There are two groups of researchers who are interested in designing network protocols and who cannot (yet) effectively communicate with one another c- cerning these protocols. The first is the group of protocol verifiers, and the second is the group of protocol implementors. The main reason for the lack of effective communication between these two groups is that these groups use languages with quite different semantics to specify network protocols. On one hand, the protocol verifiers use specification languages whose semantics are abstract, coarse-grained, and with large atom- ity. Clearly, protocol specifications that are developed based on such semantics are easier to prove correct. On the other hand, the protocol implementors use specification languages whose semantics are concrete, fine-grained, and with small atomicity. Protocol specifications that are developed based on such - mantics are easier to implement using system programming languages such as C, C++, and Java. To help in closing this communication gap between the group of protocol verifiers and the group of protocol implementors, we present in this monograph a protocol specification language called the Timed Abstract Protocol (or TAP, for short) notation. This notation is greatly influenced by the Abstract Protocol Notation in the textbook Elements of Network Protocol Design, written by the second author, Mohamed G. Gouda. The TAP notation has two types of sem- tics: an abstract semantics that appeals to the protocol verifiers and a concrete semantics thatappeals to the protocol implementors group.

The use of information and communication technologies to support public administrations, governments and decision makers has been recorded for more than 20 years and dubbed e-Government. Moving towards open governance roadmaps worldwide, electronic participation and citizen engagement stand out as a new domain, important both for decision makers and citizens; and over the last decade, there have been a variety of related pilot projects and innovative approaches.

With contributions from leading researchers, Charalabidis and Koussouris provide the latest research findings such as theoretical foundations, principles, methodologies, architectures, technical frameworks, cases and lessons learnt within the domain of open, collaborative governance and online citizen engagement. The book is divided into three sections: Section one, "Public Policy Debate Foundations," lays the foundations regarding processes and methods for scoping, planning, evaluating and transforming citizen engagement. The second section, "Information and Communication Technologies for Citizen Participation," details practical approaches to designing and creating collaborative governance infrastructures and citizen participation for businesses and administrations. Lastly, the third section on "Future Research Directions of Open, Collaborative ICT-enabled Governance" provides a constructive critique of the developments in the past and presents prospects regarding future challenges and research directions.

The book is mainly written for academic researchers and graduate students working in the computer, social, political and management sciences. Its audience includes researchers and practitioners in e-Governance, public administration officials, policy and decision makers at the local, national and international level engaged in the design and creation of policies and services, and ICT professionals engaged in e-Governance and policy modelling projects and solutions.

Language, Compilers and Run-time Systems for Scalable Computers contains 20 articles based on presentations given at the third workshop of the same title, and 13 extended abstracts from the poster session. Starting with new developments in classical problems of parallel compiler design, such as dependence analysis and an exploration of loop parallelism, the book goes on to address the issues of compiler strategy for specific architectures and programming environments. Several chapters investigate support for multi-threading, object orientation, irregular computation, locality enhancement, and communication optimization. Issues of the interface between language and operating system support are also discussed. Finally, the load balance issues are discussed in different contexts, including sparse matrix computation and iteratively balanced adaptive solvers for partial differential equations. Some additional topics are also discussed in the extended abstracts. Each chapter provides a bibliography of relevant papers and the book can thus be used as a reference to the most up-to-date research in parallel software engineering.

This book illustrates the current work of leading multilevel modeling (MLM) researchers from around the world.

The book's goal is to critically examine the real problems that occur when trying to use MLMs in applied research, such as power, experimental design, and model violations. This presentation of cutting-edge work and statistical innovations in multilevel modeling includes topics such as growth modeling, repeated measures analysis, nonlinear modeling, outlier detection, and meta analysis.

This volume will be beneficial for researchers with advanced statistical training and extensive experience in applying multilevel models, especially in the areas of education; clinical intervention; social, developmental and health psychology, and other behavioral sciences; or as a supplement for an introductory graduate-level course.

Nontraditional Database Systems is the fifth volume in the Advanced Information Processing Technology series. It brings together the results of research carried out by the Japanese database research community in the field of nontraditional database systems.

