This book explores how PPPM, clinical practice, and basic research could be best served by information technology (IT). A use-case was developed for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). The subject was approached with four interrelated tasks: (1) review of clinical practices relating to HCC; (2) propose an IT system relating to HCC, including clinical decision support and research needs; (3) determine how a clinical liver cancer center can contribute; and, (4) examine the enhancements and impact that the first three tasks will have on the management of HCC. An IT System for Personalized Medicine (ITS-PM) for HCC will provide the means to identify and determine the relative value of the wide number of variables, including clinical assessment of the patient -- functional status, liver function, degree of cirrhosis, and comorbidities; tumor biology, at a molecular, genetic and anatomic level; tumor burden and individual patient response; medical and operative treatments and their outcomes.

The present book includes a set of selected extended papers from the 4th International Conference on Simulation and Modeling Methodologies, Technologies and Applications (SIMULTECH 2014), held in Vienna, Austria, from 28 to 30 August 2014. 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 2014 received 167 submissions, from 45 countries, in all continents. After a double blind paper review performed by the Program Committee, 23% 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 2014. 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 is a comprehensive guide to both the fundamentals of thermal sensors and their advanced functions. Key topics include sensor materials, CMOS-compatible sensors, measurement capabilities, thermal management and manufacturing processes. The introductory chapter covers the basic principles of thermal sensors from the essentials of heat transfer to smart wireless sensors. Later chapters illustrate the wide range of thermal sensor uses, from microprocessor thermal sensing to energy converter applications. Modeling and simulation techniques are used to explain the future direction of the field. Designed for researchers and practitioners working with wireless sensors and thermal management, Thermal Sensors: Principles and Applications for Semiconductor Industries is a valuable reference to the benefits and challenges these sensors offer. Advanced-level students studying mechanical or electrical engineering and networks will also find the content useful.

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.

Simulation-Based Optimization: Parametric Optimization Techniques and Reinforcement Learning introduce the evolving area of static and dynamic simulation-based optimization. Covered in detail are model-free optimization techniques - especially designed for those discrete-event, stochastic systems which can be simulated but whose analytical models are difficult to find in closed mathematical forms. Key features of this revised and improved Second Edition include: * Extensive coverage, via step-by-step recipes, of powerful new algorithms for static simulation optimization, including simultaneous perturbation, backtracking adaptive search and nested partitions, in addition to traditional methods, such as response surfaces, Nelder-Mead search and meta-heuristics (simulated annealing, tabu search, and genetic algorithms) * Detailed coverage of the Bellman equation framework for Markov Decision Processes (MDPs), along with dynamic programming (value and policy iteration) for discounted, average, and total reward performance metrics * An in-depth consideration of dynamic simulation optimization via temporal differences and Reinforcement Learning: Q-Learning, SARSA, and R-SMART algorithms, and policy search, via API, Q-P-Learning, actor-critics, and learning automata * A special examination of neural-network-based function approximation for Reinforcement Learning, semi-Markov decision processes (SMDPs), finite-horizon problems, two time scales, case studies for industrial tasks, computer codes (placed online) and convergence proofs, via Banach fixed point theory and Ordinary Differential Equations Themed around three areas in separate sets of chapters - Static Simulation Optimization, Reinforcement Learning and Convergence Analysis - this book is written for researchers and students in the fields of engineering (industrial, systems, electrical and computer), operations research, computer science and applied mathematics.

This volume presents results of the International Meshing Roundtable conference organized by Sandia National Laboratories held in September 2005. The conference is held annually and since its inception eleven years ago has become widely recognized as a major forum for the exchange of ideas in this field. The papers of this proceedings are devoted to mesh generation and adaptation which has applications to finite element simulation as well as to computational geometry and computer graphics. This book introduces theoretical and novel ideas with practical potential as well as technical applications from industrial researchers, bringing together renowned specialists from engineering, computer science and mathematics.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 15th International Scientific Conference on Information Technologies and Mathematical Modeling, named after A. F. Terpugov, ITMM 2016, held in Katun, Russia, in September 2016. The 33 full papers presented together with 4 short papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 96 submissions. They are devoted to new results in the queueing theory and its applications, addressing specialists in probability theory, random processes, mathematical modeling as well as engineers dealing with logical and technical design and operational management of telecommunication and computer networks.

