Multiplying Worlds argues that modern forms of virtual reality first appear in the urban/commercial milieu of London in the late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century (1780-1830). It develops a revisionary account of relations between romanticism and popular entertainments, 'high' and 'low' literature, and verbal and visual virtual realities during this period. The argument is divided into three parts. The first, 'From the Actual to the Virtual', focuses on developments during the period from 1780 to 1795, as represented by Robert Barker's Panorama, Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon, and James Graham's Temple of Health and Hymen. The second part, 'From Representation to Poiesis', extends the study of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century virtual realities to include textual media. It considers the relation between textual and visual virtual-realities, while also introducing the Palace of Pandemonium and Satan/Prometheus as key figures in late eighteenth-century explorations of the implications of virtual reality. There are chapters on Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho, Beckford's Fonthill Abbey, the Phantasmagoria, and Romantic representations of Satan. The book's third part, 'Actuvirtuality and Virtuactuality', provides an introduction to the Romantics' remarkably diverse (and to this point rarely studied) engagements with the virtual. It focuses on attempts to describe or indirectly present the cultural, material, or psychological apparatuses that project the perceptual world; reflections on the epistemological, ethical and political paradoxes that arise in a world of actuvirtuality and virtuactuality; and experiments in the construction of virtual worlds that, like those of Shakespeare (according to Coleridge) are not bound by 'the iron compulsion of [everyday] space and time'.

This book is an overview of current research in theoretical and practical aspects of security in distributed systems, in particular in information systems and related security tools. Issues treated in the book are security in XML-based management systems, security of multimedia data, technology and use of smart cards, applications of cryptography, security of distributed applications and adherence to standards, model and security issues associated with the organization of components (architectures) of information systems, such as networked systems (Internet and WWW-based), client/server architectures, andlayered architectures. Contributions come both from the academic and the industrial field.

A Deep Dive into NoSQL Databases: The Use Cases and Applications, Volume 109, the latest release in the Advances in Computers series first published in 1960, presents detailed coverage of innovations in computer hardware, software, theory, design and applications. In addition, it provides contributors with a medium in which they can explore their subjects in greater depth and breadth. This update includes sections on NoSQL and NewSQL databases for big data analytics and distributed computing, NewSQL databases and scalable in-memory analytics, NoSQL web crawler application, NoSQL Security, a Comparative Study of different In-Memory (No/New)SQL Databases, NoSQL Hands On-4 NoSQLs, the Hadoop Ecosystem, and more.

In real management situations, uncertainty is inherently present in decision making. As such, it is increasingly imperative to research and develop new theories and methods of fuzzy sets. Theoretical and Practical Advancements for Fuzzy System Integration is a pivotal reference source for the latest scholarly research on the importance of expressing and measuring fuzziness in order to develop effective and practical decision making models and methods. Featuring coverage on an expansive range of perspectives and topics, such as fuzzy logic control, intuitionistic fuzzy set theory, and defuzzification, this book is ideally designed for academics, professionals, and researchers seeking current research on theoretical frameworks and real-world applications in the area of fuzzy sets and systems.

Advanced research in the field of mechatronics and robotics represents a unifying interdisciplinary and intelligent engineering science paradigm. It is a holistic, concurrent, and interdisciplinary engineering science that identifies novel possibilities of synergizing and fusing different disciplines. The Handbook of Research on Advanced Mechatronic Systems and Intelligent Robotics is a collection of innovative research on the methods and applications of knowledge in both theoretical and practical skills of intelligent robotics and mechatronics. While highlighting topics including green technology, machine learning, and virtual manufacturing, this book is ideally designed for researchers, students, engineers, and computer practitioners seeking current research on developing innovative ideas for intelligent robotics and autonomous and smart interdisciplinary mechatronic products.

