Traditional machining has many limitations in today's technology-driven world, which has caused industrial professionals to begin implementing various optimization techniques within their machining processes. The application of methods including machine learning and genetic algorithms has recently transformed the manufacturing industry and created countless opportunities in non-traditional machining methods. Significant research in this area, however, is still considerably lacking. Machine Learning Applications in Non-Conventional Machining Processes is a collection of innovative research on the advancement of intelligent technology in industrial environments and its applications within the manufacturing field. While highlighting topics including evolutionary algorithms, micro-machining, and artificial neural networks, this book is ideally designed for researchers, academicians, engineers, managers, developers, practitioners, industrialists, and students seeking current research on intelligence-based machining processes in today's technology-driven market.

This book presents a methodology to model and specify the data aspect of Web services, as it is overlooked by current standards for specifying Web services. The formal specification enables verification of service behavior, and the proposed methodology is based on formal methods and design-by-contract techniques. The Web has evolved from an information sharing medium to a wide-scale environment for sharing capabilities or services. Currently, URLs not only point to documents and images, but are also used to invoke services that potentially change the state of the Web. Major online organizations today, such as Amazon, PayPal and FedEx, provide services for users and consumers. They also allow third-party vendors to resell their services. In both cases, this requires precise and complete specification of service offerings. Several online discussions demonstrate the challenges faced by these organizations and others while describing their data-centric Web services. These challenges surrounding data specification can lead consumers to use a service erroneously. Case studies demonstrate how formal methods, and specifically design-by-contract techniques, can be leveraged to address the lack of formal specification of data when it comes to developing Web applications such as Amazon and PayPal.

Call Admission Control (CAC) and Dynamic Channel Assignments (DCA) are important decision-making problems in mobile cellular communication systems. Current research in mobile communication considers them as two independent problems, although the former greatly depends on the resulting free channels obtained as the outcome of the latter. This book provides a solution to the CAC problem, considering DCA as an integral part of decision-making for call admission. Further, current technical resources ignore movement issues of mobile stations and fluctuation in network load (incoming calls) in the control strategy used for call admission. In addition, the present techniques on call admission offers solution globally for the entire network, instead of considering the cells independently. CAC here has been formulated by two alternative approaches. The first approach aimed at handling the uncertainty in the CAC problem by employing fuzzy comparators. The second approach is concerned with formulation of CAC as an optimization problem to minimize call drop, satisfying a set of constraints on feasibility and availability of channels, hotness of cells, and velocity and angular displacement of mobile stations. Evolutionary techniques, including Genetic Algorithm and Biogeography Based Optimization, have been employed to solve the optimization problems. The proposed approaches outperform traditional methods with respect to grade and quality of services.

Despite solid advances, numerous challenges have yet to be resolved by Web services-enabled service-oriented architecture systems. Web Services Security Development and Architecture: Theoretical and Practical Issues explores a global approach to methodical development in constructing safety architectures for online systems. Addressing security concerns during the full development lifecycle of Web services-based systems, this critical mass of the most sought after knowledge bridges the gap between practical and theoretical approaches in the field.

Who are we in simulated worlds? Will experiencing worlds that are not 'actual' change our ways of structuring thought? Can virtual worlds open up new possibilities to philosophize? Virtual Worlds as Philosophical Tools tries to answer these questions from a perspective that combines philosophy of technology with videogame design.

"Blue Pelican Java" is a somewhat unusual high school computer science textbook. Most computer science texts will begin with a section on the history of computers followed with a flurry of definitions that are just "so many words" to the average student. The approach here is to first give the student some experience upon which to hang the definitions that come later. The usual practice of introducing classes and objects is deferred until the student has a firm grasp of the fundamentals (loops, decision structures, etc). Thus, the beginning student is not overwhelmed by the simultaneous introduction of OOPs and the fundamentals. The book includes plenty of exercises (many in "contest" form), programming projects, and a huge appendix.

The book describes recent research results in the areas of modelling, creation, management and presentation of interactive 3D multimedia content. The book describes the current state of the art in the field and identifies the most important research and design issues. Consecutive chapters address these issues. These are: database modelling of 3D content, security in 3D environments, describing interactivity of content, searching content, visualization of search results, modelling mixed reality content, and efficient creation of interactive 3D content. Each chapter is illustrated with example applications based on the proposed approach. The final chapter discusses some important ethical issues related to the widespread use of virtual environments in everyday life. The book provides ready to use solutions for many important problems related to the creation of interactive 3D multimedia applications and will be a primary reading for researchers and developers working in this domain.

COOP 2012 is the tenth COOP conference, marking twenty years from the first conference in 1992. In this special anniversary edition we asked researchers and practitioners to reflect on what have been the successes and the failures in designing cooperative systems, and what challenges still need to be addressed. We have come a long way in understanding the intricacies of cooperation and in designing systems that support work practices and collective activities. These advances would not have been possible without the concerted effort of contributions from a plethora of domains including CSCW, HCI, Information Systems, Knowledge Engineering, Multi-agent systems, organizational and management sciences, sociology, psychology, anthropology, ergonomics, linguistics, etc. The COOP community is going from strength to strength in developing new technologies, advancing and proposing new methodological approaches, and forging theories.

