Take an active role in managing technology!

From new business models to new types of business, information technology has become a key driver of business and an essential component of corporate strategy. But simply acquiring technology is not enough; organizations must manage IT effectively to gain the competitive advantage.

Henry Lucas's Information Technology: Strategic Decision Making for Managers focuses on the key knowledge and skills you need to take an active role in managing technology and obtain the maximum benefits from investing in IT. Offering streamlined, up-to-date coverage, the text is ideally suited for MBA students or anyone who wants to learn more about how to gain the competitive advantage by successfully managing IT.

Features Focuses on managerial issues: This text explores the many real technology issues confronting today's managers, such as what to do with legacy systems, when to outsource, and how to choose a source of processing and services. Shows how to evaluate IT investments: Two full chapters cover the value of information technology and how to evaluate IT project proposals using both net present value and real options approaches. Balances technical and managerial coverage: This balance helps you understand how diverse companies have developed their IT architectures and environments. Explains the various applications of technology: Concrete examples illustrate major IT applications, such as ecommerce, ERP, CRM, decision and intelligent systems, and knowledge management.

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) and the Internet of Things are facing tremendous advances both in terms of energy-efficiency as well as in the number of available applications. Consequently, there are challenges that need to be tackled for the future generation of WSNs. After giving an overview of the WSN protocols and IEEE 802.15.4 standard, this book proposes IEEE 802.15.4 Medium Access Control (MAC) sub-layer performance enhancements by employing not only RTS/CTS combined with packet concatenation but also scheduled channel poling (MC-SCP). Results have shown that the use of the RTS/CTS mechanism improves channel efficiency by decreasing the deferral time before transmitting a data packet. Furthermore, the Sensor Block Acknowledgment MAC (SBACK-MAC) protocol enables more efficiency as it allows the aggregation of several acknowledgement responses in one special Block Acknowledgment (BACK) Response packet. The throughput and delay performance have been mathematically derived under both ideal conditions (a channel environment with no transmission errors) and non-ideal conditions (with transmission errors). Simulation results successfully validate the proposed analytical models. This research reveals the importance of an appropriate design for the MAC sub-layer protocol for the desired WSN application. Depending on the mission of the WSN application, different protocols are required. Therefore, the overall performance of a WSN application certainly depends on the development and application of suitable e.g., MAC, network layer protocols.

This book is a collection of contributions honouring Arnon Avron's seminal work on the semantics and proof theory of non-classical logics. It includes presentations of advanced work by some of the most esteemed scholars working on semantic and proof-theoretical aspects of computer science logic. Topics in this book include frameworks for paraconsistent reasoning, foundations of relevance logics, analysis and characterizations of modal logics and fuzzy logics, hypersequent calculi and their properties, non-deterministic semantics, algebraic structures for many-valued logics, and representations of the mechanization of mathematics. Avron's foundational and pioneering contributions have been widely acknowledged and adopted by the scientific community. His research interests are very broad, spanning over proof theory, automated reasoning, non-classical logics, foundations of mathematics, and applications of logic in computer science and artificial intelligence. This is clearly reflected by the diversity of topics discussed in the chapters included in this book, all of which directly relate to Avron's past and present works. This book is of interest to computer scientists and scholars of formal logic.

This book shows in a comprehensive presentation how Bond Graph methodology can support model-based control, model-based fault diagnosis, fault accommodation, and failure prognosis by reviewing the state-of-the-art, presenting a hybrid integrated approach to Bond Graph model-based fault diagnosis and failure prognosis, and by providing a review of software that can be used for these tasks. The structured text illustrates on numerous small examples how the computational structure superimposed on an acausal bond graph can be exploited to check for control properties such as structural observability and control lability, perform parameter estimation and fault detection and isolation, provide discrete values of an unknown degradation trend at sample points, and develop an inverse model for fault accommodation. The comprehensive presentation also covers failure prognosis based on continuous state estimation by means of filters or time series forecasting. This book has been written for students specializing in the overlap of engineering and computer science as well as for researchers, and for engineers in industry working with modelling, simulation, control, fault diagnosis, and failure prognosis in various application fields and who might be interested to see how bond graph modelling can support their work. Presents a hybrid model-based, data-driven approach to failure prognosis Highlights synergies and relations between fault diagnosis and failure prognostic Discusses the importance of fault diagnosis and failure prognostic in various fields

