Many emerging technologies such as video conferencing, video-on-demand, and digital libraries require the efficient delivery of compressed video streams. For applications that require the delivery of compressed stored multimedia streams, the a priori knowledge available about these compressed streams can aid in the allocation of server and network resources. By using a client-side buffer, the resource requirements from the server and network can be minimized. Buffering Techniques for Delivery of Compressed Video in Video-on-Demand Systems presents a comprehensive description of buffering techniques for the delivery of compressed, prerecorded multimedia data. While these techniques can be applied to any compressed data streams, this book focusses primarily on the delivery of video streams because of the large resource requirements that they can consume. The book first describes buffering techniques for the continuous playback of stored video sources. In particular, several bandwidth smoothing (or buffering) algorithms that are provably optimal under certain conditions are presented. To provide a well-rounded discussion, the book then describes extensions that aid in the ability to provide interactive delivery of video across networks. Specifically, reservation techniques that take into account interactive functions such as fast-forward and rewind are described. In addition, extensions to the bandwidth smoothing algorithms presented in the first few chapters are described. These algorithms are designed with interactive, continuous playback of stored video in mind and are also provably optimal under certain constraints. Buffering Techniques for Delivery of Compressed Video in Video-on-Demand Systems serves as an excellent resource for multimedia systems, networking and video-on-demand designers, and may be used as a text for advanced courses on the topic.

This book treats computational modeling of structures in which strong nonlinearities are present. It is therefore a work in mechanics and engineering, although the discussion centers on methods that are considered parts of applied mathematics. The task is to simulate numerically the behavior of a structure under various imposed excitations, forces, and displacements, and then to determine the resulting damage to the structure, and ultimately to optimize it so as to minimize the damage, subject to various constraints. The method used is iterative: at each stage an approximation to the displacements, strains, and stresses throughout the structure is computated and over all times in the interval of interest. This method leads to a general approach for understanding structural models and the necessary approximations.

The book Model-Based Reasoning in Scientific Discovery, aims to explain how specific modeling practices employed by scientists are productive methods of creative changes in science. The study of diagnostic, visual, spatial, analogical, and temporal reasoning has demonstrated that there are many ways of performing intelligent and creative reasoning which cannot be described by classical logic alone. The study of these high-level methods of reasoning is situated at the crossroads of philosophy, artificial intelligence, cognitive psychology, and logic: at the heart of cognitive science. Model based reasoning promotes conceptual change because it is effective in abstracting, generating, and integrating constraints in ways that produce novel results. There are several key ingredients common to the various forms of model-based reasoning to be considered in this presentation. The models are intended as interpretations of target physical systems, processes, phenomena, or situations. The models are retrieved or constructed on the basis of potentially satisfying salient constraints of the target domain. In the modeling process, various forms of abstraction, such as limiting case, idealization, generalization, and generic modeling are utilized. Evaluation and adaptation take place in the light of structural of structural, causal, and/or functional constraint satisfaction and enhanced understanding of the target problem is obtained through the modeling process. Simulation can be used to produce new states and enable evaluation of behaviors, constraint satisfaction, and other factors. The book also addresses some of the main aspects of the concept of abduction, connecting it to the centralepistemological question of hypothesis withdrawal in science and model-based reasoning, where abductive interferences exhibit their most appealing cognitive virtues. The most recent results and achievements in the above areas are illustrated in detail by the various contributors to the work, who are among the most respected researchers in philosophy, artificial intelligence and cognitive science.

Automatic Graph Drawing is concerned with the layout of relational structures as they occur in Computer Science (Data Base Design, Data Mining, Web Mining), Bioinformatics (Metabolic Networks), Businessinformatics (Organization Diagrams, Event Driven Process Chains), or the Social Sciences (Social Networks). In mathematical terms, such relational structures are modeled as graphs or more general objects such as hypergraphs, clustered graphs, or compound graphs. A variety of layout algorithms that are based on graph theoretical foundations have been developed in the last two decades and implemented in software systems. After an introduction to the subject area and a concise treatment of the technical foundations for the subsequent chapters, this book features 14 chapters on state-of-the-art graph drawing software systems, ranging from general "tool boxes'' to customized software for various applications. These chapters are written by leading experts, they follow a uniform scheme and can be read independently from each other.