The book examines nontraditional types of applications, data types, systems and environments together with high-performance architecture to support nontraditional applications, such as web mining, data engineering and object processing.

eBook available with sample pages: 0203301943

Explains the basic concepts of Python and its role in machine learning Provides comprehensive coverage of feature-engineering including real-time case studies Perceive the structural patterns with reference to data science and statistics and analytics Includes machine learning based structured exercises Appreciates different algorithmic concepts of machine learning including unsupervised, supervised and reinforcement learning

Constraint databases provide extra expressive power over relational databases in a largely hidden way at the data-storage or physical level. Constraints, such as linear or polynomial equations, are used to represent large sets in a compact manner. They keep the view of the database for a user or application programmer almost as simple as in relational databases. "Introduction to Constraint Databases" comprehensively covers both constraint-database theory and several sample systems. The book reveals how constraint databases bring together techniques from a variety of fields, such as logic and model theory, algebraic and computational geometry, and symbolic computation, to the design and analysis of data models and query languages. Constraint databases are shown to be powerful and simple tools for data modeling and querying in application areas¿such as environmental modeling, bioinformatics, and computer vision--that are not suitable for relational databases. Specific applications are examined in geographic information systems, spatiotemporal data management, linear programming, genome databases, model checking of automata, and other areas. Topics and features: *Offers a database perspective and a focus on simplicity at the user level *Utilizes simple tools for determining whether queries are safe or not *Incorporates scientist-supplied descriptions of applications *Explains constraint databases from a developer's viewpoint *Provides extensive exercise sets, and sample software systems, that facilitate rapid learning of the topic within a real-world software context This volume presents a comprehensive introduction to the theory and applications of constraint database systems, which provide new methods for the design of data models and query languages. It is an essential resource for advanced students, practitioners, and professionals in computer science, database systems, and information systems.

Digital Watermarking for Digital Media discusses the new aspects of digital watermarking in a worldwide context. Approached not only from the technical side, but the business and legal sides as well, this book discusses digital watermarking as it relates to many areas of digital media. Broad in its approach, Digital Watermarking for Digital Media provides a comprehensive overview not provided by any texts. Students in information technology, law, multimedia design, and economics will all find valuable material here. But this book is not limited to only students. Artists, composers, lawyers, and publishers will all find value in this digital watermarking book.

Thisbookpresentsmaterialwhichismorealgorithmicallyorientedthanmost alternatives.Italsodealswithtopicsthatareatorbeyondthestateoftheart. Examples include practical and applicable wavelet and other multiresolution transform analysis. New areas are broached like the ridgelet and curvelet transforms. The reader will ?nd in this book an engineering approach to the interpretation of scienti?c data. Compared to the 1st Edition, various additions have been made throu- out, and the topics covered have been updated. The background or en- ronment of this book's topics include continuing interest in e-science and the virtual observatory, which are based on web based and increasingly web service based science and engineering. Additional colleagues whom we would like to acknowledge in this 2nd edition include: Bedros Afeyan, Nabila Aghanim, Emmanuel Cand' es, David Donoho, Jalal Fadili, and Sandrine Pires, We would like to particularly - knowledge Olivier Forni who contributed to the discussion on compression of hyperspectral data, Yassir Moudden on multiwavelength data analysis and Vicent Mart' ?nez on the genus function. The cover image to this 2nd edition is from the Deep Impact project. It was taken approximately 8 minutes after impact on 4 July 2005 with the CLEAR6 ?lter and deconvolved using the Richardson-Lucy method. We thank Don Lindler, Ivo Busko, Mike A'Hearn and the Deep Impact team for the processing of this image and for providing it to us.

Every second, users produce large amounts of image data from medical and satellite imaging systems. Image mining techniques that are capable of extracting useful information from image data are becoming increasingly useful, especially in medicine and the health sciences. Biomedical Image Analysis and Mining Techniques for Improved Health Outcomes addresses major techniques regarding image processing as a tool for disease identification and diagnosis, as well as treatment recommendation. Highlighting current research intended to advance the medical field, this publication is essential for use by researchers, advanced-level students, academicians, medical professionals, and technology developers. An essential addition to the reference material available in the field of medicine, this timely publication covers a range of applied research on data mining, image processing, computational simulation, data visualization, and image retrieval.

