This volume on financial and economic simulations in Swarm marks the continued progress by a group of researchers to incorporate agent-based computer models as an important tool within their discipline. Swarm promotes agent-based computer models as a tool for the study of complex systems. A common language is leading to the growth of user communities in specific areas of application. Furthermore, by providing an organizing framework to guide the development of more problem-specific structures, and by dealing with a whole range of issues that affect their fundamental correctness and their ability to be developed and reused, Swarm has sought to make the use of agent-based models a legitimate tool of scientific investigation that also meets the practical needs of investigators within a community. Swarm's principal foundation is an object-oriented representation of active agents interacting among themselves and with their environment. To this base layer it adds its own structures to drive, record and portrait the events that occur across this world. The specific contents of any world, however, are up to the experimenter to provide, either by building them from scratch or by tapping previous contributions. This book is notable in assembling a rich array of such contributions, which are significant in their own right, but which can also be mined to extract the reusable elements in their respective areas of finance and economics. It also presents three interesting software additions with tutorials in the form of simple financial and economic applications. A Swarm meta-language closer to a natural language', the use of internet-augmented Swarm for experimental economics, and a Swarm visualbuilder will meet the challenges launched by other agent-based modelling competitors. The Swarm community at large can benefit greatly from the lead that the growing field of computational economics is taking to address its own needs, as represented by this book.

This book extends the conventional two-dimensional (2D) magnet arrangement into 3D pattern for permanent magnet linear machines for the first time, and proposes a novel dual Halbach array. It can not only effectively increase the radial component of magnetic flux density and output force of tubular linear machines, but also significantly reduce the axial flux density, radial force and thus system vibrations and noises. The book is also the first to address the fundamentals and provide a summary of conventional arrays, as well as novel concepts for PM pole design in electric linear machines. It covers theoretical study, numerical simulation, design optimization and experimental works systematically. The design concept and analytical approaches can be implemented to other linear and rotary machines with similar structures. The book will be of interest to academics, researchers, R&D engineers and graduate students in electronic engineering and mechanical engineering who wish to learn the core principles, methods, and applications of linear and rotary machines.

This work presents lines of investigation and scientific achievements of the Ukrainian school of optimization theory and adjacent disciplines. These include the development of approaches to mathematical theories, methodologies, methods, and application systems for the solution of applied problems in economy, finances, energy saving, agriculture, biology, genetics, environmental protection, hardware and software engineering, information protection, decision making, pattern recognition, self-adapting control of complicated objects, personnel training, etc. The methods developed include sequential analysis of variants, nondifferential optimization, stochastic optimization, discrete optimization, mathematical modeling, econometric modeling, solution of extremum problems on graphs, construction of discrete images and combinatorial recognition, etc. Some of these methods became well known in the world's mathematical community and are now known as classic methods.

Simulation Methods for Reliability and Availability of Complex Systems discusses the use of computer simulation-based techniques and algorithms to determine reliability and availability (R and A) levels in complex systems. The book: shares theoretical or applied models and decision support systems that make use of simulation to estimate and to improve system R and A levels, forecasts emerging technologies and trends in the use of computer simulation for R and A and proposes hybrid approaches to the development of efficient methodologies designed to solve R and A-related problems in real-life systems.

Dealing with practical issues, Simulation Methods for Reliability and Availability of Complex Systems is designed to support managers and system engineers in the improvement of R and A, as well as providing a thorough exploration of the techniques and algorithms available for researchers, and for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students.

This major reference work represents the first attempt to confront, on a world-wide basis, the way computer associations face up to their own responsibilities in an age increasingly dominated by information and communication technology. The book deals with the codes of ethics and conduct, and related issues. It is the first book to deal with homogenous codes namely codes of national computer societies. Some thirty codes are compared and analysed in depth. To put these into perspective, there are discussion papers covering the methodological, philosophical and organisational issues.