The book focusses on questions of individual and collective action, the emergence and dynamics of social norms and the feedback between individual behaviour and social phenomena. It discusses traditional modelling approaches to social norms and shows the usefulness of agent-based modelling for the study of these micro-macro interactions. Existing agent-based models of social norms are discussed and it is shown that so far too much priority has been given to parsimonious models and questions of the emergence of norms, with many aspects of social norms, such as norm-change, not being modelled. Juvenile delinquency, group radicalisation and moral decision making are used as case studies for agent-based models of collective action extending existing models by providing an embedding into social networks, social influence via argumentation and a causal action theory of moral decision making. The major contribution of the book is to highlight the multifaceted nature of the dynamics of social norms, consisting not only of emergence, and the importance of embedding of agent-based models into existing theory."

This book represents the compilation of papers presented at the IFIP Working Group 8. 2 conference entitled "Information Technology in the Service Economy: Challenges st and Possibilities for the 21 Century. " The conference took place at Ryerson University, Toronto, Canada, on August 10 13, 2008. Par ticipation in the conference spanned the continents from Asia to Europe with paper submissions global in focus as well. Conference submissions included complete d research papers and research in progress reports. Papers submitted to the conference went through a double blind review process in which the program co chairs, an associate editor, and reviewers provided assessments and recommendations. The editor ial efforts of the associate editors and reviewers in this process were outstanding. To foster high quality research publications in this field of study, authors of accepted pape rs were then invited to revise and resubmit their work. Through this rigorous review and revision process, 12 completed research papers and 11 research in progress reports were accepted for presentation and publica tion. Paper workshop sessions were also esta blished to provide authors of emergent work an opportunity to receive feedback fromthe IF IP 8. 2 community. Abstracts of these new projects are included in this volume. Four panels were presented at the conference to provide discussion forums for the varied aspect s of IT, service, and globalization. Panel abstracts are also included here.

This book presents a unified theory of rare event simulation and the variance reduction technique known as importance sampling from the point of view of the probabilistic theory of large deviations. It allows us to view a vast assortment of simulation problems from a unified single perspective.

We are extremely pleased to present a comprehensive book comprising a collection of research papers which is basically an outcome of the Second IFIP TC 13.6 Working Group conference on Human Work Interaction Design, HWID2009. The conference was held in Pune, India during October 7-8, 2009. It was hosted by the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing, India, and jointly organized with Copenhagen Business School, Denmark; Aarhus University, Denmark; and Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati, India. The theme of HWID2009 was Usability in Social, C- tural and Organizational Contexts. The conference was held under the auspices of IFIP TC 13 on Human-Computer Interaction. 1 Technical Committee TC13 on Human-Computer Interaction The committees under IFIP include the Technical Committee TC13 on Human-Computer Interaction within which the work of this volume has been conducted. TC13 on Human-Computer Interaction has as its aim to encourage theoretical and empirical human science research to promote the design and evaluation of human-oriented ICT. Within TC13 there are different working groups concerned with different aspects of human- computer interaction. The flagship event of TC13 is the bi-annual international conference called INTERACT at which both invited and contributed papers are presented. Contributed papers are rigorously refereed and the rejection rate is high.

Content-Based Audio Classification and Retrieval for Audiovisual Data Parsing is an up-to-date overview of audio and video content analysis. Included is extensive treatment of audiovisual data segmentation, indexing and retrieval based on multimodal media content analysis, and content-based management of audio data. In addition to the commonly studied audio types such as speech and music, the authors have included hybrid types of sounds that contain more than one kind of audio component such as speech or environmental sound with music in the background. Emphasis is also placed on semantic-level identification and classification of environmental sounds. The authors introduce a new generic audio retrieval system on top of the audio archiving schemes. Both theoretical analysis and implementation issues are presented. The developing MPEG-7 standards are explored. Content-Based Audio Classification and Retrieval for Audiovisual Data Parsing will be especially useful to researchers and graduate level students designing and developing fully functional audiovisual systems for audio/video content parsing of multimedia streams.

The book covers the various approaches to modeling the in-cylinder processes such as mixture formation, combustion and formation of exhaust emissions in diesel and gasoline engines. Due to their complexity, emphasis is put on multi-dimensional spray, combustion and emission formation models. However, phenomenological as well as zero-dimensional thermodynamic models, which are still widely used in engine development because of their computational efficiency, are addressed as well. Example calculations of each model type are compared with corresponding experimental data – represented in diagrams as well as in images resulting from modern optical measuring techniques – in order to discuss the capabilities of today's simulation models and the shortcomings that still exist either because of oversimplifying assumptions or insufficient knowledge. Readers achieve an overview of the most important simulation models describing the in-cylinder processes of internal combustion engines and gain insights into which modeling approach is appropriate for a specific problem.

