This edited book presents the scientific outcomes of the 19th IEEE/ACIS International Conference on Software Engineering, Artificial Intelligence, Networking and Parallel/Distributed Computing (SNPD 2018), which was held in Busan, Korea on June 27-29, 2018. The aim of this conference was to bring together researchers and scientists, businessmen and entrepreneurs, teachers, engineers, computer users and students to discuss the numerous fields of computer science and to share their experiences and exchange new ideas and information in a meaningful way. The book includes research findings on all aspects (theory, applications and tools) of computer and information science and discusses the practical challenges encountered along the way and the solutions adopted to respond to them. The book includes 13 of the conference's most promising papers.

Despite decades of research, developing software that is fit for purpose, developed on time, and within budget remains a challenge. Many researchers have advocated the use of artificial intelligence techniques such as knowledge-based systems, neural networks, and data mining as a way of addressing these difficulties. ""Artificial Intelligence Applications for Improved Software Engineering Development: New Prospects"" provides an overview of useful techniques in artificial intelligence for future software development along with critical assessment for further advancement. A compendium of latest industry findings, this premier reference source offers researchers, academicians, and practitioners developmental ideas within the field.

Video games have become an increasingly ubiquitous part of society due to the proliferation and use of mobile devices. Video Games and Creativity explores research on the relationship between video games and creativity with regard to play, learning, and game design. It answers such questions as: Can video games be used to develop or enhance creativity? Is there a place for video games in the classroom? What types of creativity are needed to develop video games? While video games can be sources of entertainment, the role of video games in the classroom has emerged as an important component of improving the education system. The research and development of game-based learning has revealed the power of using games to teach and promote learning. In parallel, the role and importance of creativity in everyday life has been identified as a requisite skill for success.

While a number of books on the market deal with software requirements, this is the first resource to offer a methodology for discovering and testing the real business requirements that software products must meet in order to provide value.

This book discusses efficient prediction techniques for the current state-of-the-art High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) standard, focusing on the compression of a wide range of video signals, such as 3D video, Light Fields and natural images. The authors begin with a review of the state-of-the-art predictive coding methods and compression technologies for both 2D and 3D multimedia contents, which provides a good starting point for new researchers in the field of image and video compression. New prediction techniques that go beyond the standardized compression technologies are then presented and discussed. In the context of 3D video, the authors describe a new predictive algorithm for the compression of depth maps, which combines intra-directional prediction, with flexible block partitioning and linear residue fitting. New approaches are described for the compression of Light Field and still images, which enforce sparsity constraints on linear models. The Locally Linear Embedding-based prediction method is investigated for compression of Light Field images based on the HEVC technology. A new linear prediction method using sparse constraints is also described, enabling improved coding performance of the HEVC standard, particularly for images with complex textures based on repeated structures. Finally, the authors present a new, generalized intra-prediction framework for the HEVC standard, which unifies the directional prediction methods used in the current video compression standards, with linear prediction methods using sparse constraints. Experimental results for the compression of natural images are provided, demonstrating the advantage of the unified prediction framework over the traditional directional prediction modes used in HEVC standard.

This book provides comprehensive coverage of the modern methods for geometric problems in the computing sciences. It also covers concurrent topics in data sciences including geometric processing, manifold learning, Google search, cloud data, and R-tree for wireless networks and BigData. The author investigates digital geometry and its related constructive methods in discrete geometry, offering detailed methods and algorithms. The book is divided into five sections: basic geometry; digital curves, surfaces and manifolds; discretely represented objects; geometric computation and processing; and advanced topics. Chapters especially focus on the applications of these methods to other types of geometry, algebraic topology, image processing, computer vision and computer graphics. Digital and Discrete Geometry: Theory and Algorithms targets researchers and professionals working in digital image processing analysis, medical imaging (such as CT and MRI) and informatics, computer graphics, computer vision, biometrics, and information theory. Advanced-level students in electrical engineering, mathematics, and computer science will also find this book useful as a secondary text book or reference. Praise for this book: This book does present a large collection of important concepts, of mathematical, geometrical, or algorithmical nature, that are frequently used in computer graphics and image processing. These concepts range from graphs through manifolds to homology. Of particular value are the sections dealing with discrete versions of classic continuous notions. The reader finds compact definitions and concise explanations that often appeal to intuition, avoiding finer, but then necessarily more complicated, arguments... As a first introduction, or as a reference for professionals working in computer graphics or image processing, this book should be of considerable value." - Prof. Dr. Rolf Klein, University of Bonn.

