These contributions, written by the foremost international researchers and practitioners of Genetic Programming (GP), explore the synergy between theoretical and empirical results on real-world problems, producing a comprehensive view of the state of the art in GP. Topics in this volume include: evolutionary constraints, relaxation of selection mechanisms, diversity preservation strategies, flexing fitness evaluation, evolution in dynamic environments, multi-objective and multi-modal selection, foundations of evolvability, evolvable and adaptive evolutionary operators, foundation of injecting expert knowledge in evolutionary search, analysis of problem difficulty and required GP algorithm complexity, foundations in running GP on the cloud - communication, cooperation, flexible implementation, and ensemble methods. Additional focal points for GP symbolic regression are: (1) The need to guarantee convergence to solutions in the function discovery mode; (2) Issues on model validation; (3) The need for model analysis workflows for insight generation based on generated GP solutions - model exploration, visualization, variable selection, dimensionality analysis; (4) Issues in combining different types of data. Readers will discover large-scale, real-world applications of GP to a variety of problem domains via in-depth presentations of the latest and most significant results.

Applying TQM to systems engineering can reduce costs while simultaneously improving product quality. This guide to proactive systems engineering shows how to develop and optimize a practical approach, while highlighting the pitfalls and potentials involved.

This unique textbook/reference presents unified coverage of bioinformatics topics relating to both biological sequences and biological networks, providing an in-depth analysis of cutting-edge distributed algorithms, as well as of relevant sequential algorithms. In addition to introducing the latest algorithms in this area, more than fifteen new distributed algorithms are also proposed. Topics and features: reviews a range of open challenges in biological sequences and networks; describes in detail both sequential and parallel/distributed algorithms for each problem; suggests approaches for distributed algorithms as possible extensions to sequential algorithms, when the distributed algorithms for the topic are scarce; proposes a number of new distributed algorithms in each chapter, to serve as potential starting points for further research; concludes each chapter with self-test exercises, a summary of the key points, a comparison of the algorithms described, and a literature review.

This book offers a comprehensive and accessible exposition of Euclidean Distance Matrices (EDMs) and rigidity theory of bar-and-joint frameworks. It is based on the one-to-one correspondence between EDMs and projected Gram matrices. Accordingly the machinery of semidefinite programming is a common thread that runs throughout the book. As a result, two parallel approaches to rigidity theory are presented. The first is traditional and more intuitive approach that is based on a vector representation of point configuration. The second is based on a Gram matrix representation of point configuration. Euclidean Distance Matrices and Their Applications in Rigidity Theory begins by establishing the necessary background needed for the rest of the book. The focus of Chapter 1 is on pertinent results from matrix theory, graph theory and convexity theory, while Chapter 2 is devoted to positive semidefinite (PSD) matrices due to the key role these matrices play in our approach. Chapters 3 to 7 provide detailed studies of EDMs, and in particular their various characterizations, classes, eigenvalues and geometry. Chapter 8 serves as a transitional chapter between EDMs and rigidity theory. Chapters 9 and 10 cover local and universal rigidities of bar-and-joint frameworks. This book is self-contained and should be accessible to a wide audience including students and researchers in statistics, operations research, computational biochemistry, engineering, computer science and mathematics.

This book is designed both for FPGA users interested in developing new, specific components - generally for reducing execution times -and IP core designers interested in extending their catalog of specific components. The main focus is circuit synthesis and the discussion shows, for example, how a given algorithm executing some complex function can be translated to a synthesizable circuit description, as well as which are the best choices the designer can make to reduce the circuit cost, latency, or power consumption. This is not a book on algorithms. It is a book that shows how to translate efficiently an algorithm to a circuit, using techniques such as parallelism, pipeline, loop unrolling, and others. Numerous examples of FPGA implementation are described throughout this book and the circuits are modeled in VHDL. Complete and synthesizable source files are available for download."

Most networks and databases that humans have to deal with contain large, albeit finite number of units. Their structure, for maintaining functional consistency of the components, is essentially not random and calls for a precise quantitative description of relations between nodes (or data units) and all network components. This book is an introduction, for both graduate students and newcomers to the field, to the theory of graphs and random walks on such graphs. The methods based on random walks and diffusions for exploring the structure of finite connected graphs and databases are reviewed (Markov chain analysis). This provides the necessary basis for consistently discussing a number of applications such diverse as electric resistance networks, estimation of land prices, urban planning, linguistic databases, music, and gene expression regulatory networks.

