This book presents new optimization approaches and methods and their application in real-world and industrial problems, and demonstrates how many of the problems arising in engineering, economics and other domains can be formulated as optimization problems. Constituting a comprehensive collection of extended contributions from the 9th International Workshop on Computational Optimization (WCO) held in Gdansk, Poland, September 11-14, 2016, the book discusses important applications such as job scheduling, wildfire modeling, parameter settings for controlling different processes, capital budgeting, data mining, finding the location of sensors in a given network, identifying the conformation of molecules, algorithm correctness, decision support system, and computer memory management. Further, it shows how to develop algorithms for these based on new intelligent methods like evolutionary computations, ant colony optimization and constraint programming. The book is a valuable resource for researchers and practitioners alike.

The volume, complexity, and irregularity of computational data in modern algorithms and simulations necessitates an unorthodox approach to computing. Understanding the facets and possibilities of soft computing algorithms is necessary for the accurate and timely processing of complex data. Research Advances in the Integration of Big Data and Smart Computing builds on the available literature in the realm of Big Data while providing further research opportunities in this dynamic field. This publication provides the resources necessary for technology developers, scientists, and policymakers to adopt and implement new paradigms in computational methods across the globe. The chapters in this publication advance the body of knowledge on soft computing techniques through topics such as transmission control protocol for mobile ad hoc networks, feature extraction, comparative analysis of filtering techniques, big data in economic policy, and advanced dimensionality reduction methods.

This research volume presents a sample of recent contributions related to the issue of quality-assessment for Web Based information in the context of information access, retrieval, and filtering systems.

The advent of the Web and the uncontrolled process of documents' generation have raised the problem of declining quality assessment to information on the Web, by considering both the nature of documents (texts, images, video, sounds, and so on), the genre of documents ( news, geographic information, ontologies, medical records, products records, and so on), the reputation of information sources and sites, and, last but not least the actions performed on documents (content indexing, retrieval and ranking, collaborative filtering, and so on).

The volume constitutes a compendium of both heterogeneous approaches and sample applications focusing specific aspects of the quality assessment for Web-based information for researchers, PhD students and practitioners carrying out their research activity in the field of Web information retrieval and filtering, Web information mining, information quality representation and management.

This volume introduces new approaches in intelligent control area from both the viewpoints of theory and application. It consists of eleven contributions by prominent authors from all over the world and an introductory chapter. This volume is strongly connected to another volume entitled "New Approaches in Intelligent Image Analysis" (Eds. Roumen Kountchev and Kazumi Nakamatsu). The chapters of this volume are self-contained and include summary, conclusion and future works. Some of the chapters introduce specific case studies of various intelligent control systems and others focus on intelligent theory based control techniques with applications. A remarkable specificity of this volume is that three chapters are dealing with intelligent control based on paraconsistent logics.

This book presents modeling methods and algorithms for data-driven prediction and forecasting of practical industrial process by employing machine learning and statistics methodologies. Related case studies, especially on energy systems in the steel industry are also addressed and analyzed. The case studies in this volume are entirely rooted in both classical data-driven prediction problems and industrial practice requirements. Detailed figures and tables demonstrate the effectiveness and generalization of the methods addressed, and the classifications of the addressed prediction problems come from practical industrial demands, rather than from academic categories. As such, readers will learn the corresponding approaches for resolving their industrial technical problems. Although the contents of this book and its case studies come from the steel industry, these techniques can be also used for other process industries. This book appeals to students, researchers, and professionals within the machine learning and data analysis and mining communities.

The success of a BCI system depends as much on the system itself as on the user's ability to produce distinctive EEG activity. BCI systems can be divided into two groups according to the placement of the electrodes used to detect and measure neurons firing in the brain. These groups are: invasive systems, electrodes are inserted directly into the cortex are used for single cell or multi unit recording, and electrocorticography (EcoG), electrodes are placed on the surface of the cortex (or dura); noninvasive systems, they are placed on the scalp and use electroencephalography (EEG) or magnetoencephalography (MEG) to detect neuron activity. The book is basically divided into three parts. The first part of the book covers the basic concepts and overviews of Brain Computer Interface. The second part describes new theoretical developments of BCI systems. The third part covers views on real applications of BCI systems.

This book gathers contributions on fuzzy neural control, intelligent and non-linear control, dynamic systems and cyber-physical systems. It presents the latest theoretical and practical results, including numerous applications of computational intelligence in various disciplines such as engineering, medicine, technology and the environment. The book is dedicated to Imre J. Rudas on his seventieth birthday.