This book focuses on recent technical advancements and state-of-the art technologies for analyzing characteristic features and probabilistic modelling of complex social networks and decentralized online network architectures. Such research results in applications related to surveillance and privacy, fraud analysis, cyber forensics, propaganda campaigns, as well as for online social networks such as Facebook. The text illustrates the benefits of using advanced social network analysis methods through application case studies based on practical test results from synthetic and real-world data. This book will appeal to researchers and students working in these areas.

Rapid development of digital technologies has led to the widespread use of software in all aspects of our life. The degree of reliance that can be justifiably placed on software-intensive systems is expressed by the notion of dependability. The complexity of modern software-intensive systems poses the greatest threat to dependability. Furthermore, software the most complex system component is recognized to be the most error-prone part of the system. Dependability and Computer Engineering: Concepts for Software-Intensive Systems offers a state-of-the-art overview of the dependability research, from engineering various software-intensive systems to validating existing IT-frameworks and solving generic and particular problems related to the dependable use of IT in our society. It is important to understand how dependability is manifested in software-intensive systems, how it is developed, and how it can be enhanced at various levels in systems and organizations. This book uncovers the existing research on the topic as well as the key challenges associated with the engineering of dependable IT systems in the future.

Mobile user experience is a new frontier. Untethered from a keyboard and mouse, this rich design space is lush with opportunity to invent new and more human ways for people to interact with information. Invention requires casting off many anchors and conventions inherited from the last 50 years of computer science and traditional design and jumping head first into a new and unfamiliar design space.

Web Services are among the most important emerging technologies in the e-business, computer software, and communication industries with the potential to redefine the ways that companies do business and exchange information. Web Service Composition and New Frameworks in Designing Semantics: Innovations highlights new developments in Semantic Web services, service-oriented systems, and Web services composition, among others. This book is a valuable resource providing leading technologies, developments, ideas, and trends to an international readership of researchers and engineers in the field of Web services.

Computer technologies are forever evolving and it is vital that computer science educators find new methods of teaching programming in order to maintain the rapid changes occurring in the field. One of the ways to increase student engagement and retention is by integrating games into the curriculum. Gamification-Based E-Learning Strategies for Computer Programming Education evaluates the different approaches and issues faced in integrating games into computer education settings. Featuring emergent trends on the application of gaming to pedagogical strategies and technological tactics, as well as new methodologies and approaches being utilized in computer programming courses, this book is an essential reference source for practitioners, researchers, computer science teachers, and students pursuing computer science.

The book describes the emergence of big data technologies and the role of Spark in the entire big data stack. It compares Spark and Hadoop and identifies the shortcomings of Hadoop that have been overcome by Spark. The book mainly focuses on the in-depth architecture of Spark and our understanding of Spark RDDs and how RDD complements big data's immutable nature, and solves it with lazy evaluation, cacheable and type inference. It also addresses advanced topics in Spark, starting with the basics of Scala and the core Spark framework, and exploring Spark data frames, machine learning using Mllib, graph analytics using Graph X and real-time processing with Apache Kafka, AWS Kenisis, and Azure Event Hub. It then goes on to investigate Spark using PySpark and R. Focusing on the current big data stack, the book examines the interaction with current big data tools, with Spark being the core processing layer for all types of data. The book is intended for data engineers and scientists working on massive datasets and big data technologies in the cloud. In addition to industry professionals, it is helpful for aspiring data processing professionals and students working in big data processing and cloud computing environments.

This book examines the possibilities of incorporating elements of user-centred design (UCD) such as user experience (UX) and usability with agile software development. It explores the difficulties and problems inherent in integrating these two practices despite their relative similarities, such as their emphasis on stakeholder collaboration. Developed from a workshop held at NordiCHI in 2014, this edited volume brings together researchers from across the software development, UCD and creative design fields to discuss the current state-of-the-art. Practical case studies of integrating UCD in Agile development across diverse contexts are presented, whilst the different futures for UCD and other design practices in the context of agile software development are identified and explored. Integrating User Centred Design in Agile Development will be ideal for researchers, designers and academics who are interested in software development, user-centred design, agile methodologies and related areas.

This book provides extensive insight into the possibilities and challenges of XML in building new information management solutions in networked organizations. After a brief introduction to Web communication features and XML fundamentals, the book examines the benefits of adopting XML and illustrates various types of XML use: XML in document management; XML for data-centric and multimedia components; XML as a format for metadata, including metadata for the Semantic Web; and XML in support of data interchange between software applications and among organizations. The challenges of adopting XML in large-scale information management are also discussed. In addition, applications across a broad spectrum are examined and numerous case studies pertaining to the adoption of XML are presented. The book is particularly suitable for courses offered in Information Studies, Information Systems, or Information Technology. It also serves as an excellent practical guide for professionals in information management and provides important support material for courses in Computer Science and in Business.

