This solid volume discusses all the key topics in detail, including classification, orbit structure, representations, universal constructions, and abstract analogues. Open problems are discussed as they arise and many useful exercises are included.

In the last thirty years Computational Geometry has emerged as a new discipline from the field of design and analysis of algorithms. That dis cipline studies geometric problems from a computational point of view, and it has attracted enormous research interest. But that interest is mostly concerned with Euclidean Geometry (mainly the plane or Eu clidean 3-dimensional space). Of course, there are some important rea sons for this occurrence since the first applieations and the bases of all developments are in the plane or in 3-dimensional space. But, we can find also some exceptions, and so Voronoi diagrams on the sphere, cylin der, the cone, and the torus have been considered previously, and there are manY works on triangulations on the sphere and other surfaces. The exceptions mentioned in the last paragraph have appeared to try to answer some quest ions which arise in the growing list of areas in which the results of Computational Geometry are applicable, since, in practiee, many situations in those areas lead to problems of Com putational Geometry on surfaces (probably the sphere and the cylinder are the most common examples). We can mention here some specific areas in which these situations happen as engineering, computer aided design, manufacturing, geographie information systems, operations re search, roboties, computer graphics, solid modeling, etc."

An in-depth look at soft computing methods and their applications in the human sciences, such as the social and the behavioral sciences. Soft computing methods - including fuzzy systems, neural networks, evolutionary computing and probabilistic reasoning - are state-of-the-art methods in theory formation and model construction. The powerful application areas of these methods in the human sciences are demonstrated, including the replacement of statistical models by simpler numerical or linguistic soft computing models and the use of computer simulations with approximate and linguistic constituents.

"Dr. Niskanen's work opens new vistas in application of soft computing, fuzzy logic and fuzzy set theory to the human sciences. This book is likely to be viewed in retrospect as a landmark in its field"
(Lotfi A. Zadeh, Berkeley)

Here is an accessible, algorithmically oriented guide to some of the most interesting techniques of complexity theory. The book shows that simple algorithms are at the heart of complexity theory. The book is organized by technique rather than by topic. Each chapter focuses on one technique: what it is, and what results and applications it yields.

Some mathematical disciplines can be presented and developed in the context of other disciplines, for instance Boolean algebras, that Stone has converted in a branch of ring theory, projective geome- tries, characterized by Birkhoff as lattices of a special type, projec- tive, descriptive and spherical geometries, represented by Prenowitz, as multigroups, linear geometries and convex sets presented by Jan- tosciak and Prenowitz as join spaces. As Prenowitz and Jantosciak did for geometries, in this book we present and study several ma- thematical disciplines that use the Hyperstructure Theory. Since the beginning, the Hyperstructure Theory and particu- larly the Hypergroup Theory, had applications to several domains. Marty, who introduced hypergroups in 1934, applied them to groups, algebraic functions and rational fractions. New applications to groups were also found among others by Eaton, Ore, Krasner, Utumi, Drbohlav, Harrison, Roth, Mockor, Sureau and Haddad. Connections with other subjects of classical pure Mathematics have been determined and studied: * Fields by Krasner, Stratigopoulos and Massouros Ch. * Lattices by Mittas, Comer, Konstantinidou, Serafimidis, Leoreanu and Calugareanu * Rings by Nakano, Kemprasit, Yuwaree * Quasigroups and Groupoids by Koskas, Corsini, Kepka, Drbohlav, Nemec * Semigroups by Kepka, Drbohlav, Nemec, Yuwaree, Kempra- sit, Punkla, Leoreanu * Ordered Structures by Prenowitz, Corsini, Chvalina IX x * Combinatorics by Comer, Tallini, Migliorato, De Salvo, Scafati, Gionfriddo, Scorzoni * Vector Spaces by Mittas * Topology by Mittas , Konstantinidou * Ternary Algebras by Bandelt and Hedlikova.

This informative and exhaustive study gives a problem-solving approach to the difficult subject of analytic number theory. It is primarily aimed at graduate students and senior undergraduates. The goal is to provide a rapid introduction to analytic methods and the ways in which they are used to study the distribution of prime numbers. The book also includes an introduction to p-adic analytic methods. It is ideal for a first course in analytic number theory. The new edition has been completely rewritten, errors have been corrected, and there is a new chapter on the arithmetic progression of primes.

The application of geometric algebra to the engineering sciences is a young, active subject of research. The promise of this field is that the mathematical structure of geometric algebra together with its descriptive power will result in intuitive and more robust algorithms.