This book provides a literature review of techniques used to pass from continuous to combinatorial space, before discussing a detailed example with individual steps of how cuckoo search (CS) can be adapted to solve combinatorial optimization problems. It demonstrates the application of CS to three different problems and describes their source code. The content is divided into five chapters, the first of which provides a technical description, together with examples of combinatorial search spaces. The second chapter summarizes a diverse range of methods used to solve combinatorial optimization problems. In turn, the third chapter presents a description of CS, its formulation and characteristics. In the fourth chapter, the application of discrete cuckoo search (DCS) to solve three POCs (the traveling salesman problem, quadratic assignment problem and job shop scheduling problem) is explained, focusing mainly on a reinterpretation of the terminology used in CS and its source of inspiration. In closing, the fifth chapter discusses random-key cuckoo search (RKCS) using random keys to represent positions found by cuckoo search in the TSP and QAP solution space.

This book presents the first paradigm of social multimedia computing completely from the user perspective. Different from traditional multimedia and web multimedia computing which are content-centric, social multimedia computing rises under the participatory Web2.0 and is essentially user-centric. The goal of this book is to emphasize the user factor in facilitating effective solutions towards both multimedia content analysis, user modeling and customized user services. Advanced topics like cross-network social multimedia computing are also introduced as extensions and potential directions along this research line.

Approximation theory and numerical analysis are central to the creation of accurate computer simulations and mathematical models. Research in these areas can influence the computational techniques used in a variety of mathematical and computational sciences.

This collection of contributed chapters, dedicated to renowned mathematician Gradimir V. Milovanovi, represent the recent work of experts in the fields of approximation theory and numerical analysis. These invited contributions describe new trends in these important areas of research including theoretic developments, new computational algorithms, and multidisciplinary applications.

Special features of this volume:

- Presents results and approximation methods in various computational settings including: polynomial and orthogonal systems, analytic functions, and differential equations.

- Provides a historical overview of approximation theory and many of its subdisciplines;

- Contains new results from diverse areas of research spanning mathematics, engineering, and the computational sciences.

"Approximation and Computation" is intended for mathematicians and researchers focusing on approximation theory and numerical analysis, but can also be a valuable resource to students and researchers in the computational and applied sciences."

This book covers the important aspects involved in making cognitive radio devices portable, mobile and green, while also extending their service life. At the same time, it presents a variety of established theories and practices concerning cognitive radio from academia and industry. Cognitive radio can be utilized as a backbone communication medium for wireless devices. To effectively achieve its commercial application, various aspects of quality of service and energy management need to be addressed. The topics covered in the book include energy management and quality of service provisioning at Layer 2 of the protocol stack from the perspectives of medium access control, spectrum selection, and self-coexistence for cognitive radio networks.

The last decade has witnessed a rapid surge of interest in new sensing and monitoring devices for wellbeing and healthcare. One key development in this area is wireless, wearable and implantable "in vivo" monitoring and intervention. A myriad of platforms are now available from both academic institutions and commercial organisations. They permit the management of patients with both acute and chronic symptoms, including diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, treatment of epilepsy and other debilitating neurological disorders. Despite extensive developments in sensing technologies, there are significant research issues related to system integration, sensor miniaturisation, low-power sensor interface, wireless telemetry and signal processing.

In the 2nd edition of this popular and authoritative reference on Body Sensor Networks (BSN), major topics related to the latest technological developments and potential clinical applications are discussed, with contents covering.

Biosensor Design, Interfacing and Nanotechnology

Wireless Communication and Network Topologies

Communication Protocols and Standards

Energy Harvesting and Power Delivery

Ultra-low Power Bio-inspired Processing

Multi-sensor Fusion and Context Aware Sensing

Autonomic Sensing

Wearable, Ingestible Sensor Integration and Exemplar Applications

System Integration and Wireless Sensor Microsystems

The book also provides a comprehensive review of the current wireless sensor development platforms and a step-by-step guide to developing your own BSN applications through the use of BSN development kit.

Biological and biomedical studies have entered a new era over the past two decades thanks to the wide use of mathematical models and computational approaches. A booming of computational biology, which sheerly was a theoretician's fantasy twenty years ago, has become a reality. Obsession with computational biology and theoretical approaches is evidenced in articles hailing the arrival of what are va- ously called quantitative biology, bioinformatics, theoretical biology, and systems biology. New technologies and data resources in genetics, such as the International HapMap project, enable large-scale studies, such as genome-wide association st- ies, which could potentially identify most common genetic variants as well as rare variants of the human DNA that may alter individual's susceptibility to disease and the response to medical treatment. Meanwhile the multi-electrode recording from behaving animals makes it feasible to control the animal mental activity, which could potentially lead to the development of useful brain-machine interfaces. - bracing the sheer volume of genetic, genomic, and other type of data, an essential approach is, ?rst of all, to avoid drowning the true signal in the data. It has been witnessed that theoretical approach to biology has emerged as a powerful and st- ulating research paradigm in biological studies, which in turn leads to a new - search paradigm in mathematics, physics, and computer science and moves forward with the interplays among experimental studies and outcomes, simulation studies, and theoretical investigations.