Computational and mathematical models provide us with the opportunities to investigate the complexities of real world problems. They allow us to apply our best analytical methods to define problems in a clearly mathematical manner and exhaustively test our solutions before committing expensive resources. This is made possible by assuming parameter(s) in a bounded environment, allowing for controllable experimentation, not always possible in live scenarios. For example, simulation of computational models allows the testing of theories in a manner that is both fundamentally deductive and experimental in nature. The main ingredients for such research ideas come from multiple disciplines and the importance of interdisciplinary research is well recognized by the scientific community. This book provides a window to the novel endeavours of the research communities to present their works by highlighting the value of computational modelling as a research tool when investigating complex systems. We hope that the readers will have stimulating experiences to pursue research in these directions.

Decision trees and decision rule systems are widely used in different applications as algorithms for problem solving, as predictors, and as a way for knowledge representation. Reducts play key role in the problem of attribute (feature) selection. The aims of this book are (i) the consideration of the sets of decision trees, rules and reducts; (ii) study of relationships among these objects; (iii) design of algorithms for construction of trees, rules and reducts; and (iv) obtaining bounds on their complexity. Applications for supervised machine learning, discrete optimization, analysis of acyclic programs, fault diagnosis, and pattern recognition are considered also. This is a mixture of research monograph and lecture notes. It contains many unpublished results. However, proofs are carefully selected to be understandable for students. The results considered in this book can be useful for researchers in machine learning, data mining and knowledge discovery, especially for those who are working in rough set theory, test theory and logical analysis of data. The book can be used in the creation of courses for graduate students.

The recommendation of products, content and services cannot be considered newly born, although its widespread application is still in full swing. While its growing success in numerous sectors, the progress of the Social Web has revolutionized the architecture of participation and relationship in the Web, making it necessary to restate recommendation and reconciling it with "Collaborative Tagging," as the popularization of authoring in the Web, and "Social Networking," as the translation of personal relationships to the Web. Precisely, the convergence of recommendation with the above "Social Web" pillars is what motivates this book, which has collected contributions from well-known experts in the academy and the industry to provide a broader view of the problems that "Social Recommenders" might face with. If recommender systems have proven their key role in facilitating the user access to resources on the Web, when sharing resources has become social, it is natural for recommendation strategies in the Social Web era take into account the users' point of view and the relationships among users to calculate their predictions. This book aims to help readers to discover and understand the interplay among legal issues such as privacy; technical aspects such as interoperability and scalability; and social aspects such as the influence of affinity, trust, reputation and likeness, when the goal is to offer recommendations that are truly useful to both the user and the provider."

This is a textbook for courses commonly called neural networks in departments of computer and information science. This unique neural network book will describe novel architectures and learning mechanisms of model-based neural networks that utilize and intriguing concept of an internal "world" model. This concept combines a prior knowledge of models with adaptive learning and addresses the most perplexing problems in the fields of neural networks: fast learning and robust generalization. The author provides an overview of neural networks and artificial intelligence fields, relating hundreds of seemingly disparate techniques to several basic mathematical concepts. He then analyzes fundamental computational concepts of major neural network paradigms, and relates them to concepts of mind in philosophy, pschology, and linguistics. Relationships of these mathematical concepts to the concepts of philosophy will help students and researchers determine the directions of future research. This book can also be used as a supplementary text in a graduate course on Neural Networks.

This book is dedicated to the memory of Professor Zdzis{\l}aw Pawlak who passed away almost six year ago. He is the founder of the Polish school of Artificial Intelligence and one of the pioneers in Computer Engineering and Computer Science with worldwide influence. He was a truly great scientist, researcher, teacher and a human being. This book prepared in two volumes contains more than 50 chapters. This demonstrates that the scientific approaches discovered by of Professor Zdzis{\l}aw Pawlak, especially the rough set approach as a tool for dealing with imperfect knowledge, are vivid and intensively explored by many researchers in many places throughout the world. The submitted papers prove that interest in rough set research is growing and is possible to see many new excellent results both on theoretical foundations and applications of rough sets alone or in combination with other approaches. We are proud to offer the readers this book.

This monograph deals with various visibility-based path and motion planning problems motivated by real-world applications such as exploration and mapping planetary surfaces, environmental surveillance using stationary or mobile robots, and imaging of global air/pollutant circulation. The formulation and solution of these problems call for concepts and methods from many areas of applied mathematics including computational geometry, set-covering, non-smooth optimization, combinatorial optimization and optimal control. Emphasis is placed on the formulation of new problems and methods of approach to these problems. Since geometry and visualization play important roles in the understanding of these problems, intuitive interpretations of the basic concepts are presented before detailed mathematical development. The development of a particular topic begins with simple cases illustrated by specific examples, and then progresses forward to more complex cases. The intended readers of this monograph are primarily students and researchers in engineering, computer science and applied mathematics. An understanding of the mathematical development of the main results requires only basic knowledge of mathematical analysis, control, and optimization theories. Some exercises with various degrees of difficulty are provided at the end of the main chapters. The material presented here may serve as a portion of an introductory course or seminar on visibility-based optimal path and motion planning problems with the objective of stimulating interest and further studies in this relatively new area.

