Queueing network models have been widely applied as a powerful tool for modelling, performance evaluation, and prediction of discrete flow systems, such as computer systems, communication networks, production lines, and manufacturing systems. Queueing network models with finite capacity queues and blocking have been introduced and applied as even more realistic models of systems with finite capacity resources and with population constraints. In recent years, research in this field has grown rapidly. Analysis of Queueing Networks with Blocking introduces queueing network models with finite capacity and various types of blocking mechanisms. It gives a comprehensive definition of the analytical model underlying these blocking queueing networks. It surveys exact and approximate analytical solution methods and algorithms and their relevant properties. It also presents various application examples of queueing networks to model computer systems and communication networks. This book is organized in three parts. Part I introduces queueing networks with blocking and various application examples. Part II deals with exact and approximate analysis of queueing networks with blocking and the condition under which the various techniques can be applied. Part III presents a review of various properties of networks with blocking, describing several equivalence properties both between networks with and without blocking and between different blocking types. Approximate solution methods for the buffer allocation problem are presented.

There has been a common perception that computational complexity is a theory of "bad news" because its most typical results assert that various real-world and innocent-looking tasks are infeasible. In fact, "bad news" is a relative term, and, indeed, in some situations (e.g., in cryptography), we want an adversary to not be able to perform a certain task. However, a "bad news" result does not automatically become useful in such a scenario. For this to happen, its hardness features have to be quantitatively evaluated and shown to manifest extensively.
The book undertakes a quantitative analysis of some of the major results in complexity that regard either classes of problems or individual concrete problems. The size of some important classes are studied using resource-bounded topological and measure-theoretical tools. In the case of individual problems, the book studies relevant quantitative attributes such as approximation properties or the number of hard inputs at each length.
One chapter is dedicated to abstract complexity theory, an older field which, however, deserves attention because it lays out the foundations of complexity. The other chapters, on the other hand, focus on recent and important developments in complexity. The book presents in a fairly detailed manner concepts that have been at the centre of the main research lines in complexity in the last decade or so, such as: average-complexity, quantum computation, hardness amplification, resource-bounded measure, the relation between one-way functions and pseudo-random generators, the relation between hard predicates and pseudo-random generators, extractors, derandomization of bounded-error probabilistic algorithms, probabilistically checkable proofs, non-approximability of optimization problems, and others.
The book should appeal to graduate computer science students, and to researchers who have an interest in computer science theory and need a good understanding of computational complexity, e.g., researchers in algorithms, AI, logic, and other disciplines.
-Emphasis is on relevant quantitative attributes of important results in complexity.
-Coverage is self-contained and accessible to a wide audience.
-Large range of important topics including: derandomization techniques, non-approximability of optimization problems, average-case complexity, quantum computation, one-way functions and pseudo-random generators, resource-bounded measure and topology.

Online activities present a unique challenge for museums as they harness the potential of digital technology for sustainable development, trust building, and representations of diversity. This volume offers a holistic picture of museum online activities that can serve as a starting point for cross-disciplinary discussion. It is a resource for museum staff, students, designers, and researchers working at the intersection of cultural institutions and digital technologies. The aim is to provide insight into the issues behind designing and implementing web pages and social media to serve the broadest range of museum stakeholders.

According to the Semiconductor Industry Association's 1999 International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors, by the year 2008 the integration of more than 500 million transistors will be possible on a single chip. Integrating transistors on silicon will depend increasingly on design reuse.

Design reuse techniques have become the subject of books, conferences, and podium discussions over the last few years. However, most discussions focus on higher-level abstraction like RTL descriptions, which can be synthesized. Design reuse is often seen as an add-on to normal design activity, or a special design task that is not an integrated part of the existing design flow. This may all be true for the ASIC world, but not for high-speed, high-performance microprocessors.

In the field of high-speed microprocessors, design reuse is an integrated part of the design flow. The method of choice in this demanding field was, and is always, physical design reuse at the layout level. In the past, the practical implementations of this method were linear shrinks and the lambda approach. With the scaling of process technology down to 0.18 micron and below, this approach lost steam and became inefficient.
The only viable solution is a method, which is now called Automatic Layout Modification (ALM). It combines compaction, mask manipulation, and correction with powerful capabilities.

