This book concisely presents a broad range of models and theories on social systems. Because of the huge spectrum of topics involving social systems, various issues related to Mathematics, Statistics, Teaching, Social Science, and Economics are discussed. In an effort to introduce the subject to a wider audience, this volume, part of the series "Studies in Systems, Decision and Control", equally addresses the needs of mathematicians, statisticians, sociologists and philosophers. The studies examined here are divided into four parts. The first part, "Perusing the Minds Behind Scientific Discoveries", traces the winding path of Syamal K. Sen and Ravi P. Agarwal's scholarship throughout history, and most importantly, the thought processes that allowed each of them to master their subject. The second part covers "Theories in Social Systems" and the third discusses "Models in Social Systems", while the fourth and final part is dedicated to "Mathematical Methods in the Social Sciences". Given its breadth of coverage, the book will offer inquisitive readers a valuable point of departure for exploring these rich, vast, and ever-expanding fields of knowledge.

This self-contained book presents a framework for solving a general class of linear systems with coefficients being continuous functions of parameters varying within prescribed intervals. It also provides a comprehensive overview of the theory related to solving parametric interval linear systems and the basic properties of parametric interval matrices. In particular, it develops several new algorithms delivering sharp rigorous bounds for the solutions of such systems with full mathematical rigor. The framework employs the arithmetic of revised affine forms that enables the readers to handle dependent data. The book is intended not only for researchers interested in developing rigorous methods of numerical linear algebra, but also for engineers dealing with problems involving uncertain data. The theory discussed is also useful in various other fields of numerical analysis, in computer graphics, economics, computational geometry, computer-aided design, computer-assisted proofs, computer graphics, control theory, solving constraint satisfaction problems, and global optimization.

Since its initial development, particle swarm optimization has gained wide recognition due to its ability to provide solutions efficiently, requiring only minimal implementation effort. Particle Swarm Optimization and Intelligence: Advances and Applications examines modern intelligent optimization algorithms proven as very efficient in applications from various scientific and technological fields. Providing distinguished and unique research, this innovative publication offers a compendium of leading field experiences as well as theoretical analyses and complementary techniques useful to academicians and practitioners.

This contributed volume discusses diverse topics to demystify the rapidly emerging and evolving blockchain technology, the emergence of integrated platforms and hosted third-party tools, and the development of decentralized applications for various business domains. It presents various applications that are helpful for research scholars and scientists who are working toward identifying and pinpointing the potential of as well as the hindrances to this technology.

This book details some of the major developments in the implementation of compressive sensing in radio applications for electronic defense and warfare communication use. It provides a comprehensive background to the subject and at the same time describes some novel algorithms. It also investigates application value and performance-related parameters of compressive sensing in scenarios such as direction finding, spectrum monitoring, detection, and classification.

This monograph presents new theories and methods for fixed-time cooperative control of multi-agent systems. Fundamental concepts of fixed-time stability and stabilization are introduced with insightful understanding. This book presents solutions for several problems of fixed-time cooperative control using systematic design methods. The book compares fixed-time cooperative control with asymptotic cooperative control, demonstrating how the former can achieve better closed-loop performance and disturbance rejection properties. It also discusses the differences from finite-time control, and shows how fixed-time cooperative control can produce the faster rate of convergence and provide an explicit estimate of the settling time independent of initial conditions. This monograph presents multiple applications of fixed-time control schemes, including to distributed optimization of multi-agent systems, making it useful to students, researchers and engineers alike.

In the design of a neural network, either for biological modeling, cognitive simulation, numerical computation or engineering applications, it is important to investigate the network's computational performance which is usually described by the long-term behaviors, called dynamics, of the model equations. The purpose of this book is to give an introduction to the mathematical modeling and analysis of networks of neurons from the viewpoint of dynamical systems.

This book explains how to teach better and presents the latest research on processing educational data and presents traditional statistical techniques as well as probabilistic, interval, and fuzzy approaches. Teaching is a very rewarding activity; it is also a very difficult one - because it is largely an art. There is a lot of advice on teaching available, but it is usually informal and is not easy to follow. To remedy this situation, it is reasonable to use techniques specifically designed to handle such imprecise knowledge: the fuzzy logic techniques. Since there are a large number of statistical studies of different teaching techniques, the authors combined statistical and fuzzy approaches to process the educational data in order to provide insights into improving all the stages of the education process: from forming a curriculum to deciding in which order to present the material to grading the assignments and exams. The authors do not claim to have solved all the problems of education. Instead they show, using numerous examples, that an innovative combination of different uncertainty techniques can improve teaching. The book offers teachers and instructors valuable advice and provides researchers in pedagogical and fuzzy areas with techniques to further advance teaching.