Constant improvements in technological applications have allowed for more opportunities to develop automated systems. This not only leads to higher success in smart data analysis, but also ensures that technological progression will continue. Ubiquitous Machine Learning and its Applications is a pivotal reference source for the latest research on the issues and challenges machines face in the new millennium. Featuring extensive coverage on relevant areas such as computational advertising, software engineering, and bioinformatics, this publication is an ideal resource for academicians, graduate students, engineering professionals, and researchers interested in discovering how they can apply these advancements to various disciplines.

This book presents the state-of-the-art in supercomputer simulation. It includes the latest findings from leading researchers using systems from the High Performance Computing Center Stuttgart (HLRS) in 2017. The reports cover all fields of computational science and engineering ranging from CFD to computational physics and from chemistry to computer science with a special emphasis on industrially relevant applications. Presenting findings of one of Europe's leading systems, this volume covers a wide variety of applications that deliver a high level of sustained performance.The book covers the main methods in high-performance computing. Its outstanding results in achieving the best performance for production codes are of particular interest for both scientists and engineers. The book comes with a wealth of color illustrations and tables of results.

This book highlights new trends and challenges in research on agents and the new digital and knowledge economy. It includes papers on business- process management, agent-based modeling and simulation, and anthropic-oriented computing, which were originally presented at the 13th International KES Conference on Agents and Multi-Agent Systems - Technologies and Applications (KES-AMSTA 2019) held June 17-19, 2019 at St George's Bay, St. Julians, Malta. Today's economy is driven by technologies and knowledge. Digital technologies can free, shift and multiply choices, and often intrude on the territory of other industries by providing new ways of conducting business operations and creating value for customers and companies. As such, the book covers topics such as software agents, multi-agent systems, agent modeling, mobile and cloud computing, big data analysis, business intelligence, artificial intelligence, social systems, computer embedded systems and nature inspired manufacturing, all of which contribute to the modern digital economy. The research presented is of value to researchers and industrial practitioners working in the fields of artificial intelligence, collective computational intelligence, innovative business models, the new digital and knowledge economy and, in particular, agent and multi-agent systems, technologies, tools and applications.

A new set of major changes is reshaping the economy and creating challenges that are testing the mettle and talents of organizations and their employees. Unless organizations and their employees develop the requisite skills they need to cope with these challenges, many will become casualties of their own deficiencies. "Keys to Employee Success in Coming Decades" seeks to prepare employees for future success in an increasingly demanding and competitive global environment. Sims, Veres, and their contributors are careful to focus on what employees at different levels in the organization will need to do to be successful in the twenty-first century.

Mastery of the knowledge, skills, attitudes, and behaviors discussed by the contributors in this book will lead to enhanced employee performance as the new decade approaches. The requirements for new employees or the redesigned employees is quickly changing. The organizations of tomorrow will expect employees who understand the importance of success; who welcome change and accept it, master it, and deliberately cause it. They are also employees who are proactive innovators, who confront constraints and the limitations on actions that they impose, who take risks and who continue to develop themselves professionally, technically, and personally. Written clearly, concisely, and with a minimum of academic jargon, the book will be important reading for specialists in human resource management, training and development, and others with critical responsibilities throughout the organization.

This book contains 74 papers presented at ICTCS 2017: Third International Conference on Information and Communication Technology for Competitive Strategies. The conference was held during 16-17 December 2017, Udaipur, India and organized by Association of Computing Machinery, Udaipur Professional Chapter in association with The Institution of Engineers (India), Udaipur Local Center and Global Knowledge Research Foundation. This book contains papers mainly focused on ICT for Computation, Algorithms and Data Analytics and IT Security etc.

The book presents innovative scientific research works by academics, research scholars and students, presented at the 2017 International Conference on Energy, Materials and Information Technology at Amity University Jharkhand, India. It includes contributions on system solutions based on soft computing techniques, and covers innovative soft computing techniques and tools with advanced applications. A major focus of the book is on presenting interdisciplinary problems and how they can be solved using information technology, together with innovative connections to other disciplines. It also includes papers on cloud computing and WSN-related real-time research.