This book describes new algorithms and ideas for making effective decisions under constraints, including applications in control engineering, manufacturing (how to optimally determine the production level), econometrics (how to better predict stock market behavior), and environmental science and geosciences (how to combine data of different types). It also describes general algorithms and ideas that can be used in other application areas. The book presents extended versions of selected papers from the annual International Workshops on Constraint Programming and Decision Making (CoProd'XX) from 2013 to 2016. These workshops, held in the US (El Paso, Texas) and in Europe (Wurzburg, Germany, and Uppsala, Sweden), have attracted researchers and practitioners from all over the world. It is of interest to practitioners who benefit from the new techniques, to researchers who want to extend the ideas from these papers to new application areas and/or further improve the corresponding algorithms, and to graduate students who want to learn more - in short, to anyone who wants to make more effective decisions under constraints.

It is clear that computation is playing an increasingly prominent role in the development of mathematics, as well as in the natural and social sciences. The work of Stephen Wolfram over the last several decades has been a salient part in this phenomenon helping founding the field of Complex Systems, with many of his constructs and ideas incorporated in his book A New Kind of Science (ANKS) becoming part of the scientific discourse and general academic knowledge--from the now established Elementary Cellular Automata to the unconventional concept of mining the Computational Universe, from today's widespread Wolfram's Behavioural Classification to his principles of Irreducibility and Computational Equivalence.

This volume, with a Foreword by Gregory Chaitin and an Afterword by Cris Calude, covers these and other topics related to or motivated by Wolfram's seminal ideas, reporting on research undertaken in the decade following the publication of Wolfram's NKS book. Featuring 39 authors, its 23 contributions are organized into seven parts:

Mechanisms in Programs & Nature

Systems Based on Numbers & Simple Programs Social and Biological Systems & Technology Fundamental Physics The Behavior of Systems & the Notion of Computation Irreducibility & Computational Equivalence Reflections and Philosophical Implications.

High-speed, power-efficient analog integrated circuits can be used as standalone devices or to interface modern digital signal processors and micro-controllers in various applications, including multimedia, communication, instrumentation, and control systems. New architectures and low device geometry of complementary metaloxidesemiconductor (CMOS) technologies have accelerated the movement toward system on a chip design, which merges analog circuits with digital, and radio-frequency components.

Images are all around us The proliferation of low-cost, high-quality imaging devices has led to an explosion in acquired images. When these images are acquired from a microscope, telescope, satellite, or medical imaging device, there is a statistical image processing task: the inference of something--an artery, a road, a DNA marker, an oil spill--from imagery, possibly noisy, blurry, or incomplete. A great many textbooks have been written on image processing. However this book does not so much focus on images, per se, but rather on spatial data sets, with one or more measurements taken over a two or higher dimensional space, and to which standard image-processing algorithms may not apply. There are many important data analysis methods developed in this text for such statistical image problems. Examples abound throughout remote sensing (satellite data mapping, data assimilation, climate-change studies, land use), medical imaging (organ segmentation, anomaly detection), computer vision (image classification, segmentation), and other 2D/3D problems (biological imaging, porous media). The goal, then, of this text is to address methods for solving multidimensional statistical problems. The text strikes a balance between mathematics and theory on the one hand, versus applications and algorithms on the other, by deliberately developing the basic theory (Part I), the mathematical modeling (Part II), and the algorithmic and numerical methods (Part III) of solving a given problem. The particular emphases of the book include inverse problems, multidimensional modeling, random fields, and hierarchical methods.

Decision-aiding software, the underpinning of computer-aided judicial analysis, can facilitate the prediction of how cases are likely to be decided, prescribe decisions that should be reached in such cases, and help administrate more efficiently the court process. It can do so, says Nagel, by listing past cases on each row of a spreadsheet matrix, by listing predictive criteria in the columns, and in general by showing for each factual element the estimated probability of winning a case. The software aggregates the information available and deduces likely outcomes. But it can also prescribe judicial decisions by listing alternatives in the rows, the goals to be achieved in the columns, and by showing relations between alternatives in the cells. By similar means decision-aiding software can also help perform administrative tasks, such as rationally assigning judges or other personnel to cases, and by sequencing cases to reduce the time consumed by each case.

