This book contains contributions presented during the international conference on Model-Based Reasoning (MBR012), held on June 21-23 in Sestri Levante, Italy. Interdisciplinary researchers discuss in this volume how scientific cognition and other kinds of cognition make use of models, abduction, and explanatory reasoning in order to produce important or creative changes in theories and concepts. Some of the contributions analyzed the problem of model-based reasoning in technology and stressed the issues of scientific and technological innovation. The book is divided in three main parts: models, mental models, representations; abduction, problem solving and practical reasoning; historical, epistemological and technological issues. The volume is based on the papers that were presented at the international

The ability to communicate cultural codes in multimedia depends on their meaning and beauty, as perceived by different audiences around the globe. In this book, the ongoing research on computational modeling of visual, musical and textual contents is described in terms of identifying and mapping their semantic representations across different cultures. The underlying psychology of sense-making is quantified through analysis of aesthetics in terms of organizational and structural aspects of the contents that influence an audience's formation of expectations for future signals, violations of these expectations, and explanations of their meaning. Complexity-accuracy tradeoffs in sound representation are further used to develop new computational methods that capture poietic and aesthetic aspects in music communication. Experimental studies are reported that try to characterize preferences for complexity in abstract, classical and traditional art and music across samples of Western and Far Eastern cultures. These experiments illustrate how aesthetics can be computed in terms of semantic and information measures, highlighting commonalities and uncovering differences in aesthetic preferences across cultures and individuals.

The present book provides guidance to understanding complicated coupled processes based on the experimental data available and implementation of developed algorithms in numerical codes. Results of selected test cases in the fields of closed-form solutions (e.g., deformation processes), single processes (such as groundwater flow) as well as coupled processes are presented. It is part of the OpenGeoSys initiative - an open source project to share knowledge and experience in environmental analysis and scientific computation with the community.

The Handbook of Simulation Optimization presents an overview of the state of the art of simulation optimization, providing a survey of the most well-established approaches for optimizing stochastic simulation models and a sampling of recent research advances in theory and methodology. Leading contributors cover such topics as discrete optimization via simulation, ranking and selection, efficient simulation budget allocation, random search methods, response surface methodology, stochastic gradient estimation, stochastic approximation, sample average approximation, stochastic constraints, variance reduction techniques, model-based stochastic search methods and Markov decision processes. This single volume should serve as a reference for those already in the field and as a means for those new to the field for understanding and applying the main approaches. The intended audience includes researchers, practitioners and graduate students in the business/engineering fields of operations research, management science, operations management and stochastic control, as well as in economics/finance and computer science.

In the present authors attempted to have a clear insight into the interworking of geotectonic, geomorphic, hydrologic and anthropogenic factors leading to landslide in the Shiv khola Watershed, the most worst affected region of Darjiling Himalaya. This book includes the parameters responsible for landslide events in mountainous areas. It provides knowledge and understanding to the local people, planners, and policy makers about the causes and consequences of landslides as well as provides a suitable method to mitigate the landslips. The book deals with the role of land, water and soil in landslide phenomena. These three attributes have been described in terms of critical rainfall, critical slope, critical height and changes and development of drainage network in landslides. Mitigations and site-specific management options are evaluated considering the roles of local govt., community and other organizations in both pre-slide and post-slide periods. Various scientific methods have been used to assess the landslides that will bring about tremendous help to researchers in the field. In particular, Researchers in Mountain Geomorphology and Geological and Geographical Society will get tremendous help from some topics such as 1-D slope stability model, SCS Curve Number Technique, Assessment of morphological parameters, application of RS & GIS, Application of Analytical Hierarchy Process. Semi-quantitative approach is followed for understanding spatial distribution of cohesion, friction angle slope, lithology and lineaments, drainage, upslope contributing area, land use and land cover types etc. This book also reveals some techniques and models for initiating slope instability.

The model investigated in this work, a particular cellular automaton with stochastic evolution, was introduced as the simplest case of self-organized-criticality, that is, a dynamical system which shows algebraic long-range correlations without any tuning of parameters. The author derives exact results which are potentially also interesting outside the area of critical phenomena. Exact means also site-by-site and not only ensemble average or coarse graining. Very complex and amazingly beautiful periodic patterns are often generated by the dynamics involved, especially in deterministic protocols in which the sand is added at chosen sites. For example, the author studies the appearance of allometric structures, that is, patterns which grow in the same way in their whole body, and not only near their boundaries, as commonly occurs. The local conservation laws which govern the evolution of these patterns are also presented. This work has already attracted interest, not only in non-equilibrium statistical mechanics, but also in mathematics, both in probability and in combinatorics. There are also interesting connections with number theory. Lastly, it also poses new questions about an old subject. As such, it will be of interest to computer practitioners, demonstrating the simplicity with which charming patterns can be obtained, as well as to researchers working in many other areas.

