Multi-Threaded Object-Oriented MPI-Based Message Passing Interface: The ARCH Library presents ARCH, a library built as an extension to MPI. ARCH relies on a small set of programming abstractions that allow the writing of well-structured multi-threaded parallel codes according to the object-oriented programming style. ARCH has been written with C++. The book describes the built-in classes, and illustrates their use through several template application cases in several fields of interest: Distributed Algorithms (global completion detection, distributed process serialization), Parallel Combinatorial Optimization (A* procedure), Parallel Image-Processing (segmentation by region growing). It shows how new application-level distributed data types - such as a distributed tree and a distributed graph - can be derived from the built-in classes. A feature of interest to readers is that both the library and the application codes used for illustration purposes are available via the Internet. The material can be downloaded for installation and personal parallel code development on the reader's computer system. ARCH can be run on Unix/Linux as well as Windows NT-based platforms. Current installations include the IBM-SP2, the CRAY-T3E, the Intel Paragon, PC-networks under Linux or Windows NT. Multi-Threaded Object-Oriented MPI-Based Message Passing Interface: The ARCH Library is aimed at scientists who need to implement parallel/distributed algorithms requiring complicated local and/or distributed control structures. It can also benefit parallel/distributed program developers who wish to write codes in the object-oriented style. The author has been using ARCH for several years as a medium to teach parallel and network programming. Teachers can employ the library for the same purpose while students can use it for training. Although ARCH has been used so far in an academic environment, it will be an effective tool for professionals as well. Multi-Threaded Object-Oriented MPI-Based Message Passing Interface: The ARCH Library is suitable as a secondary text for a graduate level course on Data Communications and Networks, Programming Languages, Algorithms and Computational Theory and Distributed Computing and as a reference for researchers and practitioners in industry.

by Maq Mannan President and CEO, DSM Technologies Chairman of the IEEE 1364 Verilog Standards Group Past Chairman of Open Verilog International One of the major strengths of the Verilog language is the Programming Language Interface (PLI), which allows users and Verilog application developers to infinitely extend the capabilities of the Verilog language and the Verilog simulator. In fact, the overwhelming success of the Verilog language can be partly attributed to the exi- ence of its PLI. Using the PLI, add-on products, such as graphical waveform displays or pre and post simulation analysis tools, can be easily developed. These products can then be used with any Verilog simulator that supports the Verilog PLI. This ability to create thi- party add-on products for Verilog simulators has created new markets and provided the Verilog user base with multiple sources of software tools. Hardware design engineers can, and should, use the Verilog PLI to customize their Verilog simulation environment. A Company that designs graphics chips, for ex- ple, may wish to see the simulation results of a new design in some custom graphical display. The Verilog PLI makes it possible, and even trivial, to integrate custom so- ware, such as a graphical display program, into a Verilog simulator. The simulation results can then dynamically be displayed in the custom format during simulation. And, if the company uses Verilog simulators from multiple simulator vendors, this integrated graphical display will work with all the simulators.

With this book, Onn Shehory and Arnon Sturm, together with further contributors, introduce the reader to various facets of agent-oriented software engineering (AOSE). They provide a selected collection of state-of-the-art findings, which combines research from information systems, artificial intelligence, distributed systems and software engineering and covers essential development aspects of agent-based systems.

The book chapters are organized into five parts. The first part introduces the AOSE domain in general, including introduction to agents and the peculiarities of software engineering for developing MAS. The second part describes general aspects of AOSE, like architectural models, design patterns and communication. Next, part three discusses AOSE methodologies and associated research directions and elaborates on Prometheus, O-MaSE and INGENIAS. Part four then addresses agent-oriented programming languages. Finally, the fifth part presents studies related to the implementation of agents and multi-agent systems.

The book not only provides a comprehensive review of design approaches for specifying agent-based systems, but also covers implementation aspects such as communication, standards and tools and environments for developing agent-based systems. It is thus of interest to researchers, practitioners and students who are interested in exploring the agent paradigm for developing software systems.

Content-based multimedia retrieval is a challenging research field with many unsolved problems. This monograph details concepts and algorithms for robust and efficient information retrieval of two different types of multimedia data: waveform-based music data and human motion data. It first examines several approaches in music information retrieval, in particular general strategies as well as efficient algorithms. The book then introduces a general and unified framework for motion analysis, retrieval, and classification, highlighting the design of suitable features, the notion of similarity used to compare data streams, and data organization.