Automatic Layout Modification, Including design reuse of the Alpha CPU in 0.13 micron SOI technology is a welcome effort to improving some of the practices in chip design today. It is a comprehensive reference work on Automatic Layout Modification which will be valuable to VLSI courses at universities, and to CAD and circuit engineers and engineering managers.

This book presents scientific metrics and its applications for approaching scientific findings in the field of Physics, Economics and Scientometrics. Based on a collection of the author's publications in these fields, the book reveals the profound links between the measures and the findings in the natural laws, from micro-particles to macro-cosmos, in the economic rules of human society, and in the core knowledge among mass information. With this book the readers can gain insights or ideas on addressing the questions of how to measure the physical world, economics process and human knowledge, from the perspective of scientific metrics. The book is also useful to scientists, particularly to specialists in physics, economics and scientometrics, for promoting and stimulating their creative ideas based on scientific metrics.

The process of developing predictive models includes many stages. Most resources focus on the modeling algorithms but neglect other critical aspects of the modeling process. This book describes techniques for finding the best representations of predictors for modeling and for nding the best subset of predictors for improving model performance. A variety of example data sets are used to illustrate the techniques along with R programs for reproducing the results.

Computers are those unfathomable contraptions everyone everywhere loves to hate. We can't live with them, but we can't live without them. Contempt for our byte-based existence has developed universal appeal crossing boundaries of culture, economics, religion, and language. Everyone you know has a "those stupid computers" story. If you think you have heard it all, STOP.

The digital revolution began in 1951. "Computer Factoids" chronicles behind-the-scenes digital weirdness from Day One. Kirk Kirksey covers the landscape of computer history, cyber legend, digital mythology, and Internet lore. Put away your pocket protector because you won't find any techno-babble on these pages. Each of these 39 high-tech yarns is an easy-read with a serious dose of attitude. Whether it is a computer powered by rotting potatoes or a symphony performed by obsolete dot-matrix printers or a computerized bra equipped with a modem, these tales of the digital surreal will make you stand up and shout, "Honey, you're not going to believe this."

The Internet creates a very unique environment where numerous individuals and widely distributed organizations can communicate and even collaborate for common interests. Virtual communities, shared information databases, and online forums are visible examples of the self-organizing social collectivities, which emerge from the many-to-many interactions among voluntary participants. Online social communities exemplified by blogs and social networking sites are getting more and more attention nowadays from the business sector, and companies are eager to find ways to use them for business opportunities. Despite the mushrooming hype regarding the unlimited potentials of virtual community, little is known about its complex nature-how virtual communities are born, sustained, and under what circumstances they collapse. A virtual community is an aggregate of voluntary participants, in which individual behaviors are in conjunction with the behaviors of others. People decide to contribute or free-ride in response to the contributing or free-riding behaviors of others. If many people already are contributing to the community, for example, one may be strongly tempted to free-ride, while this may not be the case if there are very few contributors. Understanding this social interdependence is the key to grasping the collective dynamics underlying virtual communities. This book aims at illuminating the implications of the collective social dynamics in a computer-mediated environment on advertising, business, and communication in general. Along with conceptual discussions, this book shows some experimental findings related to the psychological and social-structural factors affecting individuals' communicative motivations. "This pioneering book should be valuable to read since it is one of the first academic attempts to shed light on how network structures influence the behaviors of individuals on the Internet." - John D. Leckenby, Professor and Everett D. Collier Centennial Chair in Communication, The University of Texas at Austin

Knowledge in its pure state is tacit in nature-difficult to formalize and communicate-but can be converted into codified form and shared through both social interactions and the use of IT-based applications and systems. Even though there seems to be considerable synergies between the resulting huge data and the convertible knowledge, there is still a debate on how the increasing amount of data captured by corporations could improve decision making and foster innovation through effective knowledge-sharing practices. Big Data and Knowledge Sharing in Virtual Organizations provides innovative insights into the influence of big data analytics and artificial intelligence and the tools, methods, and techniques for knowledge-sharing processes in virtual organizations. The content within this publication examines cloud computing, machine learning, and knowledge sharing. It is designed for government officials and organizations, policymakers, academicians, researchers, technology developers, and students.