A 3D user interface (3DUI) is an interface in which the user performs tasks in three dimensions. For example, interactions using hand/body gestures, interaction using a motion controller (e.g. Sony PlayStation Move), interaction with virtual reality devices using tracked motion controllers, etc. All these technologies which let a user interact in three dimensions are called 3D user interface technologies. These 3D user interfaces have the potential to make games more immersive & engaging and thus potentially provide a better user experience to gamers. Although 3D user interface technologies are available for games, it is unclear how their usage affects game play and if there are any user performance benefits. This book presents state of the art research on exploring 3D user interface technologies for improving video games. It also presents a review of research work done in this area and describes experiments focused on usage of stereoscopic 3D, head tracking, and hand gesture-based control in gaming scenarios. These experiments are systematic studies in gaming environments and are aimed at understanding the effect of the underlined 3D interface technology on the gaming experience of a user. Based on these experiments, several design guidelines are presented which can aid game designers in designing better immersive games.

The Internet has become the major form of map delivery. The current presentation of maps is based on the use of online services. This session examines developments related to online methods of map delivery, particularly Application Programmer Interfaces (APIs) and MapServices in general, including Google Maps API and similar services. Map mashups have had a major impact on how spatial information is presented. The advantage of using a major online mapping site is that the maps represent a common and recognizable representation of the world. Overlaying features on top of these maps provides a frame of reference for the map user. A particular advantage for thematic mapping is the ability to spatially reference thematic data.

The book 'BiLBIQ: A biologically inspired Robot with walking and rolling locomotion' deals with implementing a locomotion behavior observed in the biological archetype Cebrennus villosus to a robot prototype whose structural design needs to be developed. The biological sample is investigated as far as possible and compared to other evolutional solutions within the framework of nature's inventions. Current achievements in robotics are examined and evaluated for their relation and relevance to the robot prototype in question. An overview of what is state of the art in actuation ensures the choice of the hardware available and most suitable for this project. Through a constant consideration of the achievement of two fundamentally different ways of locomotion with one and the same structure, a robot design is developed and constructed taking hardware constraints into account. The development of a special leg structure that needs to resemble and replace body elements of the biological archetype is a special challenge to be dealt with. Finally a robot prototype was achieved, which is able to walk and roll - inspired by the spider Cebrennus villosus.

A principal aim of computer graphics is to generate images that look as real as photographs. Realistic computer graphics imagery has however proven to be quite challenging to produce, since the appearance of materials arises from complicated physical processes that are difficult to analytically model and simulate, and image-based modeling of real material samples is often impractical due to the high-dimensional space of appearance data that needs to be acquired.

This book presents a general framework based on the inherent coherency in the appearance data of materials to make image-based appearance modeling more tractable. We observe that this coherence manifests itself as low-dimensional structure in the appearance data, and by identifying this structure we can take advantage of it to simplify the major processes in the appearance modeling pipeline. This framework consists of two key components, namely the coherence structure and the accompanying reconstruction method to fully recover the low-dimensional appearance data from sparse measurements. Our investigation of appearance coherency has led to three major forms of low-dimensional coherence structure and three types of coherency-based reconstruction upon which our framework is built.

This coherence-based approach can be comprehensively applied to all the major elements of image-based appearance modeling, from data acquisition of real material samples to user-assisted modeling from a photograph, from synthesis of volumes to editing of material properties, and from efficient rendering algorithms to physical fabrication of objects. In this book we present several techniques built on this coherency framework to handle various appearance modeling tasks both for surface reflections and subsurface scattering, the two primary physical components that generate material appearance. We believe that coherency-based appearance modeling will make it easier and more feasible for practitioners to bring computer graphics imagery to life.

This book is aimed towards readers with an interest in computer graphics. In particular, researchers, practitioners and students will benefit from this book by learning about the underlying coherence in appearance structure and how it can be utilized to improve appearance modeling. The specific techniques presented in our manuscript can be of value to anyone who wishes to elevate the realism of their computer graphics imagery. For understanding this book, an elementary background in computer graphics is assumed, such as from an introductory college course or from practical experience with computer graphics.

"Computer and Information Sciences" is a unique and comprehensive review of advanced technology and research in the field of Information Technology. It provides an up to date snapshot of research in Europe and the Far East (Hong Kong, Japan and China) in the most active areas of information technology, including Computer Vision, Data Engineering, Web Engineering, Internet Technologies, Bio-Informatics and System Performance Evaluation Methodologies.

Software Life Cycle Models. Objectoriented Concepts and Modeling. Formal Specification and Verification. Design Methodologies and Specifications. Programming and Coding. Programming Tools. Declarative Programming. Automatic Program Synthesis and Reuse. Program Verification and Testing. Software Maintenance. Advanced Programming Environments. Other Selected Topics. Index.