The planned construction of traffic routes through the European Alps represents a challenge for science and technology. In the past decades, Austria has gained a leading position in the field of tunnelling. This has been verified by many successful projects all over the world, which have been realised with the well-known "New Austrian Tunnelling Method". However, further development and economic success of modern tunnelling methods, which are still partly based on empirical assumptions, can only be assured if their scientific basis is improved. The book discusses the application of numerical simulation methods to assist tunnel engineers. Numerical simulation tools for the estimation of the required tunnel support and the required construction measures are described in this book. By using them, it is possible to study the impact on construction and environment during the planning stage and during construction. This will result in an improvement of the safety and economy of tunnels.

This work contains an up-to-date coverage of the last 20 years' advances in Bayesian inference in econometrics, with an emphasis on dynamic models. It shows how to treat Bayesian inference in non linear models, by integrating the useful developments of numerical integration techniques based on simulations (such as Markov Chain Monte Carlo methods), and the long available analytical results of Bayesian inference for linear regression models. It thus covers a broad range of rather recent models for economic time series, such as non linear models, autoregressive conditional heteroskedastic regressions, and cointegrated vector autoregressive models. It contains also an extensive chapter on unit root inference from the Bayesian viewpoint. Several examples illustrate the methods. This book is intended for econometrics and statistics postgraduates, professors and researchers in economics departments, business schools, statistics departments, or any research centre in the same fields, especially econometricians.

Algorithmic design is not simply the use of computer to design architecture and objects. Algorithms allow designers to overcome the limitations of traditional CAD software and 3D modelers, reaching a level of complexity and control which is beyond the human manual ability. Algorithms-Aided Design presents design methods based on the use of Grasshopper (R), a visual algorithm editor tightly integrated with Rhinoceros (R), the 3D modeling software by McNeel & Associates allowing users to explore accurate freeform shapes. The book provides computational techniques to develop and control complex geometries, covering parametric modeling, digital fabrication techniques, form-finding strategies, environmental analysis and structural optimization. It also features case studies and contributions by researchers and designers from world's most influential universities and leading architecture firms.

Over the past thirty years, with improvements in optics, electronics, and computer technology, great strides have been made in the quantitative analysis of the visual system. A number of books on eye movement research have been written that have dealt with specific aspects of either eye movement control. However, none of these books provide a comprehensive overview of multiple aspects of the visual system. Moreover, few of these books contain modeling and detailed quantitative analyses of the visual system. Further, since the major books are almost ten years old, there is a need for an update to include the most recent research findings. It is with these considerations in mind that we have carefully compiled this updated, comprehensive, and quantitative model-based edited book on various components of the visual system. Some of the best vision scientists in the world in their respective fields have contributed to chapters in this book. They have expertise in a wide variety of fields, including bioengineering, basic and clinical visual science, medicine, neurophysiology, optometry, and psychology. Their combined efforts have resulted in a high quality book that covers modeling and quantitative analysis of optical, neurosensory, oculomotor, perceptual and clinical systems. It includes only those techniques and models that have such fundamentally strong physiological, control system, and perceptual bases that they will serve as foundations for models and analysis techniques in the future. The book is aimed first towards seniors and beginning graduate students in biomedical engineering, neurophysiology, optometry, and psychology, who will gain a broad understanding of quantitative analysisof the visual system. In addition, it has sufficient depth in each area to be useful as an updated reference and tutorial for graduate and post-doctoral students, as well as general vision scientists.

This book introduces modeling and simulation of linear time invariant systems and demonstrates how these translate to systems engineering, mechatronics engineering, and biomedical engineering. It is organized into nine chapters that follow the lectures used for a one-semester course on this topic, making it appropriate for students as well as researchers. The author discusses state space modeling derived from two modeling techniques and the analysis of the system and usage of modeling in control systems design. It also contains a unique chapter on multidisciplinary energy systems with a special focus on bioengineering systems and expands upon how the bond graph augments research in biomedical and bio-mechatronics systems.

This book is a collection of papers presented at the Forum The Impact of Applications on Mathematics in October 2013. It describes an appropriate framework in which to highlight how real-world problems, over the centuries and today, have influenced and are influencing the development of mathematics and thereby, how mathematics is reshaped, in order to advance mathematics and its application. The contents of this book address productive and successful interaction between industry and mathematicians, as well as the cross-fertilization and collaboration that result when mathematics is involved with the advancement of science and technology."

