Conceived in the early 1980s to ease the threat posed by the American ATF program, these fighters were developed as the Soviet Union's fifth-generation fighters. This book gives a detailed account of how Russia's two leading fighter aircraft designers competed for the order and how a third contender never made it to the hardware stage. It deals with the way these aircraft were conceived, designed, built, and flown.

A solution to the climate and energy crisis

Demonstrating the feasibility of a clean, renewable global energy future, Post-Oil Energy Technology: The World’s First Solar-Hydrogen Demonstration Power Plant describes the detailed design of the first 1,000 megawatt solar power plant with hydrogen storage.

How is this possible?

Our planet receives more solar energy in about a half hour than humans use in a year. In fact, collecting solar energy on just one percent of the Sahara desert would be sufficient to meet global electricity needs. This energy can then be stored and transported in the form of hydrogen.

Converting from nonrenewable energy sources to solar-hydrogen energy

In this timely book, author Béla Lipták explains how a solar-hydrogen economy is technically feasible and cost-effective. He first outlines existing conservation technologies and renewable energy processes as well as evolving technologies, such as energy-free homes, roof shingle solar collectors, and reversible fuel cells. He goes on to discuss energy optimization techniques that could reduce the energy consumption of industrialized countries by twenty-five percent and that of third-world countries by even more. Lipták also shows that we already have the know-how—optimizing large solar power plants, providing solar energy storage in hydrogen, and operating reversible electrolyzers—to build a full-sized renewable energy demonstration plant.

It is time to harness the power of solar energy

With global energy consumption quadrupling in the last fifty years and atmospheric carbon dioxide reaching the highest level ever recorded, now is the time to prevent further damage to the planet and ensure future generations of human civilization. This book provides the facts about renewable energy, proving that it can slow global warming, stabilize our climate, eliminate the possibility of energy wars, and improve the world’s economy.

About the Author

Liptak Associates, Stamford, Connecticut, USA

This is the story of a small building in Ohio that was one of the first, if not the first, substantially green or high-performance buildings on a college campus. It spans the decade between 1995 and 2005. In that time, Americans impeached a president, balanced the federal budget and then unbalanced it again, witnessed the largest corporate bankruptcy ever, opted out of the Kyoto treaty, suffered a major terrorist attack, fought wars in he Balkans, Afghanistan, and Iraq, evacuated a major city, and became acutely aware of our vulnerability to malice, the forces of nature, and incompetence and malfeasance in high places. Ostensibly the story is about the art and science of ecological design, a specific building, a particular college, and education of the higher sort. But it is also a thread in the larger narrative of our time and the uncertain struggle to calibrate global civilization with the realities and limits of the biosphere. We are not faring particularly well in that effort and the stakes are rising. For Americans, with our SUVs, sprawling suburbs, and peculiar blend of manifest destiny, religiosity, militarism, and consumerism, larger connections are sometimes hard to see. Yet see them we must. We might have had an easier path to walk had we had the good sense to pay serious attention to the problems of energy, the environment, and security put before the public by the Carter administration in The Global 2000 Report (1980). Instead, we did the national equivalent of a quarter-century Australian walkabout, mostly ignoring energy efficiency, solar energy, the preservation of natural systems, and the national remodeling implied by the necessities of sustainability and resilience.

The wireless communications revolution has been driven by a confluence of technological advances, including improvements in communications theory, very large-scale integration (VLSI) technology, and radio frequency (RF) microelectronics. The microwave power amplifier represents one of the major factors in the low-cost and low-power implementation of these systems, since they are required to deliver tens of watts of power (in the case of a base station) with exacting standards of linearity and direct current (dc) power efficiency. The microwave power amplifier in the handset must deliver—at most—a few watts of power but dissipate very little dc power and sell for only a few dollars in large quantities. Clearly, these requirements represent an enormous challenge for the design and implementation of the power amplifier circuit.

This challenge has been met through a variety of creative approaches over the years, and the linearization and efficiency enhancement of microwave amplifiers remains an area of active research. Generally speaking, linearization techniques can be classified under the categories of either feedback or feed-forward approaches. Both of these approaches have wellknown advantages and disadvantages. Feedback approaches tend to exhibit stability problems, and feed-forward approaches suffer from matching limitations. Neither has achieved very widespread application in commercial communications systems.

Are you a visual learner? Do you prefer instructions that show you how to do something — and skip the long-winded explanations? If so, then this book is for you. Open it up and you'll find clear, step-by-step screen shots that show you how to tackle more than 145 PhotoshopCS4 tasks. Each task-based spread covers a single technique, sure to help you get up and running on Photoshop CS4 in no time.

