Optimization techniques are used to find the values of a set of parameters which maximize or minimize some objective function of interest. Such methods have become of great importance in statistics for estimation, model fitting, etc. This text attempts to give a brief introduction to optimization methods and their use in several important areas of statistics. It does not pretend to provide either a complete treatment of optimization techniques or a comprehensive review of their application...

What do clown fish eat?How many babies does a clown fish mother have?Where do clown fish live?Do clown fish make good pets?Meet the funny little clown fish. Find out what a clown fish looks like, where it lives, what it eats, what eats it, how babies are born, and some funky facts.LearningIsland.com believes in the value of children practicing reading for 15 minutes every day. Our 15-Minute Books give children lots of fun, exciting choices to read, from...

How did early men live? What did they eat and how different were they from us today? You will find the answers to these questions within the pages of this educational book. The use of pictures is a welcome change as it provides relief from the boring texts. Picture are considered universal languages because they are understood regardless of reading and comprehension levels. Buy a copy now!

Does the patch of stormy sea between the tip of Florida, Puerto Rico and Bermuda hide a dark and frightening secret? For decades, there have been cases of ships and aircraft that seem to vanish in this part of the Atlantic Ocean. Others who have survived flying or sailing through, have reported strange occurrences, such as clocks and navigational instruments failing. Are all of these reports true? Is there a mystery lurking? Using the scientific method and available data, this book attempt...

Are zombies real? As far as we know, dead people do not come back to life and start walking around, looking for trouble. But there are things that can take over the bodies and brains of innocent creatures, turning them into senseless slaves. Meet nature's zombie makers—including a fly-enslaving fungus, a suicide worm, and a cockroach-taming wasp—and their victims.

Can you list the wild animals that you know of? If you don't know a lot, then don't worry. You get to learn more about them in this fun workbook for 3rd graders. Learning through pictures is very effective because it makes learning interactive and highly attractive. Pictures are often referred to as universal learning methods because they make concepts easier to understand and remember too. Buy a copy today!

Bear Grylls' Extreme Planet is a whirlwind tour of the globe, seeking out the highest, deepest, wildest, thinnest, coolest, hottest, scariest and smelliest things planet Earth has to offer!From the longest place name and the most dangerous road in the world, to the riskiest food to eat and where to find the oldest vomit, Bear Grylls will guide you through the coolest facts and the most perilous limits of our Extreme Planet.A fantas...

A question often asked of those of us who work in the seemingly esoteric field of fish vision is, why? To some of us the answer seems obvious - how many other visual scientists get to dive in a tropical lagoon in the name of science and then are able to eat their subjects for dinner? However, there are better, or at least scientifically more acceptable, reasons for working on the visual system of fish. First, in terms of numbers, fish are by far the most important of all vertebrate classes...

This book provides the conceptual and operational tools for understanding the mechanisms for assigning a rating to a network of companies. In it, the author explores the rating systems of corporate networks and analyses the link between rating and an enterprise network.

It has often been said that the laser is a solution searching for a problem. The rapid development of laser technology over the past dozen years has led to the availability of reliable, industrially rated laser sources with a wide variety of output characteristics. This, in turn, has resulted in new laser applications as the laser becomes a familiar processing and analytical tool. The field of materials science, in particular, has become a fertile one for new laser applications. Laser anne...

The scientific literature has expanded dramatically in recent years, making entry into the structure of any given area extremely difficult; concurrent with this explosion more people are required to become acquainted with information outside their main line of expertise. For this reason there is a need for review articles which give an overall review of circumscribed areas. This volume reviews the subject of respiratory control mechanisms; the authors of each chapter are active research wo...

The changing role of industry, the trend towards automation, the in creased cost of raw materials and labour rates all emphasize the need for improved quality of manufacture which will lead to better reliability, reduced maintenance costs and incidence of failure, as well as greater consumer confidence. Many countries, including Japan, are noted for their high quality of manufacture. This has helped them monopolize the world radio and television market and achieve great in-roads into the m...