The Second Edition of An Applied Guide to Research Designs offers researchers in the social and behavioral sciences guidance for selecting the most appropriate research design to apply in their study. Using consistent terminology, the authors visually present a range of research designs used in quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods to help readers conceptualize, construct, test, and problem solve in their investigation. The Second Edition features revamped and expanded coverage of research designs, new real-world examples and references, a new chapter on action research, and updated ancillaries.

This book constitutes the Proceedings of the IFIP Working Conference PRO COMET'98, held 8-12 June 1998 at Shelter Island, N.Y. The conference is organized by the t'wo IFIP TC 2 Working Groups 2.2 Formal Description of Programming Concepts and 2.3 Programming Methodology. WG2.2 and WG2.3 have been organizing these conferences every four years for over twenty years. The aim of such Working Conferences organized by IFIP Working Groups is to bring together leading scientists in a given area of computer science. Participation is by invitation only. As a result, these conferences distinguish themselves from other meetings by extensive and competent technical discus sions. PROCOMET stands for Programming Concepts and Methods, indicating that the area of discussion for the conference is the formal description of pro gramming concepts and methods, their tool support, and their applications. At PROCOMET working conferences, papers are presented from this whole area, reflecting the interest of the individuals in WG2.2 and WG2.3.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Tools and Algorithms for the Construction and Analysis of Systems, TACAS 2001. The 36 revised full papers presented together with an invited contribution were carefully reviewed and selected from a total of 125 submissions. The papers are organized in sections on symbolic verification, infinite state systems - deduction and abstraction, application of model checking techniques, timed and probabilistic systems, hardware - design and verification, software verification, testing - techniques and tools, implementation techniques, semantics and compositional verification, logics and model checking, and ETAPS tool demonstration.

Traditionally, models and methods for the analysis of the functional correctness of reactive systems, and those for the analysis of their performance (and - pendability) aspects, have been studied by di?erent research communities. This has resulted in the development of successful, but distinct and largely unrelated modeling and analysis techniques for both domains. In many modern systems, however, the di?erence between their functional features and their performance properties has become blurred, as relevant functionalities become inextricably linked to performance aspects, e.g. isochronous data transfer for live video tra- mission. During the last decade, this trend has motivated an increased interest in c- bining insights and results from the ?eld of formal methods – traditionally - cused on functionality – with techniques for performance modeling and analysis. Prominent examples of this cross-fertilization are extensions of process algebra and Petri nets that allow for the automatic generation of performance models, the use of formal proof techniques to assess the correctness of randomized - gorithms, and extensions of model checking techniques to analyze performance requirements automatically. We believe that these developments markthe - ginning of a new paradigm for the modeling and analysis of systems in which qualitative and quantitative aspects are studied from an integrated perspective. We are convinced that the further worktowards the realization of this goal will be a growing source of inspiration and progress for both communities.

With about 200,000 entries, StarBriefs Plus represents the most comprehensive and accurately validated collection of abbreviations, acronyms, contractions and symbols within astronomy, related space sciences and other related fields. As such, this invaluable reference source (and its companion volume, StarGuides Plus) should be on the reference shelf of every library, organization or individual with any interest in these areas. Besides astronomy and associated space sciences, related fields such as aeronautics, aeronomy, astronautics, atmospheric sciences, chemistry, communications, computer sciences, data processing, education, electronics, engineering, energetics, environment, geodesy, geophysics, information handling, management, mathematics, meteorology, optics, physics, remote sensing, and so on, are also covered when justified. Terms in common use and/or of general interest have also been included where appropriate.

Markov Chains are widely used as stochastic models to study a broad spectrum of system performance and dependability characteristics. This monograph is devoted to compositional specification and analysis of Markov chains. Based on principles known from process algebra, the author systematically develops an algebra of interactive Markov chains. By presenting a number of distinguishing results, of both theoretical and practical nature, the author substantiates the claim that interactive Markov chains are more than just another formalism: Among other, an algebraic theory of interactive Markov chains is developed, devise algorithms to mechanize compositional aggregation are presented, and state spaces of several million states resulting from the study of an ordinary telefone system are analyzed.