This book highlights recent advances in natural computing, including biology and its theory, bio-inspired computing, computational aesthetics, computational models and theories, computing with natural media, philosophy of natural computing and educational technology. It presents extended versions of the best papers selected from the symposium "7th International Workshop on Natural Computing" (IWNC7), held in Tokyo, Japan, in 2013. The target audience is not limited to researchers working in natural computing but also those active in biological engineering, fine/media art design, aesthetics and philosophy.

The interaction between a user and a device forms the foundation of today's application design. Covering the following topics: A suite of five structural principles helping designers to structure their mockups; An agile method for exploiting desktop eye tracker equipment in combination with mobile devices; An approach to explore large-scale collections based on classification systems; A framework based on the use of modeling and components composition techniques to simplify the development of organizational collaborative systems; A low-cost virtual reality system that provides highly satisfying virtual experiences; Popular hardware and software tools and technologies for developing augmented and virtual reality applications; An implementation to handle connectivity between virtual reality applications and SensAble (R) Technology Phantom Haptic Devices; The results of a research study implementing a teaching technological strategy to help Down syndrome children develop their reading skills; Platform independent models decreasing the level of cohesion between communication technologies and software for ubiquitous computing; A method for applying gamification as a tool to improve the participation and motivation of people in performing different tasks. New Trends in Interaction, Virtual Reality and Modeling collects the best research from Interaccion 2012 and MexIHC 2012, and presents the state-of-the-art in human-computer interaction, user interfaces, user experience and virtual reality. Written by researchers from leading universities, research institutes and industry, this volume forms a valuable source of reference for researchers in HCI and VR.

This textbook aims to fill the gap between those that offer a theoretical treatment without many applications and those that present and apply formulas without appropriately deriving them. The balance achieved will give readers a fundamental understanding of key financial ideas and tools that form the basis for building realistic models, including those that may become proprietary. Numerous carefully chosen examples and exercises reinforce the student's conceptual understanding and facility with applications. The exercises are divided into conceptual, application-based, and theoretical problems, which probe the material deeper. The book is aimed toward advanced undergraduates and first-year graduate students who are new to finance or want a more rigorous treatment of the mathematical models used within. While no background in finance is assumed, prerequisite math courses include multivariable calculus, probability, and linear algebra. The authors introduce additional mathematical tools as needed. The entire textbook is appropriate for a single year-long course on introductory mathematical finance. The self-contained design of the text allows for instructor flexibility in topics courses and those focusing on financial derivatives. Moreover, the text is useful for mathematicians, physicists, and engineers who want to learn finance via an approach that builds their financial intuition and is explicit about model building, as well as business school students who want a treatment of finance that is deeper but not overly theoretical.

This four-volume set (CCIS 643, 644, 645, 646) constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 16th Asia Simulation Conference and the First Autumn Simulation Multi-Conference, AsiaSim / SCS AutumnSim 2016, held in Beijing, China, in October 2016. The 265 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 651 submissions. The papers in this second volume of the set are organized in topical sections on HMI and robot simulations; modeling and simulation for intelligent manufacturing; military simulation; visualization and virtual reality.

This four-volume set (CCIS 643, 644, 645, 646) constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 16th Asia Simulation Conference and the First Autumn Simulation Multi-Conference, AsiaSim / SCS AutumnSim 2016, held in Beijing, China, in October 2016. The 265 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 651 submissions. The papers in this third volume of the set are organized in topical sections on Cloud technologies in simulation applications; fractional calculus with applications and simulations; modeling and simulation for energy, environment and climate; SBA virtual prototyping engineering technology; simulation and Big Data.

Benjamin Meyer performs several psycho-physical experiments to measure the re-adaptation process of glared drivers in traffic scenarios. The author then develops a novel tone mapping algorithm to simulate the recurring contrast perception of the human eye by adjusting the displayed contrast. Depending on background illumination, bright light sources cause considerable perception restrictions for a glared viewer and can deter the driver from perceiving critical objects for several seconds and severely increase the risk of accidents. Based on the results of the conducted user studies, this vision impairment is integrated into a night driving simulator. The modified driving simulation provides a more realistic visualization and enables the analysis of critical traffic scenarios including short-time headlight glares. This leads to better transferability of driving simulator results and enables investigating driving behavior in the presence of glare.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Concept Mapping, CMC 2016, held in Tallinn, Estonia, in September 2016. The 25 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 135 submissions. The papers address issues such as facilitation of learning; eliciting, capturing, archiving, and using "expert" knowledge; planning instruction; assessment of "deep" understandings; research planning; collaborative knowledge modeling; creation of "knowledge portfolios"; curriculum design; eLearning, and administrative and strategic planning and monitoring.