Based on interdisciplinary research into "Directional Change", a new data-driven approach to financial data analysis, Detecting Regime Change in Computational Finance: Data Science, Machine Learning and Algorithmic Trading applies machine learning to financial market monitoring and algorithmic trading. Directional Change is a new way of summarising price changes in the market. Instead of sampling prices at fixed intervals (such as daily closing in time series), it samples prices when the market changes direction ("zigzags"). By sampling data in a different way, this book lays out concepts which enable the extraction of information that other market participants may not be able to see. The book includes a Foreword by Richard Olsen and explores the following topics: Data science: as an alternative to time series, price movements in a market can be summarised as directional changes Machine learning for regime change detection: historical regime changes in a market can be discovered by a Hidden Markov Model Regime characterisation: normal and abnormal regimes in historical data can be characterised using indicators defined under Directional Change Market Monitoring: by using historical characteristics of normal and abnormal regimes, one can monitor the market to detect whether the market regime has changed Algorithmic trading: regime tracking information can help us to design trading algorithms It will be of great interest to researchers in computational finance, machine learning and data science. About the Authors Jun Chen received his PhD in computational finance from the Centre for Computational Finance and Economic Agents, University of Essex in 2019. Edward P K Tsang is an Emeritus Professor at the University of Essex, where he co-founded the Centre for Computational Finance and Economic Agents in 2002.

This book deals with Invitations to Tender (ITTs) for the provision of Facility Management (FM) services. It presents a framework to support companies in preparing clear, comprehensive and effective ITTs, focusing on such key aspects as: organizational structures, tools and procedures for managing information, allocation of information responsibilities, procedures for services monitoring and control, quality policies, and risk management. It discusses and analyzes a range of basic terms and concepts, procedures, and international standards concerning the Tendering Process, as well as the contents of ITTs, which should represent the translation of information needs into requirements related to: the client's goals, main categories of information to deal with, expected organization of information, modalities of reporting and control, and level of knowledge to be reached. A further major focus is on potential key innovation scenarios concerning current FM practice, such as Sustainable Procurement, Building Information Modeling (BIM), Big Data and Internet of Things (IoT) technologies, highlighting both the possible benefits and the possible risks and implications that could negatively affect the quality of FM service provision if not properly treated within the ITT. The book will be of interest to real estate owners, demand organizations and facility managers, enhancing their ability to prepare, interpret and/or critically analyze ITTs.

Web mining is moving the World Wide Web toward a more useful environment in which users can quickly and easily find the information they need. Web mining uses document content, hyperlink structure, and usage statistics to assist users in meeting their needed information. This book provides a record of current research and practical applications in Web searching. It includes techniques that will improve the utilization of the Web by the design of Websites, as well as the design and application of search agents. This book presents this research and related applications in a manner that encourages additional work toward improving the reduction of information overflow, which is so common today in Web search results.

This text introduces the concepts of information warfare from a non-military, organizational perspective. It is designed to stimulate managers to develop policies, strategies, and tactics for the aggressive use and defence of their data and knowledge base. The book covers the full gambit of information warfare subjects from the direct attack on computer systems to the more subtle psychological technique of perception management. It provides the framework needed to build management strategies in this area. The topics covered include the basics of information warfare, corporate intelligence systems, the use of deception, security of systems, modes of attack, a methodology to develop defensive measures, plus specific issues associated with information warfare.
This book will be of interest to executives and managers in any public or private organization. Specifically, managers or staff in the areas of information technology, security, knowledge management, public relations, or marketing should find it directly useful.
Its main purpose is to make readers aware of the new world of information saturation; thus decreasing the chance that they will become victims of those abusing the information age, whilst at the same time increasing their chances of benefiting from the new opportunities produced.
Addresses the issues and implications of cyber warfare and how it directly impacts on companies

This volume explores the diverse applications of advanced tools and technologies of the emerging field of big data and their evidential value in business. It examines the role of analytics tools and methods of using big data in strengthening businesses to meet today's information challenges and shows how businesses can adapt big data for effective businesses practices. This volume shows how big data and the use of data analytics is being effectively adopted more frequently, especially in companies that are looking for new methods to develop smarter capabilities and tackle challenges in dynamic processes. Many illustrative case studies are presented that highlight how companies in every sector are now focusing on harnessing data to create a new way of doing business.

In recent years, cryptographic techniques for protecting and hiding secret information have been included in directions of research on intelligent information management. Data can be managed securely due to the use of algorithms for ensuring the confidentiality of data, information splitting techniques as well as protocols for sharing information and methods of its reconstruction. This is why techniques of advanced splitting and reconstruction of information form the primary subject of Secure Information Management Using Linguistic Threshold Approach, whose main purpose is to discuss the so-called linguistic threshold schemes for information sharing. An attempt is also made to describe the opportunities of using these techniques to create new models of managing strategic information shared within a commercial organisation or a state institution. Such information is specially protected, and its contents are used only if the authorised users are enabled to access it. This monograph attempts to define a model structure of information flow and for assigning information shares to particular groups of individuals concerned. The proposed information flow model can be integrated into practical solutions within any organisation or institution, improving the functionality of its legacy information systems. The use of strong mathematical cryptographic models to manage information constitutes a scientific innovation and a demonstration of the methods and opportunities of using advanced techniques for confidentially exchanging information in tasks supporting data flow within a commercial organisation. The interdisciplinary nature of the solutions proposed means that the subject of linguistic threshold schemes forming part of intelligent information management becomes a new challenge for the research and application work carried out. The authors of this monograph hope that it will guide readers on an interesting journey through the cutting edge solution in the field of secure information management.

