Convexity of sets in linear spaces, and concavity and convexity of functions, lie at the root of beautiful theoretical results that are at the same time extremely useful in the analysis and solution of optimization problems, including problems of either single objective or multiple objectives. Not all of these results rely necessarily on convexity and concavity; some of the results can guarantee that each local optimum is also a global optimum, giving these methods broader application to a wider class of problems. Hence, the focus of the first part of the book is concerned with several types of generalized convex sets and generalized concave functions. In addition to their applicability to nonconvex optimization, these convex sets and generalized concave functions are used in the book's second part, where decision-making and optimization problems under uncertainty are investigated. Uncertainty in the problem data often cannot be avoided when dealing with practical problems. Errors occur in real-world data for a host of reasons. However, over the last thirty years, the fuzzy set approach has proved to be useful in these situations. It is this approach to optimization under uncertainty that is extensively used and studied in the second part of this book. Typically, the membership functions of fuzzy sets involved in such problems are neither concave nor convex. They are, however, often quasiconcave or concave in some generalized sense. This opens possibilities for application of results on generalized concavity to fuzzy optimization. Despite this obvious relation, applying the interface of these two areas has been limited to date. It is hoped that the combination of ideas and results from the field of generalized concavity on the one hand and fuzzy optimization on the other hand outlined and discussed in Generalized Concavity in Fuzzy Optimization and Decision Analysis will be of interest to both communities. Our aim is to broaden the classes of problems that the combination of these two areas can satisfactorily address and solve.

Arc Routing: Theory, Solutions and Applications is about arc traversal and the wide variety of arc routing problems, which has had its foundations in the modern graph theory work of Leonhard Euler. Arc routing methods and computation has become a fundamental optimization concept in operations research and has numerous applications in transportation, telecommunications, manufacturing, the Internet, and many other areas of modern life. The book draws from a variety of sources including the traveling salesman problem (TSP) and graph theory, which are used and studied by operations research, engineers, computer scientists, and mathematicians. In the last ten years or so, there has been extensive coverage of arc routing problems in the research literature, especially from a graph theory perspective; however, the field has not had the benefit of a uniform, systematic treatment. With this book, there is now a single volume that focuses on state-of-the-art exposition of arc routing problems, that explores its graph theoretical foundations, and that presents a number of solution methodologies in a variety of application settings. Moshe Dror has succeeded in working with an elite group of ARC routing scholars to develop the highest quality treatment of the current state-of-the-art in arc routing.

"An Introduction to XML Query Processing and Keyword Search" systematically and comprehensively covers the latest advances in XML data searching. It presents an extensive overview of the current query processing and keyword search techniques on XML data, including XML labeling schemes, indexing, processing on order and un-order XML tree patterns, XML query optimization, results estimation, and XML keyword searches, which are elaborated in separate chapters. Graduate students and researchers in the field of XML data searching will find this book an invaluable resource. Prof. Jiaheng Lu is an associate professor at Renmin University of China's School of Information.

This book develops a crowdsourced sensor-cloud service composition framework taking into account spatio-temporal aspects. This book also unfolds new horizons to service-oriented computing towards the direction of crowdsourced sensor data based applications, in the broader context of Internet of Things (IoT). It is a massive challenge for the IoT research field how to effectively and efficiently capture, manage and deliver sensed data as user-desired services. The outcome of this research will contribute to solving this very important question, by designing a novel service framework and a set of unique service selection and composition frameworks. Delivering a novel service framework to manage crowdsourced sensor data provides high-level abstraction (i.e., sensor-cloud service) to model crowdsourced sensor data from functional and non-functional perspectives, seamlessly turning the raw data into "ready to go" services. A creative indexing model is developed to capture and manage the spatio-temporal dynamism of crowdsourced service providers. Delivering novel frameworks to compose crowdsourced sensor-cloud services is vital. These frameworks focuses on spatio-temporal composition of crowdsourced sensor-cloud services, which is a new territory for existing service oriented computing research. A creative failure-proof model is also designed to prevent composition failure caused by fluctuating QoS. Delivering an incentive model to drive the coverage of crowdsourced service providers is also vital. A new spatio-temporal incentive model targets changing coverage of the crowdsourced providers to achieve demanded coverage of crowdsourced sensor-cloud services within a region. The outcome of this research is expected to potentially create a sensor services crowdsourcing market and new commercial opportunities focusing on crowdsourced data based applications. The crowdsourced community based approach adds significant value to journey planning and map services thus creating a competitive edge for a technologically-minded companies incentivizing new start-ups, thus enabling higher market innovation. This book primarily targets researchers and practitioners, who conduct research work in service oriented computing, Internet of Things (IoT), smart city and spatio-temporal travel planning, as well as advanced-level students studying this field. Small and Medium Entrepreneurs, who invest in crowdsourced IoT services and journey planning infrastructures, will also want to purchase this book.