As the software industry continues to evolve, professionals are continually searching for practices that can assist with the various problems and challenges in information technology (IT). Agile development has become a popular method of research in recent years due to its focus on adapting to change. There are many factors that play into this process, so success is no guarantee. However, combining agile development with other software engineering practices could lead to a high rate of success in problems that arise during the maintenance and development of computing technologies. Software Engineering for Agile Application Development is a collection of innovative research on the methods and implementation of adaptation practices in software development that improve the quality and performance of IT products. The presented materials combine theories from current empirical research results as well as practical experiences from real projects that provide insights into incorporating agile qualities into the architecture of the software so that the product adapts to changes and is easy to maintain. While highlighting topics including continuous integration, configuration management, and business modeling, this book is ideally designed for software engineers, software developers, engineers, project managers, IT specialists, data scientists, computer science professionals, researchers, students, and academics.

This two-volume set focuses on fundamental concepts and design goals (i.e., a switch/router's key features), architectures, and practical applications of switch/routers in IP networks. The discussion includes practical design examples to illustrate how switch/routers are designed and how the key features are implemented. Designing Switch/Routers: Fundamental Concepts, Design Methods, Architectures, and Applications begins by providing an introductory level discussion that covers the functions and architectures of the switch/router. The first book considers the switch/router as a generic Layer 2 and Layer 3 forwarding device without placing emphasis on any particular manufacturer's device. The underlining concepts and design methods are not only positioned to be applicable to this generic switch/router, but also to the typical switch/router seen in the industry. The discussion provides a better insight into the protocols, methods, processes, and tools that go into designing switch/routers. The second volume explains the design and architectural considerations, as well as, the typical processes and steps used to build practical switch/routers. It then discusses the advantages of using Ethernet in today's networks and why Ethernet continues to play a bigger role in Local Area Network (LAN), Metropolitan Area Network (MAN), and Wide Area Network (WAN) design. This book set provides a discussion of the design of switch/routers and is written in a style to appeal to undergraduate and graduate-level students, engineers, and researchers in the networking and telecoms industry, as well as academics and other industry professionals. The material and discussion are structured in such a way that they could serve as standalone teaching material for networking and telecom courses and/or supplementary material for such courses.

This treatise presents an integrated perspective on the interplay of set theory and graph theory, providing an extensive selection of examples that highlight how methods from one theory can be used to better solve problems originated in the other. Features: explores the interrelationships between sets and graphs and their applications to finite combinatorics; introduces the fundamental graph-theoretical notions from the standpoint of both set theory and dyadic logic, and presents a discussion on set universes; explains how sets can conveniently model graphs, discussing set graphs and set-theoretic representations of claw-free graphs; investigates when it is convenient to represent sets by graphs, covering counting and encoding problems, the random generation of sets, and the analysis of infinite sets; presents excerpts of formal proofs concerning graphs, whose correctness was verified by means of an automated proof-assistant; contains numerous exercises, examples, definitions, problems and insight panels.

Healthcare and well-being have captured the attention of established software companies, start-ups, and investors. Software is starting to play a central role for addressing the problems of the aging society and the escalating cost of healthcare services. Enablers of such digital health are a growing number of sensors for sensing the human body and communication infrastructure for remote meetings, data sharing, and messaging. The challenge that lies in front of us is how to effectively make use of these capabilities, for example to empower patients and to free the scarce resources of medical personnel. Requirements engineering is the process by which the capabilities of a software product are aligned with stakeholder needs and a shared understanding between the stakeholders and development team established. This book provides guide for what to look for and do when inquiring and specifying software that targets healthcare and well-being, helping readers avoid the pitfalls of the highly regulated and sensible healthcare domain are and how they can be overcome. This book brings together the knowledge of 22 researchers, engineers, lawyers, and CEOs that have experience in the development of digital health solutions. It represents a unique line-up of best practices and recommendations of how to engineer requirements for digital health. In particular the book presents: * The area of digital health, e-health, and m-health * Best practice for requirements engineering based on evidence from a large number of projects * Practical step-by-step guidelines, examples, and lessons-learned for working with laws, regulations, ethical issues, interoperability, user experience, security, and privacy * How to put these many concerns together for engineering the requirements of a digital health solution and for scaling a digital health product For anybody who intends to develop software for digital health, this book is an introduction and reference with a wealth of actionable insights. For students interested in understanding how to apply software to healthcare, the text introduces key topics and guides further studies with references to important literature.

