This authoritative reference offers you a comprehensive understanding of the underpinnings and practical applications of artificial neural networks and their use in the retrieval of geophysical parameters. You find expert guidance on the development and evaluation of neural network algorithms that process data from a new generation of hyperspectral sensors. The book provides clear explanations of the mathematical and physical foundations of remote sensing systems, including radiative transfer and propagation theory, sensor technologies, and inversion and estimation approaches. You discover how to use neural networks to approximate remote sensing inverse functions with emphasis on model selection, preprocessing, initialization, training, and performance evaluation.
The success of Global Tourism has led to this fully revised and updated second edition which retains all the strengths of the original book and is enhanced by the inclusion of five new chapters. This edition draws together the insights of thirty-three observers commonly concerned with the effects of tourism on comtemporary society.
The productivity of agricultural systems is the result of human alteration of originally wild organisms over millennia. The availability of germplasm, particularly from wild relatives of crop plants, is vitally important in the development of new and improved crops for both agriculture and horticulture. The handling of these genetic resources for both immediate and future human benefits has resulted in the decades of interdisciplinary scientific research described in this book. The applications of this work and the associated operational programmes in all parts of the world are discussed in the light of their impact on the conservation of biodiversity, ecosystem rehabilitation and the future health of our planet.
Reprint of the original, first published in 1866. With historical and descriptive Observations, illustrative of natural Scenery, the Progress of Civilization, and the general Results of the Missionary Enterprise.
This book, first published in 1987, aims to characterise and identify the intellectual heritage of the proponents of the libertarian tradition. To set this within a theoretical framework, these ideas will be examined by using the pragmatic and conceptual formulations of freedom and authority, two notions which are central to any understanding of political philosophy in the nineteenth and twentieth century. This title will be of interest to students of history, philosophy and politics.
During his comparatively brief life (he died at thirty-nine, the age Mozart was to die) Blaise Pascal devoted his unusual talents to mathematics, physics and religion. His religious views are still widely discussed, and the general interest in this aspect of his life may be responsible for the fact that his mathematical and scientific achievements are less known. Those who are familiar with his Pensées, which are fragments of an intended Apology for Christianity, have had little opportunity of acquiring a just appreciation of the originality of his thought in physics and probability theory. This book fills this gap by describing Pascal’s work in a way that is accessible to anyone interested in his contribution to modern science and his attempt to tame Lady Luck. The words “Unconventional Science” in the subtitle of the book are meant as a reminder of the radically different way of looking at nature that was developed by Pascal and his contemporaries. The first seven chapters examine Pascal’s ingenious experiments to show that a vacuum can be produced, an idea that led him to ascend a mountain with a barometer to prove that we lived submerged under a sea of air. Chapter eight considers his bold views on the advancement of science and religion, and chapter nine his new philosophy of experimental science. The concluding chapters offer an insight into his pioneering work in the theory of probability and his willingness to help a friend who was a keen gambler but no mathematician. Pascal even applied his calculation of the odds at games of chance to the problem of personal destiny and the existence of God. Walking in his footsteps, the reader not only discovers the new world of experimental science but learns to play for high stakes."--Publisher's description.
Step by step the reader is introduced, through analysis of the fundamental problems of Being, the relation of thoughts to things, novelty, causation, and the Infinite, to the original philosophical synthesis that James called radical empiricism. This is the seventh volume to be published in The Works of William James.
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