Aerodynamic design, like many other engineering applications, is increasingly relying on computational power. The growing need for multi-disciplinarity and high fidelity in design optimization for industrial applications requires a huge number of repeated simulations in order to find an optimal design candidate. The main drawback is that each simulation can be computationally expensive - this becomes an even bigger issue when used within parametric studies, automated search or optimization loops, which typically may require thousands of analysis evaluations. The core issue of a design-optimization problem is the search process involved. However, when facing complex problems, the high-dimensionality of the design space and the high-multi-modality of the target functions cannot be tackled with standard techniques. In recent years, global optimization using meta-models has been widely applied to design exploration in order to rapidly investigate the design space and find sub-optimal solutions. Indeed, surrogate and reduced-order models can provide a valuable alternative at a much lower computational cost. In this context, this volume offers advanced surrogate modeling applications and optimization techniques featuring reasonable computational resources. It also discusses basic theory concepts and their application to aerodynamic design cases. It is aimed at researchers and engineers who deal with complex aerodynamic design problems on a daily basis and employ expensive simulations to solve them.

This book is concerned exclusively with discrete-time queues and their applications to the performance modeling of communication and computer networks. Since most modern networks operate on the basis of time slotting, and transmit information in fixed length (packets or cells), it thus becomes natural to model such networks in discrete-time by associating a time slot in a physical network with the unit time in the corresponding discrete-time model. The book shows how, in this way, very accurate models that faithfully reproduce the stochastic behaviour of a communication or computer network can be constructed.

The treatment is self contained, and progresses from basic probability theory and discrete-time queueing networks. These latter are applied to model the performance of numerous wide area satellite networks and local area networks, ranging in complexity from simple Aloha schemes to the timed token protocol of the FDDI network. The main objective of this book is to present a unified method for modeling any network access protocol as a discrete-time queueing network and t develop efficient solution techniques for these models. A significant number of the models and their solutions which are included have not previously appeared in the open literature.

The text should prove useful to practitioners and researchers concerned with communication and computer network performance modeling, or anyone wanting a sound understanding of the application of discrete-time technique to this subject area.

In recent years, it has become apparent that knowing the average atomic structure of materials is insufficient to understand their properties. Diffuse scattering in addition to the Bragg scattering holds the key to learning about defects in materials, the topic of many recent books. What has been missing is a detailed step-by-step guide on how to simulate disordered materials. The DISCUS cook book fills this need covering simple topics such as building a computer crystal to complex topics such as domain structures, stacking faults or using advanced refinement techniques to adjust parameters on a disordered model. The book contains a CD-ROM with all files needed to recreate every example given using the program DISCUS. The reader is free to follow the principles behind simulating disordered materials or to get down into the details and run or modify the given examples.

This book provides a simple and unified approach to the mechanics of discontinuous-fibre reinforced composites, and introduces readers as generally as possible to the key concepts regarding the mechanics of elastic stress transfer, intermediate modes of stress transfer, plastic stress transfer, fibre pull-out, fibre fragmentation and matrix rupture. These concepts are subsequently applied to progressive stages of the loading process, through to the composite fractures. The book offers a valuable guide for advanced undergraduate and graduate students attending lecture courses on fibre composites. It is also intended for beginning researchers who wish to develop deeper insights into how discontinuous fibre provides reinforcement to composites, and for engineers, particularly those who wish to apply the concepts presented here to design and develop discontinuous-fibre reinforced composites.