This book continues the biannual series of conference proceedings, which has become a classical reference resource in traffic and granular research alike, and addresses the latest developments at the intersection of physics, engineering and computational science. These involve complex systems, in which multiple simple agents, be they vehicles or particles, give rise to surprising and fascinating phenomena. The contributions collected in these proceedings cover several research fields, all of which deal with transport. Topics include highway, pedestrian and internet traffic; granular matter; biological transport; transport networks; data acquisition; data analysis and technological applications. Different perspectives, i.e., modeling, simulations, experiments, and phenomenological observations are considered.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 4th International Workshop on Formal Techniques for Safety-Critical Systems, FTSCS 2015, held in Paris, France, in November 2015. The 15 revised full papers presented together with one invited talk and two tool papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 41 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on timed systems; railway systems; fault tolerance; automotive systems; software and systems analysis; tools.

This instructional book showcases techniques to parameterise human agents in empirical agent-based models (ABM). In doing so, it provides a timely overview of key ABM methodologies and the most innovative approaches through a variety of empirical applications. It features cutting-edge research from leading academics and practitioners, and will provide a guide for characterising and parameterising human agents in empirical ABM. In order to facilitate learning, this text shares the valuable experiences of other modellers in particular modelling situations. Very little has been published in the area of empirical ABM, and this contributed volume will appeal to graduate-level students and researchers studying simulation modeling in economics, sociology, ecology, and trans-disciplinary studies, such as topics related to sustainability. In a similar vein to the instruction found in a cookbook, this text provides the empirical modeller with a set of 'recipes' ready to be implemented. Agent-based modeling (ABM) is a powerful, simulation-modeling technique that has seen a dramatic increase in real-world applications in recent years. In ABM, a system is modeled as a collection of autonomous decision-making entities called "agents." Each agent individually assesses its situation and makes decisions on the basis of a set of rules. Agents may execute various behaviors appropriate for the system they represent-for example, producing, consuming, or selling. ABM is increasingly used for simulating real-world systems, such as natural resource use, transportation, public health, and conflict. Decision makers increasingly demand support that covers a multitude of indicators that can be effectively addressed using ABM. This is especially the case in situations where human behavior is identified as a critical element. As a result, ABM will only continue its rapid growth. This is the first volume in a series of books that aims to contribute to a cultural change in the community of empirical agent-based modelling. This series will bring together representational experiences and solutions in empirical agent-based modelling. Creating a platform to exchange such experiences allows comparison of solutions and facilitates learning in the empirical agent-based modelling community. Ultimately, the community requires such exchange and learning to test approaches and, thereby, to develop a robust set of techniques within the domain of empirical agent-based modelling. Based on robust and defendable methods, agent-based modelling will become a critical tool for research agencies, decision making and decision supporting agencies, and funding agencies. This series will contribute to more robust and defendable empirical agent-based modelling.

The main idea of this book is that to comprehend the instructional potential of simulation and to design effective simulation-based learning environments, one has to consider both what happens inside the computer and inside the students' minds. The framework adopted to do this is model-centered learning, in which simulation is seen as particularly effective when learning requires a restructuring of the individual mental models of the students, as in conceptual change. Mental models are by themeselves simulations, and thus simulation models can extend our biological capacity to carry out simulative reasoning. For this reason, recent approaches in cognitive science like embodied cognition and the extended mind hypothesis are also considered in the book. A conceptual model called the "epistemic simulation cycle" is proposed as a blueprint for the comprehension of the cognitive activies involved in simulation-based learning and for instructional design.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 7th International Symposium on Intelligence Computation and Applications, ISICA 2015, held in Guangzhou, China, in November 2015. The 77 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 189 submissions. The papers feature the most up-to-date research in analysis and theory of evolutionary computation, neural network architectures and learning; neuro-dynamics and neuro-engineering; fuzzy logic and control; collective intelligence and hybrid systems; deep learning; knowledge discovery; learning and reasoning.

