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."

Once the basic idea of hypertext had spread rapidly throughout the world via the Internet, the reception of hypertexts soon became subject of empirical research among psychologists, cognitive scientists, and educational researchers. As easy to use software for the writing of hypertexts (HTML editors) is now broadly available, there are no longer any technical obstacles for the use of hypertext production in teaching and learning. This book presents and analyses the learning effects that can be anticipated from the production of hypertexts. It includes laboratory experiments, studies on the production of hypertexts in the context of educational institutions, and reports on software environments designed for the production of hypertext. It includes theoretical, empirically and developmentally oriented contributions. The first three chapters link up directly with research on traditional writing while addressing aspects of the interaction between content and rhetoric during hypertext writing. The next three chapters focus on cooperative learning of students in and through the production of hypertexts. The following two chapters look at new technological possibilities, namely, a software environment for transforming textbooks into personalized hypertexts and the design of hypervideos. The final chapter discusses potential methods for further research.

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.

grams of which the objective is given by the ratio of a convex by a positive (over a convex domain) concave function. As observed by Sniedovich (Ref. [102, 103]) most of the properties of fractional pro grams could be found in other programs, given that the objective function could be written as a particular composition of functions. He called this new field C programming, standing for composite concave programming. In his seminal book on dynamic programming (Ref. [104]), Sniedovich shows how the study of such com positions can help tackling non-separable dynamic programs that otherwise would defeat solution. Barros and Frenk (Ref. [9]) developed a cutting plane algorithm capable of optimizing C-programs. More recently, this algorithm has been used by Carrizosa and Plastria to solve a global optimization problem in facility location (Ref. [16]). The distinction between global optimization problems (Ref. [54]) and generalized convex problems can sometimes be hard to establish. That is exactly the reason why so much effort has been placed into finding an exhaustive classification of the different weak forms of convexity, establishing a new definition just to satisfy some desirable property in the most general way possible. This book does not aim at all the subtleties of the different generalizations of convexity, but concentrates on the most general of them all, quasiconvex programming. Chapter 5 shows clearly where the real difficulties appear.

Many designers, policy makers, teachers, and other practitioners are beginning to understand the usefulness of using digital games beyond entertainment. Games have been developed for teaching, recruiting and to collect data to improve search engines. This book examines the fundamentals of designing any game with a serious purpose and provides a way of thinking on how to design one successfully.

The reader will be introduced to a design philosophy called Triadic Game Design.; a theory that all games involve three worlds: the worlds of Reality, Meaning, and Play. Each world is affiliated with aspects. A balance needs to be found within and between the three worlds. Such a balance is difficult to achieve, during the design many tensions will arise, forcing designers to make trade-offs. To deal with these tensions and to ensure that the right decisions are made to create a harmonic game, a frame of reference is needed. This is what "Triadic Game Design" offers.

This monograph book is focused on the recent advances in smart, multimedia and computer gaming technologies. The Contributions include: *Smart Gamification and Smart Serious Games. *Fusion of secure IPsec-based Virtual Private Network, mobile computing and rich multimedia technology. *Teaching and Promoting Smart Internet of Things Solutions Using the Serious-game Approach. *Evaluation of Student Knowledge using an e-Learning Framework. *The iTEC Eduteka. *3D Virtual Worlds as a Fusion of Immersing, Visualizing, Recording, and Replaying Technologies. *Fusion of multimedia and mobile technology in audio guides for Museums and Exhibitions: from Bluetooth Push to Web Pull. The book is directed to researchers, students and software developers working in the areas of education and information technologies.

In the paper we propose a model of tax incentives optimization for inve- ment projects with a help of the mechanism of accelerated depreciation. Unlike the tax holidays which influence on effective income tax rate, accelerated - preciation affects on taxable income. In modern economic practice the state actively use for an attraction of - vestment into the creation of new enterprises such mechanisms as accelerated depreciation and tax holidays. The problem under our consideration is the following. Assume that the state (region) is interested in realization of a certain investment project, for ex- ple, the creation of a new enterprise. In order to attract a potential investor the state decides to use a mechanism of accelerated tax depreciation. The foll- ing question arise. What is a reasonable principle for choosing depreciation rate? From the state's point of view the future investor's behavior will be rat- nal. It means that while looking at economic environment the investor choose such a moment for investment which maximizes his expected net present value (NPV) from the given project. For this case both criteria and "investment rule" depend on proposed (by the state) depreciation policy. For the simplicity we will suppose that the purpose of the state for a given project is a maximi- tion of a discounted tax payments into the budget from the enterprise after its creation. Of course, these payments depend on the moment of investor's entry and, therefore, on the depreciation policy established by the state.