This book introduces readers to the use of R codes for optimization problems. First, it provides the necessary background to understand data envelopment analysis (DEA), with a special emphasis on fuzzy DEA. It then describes DEA models, including fuzzy DEA models, and shows how to use them to solve optimization problems with R. Further, it discusses the main advantages of R in optimization problems, and provides R codes based on real-world data sets throughout. Offering a comprehensive review of DEA and fuzzy DEA models and the corresponding R codes, this practice-oriented reference guide is intended for masters and Ph.D. students in various disciplines, as well as practitioners and researchers.

Mapping and localization are two essential tasks in autonomous mobile robotics. Due to the unavoidable noise that sensors present, mapping algorithms usually rely on loop closure detection techniques, which entail the correct identification of previously seen places to reduce the uncertainty of the resulting maps. This book deals with the problem of generating topological maps of the environment using efficient appearance-based loop closure detection techniques. Since the quality of a visual loop closure detection algorithm is related to the image description method and its ability to index previously seen images, several methods for loop closure detection adopting different approaches are developed and assessed. Then, these methods are used in three novel topological mapping algorithms. The results obtained indicate that the solutions proposed attain a better performance than several state-of-the-art approaches. To conclude, given that loop closure detection is also a key component in other research areas, a multi-threaded image mosaicing algorithm is proposed. This approach makes use of one of the loop closure detection techniques previously introduced in order to find overlapping pairs between images and finally obtain seamless mosaics of different environments in a reasonable amount of time.

Recent advancements in technology have influenced major change within many industries. Because of such advancements, businesses and organizations are adapting to a more technology based work environment in order achieve a higher rate of production, output, and accuracy. Methodological Advancements in Intelligent Information Technologies: Evolutionary Trends brings together research from international authors detailing developments in intelligent information technologies and their impact on organizational environments. This esteemed reference publication covers topics on agent-based approaches to process management, semantic Web services, data mining techniques, engineering software technologies, and scalable and adaptive Web search engines, in order to provide current research for practitioners, educators, and students interested in the implementation of innovative technologies in a variety of work environments.

In a face-to-face conversation, only 10 % of the message is conveyed by words, the remaining 90 % is carried via vocal pitch, emphasis, facial expressions, body language, and other related factors.

The challenge for future telecommunication systems will be to bridge the shortcomings of our current voice-orientated systems. Video conferencing and live chats are replacing our traditional forms of communication. Worldwide telecommunications networks are being redesigned to provide new multimedia services.

The goal of this book is to bring together end users, service providers and researchers from academia as well as the communications industry to share state-of-the-art information on projects, products, services, and processes for future virtual reality (VR) telecommunications systems.

Virtual Reality Technologies for Future Telecommunications Systems features:

• today' s telecommunications systems and services - problems and limitations

• a guide to employing VR in telecommunications networks

• cutting edge research & rare insights into experimental VR telecommunications systems and services

• aspects and challenges of the emerging technologies (user interface design, user behaviour, computational complexity, high-speed Internet)

• accompanying CD with software demos and video footage

This book explores recent perspectives on type-2 fuzzy sets. Written as a tribute to Professor Jerry Mendel for his pioneering works on type-2 fuzzy sets and systems, it covers a wide range of topics, including applications to the Go game, machine learning and pattern recognition, as well as type-2 fuzzy control and intelligent systems. The book is intended as a reference guide for the type-2 fuzzy logic community, yet it aims also at other communities dealing with similar methods and applications.