Autopoietic systems show a remarkable property in the way they interact with their environment: on the one hand building blocks and energy (including information) are exchanged with the environment, which characterizes them as open systems; on the other hand, any functional mechanisms-the way the system processes, incorporates building blocks, and responds to information-are totally self-determined and cannot be controlled by interventions from the environment. Information systems in an organization seem to accept the autopoietic system way of development and can help managers to understand the operations of their organizations better. Autopoiesis and Self-Sustaining Processes for Organizational Success is an innovative reference book that presents the meaning of autopoietic organizations for social and information science, examines how autopoietic organizations are information self-producing and self-controlled, and provides a framework for its development in modern organizations. The book focuses on analyzing autopoiesis features such as self-managing, self-sustaining, self-producing, self-regulating, etc. Moreover, as the aforementioned characteristics receive a new interpretation in IT environments, the book also includes an exploration of IT solutions that enable the development of these characteristics. This book is ideal for professionals, academicians, researchers, and students working in the field of information economics and management in various disciplines such as information and communication sciences, administrative sciences and management, education, computer science, and information technology.

This volume contains the Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Intelligent Interactive Multimedia Systems and Services (IIMSS-2011). IIMSS-2011 comes as a sequel to IIMSS-2008 (Piraeus-Athens, Greece, July 9, 10 and 11, 2008), IIMSS-2009 (Mogliano Veneto (near Venice), Italy, July 15, 16 and 17, 2009) and IIMSS-2010 (Baltimore, USA, July 28, 29, and 30, 2010). This fourth edition of the IIMSS Conference was organized jointly by the Department of Informatics of the University of Piraeus, Greece and the School of Electrical and Information Engineering of the University of South Australia, in conjunction with KES International. At a time when computers are more widespread than ever and computer users range from highly qualified scientists to non-computer-expert professionals and may include people with special needs, interactivity, personalization and adaptivity have become a necessity in modern multimedia systems. Modern intelligent multimedia systems need to be interactive not only through classical modes of interaction where the user inputs information through a keyboard or mouse. They must also support other modes of interaction, such as visual or lingual computer-user interfaces, which render them more attractive, user friendlier, more human-like and more informative. IIMSS is a new series of international scientific conferences aimed at presenting novel research in the fields of intelligent multimedia systems relevant to the development of a new generation of interactive, user-centric services.

Several works on multimedia storage appear in literature today, but very little if any, have been devoted to handling long duration video retrieval, over large scale networks. Distributed retrieval of multimedia documents, especially the long duration documents, is an imperative step in rendering high-quality, high-fidelity, and cost-effective services for network service providers.

Distributed Multimedia Retrieval Strategies for Large Scale Networked Systems presents an up-to-date research status in the domain of distributed video retrieval. This professional book will include several different techniques that are in place for long duration video retrieval. An experimentally tested technology under the JINI platform, demonstrates a practical working system which serves as a feasibility study, as well as the first step in realizing such a technology.

This monograph book is focused on the recent advances in smart, multimedia and computer gaming technologies. The Contributions include: *Smart Gamification and Smart Serious Games. *Fusion of secure IPsec-based Virtual Private Network, mobile computing and rich multimedia technology. *Teaching and Promoting Smart Internet of Things Solutions Using the Serious-game Approach. *Evaluation of Student Knowledge using an e-Learning Framework. *The iTEC Eduteka. *3D Virtual Worlds as a Fusion of Immersing, Visualizing, Recording, and Replaying Technologies. *Fusion of multimedia and mobile technology in audio guides for Museums and Exhibitions: from Bluetooth Push to Web Pull. The book is directed to researchers, students and software developers working in the areas of education and information technologies.

This textbook on computational statistics presents tools and concepts of univariate and multivariate statistical data analysis with a strong focus on applications and implementations in the statistical software R. It covers mathematical, statistical as well as programming problems in computational statistics and contains a wide variety of practical examples. In addition to the numerous R sniplets presented in the text, all computer programs (quantlets) and data sets to the book are available on GitHub and referred to in the book. This enables the reader to fully reproduce as well as modify and adjust all examples to their needs. The book is intended for advanced undergraduate and first-year graduate students as well as for data analysts new to the job who would like a tour of the various statistical tools in a data analysis workshop. The experienced reader with a good knowledge of statistics and programming might skip some sections on univariate models and enjoy the various ma thematical roots of multivariate techniques. The Quantlet platform quantlet.de, quantlet.com, quantlet.org is an integrated QuantNet environment consisting of different types of statistics-related documents and program codes. Its goal is to promote reproducibility and offer a platform for sharing validated knowledge native to the social web. QuantNet and the corresponding Data-Driven Documents-based visualization allows readers to reproduce the tables, pictures and calculations inside this Springer book.

