'There has never been a mid ocean ditching by an air carrier jet.' These are the words that haunt Captain Charlie Wells when he realizes that his jumbo jet has a problem over the Atlantic. None of the passengers or crew could know that a disgruntled airline mechanic has sentenced them to a night of terror. As the flight approaches the Equal Time Point and is the most distant from land, Captain Wells and his crew of pilots and flight attendants struggle to avoid making history. While airline personnel, the FAA, and the FBI try to solve the mystery of Tri Con Flight Eleven, a small U.S. Navy ship may be the only hope for the 208 souls on board. Ride along in the cockpit as this routine international flight becomes a nightmare that will require all the flight staff's training to survive. After reading Equal Time Point, frequent flyers and first-time passengers will find themselves studying the emergency procedure card in the seatback before their next flight.

On January 16, 2007, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) issued revi- sed regulatory material relating to the operation of all aircraft on flights with the potential for extended time diversions. As a result, the term ETOPS has been redefined as “Exten- ded Operations” and now includes the operation of all transport aircraft, regardless of the number of engines (except All- Cargo operations of airplanes with more than 2-engines), further than specific threshold times from available enroute diversion airports. The new FAA rules, while still limiting two-engine airplanes to routes that remain within 60 minutes from an Adequate Airport, unless the operator is approved for ETOPS, will now allow two-engine airplanes to be flown on ETOPS routes with diversion times greater than 240 minutes flying time in certain geographic regions. Passenger airplanes with more than two engines will also be required to meet ETOPS requirements under the new rules, whenever they are operated more than 180 minutes from an Adequate Airport. ETOPS Operational Approvals may be granted to operators if the airframe/engine combi- nation being used has been approved for such flights and the operator has established ac- ceptable operations and maintenance programs. FAA Advisory Circulars, AC 120-42B and AC 135-42, provide guidelines for the additional operations, maintenance, reliability and training programs that are required of an FAA ETOPS operator. NOTE: Based on Boeing operations. Only for information purpose. For real flight refer to Boeing manuals.

This book comprises a set of papers selected from those presented at the fifth « International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems », (ICEIS’2003) held in Angers, France, from 23 to 26 April 2003. The conference was organised by École Supérieure d’Électronique de l’Ouest (ESEO) of Angers, France and the Escola Superior de Tecnologia of Setúbal, Portugal. Since its first edition in 1999, ICEIS focuses on real world applications and aims at bringing together researchers, engineers and practitioners interested in the advances and business applications of information systems. As in previous years, ICEIS’2003 held four simultaneous tracks covering different aspects of enterprise computing: Databases and Information Systems Integration, Artificial Intelligence and Decision Support Systems, Information Systems Analysis and Specification and Software Agents and Internet Computing. Although ICEIS’2003 received 546 paper submissions from over 50 countries, only 80 were accepted as full papers and presented in 30-minutes oral presentations. With an acceptance rate of 15%, these numbers demonstrate the intention of preserving a high quality forum for future editions of this conference. From the articles accepted as long papers for the conference, only 32 were selected for inclusion in this book Additional keynote lectures, tutorials and industrial sessions were also held during ICEIS’2003, and, for the first time this year, the 1st Doctoral Consortium on Enterprise Information Systems gave PhD students an opportunity to present their work to an international audience of experts in the field of information systems.

Supplementing "Quantum Mechanics. An Introduction" and "Quantum Mechanics. Symmetries", this book covers an important additional course on quantum mechanics, including an introduction to quantum statistics, the structure of atoms and molecules, and the Schrödinger wave equation. 72 fully worked examples and problems consolidate the material.