This Brief highlights a novel model to find out the feasibility of any location to produce solar energy. The model utilizes the latest multi-criteria decision making techniques and artificial neural networks to predict the suitability of a location to maximize allocation of available energy for producing optimal amount of electricity which will satisfy the demand from the market. According to the results of the case studies further applications are encouraged.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Process-Aware Systems, PAS 2015, held in Hangzhou, China, in October 2015. The four revised full papers and two short papers, presented together with five demo papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 16 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on process modeling and comparison; process data analysis; Cloud workflow applications.

Increasing performance demands in integrated circuits, together with limited energy budgets, force IC designers to find new ways of saving power. One innovative way is the presented adaptive voltage scaling scheme, which tunes the supply voltage according to the present process, voltage and temperature variations as well as aging. The voltage is adapted "on the fly" by means of in-situ delay monitors to exploit unused timing margin, produced by state-of-the-art worst-case designs. This book discusses the design of the enhanced in-situ delay monitors and the implementation of the complete control-loop comprising the monitors, a control-logic and an on-chip voltage regulator. An analytical Markov-based model of the control-loop is derived to analyze its robustness and stability. Variation-Aware Adaptive Voltage Scaling for Digital CMOS Circuits provides an in-depth assessment of the proposed voltage scaling scheme when applied to an arithmetic and an image processing circuit. This book is written for engineers interested in adaptive techniques for low-power CMOS circuits.

These transactions publish research in computer-based methods of computational collective intelligence (CCI) and their applications in a wide range of fields such as the semantic Web, social networks, and multi-agent systems. TCCI strives to cover new methodological, theoretical and practical aspects of CCI understood as the form of intelligence that emerges from the collaboration and competition of many individuals (artificial and/or natural). The application of multiple computational intelligence technologies, such as fuzzy systems, evolutionary computation, neural systems, consensus theory, etc., aims to support human and other collective intelligence and to create new forms of CCI in natural and/or artificial systems. This twenty-second issue contains 11 carefully selected and revised contributions.

The purpose of this book is to provide an up-to-date introduction to the time-domain finite element methods for Maxwell's equations involving metamaterials. Since the first successful construction of a metamaterial with both negative permittivity and permeability in 2000, the study of metamaterials has attracted significant attention from researchers across many disciplines. Thanks to enormous efforts on the part of engineers and physicists, metamaterials present great potential applications in antenna and radar design, sub-wavelength imaging, and invisibility cloak design. Hence the efficient simulation of electromagnetic phenomena in metamaterials has become a very important issue and is the subject of this book, in which various metamaterial modeling equations are introduced and justified mathematically. The development and practical implementation of edge finite element methods for metamaterial Maxwell's equations are the main focus of the book. The book finishes with some interesting simulations such as backward wave propagation and time-domain cloaking with metamaterials.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Systems Simulation, Asia Simulation 2014, held in Kitakyushu, Japan, in October 2014. The 32 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 69 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on modeling and simulation technology; network simulation; high performance computing and cloud simulation; numerical simulation and visualization; simulation of instrumentation and control application; simulation technology in diversified higher education; general purpose simulation.

The ease of use of the programs in the application to ever more complex cases of disease and pestilence. The lack of need on the part of the student or modelers of mathematics beyond algebra and the lack of need of any prior computer programming experience. The surprising insights that can be gained from initially simple systems models.

Die Casting: An Analytical Approach will refresh knowledge of the governing laws of the fluid dynamics that have an effect on die cast die and die cast process design. It will be bought by product designers that design die cast parts and die cast die and process engineers and designers.