Augmented Reality (AR) refers to the merging of a live view of the physical, real world with context-sensitive, computer-generated images to create a mixed reality. Through this augmented vision, a user can digitally interact with and adjust information about their surrounding environment on-the-fly. "Handbook of Augmented Reality" provides an extensive overview of the current and future trends in Augmented Reality, and chronicles the dramatic growth in this field. The book includes contributions from world expert s in the field of AR from academia, research laboratories and private industry. Case studies and examples throughout the handbook help introduce the basic concepts of AR, as well as outline the Computer Vision and Multimedia techniques most commonly used today. The book is intended for a wide variety of readers including academicians, designers, developers, educators, engineers, practitioners, researchers, and graduate students. This book can also be beneficial for business managers, entrepreneurs, and investors.

This book presents cutting-edge research on various ways to bridge the semantic gap in image and video analysis. The respective chapters address different stages of image processing, revealing that the first step is a future extraction, the second is a segmentation process, the third is object recognition, and the fourth and last involve the semantic interpretation of the image. The semantic gap is a challenging area of research, and describes the difference between low-level features extracted from the image and the high-level semantic meanings that people can derive from the image. The result greatly depends on lower level vision techniques, such as feature selection, segmentation, object recognition, and so on. The use of deep models has freed humans from manually selecting and extracting the set of features. Deep learning does this automatically, developing more abstract features at the successive levels. The book offers a valuable resource for researchers, practitioners, students and professors in Computer Engineering, Computer Science and related fields whose work involves images, video analysis, image interpretation and so on.

This important text/reference presents the first dedicated review of techniques for contactless 3D fingerprint identification, including novel and previously unpublished research. The text provides a systematic introduction to 3D fingerprint identification, covering the latest advancements in contactless 2D and 3D sensing technologies, and detailed discussions on each key aspect in the development of an effective 3D fingerprint identification system. Topics and features: introduces the key concepts and trends in the acquisition and identification of fingerprint images, and a range of 3D fingerprint imaging techniques; proposes a low-cost method for online 3D fingerprint image acquisition, and an efficient 3D fingerprint imaging approach using coloured photometric stereo; describes pre-processing operations on point cloud 3D fingerprint data, and explains the specialized operations for reconstructing 3D fingerprints from live finger scans; examines the representation of minutiae in 3D space, providing details on recovering these features from point cloud data, and on matching such 3D minutiae templates; reviews various 3D fingerprint matching methods, including binary surface code-based approaches and a tetrahedron-based matching approach; discusses the uniqueness of 3D fingerprints, evaluating the benefits of employing 3D fingerprint identification over conventional 2D fingerprint techniques. This unique work is a must-read for all researchers seeking to make further advances in this area, towards the exciting opportunities afforded by contactless 3D fingerprint identification for improving the hygiene, user convenience, and matching accuracy of fingerprint biometric technologies.

As the use of internet applications with client server architecture and web browsers have increased the ability to draw on information, many managers now face the challenge of making effective decisions based on this data. Integrating end users into computer environments aid in the impact, design, and development that computer models have on performance and productivity. Innovative Strategies and Approaches for End-User Computing Advancements presents comprehensive research on the implementation of organizational and end user computing initiatives to further understand this discipline and its related fields. This book aims to bring together information technology educators, researchers, and practitioners who strive to advance the practice and understanding of organizational and end user computing.

This volume consists of 52 peer-reviewed papers, presented at the International Conference on Sustainable Design and Manufacturing (SDM-19) held in Budapest, Hungary in July 2019. Leading-edge research into sustainable design and manufacturing aims to enable the manufacturing industry to grow by adopting more advanced technologies, and at the same time improve its sustainability by reducing its environmental impact. The topic includes the sustainable design of products and services; the sustainable manufacturing of all products; energy efficiency in manufacturing; innovation for eco-design; circular economy; industry 4.0; industrial metabolism; automotive and transportation systems. Application areas are wide and varied. The book will provide an excellent overview of the latest developments in the Sustainable Design and Manufacturing Area.

This volume highlights new trends and challenges in research on agents and the new digital and knowledge economy, and includes 23 papers classified into the following categories: business process management, agent-based modeling and simulation, and anthropic-oriented computing. All papers were originally presented at the 11th International KES Conference on Agents and Multi-Agent Systems - Technologies and Applications (KES-AMSTA 2017) held June 21-23, 2017 in Vilamoura, Algarve, Portugal. 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. The topics covered in this volume include 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, etc., all of which contribute to the modern Digital Economy. The results presented here will be of theoretical and practical 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.