This edited book presents the scientific outcomes of the 17th International Conference on Software Engineering, Artificial Intelligence Research, Management and Applications (SERA 2019) held on May 29-31, 2019 in Honolulu, Hawaii. The aim of the conference was to bring together researchers and scientists, businessmen and entrepreneurs, teachers, engineers, computer users and students to discuss the numerous fields of computer science and to share their experiences and exchange new ideas and information in a meaningful way. This book includes 13 of the conference's most promising papers featuring recent research in software engineering, management and applications

The amount of data used in the business world has been growing at a rapid and exponential rate. These large volumes of data have led not only to the rise of big data analytics, but to the need for improvements and advancements in the management of it. Recent Advances in Intelligent Technologies and Information Systems brings together current practices and innovations in the management and processing of diverse big data sets through technological integration. Focusing on concepts such as semantic technologies, open source tools, and soft computing, this book is an integral reference source for professionals, researchers, and practitioners interested in the application of technological advancements.

This book develops a coherent and quite general theoretical approach to algorithm design for iterative learning control based on the use of operator representations and quadratic optimization concepts including the related ideas of inverse model control and gradient-based design. Using detailed examples taken from linear, discrete and continuous-time systems, the author gives the reader access to theories based on either signal or parameter optimization. Although the two approaches are shown to be related in a formal mathematical sense, the text presents them separately as their relevant algorithm design issues are distinct and give rise to different performance capabilities. Together with algorithm design, the text demonstrates the underlying robustness of the paradigm and also includes new control laws that are capable of incorporating input and output constraints, enable the algorithm to reconfigure systematically in order to meet the requirements of different reference and auxiliary signals and also to support new properties such as spectral annihilation. Iterative Learning Control will interest academics and graduate students working in control who will find it a useful reference to the current status of a powerful and increasingly popular method of control. The depth of background theory and links to practical systems will be of use to engineers responsible for precision repetitive processes.

Autonomic computing and networking (ACN), a concept inspired by the human autonomic system, is a priority research area and a booming new paradigm in the field. Formal and Practical Aspects of Autonomic Computing and Networking: Specification, Development, and Verification outlines the characteristics, novel approaches of specification, refinement, programming and verification associated with ACN. The goal of ACN and the topics covered in this work include making networks and computers more self-organized, self- configured, self-healing, self-optimizing, self-protecting, and more. This book helpfully details the steps necessary towards realizing computer and network autonomy and its implications.

In the mid 1990s, Tim Berners-Lee had the idea of developing the World Wide Web into a "Semantic Web", a web of information that could be interpreted by machines in order to allow the automatic exploitation of data, which until then had to be done by humans manually. One of the first people to research topics related to the Semantic Web was Professor Rudi Studer. From the beginning, Rudi drove projects like ONTOBROKER and On-to-Knowledge, which later resulted in W3C standards such as RDF and OWL. By the late 1990s, Rudi had established a research group at the University of Karlsruhe, which later became the nucleus and breeding ground for Semantic Web research, and many of today's well-known research groups were either founded by his disciples or benefited from close cooperation with this think tank. In this book, published in celebration of Rudi's 60th birthday, many of his colleagues look back on the main research results achieved during the last 20 years. Under the editorship of Dieter Fensel, once one of Rudi's early PhD students, an impressive list of contributors and contributions has been collected, covering areas like Knowledge Management, Ontology Engineering, Service Management, and Semantic Search. Overall, this book provides an excellent overview of the state of the art in Semantic Web research, by combining historical roots with the latest results, which may finally make the dream of a "Web of knowledge, software and services" come true.

Recent advancements in the field of telecommunications, medical imaging and signal processing deal with signals that are inherently time varying, nonlinear and complex-valued. The time varying, nonlinear characteristics of these signals can be effectively analyzed using artificial neural networks. Furthermore, to efficiently preserve the physical characteristics of these complex-valued signals, it is important to develop complex-valued neural networks and derive their learning algorithms to represent these signals at every step of the learning process. This monograph comprises a collection of new supervised learning algorithms along with novel architectures for complex-valued neural networks. The concepts of meta-cognition equipped with a self-regulated learning have been known to be the best human learning strategy. In this monograph, the principles of meta-cognition have been introduced for complex-valued neural networks in both the batch and sequential learning modes. For applications where the computation time of the training process is critical, a fast learning complex-valued neural network called as a fully complex-valued relaxation network along with its learning algorithm has been presented. The presence of orthogonal decision boundaries helps complex-valued neural networks to outperform real-valued networks in performing classification tasks. This aspect has been highlighted. The performances of various complex-valued neural networks are evaluated on a set of benchmark and real-world function approximation and real-valued classification problems.