This book presents a complete and accurate study of arithmetic and algebraic circuits. The first part offers a review of all important basic concepts: it describes simple circuits for the implementation of some basic arithmetic operations; it introduces theoretical basis for residue number systems; and describes some fundamental circuits for implementing the main modular operations that will be used in the text. Moreover, the book discusses floating-point representation of real numbers and the IEEE 754 standard. The second and core part of the book offers a deep study of arithmetic circuits and specific algorithms for their implementation. It covers the CORDIC algorithm, and optimized arithmetic circuits recently developed by the authors for adders and subtractors, as well as multipliers, dividers and special functions. It describes the implementation of basic algebraic circuits, such as LFSRs and cellular automata. Finally, it offers a complete study of Galois fields, showing some exemplary applications and discussing the advantages in comparison to other methods. This dense, self-contained text provides students, researchers and engineers, with extensive knowledge on and a deep understanding of arithmetic and algebraic circuits and their implementation.

[FIRST EDITION] This accessible textbook presents an introduction to computer vision algorithms for industrially-relevant applications of X-ray testing. Features: introduces the mathematical background for monocular and multiple view geometry; describes the main techniques for image processing used in X-ray testing; presents a range of different representations for X-ray images, explaining how these enable new features to be extracted from the original image; examines a range of known X-ray image classifiers and classification strategies; discusses some basic concepts for the simulation of X-ray images and presents simple geometric and imaging models that can be used in the simulation; reviews a variety of applications for X-ray testing, from industrial inspection and baggage screening to the quality control of natural products; provides supporting material at an associated website, including a database of X-ray images and a Matlab toolbox for use with the book's many examples.

This book addresses the principles and applications of metaheuristic approaches in engineering and related fields. The first part covers metaheuristics tools and techniques such as ant colony optimization and Tabu search, and their applications to several classes of optimization problems. In turn, the book's second part focuses on a wide variety of metaheuristics applications in engineering and/or the applied sciences, e.g. in smart grids and renewable energy. In addition, the simulation codes for the problems discussed are included in an appendix for ready reference. Intended for researchers aspiring to learn and apply metaheuristic techniques, and gathering contributions by prominent experts in the field, the book offers readers an essential introduction to metaheuristics, its theoretical aspects and applications.

Databases are designed to support data storage, processing, and retrieval activities related to data management. The use of databases in various applications has resulted in an enormous wealth of data, which populates many types of databases around the world. Advanced Database Query Systems: Techniques, Applications and Technologies focuses on technologies and methodologies of database queries, XML and metadata queries, and applications of database query systems, aiming at providing a single account of technologies and practices in advanced database query systems. This book provides the state of the art information for academics, researchers and industry practitioners who are interested in the study, use, design and development of advanced and emerging database queries with ultimate aim of building competencies for exploiting the opportunities of the data and knowledge society.

This book analyzes new electricity pricing models that consider uncertainties in the power market due to the changing behavior of market players and the implementation of renewable distributed generation and responsive loads. In-depth chapters examine the different types of market players including the generation, transmission, and distribution companies, virtual power plants, demand response aggregators, and energy hubs and microgrids. Expert authors propose optimal operational models for short-term performance and scheduling and present readers with solutions for pricing challenges in uncertain environments. This book is useful for engineers, researchers and students involved in integrating demand response programs into smart grids and for electricity market operation and planning. Proposes optimal operation models; Discusses the various players in today's electricity markets; Describes the effects of demand response programs in smart grids.

