The aim of the book is to lay out the foundations and provide a detailed treatment of the subject. It will focus on two main elements in dual phase evolution: the relationship between dual phase evolution and other phase transition phenomena and the advantages of dual phase evolution in evolutionary computation and complex adaptive systems. The book will provide a coherent picture of dual phase evolution that encompasses these two elements and frameworks, methods and techniques to use this concept for problem solving.

As science and technology have pervaded modern life to an ever greater degree, social scientists have been led to find questions of the causes and consequences of 'expert' knowledge arising in places that would have been felt unlikely hitherto. Varcoe, McNeil and Yearley's book assembles nine exemplary studies by sociologists, each of which explores an aspect of the current scientific-technological 'revolution'. Some popular ideas are challenged. So, too, implicitly, are certain large-scale social scientific theories claiming to have discerned in science and technology an overall meaning.

Evolutionary algorithms (EAs) are becoming increasingly attractive for researchers from various disciplines, such as operations research, computer science, industrial engineering, electrical engineering, social science, economics, etc. This book presents an insightful, comprehensive, and up-to-date treatment of EAs, such as genetic algorithms, differential evolution, evolution strategy, constraint optimization, multimodal optimization, multiobjective optimization, combinatorial optimization, evolvable hardware, estimation of distribution algorithms, ant colony optimization, particle swarm optimization, artificial immune systems, artificial life, genetic programming, etc.

It emphasises the initiative ideas of the algorithm, contains discussions in the contexts, and suggests further readings and possible research projects. All the methods form a pedagogical way to make EAs easy and interesting.

This textbook also introduces the applications of EAs as many as possible. At least one real-life application is introduced by the end of almost every chapter. The authors focus on the kernel part of applications, such as how to model real-life problems, how to encode and decode the individuals, how to design effective search operators according to the chromosome structures, etc.

This textbook adopts pedagogical ways of making EAs easy and interesting. Its methods include an introduction at the beginning of each chapter, emphasising the initiative, discussions in the contexts, summaries at the end of every chapter, suggested further reading, exercises, and possible research projects.

Introduction to Evolutionary Algorithms will enable students to:

establish a strong background on evolutionary algorithms;

appreciate the cutting edge of EAs;

perform their own research projects by simulating the application introduced in the book; and

apply their intuitive ideas to academic search.

This book is aimed at senior undergraduate students or first-year graduate students as a textbook or self-study material."

Asset Condition, Information Systems and Decision Models, is the second volume of the Engineering Asset Management Review Series. The manuscripts provide examples of implementations of asset information systems as well as some practical applications of condition data for diagnostics and prognostics. The increasing trend is towards prognostics rather than diagnostics, hence the need for assessment and decision models that promote the conversion of condition data into prognostic information to improve life-cycle planning for engineered assets. The research papers included here serve to support the on-going development of Condition Monitoring standards. This volume comprises selected papers from the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd World Congresses on Engineering Asset Management, which were convened under the auspices of ISEAM in collaboration with a number of organisations, including CIEAM Australia, Asset Management Council Australia, BINDT UK, and Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing University of Chemical Technology, China. Asset Condition, Information Systems and Decision Models will be of particular interest to finance, maintenance, and operations personnel whose roles directly affect the capability value of engineering asset base, as well as asset managers in both industry and government.

Essential reading on the latest advances in virtual prototyping and rapid manufacturing. Includes 110 peer reviewed papers covering: 1. Biomanufacturing, 2. CAD and 3D data acquisition technologies, 3. Materials, 4. Rapid tooling and manufacturing, 5. Advanced rapid prototyping technologies and nanofabrication, 6. Virtual environments and simulation and 7. Novel Applications. For all thos working on V&RP, focused on inducing increased collaboration between industry and academia.

Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing many of these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

CONTENTS - Introduction - I. Mechanism of Electrodeposition - 2. Laws and Characteristics of Plating Baths - 3. The Deposit - 4. Preparatory Steps of Plating - 5. Preparation of the Surface - 6. Cleaning - 7. Pickling - 8. Strike Plating - 9. Rinsing - 10. Anodizing - 1 I. Brass Plating - 12. Bronze Plating - 13. Cadmium Plating - 14. Chromate Coatings - 15. Chromium Plating - 16. Acid Copper Plating - 17. Copper Cyanide Baths - 18. Iron Plating - 19. Lead Plating - 20. Lead-Tin - 21. Nickel Plating - 22. Electroless Nickel - 23. Phosphate Coatings - 24. Silver Plating - 25. Acid Tin Plating - 26. Alkaline Tin Plating - 27. Tin-Nickel - 28. Tin-Zinc - 29. Acid Zinc Baths - 30. Zinc Cyanide Baths - 31. Control of a Plating Bath - 32. Plating Tests - 33. Gravity, Conductivity, and Voltage - 34. Electroplated Alloys - 35. Layer Plating - 36. Applications of Electroplating - 37. Plating Bath Troubles - 38. Continuous Plating - 39. Plating on Plastics - 40. Preparation of Metals for Painting - 41. Analytical Methods for Plating Baths - Appendix - Conversion Factors - Electrochemical Yields - Electrochemical Formulas - Electrochemical Equivalents - Single Electrode Potentials - Stripping Chart - Glossary - Index -

This book offers a comprehensive, easy to understand guide for startup entities and developing companies, providing insight on the various sources of funding that are available, how these funding sources are useful at each stage of a company's development, and offers a comprehensive intellectual property strategy that parallels each stage of development. The IP strategies offered in this book take into consideration the goals that most startups and companies have at each stage of development, as well as the limitations that exist at each stage (i.e., limited available resources earmarked for intellectual property asset development), and provides solutions that startups and companies can implement to maximize their return on intellectual property investments. This book also includes a number of descriptive examples, case studies and scenarios to illustrate the topics discussed, and is intended for use by startups and companies across all industries. Readers will garner an appreciation for the value that intellectual property rights provide to a startup entity or company and will gain an understanding of the types of intellectual property rights that are available to companies and how to procure, utilize and monetize those intellectual property rights to help their company grow.

How to Use This Book The primary purpose of this book is to assist small companies, involved in both hardware and software, to devise and evolve their own quality systems. There are a number of national and now international standards which outline the activities for which procedures and records need to be specified. They are described and compared in Chapter 2, and the subsequent guidance in the book is intended to assist in meeting them. Although, at first sight, the operations of a hardware equipment developer may seem very different from those of a software house, the basic requirements of a quality system, such as the BS 5750 and ISO 1987 series of documents, are the same. For this reason the same standard can be called for in both areas and it will be seen, in Part 2, that suitable procedures can be derived to meet both types of operation. Quality standards (BS 5750, AQAP, ISO 9000 series) distinguish between companies carrying out, on the one hand, both design and manufacturing fixed functions and, on the other hand, those who only manufacture to specifications. In practice, the lesser requirements (those applying to manufacture to fixed specifications) are common to both levels of standard and the additional controls pertaining to design are added to obtain the higher standard. Chapter 2 explains the differences in detail.

The focal main objective of the book is to constitute a meaningful linkage among research problems, geoinformation methods and corresponding applications. The research goals, related both to theoretical and practical issues, derive from multidisciplinary fields such as archaeology, history, geography, landscape planning, environment, geoinformation science, geology and geomorphology. All the aforementioned scientific areas have the spatial dimension in common, i.e. the vast amount of spatially referenced data. Their research issues can be addressed and analysed with geoinformation technology; though, the researchers should get familiar to the range of available geoinformation methods. The book provides description of a variety of research problems issues and technological ?solutions?approaches that can be used to support processes of data capturing, mapping and analysis. These techniques and concepts are illustrated on numerous practical examples. along with specific examples, where these have been applied. The current structure of the book includes the following four chapters: introduction, data capturing and mapping, analysis and modelling, and study cases. In the following we provide a more detailed content of each chapter listing the main topics included within the selected articles.