This book highlights papers presented at the Second International Conference on Smart Vehicular Technology, Transportation, Communication and Applications (VTCA 2018), which was held at Mount Emei, Sichuan Province, China from 25 to 28 October 2018. The conference was co-sponsored by Springer, Southwest Jiaotong University, Fujian University of Technology, Chang'an University, Shandong University of Science and Technology, Fujian Provincial Key Lab of Big Data Mining and Applications, and the National Demonstration Center for Experimental Electronic Information and Electrical Technology Education (Fujian University of Technology). The conference was intended as an international forum for researchers and professionals engaged in all areas of smart vehicular technology, vehicular transportation, vehicular communication, and applications.

Cutting-edge research indicates that evolutionary programming is set to emerge as the dominant optimisation technique in the fast-changing power industry. Combining theory and practice, Intelligent System Applications in Power Engineering capitalises on the potential of neural networks and evolutionary computation to resolve real-world power engineering problems such as load forecasting, power system operation and planning optimisation. Unlike existing optimisation methods, these novel computational intelligence techniques provide power utilities with innovative solutions for improved performance. Features include:

• Introduction to evolutionary programming and neural networks serving as a foundation for later discussion of the benefits of hybrid systems
• Practical application of evolutionary programming to reactive power planning and dispatch for speedy, cost-effective increases in transmission capacity plus generator parameter estimation
• Examination of economic dispatch, power flow control in FACTS and co-generation scheduling and fault diagnosis for HVDC systems and transformers
• Consideration of power frequency and harmonic evaluation to maximise supply quality
• Employment of distance protection, faulty section estimation and calculation of fault clearing time for transient stability assessment

This book introduces readers to the background, general framework, main operators, and other basic characteristics of biogeography-based optimization (BBO), which is an emerging branch of bio-inspired computation. In particular, the book presents the authors' recent work on improved variants of BBO, hybridization of BBO with other algorithms, and the application of BBO to a variety of domains including transportation, image processing, and neural network learning. The content will help to advance research into and application of not only BBO but also the whole field of bio-inspired computation. The algorithms and applications are organized in a step-by-step manner and clearly described with the help of pseudo-codes and flowcharts. The readers will learn not only the basic concepts of BBO but also how to apply and adapt the algorithms to the engineering optimization problems they actually encounter.

These proceedings present selected research papers from CISC'18, held in Wenzhou, China. The topics include Multi-Agent Systems, Networked Control Systems, Intelligent Robots, Complex System Theory and Swarm Behavior, Event-Triggered Control and Data-Driven Control, Robust and Adaptive Control, Big Data and Brain Science, Process Control, Nonlinear and Variable Structure Control, Intelligent Sensor and Detection Technology, Deep learning and Learning Control Guidance, Navigation and Control of Flight Vehicles, and so on. Engineers and researchers from academia, industry, and government can get an insight view of the solutions combining ideas from multiple disciplines in the field of intelligent systems.

This volume focuses on smart medical and healthcare systems (modern intelligent systems for medicine and healthcare) and includes 31 papers presenting recent trends and innovations in medicine and healthcare, including biomedical engineering research and technologies; machine learning and labeling for biomedical visual data analysis and understanding; advanced ICT for medicine and healthcare; and healthcare support systems. Innovation in medicine and healthcare is an interdisciplinary research area, which combines advanced technologies and problem-solving skills with medical and biological science, and smart medical and healthcare systems can provide efficient and accurate solution to problems faced by healthcare and medical practitioners today by using advanced information communication techniques, computational intelligence, mathematics, robotics and other advanced technologies. Discussing the techniques developed in this area, which will have a significant effect on future medicine and healthcare, the book is a valuable resource for researchers, students, engineers, and professionals working in the fields of medical systems, medical technology, and intelligent systems.

Due to increasing potential in real-world applications such as visual communications, computer assisted biomedical imaging, and video surveillance, image and video interpretations have become an area of growing interest. Intelligent Image and Video Interpretation: Algorithms and Applications covers all aspects of image and video analysis from low-level early visions to high-level recognition. This publication highlights how these techniques have become applicable and will prove to be a valuable tool for researchers, professionals, and graduate students working or studying the fields of imaging and video processing.