This lively and fascinating text traces the key developments in computation - from 3000 B.C. to the present day - in an easy-to-follow and concise manner. Topics and features: ideal for self-study, offering many pedagogical features such as chapter-opening key topics, chapter introductions and summaries, exercises, and a glossary; presents detailed information on major figures in computing, such as Boole, Babbage, Shannon, Turing, Zuse and Von Neumann; reviews the history of software engineering and of programming languages, including syntax and semantics; discusses the progress of artificial intelligence, with extension to such key disciplines as philosophy, psychology, linguistics, neural networks and cybernetics; examines the impact on society of the introduction of the personal computer, the World Wide Web, and the development of mobile phone technology; follows the evolution of a number of major technology companies, including IBM, Microsoft and Apple.

This third volume of the Handbook of Formal Languages discusses language theory beyond linear or string models: trees, graphs, grids, pictures, computer graphics. Many chapters offer an authoritative self-contained exposition of an entire area. Special emphasis is on interconnections with logic.

Business-to-business (B2B) integration is a buzzword which has been used a lot in recent years, with a variety of meanings. Starting with a clear technical definition of this term and its relation to topics like A2A (Application-to-Application), ASP (Application Service Provider), A2A, and B2C (Business-to-Consumer), Christoph Bussler outlines a complete and consistent B2B integration architecture based on a coherent conceptual model. He shows that B2B integration not only requires the exchange of business events between distributed trading partners across networks like the Internet, but also demands back-end application integration within business processes, and thus goes far beyond traditional approaches to enterprise application integration approaches. His detailed presentation describes how B2B integration standards like RosettaNet or SWIFT, the application integration standard J2EE Connector Architecture and basic standards like XML act together in order to enable business process integration. The book is the first of its kind that discusses B2B concepts and architectures independent of specific and short-term industrial or academic approaches and thus provides solid and long-lasting knowledge for researchers, students, and professionals interested in the field of B2B integration.  

Volume 55 covers some particularly hot topics. Linda Harasim writes about education and the Web in "The Virtual University: A State of the Art." She discusses the issues that will need to be addressed if online education is to live up to expectations. Neville Holmes covers a related subject in his chapter "The Net, the Web, and the Children." He argues that the Web is an evolutionary, rather than revolutionary, development and highlights the division between the rich and the poor within and across nations. Continuing the WWW theme, George Mihaila, Louqa Raschid, and Maria-Esther Vidal look at the problems of using the Web and finding the information you want.
Naren Ramakrishnan and Anath Grama discuss another aspect of finding relevant information in large databases in their contribution. They discuss the algorithms, techniques, and methodologies for effective application of scientific data mining.
Returning to the Web theme, Ross Anderson, Frank Stajano, and Jong-Hyeon Lee address the issue of security policies. Their survey of the most significant security policy models in the literature shows how security may mean different things in different contexts.
John Savage, Alan Selman, and Carl Smith take a step back from the applications and address how theoretical computer science has had an impact on practical computing concepts. Finally, Yuan Taur takes a step even further back and discusses the development of the computer chip.
Thus, Volume 55 takes us from the very fundamentals of computer science-the chip-right to the applications and user interface with the Web.

This book is an introduction to the fundamental concepts and tools needed for solving problems of a geometric nature using a computer. It attempts to fill the gap between standard geometry books, which are primarily theoretical, and applied books on computer graphics, computer vision, robotics, or machine learning.

This book covers the following topics: affine geometry, projective geometry, Euclidean geometry, convex sets, SVD and principal component analysis, manifolds and Lie groups, quadratic optimization, basics of differential geometry, and a glimpse of computational geometry (Voronoi diagrams and Delaunay triangulations). Some practical applications of the concepts presented in this book include computer vision, more specifically contour grouping, motion interpolation, and robot kinematics.

In this extensively updated second edition, more material on convex sets, Farkas's lemma, quadratic optimization and the Schur complement have been added. The chapter on SVD has been greatly expanded and now includes a presentation of PCA.