The Molecular Solid State Founding Editor: J. D. Dunitz ETH Zentrum, ZA1/4rich, Switzerland This new series reports on advances in the field of molecular solid state chemistry. Each volume focuses on selected areas and highlights methods and results in syntheses, properties and applications. Future volumes will provide a continuing forum for the discussion of chemical, physical, biological and crystallographic aspects of the molecular solid state. Theoretical Aspects and Computer Modeling of the Molecular Solid State Edited by Angelo Gavezzotti, University of Milan, Italy Focusing on crystal symmetry, intermolecular forces and the thermodynamics of solids and phase transitions, this first volume in the series provides the basic theoretical framework for understanding the molecular solid state. This compendium of reviews opens the way to the computer modeling of molecules and molecular crystals, enabling the reproduction and prediction of structural and energetic properties. This forms the basis for understanding the exciting developments in experimental techniques and the design and creation of novel materials. An appreciation of the underlying theories and uses of molecular modeling packages is essential for the solid state chemist. Angelo Gavezzotti is a professor of physical chemistry at the University of Milan and a renowned expert in the theoretical and computer modeling of organic solids. He provides an introductory chapter on crystal symmetry and molecular recognition, a topic that is essential in understanding how crystals grow and how crystal properties are related to the physical properties of solids. Theoretical Aspects and Computer Modeling of the Molecular Solid State isinvaluable to theoretical chemists in materials science, crystallography and solid state chemistry.

This book explores the theory and methods of systems analysis and computer modeling as applied to problems in ecology and natural resource management. It reflects the problems and conflicts between competing uses of limited space and the need for quantitative predictors of the outcome of various management strategies.

This book, which contains a collection of review articles as well as focus on evidence-based policy making, will serve as a valuable resource not just for all postgraduate students conducting research using systems analysis thinking but also for policy makers. To our knowledge, a book of this nature which also has a strong African focus is currently not available. The book examines environmental and socio-economic risks with the aim of providing an analytical foundation for the management and governance of natural resources, disasters, addressing climate change, and easing the technological and ecological transitions to sustainability. It provides scientific and strategic analysis to better understand the dynamics of future energy transitions, their main driving forces, enabling factors, barriers, as well as their consequences for the social, economic and environmental dimensions of human wellbeing. Science-based policy advice is achieved through an integrated assessment and modeling of how to simultaneously address the major energy policy challenges in the areas of environment (climate change and air pollution), energy poverty (or access to affordable and clean energy for the poor), energy security and reliability. It also aims to improve our understanding of ecosystems and their management in today's changing world-in particular, the current state of ecosystems, and their ecological thresholds and buffering capacities. It provides support for policy makers in developing rational, realistic and science-based regional, national and global strategies for the production of fuel, food and fibre that sustain ecosystem services and safeguard food security. Finally, it addresses the human development dimension of global change based on comprehensive studies on the changing size and composition of human populations around the world by analyzing both their impacts and the differential vulnerabilities by age, gender and level of education.

Computerized modeling is a powerful tool to describe the complex interrelations between measured data and the dynamics of sedimentary systems. Complex interaction of environmental factors with natural variations and increasing anthropogenic intervention is reflected in the sedimentary record at varying scales. The understanding of these processes gives way to the reconstruction of the past and is a key to the prediction of future trends. Especially in cases where observations are limited and/or expensive, computer simulations may substitute for the lack of data. State-of-the-art research work requires a thorough knowledge of processes at the interfaces between atmosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere, and lithosphere, and is therefore an interdisciplinary approach.

This book is the result of a NATO sponsored workshop entitled "Student Modelling: The Key to Individualized Knowledge-Based Instruction" which was held May 4-8, 1991 at Ste. Adele, Quebec, Canada. The workshop was co-directed by Gordon McCalla and Jim Greer of the ARIES Laboratory at the University of Saskatchewan. The workshop focused on the problem of student modelling in intelligent tutoring systems. An intelligent tutoring system (ITS) is a computer program that is aimed at providing knowledgeable, individualized instruction in a one-on-one interaction with a learner. In order to individualize this interaction, the ITS must keep track of many aspects of the leamer: how much and what he or she has leamed to date; what leaming styles seem to be successful for the student and what seem to be less successful; what deeper mental models the student may have; motivational and affective dimensions impacting the leamer; and so ono Student modelling is the problem of keeping track of alI of these aspects of a leamer's leaming.

