BOOK REPORTS 287

cock). Scheduling straight-line code using reinforcement learning and rollouts (Amy McGovern and Eliot Moss). Bayesian modeling of facial similarity (Baback Moghaddam, Tony Jebara and Alex Pentland). Reinfocement learn- ing for t rading (John Moody and Matthew Saffell). Graphical models for recognizing human interactions (Nuria M. Oliver, Barbara Rosario and Alex Pentland). Independent component analysis of intracellular calcium spike da ta (Klaus Prank, Julia BSrger, Alexander yon zur Miihlen, Georg Brabant and Christof SchSfl). Applications of multi-resolution neural networks to mammography (Clay D. Spence and Paul Sajda). Robot docking using mixtures of Gaussians (Matthew M. Williamson, Roderick Murray-Smith and Volker Hansen). Using collective intelligence to route Internet traffic (David H. Wolpert, Kagan Tumer and Jeremy Frank).

IX. Control, navigation and planning. Robust, efficient, globally-optimized reinforcement learning with the parti-game algorithm (Mohammad A. A1-Ansari and Ronald J. Williams). Gradient descent for general rein- forcement learning (Leemon Baird and Andrew W. Moore). Non-linear PI control inspired by biological control systems (Lyndon J. Brown, Gregory E. Gonye and James S. Schwaber). Optimizing admission control while ensuring quality of service in multimedia networks via reinforcement learning (Timothy X. Brown, Hui Tong and Satinder Singh). Viewing classifier systems as model free learning in POMDPs (Akira Hayashi and Nobuo Sue- matsu). Finite-sample convergence rates for Q-learning and indirect algorithms (Michael Kearns and Satinder Singh). Exploring unknown environments with real-time search or reinforcement learning (Sven Koenig). The effect of eligibility traces on finding optimal memoryless policies in partially observable Markov decision pro- ceases (John Loch). Learning instance-independent value functions to enhance local search (Robert Moll, Andrew G. Barto, Theodore J. Perkins and Richard S. Sutton). Barycentric interpolators for continuous space and t ime reinforcement learning (Remi Munos and Andrew W. Moore). Risk sensitive reinforcement learning (Ralph Ne- uneier and Oliver Mihatsch). Coordinate transformation learning of hand position feedback controller by using change of position error norm (Eimei Oyama and Susumu Tachi). Learning macro-actions in reinforcement learn- ing (Jet te Randlov). Reinforcement learning based on on-line EM algorithm (Masa-aki Sato and Shin Ishii). A reinforcement learning algorithm in partially observable environments using short-term memory (Nobuo Suematsu and Akira Hayashi). Improved switching among temporally abstract actions (Richard S. Sutton, Satinder Singh, Doina Precup and Balaraman Ravindran). Experimental results on learning stochastic memoryless policies for partially observable Markov processes (John K. Williams and Satinder Singh). Index of authors. Keyword index.

Lexical Semantics and Knowledqe Representation in Multilinqual Text Generation. By Manfred Stede. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Boston, MA. (1999). 219 pages. $129.00, NLG 265.00, GBP 84.00. Contents:

List of figures. List of tables. Preface. Acknowledgments. 1. Introduction. 2. Lexicalization in NLC. 3. Classify- ing lexical variation. 4. Modelling the domain. 5. Levels of representation: SitSpec and SemSpec. 6. Representing the meaning of words. 7. Verb alternations and extensions. 8. A system architecture for multilingual generation. 9. Generat ing paraphrases. 10. From sentences to text. 11. Summary and conclusions. References. Index.

The Politics of Pure Science, New edition. By Daniel S. Greenberg. University of Chicago Press, Chicago. (1999). 311 pages. $49.00, £34.50 (cloth); $15.00, £10.50 (paper). Contents:

Foreword to the 1999 edition (Sir John Maddox). Foreword to the 1999 edition (Steven Shapin). Acknowledg- ments and a note on sources. Introduction. Book I. 1. The scientific community. 2. Chauvinism, xenophobia, and evangelism. Book II. 3. When science was an orphan. 4. The war-born relationship. 5. The experience of war. 6. Meshing the incompatible. 7. The reluctant leaders. Book III. 8. The government of science. 9. Mohole: The anatomy of a fiasco. 10. High energy politics. 11. MURA's last stand. 12. The new politics of science. Afterword. Index.

PNG: The Definitive Guide. By Greg Roelofs. O'Reilly, Sebastopol, CA. (1999). 321 pages. $32.95. Contents:

Preface. I. Using PNG. 1. An introduction to PNG. 2. Applications: W W W browsers and servers. 3. Ap- plications: Image viewers. 4. Applications: Image editors. 5. Applications: Image converters. 6. Applications: VRML browsers and other 3D apps. II. The design of PNG. 7. History of the Portable Network Graphics For- mat. 8. PNG basics. 9. Compression and filtering. 10. Gamma correction and precision color. 11. PNG options and extensions. 12. Multiple-image network graphics. III. Programming with PNG. 13. Reading PNG images. 14. Reading PNG images progressively. 15. Writing PNG images. 16. Other libraries and concluding remarks. References. Glossary. Index.

Webmaster in a Nutshell, Second edition. By Stephen Spainhour and Robert Eckstein. O'Reilly, Sebastopol, CA. (1999). 523 pages. $24.95. Contents:

Preface. 1. Introduction. I. HTML. 2. HTML overview. 3. HTML reference. 4. Frames. 5. Tables. 6. Forms. 7. Character entitities. 8. Color names and values. II. CSS. 9. Cascading style sheets. III. XML. 10. XML. IV. JavaScript. 11. JavaScript. V. CGI and Perl. 12. CGI overview. 13. Server side inclues. 14. The CGI.pm module. 15. Web server programming with mod_perl. VI. PHP. 16. PHP. VII. HTTP. 17. HTTP. VIII. Server configuration. 18. Apache configuration. 19. Apache modules. 20. Server performance. Index.