This handbook provides a unique and in-depth survey of the current state-of-the-art in software engineering, covering its major topics, the conceptual genealogy of each subfield, and discussing future research directions. Subjects include foundational areas of software engineering (e.g. software processes, requirements engineering, software architecture, software testing, formal methods, software maintenance) as well as emerging areas (e.g., self-adaptive systems, software engineering in the cloud, coordination technology). Each chapter includes an introduction to central concepts and principles, a guided tour of seminal papers and key contributions, and promising future research directions. The authors of the individual chapters are all acknowledged experts in their field and include many who have pioneered the techniques and technologies discussed. Readers will find an authoritative and concise review of each subject, and will also learn how software engineering technologies have evolved and are likely to develop in the years to come. This book will be especially useful for researchers who are new to software engineering, and for practitioners seeking to enhance their skills and knowledge.

Python Passive Network Mapping: P2NMAP is the first book to reveal a revolutionary and open source method for exposing nefarious network activity. The "Heartbleed" vulnerability has revealed significant weaknesses within enterprise environments related to the lack of a definitive mapping of network assets. In Python Passive Network Mapping, Chet Hosmer shows you how to effectively and definitively passively map networks. Active or probing methods to network mapping have traditionally been used, but they have many drawbacks - they can disrupt operations, crash systems, and - most importantly - miss critical nefarious activity. You require an accurate picture of the environments you protect and operate in order to rapidly investigate, mitigate, and then recover from these new attack vectors. This book gives you a deep understanding of new innovations to passive network mapping, while delivering open source Python-based tools that can be put into practice immediately. Python Passive Network Mapping is for practitioners, forensic investigators, IT teams, and individuals who work together when performing incident response and investigating potential damage, or are examining the impacts of new malware threats. Those defending critical infrastructures will have a special interest in this book, as active or probing methods of network mapping are rarely used within these environments as any resulting impacts can be disastrous. Python Passive Network Mapping is ideally suited for use as a text in a variety of academic programs to expose and engage students in the art of passively mapping enterprise networks, with the added benefit of providing exposure to open source Python solutions.

This volume collects contributions written by different experts in honor of Prof. Jaime Munoz Masque. It covers a wide variety of research topics, from differential geometry to algebra, but particularly focuses on the geometric formulation of variational calculus; geometric mechanics and field theories; symmetries and conservation laws of differential equations, and pseudo-Riemannian geometry of homogeneous spaces. It also discusses algebraic applications to cryptography and number theory. It offers state-of-the-art contributions in the context of current research trends. The final result is a challenging panoramic view of connecting problems that initially appear distant.

In this work we plan to revise the main techniques for enumeration algorithms and to show four examples of enumeration algorithms that can be applied to efficiently deal with some biological problems modelled by using biological networks: enumerating central and peripheral nodes of a network, enumerating stories, enumerating paths or cycles, and enumerating bubbles. Notice that the corresponding computational problems we define are of more general interest and our results hold in the case of arbitrary graphs. Enumerating all the most and less central vertices in a network according to their eccentricity is an example of an enumeration problem whose solutions are polynomial and can be listed in polynomial time, very often in linear or almost linear time in practice. Enumerating stories, i.e. all maximal directed acyclic subgraphs of a graph G whose sources and targets belong to a predefined subset of the vertices, is on the other hand an example of an enumeration problem with an exponential number of solutions, that can be solved by using a non trivial brute-force approach. Given a metabolic network, each individual story should explain how some interesting metabolites are derived from some others through a chain of reactions, by keeping all alternative pathways between sources and targets. Enumerating cycles or paths in an undirected graph, such as a protein-protein interaction undirected network, is an example of an enumeration problem in which all the solutions can be listed through an optimal algorithm, i.e. the time required to list all the solutions is dominated by the time to read the graph plus the time required to print all of them. By extending this result to directed graphs, it would be possible to deal more efficiently with feedback loops and signed paths analysis in signed or interaction directed graphs, such as gene regulatory networks. Finally, enumerating mouths or bubbles with a source s in a directed graph, that is enumerating all the two vertex-disjoint directed paths between the source s and all the possible targets, is an example of an enumeration problem in which all the solutions can be listed through a linear delay algorithm, meaning that the delay between any two consecutive solutions is linear, by turning the problem into a constrained cycle enumeration problem. Such patterns, in a de Bruijn graph representation of the reads obtained by sequencing, are related to polymorphisms in DNA- or RNA-seq data.