Written for developers with some understanding of deep learning algorithms. Experience with reinforcement learning is not required. Grokking Deep Reinforcement Learning introduces this powerful machine learning approach, using examples, illustrations, exercises, and crystal-clear teaching. You'll love the perfectly paced teaching and the clever, engaging writing style as you dig into this awesome exploration of reinforcement learning fundamentals, effective deep learning techniques, and practical applications in this emerging field. We all learn through trial and error. We avoid the things that cause us to experience pain and failure. We embrace and build on the things that give us reward and success. This common pattern is the foundation of deep reinforcement learning: building machine learning systems that explore and learn based on the responses of the environment. * Foundational reinforcement learning concepts and methods * The most popular deep reinforcement learning agents solving high-dimensional environments * Cutting-edge agents that emulate human-like behavior and techniques for artificial general intelligence Deep reinforcement learning is a form of machine learning in which AI agents learn optimal behavior on their own from raw sensory input. The system perceives the environment, interprets the results of its past decisions and uses this information to optimize its behavior for maximum long-term return.

hebookpresentedtothereaderisdevotedtotime-dependentscheduling. TScheduling problems, in general, consist in the allocation of resources over time in order to perform a set of jobs. Any allocation that meets all requirements concerning the jobs and resources is called a feasible schedule. The quality of a schedule is measured by a criterion function. The aim of scheduling is to ?nd, among all feasible schedules, a schedule that optimizes the criterion function. A solution to an arbitrary scheduling problem consists in giving a polynomial-time algorithm generating either an optimal schedule or a schedule that is close to the optimal one, if the given scheduling problem has been proved to be computationally intractable. The scheduling problems are subject of interest of the scheduling theory, originated in mid-?fties of the twentieth century. The theory has been developing dynamically and new research areas constantly come into existence. The subject of this book, ti- dependent scheduling, is one of such areas. In time-dependent scheduling, the processing time of a job is variable and depends on the starting time of the job. This crucial assumption allows us to apply the scheduling theory to a broader spectrum of problems. For example, in the framework of the time-dependent scheduling theory we may consider the problems of repayment of multiple loans, ?re ?ghting and maintenance assignments. In this book, we will discuss algorithms and complexity issues concerning various time-dependent scheduling problems.

This book provides an overview of the theory and application of linear and nonlinear mixed-effects models in the analysis of grouped data, such as longitudinal data, repeated measures, and multilevel data. Over 170 figures are included in the book.

Proceedings of the Centre for Software Reliability Conference entitled Software Certification, held at the Penta Hotel, Gatwick, UK, 13-16 September 1988

"Software Project Secrets: Why Software Projects Fail" offers a new path to success in the software industry. This book reaches out to managers, developers, and customers who use industry-standard methodologies, but whose projects still struggle to succeed.

Author -->George Stepanek--> analyzes the project management methodology itself, a critical factor that has thus far been overlooked. He explains why it creates problems for software development projects and begins by describing 12 ways in which software projects are different from other kinds of projects. He also analyzes the project management body of knowledge to discover 10 hidden assumptions that are invalid in the context of software projects.-->Table of Contents-->IntroductionWhy Software Is DifferentProject Management AssumptionsCase Study: The Billing System ProjectThe New Agile MethodologiesBudgeting Agile ProjectsCase Study: The Billing System RevisitedAfterword

The art, craft, discipline, logic, practice, and science of developing large-scale software products needs a believable, professional base. The textbooks in this three-volume set combine informal, engineeringly sound practice with the rigour of formal, mathematics-based approaches.

Volume 1 covers the basic principles and techniques of formal methods abstraction and modelling. First this book provides a sound, but simple basis of insight into discrete mathematics: numbers, sets, Cartesians, types, functions, the Lambda Calculus, algebras, and mathematical logic. Then it trains its readers in basic property- and model-oriented specification principles and techniques. The model-oriented concepts that are common to such specification languages as B, VDM-SL, and Z are explained here using the RAISE specification language (RSL). This book then covers the basic principles of applicative (functional), imperative, and concurrent (parallel) specification programming. Finally, the volume contains a comprehensive glossary of software engineering, and extensive indexes and references.

These volumes are suitable for self-study by practicing software engineers and for use in university undergraduate and graduate courses on software engineering. Lecturers will be supported with a comprehensive guide to designing modules based on the textbooks, with solutions to many of the exercises presented, and with a complete set of lecture slides.