This book highlights interdisciplinary insights, latest research results, and technological trends in Business Intelligence and Modelling in fields such as: Business Intelligence, Business Transformation, Knowledge Dissemination & Implementation, Modeling for Logistics, Business Informatics, Business Model Innovation, Simulation Modelling, E-Business, Enterprise & Conceptual Modelling, etc. The book is divided into eight sections, grouping emerging marketing technologies together in a close examination of practices, problems and trends. The chapters have been written by researchers and practitioners that demonstrate a special orientation in Strategic Marketing and Business Intelligence. This volume shares their recent contributions to the field and showcases their exchange of insights.

Covering aspects from principles and limitations of statistical significance tests to topic set size design and power analysis, this book guides readers to statistically well-designed experiments. Although classical statistical significance tests are to some extent useful in information retrieval (IR) evaluation, they can harm research unless they are used appropriately with the right sample sizes and statistical power and unless the test results are reported properly. The first half of the book is mainly targeted at undergraduate students, and the second half is suitable for graduate students and researchers who regularly conduct laboratory experiments in IR, natural language processing, recommendations, and related fields.Chapters 1-5 review parametric significance tests for comparing system means, namely, t-tests and ANOVAs, and show how easily they can be conducted using Microsoft Excel or R. These chapters also discuss a few multiple comparison procedures for researchers who are interested in comparing every system pair, including a randomised version of Tukey's Honestly Significant Difference test. The chapters then deal with known limitations of classical significance testing and provide practical guidelines for reporting research results regarding comparison of means. Chapters 6 and 7 discuss statistical power. Chapter 6 introduces topic set size design to enable test collection builders to determine an appropriate number of topics to create. Readers can easily use the author's Excel tools for topic set size design based on the paired and two-sample t-tests, one-way ANOVA, and confidence intervals. Chapter 7 describes power-analysis-based methods for determining an appropriate sample size for a new experiment based on a similar experiment done in the past, detailing how to utilize the author's R tools for power analysis and how to interpret the results. Case studies from IR for both Excel-based topic set size design and R-based power analysis are also provided.

Medical internet of things (IoT)-based applications are being utilized in several industries and have been shown to provide significant advantages to users in critical health applications. Artificial intelligence (AI) plays a key role in the growth and success of medical IoT applications and IoT devices in the medical sector. To enhance revenue, improve competitive advantage, and increase consumer engagement, the use of AI with medical IoT should be encouraged in the healthcare and medical arena. Revolutionizing Healthcare Through Artificial Intelligence and Internet of Things Applications provides greater knowledge of how AI affects healthcare and medical efficacy in order to improve outputs. It focuses on a thorough and comprehensive introduction to machine learning. Covering topics such as patient treatment, cyber-physical systems, and telemedicine, this premier reference source is a dynamic resource for hospital administrators, medical professionals, government officials, students and faculty of higher education, librarians, researchers, and academicians.

Pattern Recognition has a long history of applications to data analysis in business, military and social economic activities. While the aim of pattern recognition is to discover the pattern of a data set, the size of the data set is closely related to the methodology one adopts for analysis. Intelligent Data Analysis: Developing New Methodologies Through Pattern Discovery and Recovery tackles those data sets and covers a variety of issues in relation to intelligent data analysis so that patterns from frequent or rare events in spatial or temporal spaces can be revealed. This book brings together current research, results, problems, and applications from both theoretical and practical approaches.

This book introduces the linkage between evolutionary computation and complex networks and the advantages of cross-fertilising ideas from both fields. Instead of introducing each field individually, the authors focus on the research that sits at the interface of both fields. The book is structured to address two questions: (1) how complex networks are used to analyze and improve the performance of evolutionary computation methods? (2) how evolutionary computation methods are used to solve problems in complex networks? The authors interweave complex networks and evolutionary computing, using evolutionary computation to discover community structure, while also using network analysis techniques to analyze the performance of evolutionary algorithms. The book is suitable for both beginners and senior researchers in the fields of evolutionary computation and complex networks.