This book summarizes the results of Design Thinking Research carried out at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, USA and at the Hasso Plattner Institute in Potsdam, Germany. Offering readers a closer look at Design Thinking, its innovation processes and methods, the book covers topics ranging from how to design ideas, methods and technologies, to creativity experiments and wicked problem solutions, to creative collaboration in the real world, and the interplay of designers and engineers. But the topics go beyond this in their detailed exploration of Design Thinking and its use in IT systems engineering fields, or even from a management perspective. The authors show how these methods and strategies actually work in companies, introduce new technologies and their functions, and demonstrate how Design Thinking can influence such unexpected topics as marriage. Furthermore, readers will learn how special-purpose Design Thinking can be used to solve wicked problems in complex fields. Thinking and devising innovations are fundamentally and inherently human activities - so is Design Thinking. Accordingly, Design Thinking is not merely the result of special courses nor of being gifted or trained: it's a way of dealing with our environment and improving techniques, technologies and life.

This book puts the spotlight on how a real-time kernel works using Micrium s C/OS-III as a reference. The book consists of two complete parts. The first describes real-time kernels in generic terms. Part II provide examples for the reader, using Texas Instruments EVM-EVALBOT, a small, robotic evaluation board. The board is based on the Stellaris LM3S9B92 which combines the popular ARM Cortex-M3(r) architecture with Ethernet MAC+PHY, USB OTG (On-The-Go), and I2S. Together with the IAR Systems Embedded Workbench for ARM development tools, the evaluation board provides everything necessary to enable the reader to be up and running quickly, as well as a fun and educational experience, resulting in a high-level of proficiency in a short time.

This book is written for serious embedded systems programmers, consultants, hobbyists, and students interested in understanding the inner workings of a real-time kernel. C/OS-III is not just a great learning platform, but also a full commercial-grade software package, ready to be part of a wide range of products.

C/OS-III is a highly portable, ROMable, scalable, preemptive real-time, multitasking kernel designed specifically to address the demanding requirements of today s embedded systems. C/OS-III is the successor to the highly popular C/OS-II real-time kernel but can use most of C/OS-II s ports with minor modifications. Some of the features of C/OS-III are:

Preemptive multitasking with round-robin scheduling of tasks at the same priority
Supports and unlimited number of tasks and other kernel objects
Rich set of services: semaphores, mutual exclusion semaphores with full priority inheritance, event flags, message queues, timers, fixed-size memory block management, and more. Built-in performance measurements

This book highlights how real-time kernels work, using Micrium s C/OS-III as a reference. The book consists of two parts: Part I describes real-time kernels in generic terms, while Part II provides practical examples using NXP s LPC1768 Microcontroller, based on the ARM Cortex M3(rev 2) architecture. A companion evaluation board (Keil MCB1700) and IDE (Keil MDK Evaluation Version) enable the reader to quickly and easily evaluate the microcontroller, tools and RTOS. A range of examples are included, providing a unique hands-on experience, and leading to a faster and better understanding of the concepts presented in the book.

This book is written for serious embedded systems programmers, consultants, hobbyists, and students interested in understanding the inner workings of a real-time kernel. C/OS-III is not just a great learning platform, but also a full commercial-grade software package, ready to be part of a wide range of products.