This book reports on the development and validation of a generic defeasible logic programming framework for carrying out argumentative reasoning in Semantic Web applications (GF@SWA). The proposed methodology is unique in providing a solution for representing incomplete and/or contradictory information coming from different sources, and reasoning with it. GF@SWA is able to represent this type of information, perform argumentation-driven hybrid reasoning to resolve conflicts, and generate graphical representations of the integrated information, thus assisting decision makers in decision making processes. GF@SWA represents the first argumentative reasoning engine for carrying out automated reasoning in the Semantic Web context and is expected to have a significant impact on future business applications. The book provides the readers with a detailed and clear exposition of different argumentation-based reasoning techniques, and of their importance and use in Semantic Web applications. It addresses both academics and professionals, and will be of primary interest to researchers, students and practitioners in the area of Web-based intelligent decision support systems and their application in various domains.

The book presents a conceptually novel oscillations based paradigm, the Oscillation-Based Multi-Agent System (OSIMAS), aimed at the modelling of agents and their systems as coherent, stylized, neurodynamic processes. This paradigm links emerging research domains via coherent neurodynamic oscillation based representations of the individual human mind and society (as a coherent collective mind) states. Thus, this multidisciplinary paradigm delivers an empirical and simulation research framework that provides a new way of modelling the complex dynamics of individual and collective mind states. This book addresses a conceptual problem - the lack of a multidisciplinary, connecting paradigm, which could link fragmented research in the fields of neuroscience, artificial intelligence (AI), multi-agent system (MAS) and the social network domains. The need for a common multidisciplinary research framework essentially arises because these fields share a common object of investigation and simulation, i.e., individual and collective human behavior. Although the fields of research mentioned above all approach this from different perspectives, their common object of investigation unites them. By putting the various pathways of research as they are interrelated into perspective, this book provides a philosophical underpinning, experimental background and modelling tools that the author anticipates will reveal new frontiers in multidisciplinary research. Fundamental investigation of the implicit oscillatory nature of agents' mind states and social mediums in general can reveal some new ways of understanding the periodic and nonperiodic fluctuations taking place in real life. For example, via agent states-related diffusion properties, we could investigate complex economic phenomena like the spread of stock market crashes, currency crises, speculative oscillations (bubbles and crashes), social unrest, recessionary effects, sovereign defaults, etc. All these effects are closely associated with social fragility, which follows and is affected by cycles such as production, political, business and financial. Thus, the multidisciplinary OSIMAS paradigm can yield new knowledge and research perspectives, allowing for a better understanding of social agents and their social organization principles.

This book discusses the latest advances in algorithms for symbolic summation, factorization, symbolic-numeric linear algebra and linear functional equations. It presents a collection of papers on original research topics from the Waterloo Workshop on Computer Algebra (WWCA-2016), a satellite workshop of the International Symposium on Symbolic and Algebraic Computation (ISSAC'2016), which was held at Wilfrid Laurier University (Waterloo, Ontario, Canada) on July 23-24, 2016. This workshop and the resulting book celebrate the 70th birthday of Sergei Abramov (Dorodnicyn Computing Centre of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow), whose highly regarded and inspirational contributions to symbolic methods have become a crucial benchmark of computer algebra and have been broadly adopted by many Computer Algebra systems.

"The Definitive Guide to SQLite" is the perfect book about SQLite. It covers everything needed to start working with SQLite including installation, using the SQLite shell, and programming with SQLite using six different language extensions. -- Joe Topjian, Adminspotting

Traditional relational databases and embedded databases both have shortcomings that can leave a developer perplexed. So for many people, the solution resides in SQLite, an open source embeddable database with an amazingly small footprint (less than 250 kilobytes). SQLite packs a powerful array of features and can handle databases as large as 2 terabytes. It offers a flexible set of datatypes and the ability to perform transactions, and it is supported by languages like C, PHP, Perl, and Python. And because SQLite's databases are completely file based, privileges are granted at the operating system level, allowing for easy and fast user management.