The Mobile Ad Hoc Network (MANET) has emerged as the next frontier for wireless communications networking in both the military and commercial arena. Handbook of Mobile Ad Hoc Networks for Mobility Models introduces 40 different major mobility models along with numerous associate mobility models to be used in a variety of MANET networking environments in the ground, air, space, and/or under water mobile vehicles and/or handheld devices. These vehicles include cars, armors, ships, under-sea vehicles, manned and unmanned airborne vehicles, spacecrafts and more. This handbook also describes how each mobility pattern affects the MANET performance from physical to application layer; such as throughput capacity, delay, jitter, packet loss and packet delivery ratio, longevity of route, route overhead, reliability, and survivability. Case studies, examples, and exercises are provided throughout the book. Handbook of Mobile Ad Hoc Networks for Mobility Models is for advanced-level students and researchers concentrating on electrical engineering and computer science within wireless technology. Industry professionals working in the areas of mobile ad hoc networks, communications engineering, military establishments engaged in communications engineering, equipment manufacturers who are designing radios, mobile wireless routers, wireless local area networks, and mobile ad hoc network equipment will find this book useful as well.

This tutorial provides the application of the coupling interface OGS#IPhreeqc (open-source scientific software) to model reactive mass transport processes in environmental subsurface systems. It contains general information regarding reactive transport modeling and step-by-step model set-up with OGS#IPhreeqc and related components such as GINA and ParaView. Benchmark examples (1D to 2D) are presented in detail. The book is intended primarily for graduate students and applied scientists who deal with reactive transport modeling. It also gives valuable information to the professional geoscientists wishing to advance their knowledge in numerical simulation, with the focus on the fate and transport of nitrate. It is the third volume in a series that represents the further application of computational modeling in hydrological science.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Bio-inspired Computing: Theories and Applications, BIC-TA 2017, held in Harbin, China, December 2017. The 50 full papers presented were selected from 143 submissions. The papers deal with studies abstracting computing ideas such as data structures, operations with data, ways to control operations, computing models from living phenomena or biological systems such as evolution, cells, tissues, neural networks, immune systems, and ant colonies.

This two volume set (CCIS 623 and 634) constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Second International Conference of Young Computer Scientists, Engineers and Educators, ICYCSEE 2016, held in Harbin, China, in August 2016. The 91 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 338 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on Research Track (Part I) and Education Track, Industry Track, and Demo Track (Part II) and cover a wide range of topics related to social computing, social media, social network analysis, social modeling, social recommendation, machine learning, data mining.

The three-volume set CCIS 761, CCIS 762, and CCIS 763 constitutes the thoroughly refereed proceedings of the International Conference on Life System Modeling and Simulation, LSMS 2017, and of the International Conference on Intelligent Computing for Sustainable Energy and Environment, ICSEE 2017, held in Nanjing, China, in September 2017. The 208 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from over 625 submissions. The papers of this volume are organized in topical sections on: Biomedical Signal Processing; Computational Methods in Organism Modeling; Medical Apparatus and Clinical Applications; Bionics Control Methods, Algorithms and Apparatus; Modeling and Simulation of Life Systems; Data Driven Analysis; Image and Video Processing; Advanced Fuzzy and Neural Network Theory and Algorithms; Advanced Evolutionary Methods and Applications; Advanced Machine Learning Methods and Applications; Intelligent Modeling, Monitoring, and Control of Complex Nonlinear Systems; Advanced Methods for Networked Systems; Control and Analysis of Transportation Systems; Advanced Sliding Mode Control and Applications; Advanced Analysis of New Materials and Devices; Computational Intelligence in Utilization of Clean and Renewable Energy Resources; Intelligent Methods for Energy Saving and Pollution Reduction; Intelligent Methods in Developing Electric Vehicles, Engines and Equipment; Intelligent Computing and Control in Power Systems; Modeling, Simulation and Control in Smart Grid and Microgrid; Optimization Methods; Computational Methods for Sustainable Environment.