This book presents a foray into the fascinating process of risk management, beginning from classical methods and approaches to understanding risk all the way into cutting-age thinking. Risk management by necessity must lie at the heart of governing our ever more complex digital societies. New phenomena and activities necessitate a new look at how individuals, firms, and states manage the uncertainty they must operate in. Initial chapters provide an introduction to traditional methods and show how they can be built upon to better understand the workings of the modern economy. Later chapters review digital activities and assets like cryptocurrencies showing how such emergent risks can be conceptualized better. Network theory figures prominently and the book demonstrates how it can be used to gauge the risk in the digital sectors of the economy. Predicting the unpredictable black swan events is also discussed in view of a wider adoption of economic simulations. The journey concludes by looking at how individuals perceive risk and make decisions as they operate in a virtual social network. This book interests the academic audience, but it also features insights and novel research results that are relevant for practitioners and policymakers.

Climate and Environmental Database Systems contains the papers presented at the Second International Workshop on Climate and Environmental Database Systems, held November 21-23, 1995, in Hamburg, Germany. Climate and environmental data may be separated into two classes, large amounts of well structured data and smaller amounts of less structured data. The large amounts are produced by numerical climate models and by satellites, handling data in the order of magnitude of 100 Tbytes for the climate modelling sites and 1000 Tbytes for the recording and processing of satellite data. Smaller amounts of poorly structured data are the environmental data, which come mainly from observations and measurements. Present-day problems in data management are connected with a variety of data types. Climate and Environmental Database Systems addresses the state of the art, practical experience, and future perspectives for climate and environmental database systems, and may be used as a text for a graduate level course on the subject or as a reference for researchers or practitioners in industry.

Blockchain technology (BT) is quietly transforming the world, from financial infrastructure, to the internet-of-things, to healthcare applications. With increasing penetration of BT into various areas of our daily lives, the need arises for better awareness and greater knowledge about the capabilities, benefits, risks, and alternatives to distributed ledger applications. It is hoped that current book will be one of the pioneering collections focusing on blockchain implementations in the area of healthcare, with specific aim to present content in an easy-to-understand and readily accessible way for typical end-users of blockchain-based applications. There are important areas within the fabric of modern healthcare that stand to benefit from implementations of BT. These areas include electronic medical records, quality control, patient safety, finance, device tracking, biostamping/biocertification, redundant storage of critical data, health and liability insurance, medication utilization tracking (including opioid and antibiotic misuse), financial transactions, academics/education, asset tokenization, public health and pandemics, healthcare provider credentialing, and many other potential applications. The ultimate goal of the proposed book would be to provide an integrative, easy-to-understand, and comprehensive picture of the current state of blockchain use in healthcare while actively engaging the reader in a forward-looking, exploratory approach toward future developments in this space. To accomplish this goal, an expert panel of contributors has been assembled, featuring scholars from top global universities and think-tanks.

Topics covered include: The fundamentals of business process modeling, including workflow patterns, an in-depth treatment of process flexibility, including approaches to dealing with on-the-fly changes, unexpected exceptions, and constraint-based processes, Technological aspects of a modern BPM environment, including its architecture, process design environment, process engine, resource handler and other support services, a comparative insight into current approaches to business process modeling and execution such as BPMN, EPCs, BPEL, jBPM, OpenWFE, and Enhydra Shark, process mining, verification, integration and configuration; and case studies in health care and screen business.

This book provides a comprehensive treatment of the field of Business Process Management (BPM) with a focus on Business Process Automation. It achieves this by covering a wide range of topics, both introductory and advanced, illustrated through and grounded in the YAWL (Yet Another Workflow Language) language and corresponding open-source support environment. In doing so it provides the reader with a deep, timeless, and vendor-independent understanding of the essential ingredients of business process automation.