C/OS-III is a highly portable, ROMable, scalable, preemptive real-time, multitasking kernel designed specifically to address the demanding requirements of today s embedded systems. C/OS-III is the successor to the highly popular C/OS-II real-time kernel but can use most of C/OS-II s ports with minor modifications. Some of the features of C/OS-III are:

Preemptive multitasking with round-robin scheduling of tasks at the same priority
Supports and unlimited number of tasks and other kernel objects
Rich set of services: semaphores, mutual exclusion semaphores with full priority inheritance, event flags, message queues, timers, fixed-size memory block management, and more.
Built-in performance measurements

This book explains the most prominent and some promising new, general techniques that combine metaheuristics with other optimization methods. A first introductory chapter reviews the basic principles of local search, prominent metaheuristics, and tree search, dynamic programming, mixed integer linear programming, and constraint programming for combinatorial optimization purposes. The chapters that follow present five generally applicable hybridization strategies, with exemplary case studies on selected problems: incomplete solution representations and decoders; problem instance reduction; large neighborhood search; parallel non-independent construction of solutions within metaheuristics; and hybridization based on complete solution archives. The authors are among the leading researchers in the hybridization of metaheuristics with other techniques for optimization, and their work reflects the broad shift to problem-oriented rather than algorithm-oriented approaches, enabling faster and more effective implementation in real-life applications. This hybridization is not restricted to different variants of metaheuristics but includes, for example, the combination of mathematical programming, dynamic programming, or constraint programming with metaheuristics, reflecting cross-fertilization in fields such as optimization, algorithmics, mathematical modeling, operations research, statistics, and simulation. The book is a valuable introduction and reference for researchers and graduate students in these domains.

Conceptual modeling has always been one of the main issues in information systems engineering as it aims to describe the general knowledge of the system at an abstract level that facilitates user understanding and software development. This collection of selected papers provides a comprehensive and extremely readable overview of what conceptual modeling is and perspectives on making it more and more relevant in our society. It covers topics like modeling the human genome, blockchain technology, model-driven software development, data integration, and wiki-like repositories and demonstrates the general applicability of conceptual modeling to various problems in diverse domains. Overall, this book is a source of inspiration for everybody in academia working on the vision of creating a strong, fruitful and creative community of conceptual modelers. With this book the editors and authors want to honor Prof. Antoni Olive for his enormous and ongoing contributions to the conceptual modeling discipline. It was presented to him on the occasion of his keynote at ER 2017 in Valencia, a conference that he has contributed to and supported for over 20 years. Thank you very much to Antoni for so many years of cooperation and friendship.

This book presents an overview of the emerging field of emotion in videogame soundtracking. The emotional impact of music has been well-documented, particularly when used to enhance the impact of a multimodal experience, such as combining images with audio as found in the videogames industry. Soundtracking videogames presents a unique challenge compared to traditional composition (for example film music) in that the narrative of gameplay is non-linear - Player dependent actions can change the narrative and thus the emotional characteristics required in the soundtrack. Historical approaches to emotion measurement, and the musical feature mapping and music selection that might be used in video game soundtracking are outlined, before a series of cutting edge examples are given. These examples include algorithmic composition techniques, automated emotion matching from biosensors, motion capture techniques, emotionally-targeted speech synthesis and signal processing, and automated repurposing of existing music (for example from a players own library). The book concludes with some possibilities for the future.

Transactions are a concept related to the logical database as seen from the perspective of database application programmers: a transaction is a sequence of database actions that is to be executed as an atomic unit of work. The processing of transactions on databases is a well- established area with many of its foundations having already been laid in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The unique feature of this textbook is that it bridges the gap between the theory of transactions on the logical database and the implementation of the related actions on the underlying physical database. The authors relate the logical database, which is composed of a dynamically changing set of data items with unique keys, and the underlying physical database with a set of fixed-size data and index pages on disk. Their treatment of transaction processing builds on the "do-redo-undo" recovery paradigm, and all methods and algorithms presented are carefully designed to be compatible with this paradigm as well as with write-ahead logging, steal-and-no-force buffering, and fine-grained concurrency control. Chapters 1 to 6 address the basics needed to fully appreciate transaction processing on a centralized database system within the context of our transaction model, covering topics like ACID properties, database integrity, buffering, rollbacks, isolation, and the interplay of logical locks and physical latches. Chapters 7 and 8 present advanced features including deadlock-free algorithms for reading, inserting and deleting tuples, while the remaining chapters cover additional advanced topics extending on the preceding foundational chapters, including multi-granular locking, bulk actions, versioning, distributed updates, and write-intensive transactions. This book is primarily intended as a text for advanced undergraduate or graduate courses on database management in general or transaction processing in particular.