The three-volume set CCIS 761, CCIS 762, and CCIS 763 constitutes the thoroughly refereed proceedings of the International Conference on Life System Modeling and Simulation, LSMS 2017, and of the International Conference on Intelligent Computing for Sustainable Energy and Environment, ICSEE 2017, held in Nanjing, China, in September 2017. The 208 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from over 625 submissions. The papers of this volume are organized in topical sections on: Biomedical Signal Processing; Computational Methods in Organism Modeling; Medical Apparatus and Clinical Applications; Bionics Control Methods, Algorithms and Apparatus; Modeling and Simulation of Life Systems; Data Driven Analysis; Image and Video Processing; Advanced Fuzzy and Neural Network Theory and Algorithms; Advanced Evolutionary Methods and Applications; Advanced Machine Learning Methods and Applications; Intelligent Modeling, Monitoring, and Control of Complex Nonlinear Systems; Advanced Methods for Networked Systems; Control and Analysis of Transportation Systems; Advanced Sliding Mode Control and Applications; Advanced Analysis of New Materials and Devices; Computational Intelligence in Utilization of Clean and Renewable Energy Resources; Intelligent Methods for Energy Saving and Pollution Reduction; Intelligent Methods in Developing Electric Vehicles, Engines and Equipment; Intelligent Computing and Control in Power Systems; Modeling, Simulation and Control in Smart Grid and Microgrid; Optimization Methods; Computational Methods for Sustainable Environment.

The present book includes a set of selected extended papers from the 5th International Conference on Simulation and Modeling Methodologies, Technologies and Applications (SIMULTECH 2015), held in Colmar, France, from 21 to 23 July 2015. The conference brought together researchers, engineers and practitioners interested in methodologies and applications of modeling and simulation. New and innovative solutions are reported in this book. SIMULTECH 2015 received 102 submissions, from 36 countries, in all continents. After a double blind paper review performed by the Program Committee, 19% were accepted as full papers and thus selected for oral presentation. Additional papers were accepted as short papers and posters. A further selection was made after the Conference, based also on the assessment of presentation quality and audience interest, so that this book includes the extended and revised versions of the very best papers of SIMULTECH 2015. Commitment to high quality standards is a major concern of SIMULTECH that will be maintained in the next editions, considering not only the stringent paper acceptance ratios but also the quality of the program committee, keynote lectures, participation level and logistics.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Parallel Computational Technologies, PCT 2017, held in Kazan, Russia, in April 2017. The 24 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 167 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on high performance architectures, tools and technologies; parallel numerical algorithms; supercomputer simulation.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the seven workshops co-located with the 14th International Conference on Practical Applications of Agents and Multi-Agent Systems, PAAMS 2016, held in Sevilla, Spain, in June 2016.The 37 full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 77 submissions. The volume presents the papers that have been accepted for the following workshops: Workshop on Agents and Multi-Agent Systems for AAL and e-Health; Workshop on Agent-Based Solutions for Manufacturing and Supply Chain; Workshop on MAS for Complex Networks and Social Computation; Workshop on Decision Making in Dynamic Information Environments; Workshop on Intelligent Systems for Context-based Information Fusion; Workshop on Multi-Agent based Applications for Smart Grids and Sustainable Energy Systems; Workshop on Multiagent System based Learning Environments.

This volume on "Advances in Analysis and Design of Deep Foundations" contains 22 technical papers which cover various aspects of analysis and design of deep foundations based on full-scale field testing, numerical modeling, and analytical solutions. The technical papers are 8-10 pages long that present the results and findings from research as well as practical-oriented studies on deep foundations that are of interest to civil/geotechnical engineering community. The topics cover a wide spectrum of applications that include evaluation of the axial and lateral capacity of piles, pile group effects, evaluation of the increase in pile capacity with time (or pile setup), influence of excavation on pile capacity, study the behavior of pile raft caisson foundations, evaluate the bearing capacity and settlement of piles from cone penetration tests, etc. This volume is part of the proceedings of the 1st GeoMEast International Congress and Exhibition on Sustainable Civil Infrastructures, Egypt 2017.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Software Process Improvement and Capability Determination, SPICE 2017, held in Palma de Mallorca, Spain, in October 2017.The 34 full papers presented together with 4 short papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 65 submissions. The papers are organized in the following topical sections: SPI in agile approaches; SPI in small settings; SPI and assessment; SPI and models; SPI and functional safety; SPI in various settings; SPI and gamification; SPI case studies; strategic and knowledge issues in SPI; education issues in SPI.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Supercomputing, ISUM 2015, held in Mexico, Mexico, in March 2015. The 38 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 102 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on perspectives in supercomputer infrastructure and applications; parallel algorithms and optimization; HPC applications and simulations;