Advances in Design and Specification Languages for Embedded Systems is the latest contribution to the Chip Design Languages series and it consists of selected papers presented at the Forum on Specifications and Design Languages (FDL'06), which took place in September 2006 at Technische Universit't Darmstadt, Germany. FDL, an ECSI conference, is the premier European forum to present research results, to exchange experiences, and to learn about new trends in the application of specification and design languages as well as of associated design and modelling methods and tools for integrated circuits, embedded systems, and heterogeneous systems. Modelling and specification concepts push the development of new methodologies for design and verification to system level, they thus provide the means for a model-driven design of complex information processing systems in a variety of application domains.

Rather than deciding whether or not to get involved in global sourcing, many companies are facing decisions about whether or not to apply agile methods in their distributed projects. These companies are often motivated by the opportunities to solve the coordination and communication difficulties associated with global software development. Yet while agile principles prescribe close interaction and co-location, the very nature of distributed software development does not support these prerequisites. Smite, Moe, and Agerfalk structured the book into five parts. In "Motivation" the editors introduce the fundamentals of agile distributed software development and explain the rationale behind the application of agile practices in globally distributed software projects. " Transition" describes implementation strategies, adoption of particular agile practices for distributed projects, and general concepts of agility. "Management" details practical implications for project planning, time management, and customer and subcontractor interaction. "Teams" discusses agile distributed team configuration, effective communication and knowledge transfer, and allocation of roles and responsibilities. Finally, in the "Epilogue" the editors summarize all contributions and present future trends for research and practice in agile distributed development. This book is primarily targeted at researchers, lecturers, and students in empirical software engineering, and at practitioners involved in globally distributed software projects. The contributions are based on sound empirical research and identify gaps and commonalities in both the existing state of the art and state of the practice. In addition, they also offer practical advice through many hints, checklists, and experience reports. Questions answered in this book include: What should companies expect from merging agile and distributed strategies? What are the stumbling blocks that prevent companies from realizing the benefits of the agile approach in distributed environments, and how can we recognize infeasible strategies and unfavorable circumstances? What helps managers cope with the challenges of implementing agile approaches in distributed software development projects? How can distributed teams survive the decisions taken by management and become efficient through the application of agile approaches?

Purpose The purpose of this book is to provide the reader with an understanding of the ISO 9000-3 guideline and how it applies to the specification, development, test, and maintenance of software. We will show that the basic practices and procedures that define software engineering and the ISO guideline are, for all intents and purposes, one and the same. We hope that the readers of this book will use the information found within not only to pass the certification audit but as a tool to be used to create the well-managed engineering environment needed to create reliable, well engineered products in a consistent manner. Audience This book is intended for senior software engineers, software managers, and non software managers within software organizations whose aim is to create an engi neering environment within their company or organization. In addition, individ uals outside the software organization who have responsibility for the specification of the software product and preparing their organization to take ownership of the developed product will find this book of great interest. Finally, those who must choose software companies to do business with or audit software companies to determine their ability to engineer and maintain a software product will find this book helpful. 2 Introduction Overview This book is made up of twenty-four chapters that can be grouped into four sections. Chapter 1 through Chapter 4 set the basis for the following chapters that deal directly with the guideline."

This book presents new concepts, techniques and promising programming models for designing software for chips with "many" (hundreds to thousands) processor cores. Given the scale of parallelism inherent to these chips, software designers face new challenges in terms of operating systems, middleware and applications. This will serve as an invaluable, single-source reference to the state-of-the-art in programming many-core chips. Coverage includes many-core architectures, operating systems, middleware, and programming models.

This unique text/reference describes an exciting and novel approach to supercomputing in the DataFlow paradigm. The major advantages and applications of this approach are clearly described, and a detailed explanation of the programming model is provided using simple yet effective examples. The work is developed from a series of lecture courses taught by the authors in more than 40 universities across more than 20 countries, and from research carried out by Maxeler Technologies, Inc. Topics and features: presents a thorough introduction to DataFlow supercomputing for big data problems; reviews the latest research on the DataFlow architecture and its applications; introduces a new method for the rapid handling of real-world challenges involving large datasets; provides a case study on the use of the new approach to accelerate the Cooley-Tukey algorithm on a DataFlow machine; includes a step-by-step guide to the web-based integrated development environment WebIDE.