You'll learn to:

• Browse, sort, and filter in Bridge

• Use all the Photoshop tools

• Slice, scale, or rotate selections

• Adjust colors and work with layers

• Add and manipulate type

• Save images as GIF, PNG, or JPEG

• Helpful sidebars offer practical tips and tricks

• Full-color screen shots demonstrate each task

• Succinct explanations walk you through step by step

• Two-page lessons break big topics into bite-sized modules

About the Author

Mike Wooldridge has worked as an independent Web developer, technology writer, and educator since 1995. He's written about Web technology for various publications, including Macworld, and MacHome Journal, as well as for CNET. He is the coauthor of Teach Yourself VISUALLY Photoshop CS2, and Teach Yourself VISUALLY Illustrator 10.

For any professional designer or developer working in the world of web technologies or multimedia, Flash is the must-have application, and knowing how to use it effectively is vital. Add in ActionScript 3.0, and Flash becomes an even more powerful tool for the development of high-performance web applications.

The Essential Guide to Flash CS4 with ActionScript introduces and explores the possibilities available to you through using Flash CS4. You will learn the aspects basics of Flash's working environment and, using a step-by-step approach, work through the features of Flash and ActionScript needed to quickly achieve results. From navigating the interface to using graphic tools to write scripts and troubleshoot, you'll master all of the of deploying highly interactive applications with rich audio, video, and animation.

Written for the beginning-to-intermediate Flash user, this book uses complete examples that highlight best practices that you can apply to your daily work as a developer or designer in today's rich media world.

• Learn to create and manage assets in Flash using the graphics tools and the library.
• Acquire a comprehensive understanding of animation using the new Motion Editor and inverse kinematics tools.
• Discover the dynamic world of ActionScript development including classes, events, and XML.
• Learn to use and customize Flash's UI components.
• Become familiar with audio and video assets including preparation and integration.
• Debug, publish, and deploy Flash applications for the Web with Flash Player and the desktop using the Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR).

About the Author

Paul Milbourne is an Adobe Certified Expert and Instructor for Flash. He has been a Flash platform consultant in the Washington- Baltimore metropolitan area for the better part of a decade. His journey has allowed him to work with such clients as the Washington Redskins, Baltimore Ravens, Democratic National Committee, and many others. For the most part, Paul has made a handsome career cleaning up after other developers. This experience has exposed him to most aspects of Flash development through a multitude of industries.

His true passion is the advancement of the Flash community in that area. Paul is the principal and founding member of the Baltimore-Washington Adobe Flash User Group, which now boasts more than 300 members. His vision is to unite that community in a collaborative effort, both informationally and vocationally.

Paul currently studies computer science and art at the University of Maryland. And, though he was a professional chef in a former life, he is not responsible for any of the food references in this book!

Newly revised, featuring the most up-to-date research, effective strategies, and real-life stories

The spirited child—often called "difficult" or "strong-willed"—possesses traits we value in adults yet find challenging in children. Research shows that spirited kids are wired to be "more"—by temperament, they are more intense, sensitive, perceptive, persistent, and uncomfortable with change than the average child. In this revised edition of the award-winning classic, voted one of the top twenty books for parents, Kurcinka provides vivid examples and a refreshingly positive viewpoint. Raising Your Spirited Child will help you:

• understand your child's­—and your own—temperamental traits
• discover the power of positive—rather than negative—labels
• cope with the tantrums and power struggles when they do occur
• plan for success with a simple four-step program
• develop strategies for handling mealtimes, sibling rivalry, bedtimes, holidays, and school, among other situations

About the Author

Mary Sheedy Kurcinka, M.A., is an award-winning educator in Minnesota's Early Childhood Family Education Program, and founder of the Spirited Child and Power Struggles workshops. She is the bestselling author of Sleepless in America and Kids, Parents, and Power Struggles, and she lives with her family in St. Paul, Minnesota.

The Internet and growth of computer networks have eliminated geographic barriers, creating an environment where education can be brought to a student no matter where that student may be. The success of distance learning programs and the availability of many Web-supported applications and multimedia resources have increased the effectiveness of computer-supported learning. However, technology continues to grow and keeping up with the latest trends can be difficult. Advances in Computer-Supported Learning clarifies the new technologies, applications, and research in computer-supported learning. It helps students, teachers, and researchers gain a larger understanding of this field and the trends that are driving computer-supported learning forward. It shares the knowledge of international researchers in computer-supported learning, presenting the practices and challenges faced by designers. Readers of this book will gain an understanding of the current state of computer-supported learning and where it will be in the future.

