The recent financial turmoil has raised suspects on investment banks and will certainly reshape the industry. However, the transactions traditionally managed by investment banks will still require the intervention of financial institutions, as always in the past. This book aims at providing an overview of these traditional investment banking...

This book builds a bridge between facilitation techniques and leadership in project and network management. It provides methodical Messages, a Facilitator Curriculum, and the wealth of 40 carefully selected and reality-proof tools, many of which have not been published at all or at least never been published in English. The reader...

Nowadays, there is software everywhere in our life. It controls cars, airplanes, factories, medical implants. Without software, banking, logistics and transportation, media, and even scientific research would not function in the accustomed way. Building and maintaining software is a knowledge-intensive endeavour and requires that specific...

The book project was launched to access the latest research related to chaos applications in intelligent computing where researchers from all over the world provide the necessary coverage of the mentioned field. The primary objective of this project was to assemble as much research coverage as possible related to the field by defining...

Recent years have seen the widespread application of Natural Computing algorithms (broadly defined in this context as computer algorithms whose design draws inspiration from phenomena in the natural world) for the purposes of financial modelling and optimisation. A related stream of work has also seen the application of learning mechanisms...

Programming is a fascinating and challenging subject. Unfortunately, it is rarely presented as such. Most often it is taught by "induction": features of some famous programming languages are given operational meaning (e.g. a loop "goes round and round"), a number of examples are shown, and by induction, we are asked to...

Leading scholars from various disciplines analyze the relevance of evolutionary theory for future developments, whereby the fields of anthropology, ethics, and theology are considered in particular detail. The main parts of the collection are dedicated to the following three questions: What are the basic principles of evolutionary processes?...

In a Darwinian world, religious behavior - just like other behaviors - is likely to have undergone a process of natural selection in which it was rewarded in the evolutionary currency of reproductive success. This book aims to provide a better understanding of the social scenarios in which selection pressure led to religious practices becoming...