Graph theory is a specific concept that has numerous applications throughout many industries. Despite the advancement of this technique, graph theory can still yield ambiguous and imprecise results. In order to cut down on these indeterminate factors, neutrosophic logic has emerged as an applicable solution that is gaining significant attention in solving many real-life decision-making problems that involve uncertainty, impreciseness, vagueness, incompleteness, inconsistency, and indeterminacy. However, empirical research on this specific graph set is lacking. Neutrosophic Graph Theory and Algorithms is a collection of innovative research on the methods and applications of neutrosophic sets and logic within various fields including systems analysis, economics, and transportation. While highlighting topics including linear programming, decision-making methods, and homomorphism, this book is ideally designed for programmers, researchers, data scientists, mathematicians, designers, educators, researchers, academicians, and students seeking current research on the various methods and applications of graph theory.

It was in the middle of the 1980s, when the seminal paper by Kar markar opened a new epoch in nonlinear optimization. The importance of this paper, containing a new polynomial-time algorithm for linear op timization problems, was not only in its complexity bound. At that time, the most surprising feature of this algorithm was that the theoretical pre diction of its high efficiency was supported by excellent computational results. This unusual fact dramatically changed the style and direc tions of the research in nonlinear optimization. Thereafter it became more and more common that the new methods were provided with a complexity analysis, which was considered a better justification of their efficiency than computational experiments. In a new rapidly develop ing field, which got the name "polynomial-time interior-point methods", such a justification was obligatory. Afteralmost fifteen years of intensive research, the main results of this development started to appear in monographs [12, 14, 16, 17, 18, 19]. Approximately at that time the author was asked to prepare a new course on nonlinear optimization for graduate students. The idea was to create a course which would reflect the new developments in the field. Actually, this was a major challenge. At the time only the theory of interior-point methods for linear optimization was polished enough to be explained to students. The general theory of self-concordant functions had appeared in print only once in the form of research monograph [12].

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 27th IFIP TC 11 International Information Security Conference, SEC 2012, held in Heraklion, Crete, Greece, in June 2012. The 42 revised full papers presented together with 11 short papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 167 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on attacks and malicious code, security architectures, system security, access control, database security, privacy attitudes and properties, social networks and social engineering, applied cryptography, anonymity and trust, usable security, security and trust models, security economics, and authentication and delegation.

Looking to become more efficient using Unity? How to Cheat in Unity 5 takes a no-nonsense approach to help you achieve fast and effective results with Unity 5. Geared towards the intermediate user, HTC in Unity 5 provides content beyond what an introductory book offers, and allows you to work more quickly and powerfully in Unity. Packed full with easy-to-follow methods to get the most from Unity, this book explores time-saving features for interface customization and scene management, along with productivity-enhancing ways to work with rendering and optimization. In addition, this book features a companion website at www.alanthorn.net, where you can download the book's companion files and also watch bonus tutorial video content. Learn bite-sized tips and tricks for effective Unity workflows Become a more powerful Unity user through interface customization Enhance your productivity with rendering tricks, better scene organization and more Better understand Unity asset and import workflows Learn techniques to save you time and money during development

Ontology Learning for the Semantic Web explores techniques for applying knowledge discovery techniques to different web data sources (such as HTML documents, dictionaries, etc.), in order to support the task of engineering and maintaining ontologies. The approach of ontology learning proposed in Ontology Learning for the Semantic Web includes a number of complementary disciplines that feed in different types of unstructured and semi-structured data. This data is necessary in order to support a semi-automatic ontology engineering process.
Ontology Learning for the Semantic Web is designed for researchers and developers of semantic web applications. It also serves as an excellent supplemental reference to advanced level courses in ontologies and the semantic web.

In recent years, digital technologies have become more ubiquitous and integrated into everyday life. While once reserved mostly for personal uses, video games and similar innovations are now implemented across a variety of fields. Transforming Gaming and Computer Simulation Technologies across Industries is a pivotal reference source for the latest research on emerging simulation technologies and gaming innovations to enhance industry performance and dependency. Featuring extensive coverage across a range of relevant perspectives and topics, such as user research, player identification, and multi-user virtual environments, this book is ideally designed for engineers, professionals, practitioners, upper-level students, and academics seeking current research on gaming and computer simulation technologies across different industries. Topics Covered: Digital vs. Non-Digital Platforms Ludic Simulations Mathematical Simulations Medical Gaming Multi-User Virtual Environments Player Experiences Player Identification User Research