Dans une confession philosophique en forme d'itinérance intime et littéraire, l'autrice s'interroge sur la notion d'appartenance aux lieux. Elle retrace la quête humaine d'un environnement rêvé, au long de laquelle chacun doit composer avec ses obligations et ambitions familiales, professionnelles, financières, politiques ou environnementales. …

This book focuses on two-time-scale Markov chains in discrete time. Our motivation stems from existing and emerging applications in optimization and control of complex systems in manufacturing, wireless communication, and ?nancial engineering. Much of our e?ort in this book is devoted to designing system models arising from various applications, analyzing them via analytic and probabilistic techniques, and developing feasible compu- tionalschemes. Ourmainconcernistoreducetheinherentsystemcompl- ity. Although each of the applications has its own distinct characteristics, all of them are closely related through the modeling of uncertainty due to jump or switching random processes. Oneofthesalientfeaturesofthisbookistheuseofmulti-timescalesin Markovprocessesandtheirapplications. Intuitively,notallpartsorcom- nents of a large-scale system evolve at the same rate. Some of them change rapidly and others vary slowly. The di?erent rates of variations allow us to reduce complexity via decomposition and aggregation. It would be ideal if we could divide a large system into its smallest irreducible subsystems completely separable from one another and treat each subsystem indep- dently. However, this is often infeasible in reality due to various physical constraints and other considerations. Thus, we have to deal with situations in which the systems are only nearly decomposable in the sense that there are weak links among the irreducible subsystems, which dictate the oc- sional regime changes of the system. An e?ective way to treat such near decomposability is time-scale separation. That is, we set up the systems as if there were two time scales, fast vs. slow. xii Preface Followingthetime-scaleseparation,weusesingularperturbationmeth- ology to treat the underlying systems.

Stochastic programming is a fast developing area of optimization and mathematical programming. Numerous papers and conference volumes, and several monographs have been published in the area; however, the Kall and Mayer book will be particularly useful in presenting solution methods including their solid theoretical basis and their computational issues, based in many cases on implementations by the authors. The book is also suitable for advanced courses in stochastic optimization.

Les changements clés des années 1960 qui ont conduit à une transformation des modes de vie, des valeurs et de la morale. …

Le esperienze di Edward Bunker nelle prigioni peggiori della California, per le strade di Los Angeles e nel sottobosco di Hollywood lo hanno accreditato a scrivere alcuni dei piú conturbanti ed efficaci romanzi moderni sul carcere. Con "Educazione di una canaglia" i lettori possono entrare, senza alcuna finzione narrativa, nel mondo duro e non edulcorato di Bunker. Sia che fumi uno spinello seduto sulla sedia della camera a gas, o che prenda in mano un coltello usato da un serial killer, o che nuoti tra i marmi della sfarzosa piscina Nettuno a San Simeon, California, Bunker si limita a esporre la sua mercanzia, nuda e cruda. Il risultato è agghiacciante, eppure non privo di una sua orgogliosa morale, perché è la pura verità.

Dix histoires, dix patients convoqués par I. Yalom pour illustrer les difficultés que rencontre le psychiatre. Portrait du psychothérapeute, coincé entre ses exigences professionnelles et ses instincts les plus humains, parfois confronté, lui aussi, aux échecs cuisants. …

Des requins aux hommes en passant par les oiseaux, les poissons ou les reptiles, la diversité des comportements alimentaires du monde vivant est explorée. Professeur au Muséum national d'histoire naturelle, l'auteur met ainsi au jour des stratégies et des mécanismes parfois complexes que les animaux développent pour survivre dans leur milieu. …

Une analyse de l'anéantissement de la bande de Gaza par Israël. L'auteur établit un lien entre questions sociétales et stratégiques pour tenter de comprendre l'omerta autour des exactions commises contre la population locale. Il dénonce le silence et la passivité des pays occidentaux. …

Un essai dans lequel l'auteur interroge la vulnérabilité des sociétés modernes aux idéologies. Décrivant comment la rationalité peut devenir complice des pires égarements collectifs, il propose plusieurs solutions pour échapper à cette fragilité, invitant à faire preuve d'humilité à l'égard du passé, à se prémunir des croyances ou encore à ne pas légiférer contre les idées absurdes. …