This book describes five qualitative investment decision-making methods based on the hesitant fuzzy information. They are: (1) the investment decision-making method based on the asymmetric hesitant fuzzy sigmoid preference relations, (2) the investment decision-making method based on the hesitant fuzzy trade-off and portfolio selection, (3) the investment decision-making method based on the hesitant fuzzy preference envelopment analysis, (4) the investment decision-making method based on the hesitant fuzzy peer-evaluation and strategy fusion, and (5) the investment decision-making method based on the EHVaR measurement and tail analysis.

This volume contains a contemporary, integrated description of the processes of language. These range from fast scales (fractions of a second) to slow ones (over a million years). The contributors, all experts in their fields, address language in the brain, production of sentences and dialogues, language learning, transmission and evolutionary processes that happen over centuries or millenia, the relation between language and genes, the origins of language, self-organization, and language competition and death. The book as a whole will help to show how processes at different scales affect each other, thus presenting language as a dynamic, complex and profoundly human phenomenon.

Machine learning is concerned with the analysis of large data and multiple variables. However, it is also often more sensitive than traditional statistical methods to analyze small data. The first volume reviewed subjects like optimal scaling, neural networks, factor analysis, partial least squares, discriminant analysis, canonical analysis, and fuzzy modeling. This second volume includes various clustering models, support vector machines, Bayesian networks, discrete wavelet analysis, genetic programming, association rule learning, anomaly detection, correspondence analysis, and other subjects. Both the theoretical bases and the step by step analyses are described for the benefit of non-mathematical readers. Each chapter can be studied without the need to consult other chapters. Traditional statistical tests are, sometimes, priors to machine learning methods, and they are also, sometimes, used as contrast tests. To those wishing to obtain more knowledge of them, we recommend to additionally study (1) Statistics Applied to Clinical Studies 5th Edition 2012, (2) SPSS for Starters Part One and Two 2012, and (3) Statistical Analysis of Clinical Data on a Pocket Calculator Part One and Two 2012, written by the same authors, and edited by Springer, New York.

Context-aware ranking is an important task with many applications. E.g. in recommender systems items (products, movies, ...) and for search engines webpages should be ranked. In all these applications, the ranking is not global (i.e. always the same) but depends on the context. Simple examples for context are the user for recommender systems and the query for search engines. More complicated context includes time, last actions, etc. The major problem is that typically the variable domains (e.g. customers, products) are categorical and huge, the observations are very sparse and only positive events are observed. In this book, a generic method for context-aware ranking as well as its application are presented. For modelling a new factorization based on pairwise interactions is proposed and compared to other tensor factorization approaches. For learning, the `Bayesian Context-aware Ranking' framework consisting of an optimization criterion and algorithm is developed. The second main part of the book applies this general theory to the three scenarios of item, tag and sequential-set recommendation. Furthermore extensions of time-variant factors and one-class problems are studied. This book generalizes and builds on work that has received the `WWW 2010 Best Paper Award', the `WSDM 2010 Best Student Paper Award' and the `ECML/PKDD 2009 Best Discovery Challenge Award'.

In Artificial Intelligence in Finance and Investing, authors Robert Trippi and Jae Lee explain this fascinating new technology in terms that portfolio managers, institutional investors, investment analysis, and information systems professionals can understand. Using real-life examples and a practical approach, this rare and readable volume discusses the entire field of artificial intelligence of relevance to investing, so that readers can realize the benefits and evaluate the features of existing or proposed systems, and ultimately construct their own systems. Topics include using Expert Systems for Asset Allocation, Timing Decisions, Pattern Recognition, and Risk Assessment; overview of Popular Knowledge-Based Systems; construction of Synergistic Rule Bases for Securities Selection; incorporating the Markowitz Portfolio Optimization Model into Knowledge-Based Systems; Bayesian Theory and Fuzzy Logic System Components; Machine Learning in Portfolio Selection and Investment Timing, including Pattern-Based Learning and Fenetic Algorithms; and Neural Network-Based Systems. To illustrate the concepts presented in the book, the authors conclude with a valuable practice session and analysis of a typical knowledge-based system for investment management, K-FOLIO. For those who want to stay on the cutting edge of the "application" revolution, Artificial Intelligence in Finance and Investing offers a pragmatic introduction to the use of knowledge-based systems in securities selection and portfolio management.