This book compiles contributions from renowned researchers covering all aspects of conceptual modeling, on the occasion of Arne Solvberg's 67th birthday. Friends of this pioneer in information systems modeling contribute their latest research results from such fields as data modeling, goal-oriented modeling, agent-oriented modeling, and process-oriented modeling. The book reflects the most important recent developments and application areas of conceptual modeling, and highlights trends in conceptual modeling for the next decade.

The pervasiveness of the Internet has had a significant impact on global politics, economics, and culture. To create a truly effective product in such a saturated digital environment, developers must study what has come before and how they can utilize existing tools to even greater effect. Evaluating Websites and Web Services: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on User Satisfaction explores some of the various approaches to the study and assessment of Internet technologies, providing scholars, researchers, developers, and professionals with critical knowledge and an interdisciplinary perspective on e-services in a variety of functional areas, from government and commerce to social media and education.

Commutative Algebra, Singularities and Computer Algebra presents current trends in commutative algebra, algebraic combinatorics, singularity theory and computer algebra, and highlights the interaction between these disciplines. Contributions by leading international mathematicians thoroughly discuss topics in: modules theory, integrally closed ideals and determinantal ideals, singularities in projective spaces and Castelnuovo-Mumford regularity, Groebner and SAGBI basis, and the use of the computer packages Bergman, CoCoA and SINGULAR.

Object relationships in modern software systems are becoming increasingly numerous and complex, and program errors due to violations of object relationships are difficult to detect. Programmers need new tools that allow them to explore objects in a large system more efficiently and to detect broken object relationships instantaneously. Such tools incorporate approaches used in such areas as data visualization, pattern matching and extraction, database querying, active databases, and rule-based programming. The query-based debugging approach developed by the author of this book is another powerful yet efficient tool to be added to the developer's tool chest. Advanced Debugging Methods presents practice and tools for debugging computer programs. This book proposes new powerful approaches that simplify the daunting task of debugging complex software systems. Although debugging has been addressed in numerous research papers, many of its methods have yet to be explored in a book-length format. This book helps to fill this gap by presenting an overview of existing debugging tools with motivating examples and case studies, as well as presenting new, state-of-the-art debugging methods. Advanced Debugging Methods will be of use to software developers looking for tools to be applied in cutting edge practice; system architects looking at the relationship between software design and debugging; tools and programming language researchers looking for new ideas in run-time tool implementation as well as detailed descriptions of advanced implementations; and university professors and graduate students who will use this book as supplementary reading for graduate courses in programming tools, language implementation, and advanced object-oriented systems. Advanced Debugging Methods is also a handy reference of currently existing debugging methodologies as well as a springboard for cutting-edge research to simplify the difficult task of debugging and to facilitate the development of more robust software systems.

Collaborative Networks A Tool for Promoting Co-creation and Innovation The collaborative networks paradigm offers powerful socio-organizational mec- nisms, supported by advanced information and communication technologies for p- moting innovation. This, in turn, leads to new products and services, growth of better customer relationships, establishing better project and process management, and building higher-performing consortia. By putting diverse entities that bring different perspectives, competencies, practices, and cultures, to work together, collaborative networks develop the right environment for the emergence of new ideas and more efficient, yet practical, solutions. This aspect is particularly important for small and medium enterprises which typically lack critical mass and can greatly benefit from participation in co-innovation networks. However, larger organizations also benefit from the challenges and the diversity found in collaborative ecosystems. In terms of research, in addition to the trend identified in previous years toward a sounder consolidation of the theoretical foundation in this discipline, there is now a direction of developments more focused on modeling and reasoning about new c- laboration patterns and their contribution to value creation. "Soft issues," including social capital, cultural aspects, ethics and value systems, trust, emotions, behavior, etc. continue to deserve particular attention in terms of modeling and reasoning. Exploi- tion of new application domains such as health care, education, and active aging for retired professionals also help identify new research challenges, both in terms of m- eling and ICT support development.