This book examines all aspects essential for a successful application of geometric algebra: the theoretical foundations, the representation of geometric constraints, and the numerical estimation from uncertain data. Formally, the book consists of two parts: theoretical foundations and applications. The first part includes chapters on random variables in geometric algebra, linear estimation methods that incorporate the uncertainty of algebraic elements, and the representation of geometry in Euclidean, projective, conformal and conic space. The second part is dedicated to applications of geometric algebra, which include uncertain geometry and transformations, a generalized camera model, and pose estimation.

Graduate students, scientists, researchers and practitioners will benefit from this book. The examples given in the text are mostly recent research results, so practitioners can see how to apply geometric algebra to real tasks, while researchers note starting points for future investigations. Students will profit from the detailed introduction to geometric algebra, while the text is supported by the author's visualization software, CLUCalc, freely available online, and a website that includes downloadable exercises, slides and tutorials.

The need for a comprehensive survey-type exposition on formal languages and related mainstream areas of computer science has been evident for some years. In the early 1970s, when the book Formal Languages by the second mentioned editor appeared, it was still quite feasible to write a comprehensive book with that title and include also topics of current research interest. This would not be possible anymore. A standard-sized book on formal languages would either have to stay on a fairly low level or else be specialized and restricted to some narrow sector of the field. The setup becomes drastically different in a collection of contributions, where the best authorities in the world join forces, each of them concentrat ing on their own areas of specialization. The present three-volume Handbook constitutes such a unique collection. In these three volumes we present the current state of the art in formallanguage theory. We were most satisfied with the enthusiastic response given to our request for contributions by specialists representing various subfields. The need for a Handbook of Formal Languages was in many answers expressed in different ways: as an easily accessible his torical reference, a general source of information, an overall course-aid, and a compact collection of material for self-study. We are convinced that the final result will satisfy such various needs."

The primary goal of this book is unifying and making more widely accessible the vibrant stream of research - spanning more than two decades - on the theory of semi-feasible algorithms. In doing so it demonstrates the richness inherent in central notions of complexity: running time, nonuniform complexity, lowness, and NP-hardness. The book requires neither great mathematical maturity nor an extensive background in computational complexity theory or in computer science. Another aim of this book is to lay out a path along which the reader can quickly reach the frontiers of current research, and meet and engage the many exciting open problems in this area.

It is not an exaggeration to view Professor Lee's book," Software Engineer ing with Computational Intelligence," or SECI for short, as a pioneering contribution to software engineering. Breaking with the tradition of treat ing uncertainty, imprecision, fuzziness and vagueness as issues of peripheral importance, SECI moves them much closer to the center of the stage. It is ob vious, though still not widely accepted, that this is where these issues should be, since the real world is much too complex and much too ill-defined to lend itself to categorical analysis in the Cartesian spirit. As its title suggests, SECI employs the machineries of computational intel ligence (CI) and, more or less equivalently, soft computing (SC), to deal with the foundations and principal issues in software engineering. Basically, CI and SC are consortia of methodologies which collectively provide a body of con cepts and techniques for conception, design, construction and utilization of intelligent systems. The principal constituents of CI and SC are fuzzy logic, neurocomputing, evolutionary computing, probabilistic computing, chaotic computing and machine learning. The leitmotif of CI and SC is that, in general, better performance can be achieved by employing the constituent methodologies of CI and SC in combination rat her than in a stand-alone mode. In what follows, I will take the liberty of focusing my attention on fuzzy logic and fuzzy set theory, and on their roles in software engineering. But first, a couple of points of semantics which are in need of clarification."

Random Generation of Trees is about a field on the crossroads between computer science, combinatorics and probability theory. Computer scientists need random generators for performance analysis, simulation, image synthesis, etc. In this context random generation of trees is of particular interest. The algorithms presented here are efficient and easy to code. Some aspects of Horton--Strahler numbers, programs written in C and pictures are presented in the appendices. The complexity analysis is done rigorously both in the worst and average cases. Random Generation of Trees is intended for students in computer science and applied mathematics as well as researchers interested in random generation.

These notes were first used in an introductory course team taught by the authors at Appalachian State University to advanced undergraduates and beginning graduates. The text was written with four pedagogical goals in mind: offer a variety of topics in one course, get to the main themes and tools as efficiently as possible, show the relationships between the different topics, and include recent results to convince students that mathematics is a living discipline.