Fuzzy classi ers are important tools in exploratory data analysis, which is a vital set of methods used in various engineering, scienti c and business applications. Fuzzy classi ers use fuzzy rules and do not require assumptions common to statistical classi cation. Rough set theory is useful when data sets are incomplete. It de nes a formal approximation of crisp sets by providing the lower and the upper approximation of the original set. Systems based on rough sets have natural ability to work on such data and incomplete vectors do not have to be preprocessed before classi cation. To achieve better performance than existing machine learning systems, fuzzy classifiers and rough sets can be combined in ensembles. Such ensembles consist of a nite set of learning models, usually weak learners.

The present book discusses the three aforementioned elds - fuzzy systems, rough sets and ensemble techniques. As the trained ensemble should represent a single hypothesis, a lot of attention is placed on the possibility to combine fuzzy rules from fuzzy systems being members of classi cation ensemble. Furthermore, an emphasis is placed on ensembles that can work on incomplete data, thanks to rough set theory. ."

"Multi-finger Haptic Interaction "presents a panorama of technologies and methods for multi-finger haptic interaction, together with an analysis of the benefits and implications of adding multiple-fingers to haptic applications.

Research topics covered include: design and control of advanced haptic devices;multi-contact point simulation algorithms;interaction techniques and implications in human perception when interacting with multiple fingers.

These multi-disciplinary results are integrated into applications such as medical simulators for training manual skills, simulators for virtual prototyping and precise manipulations in remote environments.

"Multi-finger Haptic Interaction "presents the current and potential applications that can be developed with these systems, and details the systems' complexity. The research is focused on enhancing haptic interaction by providing multiple contact points to the user.

This state-of-the-art volume is oriented towards researchers who are involved in haptic device design, rendering methods and perception studies, as well as readers from different disciplines who are interested in applying multi-finger haptic technologies and methods to their field of interest.

Implicit objects have gained increasing importance in geometric modeling, visualisation, animation, and computer graphics, because their geometric properties provide a good alternative to traditional parametric objects. This book presents the mathematics, computational methods and data structures, as well as the algorithms needed to render implicit curves and surfaces, and shows how implicit objects can easily describe smooth, intricate, and articulatable shapes, and hence why they are being increasingly used in graphical applications.

Divided into two parts, the first introduces the mathematics of implicit curves and surfaces, as well as the data structures suited to store their sampled or discrete approximations, and the second deals with different computational methods for sampling implicit curves and surfaces, with particular reference to how these are applied to functions in 2D and 3D spaces.

This is a volume consisting of selected papers that were presented at the 3rd St. Petersburg Workshop on Simulation held at St. Petersburg, Russia, during June 28-July 3, 1998. The Workshop is a regular international event devoted to mathematical problems of simulation and applied statistics organized by the Department of Stochastic Simulation at St. Petersburg State University in cooperation with INFORMS College on Simulation (USA). Its main purpose is to exchange ideas between researchers from Russia and from the West as well as from other coun tries throughout the World. The 1st Workshop was held during May 24-28, 1994, and the 2nd workshop was held during June 18-21, 1996. The selected proceedings of the 2nd Workshop was published as a special issue of the Journal of Statistical Planning and Inference. Russian mathematical tradition has been formed by such genius as Tchebysh eff, Markov and Kolmogorov whose ideas have formed the basis for contempo rary probabilistic models. However, for many decades now, Russian scholars have been isolated from their colleagues in the West and as a result their mathe matical contributions have not been widely known. One of the primary reasons for these workshops is to bring the contributions of Russian scholars into lime light and we sincerely hope that this volume helps in this specific purpose."

The first step in making your ideas a reality SketchUp offers a vast array of tools that help you get your building, woodworking, and design plans out of your head and into a real model. Even if you've never dabbled in the software, SketchUp All-in-One For Dummies makes it easy to get started as quickly as the ideas pop into your head! Providing real-world insight from top SketchUp insiders, these six-books-in-one teach you how to tackle the basics of the program and apply those skills to real-world projects. You'll discover the basics of modeling as they apply to either free or paid versions of SketchUp before diving into creating models to use for making objects, constructing buildings, or redesigning interiors. Navigate the SketchUp product mix Get familiar with the basics of modeling View and share your models Make your architecture, interior design, and woodworking dreams a reality You have tons of great ideas--and now you can harness this powerful software to bring them to life.