This book presents a powerful new language and methodology for programming complex reactive systems in a scenario-based manner. The language is live sequence charts (LSCs), a multimodal extension of sequence charts and UML's sequence diagrams, used in the past mainly for requirements. The methodology is play-in/play-out, an unusually convenient means for specifying inter-object scenario-based behavior directly from a GUI or an object model diagram, with the surprising ability to execute that behavior, or those requirements, directly. The language and methodology are supported by a fully implemented tool – the Play-Engine – which is attached to the book in CD form.   The design of reactive systems is one of the most challenging problems in computer science. This books starts with a critical insight to explain the difficulty of this problem: there is a fundamental gap between the scenario-based way in which people think about such systems and the state-based way in which these systems are implemented. The book then offers a radical proposal to bridge this gap by means of playing scenarios. Systems can be specified by playing in scenarios and implemented by means of a Play-Engine that plays out scenarios. This idea is carried out and developed, lucidly, formally and playfully, to its fullest. The result is a compelling proposal, accompanied by a prototype software engine, for reactive systems design, which is bound to cause a splash in the software-engineering community. Moshe Y. Vardi, Rice University, Houston, Texas, USA Scenarios are a primary exchange tool in explaining system behavior to others, but their limited expressive power never made them able to fully describe systems, thus limiting their use. The language of Live Sequence Charts (LSCs) presented in this beautifully written book achieves this goal, and the attached Play-Engine software makes these LSCs really come alive. This is undoubtedly a key breakthrough that will start long-awaited and exciting new directions in systems specification, synthesis, and analysis. Gérard Berry, Esterel Technologies and INRIA, Sophia-Antipolis, France The approach of David Harel and Rami Marelly is a fascinating way of combining prototyping techniques with techniques for identifying behavior and user interfaces. Manfred Broy, Technical University of Munich, Germany

This book contains the research on modeling bodies, cloth and character based adaptation performed during the last 3 years at MIRALab at the University of Geneva. More than ten researchers have worked together in order to reach a truly 3D Virtual Try On. What we mean by Virtual Try On is the possibility of anyone to give dimensions on her predefined body and obtain her own sized shape body, select a 3D cloth and see oneself animated in Real-Time, walking along a catwalk. Some systems exist today but are unable to adapt to body dimensions, have no real-time animation of body and clothes. A truly system on the web of Virtual Try On does not exist so far. This book is an attempt to explain how to build a 3D Virtual Try On system which is now very much in demand in the clothing industry. To describe this work, the book is divided into five chapters. The first chapter contains a brief historical background of general deformation methods. It ends with a section on the 3D human body scanner systems that are used both for rapid p- totyping and statistical analyses of the human body size variations.

Genetic Programming Theory and Practice IV was developed from the fourth workshop at the University of Michigan's Center for the Study of Complex Systems to facilitate the exchange of ideas and information related to the rapidly advancing field of Genetic Programming (GP). The text provides a cohesive view of the issues facing both practitioners and theoreticians, and examines the synergy between GP theory and application. The foremost international researchers and practitioners in the GP arena contributed to the volume, exploring application areas including chemical process control, circuit design, financial data mining and bioinformatics, to name just a few. This volume is the result of an extensive dialog between GP theoreticians and practitioners, and is a unique and indispensable tool for both academics and industry professionals involved in GP, evolutionary computation, machine learning and artificial intelligence.