The BPM field is in a continual state of flux and is subject to both the ongoing proposal of new standards and the introduction of new tools and technology. Its fundamentals however are relatively stable and this book aims to equip the reader with both a thorough understanding of them and the ability to apply them to better understand, assess and utilize new developments in the BPM field.

As a consequence of its topic-based format and the inclusion of a broad range of exercises, the book is eminently suitable for use in tertiary education, both at the undergraduate and the postgraduate level, for students of computer science and information systems. BPM researchers and practitioners will also find it a valuable resource. The book serves as a unique reference to a varied and comprehensive collection of topics that are relevant to the business process life-cycle.

Soft Computing Applications for Database Technologies: Techniques and Issues treats the new, emerging discipline of soft computing, which exploits this data through tolerance for imprecision and uncertainty to achieve solutions for complex problems. Soft computing methodologies include fuzzy sets, neural networks, genetic algorithms, Bayesian belief networks and rough sets, which are explored in detail through case studies and in-depth research. The advent of soft computing marks a significant paradigm shift in computing, with a wide range of applications and techniques which are presented and discussed in the chapters of this book.

The emerging field of Data Science has had a large impact on science and society. This book explores how one distinguishing feature of Data Science - its focus on data collected from social and environmental contexts within which learners often find themselves deeply embedded - suggests serious implications for learning and education. Drawing from theories of learning and identity development in the learning sciences, this volume investigates the impacts of these complex relationships on how learners think about, use, and share data, including their understandings of data in light of history, race, geography, and politics. More than just using 'real world examples' to motivate students to work with data, this book demonstrates how learners' relationships to data shape how they approach those data with agency, as part of their social and cultural lives. Together, the contributions offer a vision of how the learning sciences can contribute to a more expansive, socially aware, and transformative Data Science Education. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the Journal of the Learning Sciences.

Volume I is the first of two volumes that document the three components of the CHILDES Project. It is divided into two parts which provide an introduction to the use of computational tools for studying language learning. The first part is the CHAT manual, which describes the conventions and principles of CHAT transcription and recommends specific methods for data collection and digitization. The second part is the CLAN manual, which describes the uses of the editor, sonic CHAT, and the various analytic commands. The book will be useful for both novice and experienced users of the CHILDES tools, as well as instructors and students working with transcripts of child language.
Volume II describes in detail all of the corpora included in the CHILDES database. The conversational interactions in the corpora come from monolingual children and their caregivers and siblings, as well as bilingual children, older school-aged children, adult second-language learners, children with various types of language disabilities, and aphasic recovering from language loss. The database includes transcripts in 26 different languages.
The CD-ROM that accompanies these volumes includes the transcript files described in Volume II. It runs on both Windows and Macintosh platforms. For more information or updates to the files, visit the CHILDES website at http: //childes.psy.cmu.edu

This book intends to change the perception of modern day telecommunications. Communication systems, usually perceived as "dumb pipes", carrying information / data from one point to another, are evolved into intelligently communicating smart systems. The book introduces a new field of cloud communications. The concept, theory, and architecture of this new field of cloud communications are discussed. The book lays down nine design postulates that form the basis of the development of a first of its kind cloud communication paradigm entitled Green Symbiotic Cloud Communications or GSCC. The proposed design postulates are formulated in a generic way to form the backbone for development of systems and technologies of the future. The book can be used to develop courses that serve as an essential part of graduate curriculum in computer science and electrical engineering. Such courses can be independent or part of high-level research courses. The book will also be of interest to a wide range of readers including both scientific and non-scientific domains as it discusses innovations from a simplistic explanatory viewpoint.

The development of a methodology for using logic databases is essential if new users are to be able to use these systems effectively to solve their problems, and this remains a largely unrealized goal. A workshop was organized in conjunction with the ILPS '93 Conference in Vancouver in October 1993 to provide a forum for users and implementors of deductive systems to share their experience. The emphasis was on the use of deductive systems. In addition to paper presentations, a number of systems were demonstrated. The papers of this book were drawn largely from the papers presented at the workshop, which have been extended and revised for inclusion here, and also include some papers describing interesting applications that were not discussed at the workshop. The applications described here should be seen as a starting point: a number of promising application domains are identified, and several interesting application packages are described, which provide the inspiration for further development. Declarative rule-based database systems hold a lot of promise in a wide range of application domains, and we need a continued stream of application development to better understand this potential and how to use it effectively. This book contains the broadest collection to date of papers describing implemented, significant applications of logic databases, and database systems as well as potential database users in such areas as scientific data management and complex decision support.