Inventing the Internet

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Steven L. Gay, Jacob Benesty

The current revolution in electronic switching and transport technologies promises a dramatic increase in the intimacy and satisfaction that users will experience over imminent telecommunications networks. However, unless there is a corresponding improvement in the technologies of the acoustics of telecommunications, this promise will soon prove empty. The sense of presence that people feel when together in a room is largely due to the psycho-acoustic cues they sense from the human binaural hearing system evolved over millennia. Modern acoustic signal processing is just now beginning to be able to deliver that same experience to users remotely located from each other. This includes the ability to communicate in full duplex with wider bandwidths and multiple audio streams (e.g. stereo, 3D audio). It also involves locating and separating audio sources, suppressing noise, and using sound to automatically steer video cameras. Acoustic Signal Processing for Telecommunication presents digital signal processing techniques for telecommunications acoustics that are both cutting-edge and practical. Each chapter presents material that has not appeared in book form before and yet is easily realizable in today's technology. To this end, both new theory and new implementation techniques are presented. Topics include new adaptive filtering algorithms, multi-channel acoustic echo cancellation, noise control, virtual sound, sound source localization for camera tracking, source separation, and microphone arrays.

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Michael Bradshaw

"Resurrection Songs: The Poetry of Thomas Lovell Beddoes brings together the poet's abiding obsession - the search for immortality - and the most prominent formal feature of his writing - fragmentation. Michael Bradshaw examines how the idea of resurrection acts upon and is acted upon by the structural disarray of Beddoes's texts. The study centres on the phenomenon of broken form on various levels, and charts the progressive involution of the theme. Addressing contexts such as Beddoes's relationships with Romantic and Renaissance forbears and the influence of his medical training, Resurrection Songs is a timely re-assessment which establishes Beddoes's relevance to the contemporary debates of Romanticism."--Jacket.

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Dėvid Dri͡u

A portrait of the Mayan world argues that there were actually two empires, a northern and southern, beset with religious conflicts, warfare, and political struggles; and that overpopulation and famine led to the sudden collapse of Mayan civilization.

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Aaron Frisch

Describes the traditions of Easter including the story of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, new Easter clothes and hats, Easter flowers and foods, the Easter bunny, and Easter egg hunts.