Introducing engineering students to numerical analysis and computing, this book covers a range of topics suitable for the first three years of a four year undergraduate engineering degree. The teaching of computing to engineers is hampered by the lack of suitable problems for the students to tackle, so much effort has gone into making the problems in this book realistic and relevant, while at the same time solvable for undergraduates.

Taking a balanced approach to teaching computing and computer methods at the same time, this book satisfies the need to be able to use computers (using both formal languages such as Fortran and other applications such as Matlab and Microsoft Excel), and the need to be able to solve realistic engineering problems.

This is an edited collection of peer-reviewed papers presented at the Ninth International Conference of the Society for the Advancement of Kinanthropometry. Defined as the relationship between human body structure and function, kinanthropometry is an area of growing interest, and these proceedings will be of use to students, academics and professionals in the areas of ergonomics, sports science, nutrition, health, and other allied fields. The assembled works represent the latest research findings across kinanthropometry, moving the discipline forward and promoting good practice and the exchange of expertise.

Dealing with environmental issues should no longer be considered simply as a cost of doing business. Effective environmental improvements to a company's products and services can be turned into business opportunities. This book was written with the express purpose of helping managers of companies, in particular of Small to Medium sized Enterprises (SMEs), to better deal with environmental challenges and address customer requirements, all in order to turn their environmental inve- ments into competitive market advantages. Several examples are provided throughout the book, but also warning signs (Alert Boxes). These "Alerts" are posted to help managers avoid typical traps when working with environmental considerations in business processes. The authors have many years of experience in the various aspects of impleme- ing Ecodesign. This experience includes working in industry for many years; le- ing the environmental departments in a multinational company; managing research projects in eco-product development; Life Cycle Assessment; and national and international environmental communication and marketing. This book is the latest in a series. The 2002 "Ecodesign Pilot" introduced a tool and software to help design more environmentally compatible products. It was directed specifically at designers. The 2004 book, "Ecodesign Implementation," was written to help project managers optimize product development processes from an environmental perspective.

In this book strategies for using very soft organic clay as a fill material for road embankment constructions are compared, and an optimisation scheme is presented. Computer programs for simulation of evaporative drying, for simulation of consolidation, and for slope stability calculation were used to analyse clay behaviour. Field and laboratory testing programs for a trial embankment were set up in order to study the relations of parameters, to examine suitability and workability of the clay, and to verify the improvement methods. An optimisation technique was applied as a rational method for using very soft organic clay for road embankments leading to an economic construction. Also recommendations are presented based on a rational method for conditioning and emplacing very soft organic clay in a safe and economic way.

Internationally, significant attention is given to transport sustainability including planning, design, construction, evaluation, safety and durability of the road system. The 4th International Gulf Conference on Roads: Efficient Transportation and Pavement Systems - Characterization, Mechanisms, Simulation, and Modeling, hosted by the University of Qatar, November 2008, provided a forum for discussions of recent developments and research results and needs on transportation network optimization, traffic management, transportation safety, and pavement design, analysis, material characterization, modeling, and rehabilitation techniques. This book is a collection of 79 fully refereed papers and six keynote lectures from the conference, and includes contributions on a variety of topics:

• Highway Design and Transportation Planning
• Transportation Network and Management System
• Traffic Characteristics and Analysis
• Traffic and Transit Signal Control
• Traffic Simulation, Safety, and Management
• Advances in Road Safety Engineering
• Road Accident Analysis and Prediction
• Work Zone Lane Closures and Dynamic Merging
• Flexible Pavement Design, Analysis, and Evaluation
• Pavement Maintenance and Management
• Binder and Emulsion Characterization - Effect of Binder, Modified Binder, and Fillers on HMA
• HMA Testing and Properties
• Foamed and HMA Recycling
• Impact of Geogrids on Pavement Performance
• Research, Development, and Standardizations
• Case Studies

Highways provide the arteries of modern society. The interaction of road, rail and other transport infrastructure with the ground is unusually intimate, and thus needs to be well-understood to provide economic and reliable infrastructure for society. Challenges include not only the design of new infrastructure (often on problematic ground), but increasingly the management and maintenance of aging assets in the face of issues such as climate change.