The future of music archiving and search engines lies in deep learning and big data. Music information retrieval algorithms automatically analyze musical features like timbre, melody, rhythm or musical form, and artificial intelligence then sorts and relates these features. At the first International Symposium on Computational Ethnomusicological Archiving held on November 9 to 11, 2017 at the Institute of Systematic Musicology in Hamburg, Germany, a new Computational Phonogram Archiving standard was discussed as an interdisciplinary approach. Ethnomusicologists, music and computer scientists, systematic musicologists as well as music archivists, composers and musicians presented tools, methods and platforms and shared fieldwork and archiving experiences in the fields of musical acoustics, informatics, music theory as well as on music storage, reproduction and metadata. The Computational Phonogram Archiving standard is also in high demand in the music market as a search engine for music consumers. This book offers a comprehensive overview of the field written by leading researchers around the globe.

This book provides exclusive insight into the development of a new generation of robotic underwater technologies. Deploying and using even the most simple and robust mechanical tools is presenting a challenge, and is often associated with an enormous amount of preparation, continuous monitoring, and maintenance. Therefore, all disciplinary aspects (e.g. system design, communication, machine learning, mapping and coordination, adaptive mission planning) are examined in detail and together this gives an extensive overview on research areas influencing next generation underwater robots. These robotic underwater systems will operate autonomously with the help of the most modern artificial intelligence procedures and perform environmental monitoring as well as inspection and maintenance of underwater structures. The systems are designed as modular and reconfigurable systems for long term autonomy to remain at the site for longer periods of time. New communication methods using AI enable missions of hybrid teams of humans and heterogeneous robots. Thus this volume will be an important reference for scientists on every qualification level in the field of underwater technologies, industrial maritime applications, and maritime science.

This book is a collection of high-quality research work on cutting-edge technologies and the most-happening areas of computational intelligence and data engineering. It includes selected papers from the International Conference on Computational Intelligence and Data Engineering (ICCIDE 2020). It covers various topics, including collective intelligence, intelligent transportation systems, fuzzy systems, Bayesian network, ant colony optimization, data privacy and security, data mining, data warehousing, big data analytics, cloud computing, natural language processing, swarm intelligence and speech processing.

Within a given enterprise, database management involves the monitoring, administration, and maintenance of the databases, which constantly change with new technologies and new forms of data. Cross-Disciplinary Models and Applications of Database Management: Advancing Approaches is an updated look at the latest tools and technology within the burgeoning field of database management. Perfect for the network administrator, technician, information technology specialist or consultant, or for academics and students, this volume presents the latest the field has to offer by way of cases and new research. As database languages, models, and systems change, it s vital for practitioners within the field to stay abreast of the latest research and methods being used around the world, and this book offers the most current advances available.

This volume traces back the history of interaction between the "computational" or "algorithmic" aspects of elementary mathematics and mathematics education throughout ages. More specifically, the examples of mathematical practices analyzed by the historians of mathematics and mathematics education who authored the chapters in the present collection show that the development (and, in some cases, decline) of counting devices and related computational practices needs to be considered within a particular context to which they arguably belonged, namely, the context of mathematics instruction; in their contributions the authors also explore the role that the instruments played in formation of didactical approaches in various mathematical traditions, stretching from Ancient Mesopotamia to the 20th century Europe and North America.

This book proposes some novel approaches for finding unmanned aerial vehicle trajectories to reach targets with unknown location in minimum time. At first, it reviews probabilistic search algorithms that have been used for dealing with the minimum time search (MTS) problem, and discusses how metaheuristics, and in particular the ant colony optimization algorithm (ACO), can help to find high-quality solutions with low computational time. Then, it describes two ACO-based approaches to solve the discrete MTS problem and the continuous MTS problem, respectively. In turn, it reports on the evaluation of the ACO-based discrete and continuous approaches to the MTS problem in different simulated scenarios, showing that the methods outperform in most all the cases over other state-of-the-art approaches. In the last part of the thesis, the work of integration of the proposed techniques in the ground control station developed by Airbus to control ATLANTE UAV is reported in detail, providing practical insights into the implementation of these methods for real UAVs.