The design process of embedded systems has changed substantially in recent years. One of the main reasons for this change is the pressure to shorten time-to-market when designing digital systems. To shorten the product cycles, programmable processes are used to implement more and more functionality of the embedded system. Therefore, nowadays, embedded systems are very often implemented by heterogeneous systems consisting of ASICs, processors, memories and peripherals. As a consequence, the research topic of hardware/software co-design, dealing with the problems of designing these heterogeneous systems, has gained great importance. Hardware/Software Co-design for Data Flow Dominated Embedded Systems introduces the different tasks of hardware/software co-design including system specification, hardware/software partitioning, co-synthesis and co-simulation. The book summarizes and classifies state-of-the-art co-design tools and methods for these tasks. In addition, the co-design tool COOL is presented which solves the co-design tasks for the class of data-flow dominated embedded systems. In Hardware/Software Co-design for Data Flow Dominated Embedded Systems the primary emphasis has been put on the hardware/software partitioning and the co-synthesis phase and their coupling. In contrast to many other publications in this area, a mathematical formulation of the hardware/software partitioning problem is given. This problem formulation supports target architectures consisting of multiple processors and multiple ASICs. Several novel approaches are presented and compared for solving the partitioning problem, including an MILP approach, a heuristic solution and an approach based on geneticalgorithms. The co-synthesis phase is based on the idea of controlling the system by means of a static run-time scheduler implemented in hardware. New algorithms are introduced which generate a complete set of hardware and software specifications required to implement heterogeneous systems. All of these techniques are described in detail and exemplified. Hardware/Software Co-design for Data Flow Dominated Embedded Systems is intended to serve students and researchers working on hardware/software co-design. At the same time the variety of presented techniques automating the design tasks of hardware/software systems will be of interest to industrial engineers and designers of digital systems. From the foreword by Peter Marwedel: Niemann's method should be known by all persons working in the field. Hence, I recommend this book for everyone who is interested in hardware/software co-design.

Soft City Culture and Technology: The Betaville Project discusses the complete cycle of conception, development, and deployment of the Betaville platform.

Betaville is a massively participatory online environment for distributed 3D design and development of proposals for changes to the built environment an experimental integration of art, design, and software development for the public realm. Through a detailed account of Betaville from a Big Crazy Idea to a working "deep social medium," the author examines the current conditions of performance and accessibility of hardware, software, networks, and skills that can be brought together into a new form of open public design and deliberation space, for and spanning and integrating the disparate spheres of art, architecture, social media, and engineering.

Betaville is an ambitious enterprise, of building compelling and constructive working relationships in situations where roles and disciplinary boundaries must be as agile as the development process of the software itself. Through a considered account and analysis of the interdependencies between Betaville's project design, development methods, and deployment, the reader can gain a deeper understanding of the potential socio-technical forms of New Soft Cities: blended virtual-physical worlds, whose "public works" must ultimately serve and succeed as massively collaborative works of art and infrastructure."

As the first book devoted to relational data mining, this coherently written multi-author monograph provides a thorough introduction and systematic overview of the area. The first part introduces the reader to the basics and principles of classical knowledge discovery in databases and inductive logic programming; subsequent chapters by leading experts assess the techniques in relational data mining in a principled and comprehensive way; finally, three chapters deal with advanced applications in various fields and refer the reader to resources for relational data mining.This book will become a valuable source of reference for R&D professionals active in relational data mining. Students as well as IT professionals and ambitioned practitioners interested in learning about relational data mining will appreciate the book as a useful text and gentle introduction to this exciting new field.

Semantic Web services promise to automate tasks such as discovery, mediation, selection, composition, and invocation of services, enabling fully flexible automated e-business. Their usage, however, still requires a significant amount of human intervention due to the lack of support for a machine-processable description.

In this book, Jos de Bruijn and his coauthors lay the foundations for understanding the requirements that shape the description of the various aspects related to Semantic Web services, such as the static background knowledge in the form of ontologies, the functional description of the service, and the behavioral description of the service. They introduce the Web Service Modeling Language (WSML), which provides means for describing the functionality and behavior of Web services, as well as the underlying business knowledge, in the form of ontologies, with a conceptual grounding in the Web Service Modeling Ontology.

Academic and industrial researchers as well as professionals will find a comprehensive overview of the concepts and challenges in the area of Semantic Web services, the Web Services Modeling Language and its relation to the Web Services Modeling Ontology, and an in-depth treatment of both enabling technologies and theoretical foundations.