This book deals with the theory and applications of the Reformulation- Linearization/Convexification Technique (RL T) for solving nonconvex optimization problems. A unified treatment of discrete and continuous nonconvex programming problems is presented using this approach. In essence, the bridge between these two types of nonconvexities is made via a polynomial representation of discrete constraints. For example, the binariness on a 0-1 variable x . can be equivalently J expressed as the polynomial constraint x . (1-x . ) = 0. The motivation for this book is J J the role of tight linear/convex programming representations or relaxations in solving such discrete and continuous nonconvex programming problems. The principal thrust is to commence with a model that affords a useful representation and structure, and then to further strengthen this representation through automatic reformulation and constraint generation techniques. As mentioned above, the focal point of this book is the development and application of RL T for use as an automatic reformulation procedure, and also, to generate strong valid inequalities. The RLT operates in two phases. In the Reformulation Phase, certain types of additional implied polynomial constraints, that include the aforementioned constraints in the case of binary variables, are appended to the problem. The resulting problem is subsequently linearized, except that certain convex constraints are sometimes retained in XV particular special cases, in the Linearization/Convexijication Phase. This is done via the definition of suitable new variables to replace each distinct variable-product term. The higher dimensional representation yields a linear (or convex) programming relaxation.

This book collects survey papers in the fields of entropy, search and complexity, summarizing the latest developments in their respective areas. More than half of the papers belong to search theory which lies on the borderline of mathematics and computer science, information theory and combinatorics, respectively. The book will be useful to experienced researchers as well as young scientists and students both in mathematics and computer science.

Multiresolution methods in geometric modelling are concerned with the generation, representation, and manipulation of geometric objects at several levels of detail. Applications include fast visualization and rendering as well as coding, compression, and digital transmission of 3D geometric objects.

This book marks the culmination of the four-year EU-funded research project, Multiresolution in Geometric Modelling (MINGLE). The book contains seven survey papers, providing a detailed overview of recent advances in the various fields within multiresolution modelling, and sixteen additional research papers. Each of the seven parts of the book starts with a survey paper, followed by the associated research papers in that area. All papers were originally presented at the MINGLE 2003 workshop held at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, UK, 9-11 September 2003.

The aim of this monograph is to give a self-contained introduction to the modern theory of finite transformation semigroups with a strong emphasis on concrete examples and combinatorial applications. It covers the following topics on the examples of the three classical finite transformation semigroups: transformations and semigroups, ideals and Green's relations, subsemigroups, congruences, endomorphisms, nilpotent subsemigroups, presentations, actions on sets, linear representations, cross-sections and variants. The book contains many exercises and historical comments and is directed first of all to both graduate and postgraduate students looking for an introduction to the theory of transformation semigroups, but also to tutors and researchers.

This book deals with combinatorial aspects of epistasis, a notion that existed for years in genetics and appeared in the ?eld of evolutionary algorithms in the early 1990s. Even thoughthe?rst chapterputsepistasisintheperspective ofevolutionary algorithms and arti?cial intelligence, and applications occasionally pop up in other chapters, thisbookisessentiallyaboutmathematics, aboutcombinatorialtechniques to compute in an e?cient and mathematically elegant way what will be de?ned as normalized epistasis. Some of the material in this book ?nds its origin in the PhD theses of Hugo Van Hove [97] and Dominique Suys [95]. The sixth chapter also contains material that appeared in the dissertation of Luk Schoofs [84]. Together with that of M. Teresa Iglesias [36], these dissertations form the backbone of a decade of mathematical ventures in the world of epistasis. The authors wish to acknowledge support from the Flemish Fund of Scienti?c - search (FWO-Vlaanderen) and of the Xunta de Galicia. They also wish to explicitly mentiontheintellectualandmoralsupporttheyreceivedthroughoutthepreparation of this work from their family and their colleagues Emilio Villanueva, Jose Mar'a Barja and Arnold Beckelheimer, as well as our local T T Xpert Jan Adriaenssens.

This book covers combinatorial data structures and algorithms, algebraic issues in geometric computing, approximation of curves and surfaces, and computational topology. Each chapter fully details and provides a tutorial introduction to important concepts and results. The focus is on methods which are both well founded mathematically and efficient in practice. Coverage includes references to open source software and discussion of potential applications of the presented techniques.

Projective duality is a very classical notion naturally arising in various areas of mathematics, such as algebraic and differential geometry, combinatorics, topology, analytical mechanics, and invariant theory, and the results in this field were until now scattered across the literature. Thus the appearance of a book specifically devoted to projective duality is a long-awaited and welcome event.

Projective Duality and Homogeneous Spaces covers a vast and diverse range of topics in the field of dual varieties, ranging from differential geometry to Mori theory and from topology to the theory of algebras. It gives a very readable and thorough account and the presentation of the material is clear and convincing. For the most part of the book the only prerequisites are basic algebra and algebraic geometry.