"The Definitive Guide to SQLite" is the first book to devote complete coverage to the latest version of this powerful database. It offers you a thorough overview of SQLite capabilities and APIs, while remaining cognizant of newcomers who may be making their first foray into a database environment with SQLite. This book serves as both a first-time tutorial and future reference guide." Youll learn about SQLite extensions available for C, Java, Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby, and Tcl. The book thoroughly covers SQLite internals to help you take full advantage of its features while minimally impacting resource consumption. Author Mike Owens is the original creator of Pysqlite, the popular Python extension for SQLite.

Advancing medical technologies are now developing cutting-edge computer applications useful to the field of oral studies. Informatics in Oral Medicine: Advanced Techniques in Clinical and Diagnostic Technologies provides innovative research techniques on current technologies in the management of problems in oral health and medicine. A unique and comprehensive reference source, this enriched collection contains valuable computational tools and the latest applications in dental and oral research topics such as artificial mouths, laser melting, and dentist appointment management.

"All problems in computer graphics can be solved with a matrix inversion." Jim Blinn
Jim Blinn is Back
Dirty Pixels is Jim's second compendium of articles selected from his award-winning column, "Jim Blinn's Corner," in "IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications." Here he addresses topics in image processing and pixel arithmetic and shares the tricks he's uncovered through years of experimentation.
Writing in the inimitable, engaging style for which he's famous, Jim's easy-to-understadn explanations and solutions make abstract concepts accessible to a broad audience. Dirty Pixels is an invaluable resource for anyone in the computer graphics field.
Teapots and More
Jim's contributions to computer graphics include the Voyager Fly-by animations of space missions to Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus; "The Mechanical Universe," a 52-part telecourse of animated physics; and the computer animation of Carl Sagan's PBS series "Cosmos." Jim developed many graphics techniques now in widespread use, among them bump mapping, environment mapping, and blobby modeling."

Cross-Media Service Delivery is of interest to professionals and academicians working in content authoring and electronic publishing platforms; as well as in media and broadcasting.
The digitization of traditional media formats, such as text, images, video, and sound provides us with the ability to store, process, and transport content in a uniform way. This has led the formerly distinct industries of media, telecommunications, and information technology to converge. Cross-media publishing and service delivery are important new trends emerging in the content industry landscape. Mass-media organizations and content providers transitionally targeted content production towards a single delivery channel. However, recent economic and technological changes in the industry led content providers to extend their brands to cover multiple delivery channels. Following the content industry trend to "create once and publish everywhere" - COPE, a number of architectures, technologies, and tools are currently being developed and deployed to facilitate the automatic conversion of content to multiple formats, and the creation of innovative multi-platform services. This new approach enables the seamless access to information over different network infrastructures and client platforms.
This work uniquely brings together a cross-disciplinary core of contributors to address the technical and business issues of cross-media publishing and service delivery. The contributions are organized into four different areas: the business issues driving the requirements for cross media content delivery, the architectures used for delivering content to multiple platforms, technologies that address specificpractical problems, and, last but not least, concrete applications.

This book is broadly organized in three parts. The first section ('Enhancing and Managing Customer Value') focuses on presenting the state-of-knowledge in managing and enhancing customer value through extraction of consumer-centric knowledge from mountains of data that modern interactive applications generate. The extracted information can then be used to provide more personalized information to customers, provide more relevant information or products, and even to create innovative business processes to enhance overall value to customers. The second section in the book ('Computational Approaches for Business Processes') focuses on presenting several specific innovative computing artifacts and tools developed by researchers that are not yet commercially used. These represent cutting-edge thought and advances in business computing research that should soon find utility in real-world applications or as a tool to analyze real-world scenarios. The final section in the book ('Supporting Knowledge Enterprise') presents approaches and frameworks that focus on ability of an enterprise to analyze, build, and protect computing infrastructure that supports value-added dimensions to the enterprise's existing business processes.

The author introduces the reader to the creation and implementation of space-related models by applying a learning-by-doing and problem-oriented approach. The required procedural skills are rarely taught at universities and many scientists and engineers struggle to transfer a model into a computer program. The purpose of this book is to fill this gap. It moves from simple to more complex applications, covering various important topics in the sequence: dynamic matrix processing, 2D and 3D graphics, databases, Java applets and parallel computing. A file (SMOP.zip) with all examples can be downloaded free of charge from the Internet at http: //de.geocities.com/bsttc2/book.