Along with the traditional material concerning linear programming (the simplex method, the theory of duality, the dual simplex method), In-Depth Analysis of Linear Programming contains new results of research carried out by the authors. For the first time, the criteria of stability (in the geometrical and algebraic forms) of the general linear programming problem are formulated and proved. New regularization methods based on the idea of extension of an admissible set are proposed for solving unstable (ill-posed) linear programming problems. In contrast to the well-known regularization methods, in the methods proposed in this book the initial unstable problem is replaced by a new stable auxiliary problem. This is also a linear programming problem, which can be solved by standard finite methods. In addition, the authors indicate the conditions imposed on the parameters of the auxiliary problem which guarantee its stability, and this circumstance advantageously distinguishes the regularization methods proposed in this book from the existing methods. In these existing methods, the stability of the auxiliary problem is usually only presupposed but is not explicitly investigated. In this book, the traditional material contained in the first three chapters is expounded in much simpler terms than in the majority of books on linear programming, which makes it accessible to beginners as well as those more familiar with the area.

This book provides graduate students and practitioners with knowledge of the CORBA standard and practical experience of implementing distributed systems with CORBA's Java mapping. With tested code examples that will run immediately!

Mathematical Programming and Financial Objectives for Scheduling Projects focuses on decision problems where the performance is measured in terms of money. As the title suggests, special attention is paid to financial objectives and the relationship of financial objectives to project schedules and scheduling. In addition, how schedules relate to other decisions is treated in detail. The book demonstrates that scheduling must be combined with project selection and financing, and that scheduling helps to give an answer to the planning issue of the amount of resources required for a project. The author makes clear the relevance of scheduling to cutting budget costs. The book is divided into six parts. The first part gives a brief introduction to project management. Part two examines scheduling projects in order to maximize their net present value. Part three considers capital rationing. Many decisions on selecting or rejecting a project cannot be made in isolation and multiple projects must be taken fully into account. Since the requests for capital resources depend on the schedules of the projects, scheduling taken on more complexity. Part four studies the resource usage of a project in greater detail. Part five discusses cases where the processing time of an activity is a decision to be made. Part six summarizes the main results that have been accomplished.

The BeOS is the exciting new operating system designed natively for the Internet and digital media. Programmers are drawn to the BeOS by its many state-of-the-art features, including pervasive multithreading, a symmetric multiprocessing architecture, and an integrated multithreaded graphics system. The Be engineering team also built in many UNIX-like capabilities as part of a POSIX toolkit. Best of all, the BeOS runs on a variety of Intel architectures and PowerPC platforms and uses off-the-shelf hardware.

This book explores the BeOS from a POSIX programmer's point of view, providing a comprehensive and practical guide to porting UNIX and other POSIX-based software to the BeOS. BeOS: Porting UNIX Applications will help you move your favorite UNIX software to an environment designed from the ground up for high-performance applications.
* Supports BeOS Release 3
* Provides a step-by-step guide to the porting process from downloading the source code to installing the application
* Explains how to port off-the-shelf utilities like Emacs and Perl as well as your own programs and tools to the BeOS
* Offers a comprehensive POSIX reference for anyone who is porting or writing software for the BeOS
* Furnishes a simple catalog of tools and features available on the BeOS

In the past several years, there have been significant technological advances in the field of crisis response. However, many aspects concerning the efficient collection and integration of geo-information, applied semantics and situation awareness for disaster management remain open. Improving crisis response systems and making them intelligent requires extensive collaboration between emergency responders, disaster managers, system designers and researchers alike. To facilitate this process, the Gi4DM (GeoInformation for Disaster Management) conferences have been held regularly since 2005. The events are coordinated by the Joint Board of Geospatial Information Societies (JB GIS) and ICSU GeoUnions. This book presents the outcomes of the Gi4DM 2018 conference, which was organised by the ISPRS-URSI Joint Working Group ICWG III/IVa: Disaster Assessment, Monitoring and Management and held in Istanbul, Turkey on 18-21 March 2018. It includes 12 scientific papers focusing on the intelligent use of geo-information, semantics and situation awareness.

Researchers working with nonlinear programming often claim "the word is non linear" indicating that real applications require nonlinear modeling. The same is true for other areas such as multi-objective programming (there are always several goals in a real application), stochastic programming (all data is uncer tain and therefore stochastic models should be used), and so forth. In this spirit we claim: The word is multilevel. In many decision processes there is a hierarchy of decision makers, and decisions are made at different levels in this hierarchy. One way to handle such hierar chies is to focus on one level and include other levels' behaviors as assumptions. Multilevel programming is the research area that focuses on the whole hierar chy structure. In terms of modeling, the constraint domain associated with a multilevel programming problem is implicitly determined by a series of opti mization problems which must be solved in a predetermined sequence. If only two levels are considered, we have one leader (associated with the upper level) and one follower (associated with the lower level)."

On August 1997 a conference titled "From Local to Global Optimiza- tion" was held at Storgarden in Rimfor.sa near the Linkoping Institute of Technology, Sweden. The conference gave us the opportunity to cel- ebrate Hoang Thy's achievements in Optimization during his 70 years of life. This book consists of a collection of research papers based on results presented during the conference and are dedicated to Professor Hoang Thy on the occasion of his 70th birthday. The papers cover a wide range of recent results in Mathematical Pro- gramming. The work of Hoang Thy, in particular in Global Optimiza- tion, has provided directions for new algorithmic developments in the field. We are indebted to the Kluwer Academic Publishers for inviting us to publish this volume, and the Center for Industrial Information Transfer (CENIIT) for financial support. We wish to thank the referees for their help and the authors for their papers. We also wish to join all contributors of this book in expressing birthday wishes and gratitude to Hoang Thy for his inspiration, support, and friendship to all of us. Athanasios Migdalas, Panos M. Pardalos, and Peter Varbrand November 1998 xv Hoang Tuy: An Appreciation Its a pleasure for me as colleague and friend to take this opportunity to celebrate Hoang 'I\lY'S numerous contributions to the field of mathemat- ical programming.