This book will be of great interest to graduate and postgraduate students as well as professional mathematicians working in algebra, geometry and analysis.

In the course of fuzzy technological development, fuzzy graph theory was identified quite early on for its importance in making things work. Two very important and useful concepts are those of granularity and of nonlinear ap proximations. The concept of granularity has evolved as a cornerstone of Lotfi A.Zadeh's theory of perception, while the concept of nonlinear approx imation is the driving force behind the success of the consumer electronics products manufacturing. It is fair to say fuzzy graph theory paved the way for engineers to build many rule-based expert systems. In the open literature, there are many papers written on the subject of fuzzy graph theory. However, there are relatively books available on the very same topic. Professors' Mordeson and Nair have made a real contribution in putting together a very com prehensive book on fuzzy graphs and fuzzy hypergraphs. In particular, the discussion on hypergraphs certainly is an innovative idea. For an experienced engineer who has spent a great deal of time in the lab oratory, it is usually a good idea to revisit the theory. Professors Mordeson and Nair have created such a volume which enables engineers and design ers to benefit from referencing in one place. In addition, this volume is a testament to the numerous contributions Professor John N. Mordeson and his associates have made to the mathematical studies in so many different topics of fuzzy mathematics."

Trees are a fundamental object in graph theory and combinatorics as well as a basic object for data structures and algorithms in computer science. During thelastyearsresearchrelatedto(random)treeshasbeenconstantlyincreasing and several asymptotic and probabilistic techniques have been developed in order to describe characteristics of interest of large trees in di?erent settings. Thepurposeofthisbookistoprovideathoroughintroductionintovarious aspects of trees in randomsettings anda systematic treatment ofthe involved mathematicaltechniques. It shouldserveasa referencebookaswellasa basis for future research. One major conceptual aspect is to connect combinatorial and probabilistic methods that range from counting techniques (generating functions, bijections) over asymptotic methods (singularity analysis, saddle point techniques) to various sophisticated techniques in asymptotic probab- ity (convergence of stochastic processes, martingales). However, the reading of the book requires just basic knowledge in combinatorics, complex analysis, functional analysis and probability theory of master degree level. It is also part of concept of the book to provide full proofs of the major results even if they are technically involved and lengthy.

Additive combinatorics is the theory of counting additive structures in sets. This theory has seen exciting developments and dramatic changes in direction in recent years thanks to its connections with areas such as number theory, ergodic theory and graph theory. This graduate-level 2006 text will allow students and researchers easy entry into this fascinating field. Here, the authors bring together in a self-contained and systematic manner the many different tools and ideas that are used in the modern theory, presenting them in an accessible, coherent, and intuitively clear manner, and providing immediate applications to problems in additive combinatorics. The power of these tools is well demonstrated in the presentation of recent advances such as Szemeredi's theorem on arithmetic progressions, the Kakeya conjecture and Erdos distance problems, and the developing field of sum-product estimates. The text is supplemented by a large number of exercises and new results.

Free Probability Theory studies a special class of 'noncommutative'random variables, which appear in the context of operators on Hilbert spaces and in one of the large random matrices. Since its emergence in the 1980s, free probability has evolved into an established field of mathematics with strong connections to other mathematical areas, such as operator algebras, classical probability theory, random matrices, combinatorics, representation theory of symmetric groups. Free probability also connects to more applied scientific fields, such as wireless communication in electrical engineering. This 2006 book gives a self-contained and comprehensive introduction to free probability theory which has its main focus on the combinatorial aspects. The volume is designed so that it can be used as a text for an introductory course (on an advanced undergraduate or beginning graduate level), and is also well-suited for the individual study of free probability.

This book provides an introduction to discrete mathematics. At the end of the book the reader should be able to answer counting questions such as: How many ways are there to stack n poker chips, each of which can be red, white, blue, or green, such that each red chip is adjacent to at least 1 green chip? The book can be used as a textbook for a semester course at the sophomore level. The first five chapters can also serve as a basis for a graduate course for in-service teachers.

Lectures: T.H. Brylawski: The Tutte polynomial.- D.J.A. Welsh: Matroids and combinatorial optimisation.- Seminars: M. Barnabei, A. Brini, G.-C. Rota: Un introduzione alla teoria delle funzioni di M bius.- A. Brini: Some remarks on the critical problem.- J. Oxley: On 3-connected matroids and graphs.- R. Peele: The poset of subpartitions and Cayley 's formula for the complexity of a complete graph.- A. Recski: Engineering applications of matroids.- T. Zaslavisky: Voltage-graphic matroids.