The papers in this volume were selected for presentation at the 19th International Meshing Roundtable (IMR), held October 3-6, 2010 in Chattanooga, Tennessee, USA. The conference was started by Sandia National Laboratories in 1992 as a small meeting of organizations striving to establish a common focus for research and development in the field of mesh generation. Now after 19 consecutive years, the International Meshing Roundtable has become recognized as an international focal point annually attended by researchers and developers from dozens of co- tries around the world. The 19th International Meshing Roundtable consists of technical presentations from contributed papers, research notes, keynote and invited talks, short course presentations, and a poster session and competition. The Program Committee would like to express its appreciation to all who participate to make the IMR a successful and enriching experience. The papers in these proceedings were selected by the Program Committee from among numerous submissions. Based on input from peer reviews, the committee selected these papers for their perceived quality, originality, and appropriateness to the theme of the International Meshing Roundtable. We would like to thank all who submitted papers. We would also like to thank the colleagues who provided reviews of the submitted papers. The names of the reviewers are acknowledged in the following pages. We extend special thanks to Jacqueline Hunter for her time and effort to make the 19th IMR another outstanding conference.

Nowadays, engineering systems are of ever-increasing complexity and must be c- sidered asmultidisciplinary systems composed of interacting subsystems or system components from different engineering disciplines. Thus, an integration of various engineering disciplines, e.g, mechanical, electrical and control engineering in ac- current design approach is required. With regard to the systematic development and analysis of system models,interdisciplinary computer aided methodologies are - coming more and more important. A graphical description formalism particularly suited for multidisciplinary s- tems arebondgraphs devised by Professor Henry Paynter in as early as 1959 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA and in use since then all over the world. This monograph is devoted exclusively to the bond graph methodology. It gives a comprehensive, in-depth, state-of-the-art presentation including recent results sc- tered over research articles and dissertations and research contributions by the - thor to a number of topics. The book systematically covers the fundamentals of developing bond graphs and deriving mathematical models from them, the recent developments in meth- ology, symbolic and numerical processing of mathematical models derived from bond graphs. Additionally it discusses modern modelling languages, the paradigm of object-oriented modelling, modern software that can be used for building and for processing of bond graph models, and provides a chapter with small case studies illustrating various applications of the methodology.

This is a book for people who love mechanics of composite materials and ? MATLAB . We will use the popular computer package MATLAB as a matrix calculator for doing the numerical calculations needed in mechanics of c- posite materials. In particular, the steps of the mechanical calculations will be emphasized in this book. The reader will not ?nd ready-made MATLAB programs for use as black boxes. Instead step-by-step solutions of composite material mechanics problems are examined in detail using MATLAB. All the problems in the book assume linear elastic behavior in structural mechanics. The emphasis is not on mass computations or programming, but rather on learning the composite material mechanics computations and understanding of the underlying concepts. The basic aspects of the mechanics of ?ber-reinforced composite materials are covered in this book. This includes lamina analysis in both the local and global coordinate systems, laminate analysis, and failure theories of a lamina.

7. 1. 1 Background Uncertainty can be considered as the lack of adequate information to make a decision. It is important to quantify uncertainties in mathematical models used for design and optimization of nondeterministic engineering systems. In general, - certainty can be broadly classi?ed into three types (Bae et al. 2004; Ha-Rok 2004; Klir and Wierman 1998; Oberkampf and Helton 2002; Sentz 2002). The ?rst one is aleatory uncertainty (also referred to as stochastic uncertainty or inherent - certainty) - it results from the fact that a system can behave in random ways. For example, the failure of an engine can be modeled as an aleatory uncertaintybecause the failure can occur at a random time. One cannot predict exactly when the engine will fail even if a large quantity of failure data is gathered (available). The second one is epistemic uncertainty (also known as subjective uncertainty or reducible - certainty) - it is the uncertainty of the outcome of some random event due to lack of knowledge or information in any phase or activity of the modeling process. By gaining information about the system or environmental factors, one can reduce the epistemic uncertainty. For example, a lack of experimental data to characterize new materials and processes leads to epistemic uncertainty.

This volume contains the articles presented at the 18th International Meshing Roundtable (IMR) organized, in part, by Sandia National Laboratories and held October 25-28, 2009 in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA. The volume presents recent results of mesh generation and adaptation which has applications to finite element simulation. It introduces theoretical and novel ideas with practical potential.