This book is the written record of the first International Conference on Transportation Geotechnics held under the auspices of the International Society of Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering, held in Nottingham, UK, in 2008. It comprises about 100 papers from a global selection of researchers and practitioners on:

? Slope instability, stabilisation, and asset management;

? Construction on soft ground;

? Interaction with structures and geogrid reinforced soil;

? Effect of climate change and vegetation;

? Highways, pavements and subgrade;

? Railway geotechnics;

? Soil improvement;

? Characterisation and recycling of geomaterials.

A further part of this collection contains papers on unbound aggregate materials as used in pavement construction and drainage. They formed the ?Unbound Aggregates in Roads (UNBAR7)? theme of the conference which followed on from the previous symposia of that title, also held in Nottingham, UK, most recently in 2004. The volume will be of interest to professionals and academics in geotechnical, highway, railway and general civil engineering.

The transfer function approach is widely used in classical control theory for its easy handling and physical meaning. Although the use of transfer functions is well-established for linear time-invariant systems, it is not suitable for non-stationary systems among which are sampled-data systems and processes with periodically varying coefficients. Computer-controlled continuous-time processes are a very important subset of periodic sampled-data systems which are not treatable using ordinary transfer functions.

Having established the ability of the parametric transfer function to solve this problem for single-input, single-output systems in previous work, the authors extend these methods, which incorporate time-dependence, to the idea of the parametric transfer matrix in a complete exposition of analysis and design methods for multiple-input, multiple-output (MIMO) sampled-data systems.

Multivariable Computer-controlled Systems is divided into three parts:

• Preliminary algebraic material describing the established fundamentals of polynomial and rational matrices necessary for the understanding of later chapters.
• Control problems, important in their own right but which also have a substantial bearing on what follows (eigenvalue assignment and the use of z- and zeta-transforms in discrete systems).
• Frequency methods for the investigation of MIMO sampled-data systems (parametric discrete-time models; stability; stochastic methods; H2 optimization and L2 design).

Appendices covering basic mathematical formulae and the description of two MATLABA(R) toolboxes round out this self-contained guide to multivariable control systems.

Of specialinterest to researchers in automatic control and to development engineers working with advanced control technology, Multivariable Computer-controlled Systems will also interest mathematical control theorists and graduate students studying advanced methods of computer-based control.

This book reports the elements required for implementing Just in Time (JIT) technique in companies. The main reasons for low implementation processes and the main benefits from the successful implementation of them are highlighted in this book. Structural equation models are presented to help identify the essential elements in JIT.

Managing Difficult Projects pulls together the principles and practice of project management and presents useful diagnostic approaches, tools and structures in a clear and practical way. The book focuses on the diagnosis and resolution of difficult problems whether in large or small complex projects. The intent is to help corporate executives and project management practitioners apply proven processes, methodologies, systems, structures and tools to rally the information and the resources required for better decisions, faster delivery and improved results.This essential book shows how to plan effectively and to reduce risk at every step of project delivery, particularly vital during project implementation when 90 per cent of project funding is spent. It covers new ground by proposing the use of the project management process as an integral part of setting and updating corporate strategy. In projects, context is everything The text is amply illustrated with international case studies, charts, photos, graphs and data tables. It enables project managers to identify root causes and to apply the right solutions. It shows exactly how to identify project opportunities and then how to apply clear methodologies to set corporate strategy. It case studies the learning process. The reader can skip forward to solutions and help resolve problems at work.