About the Author

Francisco Milton Mendes Neto holds a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the Federal University of Campina Grande, Brazil, for his work on knowledge management and computer-supported learning. In 1998, he joined the Superintendence of Corporate Systems of the Federal Service of Data Processing, where he is currently the manager of projects on computer-supported learning and learning communities for the Brazilian Federal Government. Dr. Mendes Neto is a member of the Brazilian Computing Society and the Brazilian Knowledge Management Society. Francisco Vilar Brasileiro earned his Ph.D. in computing science in 1995 from the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England, for his work on fail-controlled nodes and agreement protocols. In 1989, after a brief incursion in industry, he joined the Department of Systems and Computing of the Federal University of Para ba, Brazil, where he is currently a senior lecturer. Dr. Brasileiro is a member of the Brazilian Computing Society, the ACM, and the IEEE Computer Society.

Research on Internet security over the past few decades has focused mainly on information assurance, issues of data confidentiality and integrity as explored through cryptograph algorithms, digital signature, authentication code, etc. Unlike other books on network information security, Network Infrastructure Security by Angus Wong and Alan Yeung addresses the emerging concern with better detecting and preventing routers and other network devices from being attacked or compromised.

Attacks to network infrastructure affect large portions of the Internet at a time and create large amounts of service disruption, due to breaches such as IP spoofing, routing table poisoning and routing loops. Daily operations around the world highly depend on the availability and reliability of the Internet, which makes the security of this infrastructure a top priority issue in the field.

Network Infrastructure Security is a book that bridges the gap between the study of the traffic flow of networks and the study of the actual network configuration. This book makes effective use of examples and figures to illustrate network infrastructure attacks from a theoretical point of view. The book includes conceptual examples that show how network attacks can be run, along with appropriate countermeasures and solutions.

About the authors

Angus Kin-Yeung Wong obtained his BSc and PhD degrees from City University of Hong Kong and is currently an associate professor at Macao Polytechnic Institute. Alan Kai-Hau Yeung obtained his BSc and PhD degrees from the Chinese University of Hong Kong and is currently an associate professor at City University of Hong Kong. Wong and Yeung have been collaborating in network-related research for over 10 years.

The game development industry is in some ways quite similar to the film industry. We create entertainment for the masses, escapism for people as they are taken into different lives, and amazing worlds of imagination and wonder. The outsider’s view of what it must be like to work in these industries is often enjoyed through rose-tinted glasses.

I admit, creating characters and seeing them brought to life is an amazing thing. Given the opportunity to be creative, to be in a position where my hobby is also my work, is like a dream come true. I feel lucky to do what I do. I know a lot of people who don’t enjoy their jobs; they dread each day, which must be a sad existence especially since we spend most of our lives working.

Unfortunately, the game development industry is not all sugarcoated rainbows; being a game artist does have its tedious times. For example, when you’re faced with months of optimization, reducing someone else’s work to speed up the game can leave your creative juices running dry. Then there are the bug fixing stages at the end of a project. Imagine having to drive around a track, or search an expansive game world inch by inch to check for a rock that is sticking into the ground just a little too much. It’s at these stages in a project when the shine comes off the job, but there is always the next project.

Ruby on Rails is a feature-rich, easy to learn, and powerful web application framework that makes creating sophisticated, full featured web applications a snap. With the intuitive, straightforward nature of Ruby and the development platform provided by Rails, anyone can put together full-fledged web applications quickly, even if they're new to web programming. Ruby on Rails Power! is a comprehensive introduction to both the Ruby language and the Ruby on Rails framework, providing you with everything you need to author the next successful Web 2.0 application. It starts with the basics: installing Ruby, Ruby on Rails, and MySQL, and building a simple application in Rails. Then, since the Ruby on Rails framework is powered by the Ruby language, the book moves on to cover the basics of Ruby, making the learning curve for Ruby on Rails much easier to navigate. From there, the fundamentals everyone needs to develop a robust web application in Rails are covered in depth, from creating an interface to create, retrieve, update and delete records in a database with the Rails scaffold generator, to understanding the Model View Controller paradigm (Active Record, Action Controller and Action View) and using web services, AJAX, and Adobe Flex. By the end of the book, you’ll have created numerous applications in Rails, including a blog, a wiki, and a forum.

About the Author

Aneesha Bakharia is a web developer and accomplished author who specializes in creating dynamic database-driven web sites. She has a bachelor of engineering degree in Microelectronic Engineering and various postgraduate qualifications in multimedia, online course development, and web design. In addition to Ruby on Rails Power!, she has written several other books for Course Technology PTR, including Microsoft Visual C# 2005 Express Edition Programming for the Absolute Beginner, Dreamweaver UltraDev Fast & Easy Web Development, JavaServer Pages Fast & Easy Web Development, and Microsoft C# Fast & Easy Web Development. Bakharia is fluent in C#, Java, JavaScript, ASP.NET, JSP, HTML, XML, Ruby,
Ruby on Rails, and VB.NET. She lives in Queensland, Australia.