This book presents modern approaches to improving the energy efficiency, safety and environmental performance of industrial processes and products, based on the application of advanced trends in Green Information Technologies (IT) Engineering to components, networks and complex systems (software, programmable and hardware components, communications, Cloud and IoT-based systems, as well as IT infrastructures). The book's 16 chapters, prepared by authors from Greece, Malaysia, Russia, Slovakia, Ukraine and the United Kingdom, are grouped into four sections: (1) The Green Internet of Things, Cloud Computing and Data Mining, (2) Green Mobile and Embedded Control Systems, (3) Green Logic and FPGA Design, and (4) Green IT for Industry and Smart Grids. The book will motivate researchers and engineers from different IT domains to develop, implement and propagate green values in complex systems. Further, it will benefit all scientists and graduate students pursuing research in computer science with a focus on green IT engineering.

'Emerging Technologies of Text Mining' provides the most recent technical information related to the computational models of the TM process.

This book presents recent research on the hybridization of intelligent methods, which refers to combining methods to solve complex problems. It discusses hybrid approaches covering different areas of intelligent methods and technologies, such as neural networks, swarm intelligence, machine learning, reinforcement learning, deep learning, agent-based approaches, knowledge-based system and image processing. The book includes extended and revised versions of invited papers presented at the 6th International Workshop on Combinations of Intelligent Methods and Applications (CIMA 2016), held in The Hague, Holland, in August 2016. The book is intended for researchers and practitioners from academia and industry interested in using hybrid methods for solving complex problems.

This is a handbook of Gamma-convergence, which is a theoretical tool used to study problems in Applied Mathematics where varying parameters are present, with many applications that range from Mechanics to Computer Vision. The book is directed to Applied Mathematicians in all fields and to Engineers with a theoretical background.

This book focuses on modelling and simulation, control and optimization, signal processing, and forecasting in selected nonlinear dynamical systems, presenting both literature reviews and novel concepts. It develops analytical or numerical approaches, which are simple to use, robust, stable, flexible and universally applicable to the analysis of complex nonlinear dynamical systems. As such it addresses key challenges are addressed, e.g. efficient handling of time-varying dynamics, efficient design, faster numerical computations, robustness, stability and convergence of algorithms. The book provides a series of contributions discussing either the design or analysis of complex systems in sciences and engineering, and the concepts developed involve nonlinear dynamics, synchronization, optimization, machine learning, and forecasting. Both theoretical and practical aspects of diverse areas are investigated, specifically neurocomputing, transportation engineering, theoretical electrical engineering, signal processing, communications engineering, and computational intelligence. It is a valuable resource for students and researchers interested in nonlinear dynamics and synchronization with applications in selected areas.

The objective of Developing Quality Complex Database Systems is to provide opportunities for improving today's database systems using innovative development practices, tools and techniques. Each chapter of this book will provide insight into the effective use of database technology through models, case studies or experience reports. An emphasis is placed on organizational and management issues associated with the use of such technology inclusive of lessons learned and best practices.

Mobile Commerce Applications addresses and explores the critical architectural issues in constructing m-commerce applications and in applying mobile technologies in different areas, including methodologies, enabling technologies, models, paradigms, architectures, standards and innovations.

This book reports on the latest advances in the study of motion control in biomimetic swimming robots with high speed and high manoeuvrability. It presents state-of-the-art studies on various swimming robots including robotic fish, dolphins and jellyfish in a unified framework, and discusses the potential benefits of applying biomimetic underwater propulsion to autonomous underwater vehicle design, such as: speed, energy economy, enhanced manoeuvrability, and reduced detectability. Given its scope, the book will be of interest to researchers, engineers and graduate students in robotics and ocean engineering who wish to learn about the core principles, methods, algorithms, and applications of biomimetic underwater robots.

This book provides insights into the First International Conference on Communication, Devices and Computing (ICCDC 2017), which was held in Haldia, India on November 2-3, 2017. It covers new ideas, applications and the experiences of research engineers, scientists, industrialists, scholars and students from around the globe. The proceedings highlight cutting-edge research on communication, electronic devices and computing, and address diverse areas such as 5G communication, spread spectrum systems, wireless sensor networks, signal processing for secure communication, error control coding, printed antennas, analysis of wireless networks, antenna array systems, analog and digital signal processing for communication systems, frequency selective surfaces, radar communication, and substrate integrated waveguide and microwave passive components, which are key to state-of-the-art innovations in communication technologies.