The book is well illustrated and has chapter summaries and a large number of exercises throughout. It will be of interest to a wide audience including computer scientists, mathematicians, and engineers.

Reviews of first edition:

"Gallier's book will be a useful source for anyone interested in applications of geometrical methods to solve problems that arise in various branches of engineering. It may help to develop the sophisticated concepts from the more advanced parts of geometry into useful tools for applications." (Mathematical Reviews, 2001)

..".it will be useful as a reference book for postgraduates wishing to find the connection between their current problem and the underlying geometry." (The Australian Mathematical Society, 2001)"

Rule-basedevolutionaryonlinelearningsystems, oftenreferredtoasMichig- style learning classi?er systems (LCSs), were proposed nearly thirty years ago (Holland, 1976; Holland, 1977) originally calling them cognitive systems. LCSs combine the strength of reinforcement learning with the generali- tion capabilities of genetic algorithms promising a ?exible, online general- ing, solely reinforcement dependent learning system. However, despite several initial successful applications of LCSs and their interesting relations with a- mal learning and cognition, understanding of the systems remained somewhat obscured. Questions concerning learning complexity or convergence remained unanswered. Performance in di?erent problem types, problem structures, c- ceptspaces, andhypothesisspacesstayednearlyunpredictable. Thisbookhas the following three major objectives: (1) to establish a facetwise theory - proachforLCSsthatpromotessystemanalysis, understanding, anddesign;(2) to analyze, evaluate, and enhance the XCS classi?er system (Wilson, 1995) by the means of the facetwise approach establishing a fundamental XCS learning theory; (3) to identify both the major advantages of an LCS-based learning approach as well as the most promising potential application areas. Achieving these three objectives leads to a rigorous understanding of LCS functioning that enables the successful application of LCSs to diverse problem types and problem domains. The quantitative analysis of XCS shows that the inter- tive, evolutionary-based online learning mechanism works machine learning competitively yielding a low-order polynomial learning complexity. Moreover, the facetwise analysis approach facilitates the successful design of more - vanced LCSs including Holland's originally envisioned cognitive systems. Martin V.

The augmentation of urban spaces with technology, commonly referred to as Media Architecture, has found increasing interest in the scientific community within the last few years. At the same time architects began to use digital media as a new material apart from concrete, glass or wood to create buildings and urban structures. Simultaneously, Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) researchers began to exploit the interaction opportunities between users and buildings and to bridge the gaps between interface, information medium and architecture. As an example, they extended architectural structures with interactive, light-emitting elements on their outer shell, thereby transforming the surfaces of these structures into giant public screens. At the same time the wide distribution of mobile devices and the coverage of mobile internet allow manifold interaction opportunities between open data and citizens, thereby enabling the internet of things in the public domain. However, the appropriate distribution of information to all citizens is still cumbersome and a mutual dialogue not always successful (i.e. who gets what data and when?). In this book we therefore provide a deeper investigation of Using Information and Media as Construction Material with media architecture as an input and output medium.

CAO is one of the most misunderstood and underutilized weapons available to retailers today. International consultant Barbara Anderson makes clear that in only a limited sense does CAO replace manual ordering. In its full sense it is much more--the optimization of manufacturer, supplier, and retailer distribution to the retail store-- based on consumer and store data and corporate policy. Anderson thus provides a framework and checklist for implementing CAO, and understanding of key terminology, solutions to likely problems, and ways to make CAO implementation successful, and in doing so she covers the full spectrum of retailing. A readable, easily grasped, comprehensive, unique book for retailing management and for their colleagues teaching it in colleges and universities.

Anderson points out that CAO is not an off-the-shelf system but an ongoing project, each phase with its own unique set of benefits and cost justification. Retail systems must support a vision where a product may bypass the store on the way to the consumer, or even the distribution center on the way to the stores. Consumers have a wide range of choices, not only of where to shop, but how to shop, and this demands ever greater levels of service. CAO systems help assure that the correct product is available at the store, that it can be located throughout the supply chain, and that it can be moved easily from any location. In CAO, all levels of operation work with real-time information, using decision-making tools that react and learn from new information. Her book thus shows there is no one right system, product, or approach for successful CAO. It's too big a leap to make in one step but consists of modules and functions that can grow in sophistication over time, and that not all retailers nor all categories within one retailer will use the same methods for forecasting and ordering. She also shows that the distinct separation of replenishment product from planning product is artifically imposed and that the separation of head-quarters from stores is also artificial. Indeed, integration does not mean the integration of separate systems; rather, of business functions themselves. Readers will thus get not only a knowledgeable discussion of what CAO should be, what it is and how it works, but an immediately useful understanding of how to make it work in their own companies.