This book provides a comprehensive and practically minded introduction into serious games for law enforcement agencies. Serious games offer wide ranging benefits for law enforcement with applications from professional trainings to command-level decision making to the preparation for crises events. This book explains the conceptual foundations of virtual and augmented reality, gamification and simulation. It further offers practical guidance on the process of serious games development from user requirements elicitation to evaluation. The chapters are intended to provide principles, as well as hands-on knowledge to plan, design, test and apply serious games successfully in a law enforcement environment. A diverse set of case studies showcases the enormous variety that is possible in serious game designs and application areas and offers insights into concrete design decisions, design processes, benefits and challenges. The book is meant for law enforcement professionals interested in commissioning their own serious games as well as game designers interested in collaborative pedagogy and serious games for the law enforcement and security sector.

Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler. (Albert Einstein, Readers Digest, 1977) The modern practice of creating technical systems and technological processes of high effi.ciency besides the employment of new principles, new materials, new physical effects and other new solutions ( which is very traditional and plays the key role in the selection of the general structure of the object to be designed) also includes the choice of the best combination for the set of parameters (geometrical sizes, electrical and strength characteristics, etc.) concretizing this general structure, because the Variation of these parameters ( with the structure or linkage being already set defined) can essentially affect the objective performance indexes. The mathematical tools for choosing these best combinations are exactly what is this book about. With the advent of computers and the computer-aided design the pro bations of the selected variants are usually performed not for the real examples ( this may require some very expensive building of sample op tions and of the special installations to test them ), but by the analysis of the corresponding mathematical models. The sophistication of the mathematical models for the objects to be designed, which is the natu ral consequence of the raising complexity of these objects, greatly com plicates the objective performance analysis. Today, the main (and very often the only) available instrument for such an analysis is computer aided simulation of an object's behavior, based on numerical experiments with its mathematical model."

Overtheyears, research inthelifescienceshasbenefitedgreatlyfromthequantita tive toolsofmathematics and modeling. Many aspectsofcomplex biological systems can be more deeply understood when mathematical techniques are incorporated into a scientific investigation. Modelingcanbefruitfully applied in many typesofbiological research, from studies on the molecular, cellular, and organ level, to experiments in wholeanimalsandinpopulations. Using the field of nutrition as an example, one can find many cases of recent advances in knowledge and understanding that were facilitated by the application of mathematical modelingtokineticdata. Theavailabilityofbiologicallyimportantstable isotope-labeled compounds, developments in sensitive mass spectrometry and other analytical techniques, and advances in the powerful modeling software applied to data haveeachcontributed toourability tocarryoutevermoresophisticated kinetic studies that are relevant to nutrition and the health sciences at many levels oforganization. Furthermore, weanticipatethatmodeling isonthebrinkofanothermajoradvance: the application of kinetic modeling to clinical practice. With advances in the abilityof modelstoaccesslargedatabases(e. g., apopulationofindividualpatientrecords)andthe developmentofuserinterfaces thatare"friendly"enough tobeused byclinicians who arenotmodelers, wepredictthathealthapplicationsmodeling willbeanimportantnew 51 directionformodelinginthe21 century. This book contains manuscripts that are based on presentations at the seventh conference in a series focused on advancing nutrition and health research by fostering exchange among scientists from such disciplines as nutrition, biology, mathematics, statistics, kinetics, andcomputing. Thethemesofthesixpreviousconferencesincluded general nutritionmodeling(CanoltyandCain, 1985;Hoover-PlowandChandra, 1988), amino acids and carbohydrates (Aburnrad, 1991), minerals (Siva Subramanian and Wastney, 1995), vitamins, proteins, andmodelingtheory(CoburnandTownsend, 1996), and physiological compartmental modeling (Clifford and Muller, 1998). The seventh conference in the series was held at The Pennsylvania State University from July 29 throughAugust1,2000. Themeetingbeganwithaninstructiveandentertainingkeynote address by Professor Britton Chance, Eldridge Reeves Johnson University Professor Emeritus of Biophysics, Physical Chemistry, and Radiologic Physics, University of Pennsylvania. Dr."

This 2nd edition has been completely revised and updated, with additional new chapters. It presents state-of-the-art research in this area and focuses on key topics such as: visualization of semantic and structural information and metadata in the context of the emerging Semantic Web; Ontology-based Information Visualization and the use of graphically represented ontologies; Semantic Visualizations using Topic Maps and graph techniques; Recommender systems for filtering and recommending on the Semantic Web; SVG and X3D as new XML-based languages for 2D and 3D visualisations; methods used to construct and visualize high quality metadata and ontologies; and navigating and exploring XML documents using interactive multimedia interfaces. The design of visual interfaces for e-commerce and information retrieval is currently a challenging area of practical web development.

