems, illustrating them with more than 200 examples. Combining theory and computational techniques, it will appeal not only to students but also to industry professionals, researchers, and academics in areas such as coding theory and signal and image processing.

The areas of communications, computer networks, and signal processing have undergone rapid development over the past several years. The advent of VLSI circuitry and increasingly sophisticated computer hardware and software techniques have made possible the construction of systems and signal proces sors for· communications applications not contemplated only a short time ago. The increasing complexity of communication systems, both by themselves and in land-based or satellite networks, has created a greater need for finding use ful mathematical techniques for their analysis. The rapidly evolving technolo gies involved continue to find exciting new areas for application, and it remains a challenge for researchers to keep abreast of developments. In this volume researchers from a broad cross section of the areas of communications, signal processing, and computer networks have been invited to contribute articles to assist readers in learning about the current state of research and future research directions in their area. The authors were not given tight guidelines for their contributions and thus the character and emphasis of each chapter differs. Although the scope of the areas considered is necessarily limited in a volume of this size, the coverage here is quite broad and it is hoped that the reader will find the contents of this volume to be interesting, useful, and informative.

Combinatorial Mathematics, Optimal Designs, and Their Applications

This collection of contributions is offered to Jack van Lint on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday and appears simultaneously in the series Topics in Discrete Mathematics and as a special double volume of Discrete Mathematics (Volumes 106/107). It is hoped that the papers selected, all written by experts in their own fields, represent the many interesting areas that together constitute the discipline of Discrete Mathematics. It is in this sphere that van Lint has become the acknowledged master and this expansive volume serves to demonstrate the enormous significance he has had on the development of Discrete Mathematics during the last 30 years.

This book updates the Dual Coding Theory of mind (DCT), a theory of modern human cognition consisting of separate but interconnected nonverbal and verbal systems. Allan Paivio, a leading scholar in cognitive psychology, presents this masterwork as new findings in psychological research on memory, thought, language, and other core areas have flourished, as have pioneering developments in the cognitive neurosciences. Mind and Its Evolution provides a thorough exploration into how these adaptive nonverbal and verbal systems might have evolved, as well as a careful comparison of DCT with contrasting "single-code" cognitive theories. Divided into four parts, this text begins with a general, systematic theory of modern human cognition as the reference model for interpreting the cognitive abilities of evolutionary ancestors. The first half of the book discusses mind as it is; the second half addresses how it came to be that way. Each half is subdivided into two parts defined by thematic chapters. Mind and Its Evolution concludes with evidence-based suggestions about nourishing mental growth through applications of DCT in education, psychotherapy, and health. This volume will appeal to cognitive and evolutionary psychologists, as well as students in the areas of memory, language, cognition, and mind evolution specialists in psychology, philosophy, and other disciplines.

Includes entries for maps and atlases.