With the purpose of building upon standard web technologies, open linked data serves as a useful way to connect previously unrelated data and to publish structured data on the web. The application of these elements leads to the creation of data commons called semantic web. Cases on Open-Linked Data and Semantic Web Applications brings together new theories, research findings and case studies which cover the recent developments and approaches towards applied open linked data and semantic web in the context of information systems. By enhancing the understanding of open linked data in business, science and information technologies, this reference source aims to be useful for academics, researchers, and practitioners. With the purpose of building upon standard web technologies, open linked data serves as a useful way to connect previously unrelated data and to publish structured data on the web. The application of these elements leads to the creation of data commons called semantic web.

Recent developments in computer science clearly show the need for a better theoretical foundation for some central issues. Methods and results from mathematical logic, in particular proof theory and model theory, are of great help here and will be used much more in future than previously. This book provides an excellent introduction to the interplay of mathematical logic and computer science. It contains extensively reworked versions of the lectures given at the 1997 Marktoberdorf Summer School by leading researchers in the field.
Topics covered include: proof theory and specification of computation (J.-Y. Girard, D. Miller), complexity of proofs and programs (S. R. Buss, S. S. Wainer), computational content of proofs (H. Schwichtenberg), constructive type theory (P. Aczel, H. Barendregt, R. L. Constable), computational mathematics, (U. Martin), rewriting logic (J. Meseguer), and game semantics (S. Abramski).

This book deals with the theory and applications of the Reformulation- Linearization/Convexification Technique (RL T) for solving nonconvex optimization problems. A unified treatment of discrete and continuous nonconvex programming problems is presented using this approach. In essence, the bridge between these two types of nonconvexities is made via a polynomial representation of discrete constraints. For example, the binariness on a 0-1 variable x . can be equivalently J expressed as the polynomial constraint x . (1-x . ) = 0. The motivation for this book is J J the role of tight linear/convex programming representations or relaxations in solving such discrete and continuous nonconvex programming problems. The principal thrust is to commence with a model that affords a useful representation and structure, and then to further strengthen this representation through automatic reformulation and constraint generation techniques. As mentioned above, the focal point of this book is the development and application of RL T for use as an automatic reformulation procedure, and also, to generate strong valid inequalities. The RLT operates in two phases. In the Reformulation Phase, certain types of additional implied polynomial constraints, that include the aforementioned constraints in the case of binary variables, are appended to the problem. The resulting problem is subsequently linearized, except that certain convex constraints are sometimes retained in XV particular special cases, in the Linearization/Convexijication Phase. This is done via the definition of suitable new variables to replace each distinct variable-product term. The higher dimensional representation yields a linear (or convex) programming relaxation.

A function is convex if its epigraph is convex. This geometrical structure has very strong implications in terms of continuity and differentiability. Separation theorems lead to optimality conditions and duality for convex problems. A function is quasiconvex if its lower level sets are convex. Here again, the geo metrical structure of the level sets implies some continuity and differentiability properties for quasiconvex functions. Optimality conditions and duality can be derived for optimization problems involving such functions as well. Over a period of about fifty years, quasiconvex and other generalized convex functions have been considered in a variety of fields including economies, man agement science, engineering, probability and applied sciences in accordance with the need of particular applications. During the last twenty-five years, an increase of research activities in this field has been witnessed. More recently generalized monotonicity of maps has been studied. It relates to generalized convexity off unctions as monotonicity relates to convexity. Generalized monotonicity plays a role in variational inequality problems, complementarity problems and more generally, in equilibrium prob lems."

Nonsmooth energy functions govern phenomena which occur frequently in nature and in all areas of life. They constitute a fascinating subject in mathematics and permit the rational understanding of yet unsolved or partially solved questions in mechanics, engineering and economics. This is the first book to provide a complete and rigorous presentation of the quasidifferentiability approach to nonconvex, possibly nonsmooth, energy functions, of the derivation and study of the corresponding variational expressions in mechanics, engineering and economics, and of their numerical treatment. The new variational formulations derived are illustrated by many interesting numerical problems. The techniques presented will permit the reader to check any solution obtained by other heuristic techniques for nonconvex, nonsmooth energy problems. A civil, mechanical or aeronautical engineer can find in the book the only existing mathematically sound technique for the formulation and study of nonconvex, nonsmooth energy problems. Audience: The book will be of interest to pure and applied mathematicians, physicists, researchers in mechanics, civil, mechanical and aeronautical engineers, structural analysts and software developers. It is also suitable for graduate courses in nonlinear mechanics, nonsmooth analysis, applied optimization, control, calculus of variations and computational mechanics.