In Part I, Nagel provides an overview of computer-aided analysis and the role of decision-aiding software in the legal process. In the second part he deals with judicial prediction from prior cases and from present facts; and in the third part he emphasizes the prescribing role of judges, particularly in deciding the rules that ought to be applied in civil and criminal procedures. Nagel also covers computer-aided mediation and provides a new perspective on judicial decisions. Then, in Part IV, he treats at length the process of judicial administration and how to improve its efficiency. Of particular interest to court personnel will be the benefits to be derived from reducing delays and in the docketing and sequencing of cases.

In this book you will learn all of the basics required to rig any character in Maya. The book covers everything from joints to wires, from the connection editor to pruning small weights. With over 30 example files, 200 images, and countless step by step tutorials, you will be shown exactly how to rig a foot and leg, a hand, and much more. The thing that separates this book from the competition is answering the question of "Why?." The book covers exactly what is a gimbal lock and how do you avoid it? What axis should you use as your primary one? How do I add an influence object to fix a rig already in progress and why would I use a joint in some cases? Knowing why things are done the way they are will allow you to innovate and create new rigs. Knowing why will allow you to troubleshoot someone else's rig, and progress far beyond being a beginner. This book will help the beginner build a solid foundation and is a great addition for any character rigger using Maya. Proceeds donated to charity.

The second volume of the two volumes book is dedicated to various extensions and generalizations of Dyadic (Walsh) analysis and related applications. Considered are dyadic derivatives on Vilenkin groups and various other Abelian and finite non-Abelian groups. Since some important results were developed in former Soviet Union and China, we provide overviews of former work in these countries. Further, we present translations of three papers that were initially published in Chinese. The presentation continues with chapters written by experts in the area presenting discussions of applications of these results in specific tasks in the area of signal processing and system theory. Efficient computing of related differential operators on contemporary hardware, including graphics processing units, is also considered, which makes the methods and techniques of dyadic analysis and generalizations computationally feasible. The volume 2 of the book ends with a chapter presenting open problems pointed out by several experts in the area.

The main objective of pervasive computing systems is to create environments where computers become invisible by being seamlessly integrated and connected into our everyday environment, where such embedded computers can then provide inf- mation and exercise intelligent control when needed, but without being obtrusive. Pervasive computing and intelligent multimedia technologies are becoming incre- ingly important to the modern way of living. However, many of their potential applications have not yet been fully realized. Intelligent multimedia allows dynamic selection, composition and presentation of the most appropriate multimedia content based on user preferences. A variety of applications of pervasive computing and - telligent multimedia are being developed for all walks of personal and business life. Pervasive computing (often synonymously called ubiquitous computing, palpable computing or ambient intelligence) is an emerging ?eld of research that brings in revolutionary paradigms for computing models in the 21st century. Pervasive c- puting is the trend towards increasingly ubiquitous connected computing devices in the environment, a trend being brought about by a convergence of advanced el- tronic - and particularly, wireless - technologies and the Internet. Recent advances in pervasive computers, networks, telecommunications and information technology, along with the proliferation of multimedia mobile devices - such as laptops, iPods, personal digital assistants (PDAs) and cellular telephones - have further stimulated the development of intelligent pervasive multimedia applications. These key te- nologiesarecreatingamultimediarevolutionthatwillhavesigni?cantimpactacross a wide spectrum of consumer, business, healthcare and governmental domains.

Device-independent quantum cryptography is a method for exchanging secret messages over potentially insecure quantum communication channels, such as optical fibers. In contrast to conventional quantum cryptography, security is guaranteed even if the devices used by the communication partners, such as photon sources and detectors, deviate from their theoretical specifications. This is of high practical relevance, for attacks to current implementations of quantum cryptography exploit exactly such deviations. Device-independent cryptography is however technologically so demanding that it looked as if experimental realizations are out of reach. In her thesis, Rotem Arnon-Friedman presents powerful information-theoretic methods to prove the security of device-independent quantum cryptography. Based on them, she is able to establish security in a parameter regime that may be experimentally achievable in the near future. Rotem Arnon-Friedman's thesis thus provides the theoretical foundations for an experimental demonstration of device-independent quantum cryptography.

Podcasting Success in a Day: Beginner's Guide to Fast, Easy, and Efficient Learning of Podcasting What is Podcasting? Want to take your online marketing to the next level and provide Podcasts? Need simple guide to getting started with Podcasting? Need cheap and easy solutions to Podcasting? What equipment to use for Podcasting? How about a successful strategy to Podcasting? Want tips on how to get consumers to subscribe to your podcast? All start today right here with one click!