Actor-Network Theory (ANT) has existed as a topic of interest among social theorists for decades. Due to the prevalence of technology in modern society, discussions over the influence of actor-network theory on the changing scope of technology can assist in facilitating further research and scientific thought. Technological Advancements and the Impact of Actor-Network Theory focuses on cross-disciplinary research as well as examples of the use of actor-network theory in a variety of fields, including medicine, education, business, engineering, environmental science, computer science, and social science. This timely publication is well-suited for reference use by academicians, researchers, upper-level students, and theorists. Topics Covered The many academic areas covered in this publication include, but are not limited to: Digital Communication E-Health Human Interaction Information and Communication Technologies Online Education Online Investing Public Service Innovation Software Development

As the telecommunication industry introduces new sophisticated technologies, the nature of services and the volume of demands have changed. Indeed, a broad range of new services for users appear, combining voice, data, graphics, video, etc. This implies new planning issues. Fiber transmission systems that can carry large amounts of data on a few strands of wire were introduced. These systems have such a large bandwidth that the failure of even a single transmission link: in the network can create a severe service loss to customers. Therefore, a very high level of service reliability is becoming imperative for both system users and service providers. Since equipment failures and accidents cannot be avoided entirely, networks have to be designed so as to "survive" failures. This is done by judiciously installing spare capacity over the network so that all traffic interrupted by a failure may be diverted around that failure by way of this spare or reserve capacity. This of course translates into huge investments for network operators. Designing such survivable networks while minimizing spare capacity costs is, not surprisingly, a major concern of operating companies which gives rise to very difficult combinatorial problems. In order to make telecommunication networks survivable, one can essentially use two different strategies: protection or restoration. The protection approach preas signs spare capacity to protect each element of the network independently, while the restoration approach spreads the redundant capacity over the whole network and uses it as required in order to restore the disrupted traffic."

Polynomial extremal problems (PEP) constitute one of the most important subclasses of nonlinear programming models. Their distinctive feature is that an objective function and constraints can be expressed by polynomial functions in one or several variables. Let: e = {: e 1, ...: en} be the vector in n-dimensional real linear space Rn; n PO(: e), PI (: e), ..., Pm (: e) are polynomial functions in R with real coefficients. In general, a PEP can be formulated in the following form: (0.1) find r = inf Po(: e) subject to constraints (0.2) Pi (: e) =0, i=l, ..., m (a constraint in the form of inequality can be written in the form of equality by introducing a new variable: for example, P( x) 0 is equivalent to P(: e) + y2 = 0). Boolean and mixed polynomial problems can be written in usual form by adding for each boolean variable z the equality: Z2 - Z = O. Let a = {al, ..., a } be integer vector with nonnegative entries {a;}f=l. n Denote by R a](: e) monomial in n variables of the form: n R a](: e) = IT: ef';;=1 d(a) = 2:7=1 ai is the total degree of monomial R a]. Each polynomial in n variables can be written as sum of monomials with nonzero coefficients: P(: e) = L caR a](: e), aEA{P) IX x Nondifferentiable optimization and polynomial problems where A(P) is the set of monomials contained in polynomial P

A presentation of the central and basic concepts, techniques, and tools of computer science, with the emphasis on presenting a problem-solving approach and on providing a survey of all of the most important topics covered in degree programmes. Scheme is used throughout as the programming language and the author stresses a functional programming approach to create simple functions so as to obtain the desired programming goal. Such simple functions are easily tested individually, which greatly helps in producing programs that work correctly first time. Throughout, the author aids to writing programs, and makes liberal use of boxes with "Mistakes to Avoid." Programming examples include: * abstracting a problem; * creating pseudo code as an intermediate solution; * top-down and bottom-up design; * building procedural and data abstractions; * writing progams in modules which are easily testable. Numerous exercises help readers test their understanding of the material and develop ideas in greater depth, making this an ideal first course for all students coming to computer science for the first time.