The implementation of data and information analysis has become a trending solution within multiple professions. New tools and approaches are continually being developed within data analysis to further solve the challenges that come with professional strategy. Pattern recognition is an innovative method that provides comparison techniques and defines new characteristics within the information acquisition process. Despite its recent trend, a considerable amount of research regarding pattern recognition and its various strategies is lacking. Pattern Recognition Applications in Engineering is an essential reference source that discusses various strategies of pattern recognition algorithms within industrial and research applications and provides examples of results in different professional areas including electronics, computation, and health monitoring. Featuring research on topics such as condition monitoring, data normalization, and bio-inspired developments, this book is ideally designed for analysts; researchers; civil, mechanical, and electronic engineers; computing scientists; chemists; academicians; and students.

This book presents novel approaches to formulate, analyze, and solve problems in the area of distributed service networks, notably based on AI-related methods (parallel/cloud computing, declarative modeling, fuzzy methods). Distributed service networks are an important area of research and applications. The methods presented are meant to integrate both emerging and existing concepts and approaches for different types of production flows through synchronizations. An integration of logistics services (e.g., supply chains and projects portfolios), public and multimodal transport, traffic flow congestion management in ad hoc networks, design of high-performance cloud data centers, and milk-run distribution networks are shown as illustrations for the methods proposed. The book is of interest to researchers and practitioners in computer science, operations management, production control, and related fields.

This book covers advances in system, control and computing. This book gathers selected high-quality research papers presented at the International Conference on Advances in Systems, Control and Computing (AISCC 2020), held at MNIT Jaipur during February 27-28, 2020. The first part is advances in systems and it is dedicated to applications of the artificial neural networks, evolutionary computation, swarm intelligence, artificial immune systems, fuzzy system, autonomous and multi-agent systems, machine learning, other intelligent systems and related areas. In the second part, machine learning and other intelligent algorithms for design of control/control analysis are covered. The last part covers advancements, modifications, improvements and applications of intelligent algorithms.

The Complete "Tool Kit" for the Hottest Area in RF/Wireless Design!
Short-range wireless-communications over distances of less than 100 meters-is the most rapidly growing segment of RF/wireless engineering. Alan Bensky is an internationally recognized expert in short-range wireless, and this new edition of his bestselling book is completely revised to cover the latest developments in this fast moving field.
You'll find coverage of such cutting-edge topics as:
- architectural trends in RF/wireless integrated circuits
- compatibility and conflict issues between different short-range wireless systems
- "Zigbee" and related new IEEE standards for short-range communications
- latest U.S. and international regulatory standards for spread spectrum, ultra wideband, and other advanced communications techniques
Alan Bensky also thoroughly discusses the fundamentals of radio signal propagation, communications protocols and modulation methods, information theory, antennas and transmission lines, receivers, transmitters, radio system design, and how to successfully implement a short-range wireless system. All material has been carefully updated and revised to make it as technically up-to-the-minute as possible. The accompanying CD includes Mathcad worksheets to greatly simplify common design tasks and calculations.
You'll also find coverage of Bluetooth, "Wi-Fi" and related 802.11 variants, digital modulation methods, and other essential information for planning and designing short-range wireless hardware and networks.
This new edition will, like the first edition, be an invaluable reference for engineers and technical professionals who design, support, market, and maintain short-range wireless communications systems.
* No other book contains EVERYTHING pertaining to short-range wireless design.
* Covers all the hot topics like 802.11, Zigbee, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.
* Valuable CD-Rom included that will simplify the design process.