History of the Book The last three decades have witnessed an explosive development in integrated circuit fabrication technologies. The complexities of cur rent CMOS circuits are reaching beyond the 100 nanometer feature size and multi-hundred million transistors per integrated circuit. To fully exploit this technological potential, circuit designers use sophisticated Computer-Aided Design (CAD) tools. While supporting the talents of innumerable microelectronics engineers, these CAD tools have become the enabling factor responsible for the successful design and implemen tation of thousands of high performance, large scale integrated circuits. This research monograph originated from a body of doctoral disserta tion research completed by the first author at the University of Rochester from 1994 to 1999 while under the supervision of Prof. Eby G. Friedman. This research focuses on issues in the design of the clock distribution net work in large scale, high performance digital synchronous circuits and particularly, on algorithms for non-zero clock skew scheduling. During the development of this research, it has become clear that incorporating timing issues into the successful integrated circuit design process is of fundamental importance, particularly in that advanced theoretical de velopments in this area have been slow to reach the designers' desktops."

Java programs--does this word haunt you? Programming skills--do you want to enhance them? Arrays, strings, and data structure--do you want to master them?

The book deals with a variety of programs in every section.

This comprehensive, detailed reference to Mathematica provides the reader with both a working knowledge of Mathematica programming in general and a detailed knowledge of key aspects of Mathematica needed to create the fastest, shortest, and most elegant implementations possible to solve problems from the natural and physical sciences. The Guidebook gives the user a deeper understanding of Mathematica by instructive implementations, explanations, and examples from a range of disciplines at varying levels of complexity. "Programming" covers the structure of Mathematica expressions, after an overview of the syntax of Mathematica, its programming, graphic, numeric and symbolic capabilities in chapter 1. Chapter 2-6 cover hierarchical construction of all Mathematica objects out of symbolic expressions, the definition of functions, the recognition of patterns and their efficient application, program flows and program structuring, the manipulation of lists, and additional topics. An Appendix contains some general references on algorithms and applications of computer algebra, Mathematica itself and comparisons of various algebra systems. The multiplatform CD contains Mathematica 4.1 notebooks with detailed descriptions and explanations of the Mathematica commands needed in that chapter and used in applications, supplemented by a variety of mathematical, physical, and graphic examples and worked out solutions to all exercises. The Mathematica Guidebook is an indispensible resource for practitioners, researchers and professionals in mathematics, the sciences, and engineering. It will find a natural place on the bookshelf as an essential reference work.

Science has made great progress in the twentieth century, with the establishment of proper disciplines in the fields of physics, computer science, molecular biology, and many others. At the same time, there have also emerged many engineering ideas that are interdisciplinary in nature, beyond the realm of such orthodox disciplines. These in clude, for example, artificial intelligence, fuzzy logic, artificial neural networks, evolutional computation, data mining, and so on. In or der to generate new technology that is truly human-friendly in the twenty-first century, integration of various methods beyond specific disciplines is required. Soft computing is a key concept for the creation of such human friendly technology in our modern information society. Professor Rutkowski is a pioneer in this field, having devoted himself for many years to publishing a large variety of original work. The present vol ume, based mostly on his own work, is a milestone in the devel opment of soft computing, integrating various disciplines from the fields of information science and engineering. The book consists of three parts, the first of which is devoted to probabilistic neural net works. Neural excitation is stochastic, so it is natural to investi gate the Bayesian properties of connectionist structures developed by Professor Rutkowski. This new approach has proven to be par ticularly useful for handling regression and classification problems vi Preface in time-varying environments. Throughout this book, major themes are selected from theoretical subjects that are tightly connected with challenging applications."